Saint Elmo’s fire in late antique literature

Record summary

Ancient and late antique writers described luminous phenomena appearing around ships’ masts, commonly associated in Greek and Roman contexts with Castor and Pollux and later with Saint Elmo. These accounts belong to maritime weather lore and religious or literary interpretation rather than modern UFO reporting. They matter for comparison because they show how persistent atmospheric electricity could be classified as omen, protection, or sacred sign. The textual record is diffuse, translated, and genre-dependent, so individual passages should not be treated as eyewitness reports without checking context.