The
ancients supposed the stars to be the domiciles of the gods; falling
stars and falling meteorites signified the descending of a god or the
sending of its image to the earth. These envoys were received with
divine honor, embalmed and draped, and worshipped in temples built for
them.
The
coins to which we have alluded were usually struck in honor of the
sanctuaries wherein the aerolites were objects of adoration, and the
temple is often rudely figured with the stone set up in the centre. In
many cases the meteorite was preserved in its original form, which, if
conical, was regarded as a phallic symbol; in other cases:, the mass
was rudely shaped into the conventional form of some divinity.
It is stated in Spang-enberg's Chron. Saxon, that in 998 a.D. two
immense stones fell at Magdeburg during a thunderstorm. One of these
is said to have fallen in the town itself and the other in the open
country, near the river Elbe. The description of a meteoric fall given
in an eighteenth century treatise on meteors, presents a vivid picture
of the phenomena attending—or believed to have attended—such a fall.
We are told that on June 16, 1794, at about seven o'clock in the
evening a thunder cloud was seen in Tuscany, near the city of Siena and
the town of Radacofani. This
