CHAP. 52. (51.)—OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF LIGHTNING[1]
AND THEIR WONDERFUL EFFECTS.
We have accounts of many different kinds of thunder-storms.
Those which are dry do not burn objects, but dissipate them;
while those which are moist do not burn, but blacken them.
There is a third kind, which is called bright lightning[2], of a
very wonderful nature, by which casks are emptied, without
the vessels themselves being injured, or there being any other
trace left of their operation[3]. Gold, copper, and silver are
melted, while the bags which contain them are not in the
least burned, nor even the wax seal much defaced. Marcia,
a lady of high rank at Rome, was struck while pregnant;
the fœtus was destroyed, while she herself survived without
suffering any injury[4]. Among the prognostics which took
place at the time of Catiline's conspiracy, M. Herennius, a
magistrate of the borough of Pompeii, was struck by lightning when the sky was without clouds[5].
1. "fulgur." The account of the different kinds of thunder seems to
be principally taken from Aristotle; Meteor. iii. 1. Some of the
phænomena mentioned below, which would naturally appear to the
ancients
the most remarkable, are easily explained by a reference to their electrical
origin.
2. "quod clarum vocant."
3. This account seems to be taken from Aristotle, Meteor. iii 1. p. 574;
see also Seneca, Nat. Quest. ii. 31. p. 711. We have an account of the
peculiar effects of thunder in Lucretius, vi. 227 et seq.
4. This effect may be easily explained by the agitation into which the
female might have been thrown. The title of "princeps Romanarum,"
which is applied to Marcia, has given rise to some discussion among the
commentators, for which see the remarks of Hardouin and Alexandre, in
Lemaire, i. 348.
5. Sometimes a partial thunder-cloud is formed, while the atmosphere
generally is perfectly clear, or, as Hardouin suggests, the effect might
have been produced by a volcanic eruption. See Lemaire, i. 348.