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I shall conclude this chapter with the comets, the earthquakes, and the plague, which astonished or afflicted the age of Justinian.

I. In the fifth year of his reign, and in the month of September, a comet was seen during twenty days in the western quarter of the heavens, and which shot its rays into the north. Eight years afterwards, while the sun was in Capricorn, another comet appeared to follow in the Sagittary; the size was gradually increasing; the head was in the east, the tail in the west, and it remained visible above forty days. The nations, who gazed with astonishment, expected wars and calamities from their baleful influence; and these expectations were abundantly fulfilled. The astronomers dissembled their ignorance of the nature of these blazing stars, which they affected to represent as the floating meteors of the air; and few among them embraced the simple notion of Sencca and the Chaldeans, that they are only planets of a longer period and more eccentric motion. Time and science have justified the conjectures and predictions of the Roman sage: the telescope has opened new worlds to the eyes of astronomers; 76 and, in the narrow space of history and fable, one and the same comet is already found to have revisited the earth in seven equal revolutions of five hundred and seventy-five years. The first," which ascends beyond the Christian era one thousand seven hundred and sixty-seven years, is coeval with Ogyges, the father of Grecian antiquity. And this appearance explains the tradition which Varro has preserved, that under his reign the planet Venus changed her color, size, figure, and course; a prodigy without example either in past or succeeding ages.78 The second visit, in the year eleven hundred

74 The first comet is mentioned by John Malala (tom. ii. pp. 190, 219) and Theophanes (p 154); the second by Procopius (Persic. 1. ii. c. 4). Yet I strongly suspect their identity. The paleness of the sun (Vandal. 1. ii. c. 14) is applied by Theophanes (p. 158) to a different year.*

75 Seneca's viith book of Natural Questions displays, in the theory of comets, a philosophic mind. Yet should we not too candidly confound a vague prediction, a veniet tempus, &c., with the merit of real discoveries.

76 Astronomers may study Newton and Halley. I draw my humble science from the article COMETE, in the French Encyclopedie, by M. d'Alembert.

77 Whiston, the horest, pious, visionary Whiston. had fancied for the æra of Noah's flood (2242 years before Christ) a prior apparition of the same comet which drowned the earth with its tail.

78 A Dissertation of Freret (Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, tom. x. p. The phenomenon in 357-377) affords a happy union of philosophy and erudition.

See Lydus de Ostentis, particularly c. 15, in which the author begins to show the signification of comets according to the part of the heavens in which they appear, and what fortunes they prognosticate to the Roman empire and their Persian enemies. The chapter, however, is imperfect. (Edit. Niebuhr, p. 290).-M.

and ninety-three, is darkly implied in the fable of Electra, the seventh of the Pleiads, who have been reduced to six since the time of the Trojan war. That nymph, the wife of Dardanus, was unable to support the ruin of her country: she abandoned the dances of her sister orbs, fled from the zodiac to the north pole, and obtained, from her dishevelled locks, the name of the comet. The third period expires in the year six hundred and eighteen, a date that exactly agrees with the tremendous comet of the Sibyl, and perhaps of Pliny, which arose in the West two generations before the reign of Cyrus. The fourth apparition, forty-four years before the birth of Christ, is of all others the most splendid and important. After the death of Cæsar, a long-haired star was conspicuous to Rome and to the nations, during the games which were exhibited by young Octavian in honor of Venus and his uncle. The vulgar opinion, that it conveyed to heaven the divine soul of the dictator, was cherished and consecrated by the piety of a statesman; while his secret superstition referred the comet to the glory of his own times. The fifth visit has been already ascribed to the fifth year of Justinian, which coincides with the five hundred and thirty-first of the Christian era. And it may deserve notice, that in this, as in the preceding instance, the comet was followed, though at a longer interval, by a remarkable paleness of the sun. The sixth return, in the year eleven hundred and six, is recorded by the chronicles of Europe and China: and in the first fervor of the crusades, the Christians and the Mahometans might surmise, with equal reason, that it portended the destruction of the infidels. The seventh phenomenon, of one thousand six hundred and eighty, was presented to the eyes of an enlightened age. The philosophy of Bayle dispelled a prejudice which Milton's muse had so recently adorned, that the comet, "from its horrid hair shakes pestilence and war.' Its road in the

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the time of Ogyges was preserved by Varro (Apud Augustin. de Civitate Dei, xxi. 8), who quotes Castor, Dion of Naples and Adrastus of Cyzicus-nobiles mathematici. The two subsequent periods are preserved by the Greek mythologists and the spurious books of Sibylline verses.

