CHAP. 87. (85.)—IN WHAT PLACES THE SEA HAS RECEDED.
The same cause produces an increase of the land; the
vapour, when it cannot burst out forcibly lifting up the
surface[1]. For the land is not merely produced by what is
brought down the rivers, as the islands called Echinades are
formed by the river Achelous, and the greater part of Egypt
by the Nile, where, according to Homer, it was a day and a
night's journey from the main land to the island of Pharos[2];
but, in some cases, by the receding of the sea, as, according
to the same author, was the case with the Circæan isles[3].
The same thing also happened in the harbour of Ambracia,
for a space of 10,000 paces, and was also said to have taken
place for 5000 at the Piræus of Athens[4], and likewise at
Ephesus, where formerly the sea washed the walls of the
temple of Diana. Indeed, if we may believe Herodotus[5], the
sea came beyond Memphis, as far as the mountains of Ethiopia, and
also from the plains of Arabia. The sea also surrounded Ilium and the
whole of Teuthrania, and covered the
plain through which the Mæander flows[6].
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. See Strabo, i. 58. ii.
5. ii. 5. et alibi.
6. The plain in which this river flows, forming the windings from which
it derives its name, appears to have been originally an inlet of the sea,
which was gradually filled up with alluvial matter.