ON THE UNIVERSAL DELU&&. 



and they may perhaps be right. If we consider Nep- 

 tune the author of earthquakes, and consider the violent 

 concussion of the mountains caused by them as the work 

 of this deity, we must, upon surveying these regions, con- 

 fess that they owe their present shape to him ; for the se- 

 paration of every mountain appears to me to have been 

 produced by some violent commotion of the earth." 

 Strabo makes mention of this tradition, which he thought 

 worthy of belief, and accounts for the origin of the Vale 

 of Tempe, which is the bed of the river Peneus, and 

 likewise for the separation of Ossa from Olympus, by 

 means of an earthquake *. In making this remark, we 

 perceive that our theories which allow that earthquakes 

 are to operate in forming the surface of the earth, have 

 not even the merit of novelty. According to the last 

 writer, similar eruptions of water must have originated lit 

 the lake Copais in Breotia -f-, in the lakes Bistonis and 

 Aphnetis, in Thrace, and have been accompanied with 

 huge devastation J. Diodorus Siculus remembered a 

 Samothracian tradition, according to which the Euxine 



* T. ix. c, & Claudian describes this occurrence in the following words t 



" Cum Thessaliam scopulis inclusa teneret 

 Peneo stagnante palus, et mersa negarent 

 Arva eoli, trifida Neptunus euspide monies 

 Impulit adversos : turn forti saucius ictu 

 Dissiluit gelido vertex OSSJEUS Olympo." 



De raptu Proserp* I. ii. v. 179. 



t L. i c. 3. 



$ According to Wheeler, who was on the spot, it appears to have bro- 

 ken through the Mount. Ptous. 



Bibliothec. Hkstoric. 1. v. c. 47. 



