Etna Part 1

Etna.

by G. F. Rodwell.

PREFACE.

While preparing an account of MOUNT ETNA for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, I was surprised to find that there exists no single work in the English language devoted to the history of the most famous volcano in the world. I was consequently induced to considerably enlarge the Encyclopaedia article, and the following pages are the result. The facts recorded have been collected from various sources--German, French, Italian, and English, and from my own observations made during the summer of 1877. I desire to express my indebtedness to Mr. Frank Rutley, of H.M. Geological Survey, for his careful examination of the lavas which were collected during my ascent of the mountain, and for the account which he has written of them; also to Mr. John Murray for permission to copy figures from Lyell's "Principles of Geology." My thanks are also due to Mr. George Dennis, H.M. Consul-General in Sicily; Mr. Robert O. Franck, Vice-Consul in Catania; and to Prof. Orazio Silvestri, for information with which they have severally supplied me.

G. F. RODWELL.

MARLBOROUGH,

_September 6th, 1878._

ETNA.

A HISTORY OF THE MOUNTAIN AND OF ITS ERUPTIONS.

CHAPTER I.

HISTORY OF THE MOUNTAIN.

Position.--Name.--Mention of Etna by early writers.--Pindar.-- aeschylus.--Thucydides.--Virgil.--Strabo.--Lucretius.--Lucilius Junior.--Etna the home of early myths.--Cardinal Bembo.--Fazzello.-- Filoteo.--Early Maps of the Mountain.--Hamilton.--Houel.--Brydone.-- Ferrara.--Recupero.--Captain Smyth.--Gemellaro; his Map of Etna.-- Elie de Beaumont.--Abich.--Hoffmann.--Von Waltershausen's _Atlas des Aetna_.--Lyell.--Map of the Italian Stato Maggiore.--Carlo Gemellaro.--Orazio Silvestri.

The princ.i.p.al mountain chain of Sicily skirts the North and a portion of the North-eastern coast, and would appear to be a prolongation of the Apennines. An inferior group pa.s.ses through the centre of the island, diverging towards the South, as it approaches the East coast. Between the two ranges, and completely separated from them by the valleys of the Alcantara and the Simeto, stands the mighty ma.s.s of Mount Etna, which rises in solitary grandeur from the eastern sea-board of the island. Volcanoes, by the very mode of their formation, are frequently completely isolated; and, if they are of any magnitude, they thus acquire an imposing contour and a majesty, which larger mountains, forming parts of a chain, do not possess. This specially applies to Etna. "Coelebs degit," says Cardinal Bembo, "et nullius montis dignata conjugium, caste intra suos terminos continetur." It is not alone the conspicuous appearance of the mountain which has made it the most famous volcano either of ancient or modern times:--the number and violence of its eruptions, the extent of its lava streams, its a.s.sociation with antiquity, and its history prolonged over more than 2400 years, have all tended to make it celebrated.

The geographical position of Etna was first accurately determined by Captain Smyth in 1814. He estimated the lat.i.tude of the highest point of the bifid peak of the great crater at 37 43' 31" N.; and the longitude at 15 East of Greenwich. Elie de Beaumont repeated the observations in 1834 with nearly the same result; and these determinations have been very generally adopted. In the new Italian map recently constructed by the Stato Maggiore, the lat.i.tude of the centre of the crater is stated to be 37 44' 55" N., and the longitude 44' 55" E. of the meridian of Naples, which pa.s.ses through the Observatory of Capo di Monte.

According to Bochart the name of Etna is derived from the Phoenician _athana_--a furnace; others derive it from ~aitho~--to burn.

Professor Benfey of Gottingen, a great authority on the subject, considers that the word was created by one of the early Indo-Germanic races. He identifies the root _ait_ with the Greek ~aith~ and the Latin _aed_--to burn, as in _aes_-tu. The Greek name ~Aitna~ was known to Hesiod. The more modern name, _Mongibello_, by which the mountain is still commonly known to the Sicilians, is a combination of the Arabic _Gibel_, and the Italian _Monte_. During the Saracenic occupation of Sicily, Etna was called _Gibel Uttamat_--the mountain of fire; and the last syllables of Mongibello are a relic of the Saracenic name. A mountain near Palermo is still called Gibel Rosso--the red mountain; and names may not unfrequently be found in the immediate neighbourhood of Etna which are partly, or sometimes even entirely, composed of Arabic words; such, for example, as _Alcantara_--the river of _the bridge_. Etna is also often spoken of distinctively as _Il Monte_--the mountain _par excellence_; a name which, in its capacity of the largest mountain in the kingdom of Italy, and the loftiest volcano in Europe, it fully justifies.

