Anonymous

“ XVIII Whether then it is through extraneous or internal causes that the winds make their puissant alliance, that volcanic rush carries up amid black sand streams of fire and pieces of the mountain: huge rocks shiver as they clash and burst into explosions together with blazing flames and lightning flashes; as when forests have fallen beneath the swoop of the South wind or when they moan under a Northern gale, they intertwine their arms in a knot and with the union of the branches the fire creeps on. ”

“ Two noble sons, Amphinomus and his brother, gallantly facing an equal task, when fire now roared in homes hard by, saw how their lame father and their mother had sunk down (alas!) in the weariness of age upon the threshold. Forbear, ye avaricious throng, to lift the spoils ye love! For them a mother and a father are the only wealth: this is the spoil they will snatch from the burning. They hasten to escape through the heart of the fire, which grants safe-conduct unasked. O sense of loving duty, greatest of all goods, justly deemed the surest salvation for man among the virtues! ”

“ These are the causes above and below ground which are at work. By compression they rouse the winds; they strive in narrow gorges; in that close strife their channel strangles them. As when a wave, drawn up again and again from the deep, has drunk full of the East Wind's violence, the billows redouble their number and the first are pushed on by the last, in that same way the (volcanic) wind feels the impact of the struggle which compresses it, wraps its own strength within its heavy mass and impels its close-packed particles through fiery passages. ”

“ Here the poverty-stricken man hastens nimbly beneath the lightest of loads: everyone makes for safety with what he held dear upon his shoulders. But his spoil did not follow each owner safe to the end: fire devours them as they linger: it envelops the greedy ones in flame. They think they have escaped, but the fire catches them: it consumes its prisoners' booty: and the conflagration feeds itself, set on sparing none or only the dutiful. ”

“ If earth did not let out channels in different places, if some path did not give welcome to a river, truly no road would be assured for springs and streams, and sluggish earth, packed in a dense mass, would be rendered idle by its unmoving weight. But if rivers are buried in a sheer abyss of earth, if some which are buried come back to light and others without such burial rise from earth, no wonder is it that confined winds have liberating vents which are concealed. Proofs of this through facts indisputable, proofs which hold the eye, the earth will give you in due order. ”

“ Often a pile heaped up with huge fallen boulders chokes the gullies: it bars the ways against the struggle below, and beneath its weight, under a massive roof as it were, shows the winds unlike their former selves, gentle in their current, while the mountain is in cold inaction and the onlooker may still depart in safety. Later, after their silent spell, they press on the swifter for the delay: they dislodge the masses of rock which they face: they burst their bonds. ”

“ Just as a stone is calcined in a furnace and its moisture all burnt out inside and through the pores it steams on high, so the lava-stone loses its substance and is turned out a light pumice of inconsiderable weight: the lava-liquid begins to boil hotter and at last to advance more in the fashion of a gentle stream, as it lets its waves course down the slopes of the hills. By stages the waves advance some twice six miles. Nay, nothing can recall them: nothing checks these determined fires: no mass can hold them--'tis vain: all is war together. ”

“ Nor yet do you, O earth, suffice them: they spy on the divine powers: they are not afraid to let their eyes peer into a heaven where they have no portion. They know the wars of the gods, their unions hidden from us, all the sins of Jove in deceitful guise, as a bull to trick Europa, a white swan for Leda, a streaming shower of precious ore for Danaë. ”

“ The lava-streams come to a standstill inside their margins and harden as they cool; slowly the fires shrink and the appearance of a waving harvest of flame is lost. Each mass in turn, as it stiffens, emits fumes, and, dragged by its very weight, rolls on with enormous din; whenever it has crashed pell-mell into some solid substance which resounds with the impact, it spreads abroad the fires of the concussion and shines with white-glowing core wherever it has been opened out. ”

“ But is this too great a marvel? Bodies of thickest grain and well-nigh solid we nevertheless often subdue by fire. Do you not see how copper's sturdy spirit yields to flame? Does not fire strip away the toughness of lead? Even iron's substance, hard though it be, is yet undone by fire. Massive nuggets of gold sweat out their rich ore in vaulted furnaces; and mayhap there lie in the depths of the earth undiscovered minerals subject to similar ordinance. No place this for ingenuity: be you the judge and your eyes will triumph. The lava-stone is rigid ”

