In the six hundred and fifty-ninth year of the City

In the six hundred and fifty-ninth year of the City and during the consulship of Sextus Julius Caesar and L. Marcius Philippus, all Italy was in the throes of the war against allies. This war was caused by domestic quarrels. For Livius Drusus, a tribune of the plebs, was unable to appease the Latins by a decree after they had been deceived in their hope of gaining liberty and thus he roused them all to arms. Things came to such a pass that awful prodigies terrified the saddened city. At sunrise a ball of fire, accompanied by a tremendous clap of thunder, shone forth from the northern region. While the inhabitants of Arretium were breaking bread at banquets, blood flowed from the center of the loaves as if from bodily wounds. Moreover, a shower of stones, intermingled with pieces of brick, lashed the earth far and wide for seven continuous days. Among the Samnites, a flame broke forth from a vast fissure in the ground and seemed to shoot upwards into the sky. Furthermore, several Romans on a journey saw a golden globe falling headlong from the sky to the earth; when it had become large in appearance, they saw it again carried aloft from the earth toward the rising sun, where its huge bulk hid the sun itself from view. Drusus, who was worried by these ill-boding portents, was killed by an unidentified assassin in his own house.

Paulo Orosio. Historias contra los paganos, V, 18.