"
[footnote] *Plut., 'Vit?? par, in Lysandro', cap. 22. The statement of
Damachos (Da?•machos), that for seventy days continuously there was a fiery
cloud seen in the sky, emitting sparks like falling stars, and which then,
sinking nearer to the earth, let fall the stone of ?®gos Potamos, "which,
however, was only a small part of it," is extremely improbable, since the
direction and velocity of the fire-cloud would in that case of necessity
have to remain for so many days the same as those of the earth; and this, in
the fire-ball of the 19th of July, 1686, described by Halley ('Trans.', vol.
xxix., p. 163), lasted only a few minutes. It is not altogether certain
whether Da?•machos, the writer, [Greek words], was the same person as
Da?•machos of Plat??a, who was sent by Selencus to India to the son of
Androcottos, and who ws charged by Strabo with being "a speaker of lies" (p.
70, Casaub.). From another passage of Plutarch ('Compar. Solonis c. Cop.',
cap. 5) we should almost believe that he was. At all events, we have here
only the evidence of a very late author, who wrote a century and a half
after the fall of a?‘rolites occurred in Thrace, and whose authenticity is
also doubted by Plutarch.
Diogenes of Apollonia* expresses himself still more explicitly.
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