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A bow appeared round the sun in the consulship of Lucius Opimius and Quintus Fabius (121 BC), a hoop in that of Gaius Porcius and Manius Acilius (114 BC), and a red ring in that of Lucius Julius and Publius Rutilius (90 BC).
Thus far Aristotle ; let us for our part imagine a darkness as dense as that which is said to have once covered the neighbouring districts on the occasion of an eruption of the volcano Etna, so that for two days no man could recognize his fellow, and when on the third day the sun shone upon them, they felt as if they had come to life again : well, suppose that after darkness had prevailed from the beginning of time, it similarly happened to ourselves suddenly to behold the light of day, what should we think of the splendour of the heavens?
Etna once overflowed with a large quantity of fire and poured out an enormous mass of burning sand; daylight was shrouded in dust, and the sudden darkness terrified whole peoples. On that occasion, they say, there were then numerous lightning-bolts and thunderclaps, which were produced by the clash of dry bodies, not of clouds, which are unlikely to have been present when the air was so hot.
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During this summer it is said that Sicily was invaded by such an amount of ash that roofs of the city of Catania were oppressed and overburden, and finally collapsed ” (St. Augustine, III, 31). “ At this time Mt. Etna burned more than usual and threatened the city of Catania and its outskirts by fiery torrents, so that the roofs of buildings collapsed, being overload and burned by hot ashes ” (Orosius, V, 13, 1). The more ancient authors Cicero and Seneca probably allude to the same event when they report that darkness lasted three days and lightning occurred in the volcanic plume. Let us point out that lava flows are indicated by Orosius alone, who wrote more than five centuries after the eruption. Such information, therefore, is of little value (see above a similar discussion regarding Diodorus and the Sicanians). Most current scientists, following Kieffer ( 1985 ), consider the 122 B.C. eruption as a large Plinian outburst (e.g., Coltelli et al. 1998 ). According to Kieffer, this event created the small caldera of the Cratere del Piano which is today almost entirely buried by the central cone. This view is supported by Strabo’s Geography describing, about a century later, a summit depression 3.8 km in circumference, or 1.2 km in diameter. Seneca said also that at his time (c. A.D. 60), Mt. Etna had a lower elevation than before ( letter to Lucilius , n. 51). Moreover, it seems that a long repose period followed the 122 B.C. eruption, as usually occurs after a caldera forming event.
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Several authors mention that the eruption was followed by a dust-veil event. If the account of Obsequens can be used as valid evidence (Catania is 27 km from Mount Etna), this was possibly the largest Etnan eruption during classical antiquity before 44 BC. Tree-ring data shows that the year 125 BC was a year of ring-width minima and 123 BC a year of frost-ring signal1.
Slazer M.W., Hughes M.K., Bristlecone pine tree rings and volcanic eruptions over the last 5000 yr, Quaternary Research 67 (2007) 57 – 68 [OF] ↩
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