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Show 452 TEMPLE OF JUPI'rEllt. S~RAPIS. and currents: for towns have been built, like ancient Brighton, on sandy tracts intervening between the old cliff' and the sea, and in some cases they have been finally swept away by the return of the ocean. On the other hand, the inland clifF at Lowestoff, in Suffolk, remains, as we stated in the fifteenth chapter, at. some distance from the shore, and the low green tract called the Ness may be compared to the low flat called L::t Starza, neat· Puzzuoli. Dut there are no tides in the Mediterranean; and to suppose that sea to have sunk generally from twenty to twenty-five feet since the shores of Campania were covered with sumptuous buildings, is an hypothesis obviously untenable. The observations, indeed, made during modern surveys on the moles and cothons (docks) constructed by the ancients in various ports of the Mediterranean, have proved that there has been no sensible variation of level in that sea during the last two thousand years. A very slight change would have been perceptible; and had any been ascertained to have taken place, and had it amounted only to a difference of a few feet, it would not have appeared very extraordinary, since the equilibrium of the Mediterranean is only restored by a powerful current fro)ll the Atlantic*. Thus we arrive, without the aid of the celebrated temple, at the conclusion that the recent marine deposit at Puzzuoli was upraised in modern times above the level of the sea, and that not only this change of position, but the accumulation of the modern strata, was posterior to the destruction of many edifices, of which they contain the imbedded remains. If we now examine the evidence afforded by the temple itself, it appears, from the most authentic accounts, that the three pillars now standing erect, continued, down to the middle of the last century, half buried in the new marine strata before described. The upper part of the columns, being concealed by bushes, had not attracted the notice of antiquaries; but, when the soil was removed in 1750, they were seen to form part of the remains of a splendid edifice, the pavement of which was still preserved, and upon it lay a number of columns of African breccia and of granite. '£he original plan of the building * Captain \V. H. Smyth, R.N. obtained, during his survey, numerous proofs of the permanency of the level of the Mediterranean from a remote historical period. PERFORATION OF TilE COLUMNS. 453 cou Id be traced distinct} . . seventy feet in diametery ~n~ was of a quandrangular form, by forty-six noble coluO: the roof had been supported rest of marble. The 1 ns, twenty-four of granite, and the arge court ments, supposed to ha b was surrounded by apart-ve een used b h' a thermal spring, still used t .. as at mg-rooms; for just behind the building odr mhed1emal purposes, issues now sprm· g, was conveyed by' an btl e dw ater' 1't · 'd . mar e ucts . t IS hs m , of this Many antiquaries have ent d . 10 0 t e chambers. to the de·i ty to which this de'rfei mto elabor a t e d't scuss1· 0ns as C ll. h e 1 ce was consecrated · b s· are I, w o has written the 1 t bl . ' ut tgnor endeavours to show that all ~~ a ~· t~eattse on the subject*, were of a form essentially dt'me e rte Ighious edifices of Greece wren -t at th b 'Id' fore, could never have been a tem I h e . l11 mg, there-to the public bathing-rooms . at manp e;t at It co~responded .and, lastly, that if it had been a tern~ ~ our watermg-places, de?icated to Serapis,-the worship !r e;h~ ~ould ~lot have b~en stnctly prohibited at the time when this edifigypttan .god bemg the senate of Rome. ce was m use, by It is not for the geologist to offer a .. d h II h n opm10n on these topics an . web s .a ' t erefore ' designate th.I s va l ua bl e reh.c of a t. ' qmty y 1ts generally received name and r ~ l-the memorials of physical changes ' . ~bodceed to consider d. ' IHscri e on the th stan mg columns in most legible characters b th h ree nature. (See Frontispiece t.) The p'll . YJ! e and of . I . h h . I at s are lOrty-two fe t m 1e1g t ; t e1r surface is smooth and · · d e f b umnJure to the heicrht o a out twelve feet above their pedest 1 Ab . !=' t 1 ../! • • a 5• ove tlus IS a zone, we ve leet Ill height, where the rna bl I b . ' b · f · r e las een pierced y a spectes o marme perforating bivalve-Lt'tl d C 'I'h h l f I . lo omus uv -!· b · e o e·s o t lese ammals are pear-shaped , tl1 e external o' pem.n.( J.,'. emg mmute, a~~ gradually increasing downwards. At th~ ~ott~m of the cavihes, many shells are still found notwithstand mgt Je ~reat numbers that }Jave been taken out b; vi 't Tl - perforatiOns are so considerable in dept! d . SI ~rs. 1e manifest a long continued abode of til aLn. hsidze, t.Ja.t they le It o om1 1n the •t nD:'s sert a zl·O ne es.ergetica sulla sagra Architettura degli Antichi e representation of the present state of th t . . been carefully reduced from th t . b e emple m the frontispiece has aul Tempio di Serapide, in Puzazu~~~.enN ~ thl.e 1C8a2n0onico Andrea de J orio, Ricerche l M d' 1 · po 1 ' • o 10 a lithophaga, Lam. Mytilus lithophagus, Linn. |