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Giants or Science: Cosmic Strife, Mount Etna and Aetna

The Battle of the Gods and Giants functioned as an emblem of cosmic strife, and also of

philosophical difference, for many centuries in antiquity. This paper considers the association of

this battle with Mt Etna and its possible origin in the work of Empedocles. The anonymous Aetna

reject the Gigantomachy as a cause of volcanic activity, in favour of a scientific explanation, as

Lucretius also rejects mythological explanations for natural phenomena. The paper goes on to

ask whether the explanation offered by both authors (subterranean winds) should be associated

with a particular philosophical school, and concludes that it is available for use by writers of

any philosophical persuasion. Though scientific enquiry begins with wonder, the aim of

philosophy is to dispel wonder, and – in the case of Aetna – to draw instead an ethical moral.

Plutarch in his dialogue On the Face in the Moon (926DE) has his brother Lamprias, in a

polemic against the ‘mathematician’ Apollonides, reprove him for his view that there is

something ‘unnatural’ about the position of the moon, an earthy body, in the heavens. After all,

he says,

The fire of Aetna too is below earth ‘unnaturally’, but it is fire; and the air confined in

skins, though by nature it is light and has an upward tendency, has been constrained to

occupy an ‘unnatural’ location. (Some sentences later, he proceeds) So look out and

reflect, good sir, lest in rearranging and removing each thing to its ‘natural’ location you

contrive a dissolution of the cosmos and bring upon things the ‘Strife’ of Empedocles –

or rather lest you arouse against nature the ancient Titans and Giants and long to look

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upon that legendary and dreadful disorder and discord <when you have separated> all

that is heavy and <all> that is light.

The sun’s bright aspect is not there descried,

No, nor the shaggy might of earth, nor sea

as Empedocles says.1

This is not the only place where Plutarch mentions Mt Etna in the same breath as

Empedocles. In Natural Phenomena XXIII (Mor. 917E) he introduces a short discussion of

hunting on Mt Etna with a quotation for Empedocles describing the acuity of the hounds’ sense

of smell. No surviving fragment of Empedocles refers to Mt Etna, or to the battle of the Gods

and Giants, but the fact that Plutarch mentions the poet and the myth in quick succession

suggests that there may be a connection. Lucretius, too, regards Empedocles as Sicily’s greatest

natural product, more glorious than Etna.2 One wonders if Empedocles, who is regarded by many

later writers as the first of the Pre-Socratic thinkers to focus on matters of natural science,

mentioned the Gigantomachy in order to reject it in favour of a scientific explanation. This is

certainly how the myth is employed in the anonymous silver Latin poem Aetna. 3 Empedocles

spoke of Mt Etna elsewhere, as Plutarch testifies in another treatise (The Principle of Cold 953

EF = Emp. A 69), where he is quoted as proposing that rocks and crags ‘are upheld by resting on

1 Empedocles DK31B27. Translation by Harold Cherniss (Loeb). The reference to air confined in skins seems to reflect the common explanation of Etna’s activity as caused by winds confined underground. 2 Lucr. 1. 716-730: quae cum magna modis multis miranda videtur/ gentibus humanis regio visendaque fertur/ rebus opima bonis, multa munita virum vi,/ nil tamen hoc habuisse biro praeclarius in se/ nec sanctum magis et mirum carumque videtur (726-30). Noted by Hardie 1986, 211. 3 I accept the arguments that point to influence of Seneca’s Natural Questions on the poem, and thus position it between the years AD 65 (death of Seneca) and AD 79 (the eruption of Vesuvius, which the poem does not mention). See Goodyear 1984, Volk 2005.

