242 Mr Roe's Descnftion of a Newly Discovered Te^nple 
seus at Athens ; so that Colonel Whitmore says, that we are 
authorised to fix the date of its erection some time in the 
fifth century before Christ. About 2 feet distant from the sides 
of the edifice, two wells have been discovered ; they are between 
30 and 40 feet in depth, and lead to subterraneous aqueducts. 
These canals are on an average 6 feet in height, 2 feet 6 inches 
in breadth, and have been explored by the engineers to the ex- 
tent of 1400 feet. Their primary object was the preservation 
of the Temple. Their secondary one, to conduct the springs 
in Mount Ascension to a more remote point. These aqueducts, 
and the Temple, are evidently referred to in a marble existing 
in the Verona Museum. It has been translated by Maftei, from 
the original Doric dialect, into Latin, and by Mustoxidi from 
the Latin into Italian, The inscription commemorates the 
sanction of the Corcyrean Republic for the formation of certain 
public works. 
It details the cost of tin, lead, brass, cartage, excavation, and 
workmanship ; the expence of a brazen serpent, of nitre or 
nitron, for the altar ; the erection of an obelisk, and of a wall 
built by Metrodorus ; the J udges and Magistrates, both within 
and without the city, approve in it what had been executed ; 
they state the renewal of the roof of the Temple; the abduc- 
tion of the water courses, lest the force of the springs should 
injure the retaining-wall, and (although much is defaced and 
wanting) they intimate, that the impetus of the flowing waters 
was to be diverted from the Temple towards the docks and store- 
houses. Malfei further supposes it to enjoin, that the cippus 
of a god, whose initial A only is indicated, should be carefully 
placed within the Temple, and imagines, that the brazen ser- 
pent before mentioned, marks the divinity to have been JEscu- 
lapius. Mustoxidi translates this passage literally, as well as 
the remarks drawn by Malfei from Pliny, relative to the nitre 
for the altar. But the tablet, unfortunately for the former hy- 
pothesis, does not contain a word correspondent with cippus, or 
an expression intimating the removal of any thing belonging to 
a God ; and, perhaps, the more simple interpretation would 
have been, that the Judges and Magistrates direct their decree 
to be inscribed in columns, or in the columnar manner, on the 
wall of Metrodorus, over against the Temple of the God A. 
