Note 129 — I. THE CHURCHES OF THE LYCUS.

I draw this inference from his account of the earthquake in the reign of Tiberius. Tacitus (Ann. ii. 47) states that twelve cities were ruined in one night, and records their names. Pliny also, who mentions this earthquake as ‘the greatest within the memory of man’ (N.H. ii. 86), gives the same number. Eusebius however, Chron. Ol. 198 (II. p. 146 sq., ed. Schöne), names thirteen cities, coinciding with Tacitus as far as he goes, but including Ephesus also. Now a monument was found at Puteoli (see Gronov. Thes. Græc. Ant. VII. p. 433 sq.), and is now in the Museum at Naples (Museo Borbonico XV, Tav. iv, v), dedicated to Tiberius and representing fourteen female figures with the names of fourteen Asiatic cities underneath; these names being the same as those mentioned by Tacitus with the addition of Ephesus and Cibyra. There can be no doubt that this was one of those monuments mentioned by Apollonius quoted in Phlegon (Fragm. 42, Müller’s Fragm. Hist. Græc. III. p. 621) as erected to commemorate the liberality of Tiberius in contributing to the restoration of the ruined cities (see Eckhel Doct. Num. Vet. VI. 192 sq.). But no earthquake at Ephesus is mentioned by Tacitus. He does indeed speak of such a catastrophe as happening at Cibyra (Ann. iv. 13) six years later than the one which ruined the twelve cities, and of the relief which Tiberius afforded on this latter occasion as on the former. But we owe to Eusebius alone the fact that Ephesus also was seriously injured by an earthquake in the same year—perhaps not on the same night—with the twelve cities: and this fact is necessary to explain the monument. It should be added that Nipperdey (on Tac. Ann. ii. 47) supposes the earthquake at Ephesus to have been recorded in the lost portion of the fifth book of the Annals which comprised the years A.D. 29–31; but this bare hypothesis cannot outweigh the direct testimony of Eusebius.