TEMPLE OK JUPITER SERA PIS. 263 



became choked by sand, tufa, and ashes, and also the area of the 

 temple, and thus a lake of the waters of the hot spring was made 

 the bottom of which would be very irregular, the proofs of this, 

 are the incrustations of carbonate of lime, presenting a level sur- 

 face above, but irregular below, and not covering the former in- 

 crustations. The land still continuing to subside, the sea agaia 

 encroached, when the lithodomi, attaching themselves to the col- 

 umns, and fragments of marble, pierced them in all directions, 

 and this subsidence continued until the pavement of the temple 

 was nineteen feet below the bottom of the sea. The* base and 

 lower portions of the temple being protected by the rubbish and 

 tufa, and the upper, projecting above the water, prevented the 

 ravages of the lithodomi, on those portions. The platform of the 

 temple is now about one foot below high water mark, and the sea 

 is forty yards distant* It is clear therefore, that they have long 

 been submerged, and again elevated, moving oach time a distance 

 of twenty-three feet, and yet by so gentle a motion that the col- 

 umns have not been overthrown. Not far from the temple is the 

 solfatara or volcanic vent opened in the year 1198, after a series 

 of earthquakes, and it is highly probable that during these earth- 

 quakes the land subsided, and the pumice and ashes ejected from 

 the volcano falling into the sea protected the lower part of 

 those columns which remained erect, from being bored by the 

 lithodomi. The re-elevation was probably gradual at first, for we 

 find in the year 1503, a deed from Ferdinand and Isabella, grant- 

 ing to the University of Puzzuoli " a portion of land where the sea 

 is drying up;" but the principal elevation took place in 1538, when 

 the volcanic cone of Monte Nuovo was formed, at which time, 

 according to the accounts of eye-witnesses, the sea left the shore 

 dry for a considerable space. Great as have been the changes of 

 elevation and depression of the shores of the Bay of Baiae, yet 

 the movement has been so gentle as not to overthrow these an- 

 joient remains, 



" Whose lonely columns stand sublime 

 Flinging their shadows from on high 

 Like dials, which the wizard Time 

 Had raised to count his ages by." 



