Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/78

 62 AETNA. want of water. (Appian, B. C. v. 114.) Agair, irt B. G. 38, the volcano appears to have been in at least a partial state of emption (Id. t. 1 17), and 6 years afterwards, just before the outbreak of the civil war between Octavian and Antony, Dion Cassias re- cords a more serious ontboist, accompanied with a stream of lava which did great damage to the ad- joining oonntiy. (Dion Cass. 1. 8.) Bat firam this time forth the volcanic agency appears to have been comparatively qniescent ; the smoke and noises which terrified the emperor Caligula (Suet. CaL 51) were probably nothing very eztniordiniuy, and with this exception we hear only of two eruptions during the period of the Roman empire, one in the reign of Ves- pasian, A. i>. 70, and the other in that of Dedus, A. D. 251, neither of whidi is noticed by contem- porary writers, and may therefore be presumed to have been of no veiy formidable character. Oroeius, writing in the beginning of the fifth century, spealcs of Aetna as having then become harmless, and only smoking enough to give credit to the stones of its past violence. (Idat. Chron. ad ami. 70 ; Vita St Agathae, ap. Cluoer, Sicil. p. 106 ; Oros. ii. 14.)* From these accounts it is evident that the vol- canic action of Aetna was in ancient, as it still con- tinues in modem times, of a very irregular and inter- mittent ^character, and that no dependence can be placed upon those passages, whether of poets or prose writers, which apparently describe it as in constant and active operation. But with every allowance for exaggeration, it seems probable that the ordinary volcanic phenomena which it exhibited were more striking and conspicuous in the age of Strabo and Pliny than at the present day. The expressions, however, of the latter writer, that its noise was heard in the more distant parts of Sicily, and that its ashes were carried not only to Tauromenium and Catana, but to a dbtance of 150 miles, of course re- fer only to times of violent eruption. Livy also re- cords that in the year b. c. 44, the hot sand and ashes were carried as fur as Khegium. (Plin. H. N. ii. 103. 106, iii. 8. 14; Liv. ap. Serv. ad Georg. i. 471.) It is unnecessary to do more than allude to the well-known description of the eruptions of Aetna in Virgil, which has been imitated both by Silius Italicus and Claudian. (Virg. Aen. iii. 570 — 577 ; Sil. Ital. xiv. 58 — 69 ; ChiuiUan dt Rapt. Proaerp. i. 161.) The general appearance of the mountain is well described by Strabo, who tells us that the upper parts were bare and covered with ashes, but with snow in the winter, while the lower slopes were clothed with forests, and with planted grounds, the volcanic ashes, which were at first so destructive, ultimately producing a soil of great fertility, espe- cially adapted for the growth of vines. The summit of the mountain, as described to him by those who had lately ascended it, was a level plain of about 20 stadia in circumference, surrounded by a brow or ridge like a wall. In the midst of this plain, which consisted of deep and hot sand, rose a small hillock of similar aspect, over which hnng a cloud of smoke rising to a height of about 200 feet. He, however, justly adds, tlmt these appearances were subject to constant variations, and that there was sometimes and its eruptions, see Ferrara, Descrizume deWEtna, Palermo, 1818; and Daubeny on Volccmoetf 2d edit. pp. 283—290. AETNA. only one crater, sofmetimes more. (Strab. vi. pp. 2(19^ 273, 274.) It is evident from this account that the ascent of the mountain was in his time a oom- mon enterprize. Ludlius also speaks of it as not unusual for people to ascend to the very edge of the crater, and cffer incense to the tntelaiy gods of the mountain (Lucil. ^e(na, 336; see also Seneca, Ep. 79), and we are told that the emperor Hadrian, when he visited Sicily, made the ascent for the porpoee of seeing the sun rise from thence. (Spart. Badr. 13.) It is therefore a strange mistake in Claudian (d« Rapt. Proterp. i. 158) to represent the summit as inaccessible. At a distance of less than 1400 feet from tile highest point are some remains of a iHick building, clearly of Roman work, commonly known by the name of the Torre del Fihto/Oj from a vul- gar tradition connecting it with Empedodes: this has been supposed, with far more plaosibility, to de- rive its origin from the visit of Hadrian. (Smyth's Sicily^ p. 149; Ferrara, Descrie. ddV Etna, p. 28.) Many ancient writers describe the upper part ai Aetna as clothed with perpetual snow. Pindar calls it '* the nurse of thtf keen snow all the year long * {Pyih. i. 36), and the apparent contradiction of its perpetual fires and everlasting snows is a favonrite subject of declamation with the rhetorical poets and prose writesB of a later period. (Sil. Ital. xiv. 58 — 69 ; Claudian. de Rapt. Pro: i. 164 ; Solin. 5. § 9.) Strabo and Pliny more reasonably state that it was covered with snow tn ike winter; and there is no reason to believe that its condition in eariy ages difiered irom its present state in this respect. The highest parts of the mountain are stall covered vrith snow for seven or eight months in the year, and oc- casionally patches of it will he in hollows and rif^ throughout the whole summer. The forests which clothe the middle regions of the mountain are alluded to by many writers (Strab. vi. p. 273; Claud. I. c. 159) ; and Diodorus tells xis that Dionystos of Syra- cuse derived from thence great part of the materials for the construction of his fleet in b. c. 399. (Diod. xiv. 42.) It was natural that speculations should earlj be directed to the causes of the remarkable phenomena exhibited by Aetna. A mythological fable, adopted by almost all the poets from Pindar downwards, as- cribed them to the struggle of the giant Typhoons (or Enceladus according to others), who had been buried under the lofty pile by Zens after the defeat of th4» giants. (Pind. Pytk. i. 35 ; Aesch. Prom. 365 ; Virg. Aen. iii. 578; Ovid. Jfef. v. 346; Chiud. le. 152; Lucil. AetnOf 41 — 71.) Others assigned it as the workshop of Vulcan, though this was placed by the more ordinary tradition in tiie Aeolian islands. Later and more philosophical writera ascribed the eruptions to the violence of the winds, pent up in subterranean caverns, abounding with sulphur and other inflam- mable sulwitances; while others conceived them to originate from the action of the waters of the sea upon the same materials. Both these theories are discussed and developed by Lucretius, but at much greater length by the author of a separate poem en- titled " Aetna," which was for a long time ascribed to Cornelius Severus, but has been attributed by its more recent editors, Wemsdorf and Jacob, to the younger Ludlius, the frigid and contemporary of Seneca.f It contains some powerful passages, but is disfigured by obscurity, and adds little to our f For a foller discussion of this qucstian, see the Biogr, Diet. art. LucUmB Junior,
 * For the more recent hbtory of the mountain