After the death of Demetrius, king of Syria, whose kingdom was 1 divided by his sons Demetrius and Antiochus, a little before the Achaean War, a comet blazed forth not inferior to the sun in size. Its orb was at first fiery red, and emitted a bright light sufficient to dispel the darkness of night. By and by its size was gradually reduced and its brightness waned. Finally it went completely out. How many stars, suppose you, would require to combine to make up such a huge mass? You might collect in one a thousand of them without ever 2 matching the size of the sun. In the reign of Attalus a comet appeared, moderately small in size to begin with. By and by it mounted up and spread out and moved as far as the equator, equalling in the extent of its immense length the whole quarter of the sky which we call the Milky Way. How many planets must have combined to occupy with an unbroken line of fire such a long tract of the sky? XVI I have refuted the argument; I must now discredit its authors. It 1 requires no great effort to strip Ephorus of his authority; he is a mere chronicler. Some of his class seek to recommend their narrative by incredible stories, and by their marvels try to interest the reader, who would probably soon find some other occupation if he were called on to wade through their tedious narrative of ordinary events. Some, again, are too credulous, some too careless, some are deluded, some delighted, by falsehood. The former do not shun it, the latter go in quest of it. The whole clan of them have this in common; they fancy 2 their work cannot merit approval, and become popular unless they freely interlard it with lies. Ephorus is not a person of any scrupulous honour; he is often duped, often he tries to dupe. For example, he asserts that the great comet which, by its rising, sank Helice and Buris, which was carefully watched by the eyes of the whole world since it drew issues of great moment in its train, split up into two stars; but nobody besides him has recorded it. Who, I wonder, could observe the moment at which the comet broke up and was resolved into two 3 parts? And if there is any one who saw it split up into two, how is it that no one saw it first formed out of the two? And why did Ephorus not add the names of the two stars into which it was broken up, since they must have been some of the five planets? XVII