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the fire that burns in the depths of the earth; but (Plutarch goes on) the indications are rather that

all these things from which the heat was squeezed out and evaporated were completely frozen by

the cold; and for this reason they are called pagoi. So also the peaks of many of them have a

black crust where the heat has bene expelled and have the appearance of debris from a

conflagration.’4

Plutarch uses the Battle of the Gods and Giants at least partly as an emblem of dispute between

philosophical schools. This is a figure of thought that goes back to Plato (Sophist 246A), where

the Stranger compares the dispute between different views of reality as ‘something like a battle

of gods and giants… one party is trying to drag everything down to earth out of heaven and the

unseen, literally grasping rocks and trees in their hands… and as soon as one of the opposite

party asserts that anything without a body is real, they are utterly contemptuous and will not

listen to another world’.5 Lucretius, too uses the Gigantomachy as an emblem of philosophical

dispute, but he is of the devil’s party, as it were, and sees Epicurus as assailing heaven in the

sense of tearing down the false edifice of religion (5.117).6 Plutarch deploys Empedocles again

in the next paragraph of On the Moon (926F) to support his own Academic-Platonist

interpretation of cosmic formation: the state of Chaos, in which God or Mind is absent, persists

until, by the power of Providence, ‘Love or Aphrodite or Eros arose, as Empedocles says’ to

create a concord of the bodies involved.

4 Tr. W.C. Helmbold (Loeb). 5 Tr. F.M. Cornford. 6 Hardie 1986, 188-9.Lucretius’ arguments against the existence of monsters of any kind are at 5. 913-5; of huge men at 1.199-204.

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Empedocles, then, refers to Mt Etna, and to the Battle of the Gods and Giants, in several related

contexts. Is it possible that he associated the two, rejecting the myth in order to propound his

scientific explanation of Etna’s activity? At the risk of being very speculative, I would like to

explore this idea a little further. The Battle of the Gods and Giants did not always take place on

Sicily.7 According to Apollodorus (1.6.1-3) the battle took place in Phlegra (or Pellene) in

Thrace,8 but when Enceladus made to escape, Athena threw the island of Sicily on top of him.9

After the Giants were defeated, Earth was enraged and gave birth to another monster, Typhoeus,

in Cilicia. Hesiod narrates the battles with the Titans and with Typhoeus, but does not describe

the intervening war with the Giants.10 He tells how the Titans were destroyed by Zeus’

thunderbolt

Οὔρεος ἐν βήσσῃσιν ἀίδνης παιπαλοέσσης/ πληγέντος

‘in the groves of a dark craggy mountain struck (by the thunderbolt)’.11

Later writers and commentators may have taken the puzzling word ἀίδνης as refereeing to Aetna,

thus facilitating the eventual translocation of the other Giants besides Enceladus, in addition to

the Titans, to Etna. Next to arrive under Etna is Typhoeus according to Pindar who places him

under the volcano in P. 8. 12-18. After that the location of the Giants (and Typhoeus, who is not

a Giant) under Etna seems to become canonical.12 Both the Giants and Typhoeus are placed there

7 The literary sources (up to the Hellenistic period) are surveyed by Vian 1952; Etna does not appear in the index. (Nor does Empedocles). 8 Though the Arcadians say it took place in Arcadia, Paus. 8.29.1. 9 Also V. A. 3. 578 10 Diodorus also (3.70. 3-6) focuses on the earlier war of the Titans, starting in Phrygia but moving to Nysa, Libya and India in order to emphasise the involvement of Dionysus, who is central to Diodorus’ vision of prehistory. For an exposition see Ogden 3013, 82-6 11 Hes. Thg.860-1. 12 Ogden 2013, 76-7 traces his trajectory from Mt Casius to Phlegra to Etna, with an outlier in Xanthus of Lydia who placed him in Mysia. Xanthus is said in one wayward source to have been acquainted with Empedocles (FGrH 765 F 33 = D.L. 8.63); perhaps the two men discussed Giants together, as well as the Magi.

