A desire to observe the phenomenon from a nearer point of view, and also to rescue some of his friends, from their perilous position on the shore of the Bay of Naples, led to his launching his galleys and crossing the bay to Stabiae (Castellamare), where he perished, in the fifty-sixth year of his age.
It is said to have covered an area of 96 m., and was the capital of the kingdom of Kosala, the court of the great king Dasaratha, the fifty-sixth monarch of the Solar line in descent from Raja Manu.
But no such message came; and he went forth in his fifty-sixth year to a weary period of wandering among various states.
Confucius was in his fifty-sixth year when he left Lu; and thirteen years elapsed ere he returned to it.