Now the last of these lies in the centre of the ruin, perhaps the most impressive figure wrought by man’s hands, so like does it seem—blurred, vague, tremendous—to some effort to symbolize in stone the whole human race—the very frame of the world itself. Shoulder and breast an upheaved mountain range, down which the mighty muscles pour like leaping rivers to the plain of the enormous loins and thighs. Rough-hewn locks cluster about the frowning brows, as a gnarled forest grips a cliff’s edge, from beneath which stare darkly the caverned eyes. Primeval, prehistoric in form, overrun by gnawing lichens, smeared by lapse of time to a mere vast adumbration of the human form. This temple had been the supreme effort of Akragas, the richest and most beautiful city the Greeks ever built. The stories of its wealth, of its luxury, of its gardens, palaces, theatres, baths, its gaieties, and its pomps, sound like a description of Rome under the Empire, and would be incredible if such ruins as this did not exist to attest to the facts. Far more characteristic of the Greek were those twin temples of Castor and Pollux —“These be the great Twin Brethren To whom the Dorians pray”— to which Fortunato turned their steps as a refreshing counteraction of the stern immensities of Zeus. Light, delicate, gracious fragments they were, lifting themselves airily from a sea of flowers on the edge of the ravine-like Piscina, once the reservoir for the city’s 212water, but now full of lemon orchards, and fringed by immense dark carouba trees.... Another day, conducted by Fortunato always, they pilgrimed to the temple of Hercules, oldest and most archaic of them all, containing still in the cella remains of the pedestal on which stood that famous bronze statue of the muscular hero and demigod. The statue which that unscrupulous collector, Verres, tried to remove and thereby provoked a riot in the city. In this temple too had hung Zeuxis’ renowned painting of Hercules’ mother, Alcmena.