were afflicted progressively with violent earthquakes, intensified by volcanic phenomena.[1] In Europe, Dyrrachium, the birthplace of Anastasius, recently adorned by him at great cost, was overthrown; and Corinth shortly after experienced a similar fate. In Asia, Anazarbus, the capital of Cilicia, suffered; the central half of Pompeiopolis sunk into the earth;[2] and Edessa was ruined by a flood of the river Scirtus.[3] The withdrawal of large sums from the Imperial treasury was entailed by the restoration of these cities. This series of calamities culminated in the almost total destruction of Antioch, where the seismological disturbances persisted for more than a year, the eighth of Justin's reign, and upwards of a quarter of a million of the inhabitants perished.[4] The ground was rifted in all directions with great gaps which ejected flames; the houses caught fire or collapsed with their occupants into the yawning chasms; and a hill of considerable size, overhanging the city, was shattered with such violence that the streets and buildings in that quarter lay buried
- [Footnote:
In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war.
Paradise Lost, ii.
]
- ↑ The fullest account of these calamities is given by Jn. Malala, xvii.
- ↑ Cedrenus and Zonaras place it in this reign. Jn. Malala a little later.
- ↑ This was not the first occurrence of the kind, and all the chronographers are anxious to record that a slab now came to light with a punning inscription or prophecy, which may be rendered in English as, "The river Skip will skip some evil skippings for the townspeople"; as anxious as they are to note the peregrinations of a Cilician giantess, over seven feet high, who tramped the Empire, begging a penny at all the workshops for showing herself. After its restoration Edessa was called Justinopolis in legal acts.
- ↑ Procopius puts it as high as 300,000; De Bel. Pers., ii, 14.
