THE EARTHQUAKES IN GREECE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXV, Issue 102, 30 April 1894, Page 2

THE EARTHQUAKES IN GREECE.

It would appear from our cable messages that the earthquakes which are at present agitating the mainland of Greece are far more severe than those which visited the island ot Zante in February and April of last year. But whether th« present seismic disturbances are really greater than those which drove 10,000 of the inhabitants from their homes or not, it> is certain that they seem to have caused very much more destruction of property. This wos to have been expected, for the portion of the peninsula which is affected—Attica and Beeotia—are thickly peopled. At Thebes, which has been completely destroyed by the shocks, we learn that three hundred people have perished in the ruins, and no doubt, when the whole details are to hand, it may be found that the loss of life has been more extensive still. While the sympathy of the whole civilised world will be felt with the homeless inhabitants, and will, doubtless, be manifested by the offer of material aid, as was tho case lasb year during the Zante disasters, there is another catastrophe than tho loss of life which, should ib occur, ns it may at any moment, would be felt to be irreparable. We refer to the destruction of those noble ruins of antiquity, the relics of a civilisation which in many respects we have cause to envy and have been proud to imitate. At preBent there is no news to band of any of these famous monuments having been destroyed. Thebes, though once a famous city, has loqjj einca ceased to be so. It does not now, or, rather did not before its destruction the other day, contain 10,000 inhabitants, and there is not to be found a single relic of its former greatness. Bnt should the force of the earthquake be felt in the same degree in Athens, the result would be beyond all computation disastrous. In recent cablegrams it is stated thab tho damage caused in the " violet crowned city " was immense, and we hear to-night that Bbocks still continue to disturb the inhabitant?. But we understand that the ruin has not yet touched the Acropolis or all that remains of the columned Parthenon, "the finest edifice on the finest Bite in the world," the tomplo of Minerva Polias, or even die modern Uuiveisity or Penepistimion. We trust that those ruins of ancient Greece will be spared, for they are "fraughb with overpowering associations as the survivals of the works of the hands of a peoplo to whom civilisation and art, and the general development of intellect), owo 1 more than to any other."