It is obvious how the legend arose of the hundred-armed giant Typhœus or Enceladus, who was fabled to lie buried beneath the region between Etna and the Phlegræan Fields. The belching of the volcano suggested to the popular imagination, which so loved to personify the powers of nature, the gasping of an imprisoned monster. The tremors so constantly affecting the islands were his quiverings as he lay on his uneasy, burning bed, and the earthquakes that from time to time shook the region marked how he tried now and again to shift his position there.
As intercourse with the West made the volcanic phenomena of that region more familiar, the mythological interpretation underwent gradual modification. On the one hand, it was observed that eruptions from Etna, sometimes disastrous enough when they occurred, took place at irregular and often widely separated intervals. On the other hand, it was noticed that among the Æolian Islands, which lay to the north, within sight of the Sicilian volcano, subterranean rumblings and explosions were of daily occurrence. The Cyclops of older time, being no longer extant above ground, came to be transferred in popular fancy to the underground regions as associates of Hephaistos or Vulcan. The incessant commotion below the surface suggested the idea of a subterranean workshop, where these beings were employed in forging the thunderbolts of Jove and in making arms and implements for other gods and heroes. Accordingly the belief gradually spread over the ancient world that the god of fire had his abode under Sicily and the neighbouring islands.
Further, the abundant discharges of steam and vapours, both in the quiescent and the active phases of volcanic eruptivity, suggested that somehow they were due to wind imprisoned within the earth, and led to the myth which represented the god of the winds as having his home in the same subterranean caverns.
It has often occurred to me that one phenomenon, connecting the meteorological conditions of the atmosphere with the volcanic activity of the Æolian Islands, which must have early attracted attention, would not improbably react on mythological beliefs in that part of the Mediterranean basin. Though continually in a state of eruption, Stromboli is said to be more especially active when atmospheric pressure is low. Its clouds of steam and discharges of stones are most marked before or during stormy weather, and are consequently more conspicuous in winter and spring than in summer and autumn. Since the days of Polybius and Strabo, the fishermen of the region have regarded the cloud-cap of that volcanic cone as a trustworthy indication of the kind of weather to be expected.
In Roman times, this increase of subterranean excitement in the early part of the year appears to have received a supernatural interpretation. It was looked on as evidence that at that season Vulcan and his Cyclops were specially busy over their furnaces, forging the thunderbolts that the Father of Gods and men was to use during the ensuing summer. Thus Horace, when joyously enumerating to his friend L. Sextius the signs that winter is giving way to spring—the disappearance of ice and hoar-frost, the coming of the balmy west wind, the release of the cattle from their stalls and of the farmer from his fireside, the advent of the goddess of love, and the dances of the nymphs and graces under the bright moon—adds that now is the time
'When fiery Vulcan lights anew
The Cyclops' glowing forge.'[14]
Long before these fables had ceased to be tacitly accepted by the people, they had begun to be rejected by the more thoughtful men in the community. There slowly grew up a belief in the settled and continuous sequence of nature.[15] In the midst of the schemes that were devised for explaining the old myths or making them fit into the widening experience of later ages, we may detect the dawn of the scientific spirit. Observant men were now able to recognise that what had been regarded by their grandfathers as evidence of supernatural agency, might well have been produced by natural and familiar processes of change. The early geographers afford us some interesting illustrations of the growth of this naturalism. Thus, Herodotus, in his excellent description of the physical geography of Thessaly, takes occasion, as a man of his reverent spirit naturally would, to mention the popular belief that the striking gorge of Tempe had been rent open by a blow from the trident of Poseidon. He admits the likelihood of the explanation, but immediately proceeds to state his opinion that the formation of this defile was not an abnormal manifestation of divine power, but was to be regarded as an example of the ordinary system of the world. 'Whoever believes,' he says, 'that Poseidon causes earthquakes and rents in the earth will recognise his handiwork in the vale of Tempe. It certainly appeared to me to be quite evident that the mountains had been there torn asunder by an earthquake.'[16]
Coming down some four centuries later we find that in Strabo, while all allusion to the supernatural has disappeared, the formation of the topography by natural causes is described with as much confidence as if the events were vouched for by documentary evidence. 'When the present chasm of Tempe,' he remarks, 'was opened by the shocks of an earthquake, and Ossa was torn away from Olympus, the Peneius flowed out through this passage to the sea, and thereby drained the interior of the country.'[17] He speaks also of the two lakes Nessonis and Bœbeis as remnants of the large sheet of water which had originally covered the lowlands of Thessaly.
The myths and legends of the Teutonic races supply many illustrations of primitive attempts to account for some of the more striking external phenomena of nature. In comparing these interpretations with those of the Greeks, we cannot fail to perceive the influence of the different scenery and climate amid which they took their birth. The dwellers in the west of Scandinavia spent their lives under the shadow of lofty, rugged fjelds, surmounted by vast plains of snow. They were familiar with the gleam of glaciers, the crash of ice-falls, the tumult of avalanches. Cloud and mist enshrouded them for weeks together. Heavy rains from the broad Atlantic swelled their torrents and waterfalls. Out of the dark forests, the naked rock rose in endless fantastic and suggestive shapes. The valleys were strewn with blocks of every size detached from the cliffs above. Mounds of earth and stones, like huge graves, mottled the lower grounds over which they had been dropped by old glaciers and ice-sheets. It was a region difficult of access and hard to traverse, stern and forbidding in aspect, abounding in gigantic, fantastic, and uncouth features, while the harshness of its topography was but little tempered by that atmospheric softness which sometimes veils the rocky nakedness of sunnier climes.