68 Earthquake: Demre, Turkey

68 in Demre (Turkey), 36.217 N 30.017 (reference #10990)

68 Lycia. Dio (writing in the second to third century) mentions this event together with many other prodigies in the last year of Nero’s reign (AD 68). Other undated prodigies are recorded in the Sibylline Oracles, a prophetic text relating events that had probably already happened: one passage refers to the sea’s flooding Patara, Lycia, and another prophesies the collapse of Lycia in an earthquake. It is not certain that these two sources refer to the same event. The latter could easily allude to an event in this seismically active part of the Mediterranean that may have occurred any time before the fourth century AD. It is unlikely that this earthquake in southwest Turkey really happened, and, if it did, it is not the same as that in AD 62–64. (reference #9116)

In the 12th book of the Sibylline Oracles, datable to the third century AD, an earthquake in Phrygia is recalled in the formula of a prophesy a posteriori: "Phrygia, too, with its rich flocks, shall lament as a result of earthquakes. Alas! Laodicea, and alas! wretched Hierapolis, you were the first to be swallowed up by the yawning earth" (Sibylline Oracles 12.279-281). In this case, unfortunately, no other source is capable of adding information about this seismic event, which perhaps was accompanied by widespread landslides. Paradoxically, one can be sure that it really did happen because it was added to the Oracles. (reference #12926)

The sea-wave is also mentioned, in relation to Patara, in the Sibylline Oracles (4. 109), within the usual "prophetic" formula and accompanied by poetic images: "Fair Myra of Lycia, the earth shall shake and not remain firm; thou shalt fall headlong to the ground and pray to find another land of refuge, as an emigrant, when with thunderings and earthquakes the dark waters of the sea spread sand over Patara, for its godlessness". (reference #9285)