from Plutarch's Lives, 1859

(page 311)

... he relates, that for seventy-five days together, before that stone fell, there was seen in the heavens a large body of fire, like an inflamed cloud, not fixed to one place, but carried this way and that with a broken and irregular motion; and that by its violent agitation, several fiery fragments were forced from it, which were impelled in various directions, and darted with the celerity and brightness of so many falling stars. After this body was fallen in the Chersonesus, and the inhabitants, recovered from their terror, assembled to see it, they could find no inflammable matter, or the least sign of fire, but a real stone, which, though large, was nothing to the size of that fiery globe they had seen in the sky, but appeared only as a bit crumbled from it.