Page:Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus.djvu/151

A.D. 358.] call because of the waters pouring through them with a more rapid motion than usual, or, as Anaxagoras affirms, they arise from the force of the wind penetrating the lower parts of the earth, which, when they have got down to the encrusted solid mass, finding no vent-holes, shake those portions in their solid state, into which they have got entrance when in a state of solution. And this is corroborated by the observation that at such times no breezes of wind are felt by us above ground, because the winds are occupied in the lowest recesses of the earth.

12. Anaximander says that the earth when burnt up by excessive heat and drought, and also after excessive rains, opens larger fissures than usual, which the upper air penetrates with great force and in excessive quantities, and the earth, shaken by the furious blasts which penetrate those fissures, is disturbed to its very foundations; for which reason these fearful events occur either at times of great evaporation or else at those of an extravagant fall of rain from heaven. And therefore the ancient poets and theologians gave Neptune the name of Earthshaker, as being the power of moist substance.

13. Now earthquakes take place in four manners: either they are brasmatiæ, which raise up the ground in a terrible manner, and throw vast masses up to the surface, as in Asia, Delos arose, and Hiera; and also Anaphe and Rhodes, which has at different times been called Ophiusa and Pelagia, and was once watered with a shower of gold; and Eleusis in Boeotia, and the Hellenian islands in the Tyrrhenian sea, and many other islands. Or they are climatiæ, which, with a slanting and oblique blow, level cities, edifices, and mountains. Or chasmatiæ, which suddenly, by a violent motion, open huge mouths, and so swallow up portions of the earth, as in the Atlantic sea,