The most interesting myths, however, relate to underground personages. The forty-five Grecian Titans, who were of gigantic stature and of proportionate strength, were confined in the bowels of the earth. According to the poets, the flames of Etna proceeded from the breath of Enceladus, and when he turned his weary body the whole island of Sicily was shaken to its foundations. Neptune was not only a god of the oceans, rivers, and fountains, but with a blow of his trident he could create earthquakes at pleasure. The worship of Neptune was established in almost every part of the Grecian world. The Livians, in particular, venerated him, and looked upon him as the first and greatest of the gods. The Palici were born in the bowels of the earth, and were worshipped with great ceremonies by the Sicilians. In a superstitious age the altars of the Palici were stained with the blood of human sacrifices. In Roman mythology two very familiar deities are Pluto and Vulcan. These and a host of other deities, the outcome of imagination, excited by displays of seismic and volcanic activity, we meet with every day in picture galleries, in museums, in literature, and in our daily papers. Earthquakes have led to the abolition of oppressive taxation, the abolition of masquerades, the closing of theatres, and even to the alteration in fashions. A New England paper, of 1727, tells us that "a considerable town in this province has been so far awakened by the awful providence in the earthquake that the women have generally laid aside their hooped petticoats." In the next chapter we shall consider more particularly the terrible effects of earthquakes on geological history. CHAPTER XVI VOLCANOES AND MOUNTAIN FORMATION