ns also would have escaped unhurt, if a fire had not suddenly
broken out, which raged with great violence for fifty days and nights,
and destroyed all that remained.

9. I think this a good opportunity to enumerate a few of the conjectures
which the ancients have formed about earthquakes. For as to any accurate
knowledge of their causes, not only has that never been attained by the
ignorance of the common people, but they have equally eluded the long
lucubrations and subtle researches of natural philosophers.

10. And on this account in all priestly ceremonies, whether ritual or
pontifical, care is taken not at such times to name one god more than
another, for fear of impiety, since it is quite uncertain which god
causes these visitations.

11. But as the various opinions, among which Aristotle wavers and
hesitates, suggest, earthquakes are engendered either in small caverns
under the earth, which the Greeks call +syrigges+, 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,[70]
as being the power of moist substance.

13. Now earthquakes take place in four manners: either they are
_brasmatiae_,[71] 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;[72] and
Eleu