Great warriors, like great earthquakes, are principally remembered for the mischief they have done.
It was one of those hot, silent nights, when people sit at windows, listening for the thunder which they know will shortly break; when they recall dismal tales of hurricanes and earthquakes; and of lonely travelers on open plains, and lonely ships at sea, struck by lightning.
Defining philosophy as “an activity, attempting by means of discussion and reasoning, to make life happy,” he believed that happiness is gained through the achievement of moral self-sufficiency (autarkeia) and freedom from disturbance (ataraxia). The main obstacles to the goal of tranquillity of mind are our unnecessary fears and desires, and the only way to eliminate these is to study natural science. The most serious disturbances of all are fear of death, including fear of punishment after death, and fear of the gods. Scientific inquiry removes fear of death by showing that the mind and spirit are material and mortal, so that they cannot live on after we die: as Epicurus neatly and logically puts it: “Death…is nothing to us: when we exist, death is not present; and when death is present, we do not exist. Consequently it does not concern either the living or the dead, since for the living it is non-existent and the dead no longer exist” (Letter to Menoeceus 125). As for fear of the gods, that disappears when scientific investigation proves that the world was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, that the gods live outside the world and have no inclination or power to intervene in its affairs, and that irregular phenomena such as lightning, thunder, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes have natural causes and are not manifestations of divine anger. Every Epicurean would have agreed with Katisha in the Mikado when she sings: But to him who’s scientific There’s nothing that’s terrific In the falling of a flight of thunderbolts! So the study of natural science is the necessary means whereby the ethical end is attained. And that is its only justification: Epicurus is not interested in scientific knowledge for its own sake, as is clear from his statement that “if we were not disturbed by our suspicions concerning celestial phenomena, and by our fear that death concerns us, and also by our failure to understand the limits of pains and desires, we should have no need of natural science” (Principal Doctrines 11). Lucretius’ attitude is precisely the same as his master’s: all the scientific information in his poem is presented with the aim of removing the disturbances, especially fear of death and fear of the gods, that prevent the attainment of tranquillity of mind. It is very important for the reader of On the Nature of Things to bear this in mind all the time, particularly since the content of the work is predominantly scientific and no systematic exposition of Epicurean ethics is provided.25 Epicurus despised philosophers who do not make it their business to improve people’s moral condition: “Vain is the word of a philosopher by whom no human suffering is cured. For just as medicine is of no use if it fails to banish the diseases of the body, so philosophy is of no use if it fails to banish the suffering of the mind” (Usener fr. 221). It is evident that he would have condemned the majority of modern philosophers and scientists.
May we, or may we not, interpret, as students of language, and particularly as students of Oriental languages, the language of the Old Testament as a primitive and as an Oriental language? May we, or may we not, as true believers, see through the veil which human language always throws over the most sacred mysteries of the soul, and instead of dragging the sublimity of Abraham's trial and Abraham's faith down to the level of a merely preternatural event, recognise in it the real trial of a human soul, the real faith of the friend of God, a faith without stormwinds, without earthquakes and fires, a faith in the still small voice of God?
I see a bad moon rising. I see trouble on the way. I see earthquakes and lightnin' I see bad times today. Don't go 'round tonight, It's bound to take your life. There's a bad moon on the rise. -- J. C. Fogerty, "Bad Moon Rising"
If you're worried by earthquakes and nuclear war, As well as by traffic and crime, Consider how worry-free gophers are, Though living on burrowed time. -- Richard Armour, WSJ, 11/7/83
Volcanoes have a grandeur that is grim And earthquakes only terrify the dolts, And to him who's scientific There is nothing that's terrific In the pattern of a flight of thunderbolts! -- W. S. Gilbert, "The Mikado"
24:7. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: And there shall be pestilences and famines and earthquakes in places.
Nor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral-toppling earthquakes; nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas; nor the tearlessness of arid skies that never rain; nor the sight of her wide field of leaning spires, wrenched cope-stones, and crosses all adroop (like canted yards of anchored fleets); and her suburban avenues of house-walls lying over upon each other, as a tossed pack of cards;--it is not these things alone which make tearless Lima, the strangest, saddest city thou can'st see. For Lima has taken the white veil; and there is a higher horror in this whiteness of her woe. Old as Pizarro, this whiteness keeps her ruins for ever new; admits not the cheerful greenness of complete decay; spreads over her broken ramparts the rigid pallor of an apoplexy that fixes its own distortions.
