Los cometas en el mundo antiguo: entre la ciencia y la superstición

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Published 14-09-2011
Cristóbal Macías Villalobos

Abstract

One of the most impressive celestial phenomena for the ancients were comets, because their appearance was considered very negative and evil and used to arouse feelings of terror. That explains why both Greeks and Romans wrote several treatises De cometis, most of them lost; among those extant, the most comprehensive is that by Seneca, inserted as the 7th book of his Naturales Quaestiones. Using at all times Greek and Roman literacy sources, in this paper we analyse all the theories then formulated about their origin and nature as well as all the typologies based mainly on their physical shape, and we describe some of the more impressive comets seen at that time.

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