It was with an appetite whetted by long waiting that I landed in Sicily on the last day of May, 1897. Anybody might enjoy travel in Sicily. Its scenery is magnificent. A mountainous country with a coast-line of rugged headlands, and here and there a river breaking through to the sea, opening up vistas into the interior and forming a fertile plain at its mouth; above all, snow-capped and smoking Ætna, with its nearly eleven thousand feet towering so high as to be seen from every part of the island except the valleys, form a combination attractive even to one who has left history and art out of his travelling outfit. The student of history, however, gets a keener enjoyment in this land where so much history—ancient, mediÆval, and modern—has been enacted. Not only was it the apple of discord between Rome and Carthage, but, to say nothing of Sikans, Elymi, and Sikels, because their movements are wrapped in the mist of a prehistoric past, Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Franks, Vandals, Goths, Byzantines, Saracens, Normans, Germans, French, and Spaniards successively shaped its destinies until Garibaldi at last brought it to rest in the bosom of the kingdom of Italy. But Sicily has an especial interest for the student of the history and art of ancient Greece. He who studies the country now known as Greece and neglects the greater Hellas in the west makes a great mistake. Akragas and Selinus have left more imposing ruins than Athens, Olympia, and Delphi; and Syracuse was at one time the most populous and the most powerful of all Greek cities.

It was this especial claim which drew me and my two companions, members of the American School at Athens, to Catania. We desired to become as familiar with western Hellas as we had already become with eastern Hellas. We came rather too late in the year; not that physical comfort is an element for great consideration in such a land; it is rather the psychological aspect which I have in mind. Theocritus has thrown such associations of spring over Sicily that the traveller feels that he ought to be there with “pulses thronged with the fulness of the spring,” which can hardly be the case in the great heat of June. Perhaps our bicycles might seem to some out of time with Theocritus and Pindar, and we did not try to throw any glamour of poetry over them. But they were vastly convenient. We had sent forward our heavy luggage to Palermo, and they carried all that we needed for two weeks. While they were not a substitute for trains, they freed us from servile dependence on trains. If a train went our way at our time, as it did from Syracuse to Girgenti, we took it. But finding no railroad connection between Girgenti and Selinus, except such as took us across to the north side of the island and then back again to the south side, we passed the intervening space in a direct line along the southern shore, saving both time and money. When we were at Syracuse we wished to visit the river Asinaros, where the fugitive Athenian army was brought to bay and slaughtered and captured. The five o’clock train was too early. Who likes to take a morning meal at half-past four with the fear of losing a train before his eyes? Discomfort if not dyspepsia hovers over him. The alternative of a later train involved giving up the day to this excursion, and we needed that day for something else. We took a comfortable meal, and, starting at six o’clock, at a quarter past eight were on the banks of the Asinaros, and by the aid of a train were back in Syracuse at ten o’clock, ready for a good day’s work.

Our beginning was inauspicious. A chapter of small accidents on the lava-paved streets of Catania kept us hovering around a shop presided over by a woman in which sewing-machines and a few other miscellaneous machines, including bicycles, were repaired. Here, in a subordinate position, was one of those mechanics who know how to do things as if by instinct, a not unworthy successor of HephÆstos, who used to do business on a grander scale hard by, with Ætna for his forge. Your real mechanic, from Tubal Cain down, is always the right man in the right place. A deft-handed New Hampshire mechanic once said to me, after putting some dislocated object to rights in less than five minutes, “I shall have to charge you ten cents for doing the job and fifteen cents for knowing how.” It struck me as a good expression of the claims of the guild.

When we got off it was nearly eleven o’clock, and the flower of the day was gone; but we had vowed to see the sunrise from the theatre of Taormina the next morning; and so we sped off in the heat over roads so bad as to make us repent of all the hard things we had said of the roads of Greece. A good deal of the way lay between Ætna and the sea over lava-beds of various ages, among them the identical stream which, coming down fresh and hot, turned Himilco from proceeding straight against Dionysius and Syracuse after the destruction of Messina, and obliged him to make the circuit of the awful mountain. Shortly after noon we passed, on the highest of these lava-beds, Acireale, the most important of several Acis, all of which commemorate Acis, who here, to his grief, associated with Galatea and Polyphemus. Near by are several jagged islands pointed out by tradition as the very rocks which the latter hurled at Ulysses with such poor results. From this point on Taormina lay clear before us in the distance, high up above the sea, though but a short horizontal distance from it. When we reached Giardini, the village on the seashore which serves as a railroad station for Taormina, parched with heat and thirst, we were reminded of the verse of Euripides, “The sea washes away all human ills,” and we here began a series of baths with which we encircled the island. Nemesis marked me when, in exuberance of spirit, I made the understatement, “This bath is worth a dollar,” and made it cost me just that amount. Between the road and the shore was a railroad with a cactus hedge on each side of it. In passing this I hardly noticed that my wheel had lightly brushed against a cactus plant. But we had hardly begun the ascent to Taormina before my wheel was in a state of collapse.

