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Chap.xliii] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 463 of the Sibyll, and perhaps of Pliny, which arose in the west two generations before the reign of Cyrus. The fourth apparition, forty-four years before the birth of Christ, is of all others the most splendid and important. After the death of Caesar, a long- haired star was conspicuous to Borne and to the nations, during the games which were exhibited by young Octavian in honour of Venus and his uncle. The vulgar opinion, that it conveyed to heaven the divine soul of the dictator, was cherished and consecrated by the piety of a statesman ; while his secret super- stition referred the comet to the glory of his own times. 119 The fifth visit has been already ascribed to the fifth year of Justinian, which coincides with the five hundred and thirty-first of the Christian sera. And it may deserve notice that in this, as in the preceding, instance the comet was followed, though at a longer interval, by a remarkable paleness of the sun. The sixth return, in the year eleven hundred and six, is recorded by the chronicles of Europe and China ; and in the first fervour of the Crusades, the Christians and the Mahometans might surmise, with equal reason, that it portended the destruction of the In- fidels. The seventh phaenomenon of one thousand six hundred and eighty was presented to the eyes of an enlightened age. 120 The philosophy of Bayle dispelled a prejudice which Milton's muse had so recently adorned, that the comet " from its horrid hair shakes pestilence and war ". m Its road in the heavens was observed with exquisite skill by Flamstead and Cassini ; tFiam- and the mathematical science of Bernoulli, Newton, and Halley, investigated the laws of its revolutions. At the eighth period, in the year two thousand two hundred and fifty-five, their calculations may perhaps be verified by the astronomers of some future capital in the Siberian or American wilderness. 119 Pliny (Hist. Nat. ii. 23) has transcribed the original memorial of Augustus. Mairan, in his most ingenious letters to the P. Parennin, missionary in China, re- moves the games and the comet of September, from the year 44 to the year 43, before the Christian sera ; but I am not totally subdued by the criticism of the astronomer (Opuscules, p. 275-351). 120 This last comet was visible in the month of December, 1680. Bayle, who began his Pensees sur le Comete in January 1681 (Oeuvres, torn, iii.), was forced to argue that a supernatural comet would have confirmed the ancients in their idolatry. Bernoulli (see his Eloge, in Fontenelle, torn. v. p. 99) was forced to allow that the tail, though nox the head, was a sign of the wrath of God. 121 Paradise Lost was published in the year 1667 ; and the famous lines (1. ii. 708, &o.), which startled the licenser, may allude to the recent comet of 1664, ob- served by Cassini at Rome in the presence of queen Christina (Fontenelle in his Eloge, torn. v. p. 338). Had Charles II. betrayed any symptoms of curiosity or fear ? steed]