The hill on which Transylvania's only fortress stands was once covered with massive buildings by Diurban's race. Who now remembers so much as its name? The Roman legions subjected the nation, threw down the shapeless walls, and instead of the altar dedicated to the Blood-God, and stained with human sacrifices, there arose a temple of Vesta; the wooden palace of the Dacian duke vanished, and the marble halls of the proprætor took its place, with their Corinthian columns, their white mosaic floor, their artistically carved divinities. The place was then called _Colonia Apulensis_. Again the town grew old, fell down, and died. A new and mightier race came into it; the former inhabitants were buried beneath the ruins of their palaces and temples, and instead of the proprætor's palace, the gilded and enamelled dwelling of Duke Gyula,[42] with its skittle-shaped roof, towered up like an enchanted castle from the Thousand and One Nights, and on the ruins of the temple of Vesta the pagan forefathers of the Magyars built altars under the open sky, where they worshipped the sun, the stars, and a naked sword. Then the town was called Gyula-Fehervár.[43] [Footnote 42: _Gyula_ = Julius. The heathen Prince of Transylvania at the end of the tenth century.] [Footnote 43: _Gyula-Fehervár._ White Julius' town.] A century passed, and Stephen, saint and king, cast down the altars of the fire-worshippers, and built a vast church on the spot where so many false gods had been adored. The sun-worshippers disappeared, and the Christian world called the church after the name of the Archangel Michael. What sort of church was it?--Nobody can now tell! Two centuries later the Tartars came, levelled town and church with the ground, and put the population to the sword. On their departure they gave to the town the scornful nickname Nigra-Julia.[44] [Footnote 44: _Nigra Julia._ Black Julia.] Our nation's greatest man, John Hunniady, rebuilt it. Traces of his huge Gothic arches may still be found there. In the crypt, built at the same time, all the Princes of Transylvania were buried in richly-carved sarcophagi. Here _rested_ Hunniady himself and his headless son Ladislaus.[45] They _rested_ here, but only for a time. Robber-hordes came and scattered the sacred relics, and devastated the church, and the succeeding princes who patched it up again during the Turkish dominion, added to the Gothic groundwork the peculiarities of Arab architecture, serpentine columns, and Moorish arabesques. [Footnote 45: _Ladislaus Hunniady._ The eldest son of the great hero, treacherously beheaded in 1456.]