Greek Texts & Translations

afterwards passed into Sicily when they were expelled by the Oenotri. Some say that Morgantium ^note thus received its name from the Morgetes. But the city of the Rhegini became very powerful, and possessed many dependent settlements. It has always been a bulwark for us against the island [of Sicily], and, indeed, has recently served to that purpose when Sextus Pompeins alienated Sicily. ^note It was called Rhegium either, as Aeschylus says, because of the convulsion which had taken place in this region; for Sicily was broken from the continent by earthquakes, Whence it is called Rhegium. ^note
Others, ^note as well as he, have affirmed the same thing, and adduce as an evidence that which is observed about Aetna, and the appearances seen in other parts of Sicily, the Lipari and neighbouring islands, and even in the Pithecussae, with the whole coast beyond them, which prove that it was not unlikely that this convulsion had taken place. But now these mouths being opened, through which the fire is drawn up, and the ardent masses and water poured out, they say that the land in the neighbourhood of the Strait of Sicily rarely suffers from the effects of earthquakes; but formerly all the passages to the surface being blocked up, the fire which was smouldering beneath the earth, together with the vapour, occasioned terrible earthquakes, and the regions, being disturbed by the force of the pent-up winds, sometimes gave way, and being rent received the sea, which flowed in from either side; and thus were formed both this strait and the sea which surrounds the other islands in the neighbourhood. For Prochyta ^note and the