Popular belief has generally invested these ill-omened bodies with peculiar terrors. "These blasing starres--dreadful to be seene, with bloudie haires, and all over rough and shagged at the top." They vary, however, in their appearance. Sometimes they are pale, and glitter like a sword, without any rays or beams. Such was the one which is said to have hung over Jerusalem for near a year before its destruction, filling the minds of all who beheld it with awe and superstitious dread. A comet resembling a horn appeared when the "whole manhood of Greece fought the battaile of Salamis." Comets foretold the war between Caesar and Pompey, the murder of Claudius, and the tyranny of Nero. Though _usually_, they were not _invariably_, considered as portents of evil omen: for the birth and accession of Alexander, of Mithridates, the birth of Charles Martel, and the accession of Charlemagne, and the commencement of the Tatar empire, were all notified by blazing stars. A very brilliant one which appeared for seven consecutive nights soon after the death of Julius Caesar was supposed to be conveying the soul of the murdered dictator to Olympus. An author who wrote on one which appeared in the reign of Elizabeth was most anxious, as in duty bound, to apply the phenomenon to the queen. But here was the puzzle. "To have foretold calamities might have been misprision of treason; and the only precedent for saying anything good of a comet was to be drawn from that which occurred after the death of Julius Caesar;" but it so happened that at this time Elizabeth was by no means either ripe or willing for her apotheosis.[38] Comets, one author writes, "were made to the end the etherial regions might not be more void of monsters than the ocean is of whales and other great thieving fishes, and that a gross fatness being gathered together as excrements into an imposthume, the celestial air might thereby be purged, lest the sun should be obscured." Another says, they "signifie corruption of the ayre. They are signes of earthquake, of warres, chaunging of kyngdomes, great dearth of corne, yea, a common death of man and beast." So a poet of the same age:-- "There with long bloody hair a blazing star Threatens the world with famine, plague, and war; To princes death, to kingdoms many crosses, To all estates inevitable losses; To herdsmen rot, to plowmen hapless seasons, To sailors storms, to cities civil treasons." But a writer on comets in 1665 crowned all previous conjecture. "As if God and Nature intended by comets to ring the knells of princes; esteeming the bells of churches upon earth not sacred enough for such illustrious and eminent performances." No wonder that the comet in Harold's days was regarded with fearful misgivings.