The Lands of the Saracen: Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and SpainTaylor, Bayard
History
The Lands of the Saracen: Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain
Taylor, Bayard
Middle East -- Description and travel; Spain -- Description and travel
Passing through the village we came to a grand artificial platform on its
western side, called the Acropolis. It is of solid masonry, five hundred
feet square, and averaging ten feet in height. On the eastern side it is
supported on rude though massive arches, resembling Etruscan workmanship.
On the top and around the edges of this platform lie great numbers of
fluted columns, and immense fragments of cornice and architrave. In the
centre, on a foundation platform about eight feet high, stands a beautiful
Ionic temple, one hundred feet in length. On approaching, it appeared
nearly perfect, except the roof, and so many of the columns remain
standing that its ruined condition scarcely injures the effect. There are
seventeen columns on the side and eight at the end, Ionic in style,
fluted, and fifty feet in height. About half the cella remains, with an
elegant frieze and cornice along the top, and a series of tablets, set in
panels of ornamental sculpture, running along the sides. The front of the
cella includes a small open peristyle, with two composite Corinthian
columns at the entrance, making, with those of the outer colonnade,
eighteen columns standing. The tablets contain Greek inscriptions,
perfectly legible, where the stone has not been shattered. Under the
temple there are large vaults, which we found filled up with young kids,
who had gone in there to escape the heat of the sun. The portico was
occupied by sheep, which at first refused to make room for us, and gave
strong olfactory evidence of their partiality for the temple as a
resting-place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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