Well, the morrow must take thought for the things of itself. Here was Taormina for us to enjoy. We had planned to spend one night only here, because there was little material for archÆological study except the famous theatre, which in its present state is Roman. It was indeed refreshing to see near the upper rim of the theatre, and partly covered by its massive but cheap-looking walls of brick, the foundations of a Greek temple in four courses with its perfect joints of stone. But while Syracuse and Girgenti and Selinus were our proper fields for study, Taormina was for pleasure. From this eyrie, Ætna, which from Catania is in some degree disappointing, as is even Mont Blanc when seen from Chamonix, rises as grandly as does Mont Blanc when seen from the heights across the valley, FlÉgÈre or BrÉvent; and when the sun, rising over Calabria, gives a rosy color to the slope up to the snow-line, one gazes, forgetting the theatre in the glory of the mountain.

Although we had studied the theatre adequately on the first day, we were caught by the charm of the place; and a second sunrise in the theatre seemed so desirable that we broke our carefully drawn up itinerary at the very outset, the necessary two-thirds vote being easily obtained. About a thousand feet above Taormina rises a height which once served as an acropolis to ancient Tauromenium, crowned with a village and castle called Mola. Having climbed this in the hot afternoon we saw, about another thousand feet above us, a point called Monte Venere, which seemed to dominate the whole region. We subsequently read in Frances Elliot’s “Travels in Sicily,” "Certain misguided travellers have even been known to attempt Monte Venere." But not suspecting at the time that we were misguided, but only questioning whether the scaling of Monte Venere would cost us our table d’hÔte dinner at the Hotel Timeo, we decided, by a rather doubtful two-thirds vote, to try it. We stormed it at a pace such as the Bavarian division struck at Speicheren when told that a fresh keg of beer was to be broached “up there” at ten o’clock, and that they must be on hand. As the result of our toil we got a superb view into the interior, including a peep in behind Ætna, which from this point seemed even grander than from Taormina. It was labor well spent.

During our whole stay at Taormina there was no spot on which my eye and my thoughts so frequently rested as on the little tongue of land just below us to the south, which we had passed in coming from Catania. On this vine-covered plain once lay Naxos, settled by men from Chalkis in 734 B.C. What a chain of consequences followed upon this small beginning! Leontini and Catania were founded from Naxos itself almost immediately afterward. Dorian Corinth, following hard after Ionian Chalkis, founded Syracuse, and with the birth of western Hellas the strife of Dorian and Ionian was made a part of its life. But before this strife brought ruin a period of expansion and prosperity followed which finds its only parallel in the two centuries and a half of the history of our own country.

Having no desire to traverse again a bad road, we took an early train, which brought us back to Catania at eight o’clock. Our first visit there was to the “divine artificer,” who found eight punctures impartially distributed over my two tires. We thus learned to know the cactus in a new light. Hereafter we avoided even a dry piece of it lying in the road as cavalry would avoid caltrops. We took advantage of the necessary delay to visit the most interesting monument of Greek Catania, the theatre, covered by lava, on which rest the houses of the modern city. Enough underground excavation has been done to enable one to realize the appearance of the place when Alcibiades here harangued the Catanians to bring them over to the Athenian alliance, and had such drastic force lent to his lisping oratory by a body of Athenian hoplites, who, coming from their camp outside the city, broke down a weak spot in the wall and entered the city before he got to his peroration.

Again it was about noon when we mounted with intention to ride to Lentini, somewhat over a third of the way to Syracuse, across a level plain, and then take a train across the hill-country to within ten miles of Syracuse, there to resume our ride. For an hour or more we were passing through the famous “Campi LÆstrygonii,” which Cicero calls “uberrima pars SiciliÆ,” now known as the plain of Catania, the most extensive plain in Sicily. Then we crossed the SymÆthos, and soon began a gentle climb, with the sun almost in the zenith. Now and then a turn in the road, or if not that, a look over the shoulder, gave us a fine view of Ætna, which kept increasing in majesty as we receded from it. I was thankful that we had not climbed it. That would have in some measure vulgarized it. A geologist might do it in the line of his profession. But one who wishes to keep the Ætna of Æschylus and Pindar may do better to gaze with awe from the hill of Syracuse, as they did, upon this Greek Sinai. I do not want to overpower a mountain like that. I want it to overpower me. One may doubt whether Coleridge would or could have written his hymn to Mont Blanc if he had “conquered” it, as tourists express it.

