38 PHILOSOPHICAL, TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 16Q5. 



On the east side of the long piazza stands a vast number of marble pillars, 

 some perfect and others deprived of their beautiful capitals ; but so scattered and 

 confused, that it is not possible to reduce them into any order, so as to con- 

 jecture to what they anciently served. In one place are ] 1 ranged together in 

 a square, paved at the bottom with broad flat stones, but without any roof or 

 covering. And at a little distance from that are the ruins of a small temple, 

 of very curious workmanship, but the roof is wholly gone, and the walls much 

 defaced. Before the entrance, which looks to the south, is a piazza supported 

 by six pillars, two on one hand of the door, and two on the other, and one at 

 each end ; the pedestals of those in the front have been filled with inscriptions, 

 both in Greek and the other language ; but they are become unintelligible. 



Their sepulchres are very curious, being square towers, four or five stories 

 high, and standing on both sides of a hollow way, towards the north part of 

 the city. They stretch out in length the space of a mile, and perhaps formerly 

 might extend a great way further. They were all of the same form, but of 

 different splendour and size, according to the circumstances of their founders. 

 There were two which stood almost opposite to each other, and seemed most 

 perfect of any, though not without marks of the Turkish fury. They are two 

 square towers, rather larger than ordinary steeples, and five stories high, the 

 outside being of common stone, but the partitions and floors within of good 

 marble ; and beautified with admirable carvings and paintings, and figures both 

 of men and women, as far as the breast and shoulders, but miserably defaced 

 and broken. We entered one of these by a door on the south side, from which 

 was a walk across the whole building just in the middle. But the floor was 

 broken up, and so gave us a view of a vault below, divided after the same 

 manner. The spaces on each side were subdivided into six partitions by thick 

 walls, each partition being capable of receiving the largest corpse, and piling 

 them one above another, as their way appears to have been, each of those 

 spaces might contain at least 6 or 7 bodies. For the lowest, second, and third 

 stories, those partitions were uniform, and altogether the same, except that 

 from the second floor, which answered the main entrance, one partition was 

 reserved for a stair-case. Higher than this, the building, being somewhat con- 

 tracted towards the top, would not afford space for the continuation of the 

 same method : therefore the two uppermost rooms were not so parted, nor per- 

 haps ever had any bodies laid in them. Unless it was that of the founder alone, 

 whose statue wrapped up in funeral apparel, and in a lying posture, is placed in 

 a nich, or rather window in the front of the monument, so, as to be visible 

 both within and without. 



The other monument opposite was much like this, only the front and entrance 



