The Greeks
believed that darkness overshadowed the earth at the deaths of
Prometheus, Atreus, Hercules, AEsculapius, and Alexander the Great.
The Roman legends held that at the death of Romulus there was
darkness for six hours. In the history of the Caesars occur
portents of all three kinds; for at the death of Julius the earth
was shrouded in darkness, the birth of Augustus was heralded by a
star, and the downfall of Nero by a comet. So, too, in one of the
Christian legends clustering about the crucifixion, darkness
overspread the earth from the sixth to the ninth hour. Neither the
silence regarding it of the only evangelist who claims to have been
present, nor the fact that observers like Seneca and Pliny, who,
though they carefully described much less striking occurrences of
the same sort and in more remote regions, failed to note any such
darkness even in Judea, have availed to shake faith in an account
so true to the highest poetic instincts of humanity.
This view of the relations between Nature and man continued among
both Jews and Christians.
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