116 
PLIKY'S I^^ATrRAL HISTOET. 
[Book 11. 
changed places with each other \ although the public high- 
way was interposed. 
CHAP. 86. (84.) — ^WOjSrBEEPTJL CIECrMSTAKCES ATTENDIlS'a 
EAETHQTJAKES. 
Inundations of the sea take place at the same time with 
earthquakes^ ; the water being impregnated with 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 E-omans, who were fighting at the 
lake Thrasimenus, were neither of them sensible of a very 
great shock during the battle^. JN^or 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 Bome never experienced a shock, 
which was not the forerunner of some great calamity. 
CHAP. 87. (85.) IK WHAT PLACES THE SEA HAS EECEDED. 
The same cause produ.ces an increase of the land ; the 
vapour, when it cannot burst out forcibly lifting up the 
^ 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 circumstance again in book xvii. 
eh. 38. ^ 
2 See Aristotle, Meteor, ii. 8. 
3 " Eodem videhcet spiritu infusi (maris) ac terrse residentis sinu 
recepti." 
* u.c. 770 ; A.D. 17. We have an account of this event in Strabo, 
"sii. 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. 
u.c. 537 ; A.C. 217. 
^ This circumstance is mentioned by Livy, xxii. 5, and by Flonis, ii. 0. 
7 " Preesagiis, inquit, quam ipsa clade, sseviores sunt terrje motu^." 
Alexandi'c in Lemaire, i. 410. 
