No. V . — Temple of Jupiter Serapis. 285 



very same spot as it did SOOO years ago, marked decisively 

 by the termination of the passage cut by the ancients through 

 the tufaceous rock, and being immensely hotter than the spring 

 at Pozzuoli, we may presume its greater proximity to the vol- 

 canic centre, and its greater liability to alterations arising from 

 such a source. 



3. Pommereuil, the translator into French of Breislak's To- 

 pogrqfia Fisica di Campania, says, in a note upon this subject, 

 " L'idee du baissement et de Pexhaussement successif du ter- 

 rain avec la precision de 5 metres rassemble a une plaisante- 

 rie. Cest couper la noeud gordien parcequ'on ne pent le 

 denouer." Now this is a positive mistatement. There is no 

 such correspondence between the fall and rise of the ground 

 as is here alleged. One of our great objects has been to show 

 that it did not rise so much as it sunk ; but what the difference 

 might be, it is impossible to divine. For anything we know, 

 the temple might have originally been twenty feet above the 

 sea, and is now one below it. 



4. Another objection of the same author is equally frivo- 

 lous. " Le mole de Pouzzoles," says he, " est un temoin ir- 

 refragable que la mer n'a point baisse depuis son erection." 

 It is no doubt a proof that the sea is not now lower than 

 when the mole was built ; but that is the very evidence we 

 have already drawn from it, and infers nothing respecting its in- 

 termediate condition. No one ever said that the marks of the 

 Lithopliagi on the temple represented the level of the sea at the 

 time of the Greeks and Romans ; on the contrary, its present 

 situation proves that the sea was once relatively lower than at 

 present, and therefore gives the very same evidence as the 

 mole of Pozzuoli. This objection has, like many similar ones, 

 been hazarded from the obscurity of the subject, without ex- 

 amination, or even common attention. It is therefore perfect- 

 ly irrelevant. 



These objections I think it will be seen required for their 

 refutation little more than a calm and careful examination of 

 their nature, which they seem never to have received, and have 

 been, therefore, most inaccurately held decisive against a 

 theory, the very simplicity of which rendered it less liable to 

 be assailed than the more refined and speculative one which 



