"Under the reign of Tiberius, the whole earth,[209:2] or at least a celebrated province of the Roman empire,[209:3] was involved in a perpetual darkness of three hours. Even this miraculous event, which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity, and the devotion of mankind, passed without notice in an age of science and history. It happened during the life-time of Seneca[209:4] and the elder Pliny,[209:5] who must have experienced the immediate effects, or received the earliest intelligence, of the prodigy. Each of these philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded all the great phenomena of nature, earthquakes, meteors, comets and eclipses, which his indefatigable curiosity could collect.[209:6] But the one and the other have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which the mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe."[209:7] This account of the darkness at the time of the death of Jesus of Nazareth, is one of the prodigies related in the New Testament which no Christian commentator has been able to make appear reasonable. The favorite theory is that it was a _natural_ eclipse of the sun, which _happened_ to take place at that particular time, but, if this was the case, there was nothing _supernatural_ in the event, and it had nothing whatever to do with the death of Jesus. Again, it would be necessary to prove from other sources that such an event happened at that time, but this cannot be done. The argument from the duration of the darkness--_three hours_--is also of great force against such an occurrence having happened, _for an eclipse seldom lasts in great intensity more than six minutes_. Even if it could be proved that an eclipse really happened at the time assigned for the crucifixion of Jesus, how about the earthquake, when the rocks were rent and the graves opened? and how about the "saints which slept" rising _bodily_ and walking in the streets of the Holy City and _appearing to many_? Surely, the faith that would remove mountains,[209:8] is required here. Shakespeare has embalmed some traditions of the kind exactly analogous to the present case: "In the most high and palmy state of Rome, A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets."[210:1] Belief in the influence of the _stars_ over life and death, _and in special portents at the death of great men_, survived, indeed, to recent times. Chaucer abounds in allusions to it, and still later Shakespeare tells us: "When beggars die there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes."