Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/236

 Although people now travel halfway across the earth in order to be able to witness an eclipse, in olden days such an occasion was marked by the greatest terror. To the ancients they were without the order of nature, and in Rome, at one time, it was blasphemy, and punishable by law, to talk publicly of their being due to natural causes.

The Chaldeans believed the sun and moon to be black on the hidden side, and upon the displeasure of the Gods, the darkened