[446] ["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."] [nb] _Fly to the clouds for refuge and withdraw_ _From their unsteady nests_----.--[MS. M.] [nc] {379} _Made fat the earth_----.--[MS. M. erased] [447] No book of travels has omitted to expatiate on the temple of the Clitumnus, between Foligno and Spoleto; and no site, or scenery, even in Italy, is more worthy a description. For an account of the dilapidation of this temple, the reader is referred to _Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold_, p. 35. [448] [Compare Virgil, _Georg_., ii. 146-- "Hinc albi, Clitumne, greges et maxuma taurus Victima, sæpe tuo perfusi flumine sacro." The waters of certain rivers were supposed to possess the quality of making the cattle which drank from them white. (See Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, ii. 103; and compare Silius Italicus, _Pun._, iv. 545, 546-- " ...et patulis Clitumnus in arvis Candentes gelido perfundit flumine tauros.")