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by Lycophron, though Claudian limits the denizens of Etna to Enceladus;13 Virgil adds the

Cyclopes (another kind of giants).14 The latter poet also explicitly makes the battle an allegory of

a turmoil of the elements of the universe (Gig. Lat. 60-72), with the words discrimina rerum /

miscet turba potens (62-3). If Pindar placed Typhoeus under Etna, it is possible that the local boy

Empedocles had the same idea about the Giants: but this is no more than speculation.

The Scientific Theory

The poem Aetna is central to any discussion of scientific views of volcanoes. There is no Latin or

Greek word for a volcano, and the subject is elsewhere treated as part of seismology in general.15

The poet begins by rejecting the idea that Etna’s activity is caused by the imprisoned Giants,and

takes the opportunity to recount briefly the myth he is rejecting.16 In part this is typical

Hellenistic/Augustan recusatio;17 the Gigantomachy is so frequent a subject of recusatio that

one may need to posit a lost Hellenistic poem on the subject.18 Aetna lays out clearly a scientific

explanation for the cause of Etna’s volcanic activity: namely, the activity of subterranean winds.

Essentially the same theory is put forward by Lucretius (6.639-702), and in fact it had been the

standard explanation since Aristotle (and indeed Homer, whose Cave of the Winds was often

13 Lyc. Alex. 688-693; Claud DRP 3.351; but his Gigantomachia (Carm. Min 53) maintains the location of the battle in Pallene; the fragments of his Greek Gigantomachia do not make the location explicit. Dionysius’ fragmentary Gigantias also places the battle in Thessaly, and the same is implied by Ovid’s reference to Pelion and Ossa (Met. 1.151-62; Nonnus D. 48.70 refers to Thrace. 14 V.A. 3. 578 and 616 with 641-91. 15 Hine 2002 16 Narrative at 41-73; at 201-3 Jupiter miratur the fury of the Giants. 17 Innes 1979. 18 See also the papyrus fragment of a perhaps Stoic discussion of Gigantomchy edited by M. Gronewald 1980.

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located in the Aeolian Islands). Aristotle considers earthquakes and related seismic phenomena

in Meteorologica II. 7-8; at 366b30-367a11 he writes

It has been known to happen that an earthquakes has continued until the wind that caused

it burst through the earth into the air and appeared visibly like a hurricane [CHECK

GREEK]. This happened lately near Heracleia in Pontus and some time past at the island

Hiera [now Vulcano], one of the group called the Aeolian islands. Here a portion of the

earth swelled up and a sort of crested lump rose with a noise: finally it burst, and a great

wind came out of it and threw cinders and ashes which buried the neighbouring town of

Lipara and reached some of the towns in Italy. The spot where this eruption occurred is

still to be seen. // Indeed, this must be recognized as the cause of the fire that is generated

in the earth: the air is first broken up in small particles and then the wind is beaten about

and so catches fire.19

What was good enough for Aristotle and Lucretius was good enough for the Middle Ages, and

Gervase of Tilbury, for example, offers the same explanation in Otia Imperialia II.12 (f. 32r):

The whole island of Sicily, in fact, being cavernous, sulphurous, and seamed with

bitumen, freely admits wind and fire, and as a result of the breath striving with the fire in

the depths, there are many points at which it frequently belches out smoke, steam, or

flames; when the pressure of the wind is particularly violent, it hurls up great quantities

of sand or stones. This is why Mount Etna, providing an image of Gehenna, has been

belching out fire for so long; the fire is fed, so they say, by the waves of the Aeolian Isles,

for the rush of the waters carries the wind with it to the bottom of the sea and chokes it

19 Translated by EW. Webster. Cf. Posidonius F 227 (=Str. 6.2.11) on a later eruption at Vulcano. Xenophanes also mentioned an eruption at Lipari: DK21A 48 = ‘Ar’. Mirab.auscult. 38 , 833a15.

