Just as it amazed me to stand near the ancient temples, the Spring of Arethusa equally moved me. It was at this body of freshwater that the nymph Arethusa supposedly arrived after fleeing the river god Alpheus. Arethusa explains her flight from Greece to Sicily to a grieving Ceres in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In this way, Ovid subtly connects the old Greek stories to real Sicilian places. And that’s partially one goal of this trip—to connect the culture, history, and myths from Greece and Rome to Sicily in a concrete way.
Technically, this wasn’t the same day, but when driving from Mount Etna to Catania, we passed by the rocks (read: the giant islands in the picture) supposedly thrown by the Cyclopes. I thought I would tag it on this post of real locations for ancient myths.