Etna is frequently alluded to by cla.s.sical writers. By the poets it was sometimes feigned to be the prison of the giant Enceladus or Typhon, sometimes the forge of Hephaistos, and the abode of the Cyclops.

It is strange that Homer, who has so minutely described certain portions of the contiguous Sicilian coast, does not allude to Etna. This has been thought by some to be a proof that the mountain was in a quiescent state during the period which preceded and coincided with the time of Homer.

Pindar (B.C. 522-442) is the first writer of antiquity who has described Etna. In the first of the Pythian Odes for Hieron, of the town of Aitna, winner in the chariot race in B.C. 474, he exclaims:

... "He (Typhon) is fast bound by a pillar of the sky, even by snowy Etna, nursing the whole year's length her dazzling snow. Whereout pure springs of unapproachable fire are vomited from the inmost depths: in the daytime the lava-streams pour forth a lurid rush of smoke; but in the darkness a red rolling flame sweepeth rocks with uproar to the wide deep sea.... That dragon-thing (Typhon) it is that maketh issue from beneath the terrible fiery flood."[1]

[1] Translated by Ernest Myers, M.A., 1874.

aeschylus (B.C. 525-456) speaks also of the "mighty Typhon,"

(_Prometheus_ V.):

. . . . . "He lies A helpless, powerless carcase, near the strait Of the great sea, fast pressed beneath the roots Of ancient Etna, where on highest peak Hephaestos sits and smites his iron red hot, From whence hereafter streams of fire shall burst, Devouring with fierce jaws the golden plains Of fruitful, fair Sikelia."[2]

[2] Translated by E. Myers.

Herein he probably refers to the eruption which had occurred a few years previously (B.C. 476).

Thucydides (B.C. 471-402) alludes in the last lines of the Third Book to several early eruptions of the mountain in the following terms: "In the first days of this spring, the stream of fire issued from Etna, as on former occasions, and destroyed some land of the Catanians, who live upon Mount Etna, which is the largest mountain in Sicily. Fifty years, it is said, had elapsed since the last eruption, there having been three in all since the h.e.l.lenes have inhabited Sicily."[3]

[3] Translated by E. Crawley.

Virgil's oft-quoted description of the mountain (_Eneid_, Bk. 3) we give in the spirited translation of Conington:

"But Etna with her voice of fear In weltering chaos thunders near.

Now pitchy clouds she belches forth Of cinders red, and vapour swarth; And from her caverns lifts on high Live b.a.l.l.s of flame that lick the sky: Now with more dire convulsion flings Disploded rocks, her heart's rent strings, And lava torrents hurls to-day A burning gulf of fiery spray."

Many other early writers speak of the mountain, among them Theokritos, Aristotle, Ovid, Livy, Seneca, Lucretius, Pliny, Lucan, Petronius, Cornelius Severus, Dion Ca.s.sius, Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, and Lucilius Junior. Seneca makes various allusions to Etna, and mentions the fact that lightning sometimes proceeded from its smoke.

Strabo has given a very fair description of the mountain. He a.s.serts that in his time the upper part of it was bare, and covered with ashes, and in winter with snow, while the lower slopes were clothed with forests. The summit was a plain about twenty stadia in circ.u.mference, surrounded by a ridge, within which there was a small hillock, the smoke from which ascended to a considerable height. He further mentions a second crater. Etna was commonly ascended in Strabo's time from the south-west.

While the poets on the one hand had invested the mountain with various supernatural attributes, and had made it the prison-house of a chained giant, and the workshop of a swart G.o.d, Lucretius endeavoured to show that the eruptions and other phenomena could be easily explained by the ordinary operations of nature. "And now at last," he writes, "I will explain in what ways yon flame, roused to fury in a moment, blazes forth from the huge furnaces of Aetna. And, first, the nature of the whole mountain is hollow underneath, underpropped throughout with caverns of basalt rocks. Furthermore, in all caves are wind and air, for wind is produced when the air has been stirred and put in motion. When this air has been thoroughly heated, and, raging about, has imparted its heat to all the rocks around, wherever it comes in contact with them, and to the earth, and has struck out from them fire burning with swift flames, it rises up and then forces itself out on high, straight through the gorges; and so carries its heat far, and scatters far its ashes, and rolls on smoke of a thick pitchy blackness, and flings out at the same time stones of prodigious weight--leaving no doubt that this is the stormy force of air. Again, the sea, to a great extent, breaks its waves and sucks back its surf at the roots of that mountain. Caverns reach from this sea as far as the deep gorges of the mountain below. Through these you must admit [that air mixed up with water pa.s.ses; and] the nature of the case compels [this air to enter in from that] open sea, and pa.s.s right within, and then go out in blasts, and so lift up flame, and throw out stones, and raise clouds of sand; for on the summit are craters, as they name them in their own language, what we call gorges and mouths."[4]

[4] _De Natura Rerum_, Book 6, p. 580. Translated by E. Munro 1864.