Just as the train for Syracuse was coming in we reached Lentini station, and this time the sea that “washes away all human ills” was not available. We here made a resolve to do our work in the future when the sun was nearer the horizon. There was nothing of interest for us to investigate in the city of Gorgias, the sophist and orator, whose silver tongue, combined with a bold and transparent trick of the Segestans, duped the Athenians, who thought themselves the wisest of men, into the Sicilian expedition. We were accordingly glad to speed along to Priolo, a station between the ruins of Megara and the flat peninsula, Thapsos. Just beyond the latter, having ridden long enough to get up steam, we washed away our ills for that day with the hill of Syracuse looking down upon us, and then as renewed men passed, when the sun was approaching the horizon, over that historic hill, and looked down on the historic harbor and on little Ortygia, large enough to hold the modern city as it held the first Corinthian colony. What a tide of associations rush over one at this sight! In a sense we were at our goal. Had we closed our journey with that nightfall we should at least have read our Thucydides for the future with different eyes.

In an exaltation of spirit we came to the Casa Politi, almost at the point of Ortygia, looking out upon the sea, where we found a German host and hostess. After our strenuous and partially successful wrestling with Italian, which had generally ended by our falling back on the member who had taken Italian at Harvard to straighten out for us the tangled web of the dialogue, how welcome it was when we asked the question, “Haben Sie vielleicht gutes Bier?” to get straight from the shoulder the honest answer, “Jawohl, gewiss,” and the more tangible answer of three foaming mugs from a cool cellar. We had lived in the spirit a good deal that day, enjoying the beauty of Taormina, Ætna, and Syracuse, and holding converse with Alcibiades and Gorgias and Thucydides. Now we hobnobbed with Gambrinus, and enjoyed “the warmest welcome in an inn.”

I have never had more full and exhilarating days than those four days in Syracuse, days full of revelation, recollection, reverie, or, to put it more prosaically, days devoted to study in history and topography. The ruins of Syracuse are not to the casual observer very imposing. One might almost say of them, “periere etiamque ruinÆ.” But even these ruins have great interest for the archÆologist. There is, for example, an old temple near the northern end of Ortygia, for the most part embedded in the buildings of the modern city, yet with its east end cleared and showing several entire columns with a part of the architrave upon them. And what a surprise here awaits one who thinks of a Doric temple as built on a stereotyped plan! Instead of the thirteen columns on the long sides which one is apt to look for as going with a six-column front, here are eighteen or nineteen, it is not yet quite certain which. The columns stand less than their diameter apart, and the abaci are so broad that they nearly touch. So small is the intercolumnar space that archÆologists incline to the belief that in this one Doric temple there were triglyphs only over the columns, and not also between them as in all other known cases. Everything about this temple stamps it as the oldest in Sicily. An inscription on the top step, in very archaic letters, much worn and difficult to read, contains the name of Apollo in the ancient form, ?p?????. The inscription may, of course, be later than the temple; but it is in itself old enough to warrant the supposition that the temple was erected soon after the first Corinthian colonists established themselves in the island. While the inscription makes it reasonably certain that the temple belonged to Apollo, the god under whose guiding hand all these Dorians went out into these western seas, tradition, with strange perversity, has given it the name of “Temple of Diana.” But it is all in the family. Whether tradition has also erred in naming the temple on the highest part of the island, into which the cathedral has been so immured that the old temple columns protrude on each side of the church, the “Temple of Minerva,” is a question to which archÆologists have not yet returned a unanimous answer. Indications point rather to Zeus. This temple owes its preservation, such as it is, to this immuring of the cathedral in it. In fact, the temple is nearly all present, although one might almost pass it by in the daytime without seeing it. Another temple ruin on the edge of the plateau, which begins about two miles south of the city, across the Anapos, one might also easily overlook in a casual survey, because it consists only of two columns without capitals, and a broad extent of the foundations from which the accumulated earth has been only partially removed. This was the famous temple of Olympian Zeus, built probably in the days of Hiero I., soon after the Persian war, but on the site of a temple still more venerable. One seeks a reason for the location of this holy place at such a distance from the city. Holm, the German historian of Sicily, argues with some plausibility that this was no mere suburb of Syracuse, but the original Syracuse itself. In the first place, the list of the citizens of Syracuse was kept here down at least to the time of the Athenian invasion. In the second place, tradition, which, when rightly consulted, tells so much, says that Archias, the founder of Syracuse, had two daughters, Ortygia and Syracusa, which may point to two co-ordinate settlements, Ortygia and Syracuse; the latter, which was on this temple plateau, being subsequently merged in the former, but, as sometimes happens in such cases, giving its name to the combined result.