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down there for a long time, until it is driven into the veins of the earth, where it ignites

fuel for the fire.20

Pietro Bembo, describing his excursion up the mountain in 1493, observes but does not try to

explain the winds raging inside the crater with ‘tyrannical force’ (26); it is left to his father

Bernardo, who had never been there, to provide the scientific explanation which he has derived

from the ancient books (30, 33-4): he too scorns the myth of the Giants (31).21

There is a difference here, however, for Gervase indicates that there is pre-existing fire beneath

the surface of Sicily, which is ignited, or perhaps just fanned, by the subterranean winds. The

classical authors, by contrast, seem to state that the action of the winds alone is enough to kindle

the fire. Aristotle explains the origin of the fire by the idea that the air is broken up into small

particles and the beaten about. This is not, as far as I know, an observable phenomenon in any

context. Why does Aristotle say this?

Most of his discussion of seismology in Meteor. II is heavily indebted, as he makes clear, to the

physical theories of three previous thinkers, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes and Democritus. All three

of these, however, are basing their discussion on a theory of four elements such as was most

comprehensively expounded by Empedocles. Empedocles is famed for his use of argument by

20 Tr. S.E. Banks and J.W. Binns (2002), 341-3. 21 Bernard observes simul cum ventis Aernam animam immutari, but is puzzled as to how the winds get in. See the edition and discussion of Williams 2017.

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analogy in explaining physical phenomena,22 based on observation (though he got it wrong when

he said that water contracts as it freezes); but no analogy could support this idea that beaten air

becomes fire. The explanation of this idea is to be found, rather, in the theory of the changes of

the elements. So Seneca writes in Natural Questions 2.26. 2-3

Nothing will prevent fire being given off from something moist, and indeed, what you

will find more surprising, from moisture itself. Some people have maintained that nothing

can change into fire without first changing into water; so a cloud can emit fire from some

part of it while preserving the water it contains, just as often one part of a piece of wood

is burning while another is sweating.23

Seneca goes on to cite from Posidonius (fr. 228, T 41a Edelstein-Kidd) an account of the

formation of another island called Hiera, in the bay of Santorini in ca 197 BC.

It was only nighttime that revealed the fire. This was not continuous, but flashed at

intervals, like lightning-bolts, whenever the subterranean heat had overcome the weight

of water that lay above it…. The fire was not extinguished by the sea that covered it, and

its force was not prevented from escaping by the weight of a great volume of water.24

Like Plutarch’s characters above, these writers are reflecting on the apparent paradox of elements

that are out of place: fire under the earth in the case of Plutarch, fire under water in the case of

22 See e.g. Sen. NQ 3.24.1 where earthquake is compared to the boiling of water; NQ 6.11 CHECK. Williams 2012, 239-40. 23 Tr. H.M. Hine. 24 Ib. 26.4-5.

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Seneca and Posidonius. In De Mundo 5 the author (Aristotle or whoever it may be, probably a

Peripatetic) puts forward a clearly Empedoclean theory of four elements (and related qualities).

A single harmony orders the composition of the whole – heaven and earth and the whole

universe – by the mingling of the most contrary principles. The dry mingling with the

moist, the hot with the cold, the light with the heavy, the straight with the curved, all the

earth, the sea, the ether, the sun, the moon, and the whole heaven are ordered by a single

power extending through all, which has created the whole universe out of separate and

different elements – air, earth, fire, and water – embracing them all in one spherical

surface and forcing the most contrary natures in it to live in agreement with one another

and thus contriving the permanence of the whole (396b25-31).25

In a world-view like this, the turning of air into fire is a part of a natural sequence of cosmic

changes. The mechanism of the change thus does not need separate explanation, and the idea of a

kind of churning (perhaps a small-scale version of a Democritean dine) seems as good a cause as

any. Of course it is not only Empedocles, and maybe Democritus, who lie behind this idea, but

