Far otherwise was it with the
belief regarding comets. During many centuries it gave rise to the
direst superstition and fanaticism. The Chaldeans alone among the
ancient peoples generally regarded comets without fear, and thought
them bodies wandering as harmless as fishes in the sea; the
Pythagoreans alone among philosophers seem to have had a vague idea
of them as bodies returning at fixed periods of time; and in all
antiquity, so far as is known, one man alone, Seneca, had the
scientific instinct and prophetic inspiration to give this idea
definite shape, and to declare that the time would come when comets
would be found to move in accordance with natural law. Here and
there a few strong men rose above the prevailing superstition. The
Emperor Vespasian tried to laugh it down, and insisted that a
certain comet in his time could not betoken his death, because it
was hairy, and he bald; but such scoffing produced little permanent
effect, and the prophecy of Seneca was soon forgotten. These and
similar isolated utterances could not stand against the mass of
opinion which upheld the doctrine that comets are "signs and
wonders.
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