Disregarding the specific details of this assumption, there still remains a kernel of truth. The catastrophes of flood and of conflagration were ascribed to the influence of planets, and the conjunction was called the fatal moment. Such being the opinion of Berosus on the cause of the world catastrophes, the catastrophe that befell Sennacherib was probably explained by him in the same way. We are thus able to reconstruct Berosus' record which was omitted in Josephus.
Chaldean scholars were aware that the planetary system is not rigid and that the planets undergo changes. We find in Diodorus of Sicily: "Each of the planets, according to them [the Chaldeans]
has its own particular course, and its velocities and periods of time are subject to change and variation." 2 They counted the earth among the planets, for Diodorus wrote that the Chaldeans stated "that the
1 The same idea, but with varying positions of the stars as the cause of the catastrophes, is found in Nigidius, quoted by Lucan, and in Olvmpiodor, Commentary to Aristotle. See Boll, Sternglaube, p. 201, and idem, Sphaera, p. 362; Gennadius (George Scholarius, patriarch at Constantinople), Dialogus Christiani cum Judaeo (1464). A French edition of the works of Gennadius was printed in 1930.
2 Diodorus of Sicily, The Library of History ii. 31 (transl. Oldfather).
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moon's light is reflected and her eclipses are due to the shadow of the earth." 3 This implies that they knew the earth is a sphere in space, a fact known also to a number of Greek philosophers.4
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A few Greek philosophers were aware that planets, on close contact, are greatly disturbed, and that out of their agitated atmospheres comets are born. The perturbations in such contacts may be so strong that, when the earth is involved, deluge or world conflagration may take place.
Zeno, the founder of the Stoic school of thought, 5 and likewise Anaxagoras (-500 to -428) and Democritus (-460 to -320), declared that planets at conjunction may become coalescent, thus taking the form of comets. Aristotle, who misunderstood their teaching, declared: "We have ourselves observed Jupiter coinciding with one of the stars of the Twain and hiding it, and yet no comet was formed." 6
Diogenes Laertius recorded that Anaxagoras thought that comets are "a conjunction of planets which emit flames" 7; and Seneca, without naming Anaxagoras and Democritus, wrote: "Here is the explanation which is given by some ancient authors. When a planet enters in conjunction with another, they confound their lights into one light, and they have the appearance of an elongated star. . . . The interval which separates them is illuminated by both of them, inflames and transforms into a trail of fire." 8 Seneca, who regarded this as an explanation of the nature of comets, questioned it, reasoning that "planets cannot remain for a long time in conjunctions, because by necessity of the law of velocity they would separate."
Plato, on the authority of the Egyptian sages, ascribed the deluge and conflagration of the world to the action of a celestial body that, changing its path, passed close by the earth, and he even pointed to the planets as the cause of periodic world catastrophes.9 The Greek s Ibid. 4 Aristarchus of Samos recognized that the earth revolves together with other planets around the sun. B Seneca De Cometis.
6 Aristotle Meteorologica i. 6 (transl. E. W. Webster, 1931).
7 Diogenes Laertius, Lives, "Life of Anaxagoras." 8 Seneca De cometis. 9 Plato Timaeus 22C, 39D.
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term for the collision of planets is synodos, which, in the words of a modern interpreter, requires a meeting in space and also a collision of planets.10
The Romans knew that the earth is one of the planets; Pliny, for instance, wrote: "Human beings are distributed all around the earth and stand with their feet pointing toward each other. . . .
Another marvel, that the earth herself hangs suspended and does not fall and carry us with it." n The earth, one of the planets, had been subject to conflicts with other planets, and traces of knowledge of these occurrences may be found in the early writers. Origen writing against Celsus stated: "We do not refer either the deluge or the conflagration to the cycles and planetary periods; but the cause of them we declare to be the extensive prevalence of wickedness, and its (consequent) removal by a deluge or a conflagration." 12 Celsus and Origen were familiar with the view that the deluge and the world conflagration were caused by planets, and that these world catastrophes could be calculated in advance.
Pliny wrote: "Most men are not acquainted with a truth known to the founders of the science from their arduous study of the heavens," namely, that thunderbolts "are the fires of the three upper planets." 13 He differentiated them from lightning caused by the dashing together of two clouds. Seneca, his contemporary, also distinguished lightnings that "seek houses" or "lesser bolts" and the bolts of Jupiter "by which the threefold mass of mountains fell." 14
A vivid picture of an interplanetary discharge is given by Pliny: "Heavenly fire is spit forth by the planet as crackling charcoal flies from a burning log." 15 If such a discharge falls on the earth, "it is
10 Boll, Sternglmihe, pp. 93 and 201. The Greek term "requires a meeting in the same horizontal and vertical planes and a collision. The planets thrust one another and cause the destruction of the world" ("ein Zusammentreffen und auch ein Zusammenstossen auf derselben Ebene, also nach Breite und Hohe stossen die Planeten ineinander und losen dadurch das Weltende aus").
11 Pliny, Natural History, ii. 45.
i2 Origen, Against Celsus, Bk. iv, Chap, xii, in Vol. IV of The Ante-Nicene Fathers robin-bobin
(ed. A. Robert and J. Donaldson, 1890).
13 Pliny, Natural History, ii. 18. 14 Seneca, Thyestes. 15 Pliny, ii. 18.
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accompanied by a very great disturbance of the air," produced "by the birth-pangs, so to speak, of the planet in travail." 16
Pliny says also that a bolt from Mars fell on Bolsena, "the richest town in Tuscany," and that the city was entirely burned up by this bolt.17 He refers to Tuscan writings as the source of his information. By Tuscan writings are meant Etruscan books.
Bolsena, or the ancient Volsinium, was one of the chief cities of the Etruscans, the people whose civilization preceded that of the Latin Romans on the Apennine Peninsula. The Etruscan states occupied the area of what was later known as Tuscany, between the Tiber and the Arno.
Near Bolsena, or Volsinium, is a lake of the same name. This lake fills a basin nine miles long, seven miles wide, and 285 feet deep. For a long time this basin was regarded as the water-filled crater of a volcano. However, its area of 117 square kilometers exceeds by far that of the largest known craters on the earth—those in the Andes in South America and those in the Hawaiian (Sandwich) Islands in the Pacific. Hence, the idea that the lake is the crater of an extinct volcano has recently been questioned. Moreover, although the bottom of the lake is of lava, and the ground around the lake abounds with ashes and lava and columns of basalt, the talus of a volcano is lacking.
Taking what Pliny said of an interplanetary discharge together with what has actually been found at Volsinium, one may wonder whether the cinders and the lava and the columns of basalt could possibly be the remains of the contact Pliny mentions. Again, if the discharge was caused by Mars, it would probably have occurred in the eighth pre-Christian century. The catastrophes of that century brought the great Etruscan civilization into sudden decline and launched the migration of newcomers to Italy leading to the founding of Rome. The Etruscans, as cited by Censorinus and quoted in the Section on "The World Ages," thought that celestial prodigies augured the end of each age. "The Etruscans were versed in the science of the stars, and after having observed the prodigies with attention, they recorded these observations in their books."