[1153] “Sidus cometes effulsit; de quo vulgi opinio est tanquam mutationem regnis portendat,” etc.; Tacitus, Ann., xiv, 22; cf. xv, 47. As Milton expresses it:
Satan stood
Unterrified, and like a comet burn’d,
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge
In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war.
Paradise Lost, ii.
[1154] The fullest account of these calamities is given by Jn. Malala, xvii.
[1155] Cedrenus and Zonaras place it in this reign. Jn. Malala a little later.
[1156] This was not the first occurrence of the kind, and all the chronographers are anxious to record that a slab now came to light with a punning inscription or prophecy, which may be rendered in English as, “The river Skip will skip some evil skippings for the townspeople”; as anxious as they are to note the peregrinations of a Cilician giantess, over seven feet high, who tramped the Empire, begging a penny at all the workshops for showing herself. After its restoration Edessa was called Justinopolis in legal acts.