Page:The story of the comets.djvu/263

XIV. Comets in History and Poetry. 207 Thus rendered by A. Thomson : "A blazing star, which is vulgarly supposed to portend destruction to Kings and Princes, appeared above the horizon several nights successively." (Bohn's Suetonius, p. 366.) JUVENAL, the Satirist, evidently gives utterance to the com- monly received opinion as to comets : " Instantem regi Armenio Parthoque Cometem Prima videt. (Satirce, vi, 11. 407-8.) Thus rendered by L. Evans : "She is the first to see the Comet that Menaces the Armenian and Parthian King." (Bohn's Juvenal, p. 53.) PLINY'S statement is comprehensive : " Cometas Graeci vocant nostri crinitas : horrentes crine sanguineo et comarum modo in vertice hispidas." (Hist. Nat. Bk. II, c. 25.) Thus rendered by P. Holland, Doctor in Physicke : "These blazing starres the Greekes call cometas, our Romanes crinitas, dreadful to be scene, with bloudie haires, and all over rough and shagged in the top like the bush of haire upon the head.'* (The Historie of the World, Fol. London, 1601, p. 15.) PLUTARCH'S account of comets might in modern language be described as " prosy ". Here it is : " A Comet is one of those Stars which do not always appear, but after they have run through their determined course, they then rise, and are visible to us." [The writer then goes on to quote the opinions of a number of Greeks as to Comets.] (Treatise on the Sentiments Nature Philosophers delighted in, Lib. Ill, c. 2. Plutarch's Morals, vol. iii, p. 179, London, 1718.) CLAUDIUS, who flourished early in the 5th century, remarked that "a comet was never seen in the heavens without im- plying disaster ". In an ancient Norman Chronicle there occurs a curious exposition of the Divine Bight of William I. to invade England : " How a star with 3 long tails appeared in the sky ; how the learned declared that stars only appeared when a kingdom wanted a king, and how the said star was called a Comette." The well-known writer William of Malmesbury, speaking in the year 1060, says : " Soon after [the death of Henry, King of France, by poison] a comet denoting, as they say, change in kingdoms appeared, trailing its extended and