200 COSMOS. 



ion, universally diffused up to the sixteenth century, as to the 

 meteoric origin of the comets, has long done. While these 

 bodies were considered by the astrological corporation ot 

 "* Chaldeans in Babylon," by the greater part of the Pythago- 

 rean school, and by Apollonius Myndius, as cosmical bodies 

 reappearing at definite periods in long planetary orbits, the 

 powerful anti-Pythagorean school of Aristotle and that of 

 Epigenes, controverted by Seneca, declared the comets to be 

 productions of meteorological processes in our atmosphere. ^'^^ 



* There were divisions of opinion at Babylon in the learned Chaldean 

 school of astrologers, as well as among the Pythagoreans, and, properly 

 speaking, among all ancient schools. Seneca {Nat. Qm«s<., vii., 3) quotes 

 the antagonistic evidence of Apollonius Myndius and Epigenes. The 

 latter is seldom mentioned, yet Plinius (vii., 57) repi-esents him as 

 " gravis auctor in primis," as does also, without praise, Censorius, De 

 die Natali, cap. xvii., and Stob., Eel. Phys., i., 29, p. 586, ed. Heeren. 

 (Compare Lobeck, Aglaoph., xi.) Diodorus (xv., 50) believes that the 

 universal and prevailing opinion among the Babylonian astrologers 

 (the Chaldeans) was, that the comets reappeared at definite times in 

 their certain orbits. The division which prevailed between the Pytha- 

 goreans as to the planetary nature of the comets, and which is mentioned 

 by Aristotle (MeteoroL, lib. i., cap. vi., 1) and Pseudo-Plutarch (De Plac. 

 Philos., lib. iii., cap. ii.), extended, according to the former {MeteoroL, 

 i., 8, 2), also to the nature of the Milky, Way, the forsaken course of 

 the Sun, or of the overthrown Pha6ton. (Compare also Letronne, in 

 the M6m. de VAcad. des Inscriptions, 1839, tom. xii., p. 108.) By some 

 of the Pythagoreans the opinion of Aristotle was advanced, " that the 

 comets belonged to the number of those planets which, like Mercury, 

 only became visible after a long time when rising in the course above 

 the horizon." In the extremely fragmentary Pseudo-Plutarch it is said 

 that they "ascend at definite times after a complete revolution." A 

 great deal of matter, contained in separate works, referring to the na- 

 ture of the comets, has been lost to us — that of Airian, which Stobaeus 

 employed ; of Charimander, whose mere name has been retained only 

 by Seneca and Pappus. Stobteus brings forward, as the opinion of the 

 Chaldeans {Eclog., lib. i., cap. xxv., p. 61, Christ. Plantinus), that the 

 reason the comets remain so seldom visible to us is because they hide 

 themselves in the depths of the ether ("of space), like the fish in the 

 depths of the ocean. The most graceful, and, in spite of its rhetorical 

 coloring, the best founded opinion of antiquity, and the one correspond- 

 ing most closely with pi'esent views, is that of Seneca. In the Nat. 

 Qucest., lib. vii., cap. xxii., xxv., and xxxi., we read, " Non enim existi- 

 mo cometem subitaneum ignem sed inter aetenia opera naturae. Quid 

 enim miramur, cometas, tam rarum mundi spectaculum, nondum teneri 

 legibus certis? nee initia illorum finesque patescere, quorum ex ingeu- 

 tibus intervallis recursus est? Nondum sunt anni quirtgenti, ex quo 

 Grascia .... stelhs numeros et nomina fecit. Multseque hodie sunt 

 gentes, quae tantura facie noverit coelum ; quae nondurr sciant, cur Luna 

 deficiat, quare obumbretur. Hoc apud nos quoque nuper ratio ad cer- 

 ium perduxit. Veniet tempus, quo ista, quae nunc latent, in lucem dies 

 extrahat et longioris aevi diligentia. Veniet tempus, quo posteri nostri 

 lam aperta nos nescisse mirentur. Eleusis servat, quod ostendat revi 



