THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA. 249 



ranean, and especially its central and eastern portion,, has 

 been shaken and devastated. Omitting the various records 

 of earlier date, we may notice the earthquake in the reign of 

 Valentinian, described by Ammianus Marcellinus, which 

 spread wide calamity over its coasts and isles ; destroying, as 

 is affirmed, 50,000 persons at Alexandria alone by the 

 sudden flux and reflux of the sea; and those yet more 

 frequent and violent in the time of Justinian, described by 

 Procopius and other writers, in one of which the city of 

 Antioch is reported to have lost 230,000 of its inhabitants. 

 All such numbers are of course gross exaggerations, but ex- 

 aggerations which express the magnitude of the calamities 

 sustained. Under the same qualification we may mention 

 the series of great earthquakes in 1693, of which Sicily 

 seems to have been the centre, with a recorded loss of 

 80,000 or 90,000 of its population ; and the Calabrian earth- 

 quakes of 1783 and 1784, extraordinary from the frequency 

 of the shocks, of which about 1,100 were registered at 

 Montaleone, the seeming centre of these subterranean con- 

 vulsions. In the very last year (1856), the whole eastern 

 basin of the Mediterranean was shaken by a violent earth- 

 quake, from which some thousand persons are alleged to 

 have perished in Candia alone. Certain areas in this sea, 

 and without any close volcanic proximity, are subject to 

 what may be called a chronic form of the phenomenon. 

 Such an area exists among the Ionian Isles ; where the year 

 rarely passes without some terremoto greater or less in 

 violence ; and where daily shocks are not uncommon for 

 several weeks in succession. Those who have visited Zante 

 and Santa Maura will recollect the many traces of such 

 concussions scattered over these islands. In 1853 a smart 

 shock of earthquake was felt over the mainland of Greece, 

 which overthrew most of the existing habitations of Thebes, 

 and caused great alarm in Athens. This occurrence is the 



