No. Y. -^Temple of Jupiter Serapis. 279 



foot below it — a most extraordinary oversight. Daubeny again, 

 after De Jorio, imagines that the temple may have been always 

 below the level of the sea, and subject to its incursions, since, 

 as we have already said, it is only 100 feet from it, — a suppo- 

 sition which common sense can never warrant, and which, till 

 it became necessary to alter either the facts or arguments to 

 shape them to the new hypothesis, was always considered phy- 

 sical proof of a second change of relative levels. Pini, the 

 most elaborate supporter of that theory, is compelled to admit 

 its inadequacy to account for this fact, and affords, I think, 

 the strongest possible testimony to the opinion which I en- 

 deavour to support. He admits that the land must have 

 suffered a depression, and even points to the occasion on which 

 it may have happened, the earthquake of 1488 or that of 1538, 

 on both which occasions, according to Mazzella, * an old writer, 

 many houses in Pozzuoli were overthrown : (subbissati. ) 

 Pini, therefore, by this admission, obviously does away with 

 the necessity of his much laboured explanation of the opposite 

 phenomenon, the apparent descent of the level of the sea ; for 

 is it not the most natural course in the world to account for 

 two events similar iii their nature and object by a single cause, 

 rather than drag in an assumptive hypothesis to explain one 

 since it cannot explain both ? Farther, the idea that the pre- 

 sent situation of the sea-line indicates no rise in its level from 

 some period or other, is rendered quite untenable by facts in 

 the very same bay. We there find the bases of pillars which 

 appear to have belonged to a temple of Neptune, and another 

 of the Nymphs, at all times under water, as I have myself 

 witnessed. We draw no argument from the projection of the 

 ruins of villas into the water, since we know that to have been 

 at one time a fashionable rage. -|* But it happens that two 

 Roman roads now exist under water, one reaching from 

 Pozzuoli towards the Lucrine Lake, which may still be seen, + 



* Situs et Antiquitates Puteolorum. 



f Struis domos ; 



Marisque Bails obstrepentis urges 

 Summovere littora, 



Parum locuples continente ripa. — Hor. Carm. ii. 18. 

 X De Jorio, Guida, S^c. 



