No. V. — Temple of Jupiter Serapis. 281 



plenty of concurring facts to prove, at some period, a continued 

 rise of the sea-line, though for how long, and to what extent, 

 we have not observations enough to verify. Marks of litho- 

 phagous animals abound in many places, and render this a 

 matter of certainty. They are found at Palermo on the north 

 coast of Sicily, in Calabria, and on the Monte Circello, between 

 Naples and Rome. * I do not say that these necessarily refer 

 to the same period as when the temple at Pozzuoli was cover- 

 ed, but they point to a strong confirmation of any attempt to 

 generalize such facts. 



Thirdly, we have all the agents required for the accomplish- 

 ment of our theory within the bounds of recorded information 

 or the most direct analogy, without any pure assumptions 

 whatever. The tremendous natural convulsions to which the 

 vicinity of the temple has to our knowledge been subjected, 

 are amply sufficient to explain more frequent, more consider- 

 able, and more surprising changes in the natural features of 

 the country than those required by the theory. It is absurd 

 to say that we want direct evidence of the lowering of the land 

 on which the town of Pozzuoli and the temple stands. We 

 know from contemporary writers, that the former has at least 

 three times, in 1198, 1488, and 1538, been ruined by earth- 

 quakes, inundated by the sea, or half buried by volcanic ashes ; 

 and the latter bears irrefragable testimony to a similar fate, 

 stamped on its features in nature's own most unequivocal cha- 

 racters. But this is not all. We have recorded statements and 

 actual observation to prove, that such changes in the level of the 

 sea have taken place ; and we infer distinctly from the testimo- 

 ny of an old Italian writer, Loffredo, in 1580, that fifty years 

 previously the sea washed the base of the hills which rise from a 

 small alluvial flat extending along the shore between Puzzuoli 

 and the Monte Nuovo. That writer, on attempting to fix the po- 

 sition of Cicero's villa to those ruins since called the Stadium, 

 proves, by mentioning them as the only ones between Puteoli and 

 the Lucrine Lake, that the many walls and bases of pillars which 

 we have already mentioned, and which exist where the sea now 

 washes that alluvial plain, were then covered with sand which 

 the water had deposited ; and he tells us expressly, that fifty 



• Scrope on Volcanos, p. 216, and Brocchi. 



