previous next

CHAP. 26.—TRABES CELESTES; CHASMA CŒLI.

The trabes also, which are named δοκοὶ1, shine in the same manner; one of these was seen at the time when the Lacedæmonians, by being conquered at sea, lost their influence in Greece. An opening sometimes takes place in the firmament, which is named chasma2.

1 We may presume that the trabes are, for the most part, to be referred to the aurora borealis. The chasma and the appearances described in the twenty-seventh chapter are probably varieties of this meteor. On these phænomena we have the following remarks by Seneca: "Lucem in aëre, seu quamdam albedinem, angustam quidem, sed oblongam, de noctu quandoque visam, sereno cælo, si parallelo situ sit, Trabem vocant; si perpendiculari, Columnam; si, cum cuspide Bolida, siveJaculum." Nat. Quæst. vii. 4, and again, vii. 5, "Trabes autem non transcurrunt nec prætervolant, ut faces, sed commorantur, et in eadem parte cceli collucent."

2 Seneca describes this meteor, ubi supra, i. 14. "Sunt chasmata, cum aliquando cœli spatium discedit, et flammam dehiscens velut in abdito ostentat. Colores quoque horum omnium plurimi sunt. Quidam ruboris acerrimi, quidam evanidæ et levis flammæ, quidam candidæ lucis, quidam micantes, quidam æquabiliter et sine eruptionibus aut radiis fulvi." Aristotle's account of chasmata is contained in his Meteor. lib. i. cap. 5. p. 534.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Latin (Karl Friedrich Theodor Mayhoff, 1906)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

hide References (3 total)
  • Cross-references to this page (2):
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (1):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: