In the first report no one is said to have been killed. The same paper adds that earthquakes are frequent in that region: in January 2025, in Tingri county, not far from the border of China and Nepal, a quake of magnitude 6.8 killed at least 126 people. Nothing more is reported. On the roads, the bridges, the water conduits, the houses of Nagchu and Lhasa, and on any relief sent by the Chinese authorities, the reports are silent. A commissioner of works would ask first how many roads are closed, how many bridges inspected, how many crews already on the march.

I show you the place on the map. That plateau is the highest land in the world, set between India and the country of the Seres, where the greatest mountains rise out of the very frame of the earth. The road is long, the air thin, winter close. Whatever must be carried there, grain, doctors, shelter, must go by few roads over great distances. In such a place one blocked road weighs more than a hundred fallen houses in a city on the plain.

I joined Lake Avernus to the Lucrine lake and to the sea; I sailed through the sewers in a boat; I brought the Aqua Virgo into the city. I learned that water can be led, the sea dug, rivers conquered by bridges. I learned too that no work restrains an earth that moves. The greatest empire of Asia dams rivers, bores through mountains, raises cities within five years; the earth beneath the plateau it does not hold down. There the limit of dominion is no frontier, river or mountain. It is the foundation trembling underfoot.

We have a sure precedent. When twelve cities of Asia fell in one night to an earthquake, the princeps remitted their taxes for five years, gave money to the people of Sardis, and sent a senator to inspect the damage himself and relieve it. He did not pray to the earth to stop moving; he sent a man to see the ruins with his own eyes. So too after the fire of the city, houses were ordered built with wider spacing and of stone, so that fire could never again do so much. On moving ground, then, houses must be built to bear the shock, not for show.

The remedy is ready to hand, and not new. First, public buildings, bridges and water conduits must be inspected at once, by a man who goes down into them himself. Next, the roads must be repaired within a few days, so that the mountain people are not cut off from food and doctors. Then granaries, tents and crews must be prepared before the quake, not after. This must be finished this year, not next.

Today no one is reported dead; I am glad, but I do not rest easy. The first report is often not the last, and the dead of Tingri are before our eyes. An empire that thinks it rules the earth deceives itself. For no one rules the earth; the speed of repair is ruled by the man who prepared well.

M · AGRIPPA · L · F · COS · TERTIVM · ADNOTAVIT