Besides these temple ruins there are many more foundations that tell a more or less interesting story. Then there are remains of the ancient city that can never be ruined: for instance, the great stone quarries, pits over a hundred feet deep and acres broad, in some of which the Athenian prisoners were penned up to waste away under the gaze of the pitiless captors; the Greek theatre, cut out of the solid rock; the great altar of Hiero II., six hundred feet long and about half as broad, also of solid rock. Then there is the mighty Hexapylon, which closed the fortifications of Dionysius at the northwest at the point where they challenged attack from the land side. With its sally-ports and rock-hewn passages, some capacious enough to quarter regiments of cavalary, showing holes cut in the projecting corners of rock, through which the hitch-reins of the horses were wont to be passed, and its great magazines, it stands a lasting memorial to the energy of a tyrant. But while this fortress is practically indestructible, an impregnable fortress is a dream incapable of realization. Marcellus and his stout Romans came in through these fortifications, not entirely, it is true, by their own might, but by the aid of traitors, against whom no walls are proof.

One of the stone quarries, the Latomia del Paradiso, has an added interest from its association with the tyrant who made himself hated as well as feared, while Gelon was only feared without being hated. An inner recess of the quarry is called the “Ear of Dionysius,” and tradition says that at the inner end of this recess either he or his creatures sat and listened to the murmurs that the people uttered against him, and that these murmurs were requited with swift and fatal punishment. Certain it is that a whisper in this cave produces a wonderful resonance, and a pistol-shot is like the roar of a cannon; but that people who had anything to say against the butcher should come up within ear-shot of him to utter it is not very likely. Historians are not quite sure that the connection of Dionysius with this recess is altogether mythical, but that he shaped it with the fell purpose above mentioned is not to be thought of, as the whole quarry is older than his time, and was probably, with the Latomia dei Cappuccini, a prison for the Athenians.

No object is more frequently mentioned in connection with Syracuse than Arethusa, the nymph changed into a fountain when pursued across the sea by the river Alpheius. The water of this fountain, much praised in antiquity, has in recent times become brackish by the letting in of salt water through earthquakes. But what it has lost in real excellence it has gained in stylish appearance. For the sake of its ancient renown, washerwomen have recently been excluded from it, a fine wall put about it, and papyrus plants added to make it look picturesque. Enveloped in a more natural beauty lies the rival fountain, Kyane, the source of the southern branch of the Anapos some distance south of the Olympieum. The nymph Kyane was turned into a fountain by Pluto because she told Demeter of the rape of Persephone. We gave half a day to Kyane, and had ourselves pushed up a stream lined with reeds and papyrus, the latter a reminder of Saracen occupation, to this spring, from which the stream comes forth with a rush. It is difficult to decide which is more beautiful, the clear, deep, broad spring or the stream through which one approaches it. The whole journey is like an excursion into fairy-land, the outside world being shut out by the reeds and papyrus.

But if the monuments of Syracuse are on the whole comparatively unimpressive, what a history is crowded into the less than three centuries between Gelon, the second founder of the city, in that he made it great, and Marcellus. This history is far from being a mere record of slaughter, and sieges, and sack of cities. The time of Hiero I. is memorable for the appearance at Syracuse, in familiar if not always friendly converse, of Pindar, Simonides, Bacchylides, Æschylus, Epicharmos and Xenophanes. One must not think of the poetry of this Hieronian circle as exotic because most of the poets were transplanted: to the Greek poets any place in the Greek world where they were appreciated and cared for was home. Anacreon sang as well and as naturally at Samos and Athens as at his native Teos; Simonides’s muse was apparently equally happy in Athens, Thessaly, and Sicily; and even the Theban eagle suffered no relaxation of his wings at the Syracusan court; nay, he appears to have made his loftiest flights there. Over one-third of his epinicion odes are for Sicilian victors. Of the Titan Æschylus alone of that company one may suspect that, although he did not always get on well at home, yet the sojourn so far from Eleusis and Marathon found him homesick and heartsick. It is only rarely in the world’s history that such a lot of stars gather around a court. It is a good deal that Syracuse was again visited by the muses in the time of Hiero II., when Theocritus took up his abode there.

The afternoon before we left Syracuse we got a reminder that its greatness did not all pass away with the Roman occupation. The enormous catacombs from Christian times speak of new and better days. But what stirs one more is one particular spot in the crypt of St. Marcian, a church partly made out of a temple of Bacchus. Here, in front of an old altar, a block of stone is pointed out as the stone on which St. Paul stood when he preached at Syracuse. One gets impatiently sceptical about traces of the saints in Italy; but why not accept the report that in his three days’ stay at Syracuse, recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, St. Paul preached here? What is more fitting than that, by the very altar of the god of revelry, the great apostle should speak as he spoke at Athens? At any rate, I add this spot to Appii Forum and Tres TabernÆ as a place where I trod in the footsteps of a man beside whom Gelon, Pyrrhus, and Hannibal were pygmies.

