Making his way along this imaginary street over masses of ruins, his attention is attracted by four magnificent pillars of greater height and larger diameter than the rest; but, like all the others, supporting only a entablature, and probably standing before the front of some principal edifice now destroyed. He next arrives at a square formed by the first intersection of the main street by one crossing it at right angles, and, like it also, apparently once lined on both sides by an avenue of columns. At the point of intersection are four masses of building resembling pedestals; on the top of which there probably stood small Corinthian columns, as shafts and capitals of that order are now scattered below. Passing the fragments of a solid wall on the left, which appears to have constituted the front of a large edifice, the tourist next comes to the ruins of a temple of a semicircular form, with four columns in front, and facing the principal street in a right line. The spring of its half-dome is still remaining, as well as several columns of yellow marble and of red granite. The whole seems to have been executed with peculiar care, especially the sculpture of the friezes, cornices, pediments, and capitals, which are all of the Corinthian order, and considered not less rich and chaste than the works of the best ages. On a broken altar near this ruin is observed an inscription, containing the name of Marcus Aurelius. "Beyond this, again," says Mr. Buckingham, "we had temples, colonnades, theatres, arched buildings with domes, detached groups of Ionic and Corinthian columns, bridges, aqueducts, and portions of large buildings scattered here and there in our way; none of which we could examine with any degree of attention, from the restraint under which our guides had placed us."[137]