Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/152

118 CHAP. 89. (81.) — WHAT ISLANDS HAVE BEEN FORMED, AND AT WHAT PERIODS.

Delos and Rhodes, islands which have now been long famous, are recorded to have risen up in this way. More lately there have been some smaller islands formed; Anapha, which is beyond Melos; Nea, between Lemnos and the Hellespont; Halone, between Lebedos and Teos; Thera and Therasia, among the Cyclades, in the fourth year of the 135th Olympiad. And among the same islands, 130 years afterwards, Hiera, also called Automate made its appearance; also Thia, at the distance of two stadia from the former, 110 years afterwards, in our own times, when M. Junius Silanus and L. Balbus were consuls, on the 8th of the ides of July.

(88.) Opposite to us, and near to Italy, among the Æolian isles, an island emerged from the sea; and likewise one near Crete, 2500 paces in extent, and with warm springs in it; another made its appearance in the third year of the 163rd Olympiad, in the Tuscan gulf, burning with a violent explosion. There is a tradition too that a great number of fishes were floating about the spot, and that those who employed them for food immediately expired. It is said that the Pithecusan isles rose up, in the same way, in the bay of Campania, and that, shortly afterwards, the mountain Epopos, from which flame had suddenly burst forth, was reduced to the level of the neighbouring plain. In the same island, it is said, that a town v.as sunk in the sea; that in