II

On the journey from Syracuse to Girgenti by rail through the heart of Sicily the most interesting point is Castrogiovanni, the ancient Enna, called the navel of Sicily, a height from which one sees mountains diverging in every direction, a real Knotenpunkt. The railroad affords a view of Enna only from some distance as it plunges into a long tunnel under the ridge joining this height to another almost as high, on which stands Calascibetta. The surroundings of the old Sikel town, Enna, which, being early colonized by Syracuse, became a lasting monument of Greek domination over the Sikel, were probably much more beautiful in ancient times. On these rather bare heights there was once such luxuriant growth of woods and flowers that hunting-dogs lost the scent of the game. In this flower-garden the Sicilian legend placed the rape of Persephone.

As the train approached Girgenti it passed through the great sulphur region of the world. Here thousands of boys, many of them under ten years of age, carry the sulphur up to the surface. These boys are bound over by their parents to the overseers of the mines for the sum of two hundred francs, more or less, which they are expected to work off. But it takes years to do it, and many die before they succeed. The parents spend the purchase money and the children live on in despair. Our informant, a German-American, who had come over to study the sulphur industry, and who was not a sentimentalist, said that the sight of these boys going up and down the ladders with tears rolling down their cheeks had made him join in their sighs and carry a heavy heart all the way to Palermo.

The case of Girgenti is that of Syracuse reversed. Its history is not so very important, but its ruins are impressive. Even at Himera, where Theron and Akragas stood by Gelon and Syracuse, it was in a second rÔle. On that occasion, when the larger part of the Carthaginian prisoners fell to Akragas, apparently because they strayed into Akragantine territory after the battle, some of the citizens are said to have got five hundred slaves apiece. From this time Akragas gave itself up to the amassing of wealth. As a consequence it became the least martial and most luxurious of Greek cities, showing, like Corinth, that a Dorian city, when once given over to pleasure, could outdo the Ionians in that direction. While Syracuse battled with Athens, Akragas remained neutral. About the only form of strenuous activity to which it arose was athletics; and even then a victory was made an occasion for a display of wealth. When ExÆnetos won in the stadion at Olympia, three hundred span of milk-white horses accompanied him into the city.

The luxury of Akragas took on a peculiarly showy and almost gross type. The men loaded themselves with gold ornaments. They erected tombs to horses which had won Olympic victories and to other favorite animals. A typical Akragantine was Gellias, who used to have slaves stand at his door and invite every passing stranger to come in; and once, when five hundred knights from Gela made a visit to Akragas in the winter, he took them all in, entertained them, and gave each of them a new chiton and himation. That the means of entertainment did not fail him is shown by the statement that he had three hundred rock-hewn wine-barrels, holding each a hundred amphorÆ, and a big vat holding a thousand amphorÆ, out of which these were filled; and this was private hospitality.

One could hardly expect moderation when such bountiful provision for carousal was at hand. AthenÆus tells a story showing how well the young men lived up to their privileges. Some of these, drinking themselves dizzy at a banquet, declared that the house rocked like a ship, and, as if to avert impending shipwreck, began to lighten ship by pitching the furniture out of the windows, to the danger, and then to the hilarious delight, of the passers-by. But as a crowd and some disorder resulted, the generals went to the house to investigate the matter. The young bloods were equal to the emergency. They accosted the graybeards as Tritons, thanked them for deliverance from the storm, and vowed to sacrifice to them so soon as they had got over their sea-sickness and fright. The old men, being carried away with the humor of the thing, entered into the spirit of the joke, and that house was ever after known as “the ship.”

Such a joke might have been played in a good many other towns, but the following bit of gossip, if not true, is ben trovato, and has a peculiarly Akragantine flavor. It is related that at the fatal siege of the city by the Carthaginians, when all was at stake, a law was passed restricting the guards when at their posts to one under-mattress and one over-mattress, one blanket, and two pillows. If these things were done in a green tree, what was done in a dry? Empedocles, the most eminent citizen of Akragas, said of his fellow-citizens that they indulged in high living as if they were going to die to-morrow, but built as if they were going to live forever. The first half of this statement we have to judge by gossip, which, as it is very bulky and all to the same point, may well make us believe that when there is so much smoke there must be some fire. For the corroboration of the latter half, go to Girgenti and circumspice.

What a moment was that when, toward the end of the afternoon, after toiling up from the station on the north side of Girgenti to the city itself, which occupied the site of the acropolis of Akragas, we looked down on the plateau sloping southward toward the sea, and dotted with the famous ruins long known to us by photographs. About a mile below us, in the direction of the ruins, was the HÔtel des Temples, which we had been told in Syracuse was to close for the summer the day before. But as “the Greeks got into Troy by trying,” we thought we would try to get into this hotel, and be near our goal. At the door a boy declared that the house was closed; but at our request he said he would call the padrone. In ten minutes there appeared in riding clothes, and leading a horse, the most charming landlord of Sicily, with a bewitching smile and the manners of a gentleman. He said that, although his house was closed and his cook gone, he had not the heart to send us back up into the city. We could have, he said, eight or nine beds apiece, and, as he had a hunting comrade with him for the night, he could give us some soup and meat.

