Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/122

 88 pliny's NATUEAL HISTOET. [Book II. wounds that might come from above. In the consulship of L. Paulus and C. Marcellus it rained wool, round the castle of Carissanum, near which place, a year after, T. Annius Milo was killed. It is recorded, among the transactions of that year, that when he was pleading his own cause, there was a shower of baked tiles. CHAP. 58. (57.) — EATTLI]S^G OP ARMS ATfD THE SOTJND OF TEUMPETS HEAED IN THE SKY. "We have heard, that during the war with the Cimbri, the rattling of arms and the sound of trumpets were heard through the sky, and that the same thing has frequently happened before and since Also, that in the third consulship of Marius, armies were seen in the heavens by the Amerini and the Tudertes, encountering each other, as if from the east and west, and that those from the east were repelled^. It is not at all wonderful for the heavens themselves to be in flames', and it has been more frequently observed when the clouds have taken up a great deal of lire. CHAP. 59. (58.) OF STOliTES THAT HAYE FALLEIST PEOM THE CLOUDS^. THE OPIKLOlSr OE AlfAXAGOEAS EESPECTINa THEM. The Grreeks boast that Anaxagoras*, the Clazomenian, in the second year of the 78th Olpnpiad, from his knowledge of what relates to the heavens, had predicted, that at a certain wool mentioned below, i. e. a light flocculent substance, was perhaps volcanic. ^ Armorum sonitum toto G-ermania coelo Audiit. — Yirgil, Geor. i. 474, 475. " .... in Jovis Vicilini templo, quod in Compsano agro est, arma con- crepuisse." Livy, xxiv. 44. 2 See Plutarch, by Langhome ; Marius, iii. 133. 3 See Livy, iii. 5 & 10, xxxi. 12, xxxii, 9, et alibi. "* I have ah'eady had occasion to remark, concerning this class of phae- nomena, that there is no doubt of their actual occurrence, although their origin is still xmexplained. have an ample account of him by Enfield ia the General Biography, in loco ; he was bom B.C. 500 and died B.C. 428.
 * The life of Anaxagoras has been written by Diogenes Laertius. We