Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/156

 122 plint's natural ihstoet. [Book IT. others are so to man also, as in the country of Sinuessa and Puteoli. They are generally called vents, and, by some persons, Cliaron's sewers, from their exhaling a deadly vapour. Also at Amsanctum, in the country of the Hirpini, at the temple of Mepliitis 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 Gods. In other places there are prophetic caves, w^here 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 everyw^here diffused, and thus bursts forth in various places ? CHAP. 96. (94.)— OF CERTAIN LANDS WHICH ARE ALWAYS SHAKING, AND OF FLOATING ISLANDS. There are certain lands which shake wlien any one passes over them'* ; as in the territory of the Gabii, not far from the city of Home, there are about 200 acres which shake when cavalry passes over it : the same thing takes place at Eeate. (95.) There are certain islands which are alw^ays floating ^, as in the territory of the CsBcubum^, and of the above-men- tioned Eeate, of Mutina, and of Statonia. In the lake of Vadimonis and the waters of Cutiliae 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 whei'e, in consequence of a stratum of carbonic acid gas, which, occupies the lower part of the cave only, dogs and other animals, whose mouths are near the ground, are instantly sviifocated. ^ Celebrated in the weU-known lines of Virgil, ^n. vii. 563 et seq., as the " S8evi spLi'acula Ditis." 2 Apulcius gives us an account of this place from his o^ti observation ; De Mundo, § 729. See also Strabo, xii. 3 See Aristotle, De Mundo, cap. iv. ^ " Ad ingressum ambulantium, et equonim ciu'sus, terrse quoque tre- mere sentiimtiu* in Brabantino agro, qu^e Belgii pars, et circa S. Audoniari 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. 115. Most of the places mentioned in tliis chapter are illustrated by the remarks of Hardouin ; Lemau-e, i. 422, 423.