More than satisfied to have established a base of operations, without a delay of five minutes we were at the Concordia Temple, the most perfectly preserved Greek temple, unless we except perhaps the Theseum. Having an hour and a half of daylight, we used it in getting a first view of nearly everything on the plateau, and then returned to what we supposed was to be a frugal meal. But the dinner was an Akragantine feast, the best of the whole journey, with the possible exception of the next one at the same table. We wondered what sort of a dinner the regular cook would have produced if this was done by a novice; and when the padrone made apologies for his dinner, we searched his smiling face for traces of sarcasm.

The next day we enjoyed in detail what we had already enjoyed in the lump, that row of temples lined up along the southern edge of the plateau which here ends in a rocky precipice. These temples when new, with the city of half a million inhabitants behind it, and the acropolis above it with still more temples, must have been a very effective sight to one coming up from the sea five miles away.

Although the material of the temples is a friable yellow sandstone, quarried near by, we must not in reconstructing our picture think of them as yellow temples. They doubtless had stucco and paint enough to hide this core. The stone is so porous that it is not surprising to find the columns on the south side—i.e., the side most exposed to the sirocco—badly eaten away. The whole line dates from the fifth century, and was doubtless planned and begun by Theron, who had armies of slaves from Himera.

What Greek name the Concordia Temple had is unknown. Holm suspects that it is the temple of Demeter, although the substructure under a church farther up the hill has generally been assigned to her. It owes its excellent preservation to the fact that in the Middle Ages it was turned into a church of St. Gregory of the turnips, whoever he was, when the cella walls were perforated with a series of arches on each side, to let in the light.

The next best preserved is the temple of Hera Lacinia, in the most commanding situation of all, having the precipice, which is here higher and more abrupt, on its east front, as well as on its south side. It is also considerably the highest of the line. Its present name is surely wrong. It is quite likely to have been a temple of Poseidon, a divinity held in honor at Akragas, a horse-rearing as well as a maritime city. The temple of Herakles is more interesting than either of these, although only one column stands upright; the rest lie as they were thrown down by an earthquake, in such good order that it would be easy to set them up again; and the result would be much more important than Cavalari’s so-called temple of Castor and Pollux, which, being a corner of a temple put together out of two different temples, should be properly called "Cavalari’s folly." The temple of Herakles is rightly named. It was identified as being at the sacred gate and near the agora. It is much larger than the two temples already described, and shows, like them, traces of a great conflagration which reddened the yellow stone in places. Its ground plan is very clear but peculiar, and so extremely interesting. Sicily is the place of all others to study the construction of the Greek temple.

But the object of greatest interest is the Zeus Temple, still farther west in the line. This justifies the saying of Empedocles above quoted, being so large that the Parthenon could be lost in one corner of it, as the wooden ladle was lost in Lady Wouter Van Twiller’s pocket. It is the most massive of Greek temples, in the sense in which the temple of Zeus at Olympia is more massive than the Parthenon—i.e., its columns and all its members are larger. So enormous were its dimensions that the architect readily saw that he must deviate from the ordinary rules of construction. Columns of friable stone fifty-five feet high, supporting an unusually heavy entablature, needed support themselves. Accordingly they were embedded in a continuous wall. What one here saw was not a line of graceful columns between which and the cella one could walk about, but only a great wall with half columns protruding from it. These half columns were not really independent members. The small blocks composing them run over into the wall to the right and left. They simply serve to break up a monotonous wall, and to present the appearance of columns. This contour, which is a little over a semi-circumference, averages about twenty feet, being, of course, greater at the bottom. A man’s back, as was remarked by Diodorus Siculus, easily fits into the flutings. The clearest idea, however, of the large proportions of the temple I got by noting that the grooves in a triglyph lying on the ground measured fifteen feet in length. It would also be no exaggeration to say that a company could dance on the top of one of the capitals lying about.

The inside of this temple must have been as peculiar as the outside. The great question here is where to place the gigantic figures called Atlantes or Telamones, male figures corresponding to the female figures on the Erechtheum, but, unlike them, showing exertion, like Atlas in the Olympia metope. Probably they stood on the lateral walls of the cella, and, with their twenty-five feet, they would reach up to the roof, like the second row of columns at PÆstum. The cella probably ran clear through from one end of the temple to the other, and, while the two divisions of the temple to the right and left of it, which were as much closed as the cella itself, had entrances from the east, the cella was probably entered from the west. One has to say “probably” very often in speaking of the interior, because the temple has been nearly all carried away to make the pier at Porto Empedocle, the harbor of the modern city. As late as 1401 three columns were still standing and carrying a piece of the architrave. But the temple entered very early on the stage of dilapidation, for the reason that the roof was never put upon it. For more than half a century, even from the time of Theron, Akragas had wrought upon this monster building, and had not finished it when the Carthaginian fury broke upon her. Although the city rose again, and even prospered, it never saw a day for taking up again such a gigantic enterprise.