79 Pliny (Hist. Nat. ii, 23) has transcribed the original memorial of Augustus. Mairan, in his most ingenious letters to the P. Parennin, missionary in China, removes the games and the comet of September, from the year 44 to the year 43. before the Christian æra: but I am not totally subdued by the criticism of the astronomer (Opuscules, pp. 275-351).

80 This last comet was visible in the month of December, 1680. Bayle, who began his Pensées sur la Comète in January, 1681 (Œuvres. tom. iii.), was forced to argue that a supernatural comet would have confirmed the ancients in their idolatry. Bernoulli (see his Eloge, in Fontenelle. tom. v. p. 99) was forced to allow that the tail, though not the head. was a sign of the wrath of God.

Paradise Lost was published in the year 1667; and the famous lines (1. ii.

heavens was observed with exquisite skill by Flamstead and Cassini: and the m: thematical science of Bernoulli, Newton,* and Halley, investigated the laws of its revolutions. At the eighth period, in the year two thousand three hundred and fifty-five, their calculations may perhaps be verified by the astronomers of some future capital in the Siberian or American wilderness.

II. The near approach of a comet may injure or destroy the globe which we inhabit; but the changes on its surface have been hitherto produced by the action of volcanoes and earthquakes. The nature of the soil may indicate the countries most exposed to these formidable concussions, since they are caused by subterraneous fires, and such fires are kindled by the union and fermentation of iron and sulphur. But their times and effects appear to lie beyond the reach of human curiosity; and the philosopher will discreetly abstain from the prediction of earthquakes, till he has counted the drops of water that silently filtrate on the inflammable mineral, and measured the caverns which increase by resistance the explosion of the imprisoned air. Without assigning the cause, history will distinguish the periods in which these calamitous events have been rare or frequent, and will observe, that this fever of the earth raged with uncommon violence during the reign of Justinian. Each year is marked by the repetition of earthquakes, of such duration, that Constantinople has been shaken above forty days; of such extent, that the shock has been communicated to the whole surface of the globe, or at least of the Roman empire. An impulsive or vibratory motion was felt; enormous chasms were opened, huge and heavy bodies were discharged into the air, the sea alternately advanced and retreated beyond its ordinary bounds,

708, &c). which startled the licenser, may allude to the recent comet of 1664 observed by Cassini at Rome in the presence of Queen Christina (Fontenelle, in his Eloge, tom. v. p. 338). Had Charles II. betrayed any symptoms of curiosity or fear?

For the cause of earthquakes, see Buffon (tom. i. pp. 502-536. Supplément à Hist. Naturelle, tom. v. pp. 382-390, edition in 4to.), Valmont de Bomare (Dictionnaire d'Histoire Naturelle, Tremblement de Terre, Pyrites), Watson (Chemical Essays, tom. 1. pp. 181-209).

83 The earthquakes that shook the Roman world in the reign of Justinian are described or mentioned by Procopius (Goth. 1. iv. c. 25, Anecdot. c. 18), Agathias, (1 ii. pp. 52, 53, 54, 1. v. pp. 145-152), John Malala (Chron. tom. ii. pp. 140-146, 176, 177, 183, 193, 220, 229 231, 233, 234), and Theophanes (pp. 151, 183, 189, 191-196).†

* Compare Pingrè, Histoire des Comètes.-M.

+ Compare Daubeny on Earthquakes, and Lyell's Geology, vol. ii. p. 181. et seq.-M.

and a mountain was torn from Libanus, and cast into the waves, where it protected, as a mole, the new harbor of Botrys in Phoenicia. The stroke that agitates an ant-hill may crush the insect-myriads in the dust; yet truth must extort a confession that man has industriously labored for his own destruction. The institution of great cities, which include a nation within the limits of a wall, almost realizes the wish of Caligula, that the Roman people had but one neck. Two hundred and fifty thousand persons are said to have perished in the earthquake of Antioch, whose domestic multitudes were swelled by the conflux of strangers to the festival of the Ascension. The loss of Berytus 86 was of smaller account, but of much greater value. That city, on the coast of Phoenicia, was illustrated by the study of the civil law, which opened the surest road to wealth and dig nity; the schools of Berytus were filled with the rising spirits of the age, and many a youth was lost in the earthquake, who might have lived to be the scourge or the guardian of his country. In these disasters, the architect becomes the enemy of mankind. The hut of a savage, or the tent of an Arab, may be thrown down without injury to the inhabitants; and the Peruvians had reason to deride the folly of their Spanish conquerors, who with so much cost and labor erected their own sepulchres. The rich mar. bles of a patrician are dashed on his own head, a whole people is buried under the ruins of public and private edi fices, and the conflagration is kindled and propagated by the innumerable fires which are necessary for the subsistence and manufactures of a large city. Instead of the mutual sympathy which might comfort and assist the distressed, they dreadfully experience the vices and passions which are released from the fear of punishment; the tottering houses are pillaged by intrepid avarice; revenge embraces the moment, and selects the victim; and the earth often swallows the assassin, or the ravisher, in the consummation of their crimes. Superstition involves the present

