Aetna and the Wonders of the Earth

Abstract

The Aetna poet urges readers to study the earth, rather than the heavens or atmosphere, and to celebrate its wonders. Aetna’s volcanism provides scope for both pursuits, which powerfully induce the experience of sublimity: to read the poem is to undertake a harrowing journey through a volatile landscape, to be dazzled by stupendously engineered machines at an imperial spectacle, to catch sight of a mysterious goddess, nature the demiurge. Ultimately, the poet subordinates the study of nature’s causes to the awed contemplation of her marvels, exemplified by the story of the pious brothers of Catania. After the depravations of Nero’s regime, the imperviousness of some natural phenomena to causal analysis thrills and ennobles. This is the perspective of paradoxography, and the enthusiastic combination of philosophical theory with paradoxographical wonder constitutes the poem’s volcanic aesthetics. Significantly, the commitment to paradoxography fits the times, connecting the Aetna poet with Longinus and the Elder Pliny.