13:8. For nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places and famines. These things are the beginning of sorrows.
11:5. And this was his dream: Behold there were voices, and tumults, and thunders, and earthquakes, and a disturbance upon the earth.
That he should have set the buckle of his stock awry, it was indispensable that there should have taken place in him one of those emotions which may be designated as internal earthquakes.
A great pity, now, that this unfortunate whale should be hare-lipped. The fissure is about a foot across. Probably the mother during an important interval was sailing down the Peruvian coast, when earthquakes caused the beach to gape. Over this lip, as over a slippery threshold, we now slide into the mouth. Upon my word were I at Mackinaw, I should take this to be the inside of an Indian wigwam. Good Lord! is this the road that Jonah went? The roof is about twelve feet high, and runs to a pretty sharp angle, as if there were a regular ridge-pole there; while these ribbed, arched, hairy sides, present us with those wondrous, half vertical, scimetar-shaped slats of whalebone, say three hundred on a side, which depending from the upper part of the head or crown bone, form those Venetian blinds which have elsewhere been cursorily mentioned. The edges of these bones are fringed with hairy fibres, through which the Right Whale strains the water, and in whose intricacies he retains the small fish, when openmouthed he goes through the seas of brit in feeding time. In the central blinds of bone, as they stand in their natural order, there are certain curious marks, curves, hollows, and ridges, whereby some whalemen calculate the creature's age, as the age of an oak by its circular rings. Though the certainty of this criterion is far from demonstrable, yet it has the savor of analogical probability. At any rate, if we yield to it, we must grant a far greater age to the Right Whale than at first glance will seem reasonable.
Jacqueries are earthquakes of the people.
There is a certain state of inert asceticism in which the soul, neutralized by torpor, a stranger to that which may be designated as the business of living, receives no impressions, either human, or pleasant or painful, with the exception of earthquakes and catastrophes. This devotion, as Father Gillenormand said to his daughter, corresponds to a cold in the head. You smell nothing of life. Neither any bad, nor any good odor.
21:11. And there shall be great earthquakes in divers places and pestilences and famines and terrors from heaven: and there shall be great signs.
_Physical Description._--The northern frontier, drawn 2 m. S. of the southern shores of the river San Juan and of Lake Nicaragua, terminates at Salinas Bay on the Pacific; its southern frontier skirts the valley of the Sixola or Tiliri, strikes south-east along the crests of the Talamanca Mountains as far as 9° N., and then turns sharply south, ending in Burica Point. The monotonous Atlantic littoral is unbroken by any large inlet or estuary, and thus contrasts in a striking manner with the varied outlines of the Pacific coast, which includes the three bold promontories of Nicoya, Golfo Dulce and Burica, besides the broad sweep of Coronada Bay and several small harbours. The Gulf of Nicoya, a shallow landlocked inlet, containing a whole archipelago of richly-wooded islets, derives its name from Nicoya, an Indian chief who, with his tribe, was here converted to Christianity in the 16th century. It is famous for its purple-yielding murex, pearls and mother-of-pearl. The Golfo Dulce has an average depth of 100 fathoms and contains no islands. Two volcanic _Cordilleras_ or mountain chains, separated from one another by the central plateau of San José and Cartago, traverse the interior of Costa Rica, and form a single watershed, often precipitous on its Pacific slope, but descending more gradually towards the Atlantic, where there is a broad expanse of plain in the north-east. The more northerly range, in which volcanic disturbances on a great scale have been comparatively recent, extends transversely across the country, from a point a little south of Salinas Bay, to the headland of Carreta, the southern extremity of the Atlantic seaboard, also known as Monkey Point. Its direction changes from south-east to east-south-east opposite to the entrance into the Gulf of Nicoya, where it is cut into two sections by a depression some 20 m. wide. At first it is rather a succession of isolated volcanic cones than a continuous ridge, the most conspicuous peaks being Orosi (5185 ft.), the four-crested Rincon de la Vieja (4500), Miravalles (4698) and Tenorio (6800). In this region it is known as the Sierra de Tilaran. Then succeed the Cerros de los Guatusos, a highland stretching for more than 50 m. without a single volcano. Poas (8895), the scene of a violent eruption in 1834, begins a fresh series of igneous peaks, some with flooded craters, some with a constant escape of smoke and vapour. From Irazú (11,200), the culminating point of the range, both oceans and the whole of Costa Rica are visible; its altitude exceeds that of Aneto, the