Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/89

 OF THE RO^IAN EMPIRE 69 CHAPTER XXVI Manners of the Pastoral Nations — Progress of the Huns, from China to Europe — Flight of the Goths — Theif pass the Danube — Gothic war — Defeat and Death of Falens — Gratian invests Theodosius with the Eastern Empire — His Character and Success — Peace and Settlemetd of the Goths In the second year of the reign of Valentinian and Valens, on Earthquakes. the morning of the twenty-first day of July, the greatest part of as?' ^"^""^ the Roman world was shaken by a violent and destructive earthquake. The impression was communicated to the waters ; the shores of the Mediterranean were left dry, by the sudden retreat of the sea ; great quantities of fish were caught with the hand ; large vessels were stranded on the mud ; and a curious spectator ^ amused his eye, or rather his fancy, by contemplating the various appearance of valleys and mountains, which had never, since the formation of the globe, been exposed to the sun. But the tide soon returned, with the weight of an im- mense and irresistible deluge, which was severely felt on the coast of Sicily, of Dalmatia, of Greece, and of Egypt ; large boats were transported, and lodged on the roofs of houses, or at the distance of two miles from the shore ; the people, with their habitations, were swept away by the waters ; and the city of Alexandria annually commemorated the fatal day on which fifty thousand persons had lost their lives in the inunda- tion. This calamity, the report of which was magnified from one province to another, astonished and terrified the subjects of Rome ; and their affrighted imagination enlarged the real extent of a momentary evil. They recollected the preceding earth- quakes, which had subverted the cities of Palestine and Bithynia ; they considered these alanming strokes as the prelude only of still more dreadful calamities, and their fearful vanity was disposed to confound the symptoms of a declining empire and a iSuch is the bad taste of Ammianus (xxvi. lo) that it is not easy to distinguish his facts from his metaphors. Yet he positively affirms that he saw the rotten carcase of a ship, ad secundum lapidem, at Methone, or Modon, in Peloponnesus.