82 THE MAGIC OF JEWELS AND CHARMS
represented
on the silver coins of Marium in Cyprus. Here the radiance and splendor
of the object suggested a stellar or celestial origin, and we see the
same tendency at work in the application of the name cerauniœ (thunder-stones) to certain brilliant gems by Pliny.20
Virgil21
seems to confound with thunder the detonation of a bolide, followed by
a train of light, and he seems also to confound the bolide itself with
a lightning flash, for he says that its fall diffused a sulphurous
vapor far and wide. Seneca was more critical, for he regarded the fact
of thunder sometimes accompanying the fall of a meteorite as merely a
coincidence.
Although,
in the absence of exact and trustworthy contemporaneous accounts of
the fall of these sacred stones, we cannot be absolutely certain that
they were meteorites, the testimony in several cases is sufficient to
render this almost certain, while in many other cases there is no
reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of the tradition. The choice
of some of the bœtyli, however, was determined by their form
alone, to which was ascribed a religious significance, not exactly
compatible with our religious ideas of to-day, but quite easily
understood when we remember that the divine creative energy was
concretely represented in ancient times by many symbols offensive to
our sense of propriety.
In
the treatise "On Rivers," attributed to Plutarch, a etone is said to
have been found on Mount Cronius, which bore the name of "cylinder."
When Jupiter thundered, this stone, terrified by the noise, rolled down
from the top of the mountain.22 This passage is interesting as suggesting one of the reasons which caused the name "thunderbolt"
" F. Lenormant, in Daremberg and Saglio's Diet, dee antiq. grecques et romainee, vol. i, p. 645, Paris, 1873. See Fig. 739.
"Aen. ii, 692-698.
" De Mêly, "Le traiti des fleuves de Plutarche"; in Revue des Etudes Grecques, vol. ν (1892), p. 334.
