, the wall most open to the attacks of mortal enemies, with this
wonderful series of holy places of the divine protectors of the city. It
was a conception due, we may believe, in the first instance, to Theron,
but which the democracy fully entered into and carried out. The two best
preserved of the range stand to the east; one indeed occupies the
southeastern corner of the fortified enclosure.

Next in order to the west comes the temple which bears a name not
unlikely, but altogether impossible and unmeaning, the so-called temple
of Concord. No reasonable guess can be made at its pagan dedication; in
the fifteenth century of our era it followed the far earlier precedent
of the temples in the akropolis. It became the church of Saint Gregory,
not of any of the great pontiffs and doctors of the Church, but of the
local bishop whose full description as Saint Gregory of the Turnips can
hardly be written without a smile. The peristyle was walled up, and
arches were cut through the walls of the cella, exactly as in the great
church of Syracuse. Saint Gregory of Girgenti plays no such part in the
world's history as was played by the Panagia of Syracuse; we may
therefore be more inclined to extend some mercy to the Bourbon king who
set free the columns as we now see them. When he had gone so far, one
might even wish that he had gone on to wall up the arches. In each of
the former states of the building there was a solid wall somewhere to
give shelter from the blasts which sweep round this exposed spot. As the
building now stands, it is, after the Athenian house of Theseus and
Saint George, the best preserved Greek temple in being. Like its fellow
to the east, it is a building of moderate size, of the middle stage of
Doric, with columns less massive than those of Syracuse and Corinth,
less slender than those of Nemea.

Again to the west stood a temple of greater size, nearly ranging in
scale with the Athenian Parthenon, which is assigned, with far more of
likelihood than the other names, to Herakles. Save one patched-up column
standing amid the general ruin, it has, in the language of the prophet,
become heaps. All that is left is a mass of huge stones, among which we
can see the mighty columns, fallen, each in its place, overthrown, it is
clear, by no hand of man but by those powers of the nether world whose
sway is felt in every corner of Sicilian soil.

These three temples form a continuous range along the eastern part of
th