Lucullus and the Silver Jar: The Sky Object That Stopped a Battle

As Roman and Pontic armies prepared to fight in Phrygia, a flaming silver object shaped like a wine jar fell between them.

Plutarch says that around 73 BCE, as Lucullus's army faced a Pontic force in Phrygia, a flame-like body shaped like a wine jar and colored like molten silver fell between them, and both sides withdrew.

Lucius Licinius Lucullus was a Roman general sent to fight King Mithridates VI of Pontus in the 70s BCE. Plutarch's biography of him, written around 100 CE, describes an event early in the campaign, in Phrygia, at a place called Otryae. Lucullus was about to engage a force commanded by Marius, a Roman officer who had joined Mithridates.

Just as the two sides were about to engage, Plutarch writes, "the sky burst asunder, and a huge, flame-like body was seen to fall between the two armies. In shape, it was most like a wine-jar, and in colour, like molten silver." Both armies were astonished by the sight and drew apart. The battle simply did not happen.

The wine jar in question is a pithos, a large storage vessel, so the shape suggests something rounded and elongated. Plutarch presents it as an omen, one of several in the Life, and neither side seems to have tried to recover whatever fell. The phrase "the sky burst asunder" suggests a sudden flash and noise, with no warning in the weather beforehand, which Plutarch goes out of his way to note.

Ancient-astronaut writers cite the passage as a landing that stopped a war. Astronomers and historians generally read it as a large meteor or fireball, which can light the sky with a flash and a roar and appear to fall much closer than it really does. The detail that both armies withdrew is consistent with how seriously ancient soldiers took signs from the sky.