"('With threatening signs the lowering skies were fill'd, And sanguine drops from murky clouds distilled.') "Among the numerous prodigies reported by Livy to have happened in the year 214 B.C., it is instanced that at Mantua a stagnating piece of water, caused by the overflowing of the river Mincius, appeared as of blood; and in the cattle-market at Rome a shower of blood fell in the Istrian Street. After mentioning several other remarkable phenomena that happened during that year, Livy concludes by saying that these prodigies were expiated, conformably to the answers of the aruspices, by victims of the greater kinds, and supplication was ordered to be performed to all the deities who had shrines at Rome. Again, it is stated by Livy that many alarming prodigies were seen at Rome in the year 181 B.C., and others reported from abroad; among which was a shower of blood which fell in the courts of the temples of Vulcan and Concord. After mentioning that the image of Juno Sospita shed tears, and that a pestilence broke out in the country, this writer adds that these prodigies, and the mortality which prevailed, alarmed the Senate so much that they ordered the consuls to sacrifice to such gods as their judgment should direct victims of the larger kinds, and that the decemvirs should consult their books. Pursuant to their direction, a supplication for one day was proclaimed to be performed at every shrine in Rome; and they advised, besides, and the Senate voted, and the consul proclaimed, that there should be a supplication and public worship for three days throughout all Italy. In the year 169 B.C., Livy also mentions that a shower of blood fell in the middle of the day. The decemvirs were again called upon to consult their books, and again were sacrifices offered to the deities. The account, also, of Livy, of the bloody sweat on some of the statues of the gods, must be referred to the same phenomenon, as the predilection of those ages to marvel, says Thomas Browne, and the want of accurate investigation in the cases recorded, as well as the rare occurrence of these atmospherical depositions in our own times, inclines us to include them among the blood-red drops deposited by insects. "In Stow's 'Annales of England' we have two accounts of showers of blood, and from an edition printed in London in 1592, we make our quotations: 'Rivallus, sonne of Cunedagius, succeeded his father, in whose time (in the year 766 B.C.) it rained bloud three dayes: after which tempest ensued a great multitude of venemous flies, which slew much people, and then a great mortalitie throughout this lande, caused almost desolation of the same.' The second account is as follows: 'In the time of Brithricus (A.D. 786) it rayned blood, which falling on men's clothes, appeared like crosses.' "Hollingshed, Grafton, and Fabyan have also recorded these instances in their respective chronicles of England.