Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 1.djvu/400

 STRABO. CASAUB. 258. afterwards passed into Sicily when they were expelled by the CEnotri. Some say that Morgantium l thus received its name from the Morgetes. But the city of the Rhegini became very powerful, and possessed many dependent settlements. It has always been a bulwark for us against the island [of Sicily], and, indeed, has recently served to that purpose when Sextus Pompeius alienated Sicily. 2 It was called Rhegium either, as ^Eschylus says, because of the convulsion which had taken place in this region ; for Sicily was broken from the continent by earthquakes, " Whence it is called Rhegium." 3 Others, 4 as well as he, have affirmed the same thing, and ad- duce as an evidence that which is observed about JEtna, and the appearances seen in other parts of Sicily, the Lipari and neighbouring islands, and even in the Pithecussse, with the whole coast beyond them, which prove that it was not unlikely that this convulsion had taken place. But now these mouths being opened, through which the fire is drawn up, and the ardent masses and water poured out, they say that the land in the neighbourhood of the Strait of Sicily rarely suffers from the effects of earthquakes ; but formerly all the passages to the surface being blocked up, the fire which was smouldering be- neath the earth, together with the vapour, occasioned terrible earthquakes, and the regions, being disturbed by the force of the pent-up winds, sometimes gave way, and being rent re- ceived the sea, which flowed in from either side ; and thus were formed both this strait and the sea which surrounds the other islands in the neighbourhood. For Prochyta 5 and the 1 It seems probable that Strabo here refers to Morgantium in Sicily, which had disappeared in his days, and which he mentions in b. vi. c. ii. $4. 2 Sextus Pompeius, having received from the senate the command of the fleet, B. c. 43, in a short time made himself master of Sicily, which he held till 36. a This is a quotation from one of the missing works of ^Eschylus. 4 Virgil speaks of this great catastrophe, Mn. iii. 414, " Haec loca, vi quondam et vasta convulsa ruina (Tantum sevi longinqua valet mutare vetustas,) Dissiluisse ferunt : cum protinus utraqiie tellus Una foret, venit medio vi pontus, et undis Hesperium Siculo latus abscidit : arvaque et urbes Litore diductas angusto interluit aestu." 5 Procida.