Note 446 — CANTO THE FOURTH[375]
Reading edition
["Tantusque fuit ardor armorum, adeo intentus pugnæ animus, ut eum motum terræ, qui multarum urbium Italiæ magnas partes, prostravit, avertitque cursu rapidos amnes, marce fluminibus invexit, montes lapsu ingenti proruit, nemo pugnantium senserit" (Livy, xxii. 5). Polybius says nothing about an earthquake; and Ihne (Hist, of Rome, ii. 207-210) is also silent; but Pliny (Hist. Nat., ii. 84) and Coelius Antipater (ap. Cic., De Div., i. 35), who wrote his Annales about a century after the battle of Lake Thrasymenus (B.C. 217), synchronize the earthquake and the battle. Compare, too, Rogers's Italy, "The Pilgrim:" Poems, 1852, ii. 152—
"From the Thrasymene, that now Slept in the sun, a lake of molten gold, And from the shore that once, when armies met, Rocked to and fro unfelt, so terrible The rage, the slaughter, I had turned away."
Compare, too, Wordsworth's sonnet (No. xii.), "Near the Lake of Thrasymene" (Works, 1888, p. 756)—
"When here with Carthage Rome to conflict came, An earthquake, mingling with the battle's shock, Checked not its rage; unfelt the ground did rock, Sword dropped not, javelin kept its deadly aim,— Now all is sun-bright peace."]