, iv., 5-7), probably originated in the vague
recollection of the fall of an a?‘rolite. The ancients had also some
strange fictions (Dio Cassius, lxxv., 1259) or silver which had fallen from
heaven, and with which it had been attempted, under the Emperor Severus, to
cover bronze coins; metallic iron was however, known to exist in meteoric
stones. (Plin., ii., 56.) The frequently-recurring expression 'lapidibus
pluit' must not always be understood to refer to falls of a?‘rolites. In
Liv., xxv., 7, it probably refers to pumice ('rapilli') ejected from the
volcano, Mount Albanus (Monte Cavo), which was not wholly extinguished at
the time. (See Heyne, 'Opuscula Acad.', t. iii., p. 261; and my 'Relation
Hist.', t. i., p. 394.) The contest of Hercules with the Ligyans, on the
road from the Caucasus to the Hesperides, belongs to a different sphere of
ideas, being an attempt to explain mythically the origin of the round quartz
blocks in the Ligyan field of stones at the mouth of the Rhone, which
Aristotle supposes to have been ejected from a fissure during an earthquake,
and Posidonius to have been caused by the force of the waves of an inland
piece of water. In the fragments that we still possess of the play of
?®schylus, the 'Prometheus Delivered', every thing proceeds, however, in
part of the narration, as in a fall of a?‘rolites, for Jupiter draws
together a cloud, and causes the "district around to be covered by a shower
of round stones".
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