CTESIAS, a contemporary of Xenophon, spent much of his life in Persia, and says that he twice saw the king demonstrate the efficacy of an iron sword planted in the ground in dispersing clouds, hail, and lightning[1]; and the knowledge of conduction is implied by an expression of LUCAN, who makes Aruns, the Etrurian flamen, concentrate the flashes of lightning and direct them beneath the surface of the earth:—
"dispersos fulminus ignes Colligit, et terræ mæsto cum murmure cendit."
Phars
. lib. i. v. 606.
1: PHOTIUS, who has preserved the fragment (Bibl. lxxii.), after quoting the story of CTESIAS as to the iron it question being found in a mysterious Indian lake, adds, regarding the sword, [Greek: "phêsi oe peri autou hoti pêgnimenos en tê gê nephous kai chalazês kai prêstêrôn estin apotropaios. Kai idein auton tauta phêsi Basileôs dis poiêsantos.">[ See BAEHR'S C'tesiæ Reliquiæ, &c., p. 248, 271.
There is scarcely an indication in any work that has come down to us from the first to the fifteenth century, that the knowledge of such phenomena survived in the western world; but the books of the Singhalese contain allusions which demonstrate that in the third and in the fifth century it was the practice in Ceylon to apply mechanical devices with the hope of securing edifices from lightning.
The most remarkable of these passages occurs in connection with the following subject. It will be remembered that Dutugaimunu, by whom the great dagoba, known as the Ruanwellé, was built at Anarajapoora, died during the progress of the work, B.C. 137, the completion of which he entrusted to his brother and successor Saidaitissa.[1] The latest act of the dying king was to form "the square capital on which the spire was afterwards to be placed[2], and on each side of this there was a representation of the sun."[3] The Mahawanso states briefly, that in obedience to his brother's wishes, Saidaitissa "completed the pinnacle,"[4] for which the square capital before alluded to served as a base; but the Dipawanso, a chronicle older than the Mahawanso by a century and a half, gives a minute account of this stage of the work, and says that this pinnacle, which he erected between the years 137 and 119 before Christ, was formed of glass.[5]
1: Mahawanso, ch. xxxii. p. 198. See ante, [Vol. I. Pt. III. ch. v. p. 358.]
2: Ibid., ch. xxxi. p. 192.
3: Ibid., ch. xxxii. p. 193.