From thence it moves in circles round the earth, turbid and muddy." This
stream of molten earth and mud is so much the general cause of volcanic
phenomena, that Plato expressly adds, "thus is Pyriphlegethon constituted,
from which also the streams of fire ([Greek words]), wherever they reach the
earth ([Greek words]), inflate such parts (detached fragments)." Volcanic
scoriae and lava streams are therefore portions of Pyriphlegethon itself,
portions of the subterranean molten and ever-undulating mass. That {Greek
words] are lava streams, and not, as Schneider, Passow, and Schleiermacher
will have it, "fire-vomiting mountains," is clear enough from many passages,
some of which have been collected by Ukert ('Geogr. der Griechen und Romer',
th. ii., s. 200): [Greek word] is the volcanic phenomenon in reference to
its most striking characteristic, the lava stream. Hence the expression, the
[Greek word] of Aetna. Aristot. 'Mirab. Ausc.', t. ii., p. 833; sect. 38,
Bekker; Thucyd., iii., 116; Theophrast., 'De Lap'., 22, p. 427, Schneider;
Diod., v., 6, and xiv., 59, where are the remarkable words, "Many places
near the sea, in the neighborhood of Aetna, were leveled to the ground,
[Greek words];" Strabo, vi., p. 269; xiii., p. 268, and where there is a
notice of the celebrated burning mud of the Lelantine plains, in Euboea, i.
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