REVIEWS — THE TEMPLE OF SERAPIS. 341 



were not in common use at Rome before the time of Sylla — that is, about eighty 

 years before Christ ; but it does not follow that a mosaic pavement may not have 

 been added after that date to a building existing before it : so that the mosaic 

 pavement in question may have been part of the Temple of Serapis mentioned in 

 the ' Lex Parieti faciundo.' Pausanias lived in the time of Hadrian, as has been 

 already stated, and, according to this view, the submergence of the first baths or 

 temple, must have taken place between the time of Sylla and that date. We can- 

 not, I presume, suppose that a mosaic pavement would be originally laid under 

 water. 



" The level below the water of the Mediterranean of the old mosaic pavement 

 must correspond pretty accurately with that of the base of the columns of the 

 submerged 'Temple of the ITymphs' in the neighboring bay. Did this sub- 

 mergence take place at the time of the great eruption of Vesuvius which over- 

 whelmed Pompeii and Herculaneum, A. D. 79 ? 



" Statius was born A. D. 61, and was therefore about nineteen at the time of 

 the eruption of 19. As a native of l^aples, he may be presumed to have been 

 conversant with all the phenomena which then took place. His lines on the sub- 

 ject of the destruction of the cities are very striking : 



Haec ego Chalcidieis ad te, Marcelle, sonabam 



Littoribus, fractas ubi Vesvius egerit iras, 



.^mula Trinacriis volvens incendia flammis. 



Mira fides ! credetne virum ventura propago, 



Cum segetes iterum, et jam hsec deserta virebunt. 



Infra urbes, populosque premi ? proavitaque toto 



.Rura abiisse mari ? necdum letale minari 



Cessat apex 



" The latter part of this passage seems to me to mean " lands tilled by our 

 ancestors (proavita) have disappeared in the body of the sea" (toto mari). The 

 commentator in the Variorum edition (Lugd. Bat. 1611) appears to understand 

 the word " proavita" as referring to the restoration of these districts hereafter 

 ' proavita dicit respectu futurse posteritatis' — which seems to me absurd. How 

 were posterity to get the lands out of the sea again ? Such is not the use of the 

 word when applied to Hector : 



" Pugnantem pro se, proavitaque regna tuentem." 



Ovid. Metamorph, xiii. 416. 



" I infer from the expressions of Statius that considerable tracts of land had 

 been sunk in the sea by some sudden depression of the ground. 



"May not this have been the time when the temple of the ]Srymphs,and the first 

 baths or temple of Serapis, were covered with shallow water ? Is it not possible 

 that between this convulsion and the time when Pausanias wrote, the inhabitants 

 of Pozzuoli may have made the island in the sea (xeipoirolTjTov), and have erected 

 on it a second temple — the one of which the ruin still puzzles the geologist?" 



Sucli are some of tlie ideas — disclosing tlie graceful union of 

 science and scholarship by wMcli both have been so materially bene- 

 fitted in modern times,— that reach us, towards the eve of a stormy 



