SICILY, BATTLE-FIELD OF NATIONS AND OF NATURE 101 



(120 feet by 55 feet), and Doric also, 

 "but now only a single pillar is standing, 

 surrounded by fallen masonry, huge col- 

 umns, and great prostrate caryatides. 

 Cicero says this temple was "exceedingly 

 sacred and holy," and that the bronze 

 statue it contained was the most beautiful 

 he had ever seen. 



But of all the temples of Girgenti 

 (Agrigentum) that of Jupiter Olympus 

 was the most remarkable. It was the 

 largest in Sicily, and second only to that 

 of Ephesan Diana.* There is not one 

 stone upon another now — its ruin is com- 

 plete — but from old chronicles some idea 

 is gleaned of the Titanic proportions of 

 its grandeur. Diodorus says it was 340 

 feet by 160 feet and 120 feet in height, 

 while the flirtings of the pillars would 

 each admit the body of a man. On the 

 eastern pediment was an alto-relievo of 

 the Titans' war; on the western, the 

 taking of Troy. Statues of giants with 

 uplifted arms "sustained the ponderous 

 entablature," and from this circumstance 

 the city arms of Girgenti, three giants 

 supporting a tower, derive their origin. 



But what did Empedocles say? "My 

 countrymen build as though they were to 

 live forever, and live as though they were 

 to die tomorrow." It was that living 

 that caused the fall of the foremost city 

 of Magna Grsecia and its capture by the 

 Carthaginians. 



THE) QUARRIES WHICH SERVED AS PRISONS 



There is perhaps no place in Europe 

 which has such a distinct individuality as 

 Syracuse possesses. It is so easy, when 

 one sees it, to understand its history, 

 since so many important incidents oc- 

 curred from its geographical peculiar- 

 ities. Fourteen miles in circumference, 

 it contained four separate towns. Facing 

 them lay the island of Ortygia, and south 

 came the great harbor and the marsh of 

 Syraco. But the towns are now gray 

 ruins on the hillsides, and the island is 

 Siracusa today. Here came Diana's 

 nymphs — Arethusa hiding as a fountain 

 in the goddess' groves, Cyane changed to 

 "a pool of dark blue water," as the poet 



*See Nat. Geog. Mag., December, 1908. 



sings, by Pluto when she tried to stay 

 him in his flight with Proserpine. 



The place is eloquent with history. 

 What hosts have marched by ! Marcellus 

 broke the heart of Syracuse, when she 

 was Athens' rival, and then to Greek and 

 Goth, Byzantine, Saracen, Norman, Teu- 

 ton, and Spaniard she fell an easy prey. 

 The great hills look on the harbor and 

 the harbor looks to the sky; the Spanish 

 walls glitter now in the sunlight, and the 

 portcullises of Charles V rise where 

 stood the many-gated citadel of Penta- 

 pyla. 



In the great galleries and underground 

 forts of Euryalus castle the two years' 

 siege is easily imagined ; spacious quar- 

 ters for troops, great courts for horses; 

 here still the holes for hitching them, the 

 great stone mangers for feeding. Sta- 

 tions for catapults and magazines, sub- 

 terranean galleries, and long walled pas- 

 sages. Not a stone is missing in the long 

 flights of steps ; the apertures through 

 which the Grecian arrows flew are per- 

 fect still. Archimedes himself planned 

 those cunning sallyports — one high for a 

 mounted trooper, one low for a foot 

 soldier. 



But Diana, protectress of Syracuse, 

 had a festival, and the festival had Syra- 

 cusan wine. With none on guard, at 

 dawn of day Marcellus entered with his 

 legions. Some one has written, "All 

 Sicily was conquered in Syracuse," 

 though it long continued the island's cap- 

 ital, and is mentioned by Cicero as "the 

 greatest of Greek cities and the most 

 beautiful of all cities." 



The Syracusan latomia? are almost 

 impossible to photograph and equally so 

 to describe. The Latomia del Cappucini 

 is a hundred and more feet deep — solemn 

 labyrinths with smooth, perpendicular, 

 inexorable sides. These great excava- 

 tions were the quarries for the builders 

 first, then prisons for thousands of 

 Athenian captives after the blockade of 

 Syracuse. Old olive trees grow in the 

 crevices now, ivy drapes and trellises the 

 walls, pomegranates and lemons bloom 

 at the bottom as in a sheltered garden, 

 and the acanthus tangles its glossy, curl- 

 ing leaves. The scent of yellow jasmine 



