Homer, the greatest poet of Ancient Greece, a thousand years before the birth of Christ, sang of:
“The red star, that from his flaming hair
Shakes down diseases, pestilence and war.”
Let it be explained here that the word Comet in Greek means “long-haired,” from kome,—hair.
Virgil, the greatest Roman poet, sang of “the baleful glare of bloody Comets,” and again, of “dreadful Comets blazing in the sky.”
Tasso, the greatest of Italian poets after Dante, sang thus of Comets in his “Jerusalem Delivered”:
“Qual con le chiome sanguinose horrende
Splender Cometa suol per l’aria adusta,
Che i regni muta, e i feri morbi adduce,
Ai purpurei tiranni infausta luce.”