Far otherwise was it with the belief regarding comets.

During many centuries it gave rise to the direst superstition and fanaticism.

The Chaldeans alone among the ancient peoples generally regarded comets without fear, and thought them bodies wandering as harmless as fishes in the sea; the Pythagoreans alone among philosophers seem to have had a vague idea of them as bodies returning at fixed periods of time; and in all antiquity, so far as is known, one man alone, Seneca, had the scientific instinct and prophetic inspiration to give this idea definite shape, and to declare that the time would come when comets would be found to move in accordance with natural law.
Here and there a few strong men rose above the prevailing superstition.
The Emperor Vespasian tried to laugh it down, and insisted that a certain comet in his time could not betoken his death, because it was hairy, and he bald; but such scoffing produced little permanent effect, and the prophecy of Seneca was soon forgotten.

These and similar isolated utterances could not stand against the mass of opinion which upheld the doctrine that comets are "signs and wonders."(92) (92) For terror caused in Rome by comets, see Pingre, Cometographie, pp.
165, 166.

For the Chaldeans, see Wolf, Geschichte der Astronomie, p.