The statues were often of gold and ivory; and the offerings of golden shields and goblets, and other votive presents, given by those who consulted the oracles, formed a treasure considerable in proportion to the character and renown of the sacred place. Cicero, in his accusation of Verres, notices that the treasures of a state were often deposited too in sanctuaries, not only as protected by the abhorrence of sacrilege, but by the strength of the place: thus the general subsidies collected by the Athenians, at the close of the Persian wars, were kept in the Parthenon; and the wealth pillaged from the temple at Phocis, by Philomelus, and which occasioned the holy war, was immense. On these accounts the greater temples were often placed in actual fortresses. The Temple of Minerva at Syracuse, was in the Ortygia; the Parthenon of Athens, in the Acropolis; the Roman Temple of Jupiter, in the Capitol; and the Editor, when in Sicily, remarked the circumvallations inclosing the temples at Selinunté, and the almost impregnable situations of those at Agrigentum and Segesté. The foundations of ancient circumvallation at Siwah may thus be considered, in some degree, as indications of the origin and purpose of the building within the inclosure. The Ammonian temple was certainly surrounded by a strong wall; “triplici muro circumdatum,” as Diodorus, lib. xvii. and Q. Curtius, lib. iv. cap. 7, both inform us. Curtius uses the word _munitio_, and the Ἀκρόπολις, _or arx_ of Diodorus, answers in description to the mount of Siwah itself; and the temple of Ammon being represented as being erected within the third or more distant inclosure of wall, its distance from the citadel may well correspond _with that_ of the ruins in question, from the town of Siwah.