As you go on you come to the river Selinus, and about 40 stades from Ægium is a place called Helice near the sea. It was once an important city, and the Ionians had there the most holy temple of Poseidon of Helice. The worship of Poseidon of Helice still remained with them, both when they were driven by the Achæans to Athens, and when they afterwards went from Athens to the maritime parts of Asia Minor. And the Milesians as you go to the well Biblis have an altar of Poseidon of Helice before their city, and similarly at Teos the same god has precincts and an altar. Even Homer has written of Helice, and of Poseidon of Helice.[13] And later on the Achæans here, who drove some suppliants from the temple and slew them, met with quick vengeance from Poseidon, for an earthquake coming over the place rapidly overthrew all the buildings, and made the very site of the city difficult for posterity to find. Previously in earthquakes, remarkable for their violence or extent, the god has generally given previous intimation by signs. For either continuous rain or drought are mostly wont to precede their approach: and in winter the air is hotter, and in summer the disk of the sun is misty and has a different colour to its usual colour, being either redder or slightly inclining to black. And the springs are generally deficient in water, and gusts of wind sweeping over the district uproot the trees, and in the sky are meteors with flames of fire, and the appearance of the stars is unusual and excites consternation in the beholders, and moreover vapours and exhalations rise up out of the ground. And many other indications does the god give in the case of violent earthquakes. And earthquakes are not all similar, but those who have paid attention to such things from the first or been instructed by others have been able to recognize the following phenomena. The mildest of them, if indeed the word mildness is applicable to any of them, is when simultaneously with the first motion of the earth and with the rocking of buildings to their foundation a counter motion restores them to their former position. And in such an earthquake you may see pillars nearly rooted up falling into their places again, and walls that gaped asunder joining again: and beams that slipped out of their fittings slipping back again: so too in the pipes of conduits, if any pipe bursts from the pressure of water, the broken parts weld together again better than any workmen could adjust them. Another kind of earthquake destroys everything within its range, and, on whatever it spends its force, forthwith batters it down, like the military engines employed in sieges. But the most deadly kind of earthquake may be recognized by the following concomitants. The breath of a man in a long-continued fever comes thicker and with much effort, and this is marked in other parts of the body, but especially by feeling the pulse. Similarly this kind of earthquake they say