it creates the explosions that cause such destruction. After a second
invitation to the reader to appreciate the worth of such a theme he
tells the story of two brothers of Catania who, when other refugees from
Aetna's explosion rescued their worldly goods, risked their lives to save
their parents.

The poem is not a happy experiment. There is no lack of enthusiasm for
the subject, despite the fact that the science of that day was wholly
inadequate to the theme. But Vergil could hardly realize this, since both
Stoics and Epicureans had adopted the theory of the exploding winds.
The real trouble with the theme is its hopelessly prosaic ugliness.
Lucretius, by his imaginative power, had apparently deceived him into
thinking that any fragment of science might be treated poetically. In
his master the "flaring atom streams" had attained the sublimity of a
Platonic vision, and the very majestic sadness of his materialism carried
the young poet off his feet. But the mechanism of Aetna remained merely a
puzzle with little to inspire awe, and the theme contained inherently no
deep meaning for humanity--which, after all, the scientific problem must
possess to lend itself to poetic treatment. The poet indeed realized all
this before he had finished. He sought, with inadequate resources, to
stir an emotion of awe in describing the eruption, to argue the reader
into his own enthusiasm for a scientific subject, to prove the humanistic
worth of his problem by asserting its anti-religious value, and finally,
in a Turneresque obtrusion of human beings, to tell the story of the
Catanian brothers. But though the attempt does honor to his aesthetic
judgment the theme was incorrigible. Perhaps the recent eruptions of
Aetna--they are reported for the years 50 and 46 B.C.--had given the
theme a greater interest than it deserved. We may imagine how refugees
from Catania had flocked to Naples and told the tale of their suffering.