42 LANDSCAPE AND IMAGINATION 



fresh eruptions have taken place from the middle of 

 the engulphed crater, and another central volcanic 

 cone is gradually rising there. 



The Greeks, thus accustomed to volcanic pheno- 

 mena among their own islands, were prepared to 

 accept the stories, brought to them from the remote 

 West, of far more colossal volcanoes, and more 

 gigantic and continuous eruptions. Like the accounts 

 of other physical phenomena imported from that dis- 

 tant and half mythical region, the tales of the volcanoes 

 were no doubt at first more or less exaggerated. The 

 adventurous voyagers who, sailing as far as Sicily 

 and the iEolian Islands, saw the noble snow-capped 

 cone of Etna, loftier than the mountains of Hellas, 

 yet emitting smoke by day and a glare of fire by 

 night; who watched Stromboli continually in erup- 

 tion ; who perchance beheld the land convulsed with 

 earthquakes, the air darkened with volcanic dust, the 

 sea covered with floating cinders, and who only with 

 much effort were able to steer their vessels into opener 

 water, would bear eastward with them such tales of 

 horror as would not fail to confirm and increase the 

 popular belief in the national mythology, and might 

 even suggest new myths or new versions of those 

 already current. The greater size and vigour of the 

 volcanoes would tend to create the impression that 

 other characteristics of the region were on a similarly 

 exaggerated scale. Sicily was accordingly believed in 

 Homeric times to be the home of a gigantic race of 

 shepherds — the Cyclops. 



It is obvious how the legend arose of the hundred- 

 armed giant Typhosus or Enceladus, who was fabled 



