(91) For Hindu theories, see Alabaster, Wheel of the Law, 11. For Greek and Roman legends, See Higgins, Anacalypsis, vol. i, pp. 616, 617.; also Suetonius, Caes., Julius, p. 88, Claud., p. 46; Seneca, Quaest. Nat., vol. i, p. 1, vol. vii, p. 17; Pliny, Hist. Nat., vol. ii, p. 25; Tacitus, Ann., vol. xiv, p. 22; Josephus, Antiq., vol. xiv, p. 12; and the authorities above cited. For the tradition of the Jews regarding the darkness of three days, see citation in Renan, Histoire du Peuple Israel, vol. iv, chap. iv. For Tertullian's belief regarding the significance of an eclipse, see the Ad Scapulum, chap. iii, in Migne, Patrolog. Lat., vol. i, p. 701. For the claim regarding Charles I, see a sermon preached before Charles II, cited by Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. i, p. 65. Mather thought, too, that it might have something to do with the death of sundry civil functionaries of the colonies; see his Discourse concerning comets, 1682. For Archbishop Sandy's belief, see his eighteenth sermon (in Parker Soc. Publications). The story of Abraham Davenport has been made familiar by the poem of Whittier. In these beliefs regarding meteors and eclipses there was little calculated to do harm by arousing that superstitious terror which is the worst breeding-bed of cruelty. Far otherwise was it with the belief regarding comets. During many centuries it gave rise to the direst superstition and fanaticism. The Chaldeans alone among the ancient peoples generally regarded comets without fear, and thought them bodies wandering as harmless as fishes in the sea; the Pythagoreans alone among philosophers seem to have had a vague idea of them as bodies returning at fixed periods of time; and in all antiquity, so far as is known, one man alone, Seneca, had the scientific instinct and prophetic inspiration to give this idea definite shape, and to declare that the time would come when comets would be found to move in accordance with natural law. Here and there a few strong men rose above the prevailing superstition. The Emperor Vespasian tried to laugh it down, and insisted that a certain comet in his time could not betoken his death, because it was hairy, and he bald; but such scoffing produced little permanent effect, and the prophecy of Seneca was soon forgotten. These and similar isolated utterances could not stand against the mass of opinion which upheld the doctrine that comets are "signs and wonders."(92) (92) For terror caused in Rome by comets, see Pingre, Cometographie, pp. 165, 166. For the Chaldeans, see Wolf, Geschichte der Astronomie, p. 10 et seq., and p. 181 et seq.; also Pingre, chap. ii. For the Pythagorean notions, see citations from Plutarch in Costard, History of Astronomy, p. 283. For Seneca's prediction, see Guillemin, World of Comets (translated by Glaisher), pp. 4, 5; also Watson, On Comets, p. 126. For this feeling in antiquity generally, see the preliminary chapters of the two works last cited.