Besides this temple of Olympian Zeus there was an older temple of Zeus Polieus on the acropolis, to which an unusual interest attaches, because it was built by Phalaris, of execrable memory, who, having attached to himself a band of laborers for the construction of the temple, by their help seized the sovereign power and subverted the democracy. Down in the crypt of the Church of Santa Maria dei Greci we were shown a regular stylobate of three steps, and on the top step eight columns, the upper parts of which run up into the church, which shows also columns of the other long side of the temple. Tradition claims this as the identical temple built by Phalaris. But as the forms of the columns forbid putting them back into the sixth century we do better to identify them with the temple of Athena on the acropolis. The temple built by Phalaris is to be sought, then, on the ground occupied by the modern cathedral. Jove gave place to Jesus, and the virgin goddess, as at Athens, to the Virgin Mother.

When we told our smiling host that we intended to ride in one day from his hotel to Castelvetrano, the point of departure for Selinus, he said the thing was impossible. We told him that, while we admitted his judgment in all that pertained to horses, we were going to make the sixty-two miles which, according to Baedeker, lay between us and our goal between sunrise and sunset, however bad the road might be. He then, like a true sportsman, got interested, offered to bet, and when we declined begged us to telegraph back to him if we really did it.

As we had to wake up the cook the next morning, after waking up ourselves, the sun was well up in the heavens before we got off. But the coffee which cost us so much time must have told on our gait; for a fellow-countryman, whom we first met two days later at Palermo, seemed impressed by it, and rather proud of it. He asked, “Didn’t I see you go through Porto Empedocle the day before yesterday morning on bicycles?” When we assented he said: “Well, I told the American Consul who was with me, ‘I bet dose vas American boys.’” And the next day he repeated, as if pleased with his own sagacity, “I told the Consul, ‘I bet dose vas American boys.’”

As we started the next morning toward Selinus, after passing the night at Castelvetrano, I realized that this, more even than Syracuse, was my chief object of interest in this long-delayed Sicilian journey.

The history of this short-lived colony of a colony is invested with a pathetic interest. Planted by Sicilian Megara in 628 B.C., as an outpost of Hellas toward the west, it was a standing challenge to the Phoenicians. But there was not always war between Hellas and Canaan. The Phoenicians, who had long been in possession of the west end of the island, were bent on gain, while the Greek sought rather for a free unfolding of his civic life; and so, Selinus, with a little temporizing, got on with its neighbors.

There were some strange vicissitudes in Sicilian politics. From the time when Carthage appeared in Sicily as a protector of the older Phoenician settlements, Selinus saw its advantage in siding with her against other rivals. On the great day of Himera, Gelon and Theron had to contend against Selinus as well as against Carthage. This off-side play was not, however, regarded by the other Sicilian cities as sufficient cause for shutting Selinus out of the sisterhood of states.

But, while Selinus had an eye to profit, it did not, like Akragas, forget the art of war. That she was a power in western Sicily in the days when Carthage was so strangely inactive for seventy years after Himera, is shown by an inscription of this time, which mentions a victory won by the Selinuntians “with the aid of Zeus and Phobos and Herakles and Apollo and Poseidon and the TyndaridÆ and Athena and Malophoros and Pasikrateia and the other gods, but especially Zeus.” This drawing in of so large a part of the pantheon implies that it was a great victory. Probably it was won from Segesta, that most hated Elymian neighbor. But Segesta knew how to help herself. After she had lured Athens to destruction in this same quarrel, she invoked the Carthaginian on a mission of destruction. For the Carthaginian was not subdued, but was biding his time, and, when he again fell upon Sicily, it was his old ally, Selinus, that first felt the weight of his arm. Then Zeus and Phobos seemed to forsake her. But her conduct was such in that awful visitation that Hellas had no reason to blush for this daughter.

The force which Hannibal led against her was, at the lowest estimate, 100,000, which was more than the total population of the city. The first attack on the land side, where the walls were weak and out of repair because no danger had threatened for years, was repulsed. A call for help was sent to both Akragas and Syracuse. The former might have had its contingent before the walls in three days, allowing one for the messenger. But Akragas waited for the Syracusans, who were two days farther off, to come and take them on the way. She paid the penalty for this delay three years later. She, as well as Syracuse, ought to have known that at Selinus they would be fighting for their own life. Syracuse was, moreover, an ally of Selinus in the war against Athens, which was finished only three years before with such eclat as to make Syracuse a proper champion of the Greek cities against the great enemy.

It is probable that the call for help was sent out before the enemy actually made its assault, but so speedy were the movements of the Carthaginians that one might have expected even prompt aid to come too late. Selinus, however, held out with such tenacity as to frustrate all calculation. For nine days, in the consciousness that she stood as a vanguard of Hellas, while the eastern hills were eagerly scanned for the succor that was hourly expected, Selinus conducted a defence rarely equalled in history.

