294 SEE— TEMPERATURE, SECULAR COOLING LApril 20, 



ing earthquakes. The nature of the sign is generally the same. For earth- 

 quakes are preceded either by heavy and continuous rains or long droughts. 

 The weather, too, is unseasonable. If it is winter, the weather is sultry; if it 

 is summer, there is haze, and the sun's disc appears of an unusual colour, 

 slightly inclining either to red or dun. Springs of water mostly dry up. 

 Sudden gusts sometimes sweep across the country, blowing the trees down. 

 At times, too, the sky is shot with sheets of flame. Stars are seen of an 

 aspect never before known, and strike consternation into beholders. More- 

 over, a mighty murmur is heard of winds blowing underground. And many 

 more signs there are whereby the god gives warning of the approach of 

 violent earthquakes. The character of the shock itself is not always the 

 same. The original observers and persons instructed by them have been 

 able to distinguish the following classes of earthquakes. The mildest form 

 of earthquake — if so dire a calamity can be thought to admit of alleviation — 

 is when the first shock which levels the buildings with the ground, is counter- 

 acted by an opposite shock which raises up what the first had knocked down. 

 In this kind of earthquake you may see columns, which had been all but 

 hurled from their bases, rising to the perpendicular, and walls which had 

 been cracked closing up again; and beams, which the shock had caused to 

 slide out, return to their places, and similarly rifts made in conduits and 

 water-channels are cemented better than they could have been by a crafts- 

 man. The second kind of earthquake destroys everything that is the least 

 unsteady; whatever it strikes it instantly overthrows, as with the blow of 

 a battering ram. The deadliest kind of an earthquake is illustrated by the 

 following comparison. In an unintermitting fever a man's breathing is quick 

 and laboured, as is shown by symptoms at various points of the body, but 

 especially at the wrists; and they say that in the same way the earthquake 

 dives under buildings and upheaves their foundations, just as molehills are 

 pushed up from the bowels of the earth. It is this kind of shock alone that 

 leaves not a trace of human habitation behind. They say that the earth- 

 quake at Helice was of this last kind, the kind that levels with the ground; 

 and that, besides the earthquake, another disaster befell the doomed city in the 

 winter-time. The sea advanced far over the land and submerged the whole 

 of Helice, and in the grove of Poseidon the water was so deep that only 

 the tops of trees were visible. So that between the suddenness of the 

 earthquake and the simultaneous rush of the sea, the billows sucked down 

 Helice and every soul in the place. 7. A like fate befell a city on Mount 

 Sipylus; it disappeared into a chasm, and from the fissure in the mountain 

 water gushed forth, and the chasm became a lake named Saloe. The ruins 

 of the city could still be seen in the lake until the water of the torrent 

 covered them up. The ruins of Helice are also visible, but not so clearly 

 as before, for they have been eaten away by the brine." 



Again in Chapter XXV. (p. 367) these additional remarks are 

 added : 



" The Lacedaemonians also slew men who had taken refuge in the sanctu- 

 ary of Poseidon at Taenarum; and not long afterward their city was shaken 

 by so prolonged and severe an earthquake, that not a house in Lacedaemon 

 stood the shock. 



