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Show 454 TEMrLE OF JUPITER SERAPIS. columns; for, as the inhabitant grows older and increases in ·size, it bores a larger cavity, to correspond with the increasing magnitude of its shell. We must, consequently, infer a long continued immersion of the pillars in sea-water, at a time when the lower part was covered up and protected by strata of .tuff and the rubbish of buildings, the highest part at the same time projecting above the waters, and being consequently weather~d, but not materially injured. On the pavement of the temple, he some columns of marble, which are perforat<::d in the same manner in certain parts, one, for example, to the length of eight feet, while, for the length of four feet, it is uninjured. Several of these broken columns are eaten into, not only on the ex .. terior but on the cross fracture, and, on some of them, other marin~ animals have fixed themselves*. All the granite pillars are untouched by Lithodomi. The platform of the Temple is at present about one foot below high-water mark, (for .the~e are small tides in the Bay of Naples,) and the sea, whiCh Is only one hundred feet distant, soaks through the intervening soil. The upper part of the perforations then are at least twenty-three feet above high-water ·mark, and it is clear, that the columns must have continued for a long time in an erect position, immersed in salt-water. After re~aining for m:any years submerged, they must have been upraised to the height of about twenty-three feet above the level of the sea. So far the information derived from the Temple corroborates tl1at before obtained from the new strata in the plain of La Starza, and proves nothing more. But as the tempi~ could not have been built originally at the bottom of the sea, It must have first sunk down below the waves, and afterwards have been elevated. Of such subsidences there are numerous independent proofs in the Bay of Baire. Not far from the shore, to the north-west of the Temple of Serapis, are the ruins of a 'l"'emple of Neptune, and a Temple of the Nymphs, now under water .. Thes~ buildings probably participated in the movement which raised the Starza, but, either they were deeper under water than the Temple of Serapis, or they were not raised up again to so g;eat a height. There are also two Roman roads under water m the * Serpula contortuplicata, Linn., and V ermilia triquet~a, Lam: These species; as well as the Lithodomus, are now inhabitants pf the netghbounng sea. PALACE NEAR CAPRI UNDER TilE SEA. 455 Bay, one reaching from Puzzuoli towards the Lucrine Lake which may still be seen, and the other near the Castle of Baire. The ancient mole too, which exists at the Port of Puzzuoli, and which is commonly called that of Caligula, has th~ wate~ .up to a conside~·a~le height of the arches; whereas Brteslak JUstly observes, It Is next to certain, that the piers must formerly have reached the surface before the springing of the arches. A modern writer also reminds us, that these effects are not so local as some would have us believe· for on the opposite side of the Bay of Naples, on the Sorre~tine coast which, as well as Puzzuoli, is subject to earthquakes, a road: with some fragments of Roman buildings, is covered to some depth by the sea. In the island of Capri, also, which is situated some way at sea, in the opening of the Bay of Naples, one of the palaces of Tiberi us is now covered with water t. They who have attentively considered the effects of earthquakes before enumerated by us during the last one hundred and forty years, will not feel astonished at these signs of alternate elevation and depression of the bed of the sea and the adjoining coast during the course of eighteen centuries, but, on the contrary, they will be very much astonished if future researches fail to bring to light similar indications of change in all regions of volcanic disturbances. That buildings should have been submerged, and afterwards upheaved, without being entirely reduced to a , heap of ruins, will appear no anomaly, when we recollect that in the year 1819, when the delta of the Indus sank down, the houses within the fort of Sindree subsided beneath the waves without being overthrown. In like manner, in the year 1692, the buildings around the harbour of Port Royal, in Jamaica, descended suddenly to the depth of between thirty and fifty feet under the sea without falling. Even on small portions of land, transported to a distance of a mile, down a declivity, tenements like those near Mileto, in Calabria, were carried entire. At Valparaiso, buildings were left standing when their foundations, together with a long tract of the Chilian coast, were permanently upraised to the height of several feet in 1822. It is true that, in the year 1750, when the bottom of the sea "' Voy. dans Ia Campania, tome ii., p. 162. t Mr. Forbes, Physical Notices of the Bay of Naples. Ed. Journ. of Sci., No.2, new series, p. 280. October, 1829. |
