A luminous fire appeared in the morning sky before sunrise one day in the summer of 466 BC. Morning by morning the fire grew larger, sprouting a tail that trailed away from the sun. This was a great comet, another heavenly portent. As the comet approached the sun, the tail became vertical, extending toward the zenith. Around July 18th it disappeared from the morning sky and later appeared in the west near the setting sun. Shooting stars filled the night sky.
A few days later, a large fireball appeared falling toward the earth in northern Greece, its brightness lighting up the sky in daylight. It crashed to earth with a terrifying roar, landing near the small settlement of Aegospotami (“Goat Rivers”) on the west bank of the Hellespont. As the frightened inhabitants gathered around the smoking crater where the meteor had hit, they descried a blackened stone the size of a wagon.[15] The comet that appeared may well have been Halley’s Comet, which astronomers estimate would have appeared in the summer of 466, passed close to the earth, and been visible for the seventy-five days ancient sources say people observed the comet.[16]
In a time when heavenly signs typically caused fear and foreboding, a surprising thing happened. Rumor with her thousand tongues reported that Anaxagoras had been vindicated. A massive stone had fallen out of the sky, and no other philosopher besides Anaxagoras had ever claimed that heavy bodies could be found above the earth. Now a piece of heaven lay on the ground to show that the Ionian philosopher was a prescient genius.
The fall of the stone was recorded by chroniclers of the time and reported by Aristotle a couple of generations later. The stone itself became a tourist attraction that was still drawing visitors in the time of the Roman Empire.[17] Never before had a conjectural theory been vindicated so spectacularly.
Anaxagoras became the toast of Athens. He sat at the table of the young statesman Pericles, who delighted in his rational explanations of strange phenomena. According to a later account of Pericles’ circle written by Plutarch, a mutant ram with one horn growing from the middle of its head was brought to Pericles. Lampon the prophet interpreted the monster as a sign that, as one of the two leading statesmen in Athens, Pericles, the witness of the sign, would soon displace his rival as the sole ruler of Athens. In response, Anaxagoras, ever the curious philosopher, had the ram’s head cut open and showed that the skull was simply misshapen. Everyone admired Anaxagoras; but when the prophecy came true, Lampon regained his prestige.[18] The story illustrates the nascent conflict between reason and superstition, or between science and traditional religion. One day that conflict would overtake Socrates.
[15].Pliny Natural History 2.149 = DK 59A11; Aristotle Meteorology 344b31-34; Plutarch Lysander 12.1-5 = 59A12.
[16].Graham & Hintz 2010;Graham 2013a.
[17]. Pliny Natural History 2.149.
[18].Plutarch Pericles 6.2-3.