[555] We have no authentic accounts of this mutual change of place between two portions of land, nor can we conceive of any cause capable of effecting it. Our author mentions this circumstance again in book xvii. ch. 38.
[556] See Aristotle, Meteor. ii. 8.
[557] “Eodem videlicet spiritu infusi (maris) ac terræ residentis sinu recepti.”
[558] U.C. 770; A.D. 17. We have an account of this event in Strabo, xii. 57; in Tacitus, Ann. ii. 47; and in the Universal History, xiv. 129, 130. We are informed by Hardouin, that coins are still in existence which were struck to commemorate the liberality of the emperor on the occasion, inscribed “civitatibus Asiæ restitutis.” Lemaire, i. 410.
[559] U.C. 537; A.C. 217.
[560] This circumstance is mentioned by Livy, xxii. 5, and by Floras, ii. 6.
[561] “Præsagiis, inquit, quam ipsa clade, sæviores sunt terræ motus.” Alexandre in Lemaire, i. 410.
[562] This phænomenon is distinctly referred to by Seneca, Nat. Quæst. vi. 21. It presents us with one of those cases, where the scientific deductions of the moderns have been anticipated by the speculations of the ancients.
[563] Odyss. iv. 354-357; see also Arist. Meteor. i. 14; Lucan, x. 509-511; Seneca, Nat. Quæst. vi. 26; Herodotus, ii. 4, 5; and Strabo, i. 59.
[564] These form, at this day, the Monte Circello, which, it is remarked, rises up like an island, out of the Pontine marshes. It seems, however, difficult to conceive how any action of the sea could have formed these marshes.