The Greek
poet Pindar is the earliest writer who makes mention of its
activity. He refers to it in his first Pythian Ode, Strophe B, 1.
1. The passage is thus rendered by Carey--
"From whose caverned depths aspire,
In purest folds upwreathing, tost
Fountains of approachless fire--
by day a flood of smouldering smoke
With sullen gleam the torrents pour"
[Illustration: Mount Etna.]
The ode in which this allusion occurs is said to have been written
about B.C. 470; and the eruption to which it refers probably took
place shortly before that date.
Virgil also describes the mountain very forcibly in the ?†neid,
lib. iii. 570. Dryden renders the passage thus:--
"The port capacious, and secure from wind,
Is to the foot of thund'ring Etna joined.
By turns a pitchy cloud she rolls on high:
By turns hot embers from her entrails fly,
And flakes of mounting flames, that lick the sky.
Oft from her bowels massy rocks are thrown,
And shivered by the force come piece-meal down.
Oft liquid lakes of burning sulphur flow,
Fed from the fiery springs that boil below."
Since the one to which Pindar alludes, there have been recorded
about sixty eruptions; but in the present century Etna has been
less frequently active than Vesuvius.
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