[137] But God, moved by pity for mankind whose Saviour and Lover He was, gave increase in the greatest possible degree to the unions which men and women naturally make for begetting children, but abominated and extinguished this unnatural and forbidden intercourse, and those who lusted for such He cast forth and chastised with punishments not of the usual kind but startling and extraordinary, newly-created for this purpose.
[138] He bade the air grow suddenly overclouded and pour forth a great rain, not of water but fire. And when the flames streamed down massed in one constant and perpetual rush, they burnt up the fields and meadows, the leafy groves, the overgrowths of the marshland and the dense thickets. They burnt the plainland and all the fruit of the corn and other crops. They burnt the forest-land on the mountains, where trunks and roots alike were consumed.
[139] The conflagration reached to byres and houses and walls and all public and private property contained in buildings; and in one day populous cities had become the grave of the inhabitants and fabrics of stone and timber had turned into ashes and fine dust.
[140] And when the flame had utterly consumed all that was visible and above ground it penetrated right down into the earth itself, destroyed its inherent life-power and reduced it to complete sterility to prevent it from ever bearing fruit and herbage at all. And to this day it goes on burning, for the fire of the thunderbolt is never quenched but either continues its ravages or else smoulders.
[141] And the clearest proof is what is still visible, for a monument of the disastrous event remains in the smoke which rises ceaselessly and the brimstone which the miners obtain; while the ancient prosperity of the country is most plainly attested by the survival of one of the cities of the neighbourhood and the land round it; for the city is thickly populated and the land rich in corn and pasturage and fertile in general, thus providing a standing evidence to the sentence decreed by the divine judgement.