296 SEE— TEMPERATURE, SECULAR COOLING [April 20. 



"The whole neighborhood gives one the impression that it has been 

 subjected to gigantic convulsions of nature. The crags tov^^er up to dizzy 

 heights above the traveler, and the rivers find their way through tremendous 

 gorges to the sea. 



" At the southwestern foot of the hill of Bura, where the precipices 

 rise highest, lie the ruins of the ancient theatre, with remains of fifteen 

 rows of seats; the orchestra is about 32 paces broad. From some of the 

 seats there is a fine view of the Corinthian Gulf, with the mountains of 

 northern Greece rising behind it. A few remains of the town wall may be 

 seen below the theatre. 



" The citadel of Bura probably occupied the summit of the hill. The 

 western face of the hill is a sheer wall of rock; a single path here leads to 

 the summit." 



From this account it is clear that most of the site of Bura is too 

 high above the sea to have been inundated by the seismic sea wave 

 of 373 B. C, and that the damage was due principally to the violent 

 shocks during that dreadful earthquake. Pausanias says that it 

 was so violent " that it spared not even the ancient images in the 

 sanctuaries. Such of the people as chanced to be away at the wars 

 or on other business were the only survivors, and they rebuilt Bura." 

 This accords well with descriptions of the yawning chasms at Bura 

 given by Aristotle, Lucretius and other writers. 



It also appears that according to the authorities available to 

 Pausanias, Helike subsided so much that only the tops of the trees 

 in the grove about the temple of Poseidon remained above the water. 

 As this temple could not well have been less than fifty feet above 

 sea level, the total subsidence must have been about a hundred feet. 

 This effectively disposes once for all of the claims of Professor 

 Suess and others that it was caused by the breaking loose of alluvium 

 from the older geological formations. It is therefore placed beyond 

 doubt that under the throes of the earthquake the bed of the Gulf of 

 Corinth gave down and thus brought on the most famous inundation 

 of antiquity. 



There seems to have been many earthquakes that year (373 

 B. C), but unfortunately our accounts are too uncertain to enable 

 us to fix upon the exact order of events. But as Pausanias says 

 that " besides the earthquake another disaster befell the doomed city 

 in the winter-time," we may safely infer that in all probability the 

 sinking of the sea bottom took place with one of the later shocks, 

 as sometimes happens in South America. This agrees also with the 



