456 THESSALONICA. 
CHAP, pillars of the Ferde-antico\ with /omc capitals ; 
■ ^ ' . and the whole of the interior was lined with 
marble, great part of which now remains. It 
is about seventy yards long, and forty wide. 
There is also another mosque, called EskiDjumna 
by the Turks, which was once a temple sacred 
Temple to the Thermeau Venus. This we did not see. 
^Thermean Bcaujour says of it', that the Greeks spoiled it, 
Venus. i^y endeavouring to make it cruciform. It was 
a perfect parallelogram, seventy feet long, and 
thirty-five feet wide ; supported on either side 
by twelve columns of the Ionic order, of the 
most elegant proportions. The six columns of 
the Pronaos still remain, although concealed by 
the wall of the mosque. *' If," observes the 
same author', " the country belonged to a civi- 
lized people, it were an easy matter to unmask 
the Temple of the Thermean Venus from its Gothic 
disguise : when, of all the chaste monuments 
of antiquity, next to the Theseum at Athens, 
this edifice would appear in the most perfect 
(1) Pococie nays these pillars are of white marble. (See Description 
of the East, vol. II. part II. p. 151. Lond. 1745.) It is very pos- 
sible, that, under the circumstances of our seeing the buildings of 
Salonica, an error of this kind may have escaped our observation ; 
but Beaujour has the same remark : " La nef du milieu est un beau 
vaisseau, soutenu par deux rangs de colonnes de vert antique," &c. 
Tableau du Comm. de la Grece, tom. I. p. 43. Paris, 1800. 
(2) Ibid. p. 45. 
(3) Ibid. 