84 An abrupt height, a perpendicular cape, between Aradus and Botrys, named by the Greeks θεῶν πρόσωρον and ευπρόσωπον οι λιθοπροσωπον by the scrupulous Christians (Polyb. 1. v. p. 411. Pompon. Mela, 1. i. c. 12, p. 87, cum Isaac. Voss. Observat. Maundrell, Journey, pp. 32, 33. Pocock's Description, vol. ii. p. 99).

Botrys was founded (ann. ante Christ. 935-903) by Ithobal, king of Tyre (Marsham, Canon. Chron. pp. 387, 388). Its poor representative, the village of Patrone, is now destitute of a harbor.

86 The university, splendor, and ruin of Berytus are celebrated by Heineccius (pp 351-356) as an essential part of the history of the Roman law. It was overthrown in the xxvth year of Justinian, A. Ď. 551, July 9 (Theophanes, p. 192); but Agathias (1. ii. pp. 51, 52) suspends the earthquake till he has achieved the Italian war.

danger with invisible terrors; and if the image of death. may sometimes be subservient to the virtue or repentance of individuals, an affrighted people is more forcibly moved to expect the end of the world, or to deprecate with servile homage the wrath of an avenging Deity.

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III. Ethiopia and Egypt have been stigmatized, in every age, as the original source and seminary of the plague.s In a damp, hot, stagnating air, this African fever is generated from the putrefaction of animal substances, and especially from the swarms of locusts, not less destruc tive in their death than in their lives. The fatal disease which depopulated the earth in the time of Justinian and his successors,88 first appeared in the neighborhood of Pelusium, between the Serbonian bog and the eastern channel of the Nile. From thence, tracing as it were a double path, it spread to the East, over Syria, Persia, and the Indies, and penetrated to the West, along the coast of Africa, and over the continent of Europe. In the spring of the second year, Constantinople, during three or four months, was visited by the pestilence; and Procopius, who observed its progress and symptoms with the eyes of a physician, has emulated the skill and diligence of Thucydides in the description of the plague of Athens. The infection was sometimes announced by the visions of a distempered fancy, and the victim despaired as soon as he had heard the menace and felt the stroke of an invisible spectre. But the greater number, in their beds, in the streets, in their usual occupation, were surprised by a slight fever; so slight, indeed, that neither the pulse nor the color of the patient gave any signs of the approaching danger. The same, the next, or the succeeding day, it was declared by the swelling of the glands, particularly those of the groin,

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37 I have read with pleasure Mead's short, but elegant, treatise concerning Pestilential Disorders, the viiith edition, London, 1722

The great plague which raged in 512 and the following years (Pagi, Critica, tom. i. p 518) must be traced in Procopius (Persic 1 i. c 22. 23). Agathias (1. v. pp. 153. 154). Evagrius (1 iv. c 29), Paul Diaconus (1. ii_c. iv pp. 776, 777), Gregory of Tours (tom ii 1 iv c. 5, p. 205), who styles it Lues Inguinaria, and the Chronicles of Victor Tunnunensis (p. 9, in Thesaur. Temporum), of Marcellinus (p 54), and of Theophanes (p. 153)

8 Dr. Friend (Hist Medicin. in Opp. pp. 416 420, Lond. 1733) is satisfied that Procopius must have studied physic, from his knowledge and use of the technical words. Yet many words that are now scientific were common and popular in the Greek idiom

See Thucydides 1. ii c 47-54. pp. 127 133, edit. Duker, and the poetical description of the same plague by Lucretius (1 vi. 1136-1284). I was indebted to Dr Hunter for an elaborate commentary on this part of Thucydides, a quarto of 600 pages (Venet. 1603, apud Juntas), which was pronounced in St. Mark's Library by Fabius Paullinus Utinensis, a physician and philosopher.

VOL. III.-41

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