Heraclitus as well: ‘Fire lives the death of air, and air lives the death of fire; Water lives the

death of earth, earth that of water’ (22 F 76 DK = Max. Tyr. xii 4 p. 489). Another source (Marc

iv. 46) expresses the same idea slightly differently: ‘it is death of earth to become water, and the

death of water to become air, and of air to become fire, and the other way about’. Fire, in fact,

can be exchanged for everything, like gold (F. 90); and ‘the cold becomes warm, the warm

25 Tr. E.S. Forster. The reference to a single power is not quite consistent with Empedocles’ theory of the alternating dominance of Love and Strife; but in so far as our universe is concerned, it must belong to the period of the dominance of Love. The theory would not be in conflict with a Platonic conception of a universe ordered by Reason. According to Hussey (132), Empedocles’ cosmos has a mind except in the period of total strife.

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becomes cold, the wet becomes dry and the dry becomes wet’ (F 126). Heraclitus, be it noted, is

the only philosopher referred to in Aetna (538-9).

Though Heraclitus’ cosmology, in which fire is the fundamental element of the universe to

which it will all return,26 differs from Empedocles’, in which the four elements have an equal

role to play, whether in love or strife, a key role for fire is not out of place in Empedocles’

theory. Empedocles in several fragments speaks of subterranean fires (F45, ‘and many fires burn

below the earth’, perhaps to be associated with F 43, ‘[aither] sank below the earth with its long

roots’ and F 44 ‘and earth expands its own bulk and aither [expands] aither’. T 35 states that

‘Empedocles does not assign definite places to the elements, but says that they reciprocally yield

to one another, so that earth moves aloft and fire is lower down’, and in another source that ‘all

the elements occupy each other’s places’. T36 (Aristotle de gen et corr 2.3, 330b19-21) states

that he in effect ‘reduces the four elements to two; for he sets all the others in opposition to fire’.

And while the heavens are made of ice, the heavenly bodies are of fire (T31, T24 and T 23 W

###).

The fundamental theory that explains the existence of fires below the earth, and their occasional

eruption, seems thus to have been developed by Empedocles, even though he does not refer in

any of his fragments to Etna or any other volcano. The biographical tradition however suggests

that his local volcano made an impression on him (how could it not?), since he chose its crater as

26 Also in Cic. DND 2.28: fire permeates everything and rules the world. Neither he nor in Aetna need this reference imply adherence to a Stoic view of the universe.

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the site of his final dissolution and return to the gods. Empedocles as the physiologos par

excellence provided the theory that later thinkers worked with.

Philosophy from Volcanoes

Broadly the same physical theory seems to be presented by Lucretius,27 by Aetna, and by

Seneca’s Natural Questions. We have seen that in Plutarch the theory of volcanoes can be

deployed as part of an argument between Academics and Stoics about what is ‘natural’. Does

this mean that any discussion of volcanoes has to be philosophically charged? Philip De Lacy, in

an article published in 1943 entitled ‘The Philosophy of Aetna’,28 after emphasizing that the

poem is not ‘a collection of doctrines’ went on to find many indications of a predominantly

Epicurean position in the poem. I believe that he is right and would like to add one or two new

considerations to his arguments. The poem is not, like Lucretius’, a philosophical tract.

An important argumentative move, noted by De Lacy, - it is his main argument, and a good one -

is the frequent appeal to the senses as evidence. At 135-6 the reader is urged to trust the evidence

of his eyes:

Certis tibi pignora rebus

Atque oculis haesura tuis dabit ordine tellus.

And again at 140-1:

27 The science is similar but he does not mention the Giants; but see 1. 199-204 for a blanket rejection of such creatures. 28 De Lacy 1943.

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Cernis et in silvis spatiosa cubilia retro

Antraque demersas penitus fodisse latebras?

Liba Taub sees these passages as belonging to a common philosophical tradition, going back to

Aristotle, of relying on observation;29 but De Lacy links them rather to the more sophisticated

Epicurean theory of signs: at 519-20 the poet distinguishes common and particular signs.

