CHAPTER VI. 
A QUARREL WITH THE ANCIENTS. 
There is not much to be said of Catania in addition to 
what is said in the guide-books. It is a dirty, shambling old 
place, a good deal like all other towns in Sicily, and owes 
any interest that it may now possess to its history. Here it 
was that Polyphemus and his Cyclopes had their local habita¬ 
tion ; here was the port of Ulysses; and Thalia and her sons, 
the Palici, were of Catanian memory; and here dwelt suc¬ 
cessively the Egyptian shepherds, the Sicanians, and the 
Romans, and the Saracens, and the Normans, and heaven 
knows how many other useless and quarrelsome people, who 
did nothing but build temples and churches and kill each 
other. Mount Etna was not half so cruel as these cut-throat 
races, whose deeds are blazoned forth in history for the ad¬ 
miration of mankind. Not all the burning lava that ever 
desolated the plains of Sicily has done a hundredth part of 
the killing so gloriously done by the blood-thirsty hordes that 
slew their fellow-creatures on these very plains. Every ruin, 
every column, every moss-covered stone is a history of ferocious 
wars. The cathedrals and crucifixes are baptized in blood, 
and the tombs of the slayers of men are worshiped. 
The flames of Etna were not enough; famine and pesti¬ 
lence were too slow; so the great warriors of old swept whole 
tribes from the face of the earth, and built grand cathedrals, 
and temples, and amphitheatres, and aqueducts, and public 
baths, and reigned in triumph till greater warriors slew them, 
and razed their churches, and temples, and fine edifices; and 
history glorified them in turn, and they did great deeds in 
turn, and were slain. 
