VII.
Haud procul inde campi quos ferunt olim uberes magnisque urbibus habitatos fulminum iactu arsisse; (fulminum iactu arsisse: a reference to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, beside three other cities, Zoar, Admah, and Zeboiim, mentioned in Genesis. The historian Strabo says that a total of thirteen cities were razed to the ground. ) et manere vestigia, terramque ipsam, specie torridam, (specie torridam: ‘burnt in appearance’) vim frugiferam perdidisse. Nam cuncta sponte edita aut manu sata, sive herba tenus aut flore seu solitam in speciem adolevere, (sive herba tenus aut flore seu solitam in speciem adolevere, …: ‘whether they grew [only] as far as the herbaceous or floral stage or grew seemingly in a normal way, …’; solitam in speciem: ‘so as to give a normal (or ‘expected’) appearance’; it has been suggested that solitam of the original text should read solidam which gives ‘firm (not hollow) in appearance only’. The prep. tenus, always postpositive, governs here the abl.) atra et inania velut in cinerem vanescunt. Ego sicut inclitas quondam urbis igne caelesti flagrasse concesserim, ita halitu lacus infici terram, corrumpi superfusum spiritum, eoque fetus segetum et autumni putrescere reor, solo caeloque iuxta gravi. (ego sicut … concesserim, ita …reor, solo caeloque iuxta gravi: a good example of a Latin comparative sentence, followed by an abl. abs.; sicut introduces the dependent clause and the correlative ita the main clause: ‘just as I might concede that …, so I maintain that …, both soil and water being equally unwholesome’. concesserim is potential subjunctive; the present and the perfect are found used interchangeably, cf. B. 280. Unlike the English ‘I’, the personal pronoun ego is rarely used, except to lend emphasis to the subject.) At (at: has here no adversative force, its role being to phase in a new aspect on the subject of rivers and lakes.) Belus amnis (Belus amnis: the river Belus (the original text has bel Ius) is today called Naaman and empties in the Mediterranean near St. Jean d’Acre, modern Akko, in northern Israel, not far from Lebanon, and rightfully belongs to ancient Phoenicia. ) Iudaico mari inlabitur, circa cuius os lectae harenae admixteo nitro (admixto nitro: nitrum is a generic name for various alkalis, such as hydroxides and carbonates of sodium and potassium; our niter is potassium nitrate.) in vitrum excoquuntur. Modicum id litus et egerentibus inexhaustum. (et egerentibus inexhaustum: ‘and yet inexhaustible for those mining it’; egerentibus is dat. of agent, rather common with perf. participles. Dative of agent is somewhat of a misnomer, as the person in the dative in most cases does not perform the action, but is rather the one in whose interest the action is done. See G. 215 and 354. et can have the slight adversative force of ‘and yet’ with respect to what precedes.)