The ferment of the elements which prevailed toward the close of the third century of the city, continued through the first half of the next century, and aggravated the miseries of the Peloponnesian war, which during that period was ruining Greece. At that time, says Thucydides, we experienced, what former ages knew only from tradition, earthquakes, spreading widely and of tremendous violence, terrible drouths, and famine in consequence, and the plague. Etna too during the same period threw out a stream of lava.

On these spasms of the earth Greek history gives us far more information: yet the Roman annals also speak of visitations which unquestionably belong to the same series. In the year 319 there were earthquakes, that recurred frequently, and threw down a number of buildings in the Roman territory: these must evidently have been connected with the eruption of Etna, and with the terrible shocks which ravaged the coast of Greece in Ol. 88. 3; even though we find from a comparison of dates that this year at the earliest only corresponds with the year of Rome 320. In the year 327 the wells and streams were dried up; the cattle and the fruits of the earth pined away for want of water: an equally terrible drouth prevailed six and thirty years after, and spread similar misery around.