highest point in the Pyrenees, but so gradual is its acclivity that the summit can easily be reached by a man on horseback. Turialba (10,910), adjoining Irazú on the east, was in eruption in 1866. Its name, though probably of Indian origin, is sometimes written Turrialba, and connected with the Latin _Turris Alba_, "White Tower." The more southerly of the two Costa Rican ranges, known as the Cordillera de Talamanca, rises south of the Gulf of Nicoya, and extends midway between the two oceans towards the south-east. It follows exactly the curve of the mainland, and is continued into Panama, under the name of the Cordillera de Chiriqui. Its chief summits are Chirripo Grande (11,485), the loftiest in the whole country, Buena Vista (10,820), Ujum (8695), Pico Blanco (9645) and Rovalo (7050), on the borders of Panama. Throughout the volcanic area earthquakes and landslides are of frequent occurrence. Entry: COSTA
Speaking broadly, earthquakes are most frequent along the steeper flexures in the earth's surface, and in those regions where there is geological evidence to show that slow secular movements in the earth's crust are possibly yet in progress. With a unit distance of 2 degrees, or 120 geographical m., we find that the slopes running eastwards from the highlands of Japan and westwards from the Andean ridges down into the Pacific vary from 1 in 20 to 1 in 30, and it is on the faces or near to the bottom of these slopes that seismic efforts are frequent. The slopes running from Australia, eastern America and western Europe into the neighbouring oceans vary between 1 in 70 and 1 in 250, and in these regions earthquakes are of rare occurrence. The seismic activity met with in the Himalayas and the Alps finds its best explanation in the fact that these mountains are geologically recent, and there are no reasons to doubt that the forces which brought their folds into existence are yet in action. Entry: A
GIFU (IMAIZUMI), a city of Japan, capital of the _ken_ (government) of Central Nippon, which comprises the two provinces of Mino and Hida. Pop. about 41,000. It lies E. by N. of Lake Biwa, on the Central railway, on a tributary of the river Kiso, which flows to the Bay of Miya Uro. Manufactures of silk and paper goods are carried on. The _ken_ has an area of about 4000 sq. m. and is thickly peopled, the population exceeding 1,000,000. The whole district is subject to frequent earthquakes. Entry: GIFU
_Earthquakes._--Japan is subject to marked displays of seismic violence. One steadily exercised influence is constantly at work, for the shores bordering the Pacific Ocean are slowly though appreciably rising, while on the side of the Japan Sea a corresponding subsidence is taking place. Japan also experiences a vast number of petty vibrations not perceptible without the aid of delicate instruments. But of earthquakes proper, large or small, she has an exceptional abundance. Thus in the thirteen years ending in 1897--that is to say, the first period when really scientific apparatus for recording purposes was available--she was visited by no fewer than 17,750 shocks, being an average of something over 3½ daily. The frequency of these phenomena is in some degree a source of security, for the minor vibrations are believed to exercise a binding effect by removing weak cleavages. Nevertheless the annals show that during the three centuries before 1897 there were 108 earthquakes sufficiently disastrous to merit historical mention. If the calculation be carried farther back--as has been done by the seismic disaster investigation committee of Japan, a body of scientists constantly engaged in studying these phenomena under government auspices,--it is found that, since the country's history began to be written in the 8th century A.D., there have been 2006 major disturbances; but inasmuch as 1489 of these occurred before the beginning of the Tokugawa administration (early in the 17th century, and therefore in an era when methods of recording were comparatively defective), exact details are naturally lacking. The story, so far as it is known, may be gathered from the following table:-- Entry: I
The early part of the reign of Aurelius was clouded by national misfortunes. An inundation of the Tiber swept away a large part of Rome, destroying fields, drowning cattle, and causing a famine (162); then came earthquakes, fires and plagues of insects; the soldiers in Britain tried to induce their general Statius Priscus to proclaim himself emperor; finally, the Parthians under Vologaeses III. resumed hostilities, annihilated the Roman forces under Severianus at Elegia in Cappadocia, and devastated Syria. Verus, originally a man of considerable courage and ability, was sent to oppose the Parthians, but gave himself up to sensual excesses, and the Roman cause in Armenia would have been lost, and the empire itself, perhaps, imperilled, had not Verus had under him able generals,[2] the chief of whom was Avidius Cassius (see CASSIUS, AVIDIUS). By them the Parthian War was brought to a conclusion in 165, but Verus and his army brought back with them a terrible pestilence, which spread through the whole empire. The