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COSMOS. 



of the Caucasus, in the northwest the mud volcanoes of Ta- 

 man, and in the southeast of the great mountain chain the 

 naphtha springs and naphtha fire of Baku and the Caspian 



mean volcanic axial direction, that is to say, of the Thian-schan be- 

 ing prolonged westward through the Caucasus. Many other mountain 

 directions of Central Asia, however, also revert to "this remarkable 

 space, and stand, as elsewhere, in mutual relation to each other, so 

 as to form vast mountain nuclei and maxima of elevation." Pliny 

 (vi., 17) says : " Pers^e appellavere Caucasum montem Graucasim 

 (var. Graucasum, Groucasim, Grocasum), hoc est nive candidum;" in 

 which Bohlen thought the Sanscrit words kds, to shine, and gravan, 

 rock, were to be recognized (see my Asie Centrale, t. i., p. 109). As 

 Klausen says, in his investigations on the wanderings of lo {Rheinisches 

 Museum fur Philologiey JahrgViii., 1845, s. 298), if the name Graucasus 

 was corrupted into Caucasus, then a name "in which each of its first 

 syllables gave the Greeks the idea of burning might certainly charac- 

 terize a burning mountain, with which the history of the Fire-burner 

 (Fire-igniter, TrvpKatvg) would become readily and almost spontaneous- 

 ly associated." It can not be denied that mylhs sometimes originate 

 from names, but the production of so great and important a fable as 

 the Typhonico-caucasic can certainly not be derivable from the acci- 

 dental similarity of sound in the misunderstood name of a mountain. 

 There are better arguments, of which Klausen also mentions one. 

 From the actual association of Typhon and the Caucasus, and from 

 the express testimony of Pherecydes of Syros (in the time of the 58th 

 Olympiad), it is clear that the eastern cxriomity of the world was re- 

 garded as a volcanic mountain. According to one of the Scholia to 

 Apollonius (Scholia in Apoll. Rhod., ed. Schaefferi, 1813, v. 1210, p. 

 524), Pherecydes says, in the Theogony, "that Typhon, when pur- 

 sued, fled to the Caucasus, and that then the mountain burned (or 

 was set on fire) ; that from thence Typhon fled to Italy, when the isl- 

 and Pithecusa was thrown around (as it were, poured around) liim." 

 But Pithecusa is the island ^naria (now Ischia), upon which the Epo- 

 meus (Epopon) cast forth fire and lava, according to Julius Obsequens, 

 95 years before our era, then during the reigns of Titus and Diocle- 

 tian, and, lastly, in the year 1302, according to the statement of To- 

 lomeo Fiadoni of Lucca, who was at that time Prior of Santa Maria 

 Novella. "It is singular," as Boeckh, the profound student of antiq- 

 uity, writes to me, " that Pherecydes should make Typhon fly from 

 the Caucasus because it burned, as he himself is the originator of sub- 

 terraneous fire ; but that his residence upon the Caucasus rests upon 

 the occurrence of volcanic eruptions there, appears to me to be unde- 

 niable." Apollonius Rhodius {Argon., lib. ii., v. 1212-1217, ed. Beck), 

 in speaking of the birth of the Colchian Dragon, also places in the 

 Caucasus the rock of Typhon, on which the giant was struck by the 

 lightning of Jupiter. Although the lava-streams and crater-lakes of 

 the high land of Kely, the eruptions of Ararat and Elburuz, or tha 

 currents of obsidian and pumice-stone from the old craters of the Rio- 

 tandagh, may be placed in a pre-historic period, still the many hun- 

 dred flames which even now break forth from fissures in the Cauca- 

 sus, both from mountains of seven or eight thousand feet in height and 

 from broad plains, may have been a sufficient reason for regarding the 

 entire mountain district of the Caucasus as a Typhonic seat of fire. 



