428 COSMOS. 



Diodorus Siculus, likewise (lib. iv. cap. 21, 5), who lived 

 tinder Caesar and Augustus, in his account of the progress of 

 -Hercules and his battles with the giants in the Phlegreean 

 Fields, describes " what is now called Vesuvius as a Xo'0os, 

 which, like Etna in Sicily, once emitted a great deal of fire, 

 and (still) shows traces of its former ignition." He calls the 

 whole space between Cumse and Naples the Phlegrsean Fields, 

 as Polybius does the still greater space between Capua and 

 Nola (lib. ii, cap. 17), while Strabo (lib. v, page 246) describes 

 with much local truth the neighbourhood of Puteoli (Dic- 

 archia), where the great Solfatara lies, and calls it ' Upaiarov 

 (i ryopd. In later times the name of TO, (pXe^oam TreSi'a is 

 ordinarily confined to this district, as at this day geologists 

 place the mineralogical composition of the lavas of the 

 Phlegrsean Fields in opposition to those from the neighbour- 

 hood of Vesuvius. The same opinion that in ancient times 

 there was fire burning within Vesuvius, and that that 

 mountain had formerly had eruptions, is most distinctly 

 expressed in the architectural work of Vitruvius (lib. ii, 

 cap. 6), in a passage which has hitherto not been sufficiently 

 regarded : " Non minus etiam memoratur, antiquitus crevisse 

 ardores et abundavisse sub Vesuvio monte, et inde evomuisse 

 circa agros flammam. Ideoque nunc qui spongia sive pumex 

 Pompejanus vocatur, excoctus ex alio genere lapidis, in hanc 

 redactus esse videtur generis qualitatem. Id autem genus 

 spongise, quod inde eximitur, non in omnibus locis nascitur, 

 nisi circurn ^Etnam, et collibus Mysise, qui a Graecis /caTa/ee- 

 Kavuevoi nominantur." It is also related that in ancient 

 times the fire increased and abounded beneath Mount 

 Vesuvius, and vomited out flame from thence on the fields 

 around. So that now what is called spongia, or Pompeian 

 pumex, baked out of some other kind of stone, seems to have 

 been reduced to this kind of substance. But that kind of 

 spongia which is got out of there is not produced in all 

 of a rocky district, having a single narrow entrance. The servile war 

 of Spartacus took place in the 681st year of Rome, or 152 years before the 

 eruption of Vesuvius described by Pliny (24th August, 79, A.D.). The 

 circumstance that Floras, a writer who lived in the time of Trajan, and 

 who, being acquainted with the eruption just referred to, knew what 

 was hidden in the interior of the mountain, calls it "cavus," proves 

 nothing, as others have already observed, for its earlier configuration 

 (Florus, lib. i, cap. 16, "Vesuvius mons, ^Etnsei ignis imitator;" lib. iii, 

 cap. 20,-" fauces cavi mentis)." 



