§ 56. TEMPLE OF JUPITER AT PUZZUOLI. 109 



place, and was accompanied by earthquakes ; a subsidence 

 of the coast followed, and sunk the temple to a depth that 

 submerged the columns in water to a height above the 

 band of perforations. This state of things must have con- 

 tinued till the beginning of the sixteenth century ; for the 

 flat district called La Starza. on which the temple stands, is 

 described by contemporary observers as being covered by 

 the sea in 1530. Eight years afterwards earthquakes were 

 very frequent and violent along that part of the Neapolitan 

 coast, and on the 29th of September a volcanic eruption 

 suddenly burst forth, and threw up. in a single night, a 

 mound of pumice and ashes 450 feet high, and a mile and a 

 half in circumference ; and which still remains, and is 

 called Monte Xuovo. During this catastrophe the coast on 

 the north of the Bay of Baiae was permanently elevated to 

 the height of twenty feet, and formed a tract 600 feet in 

 breadth, including the area occupied by the ruins of the 

 temple, which were also elevated above the reach of the 

 water, several of the columns retaining their original posi- 

 tion.* These interesting relics of antiquity appear to have 

 been wholly neglected till 1 750, when the shrubs and weeds 

 with which they were overgrown and concealed were 

 removed, and the earth accumulated in the court of the 

 temple cleared away. For the last thirty or forty years a 

 slow subsidence of this coast appears to have been going on, 

 and the floor of the temple is now often under water. t 



56. Causes of these changes. — Professor Babbage 

 attributes the tranquil elevation and depression of the 

 temple, to the contraction and expansion of the strata on 

 which it was built ; the sources of volcanic action in the sur- 



* Professor James Forbes of Edinburgh, on the historical evidence 

 relating to the elevations and subsidences of the Temple of Jupiter at 

 Puzzuoli, and of the adjacent coast.— Brewster's Edinburgh Journal 

 of Science, vol. i. second series. 



f See a letter addressed to the author by Mr.Hullmandel, Appendix, F. 



