Of all the legends which grew in such luxuriance and beauty about the cradle of Jesus of Nazareth, none appeals more directly to the highest poetic feeling than that given by one of the evangelists, in which a star, rising in the east, conducted the wise men to the manger where the Galilean peasant-child--the Hope of Mankind, the Light of the World--was lying in poverty and helplessness.
Among the Mohammedans we have a curious example of the same tendency toward a kindly interpretation of stars and meteors, in the belief of certain Mohammedan teachers that meteoric showers are caused by good angels hurling missiles to drive evil angels out of the sky.
Eclipses were regarded in a very different light, being supposed to express the distress of Nature at earthly calamities.

The Greeks believed that darkness overshadowed the earth at the deaths of Prometheus, Atreus, Hercules, Aesculapius, and Alexander the Great.

The Roman legends held that at the death of Romulus there was darkness for six hours.

In the history of the Caesars occur portents of all three kinds; for at the death of Julius the earth was shrouded in darkness, the birth of Augustus was heralded by a star, and the downfall of Nero by a comet.

So, too, in one of the Christian legends clustering about the crucifixion, darkness overspread the earth from the sixth to the ninth hour.