There was also a prison, called Latomiæ, a word signifying a quarry. Cicero has particularly described this dreadful prison, which was a cave dug out of the solid rock, one hundred and twenty-five paces long, and twenty feet broad, and almost one hundred feet below the surface of the earth. Cicero, also, reproaches Verres with imprisoning Roman citizens in this place; which was the work of Dionysius, who caused those to be shut up in it, who had the misfortune to have incurred his displeasure. It is now a noble subterranean garden. The fountain of Arethusa[266] also still exists. It was dedicated to Diana, who had a magnificent temple near its banks, where great festivals were annually celebrated in honour of that goddess. It is indeed an astonishing fountain, and rises at once out of the earth to the size of a river: and many of the people believe, even to this day, that it is the identical river, Arethusa, that was said to have sunk under ground near Olympia in Greece, and, continuing its course five hundred or six hundred miles below the ocean, rose again in this spot.[267] NO. XXXVIII.—THEBES. The glory of Thebes belongs to a period, prior to the commencement of authentic history. It is recorded only by the divine light of poetry and tradition, which might be suspected as fable, did not such mighty witnesses remain to attest the truth. A curious calculation, made from the rate of increase of deposition by the Nile, corroborated by other evidence, shows however that this city must have been founded four thousand seven hundred and sixty years ago, or two thousand nine hundred and thirty before Christ. There are the ruins of a temple, bearing an inscription, stating that it was founded by Osymandyas, who reigned, according to M. Champollion, two thousand two hundred and seventy years before Christ. [Illustration: THEBES.] Thebes was called, also, Diospolis, as having been sacred to Jupiter; and Hecatompylos, on account, it is supposed, of its having had a hundred gates. “Not all proud Thebes’ unrivall’d walls contains, The world’s great empress, on the Egyptian plain; That spreads her conquests o’er a thousand states, And pours her heroes through a hundred gates— Two hundred horsemen, and two hundred cars, From each wide portal issuing to the wars.” HOMER’S ILIAD; POPE. “This epithet Hecatompylos, however,” says Mr. Wilkinson, “applied to it by Homer, has generally been supposed to refer to the hundred gates of its wall of circuit; but this difficulty is happily solved by an observation of Diodorus, that many suppose them ‘to have been the propylæa of the temples,’ and that this expression rather implies a plurality, than a definite number.”