There were not men enough to allow reliefs in defending the wall. The same men stood at their posts day and night. The old men brought new weapons, and sharpened those that were dull. The women carried food and water. Even on the ninth day, when the fierce Iberian mercenaries broke through the wall and the weary defenders, and got inside the city, the defence did not cease. The city had to be taken house by house, men and women hurling down stones from the house-tops until the supply was exhausted. And now, house after house was pillaged by men spurred on by the promise of free plunder given by Hannibal; and delicate women fell into hands compared with which the claws of wild beasts were tender. Soldiers paraded the streets with heads on the points of their spears and strings of hands slung over their shoulders. Only 2,600 survivors somehow found their way to Akragas.

On this very day a large force started from Syracuse; but when, united with the contingent of Akragas, it confronted the Carthaginians, the woe of Selinus was accomplished. Hannibal told these belated allies that he had dealt Selinus only its deserts, and that even its gods had pronounced against it. What a theme for a Jeremiah!

The six large temples of Selinus lie in a worse condition than that in which the Carthaginians left them. Earthquakes have been more active here than at Akragas. But these ruins, in two large groups, one on the acropolis and one on a plateau to the east, are the most interesting, as well as the most impressive, ruins in Europe. Their interest lies in the fact that they present us in tangible form the history of Greek architecture as it unfolded itself in a provincial town. There is Temple C (probably a Herakles temple; but archÆologists have refrained from giving doubtful names, and designated the temples by letters. Perhaps the names given at Syracuse and Girgenti, though false, are better pegs to serve the memory than letters), with “shapeless sculpture,” the well-known metope representing Perseus cutting off the head of Medusa, and another with Heracles carrying the mischievous Kerkopes flung over his shoulder. These grotesque attempts at sculpture, as well as the general consideration that the first thought of a colony was to erect a temple, allow us to date this oldest temple of Selinus as early as 600 B.C. The architecture is vastly better than the sculpture, a complete Doric style, with something of the clumsiness which marks the venerable ruin at Corinth. Then we may notice Temple E, probably a Hera temple, the southernmost of the three on the eastern plateau, a large and beautiful temple, once most gorgeously painted, and giving us, perhaps, more light than any other temple on the subject of polychromy in Doric architecture. The metopes, the best of which is Zeus receiving Hera on Mount Ida, mark this temple as a product of the early part of the fifth century, about the time of the temple of Zeus at Olympia. Then, at the other end of this line, on the eastern plateau, is Temple G, so enormous that it is supposed, like its brother at Akragas, to have been meant for none other than Zeus, the King of the gods. It is a few feet longer and a few feet wider than the great Akragas temple. Its date is given with a melancholy certainty; for it, as well as the Akragas temple, was never finished. It may well have taken a small community like this as much as the “forty and six years” which the Temple of Jerusalem required to put up such a colossal building. An especial interest attaches to it because we see it, as it were, stopped midway in a lively process of coming into being. Some of the huge drums are combined into columns, a few of which are fluted from top to bottom, while others have a little start of fluting at the top and bottom, and still others are only cut in the form of a twenty-sided polygon. But one must go to Campo Bello, about five miles distant, to feel in a still more lively manner the interruption of the building process. Here one sees a cliff where in one case workmen had just marked out, with a circular groove, a column-drum to be detached from its bed. In another place is one around which workmen have hewn for months, so that it is almost ready to be detached. Hard by are some already detached and rolled a little distance toward Selinus; still others are found transported half-way or more to the temple. The people of the country are filled with wonder at the sight. They recognize the fact that all these blocks were meant for the great temple; and some of them told an early traveller that the women of Selinus used to carry these stones on their heads from the quarry to the temple, spinning flax all the way as they went, adding, with naÏvetÉ: “But, you know, it was a race of women much larger than ours.”

These interesting temples show, as they stand side by side, great freedom in the application of the rules of Doric style. For instance, the number of columns on the side of a hexastyle temple varies from thirteen to seventeen. The number of steps also varies from two to six, instead of the canonical three.

When we visited Segesta the next day and saw its temple, also unfinished, as it was when the city was stricken down by the Greek Agathocles, we felt little pity for this city which had stirred up so much mischief for its foe, Selinus, and for its friend, Athens. But perhaps, after all, this Elymian city’s greatest crime was saying, “I must live.” If Selinus refused to accept this proposition, Segesta called in Athens or Carthage, regardless of the woes that might in consequence come upon those who disputed her right to live.

In shooting down from Segesta to the northern shore, without further exploration of what may be called the country of Æneas, we got glimpses of Mount Eryx, the favorite haunt of Venus; and later in the day the train brought us to Palermo, “that wonderful cross-section of history.” But as it was not rich in Greek history our tour in western Hellas was at an end.