262 PHYSICAL SCIENCE BK. vi 



XXIX 



1 THROUGH fear some people have run about as 

 if distracted or mad. For fear, even when in 

 moderation and confined to individuals, shatters 

 the mind s powers. But when there is public 

 alarm through fall of cities, burying of whole 

 nations, and shaking of earth s foundations, what 

 wonder that minds in the distraction of suffering 

 and terror should have wandered forth bereft of 

 sense ? It is no easy matter in the midst of 

 overmastering evils not to lose one s reason. So 

 it is, as a rule, the feeblest souls that reach such 



2 a pitch of dread as to become unhinged. No one, 

 indeed, has suffered extreme terror without some 

 loss of sanity ; one who is afraid is much like a 

 madman. But some quickly recovering from the 

 alarm regain self-possession. Others it more 

 violently disturbs and reduces to sheer madness. 

 Hence during times of war lunatics are to be met 

 wandering about. On no occasion will one find 

 more instances of raving prophets than when mingled 

 terror and superstition have struck men s hearts. 



I am not surprised that a statue is split by an 

 earthquake, after I have recounted that mountains 

 have been separated from mountains and the ground 

 itself burst asunder down to its depths. 



3 These places, once convulsed by the force of vast ruin 

 Such the power of change in the lapse of lengthened ages ! 

 Leaped asunder, they tell us, whereas hitherto both lands 

 Were one ; into their midst rushed the deep with its mighty 



billows, 



Cutting off the Italian from the Sicilian side ; fields and cities 

 Were parted in sea-line and washed by the narrow tide that 



flowed between. 



