So Tacitus says,[N] that at Cyprus, the image of Venus was not of human shape; but a figure rising continually round, from a larger bottom to a small top, in conical fashion. And it is to be remarked, that Maximus Tyrius (who perhaps was a more accurate mathematician,) says, the stone was pyramidal.
And in Corinth, we are told by Pausanias,[O] that the images both of Jupiter Melichius, and of Diana, were made (if made at all by hand) with little or no art. The former being represented by a pyramid, the latter by a column.
Clemens Alexandrinus was so well acquainted with these facts, that he even concludes[P] the worship of such stones to have been the first, and earliest idolatry, in the world.
It is hard to conceive how mankind should ever have been led to so accursed an abomination, as the worship of stocks, and stones, at all: but, as far as any thing so horrid is to be accounted for, there is no way so likely of rendering a possible account; as that of concluding, that some of these pyramidal stones, at least, like the image of Diana, actually did fall, in the earliest ages, from the clouds; in the same manner as these pyramidal stones fell, in 1794, in Tuscany.
Plutarch, it is well known, mentions[Q] a stone which formerly fell from the clouds, in Thrace, and which Anaxagoras fancied[R] to have fallen from the sun.
And it is very remarkable, that the old writer, from whom Plutarch had his account, described the cloud, from which this stone was said to fall, in a manner (if we only make some allowance for a little exaggeration in barbarous ages,) very similar to Soldani's account of the cloud in Tuscany.—It hovered about for a long time; seemed to throw out splinters, which flew about, like wandering stars, before they fell; and at last it cast down to the earth a stone of extraordinary size.
Pliny,[S] who tells us that not only the remembrance of this event, but that the stone itself was preserved to his days, says, it was of a dark burnt colour. And though he does indeed speak of it as being of an extravagant weight and size, in which circumstance perhaps he was misled: yet he mentions another of a moderate size, which fell in Abydos, and was become an object of idolatrous worship in that place; as was still another, of the same sort, at Potidæa.
Livy, who like Herodotus, has been oftentimes censured as too credulous, and as a relater of falsehoods, for preserving traditions of an extraordinary kind; which, after all, in ages of more enlarged information, have proved to have been founded in truth; describes[T] a fall of stones to have happened on mount Alba, during the reign of Tullus Hostilius, (that is about 652 years before the Christian æra), in words that exactly convey an idea of just such a phænomenon, as this which has so lately been observed in Tuscany.
He says, the senate were told, that lapidibus pluisse, it had rained stones. And, when they doubted of the fact; and sent to inquire; they were assured that stones had actually fallen; and had fallen just as hail does, which is concreted in a storm.[U]
He mentions also shortly another shower of stones,[V] A. C. 202, and still a third,[W] which must have happened about the year 194 before the Christian æra.