Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Jonas Umbach,
The Elements: Fire
,
c.
1645-1700, etching.
Vulcan is pictured
among the clouds;
his forge is on the
left and cannons
on the right.
Image not available - no digital rights
neighbours, Vesuvius, Ischia and Etna, as torches to light the way
for the Sirens in their search for her lost daughter Persephone.
The 400 bc eruption of Vulcano may have been the source of
Thucydides' observation in
The Peloponnesian War
that 'at night
great flames are seen rising up, and in day-time the place is under
a cloud of smoke'.³ Mount Etna on Sicily, part of the same vol-
canic system, was also said to be the workshop of Hephaistos/
Vulcan, here accompanied by one-eyed giants, the Cyclopes.
These were the same bad-tempered oversized monsters who
were so inhospitable to Odysseus (Ulysses) when he and his
companions landed on their island in Homer's
Odyssey
.4 In a
connected myth, it was believed that the repulsive multi-headed
giant Typhon, offspring of Gaia, the primal goddess of the earth,
and Tartarus, the god of the wind, was imprisoned by Zeus, where
'he's lying just beside the straits of the sea, trapped beneath the
roots of Mount Etna'.5 Tossing and turning still, he causes the
ructions and eruptions that are a regular and continuing feature
of Etna. Taking the myth of the Cyclopes yet deeper, the single,
circular eye of this beast is reflected in the single, circular form
of the crater: thus the volcano becomes the creature within. Does
Homer's epic tale, itself a late compilation of centuries of oral
Bernard Picart,
Enceladus buried beneath
Mount Etna
, 1731,
engraving.
