[1] Nicholas Ambraseys, who performed the most comprehensive assessment of ancient earthquakes in the Mediterranean, traces the original source of most literary references to this quake to an account in the Augustan History purportedly written by Trebellius Pollio.

Trebellius's account also reports the southwest Anatolia earthquake in conjunction with one that hit Cyrene, Libya the same year.

Trebellius wrote that the cities of Roman Asia reported the worst damage from the earthquake: "In many places the earth yawned open, and salt water appeared in the fissures.

[2][3] Ephesus's Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was also destroyed around the same date, although some sources attribute this to a Gothic invasion in 267 or 268.

Stefan Karwiese of the Austrian Archaeological Institute at Athens reports that ceramics found near the library and temple can be dated to the second half of the third century.

For so great a pestilence, too, had arisen in both Rome and the cities of Achaea that in one single day five thousand men died of the same disease.

While Fortune thus raged, and while here earthquakes, there clefts in the ground, and in divers places pestilence, devastated the Roman world, while Valerian was held in captivity and the provinces of Gaul were, for the most part, beset, while Odaenathus was threatening war, Aureolus pressing hard on Illyricum, and Aemilianus in possession of Egypt, a portion of the Goths...