These ideas were developed by Lucilius Junior in a poem consisting of 644 hexameters ent.i.tled _Aetna_. The authorship of this poem has long been a disputed point; it has been attributed to Virgil, Claudian, Quintilius Varus, Manilius, and, by Joseph Scaliger[5] and others, to Cornelius Severus. Wensdorff was the first to adduce reasons for attributing the poem to Lucilius Junior, and his views are generally adopted. Lucilius Junior was Procurator of Sicily under Nero, and, while resident in the Island, he ascended Etna; and it is said that he proposed writing a detailed history of the mountain. He adopted the scientific opinions of Epicurus, as established in Rome by Lucretius, and was more immediately a disciple of Seneca. The latter dedicated to him his _Quaestiones Naturales_, in which he alludes more than once to Etna. M. Chenu speaks of the poem of Lucilius Junior as "sans doute tres-poetique, mais a.s.sez souvent dur, heurte, concis, et parcela meme, d'une obscurite parfois desesperante."[6] At the commencement of the poem, Lucilius ridicules the ideas of the poets as regards the connection of Etna with Vulcan and the Cyclops. He has no belief in the practice, which apparently prevailed in his time, of ascending to the edge of the crater and there offering incense to the tutelary G.o.ds of the mountain. He adopts to a great extent the tone and style of Lucretius, in his explanation of the phenomena of the mountain. Water filters through the crevices and cracks in the rocks, until it comes into contact with the internal fires, when it is converted into vapour and expelled with violence. The internal fires are nourished by the winds which penetrate into the mountain. He traces some curious connection between the plants which grow upon the mountain, and the supply of sulphur and bitumen to the interior, which is, at best, but partly intelligible.

[5] See Lucilius Junioris AETNA. Recensuit notasque Jos. Scaligeri, Frid. Lindenbruchii et suas addidit Fridericus Jacob. Lipsiae, 1826.

[6] L'Etna de Lucilius Junior. Traduction nouvelle par Jules Chenu.

Paris, 1843.

"Nunc superant, quacunque regant incendia silvae Quae flammis alimenta vacent, quid nutriat Aetnam.

Incendi patiens illis vernacula caulis Materia, appositumque igni genus utile terrae est, Uritur a.s.sidue calidus nunc sulfuris humor, Nunc sp.i.s.sus crebro praebetur flumine succus, Pingue bitumen adest, et quidquid cominus acres Irritat flammas; illius corporis aetna est.

Atque hanc materiam penitus discurrere fontes Infectae erumpunt et aquae radice sub ipsa."

Many of the myths developed by the earlier poets had their home in the immediate neighbourhood, sometimes upon the very sides, of Etna--Demeter seeking Persephone; Acis and Galatea; Polyphemus and the Cyclops. Mr.

Symonds tells us that the one-eyed giant Polyphemus was Etna itself, with its one great crater, while the Cyclops were the many minor cones.

"Persephone was the patroness of Sicily, because amid the billowy corn-fields of her mother Demeter, and the meadow-flowers she loved in girlhood, are ever found sulphurous ravines, and chasms breathing vapour from the pit of Hades."[7]

[7] Sketches in Italy and Greece, p. 201.

It is said that both Plato and the Emperor Hadrian ascended Etna in order to witness the sunrise from its summit. The story of

"He who to be deemed A G.o.d, leaped fondly into Etna flames, Empedokles"

is too trite to need repet.i.tion. A ruined tower near the head of the Val del Bove, 9,570 feet above the sea, has from time immemorial been called the _Torre del Filosofo_, and is a.s.serted to have been the observatory of Empedokles. Others regard it as the remains of a Roman tower, which was possibly erected on the occasion of Hadrian's ascent of the mountain.

During the Middle Ages Etna is frequently alluded to, among others by Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Cardinal Bembo. The latter gives a description of the mountain in the form of a dialogue, which Ferrara characterises as "_erudito, e grecizzante, ma sensa nervi_." He describes its general appearance, its well-wooded sides, and sterile summit. When he visited the mountain it had two craters about a stone's throw apart; the larger of the two was said to be about three miles in circ.u.mference, and it stood somewhat above the other.[8]

[8] Petri Bembi DE AETNA. Ad Angelum Chabrielem Liber Impressum Venetiis Aedibus Aldi Romani. Mense Februario anno M.V.D. (1495).