after the death of Hiero I.,
was peopled by colonists from Katana (then called ~Aitne~). The
new occupants of the city changed its name from Inessa to Aetna, which
it retained. The town later fell into the hands of the Syracusans, and
in 462 B.C. the Athenians in vain attempted to take it. During the
Athenian expedition both Aetna and Hybla were allies of Syracuse. In 403
B.C. Aetna was taken by Dionysius, who placed in it a body of Campanian
mercenaries. Sixty-four years later (B.C. 339) the town was taken by
Timoleon. For many succeeding years we find no further mention of it.
Cicero speaks of it in his time as an important place, and the centre of
a very fertile district; it is also mentioned by Pliny and Ptolemy, and
Strabo says that it was usually the starting point for those who
ascended the mountain. Of its later history we know absolutely nothing.

Six miles to the north-west of St. Mariah di Licodia, the road passes
through Biancavilla--a town of 13,000 inhabitants, and the centre of a
cotton district.

The road continues in the same direction until the town of Aderno is
reached; and here we arrived late in the evening, and gained our first
experience of a Sicilian inn in an out-of-the-way town. After many
enquiries we were directed to the only inn which the place could boast,
kept by a doctor. No one appeared at or near the entrance, of course
there was no bell or knocker, and we made our way up a dark stone
staircase till we arrived at a dimly-lighted passage. A horrible old
Sicilian woman now appeared, and showed us with great incivility the
only room in the house, which its inmates were willing to place at our
disposal. It was a fairly large room, with a stone floor which
apparently had not been swept for weeks, and walls that had once been
whitewashed; the furniture consisted of three beds placed on tressels, a
plain deal table, and some primitive chairs. As to food they had neither
bread, meat, wine, eggs, macaroni, fruit, or butter in the house;
neither did they offer to procure anything. Even when some eggs had been
obtained, and (after an hour's delay) cooked, there was not a single
teaspoon to eat them with. The people of the town appear to subsist
chiefly on beans and a kind of dried fish. If our courier had not been a
very handy fellow and a tolerable cook, we should have been obliged
more than once to go to bed supperless. As it was, the best he could do
on this occasion was to get some bread, e