96 HISTORY OF 



twelve cities in Asia Minor were swallowed up in 

 one night. He tells us also of another, near the 

 Lake Thrasymene, which was not perceived by 

 the armies of the Carthaginians and Romans, 

 that were then engaged near that lake, although 

 it shook the greatest part of Italy. In another 

 place * he gives the following account of an 

 earthquake of an extraordinary kind. " When 

 Lucius Marcus and Sextus Julius were consuls, 

 there appeared a very strange prodigy of the 

 earth (as I have read in the books of ^Etrus- 

 can discipline), which happened in the province 

 of Mutina. Two mountains shocked against 

 each other, approaching and retiring with the 

 most dreadful noise. They, at the same time, 

 and in the midst of the day, appeared to cast 

 forth fire and smoke, while a vast number of 

 Roman knights and travellers from the JEmi- 

 lian way, stood and continued amazed spectators. 

 Several towns were destroyed by this shock ; and 

 all the animals that were near them were kill- 

 ed." In the time of Trajan, the city of An- 

 tioch, and a great part of the adjacent country, 

 was buried by an earthquake. About three hun- 

 dred years after, in the time of Justinian, it was 

 once more destroyed, together with forty thou- 

 sand inhabitants ; and, after an interval of sixty 

 years, the same ill-fated city was a third time 

 overturned, with the loss of not less than sixty 

 thousand souls. In the year 1182, most of the 

 citjes of Syria, and the kingdom of Jerusalem, 



* Plin. lib. iii. cap. 85. 



