The ‘sizzle’ of the sun in the Ocean from Posidonius of Apamea to Giacomo Leopardi

Abstract

The very young Giacomo Leopardi in the songs All’Italia and Ad Angelo Mai when he found Cicero’s books of the Repubblica refers, respectively, to the screeching of the stars and the sun in «diving» into the Ocean: this image reveals clearly the fact that Leopardi knew the tradition, reported by the Latin poets and, even before that, by the Greek geographers, of the ‘sizzle’ that the sun would produce when setting in the Far Western Ocean. This tradition, perhaps also taken up by Artemidorus of Ephesus, had been widely contested, even on an autopsy basis, by Posidonius of Apamea, yet it had continued to influence, beyond any rational consideration, poets, from the Latin ones up to the young Leopardi, melancholy ruthless revealer of the popular errors of the ancients.