Mind your head

摘要

In the third century ad, the Roman empire briefly worshipped a meteorite. A blackened rock that had fallen from the skies in Syria was given godly status by the transsexual priest-emperor Elagabalus. In one ceremony, Elagabalus walked backwards before a horse-drawn chariot that carried the stone, his eyes fixed upon it, with gold dust strewn at his feet. Sadly, after Elagabalus began to dress in women's clothes, married a Vestal virgin and requested a sex change from the imperial surgeons, he was dismembered and thrown into the Tiber. The fate of the meteorite is not known. This fascinating episode can be found alongside many others in Ted Nield's latest book, Incoming!, which charts how our ideas about stones falling from the skies have developed over millennia.