1Q6 Account of the inte^^esting Works of' Art 



opinion of some, who suppose Selinus to have been founded by 

 the Phoenicians, he inclines to believe that it was founded by 

 the Sicani : supporting his opinion by the remarks of Diodorus, 

 that Dedalus, having come from Crete to Sicily, (long before 

 the Phoenicians, as is well known), built, in this city, a bath, in 

 which was collected hot vapour issuing from the earth, and in- 

 ducing a soothing pleasure in the human frame. In Selinus, 

 among other very ancient edifices, was a celebrated temple of 

 Jupiter Agorae us, before the altar of which, according to Hero- 

 dotus, Eurleon was slain, who unhappily aspired to become a 

 tyrant, after having earned the divine title of Liberator. But 

 every vestige of this temple had disappeared for many ages ; 

 and it would seem, perhaps, a hopeless task to discover it. 

 Three very ancient temples, of moderate size, have been dis- 

 covered on the spot now occupied by the citadel ; and three 

 others of a posterior age, but of more ample dimensions, at the 

 place called The Pillars of the Giants, about a mile from the 

 citadel. None of the second group could be the temple of Ju- 

 piter Agoraeus ; none of the first had been conjectured to be so. 



The six temples are all built of a shell-limestone of the ter- 

 tiary formation, lik6 those of Syracuse, of Agrigentum, or of 

 Segesta, and have ornaments of a granular limestone of the se- 

 condary formation. The fragments of the metopes, composed 

 of this last material, almost all formed part of a sculptured frieze 

 in the middlemost temple of the first group ; and some of them 

 belonged to the central one of The Giants'" Pillars. The cramps 

 (Tessersi), found in considerable number between the respec- 

 tive triglyphs, much facilitated a knowledge of the consecutive 

 disposition of the metopes ; and, consequently, (thanks to the 

 drawings which the two English artists made on the spot) to 

 their recomposition. 



The work was commenced by the reunion of the metopes of 

 the temple of the citadel. Of the ten which originally existed, 

 they have succeeded in joining three nearly entire, viz. the 6th, 

 the 7th, and the 8th, each 4 feet 9^ inches (English measure) 

 in altitude, and 3 feet 6 J inches broad. 



In each are three figures, representing a my thological subject, 

 " a circumstance worthy of notice," says the author of the me- 

 moir, " since no more than two figures have ever been observed 



