of the Greco-Roman Era in certain ancient Sites of Asia Minor. 33 
their heathen progenitors. Thus it was that fanes were dismantled, tomb- 
structures violated, statues displaced, and their shattered relics committed to 
the hands of the workmen whom they employed to construct the ramparts which 
even yet encircle so considerable a portion of the area of the ancient city. 
These, with other memorials of the same era, are rapidly hastening to the 
same destruction which awaited their predecessors. The columns and sculptures 
of the heathen temple are mingled in promiscuous ruin with the architectural 
embellishments of the Christian Church. The massive stonework of the ramparts 
is in gradual course of precipitation on the ground underneath, where the yet 
more ignoble destiny is reserved for it of administering to the exigencies of a 
Turkish mason, and being shaped into forms to suit his purposes. 
The temple of Aphrodite, the tutelary deity, as its name imports, of the an- 
cient town, arrests the traveller’s attention as he advances from the portal of 
Constantius towards the modern village. In its original state, as well from its 
position as the grandeur of its design, this edifice must have ranked amongst 
the chief ornaments of Aphrodisias. Iam here to be understood as speaking 
im an architectural sense, as the remains which Gheyerah even at present 
possesses sufficiently attest the existence of other works of magnificence, as, for 
example, its amphitheatre, which occupies a vast area, and still retains vestiges 
of the profusion of ornament which had been lavished on the architraves of its 
door-ways, its platforms, and arcades. 
I thought that I could perceive evidences in the architectural remains which 
cover the area of the temple, and are scattered over its precincts, of the changes 
through which the city had passed. The first which present themselves to the 
view, as we advance from the west, are two columns ofa bluish veined marble, 
with capitals of the Corinthian order. Those of the main body of the temple, or 
which enclosed the Cella, are of the Ionic. A little farther on we come upon a 
fragment of a fluted column, the capital of which has shared the fate of some of 
those on the north side of the temple, and lastly upon two others with the 
acanthus sculptured on their capitals, and that incongruous device of a later age, 
the spiral fluting, appearing on its shaft. 
These appearances may be regarded as affording evidence, that the original 
temple had received additions from time to time to suit it to the purposes of 
Christian worship ; and this opinion receives some confirmation from the actual 
VOL. XXI. E 
