LIBER II · CAPUT 84
WONDERFUL CIRCUMSTANCES ATTENDING EARTHQUAKES
Latine · Mayhoff 1906
Fiunt simul cum terrae motu et inundationes maris, eodem videlicet spiritu infusi autterrae sidentis sinu recepti. maximus terrae memoria mortalium exstitit motus Tiberii Caesaris principatu, XII urbibus Asiae una nocte prostratis; creberrimus Punico bello intra eundem annum septies ac quinquagies nuntiatus Romam, quo quidem anno ad Trasimenum lacum dimicantes maximum motum neque Poeni sensere nec Romani. nec vero simplex malum aut in ipso tantum motu periculum est, sed par aut maius ostento. numquam urbs Roma tremuit, ut non futuri eventus alicuius id praenuntium esset.
English · Bostock & Riley 1855–57
Inundations of the sea take place at the same time with earthquakes; the water being impregnated with the same spirit, and received into the bosom of the earth which subsides. The greatest earthquake which has occurred in our memory was in the reign of Tiberius, 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 year 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 battle. 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 prodigy. The city of Rome never experienced a shock, which was not the forerunner of some great calamity.