people seem to have thought that the last days of the empire had come. The Parthians had at the best been beaten, not subdued; the Britons threatened revolt; there were signs that various tribes beyond the Alps intended to break into Italy. Indeed, the bulk of the reign of Aurelius was spent in efforts to ward off the attacks of the barbarians. He went himself to the wars with Verus in 167, first to Aquileia and then on into Pannonia and Noricum, wintering at Sirmium in Pannonia. Ultimately the Marcomanni, the fiercest of the tribes that inhabited the country between Illyria and the sources of the Danube, sued for peace in 168. In January or February 160 Verus died at Altinum, apparently of apoplexy, though some ventured to say that he was poisoned by Aurelius. Entry: MARCUS
The selection of his subject and the order in which it is treated are determined by this motive. Although the title of the poem implies that it is a treatise on the "whole nature of things," the aim of Lucretius is to treat only those branches of science which are necessary to clear the mind from the fear of the gods and the terrors of a future state. In the two earliest books, accordingly, he lays down and largely illustrates the first principles of being with the view of showing that the world is not governed by capricious agency, but has come into existence, continues in existence, and will ultimately pass away in accordance with the primary conditions of the elemental atoms which, along with empty space, are the only eternal and immutable substances. These atoms are themselves infinite in number but limited in their varieties, and by their ceaseless movement and combinations during infinite time and through infinite space the whole process of creation is maintained. In the third book he applies the principles of the atomic philosophy to explain the nature of the mind and vital principle, with the view of showing that the soul perishes with the body. In the fourth book he discusses the Epicurean doctrine of the images, which are cast from all bodies, and which act either on the senses or immediately on the mind, in dreams or waking visions, as affording the explanation of the belief in the continued existence of the spirits of the departed. The fifth book, which has the most general interest, professes to explain the process by which the earth, the sea, the sky, the sun, moon and stars, were formed, the origin of life, and the gradual advance of man from the most savage to the most civilized condition. All these topics are treated with the view of showing that the world is not itself divine nor directed by divine agency. The sixth book is devoted to the explanation, in accordance with natural causes, of some of the more abnormal phenomena, such as thunderstorms, volcanoes, earthquakes, &c., which are special causes of supernatural terrors. Entry: LUCRETIUS
CYZICUS, an ancient town of Mysia in Asia Minor, situated on the shoreward side of the present peninsula of Kapu-Dagh (Arctonnesus), which is said to have been originally an island in the Sea of Marmora, and to have been artificially connected with the mainland in historic times. It was, according to tradition, occupied by Thessalian settlers at the coming of the Argonauts, and in 756 B.C. the town was founded by Greeks from Miletus. Owing to its advantageous position it speedily acquired commercial importance, and the gold _staters_ of Cyzicus were a staple currency in the ancient world till they were superseded by those of Philip of Macedon. During the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) Cyzicus was subject to the Athenians and Lacedaemonians alternately, and at the peace of Antalcidas (387 B.C.), like the other Greek cities in Asia, it was made over to Persia. The history of the town in Hellenistic times is closely connected with that of the dynasts of Pergamum, with whose extinction it came into direct relations with Rome. Cyzicus was held for the Romans against Mithradates in 74 B.C. till the siege was raised by Lucullus: the loyalty of the city was rewarded by an extension of territory and other privileges. Still a nourishing centre in Imperial times, the place appears to have been ruined by a series of earthquakes--the last in A.D. 1063--and the population was transferred to Artaki at least as early as the 13th century, when the peninsula was occupied by the Crusaders. The site is now known as Bal-Kiz ([Greek: Palaia Kuzikos]?) and entirely uninhabited, though under cultivation. The principal extant ruins are:--the walls, which are traceable for nearly their whole extent, a picturesque amphitheatre intersected by a stream, and the substructures of the temple of Hadrian. Of this magnificent building, sometimes ranked among the seven wonders of the ancient world, thirty-one immense columns still stood erect in 1444. These have since been carried away piecemeal for building purposes by the Turks. Entry: CYZICUS
