Dio's Rome, Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) an Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During the Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and - Softcover
Synopsis
Excerpt: ...but no one could have expected that so many evils would result from them. First came, on a sudden, a great bellowing roar, and there followed it a tremendous shock. The whole earth was up-heaved and buildings leaped into the air. Those that were lifted up collapsed and were smashed to pieces, A.D. 115 (a.u. 868) while others were beaten this way and that as if by the surges and were turned about. The wrecks were strewn a long distance over the countryside. The crash of grinding and breaking timbers, tiles, and stones together became most frightful, and an inconceivable mass of dust arose, so that no one could see any person nor say or hear anything. Many persons were hurt even outside the houses, being picked up and tossed violently about, and then with a momentum as in a fall from a cliff dashed to the earth. Some were maimed, others killed. Not a few trees leaped into the air, roots and all. The number of those found in the houses who perished was beyond discovery. Multitudes were destroyed by the very force of the collapse and crowds were suffocated in the debris. Those who lay with a part of their bodies buried under the stones or timbers suffered fearful agony, being able neither to live nor to find an immediate death. 25 Nevertheless many even of these were saved, as was natural in such overwhelming numbers of people. And those outside did not all get off safe and sound. Numbers lost their legs or their shoulders and some Lacuna their Lacuna heads. Others vomited blood. One of these was Pedo the consul, and he died at once. In brief, there was no form of violent experience that those people did not undergo at that time. And as Heaven continued the earthquake for several days and nights, the people were dismayed and helpless, some crushed and perishing under the weight of the buildings pressing upon them, and others dying of hunger in case it chanced that by the inclination of the timbers they were left alive in a clear space, it might be in a...
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