Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/151

 Cliap. 88.] ELEYATIO^f OF LANDS. 117 siirface For the land is not merely produced by what is brought dom the rivers, as the islands called Echinades are formed by the river Achelous, and the greater part of Egypt by the Nile, where, according to Homer, it was a day and a night's journey from the main land to the island of Pharos^ ; but, in some eases, by the receding of the sea, as, according to the same author, was the case with the Circsean isles'^ The same thing also happened in the harbour of Ambracia, for a space of 10,000 paces, and was also said to have taken place for 5000 at the Piraeus of Athens'*, and likewise at Ephesus, Avhere formerly the sea washed the walls of the temple of Diana. Indeed, if we may believe Herodotus^, the sea came beyond Memphis, as far as the mountains of JEthi- opia, and also from the jijlains of Arabia. The sea also siu'- rounded Ilium and the whole of Teuthrania, and covered the plain through which the Mseander flows ^ CHAP. 88. (86.) THE MODE I>r WHICH ISLANDS EISE UP. Land is sometimes formed in a different manner, risinsr suddenly out of the sea, as if nature was compensating the earth for its losses', restoring in one place what she had swallowed up in another. 1 This phgenomenon is distinctly referred to by Seneca, Nat. Queest. vi. 21. It presents us AAatli one of those cases, where the scientific de- ductions of the modems have been anticipated by the speculations of the ancients. - Odyss. iv. 354—357 ; see also Arist. Meteor, i. 14 ; Lucan, x. 509-511 ; Seneca, Nat. Qunest. vi. 26 ; Herodotus, ii. 4, 5 ; and Strabo, i. 59. 3 These form, at tliis day, the Monte Circello, which, it is remarked, rises up hke an island, out of the Pontine marshes. It seems, however, difficult to conceive how any action of the .sea could have formed these marshes. •• See Strabo, i. 58. ^ ii. 5. et alibi. ^ The plain in which this river flows, forming the -indinf^s from which it derives its name, appears to have been originally an hilet of the sea, which was gradually filled up with alluvial matter. 7 "Paria secum faciente natiu-a." This appears to have been a collo- quial or idiomatic expression among the Romans. See lltu'douin in Lemaire, i. 412.