122 
PLI]S"T's 2TATUEAL IIISTOET 
[Book 11. 
others are so to man also, as in tlie country of Sinuessa and 
Puteoli. They are generally called vents, and, by some 
persons, Charon's sewers, from their exhaling a deadly 
vapour. Also at Amsanctum, in the country of the Hirpini, 
at the temple of Mephitis \ there is a place which kills all 
those who enter it. And the same takes place at Hierapolis in 
Asia^, where no one can enter with safety, except the priest 
of the great Mother of the Grods. In other places there are 
prophetic caves, where those who are intoxicated with the 
vapour which rises from them predict future events^, as at 
the most noble of all oracles, Delphi. In which cases, what 
mortal is there who can assign any other cause, than the 
divine power of nature, which is everywhere diffused, and 
thus bursts forth in various places ? 
CHAP. 96. (94.) — OE CERTAIN LAIS'DS WHICH AEE ALWAYS 
SHAKIJ^a, AND OE ELOATING ISLANDS. 
There are certain lands which shake when any one passes 
over them^ ; as in the territory of the Gabii, not far from the 
city of Eome, there are about 200 acres which shake when 
cavalry passes over it : the same thing takes place at Reate. 
(95.) There are certain islands which are always floating % 
as in the territory of the Csecubum^, and of the above-men- 
tioned Iteate, of Mutina, and of Statonia. In the lake of 
Vadimonis and the waters of Cutilise there is a dark wood, 
which is never seen in the same place for a day and a night 
together. In Lydia, the islands named Calaminse are not 
where, in consequence of a stratum of carbonic acid gas, which occupies 
the lower part of the cave onlj, dogs and other animals, whose mouths 
are near the gromid, are instantly suifocated. 
1 Celebrated in the well-known imes of Virgil, ^n. vii. 563 et seq^., as 
the " ssevi spiracula Ditis." 
2 Apuleius gives us an account of this place from his own observation ; 
De Mmido, § 729. See also Strabo, xu. 
3 See Aristotle, De Mundo, cap. iv. 
^ " Ad ingressum ambulantium, et equorum cursus, terrjB quoque tre- 
mere sentiuntur in Brabantino agro, quae Belgii pars, et circa S. 
Audomari fanum." Hardouin in Lemau*e, i. 421, 422. 
^ See Seneca, Nat. Qusest. iii. 25. 
^ Martial speaks of the marshy nature of the Csecuban district, xiii. 116. 
Most of the places mentioned in tliis chapter are illustrated by the 
remarks of Hardouin j Lemaire, i. 422, 423. 
