1907] AND CONTRACTION OF THE EARTH. 29a 



" When a house obviously is about to be overthrown, the mice which 

 are in it leave along with the weasels, and they anticipate the disaster and 

 emigrate. This indeed they say took place also in Helike. For when the 

 Heliconians were engaged in religious worship, upon the arrival of the lonians, 

 they sacrificed them (the animals) upon the altar, whence forthwith (this 

 is Homeric) certain gods manifested signs unto them; for five days before 

 the disappearance of Helike all the mice that were in it, and weasels and 

 serpents, millipedes and beetles and the rest of things of this kind, crept forth 

 together into the road leading to Cerynea. And the Heliconians seeing what 

 had happened marveled indeed, but were unable to understand the cause. 

 And when the aforementioned animals had left the place, an earthquake 

 occurred in the night, and the city collapsed, and, overflown by a great wave, 

 Helike disappeared; and by chance ten vessels of the Lacedemonians lying 

 at anchor perished in the rush of the waters. And it came to pass neces- 

 sarily in respect to the vengeance upon the rowers of the impious men, that 

 justice demanded their lives. And in proof of this judgment, Pantocles, the 

 Lacedemonian, having set forth to go through Sparta to reach those absent 

 from the force with Dionysus who were in Cythera, when he had seated 

 himself on the bench of the Ephors, was torn to pieces by dogs." 



3. Pmtsanias, Description of Greece, Book VII., Caps. XXIV.- 

 XXV. — It is well known that this famous traveler lived in the time 

 of the Antonines, and probably finished his work in the reign of the 

 Emperor Marcus Aurelius, about 170 A. D. A very excellent trans- 

 lation with critical introduction and copious commentary, the whole 

 in six volumes, has recently been published by J. G. Frazer, M.A., 

 LL.D. (Glasgow), fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge (Mac- 

 Millan & Co., London, 1898). The following accounts of the de- 

 struction of Helike and Bura are taken from Frazer's translation. 



In the description of Achaia, Book VIL, Chap XXIV. (pp. 

 365-366) Pausanias says : 



"Going on you come to the river Selinus, and forty furlongs from 

 ^gium is a place Helice on the coast. Here there used to be a city Helice, 

 and here the lonians had a most holy sanctuary' of Heliconian Poseidon. 

 Their reverence for that god has survived to the present day, in spite of 

 their expulsion by the Achseans and their migration first to Athens, and 

 afterwards to the coast of Asia. At Miletus, on the way to the spring of 

 Biblis, there too is an altar of Heliconian Zeus in front of the city; and 

 in Teos, too, the Heliconian god has an enclosure and an altar which are 

 worth seeing. Homer also refers to Helice and Heliconian Poseidon. 5. 

 But in after time the Achaeans of Helice forced some suppliants from the 

 sanctuary, and put them to death. The wrath of Poseidon did not tarr>\ 

 The land was instantly visited by an earthquake, which swallowed up not 

 only the buildings, but the very ground on which the city had stood. Ominous 

 signs, vouchsafed by the god, foretell the approach of great and far-reach- 



