In the good old days Vulcan was God of Fire in heaven and, by appointment, official blacksmith to the gods. He was the son of Jupiter and Juno, and on one occasion when this normally harmonious couple had a tiff, Vulcan unwisely took his mother's side. The angry Jupiter promptly threw him out of heaven:
From morn
To noon he fell, from noon
to dewy eve,
A summer's day; and with
the setting sun
Dropped from the zenith
like a falling star
On Lemnos, the Aegean isle.
The resilient Vulcan, however, recommenced his business here on Earth, establishing his workshop under a mountain we know as Etna. Logically enough, we call his smithy a volcano, and renewed evidence of his industrious activity has been clear for all to see in recent weeks.
Sicilians have to be circumspect when they seek to protect themselves from the catastrophic side-effects of Vulcan's work. The story goes that in 1669 Mount Etna erupted with a great deal more exuberance than now. A great stream of lava advanced like a flaming river down its slopes towards the city of Catania some 20 miles south of the crater.
Seeing their town in peril, the citizens decided that something must be done. Organised into work parties by a certain Diego Pappalardo, an intrepid band of able-bodied men wrapped themselves in wet cow-hides to protect themselves against the heat, and using green fresh-cut wooden poles that were very slow to burn, they breached the side of the channel through which the stream of lava flowed.
Their efforts - as they saw it anyway - appeared to be successful; much of the molten rock diverted through the breach, and the main flow heading towards Catania slowed down considerably.
But others took a somewhat jaundiced view of these activities. The work of Diego and his friends had an unfortunate side-effect, in that the diverted lava was now headed directly towards the village of Paterno, and the inhabitants were understandably incensed at this Catanian interference with the course of nature.
In due course, several hundred villagers advanced on Pappalardo and his men, and a fracas ensued. The unattended breach soon healed, and the main stream of lava continued unimpeded towards Catania, destroying the western sector of the city and killing, it is said, 100,000 people in the process.
The Sicilian authorities of the time appear to have viewed the civil disturbances associated with these unfortunate events of 1669 more seriously than the destruction of Catania. In any event, a law was enacted there and then to make it illegal to attempt to divert the course of a Sicilian volcano.