enomena which
accompany a transitory eclipse prolonged through a whole year.

'The Moon too, even when her orb is full, is empty of her natural
splendour. Strange has been the course of the year thus far. We have
had a winter without storms, a spring without mildness, and a summer
without heat. Whence can we look for harvest, since the months which
should have been maturing the corn have been chilled by Boreas? How
can the blade open if rain, the mother of all fertility, is denied to
it? These two influences, prolonged frost and unseasonable drought,
must be adverse to all things that grow. The seasons seem to be all
jumbled up together, and the fruits, which were wont to be formed by
gentle showers, cannot be looked for from the parched earth. But as
last year was one that boasted of an exceptionally abundant harvest,
you are to collect all of its fruits that you can, and store them up
for the coming months of scarcity, for which it is well able to
provide. And that you may not be too much distressed by the signs in
the heavens of which I have spoken, return to the consideration of
Nature, and apprehend the reason of that which makes the vulgar gape
with wonder.

'The middle air is thickened by the rigour of snow and rarefied by the
beams of the Sun. This is the great Inane, roaming between the heavens
and the earth. When it happens to be pure and lighted up by the rays
of the sun it opens out its true aspect[888]; but when alien elements
are blended with it, it is stretched like a hide across the sky, and
suffers neither the true colours of the heavenly bodies to appear nor
their proper warmth to penetrate. This often happens in cloudy weather
for a time; it is only its extraordinary prolongation which has
produced these disastrous effects, causing the reaper to fear a new
frost in harvest, making the apples to harden when they should grow
ripe, souring the old age of the grape-cluster.

[Footnote 888: 'Vestros (?) veraciter pandit aspectus.']

'All this, however, though it would be wrong to construe it as an omen
of Divine wrath, cannot but have an injurious effect on the fruits of
the earth. Let it be your care to see that the scarcity of this one
year does not bring ruin on us all. Even thus was it ordained by the
first occupant of our present dignity[889], that the preceding plenty
should avail to mitigate the present penury.'

[Footnote 889: Joseph, Praetorian Praefect of Egypt under Pharaoh.]

26. SENAT