Sed signum commune leve est atque irrita caus

Quae trepidat: certo verum tibi pignore constat.

Though Stoics had developed a sophisticated theory of signs, the Epicurean Philodemus also

made this distinction in arguing that valid inferences cannot be made from common signs but

only from particular ones (ἴδια σημεῖα).30 This must be seen in the context of the Epicurean view

that all sense-perceptions are true, while Stoics insisted that some sense-perceptions can be false.

Another Epicurean, but also characteristically scientific, move is the use of analogy (144-5, 367-

9).31 Epicurean too is the idea that voluptas will result from understanding the volcano (250).

Non-Epicurean, perhaps, is the propounding of a single theory of volcanic action, when

Epicurus, and Democritus before him, were ready to admit multiple explanations of natural

phenomena. For example, on earthquakes: Sen NQ 6.20.1 and 5-7. Epicurus and Lucretius freely

offer several explanations of cosmic phenomena that it is not easy to test by experiment. And the

29 Taub 2008, 51. 30 Philod. De signis 14. 2-27). 31 See e.g. Asmis 1984, 328, treating analogy as part of the inductive method.

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principle that all sense-perceptions are true demands that any explanation will do as long as it fits

the phenomena. The reference to Heraclitus at 538-9 is sometimes taken as a marker of Stoic

inclination, but this is surely unnecessary (n. 26 above).

To this extent, then, the ‘feel’ of Aetna is of an Epicurean text. And yet it shares its theory with

that of the Stoic author Seneca, and with what seems to have been said by the Stoic polymath

Posidonius.32 The truth is that Stoics and Epicureans were in constant dialogue and frequently

developed their ideas in interaction with one another. De Lacy remarks that no Epicurean is

entirely ‘orthodox’ after 100 BC. Seneca often reads quite Epicureanly. To look for

philosophical dogma in the poem may be the wrong question. Perhaps we can define the

affiliations of Aetna a little further by considering the idea of wonder in the poem and in

Lucretius.

Cicero, for example, in de natura deorum (2.37-39) insists that man is made for the

contemplation of the universe. Lucretius turns the argument upside down in an eloquent passage

of Book 2 about the universe and the distant heavenly bodies:

All these, if now they had been seen for the first time by mortals, what story could be told

more marvellous than these things, or what that the nations would less dare to believe

beforehand? Nothing, I believe; so worthy of wonder would this sight have been. Yet

think how no one now, wearied with satiety of seeing, deigns to gaze up at the shining

32 F 234, 249-50 on Sicily; 230-3 on earthquakes, 227-8 on volcanoes. Probably he is, or is close to, the common source of both Seneca and Aetna postulated by Goodyear 1984.

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quarters of the sky! Wherefore cease to spew out reason from your mind, struck with

terror at mere newness, but rather with eager judgment weigh things, and, if you see them

true, lift your hands and yield, or, if all is false, gird yourself to battle. For our mind now

seeks to reason… (2. 1033-1044).

Lucretius demands the rejection of wonder in favour of rational thought. Now it must be

admitted that wonder is the beginning of philosophy, as Plato and Aristotle made clear in famous

passages of their works.33 Plato says ‘that experience, the feeling of wonder, is very

characteristic of a philosopher; philosophy has no other starting-point’, and Aristotle says ‘it is

owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize’. But Lucretius

sees it as the role of reason to go beyond wonder in search of truth. Seneca recommends simple

experiment as a remedy against surprise (NQ. 3.24.4), and sees the task of science as defining the

limits of knowledge in relation to the divine.34 The Epicurean maxim nil admirari has the

specific purpose of dispelling amazement and fear, and this is to be achieved by rational

investigation and understanding. Thus in Letter 79 (99) Seneca cautions against Lucilius against

being overcome by ‘wonder’.35 As Vergil put it,

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas (VG 2. 490-2)

Aetna too invites the reader to go beyond wonder in order to reach a scientific understanding and

the resultant voluptas.

