Inundations of the sea take place at the same time with earthquakes[1]; the water being impregnated with the same spirit[2], 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[3], 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[4] 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[5]. Nor is it an evil merely consisting in the danger which is produced by the motion; it is all equal or a greater evil when it is considered as a prodigy[6]. The city of Rome never experienced a shock, which was not the forerunner of some great calamity.