“ That chasm could not speed it from any slender source: fit confluents must needs summon from everywhere their wandering ducts and the chasm draw from a full source the making of a mighty river. Moreover, rivers running with broad currents have found their own places of sinking. Either an abyss has snatched them headlong down and buried them in its fateful jaws, or they flow unseen, o'er-arched by closed caverns, then, coming to light far away, renew their unexpected course. ”

“ And so neither are they who stand near the crater struck and moved by the light wind, when the purified hand of the priest brandishes the sacred torches; yet it strikes their faces, and bodies set in motion invade our bodies: in so slight an instance there is a cause which repels force. The air in its complete calm draws up no cinder or light stubble, stirs no parched grass or thin bits of chaff. ”

“ Or again hot vapours cribbed and confined have overcome solidity and fire has sought a path for itself: or all these forces may have striven in their assigned places. No cause is here for mourning our ignorance, so long as the working of the true cause stands assured. Who does not believe that there are gulfs of emptiness in earth's recesses, when he sees springs so mighty emerge and so often plunge again in the depth of a chasm? ”

“ Throughout it is a carbonised block packed with a density of strength; narrow are the channels through which it receives and feeds its fires; slowly and unwillingly it releases them when collected. Yet not for this sole reason that lava forms the greatest part of the mountain does it remain triumphant and control the cause of volcanic fire. In truth the thing to marvel at is the vitality and pluck of the stone. Every other substance productive of fire dies after it has been lighted: nothing remains therein to be recovered--merely ashes and earth with not a seed of flame. ”

“ Not cattle-like to gaze on the world's marvels merely with the eye, not to lie outstretched upon the ground feeding a weight of flesh, but to grasp the proof of things and search into doubtful causes, to hallow genius, to raise the head to the sky, to know the number and character of natal elements in the mighty universe (do they dread extinction or go on through the ages, and is the fabric fixed secure with everlasting chain?) ”

“ For on a sudden the conflagration blazes out, loaded with its spoils; masses of burning matter advance; mutilated lumps of falling rock roll forth and whirl dark shoals of sand. They present vague shapes in human likeness--some of the stones suggest the defeated warrior, some a gallant host armed for a standing fight, unassailed by the flames; on one side pants the enemy unwearied and deploys his forces, on another the breath of fury wanes, even as when an army, vanquished in the victor's joyous triumph, lies prostrate on the field right to the gates of the camp. ”

“ For all the onslaught of the winds makes for any open vacuum, but at their entry their forces slacken; altered by the spacious access to the chasm, they turn feeble and relax their spirit. For when the vacuum contains nothing to stop the winds or spur them in their delay, they flag; all the great abyss deploys them drifting to and fro, and on the very threshold they lose their speed. It must needs be in narrow gullies that the winds work their havoc. ”

“ Very often for twenty days on end a mass of rock lies buried. But in vain I try to marshal each effect with its determined cause, if a lying fable remains unshaken in your mind, leading you to believe that it is a different substance which liquefies in fire, that the lava-streams harden in virtue of their cindery property, or that what burns is a mixture of sulphur and glutinous bitumen. For clay also, they assert, can fuse when its inner material is burnt out, and potters are a testimony to this: then by the process of cooling it recovers its hardness and tightens its pores. ”

“ They are the mind's harvest, the greatest guerdon in the world--to know what nature encloses in earth's hidden depth, to give no false report of her work, not to gaze speechless on the mystic growls and frenzied rages of the Aetnaean mount, not to blench at the sudden din, not to believe that the wrath of the gods has passed underground to a new home, or that hell is breaking its bounds ”

“ It is undoubted (I claim) that there are rocks and caverns far below which fall forward with enormous crash, and that their fall disperses and sets in motion air-currents hard by: hence the gathering of winds. Again, fogs with their ample vapour pour out air, as they commonly do in plains and fields watered by a river. Rising from valleys the air makes a sombre cloud: rivulets bring gusts whose force is like the force of winds. Moisture from a distance breathes on the air-currents and whips them into strength. ”

