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HISTORY OF THE NEW STAR,

APPEARING IN THE CONSTELLATION

OF CASSIOPEIA. Chapter I.

A decorative drop-cap 'I' featuring floral and scrollwork patterns.A CERTAIN star shone with a splendid and reddening radiance in the image of Cassiopeia; it was greater and more august than any of the fixed stars, which are said to be of the first magnitude. Its magnitude, however, could be compared with Jupiter and Mars, or with Arcturus, or the Dog Star. It began to shine around the beginning of November in the year 72, although there are not wanting those who testify they saw it around the middle of October. Truly, it was not seen by me before the memorial of the solemn Nativity of the Lord and our Savior. For at most four months and more, it shone like a beacon, with the splendor and majesty of its light and luminescence undiminished and unchanged. At length, it began to be diminished little by little, and its reddish color seemed to convert into a paler one, so that in the month of May of the year 73, when we were reviewing these things by writing them down, it almost equaled itself with the remaining stars in the same image, and could not be distinguished except by those who had contemplated it more often before. It formed a quadrilateral figure that was irregular, that is, with unequal sides, which is called a trapezion trapezium by the Greeks, with the three more notable stars of Cassiopeia itself.