This region forms part of the great seismic zone of the Mediterranean, stretching westward along the Atlas chain to the Azores, and eastward through Dalmatia, Albania, the Greek Archipelago, to Smyrna and Constantinople, and into Asia Minor, whence it bifurcates into the separate systems of Syria on the south and of the Caucasus on the north, and is one of almost constant disturbance.

Its evil celebrity has become popular through the terrible earthquake of Calabria in 1783; but the frequency and extent of its earthquakes are but little known generally.

Besides innumerable minor shocks at various points, and extending to greater or less areas, earthquakes are on record as having occurred within it in the following series of years, all of which have been of power sufficient to overthrow towns and destroy numbers of human beings, namely, in A.D.

or 82 great earthquakes since the commencement of the twelfth century.