Or that aerial beings sometimes deign
To stand, embodied, to our senses plain)
Sees on the naked hill, or valley low,
The whilst in ocean Phœbus dips his wain,
A vast assembly moving to and fro,
Then all at once in air dissolves the wondrous show.”
Pliny mentions the Scythian regions within Mount Imaus, and Pomponius Mela those of Mauritania, behind Mount Atlas, as peculiarly subject to these spectral appearances. Diodorus Siculus likewise refers to the regions of Africa, situated in the neighborhood of Cyrene, as another chosen site:—“Even,” says he, “in the severest weather, there are sometimes seen in the air certain condensed exhalations that represent the figures of all kinds of animals; occasionally they seem to be motionless, and in perfect quietude; and occasionally to be flying; while immediately afterward they themselves appear to be the pursuers, and to make other objects fly before them.” Milton might have had this passage in his eye when he penned the allusion to the same apparitions:—
“As when, to warn proud cities, war appears
Waged in the troubled sky, and armies rush
To battle in the clouds; before each van