_Growth of Opinion regarding Earthquakes._--We have seen how crude were the conceptions of the ancients regarding the causes of volcanic action, and that they connected volcanoes and earthquakes as results of the commotion of wind imprisoned within subterranean caverns and passages. One of the earliest treatises, in which the phenomena of terrestrial movements were discussed in the spirit of modern science, was the posthumous collection of papers by Robert Hooke (1635-1703), entitled _Lectures and Discourses of Earthquakes and Subterranean Eruptions_, where the probable agency of earthquakes in upheaving and depressing land is fully considered, but without any definite pronouncement as to the author's conception of its origin. Hooke still associated earthquakes with volcanic action, and connected both with what he called "the general congregation of sulphurous subterraneous vapours." He conceived that some kind of "fermentation" takes place within the earth, and that the materials which catch fire and give rise to eruptions or earthquakes are analogous to those that constitute gunpowder. The first essay wherein earthquakes are treated from the modern point of view as the results of a shock that sends waves through the crust of the earth was written by the Rev. John Michell, and communicated to the Royal Society in the year 1760. Still under the old misconception that volcanoes are due to the combustion of inflammable materials, which he thought might be set on fire by the spontaneous combustion of pyritous strata, he supposed that, by the sudden access of large bodies of water to these subterranean fires, vapour is produced in such quantity and with such force as to give rise to the shock. From the centre of origin of this shock waves, he thought, are propagated through the earth, which are largest at the start and gradually diminish as they travel outwards. By drawing lines at different places in the direction of the track of these waves, he believed that the place of common intersection of these lines would be nearly the centre of the disturbance. In this way he showed that the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755 had its focus under the Atlantic, somewhere between the latitudes of Lisbon and Oporto, and he estimated that the depth at which it originated could not be much less than 1 m., and probably did not exceed 3 m. Michell, however, misconceived the character of the waves which he described, seeing that he believed them to be due to the actual propagation of the vapour itself underneath the surface of the earth. A century had almost passed after the date of his essay before modern scientific methods of observation and the use of recording instruments began to be applied to the study of earthquake phenomena. In 1846 Robert Mallet (1810-1881) published an important paper "On the Dynamics of Earthquakes" in the _Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy_. From that time onward he continued to devote his energies to the investigation, studying the effects of the Calabrian earthquake of 1857, experimenting on the transmission of waves of shock through various materials, caused by exploding charges of gunpowder, and collecting all the information to be obtained on the subject. His writings, and especially his work in two volumes on _The First Principles of Observational Seismology_, must be regarded as having laid the foundations of this branch of modern geology (see EARTHQUAKE; SEISMOMETER). Entry: A
(b) _Movements and Temperature of Lake-Waters._--(1) In addition to the rise and fall of the surface-level of lakes due to rainfall and evaporation, there is a transference of water due to the action of wind which results in raising the level at the end to which the wind is blowing. In addition to the well-known progressive waves there are also stationary waves or "seiches" which are less apparent. A seiche is a standing oscillation of a lake, usually in the direction of the longest diameter, but occasionally transverse. In a motion of this kind every particle of the water of the lake oscillates synchronously with every other, the periods and phases being the same for all, and the orbits similar but of different dimensions and not similarly situated. Seiches were first discovered in 1730 by Fatio de Duillier, a well-known Swiss engineer, and were first systematically studied by Professor Forel in the Lake of Geneva. Large numbers of observations have been made by various observers in lakes in many parts of the world. Henry observed a fifteen-hour seiche in Lake Erie, which is 396 kilometres in length, and Endros recorded a seiche of fourteen seconds in a small pond only 111 metres in length. Although these waves cause periodical rising and falling of the water-level, they are generally inconspicuous, and can only be recorded by a registering apparatus, a limnograph. Standard work has been done in the study of seiches by the Lake Survey of Scotland under the immediate direction of Professor Chrystal, who has given much attention to the hydrodynamical theories of the phenomenon. Seiches are probably due to several factors acting together or separately, such as sudden variations of atmospheric pressure, changes in the strength or direction of the wind. Explanations such as lunar attraction and earthquakes have been shown to be untenable as a general cause of seiches. Entry: C