CHAPTER V

FIRES AND EARTHQUAKES AT ANTIOCH. DEATH OF EUPHRASIUS

ABOUT the same period of Justin’s reign there happened at Antioch numerous and dreadful fires, as if harbingers of the terrible shocks which afterwards took place, and serving as a prelude for the coming calamities. For, a short time after, in the tenth month of the seventh year of Justin’s reign, being Artemisius or May, on the twenty-ninth day of the month, precisely at noon, on the sixth day of the week, the city was visited with the shock of an earthquake, which very nearly destroyed the whole of it. This was followed by a fire, to share, as it were, in the calamity: for what escaped the earthquake, the fire in its spread reduced to ashes. The damage that the city sustained, how many persons according to probable estimate became the victims of the fire and earthquake, what strange occurrences surpassing the power of words took place, have been feelingly related by John the Rhetorician, who concludes his history with the relation.

Euphrasius also perished in the ruins, to add another misfortune to the city, by leaving no one to provide for its exigencies.