The earliest earthquake, worthy of notice, of which we have any record,
was that which in the year 63 so severely injured Herculaneum and
Pompeii, and from the effects of which they had not been restored when
they were overwhelmed by the volcano. Some of the most remarkable
earthquakes of ancient times are described by Pliny. Among the most
extensive and destructive of these, was the one already noticed, by
which thirteen cities in Asia Minor were swallowed up in one night.
Another which succeeded, shook the greater part of Italy. But the most
extraordinary one, described by him, happened during the consulate of
Lucius Marcus and Sextus Julius, in the Roman province of Mutina. He
relates, that two mountains felt so tremendous a shock, that they seemed
to approach and retire with a most dreadful noise. They at the same
time, and in the middle of the day, cast forth fire and smoke, to the
dismay of the astonished spectator. By this shock several towns were
destroyed, and all the animals in their vicinity killed. During the
reign of Trajan, the city of Antioch was, together with a great part of
the adjacent country, destroyed by an earthquake; and about three
hundred years after, during the reign of Justinian, it was again
destroyed, with the loss of forty thousand of its inhabitants. Lastly,
after an interval of sixty years, that ill-fated city was a third time
overwhelmed, with a loss of sixty thousand souls. The earthquake which
happened at Rhodes, upward of two hundred years before the Christian
era, threw down the famous colossus, together with the arsenal, and a
great part of the walls of the city. In the year 1182, the greater part
of the cities of Syria, and of the kingdom of Jerusalem, were destroyed
by a similar catastrophe; and in 1594, the Italian writers describe an
earthquake at Puteoli, which occasioned the sea to retire two hundred
yards from its former bed.