they immediately
attributed to the agency of a supernatural cause. AEtna was often seen
to emit flames, and the earth was subjected to violent shocks from the
forces of its internal fires when struggling for a vent. Instead of
looking for the source of these eruptions in the sulphur and
bituminous matter in which the mountain abounds, they fabled, that the
Gods, having vanquished the Giant Typhoeus, or, according to some
authors, Enceladus, threw Mount AEtna on his body; and that the
attempts he made to free himself from the superincumbent weight were
the cause of those fires and earthquakes.

FABLE IV. [V.385-461]

Pluto surprises Proserpina in the fields of Henna, and carries her
away by force. The Nymph Cyane endeavors, in vain, to stop him in his
passage, and through grief and anguish, dissolves into a fountain.
Ceres goes everywhere in search of her daughter, and, in her journey,
turns the boy Stellio into a newt.

"Not far from the walls of Henna[46] there is a lake of deep water,
Pergus by name; Cayster does not hear more songs of swans, in his
running streams, than that. A wood skirts the lake, surrounding it on
every side, and with its foliage, as though with an awning, keeps out
the rays of the sun. The boughs produce a coolness, the moist ground
flowers of Tyrian hue. {There} the spring is perpetual. In this grove,
while Proserpina is amusing herself, and is plucking either violets or
white lilies, and while, with childlike eagerness, she is filling her
baskets and her bosom, and is striving to outdo {her companions} of the
same age in gathering, almost at the same instant she is beheld,
beloved, and seized by Pluto;[47] in such great haste is love. The
Goddess, affrighted, with lamenting lips calls both her mother and her
companions,[48] but more frequently her mother;[49] and as she has torn
her garment from the upper edge, the collected flowers fall from her
loosened robes. So great, too, is the innocence of her childish years,
this loss excites the maiden's grief as well. The ravisher drives on his
chariot, and encourages his horses, called, each by his name, along
whose necks and manes he shakes the reins, dyed with swarthy rust. He is
borne through deep lakes, and the pools of the Palici,[50] smelling
strong of sulphur, {and} boiling fresh from out of the burst earth; and
where the Bacchiadae,[51] a race sprung from Corinth, with its two
seas,[52] built a city[53] betwe