The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 1 (of 6)

Inundations of the sea take place at the same time with earthquakes556; the water being impregnated with the same spirit557, and received into the bosom of the earth which subsides. The greatest earthquake which has occurred in our memory was in the reign of Tiberius558, by which twelve cities of Asia were laid prostrate in one night. They occurred the most frequently during the Punic war, when we had accounts brought to Rome of fifty-seven earthquakes in the space of a single year. It was during this year559 that the Carthaginians and the Romans, who were fighting at the lake Thrasimenus, were neither of them sensible of a very great shock during the battle560. Nor is it an evil merely consisting in the danger which is produced by the motion; it is an equal or a greater evil when it is considered as a prodigy561. The city of Rome never experienced a shock, which was not the forerunner of some great calamity.