Aristotle METEOROLOGY Complete

Translated by E. Webster.

Aristotle Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Aristotle in Print

100 pages - You are on Page 53

Hence, since the evaporation generally follows in a continuous body in the direction in which it first started, and either all of it flows inwards or all outwards, most earthquakes and the greatest are accompanied by calm. It is true that some take place when a wind is blowing, but this presents no difficulty. We sometimes find several winds blowing simultaneously. If one of these enters the earth we get an earthquake attended by wind. Only these earthquakes are less severe because their source and cause is divided.

Again, most earthquakes and the severest occur at night or, if by day, about noon, that being generally the calmest part of the day. For when the sun exerts its full power (as it does about noon) it shuts the evaporation into the earth. Night, too, is calmer than day. The absence of the sun makes the evaporation return into the earth like a sort of ebb tide, corresponding to the outward flow; especially towards dawn, for the winds, as a rule, begin to blow then, and if their source changes about like the Euripus and flows inwards the quantity of wind in the earth is greater and a more violent earthquake results.

The severest earthquakes take place where the sea is full of currents or the earth spongy and cavernous: so they occur near the Hellespont and in Achaea and Sicily, and those parts of Euboea which correspond to our description-where the sea is supposed to flow in channels below the earth. The hot springs, too, near Aedepsus are due to a cause of this kind. It is the confined character of these places that makes them so liable to earthquakes. A great and therefore violent wind is developed, which would naturally blow away from the earth: but the onrush of the sea in a great mass thrusts it back into the earth. The countries that are spongy below the surface are exposed to earthquakes because they have room for so much wind.

For the same reason earthquakes usually take place in spring and autumn and in times of wet and of drought-because these are the windiest seasons. Summer with its heat and winter with its frost cause calm: winter is too cold, summer too dry for winds to form. In time of drought the air is full of wind; drought is just the predominance of the dry over the moist evaporation. Again, excessive rain causes more of the evaporation to form in the earth. Then this secretion is shut up in a narrow compass and forced into a smaller space by the water that fills the cavities. Thus a great wind is compressed into a smaller space and so gets the upper hand, and then breaks out and beats against the earth and shakes it violently.

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