33 Pl. Tht. 155d; Ar. Metaph. I.2, 982b 12ff. See Stoneman 2018. 34 Williams 2012, 7. 35 See also Hine 2014, 4 and 12, Williams 2012, 222.

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To gaze on nature’s wonders, not like brute beasts with the eyes alone, nor to lie

sprawling on the earth pasturing the bulk of one’s body; (but) to know the proofs of

things and seek out causes of what is doubtful; to reverence intellect and raise our heads

to the sky; to know what and how many are the elements36 from which the great universe

was born; whether # they are to fear their setting or are to persist through eternity #,37 and

(how) the machine is bound with an endless chain; to know the measure of the sun and

how much less is that of the moon – so that she flies through her course in twelve

circuits, while he passes through in one year – what stars run in a fixed order and which

independently maintain their own motions; to know the alternations of the zodiacal signs

and the laws delivered to them [the passage on astronomy, 234b-245, is omitted]38 - in

short, whatever wonders lie (before us) in this mighty universe, not to leave them

scattered, nor piled up ina heap of things, but to arrange each severally in its own place

and labelled: this is a divine and delightful pleasure for the soul. But this is the first duty

of man, to know the earth and to annotate the wonders it brings forth: this makes us

closer kin to the stars of heaven (224-250).39

At 203-6 Jupiter miratur at the assault of the Giants on heaven. Not only is he on the ‘wrong’

side, if the Giants are the Epicureans assaulting religion, he also has a bad philosophical attitude.

36 A Lucretian word. 37 The passage is corrupt but the meaning is something like this. 38 This passage certainly has Manilius in view, but it is not an ‘attack’ on this poetic predecessor: Volk 2005, 86. 39 My translation, with help from Ellis.

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It is therefore somewhat surprising to find that the Aetna poet introduces the concluding section

of his poem, the story of the two pious brothers, as a miranda fabula.40 Liba Taub (2008, 48)

argues that Aetna does not have this aim of dispelling amazement; and it has also been

suggested that the piety of the brothers (which, as Katharina Volk notes, caps the piety of Aeneas

inasmuch as there are two brothers, and two parents to be rescued from the flames) is inimical to

an Epicurean interpretation of the poem. But in fact the lesson of the poem is that wonder at

volcanoes should be dispelled; the most valuable lesson that can be drawn from a volcanic

eruption is one about human morality.41

40 In fact the poet uses parts of the verb mirari and cognates quite frequently. Wonder is a stage on the road to understanding. The following are from Ellis’ index, with line-numbers adjusted to Goodyear’s edition: 156 (E and G) miranda spectacula of the earth 197 E 198 G mirandus faber 202 E 203 G Iuppiter miratur 223 E 224 G miranda tueri 251 E 252 G miranda notare 416 E 147 G miranda virtus (virtue should be admired) 577 E 578 G miramur (Greek myths – bad) 578 E 579 G miramur (the site of Troy – bad) 602 E 603 G miranda fabula 641 E 642 G illos mirantur carmina vatum (good again) At 134 EG, 456 E (not in G’s text) haud mirum may be just a conventional expression, a verbal tic. 535 E 536 G si quis miratur,… cogitet makes the intellectual progression explicit; 539 E 540 G sed nimium hoc mirum picks up the earlier phrase. 41 This is a lesson it shares with the material assembled by Seneca in his Natural Questions: Hine 2014, 12. Another use of Mt Etna to impart a moral lesson may be found in the story recounted by Strabo 6.2.6, a Sicilian bandit named Selurus, whose base was on Mt Etna, was placed on a scaffold in the arena that depicted Mt Etna; the scaffold then collapsed and pitched Selurus into the cage of the waiting wild beasts. This unpleasant story was drawn to my attention by Karen Ni Mheallaigh: thank you.

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