Book 12
8.17
CaruraThe place is identified by the hot springs about 12 miles from Denizli or Jenidscheh. is the boundary of Phrygia and Caria. It is a village, where there are inns for the reception of travellers, and springs of boiling water, some of which rise in the river Maeander, and others on its banks. There is a story, that a pimp had lodgings in the inns for a great company of women, and that during the night he and all the women were overwhelmed by an earthquake and disappeared. Nearly the whole of the country about the Maeander, as far as the inland parts, is subject to earthquakes, and is undermined by fire and water. For all this cavernous condition of the country, beginning from the plains, extends to the Charonia; it exists likewise in Hierapolis, and in Acharaca in the district Nysaeis, also in the plain of Magnesia, and in Myus. The soil is dry and easily reduced to powder, full of salts, and very inflammable. This perhaps is the reason why the course of the Maeander is winding, for the stream is diverted in many places from its direction, and brings down a great quantity of alluvial soil, some part of which it deposits in various places along the shore, and forcing the rest forwards occasions it to drift into the open sea. It has made, for example, Priene, which was formerly upon the sea, an inland city, by the deposition of banks of alluvial earth along an extent of 40 stadia.
8.18
Phrygia Catacecaumene, (or the Burnt,) which is occupied by Lydians and Mysians, obtained this name from something of the following kind. In Philadelphia,Ala Schehr. a city adjoining to it, even the walls of the houses are not safe, for nearly every day they are shaken, and crevices appear. The inhabitants are constantly attentive to these accidents to which the ground is subject, and build with a view to their occurrence.
