The author of the poem is unknown, the very date is uncertain. The conception of the work is Lucretian, but in point of style, while full of reminiscences of Lucretius, the poem owes most to Vergil, whose hexameter has undoubtedly been taken for a model, though it has lost all its music. Except in the avoidance of elision there is no trace of the influence of Ovid. The poem might easily have been written in the latter half of the reign of Augustus.[352] The obscurity is due to the lack, not the excess of art, and the poem has no special affinity with the Silver Age. Servius and Donatus, indeed, both seem to ascribe the poem to Vergil,[353] while it is found in the MSS. which give us the _Appendix Vergiliana_. But there are considerations which have inclined editors to place it later, in the reign of Nero, or in the opening years of the principate of Vespasian. In one of his letters (Sen. 79) Seneca, writing to his friend Lucilius Junior, urges him to 'describe Etna in his poem, and by so doing treat a topic common to all poets'. The fact that Vergil had already treated it was no obstacle to Ovid's essaying the task, nor was Cornelius Severus deterred by the fact that both Vergil and Ovid had handled the theme. Later he adds, 'If I know you aright, the subject of Aetna will make your mouth water.' Lucilius was procurator in Sicily, and had sung the story of the Syracusan nymph Arethusa.[354] It has been suggested that he[355] wrote the _Aetna_. But Lucilius was an imitator of Ovid,[356] and Seneca advises him _not_ to write a didactic poem on Etna, but to treat it episodically (_in suo carmine_), as Vergil and Ovid[357] had done. It is conceivable that he may have written a didactic poem on the subject, but Seneca's remarks yield absolutely no evidence for the fact.