Ancient literary sources describe a coastal disaster along the Phoenician shoreline between Acre (Ptolemais) and Tyre, sometimes referred to as the Dead Fish and Soldiers Quake. The account preserved by Strabo, likely citing Posidonius, describes a sudden marine inundation that struck the coast following a military engagement between the forces of Sarpedon and Diodotus Tryphon, both part of the Seleucid Empire. A wave “like a flood-tide” reportedly surged ashore, overwhelming fugitives along the shoreline. Some were swept out to sea and drowned, while others were left dead in depressions on the exposed shore. When the waters receded, the coastline was said to be strewn with the bodies of soldiers mixed together with large numbers of dead fish. Strabo interpreted the phenomenon as the result of rapid ground deformation, noting that sudden vertical movements of the land could alternately repel or admit the sea.

A similar account is preserved by Athenaeus of Naucratis, who also cites Posidonius. According to this version, the victorious army of Tryphon was marching along the coast near Ptolemais (Acre) after defeating the general Sarpedon when an extraordinary wave rose from the sea and engulfed the troops. When the water withdrew, a large heap of fish remained scattered among the bodies of the drowned soldiers.

These descriptions are often interpreted as an early account of a tsunami possibly triggered by seismic activity along the Levantine margin.

A late source, John of Antioch , reports that during the reign of Antiochus IX Kyzikenos (r. 116–96 BCE) a great earthquake occurred in the East and that the coastal city of Tyre was submerged into the sea. Although John of Antioch presents inconsistent and unrelaible chronology, his account may refer to the same disaster.