“ There--round the couple--the greedy fire restrains itself. To them the lays of bards do homage: to them under an illustrious name has Ditis alloted a place apart. No mean destiny touches the sacred youths: their lot is a dwelling free from care, and the rightful rewards of the faithful. ”

“ When it has gathered flames, it discharges them and in the moment of impact kindles other fuel, forcing it to melt in a common blaze. No marvel is there in the appearance presented outside; if the action is abating, the upheaval is at a standstill. The more potent fire is in the crater: there the lava tempts more winningly all inflammable bodies within reach and sends sure forewarnings of the conflagration to come. As soon as it stirs its forces, and threatens havoc, it flies in different branches . ”

“ Such squalid poverty fits not things divine nor begs for mean supplies nor solicits doles of air. Ever at hand are workers, the swarming band of the winds: there is an unseen cause enough to interrupt the free passage and compel a stoppage. ”

“ The dried parts are held by the olive; elms like a soil more moist. Trivial motives torture men's minds and bodies--to have their barns overflowing, their wine-casks swelling with must, and their haylofts rising higher, charged with the full reapings of the field. So do ye tread the path of greed where sight reveals aught more precious. ”

“ Parts of the earth are tortured with flame and tamed with iron till they ransom themselves at a price; and, when they have owned their secret, they are silenced and abandoned to contempt and beggary. Day and night farmers hasten on the cultivation of their fields; hands grow hard with rural toil; we ponder the use of different soils. One is fertile and is more fruitful for corn, another for the vine; this is the soil for plane-trees, this the worthiest of grass crops ”

“ As in a living creature veins run through the whole body with wandering course, along which passes every drop of blood to feed life for the selfsame organism, so the earth by its chasms draws in and distributes currents of air. ”

“ For what kind of hope is it for mortal man, what madness could be greater--that he should wish to wander and explore in Jove's domain and yet pass by the mighty fabric before his feet and lose it in his negligence? We torture ourselves wretchedly over little things: we let toil weigh us down: we peer into crannies and upturn every depth. ”

“ Either, I mean, when of old the body of the universe was divided into sea, earth and stars, the first portion was given to the sky, then followed that of the sea, and earth sank down lowest of the three, albeit fissured by winding hollows; and, even as a heap springs out of stones of uneven shape thrown at random, so as to form a charybdis hollowed with frequent interstices within and hanging upon itself, even so in like conflagration the earth, too, loosened into tiny channels, does not all unite compactly or into narrow compass. ”

“ These (caves) will furnish true proofs of a depth unknown to us. Let but your mind guide you to a grasp of cunning research: from things manifest gather faith in the unseen. For as fire is always more unfettered and more furious in confined spaces, and as the rage of the winds is no less vehement thre, so to this extent, underground and in earth's depths, must fire and wind cause greater changes, all the more loose their bonds, all the more drive off what blocks their course. Yet 'tis not into unyielding channels that the pent-up force of air or flames escapes. ”

“ But once it has absorbed the flames, there is no safer home for what is absorbed; preserving its edge, it hardens with steadfast fidelity what it confines. Such is its endurance after being overpowered. Rarely does it ever go back to its old strength and belch out fire. ”

“ Wherever a path is found, it speeds on, ignoring any wind that would stay its course, until, driven by the confluent air-stream, as by so many forcing-pumps, it leaps forth and all over Aetna discharges itself in blasts of angry fire. ”

“ Hence comes the trembling, the quaking of earth, when compressed air stirs the pores till they gape and drives sluggish matter before it. But if earth had no openings, if its frame were entirely solid, it would give the eye no marvellous visions of its inner self ”

“ No task so paltry have the gods. To meanest crafts one may not rightly lower the stars; their sway is royal, aloft in a remote heaven; they reck not to handle the toil of artisans.
VI There is this second form of poetic error, different from the first. Aetna's furnaces, it is declared, are those the Cyclopes used, when, employing their strength in rhythmic strokes upon the anvil, they forged the dread thunderbolt beneath their heavy hammers and so gave Jupiter his panoply--a graceless tale with ne'er a pledge of truth. ”