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Meteorites, or Celestial Stones: Diana

The site of the city of Seleucia is said to have been determined by the fallof an aerolite, and this stone is figured on some of the coins of the Seleucidae, a thunderbolt appearing in its stead on other coins. In the Temple of Diana, at Ephesus, there was a stone partly fashioned into the conventional form of the Ephesian Diana. This, it was asserted, had fallen down from the Heavens. The stone is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles (xix. 35), where we read that the city of the Ephesians was a worshipper of the great goddess Diana, and of the image which fell down from Jupiter." In this text the word "Image" has been supplied by the translators, a more literal rendering being "that which fell down from the sky." This clearly shows that the stone only faintly indicated the human form. Tacitus says of the stone sacred to the Astarte (or Aphrodite) of Paphos, that it was a symbol of the goddess, not a human effigy, since it was an obscurely formed cone. In his life of Apollonius of Tyana, Philostratus, also, mentions this stone and tells us that when Apollonius visited Paphos, he admired there "the famous symbolic figure of Aphrodite." These "living stones" were often covered with ornaments and vestments, and it has been conjectured that these adornments were, in some cases, changed so as to accrod with the garments appropriate to certain special festivals of the respective gods. The colossal emerald of the temple of Melkarth at Tyre is designated in the fragments of Sanchoniathon as an or star fallen from heaven. It was said to have been raised up by Astarte, and this last myth is represented on the silver coins of Marium in Cyprus. Here the radiance and splendor of the object suggested a stellar or celestial origin, and we see the same tendency at work in the application of the name-cerauniae (thunder-stones) to certain brilliant gems by Pliny.

Virgil seems to confound with thunder the detonation of a bolide, followed by a train of light, and he seems also to confound the bolide itself with a lightning flash, for he says that its fall diffused a sulphurous vapor far and wide. Seneca was more critical, for he regarded the fact of thunder sometimes accompanying the fall of a meteorite as merely a coincidence. Although, in the absence of exact and trustworthy contemporaneous accounts of the fall of these sacred stones, we cannot be absolutely certain that they were meteorites, the testimony in several cases is sufficient to render this almost certain, while in many other cases there is no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of the tradition. The choice of some of the batyli, however, was determined by their form alone, to which was ascribed a religious significance, not exactly compatible with our religious ideas of to-day but quite easily understood when we remember that the divine creative energy was concretely represented in ancient times by many symbols offensive to our sense of propriety.

In the treatise "On Rivers," attributed to Plutarch, a stone is said to have been found on Mount Cronius, which bore the name of "cylinder." When Jupiter thundered, this stone, terrified by the noise, rolled down from the top of the mountain. This passage is interesting as suggesting one of the reasons which caused the name "thunderbolt" to be given to certain stones, for stones adapted to ornamental use might easily be exposed by the weathering of the rocks, and then detached by the concussion produced by heavy thunder. Of course, the cylinder-stone here mentioned must have more especially signified one of the prehistoric celts, but it is not unlikely that the name was also given to other, unworked stones, having a similar form. Before Galba was chosen emperor, and when he was acting as governor of the Basque provinces in Spain, a thunderbolt descended upon the shore of a lake in that region. Search was made for the stones which were supposed to have fallen, and Suetonius tells us that twelve axes were found. This was regarded as a sure augury of Galba's elevation to the imperial dignity, but for the archaeologist the presence of the axes merely signifies that this was the site of a lake dwellers' village.

In some cases, the stone which was held to be a dwelling-place of the divinity was also regarded as a representation, or epitome, of some sacred mountain. In the earliest stage of this belief, the god was supposed to have his abode in the mountain, and later he was thought to animate the stone which had a fancied likeness in shape to the mountain. A coin of the Roman emperor Elagabalus (204-222 A.D.) bears on its reverse a representation of one of the sacred stones of Astarte, namely, that worshipped at Sidon. This is shown resting upon a car, and it seems probable that it was transported from place to place, so that large numbers of people could have the privilege of paying reverence to it.