116 PLIIfY'S NATTJEAL HISTOKT. [Book II. 



changed places with each other \ although the pubHc high- 

 way was interposed. 



CHAP. 86. (84.) — WOlfDERFUL CIRCTJMSTAIirCES ATTElfDINa 

 EAETHQTJAKES. 



Inundations of the sea take place at the same time with 

 earthquakes^ ; the water being impregnated wdth the same 

 spirit^, and received into the bosom of the earth which 

 subsides. The greatest earthquake which has occurred in 

 our memory was in the reign of Tiberius^, by which twelve 

 cities of Asia were laid prostrate in one night. They occurred 

 the most frequently during the Punic war, when we had 

 accounts brought to Eome of fifty-seven earthquakes in the 

 space of a single year. It was during this year^ that the 

 Carthaginians and the Eomans, who were fighting at the 

 lake Thrasimenus, were neither of them sensible of a very 

 great shock during the battled Nor is it an evil merely 

 consisting in the danger which is produced by the motion ; 

 it is an equal or a greater evil when it is considered as a 

 prodigy^. The city of Eome never experienced a shock, 

 which was not the forerunner of some great calamity. 



CHAP. 87. (85.) — IS WHAT PLACES THE SEA HAS EECEDED. 



The same cause produces an increase of the land ; the 

 vapour, when it cannot burst out forcibly lifting up the 



J We have no authentic accounts of this mutual change of place be- 

 tween two portions of land, nor can we conceive of any cause capable of 

 effecting it. Our author mentions this circumistance again La book xvii. 

 ch. 38. 



2 See Aristotle, Meteor, ii. 8. 



3 " Eodem videHcet spiritu infusi (maris) ac terrse residentis sinu 

 recepti." 



^ ir.c. 770 ; A.D, 17. We have an account of this event in Strabo, 

 xu. 57 ; in Tacitus, Ann. ii, 47 ; and in the Universal History, xiv. 129, 

 130, We are informed by Hardouin, that coins are still in existence 

 which were struck to commemorate the hberahty of the emperor on the 

 occasion, inscribed " civitatibus Asise restitutis." Lemaire, i. 410. 



* ir.c. 537 ; A.C. 217. 



* This circumstance is mentioned by Livy, xxii. 5, and by Flonis, ii. 6. 

 7 " Prsesagiis, inquit, quam ipsa clade, sseviores sunt terrse motu?." 



Alexandre in Lemaire, i. 410. 



