to enter their houses if they still stood, bivouacked during the height of the winter in the open air, in the Circus, and elsewhere about the city.  The terror which legitimately followed from the actual perils was heightened by imaginary fears.  It was thought that the Mons Casius, which towers above Antioch to the south-west, was about to be shattered by the violence of the shocks, and to precipitate itself upon the ruined town.

Nor were the horrors of the catastrophe confined to Antioch.  The earthquake was one of a series which carried destruction and devastation through the greater part of the East.  In the Roman province of Asia, four cities were completely destroyed—­Eleia, Myrina, Pitane, and Cyme.  In Greece two towns were reduced to ruins, namely, Opus in Locris, and Oritus.  In Galatia three cities, unnamed, suffered the same fate.  It seemed as if Providence had determined that the new glories which Rome was gaining by the triumphs of her arms should be obscured by calamities of a kind that no human power could avert or control, and that despite the efforts of Trajan to make his reign a time of success and splendor, it should go down to posterity as one of gloom, suffering, and disaster.

Trajan, however, did not allow himself to be diverted from the objects that he had set before him by such trifling matters as the sufferings of a certain number of provincial towns.  With the approach of spring (A.D. 116) he was up and doing.  His officers had obeyed his orders, and a fleet had been built at Nisibis during the winter amply sufficient for the purpose for which it was wanted.  The ships were so constructed that they could be easily taken to pieces and put together again.  Trajan had them conveyed on wagons to the Tigris at Jezireh, and there proceeded to make preparations for passing the river and attacking Adiabene.  By embarking on board some of his ships companies of heavy-armed and archers, who protected his working parties, and at the same time threatening with other ships to cross at many different points, he was able, though with much difficulty, to bridge the stream in the face of a powerful body of the enemy, and to land his troops safely on the opposite bank.  This done, his work was more than half accomplished.  Chosroes remained aloof from the war, either husbanding his resources, or perhaps occupied by civil feuds, and left the defence of his outlying provinces to their respective governors.  Mobarsapes, the Adiabenian monarch, had set his hopes on keeping the invader out of his kingdom by defending the line of the Tigris, and when that was forced he seems to have despaired, and to have made no further effort.  His towns and strongholds were taken one after another, without their offering any serious resistance.  Nineveh, Arbela, and Gaugamala fell into the enemy’s hands.  Adenystrse, a place of great strength, was captured by a small knot of Roman prisoners, who, when they found their friends near, rose upon the garrison, killed the commandant, and opened the gates to their countrymen.  In a short time the whole tract between the Tigris and the Zagros mountains was overrun; resistance ceased; and the invader was able to proceed to further conquests.