"After leaving the walls, and passing over corngrounds, rugged and interrupted by ravines, at about a furlong distance you come to a flat paved area, evidently artificially raised, as may be seen from some foundation walls on the eastern side, and towards the channel of the Ilissus, which passes at a hundred paces to the south. On this stand the sixteen fluted Corinthian columns of the building finished by Hadrian, called by some the Pantheon, and by others the Temple of Jupiter Olympius.

"The stupendous size of the shafts of these columns (for they are six feet in diameter, and sixty feet in height,) does not more arrest the attention of the spectator than the circumstance of there being no fallen ruins on or near the spot, which was covered with one hundred and twenty columns, and the marble walls of a temple abounding in statues of gods and heroes, and a thousand offerings of splendid piety.

"The solitary grandeur of these marble ruins is, perhaps, more striking than the appearance presented by any other object at Athens; and the Turks themselves seem to regard them with an eye of respect and veneration."-Hobhouse's Journey.

"According to Stuart's plan, it had, when entire, one hundred and twenty-four large columns, and twenty-six smaller ones within the cella. It stands upon a foundation of the soft Piraan stone, like the

TEMPLE OF JUPITER OLYMPIUS.

Parthenon. Pliny seems to authorise the supposition, that Sylla sent from Athens to Rome some columns of the temple of Jupiter Olympius: but when we consider their colossal size, it appears probable that he alludes to some of the smaller ones which were within the cella, and perhaps of more costly materials than the Pentelic, which was not so highly prized by the Romans as the variegated marble. The capital and the architrave of this temple have never been measured, on account of the great height of the column; which, including the capital, appears to be about fifty-five feet. The capitals are not all exactly similar in their ornaments; and are so large, that they are composed of two blocks.

"The brick building that rests upon the architrave of the two western columns of the middle range, is supposed to have been the aërial residence of a Stylites hermit it is three stories high, and about twenty feet long, and seven broad; and must have been erected when the temple was much more perfect, and when a staircase remained in the wall of the cella, or when the accumulated mass of ruin reached as high as the epistylia of the temple.

"The single column which stood towards the western extremity of the temple, was thrown down, many years ago, by the orders of a voivode of Athens, for the sake of the materials, which were employed in

constructing the great mosque in the bazar. It was undermined and blown down by gunpowder; but such was its massive strength, that the fourth explosion took place before it fell. The Pacha of Egripos inflicted upon the voivode a fine of seventeen purses (8,500 Turkish piastres) for having destroyed those venerable remains. The Athenians relate, that, after this column was thrown down, the three others nearest to it were heard at night to lament the loss of their sister! and these nocturnal lamentations did not cease to terrify the inhabitants, till the sacrilegious voivode, who had been appointed governor of Zetoun, was destroyed by poison." Dodwell's Greece, vol. i. p. 387.