d civilization, which rank
amongst the most venerable as well as the most beautiful relics of
antiquity, it is only meet that we should carry with us into their ruined
halls a few grains of historical knowledge, whereby our sense of reality
and our appreciation of their greatness and splendour may be increased.

[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF NEPTUNE, PAESTUM]

Although we do not possess a definite history of Paestum, similar to that
of Rome or of Athens, yet from the many allusions to be found scattered
throughout the pages of classical historians, as well as from the various
inscriptions and devices found upon ancient coins of this city, it is not
a difficult task to piece together the main features of Poseidonian
annals. From a very remote period of antiquity there was undoubtedly a
settlement on or near the coast to the south of the river Silarus, whilst
it is commonly held that this spot was called Peste--a name almost
identical with the modern Italian appellation--many hundreds of years
before the arrival of Doric settlers on the shores of the Tyrrhene Sea.
Late in the seventh century before Christ, the Greek colony of Poseidonia,
the city of the Sea God, was founded on or near the site of Italian Peste
by certain Hellenic adventurers from Troezen, who were amongst the
inhabitants of Sybaris, at that time one of the most flourishing of the
famous cities of Magna Graecia: and this new colony of Troezenians
henceforward was accounted one of the twenty-five subject-towns that
recognised Sybaris for their metropolis, or mother and suzerain city. We
have no details of its early history, but it is quite certain that under
the protection of Sybaris the new city of Poseidonia rose by degrees to
such wealth and importance that in course of time it gave its own name to
the whole Bay of Salerno, which henceforth became known to the Greeks as
the Poseidonian Gulf and later, to the Romans, as the Bay of Paestum. With
the fall of the mother city, this flourishing colony was left alone to
face the attacks of the Samnites, the native barbarians who peopled the
dense forests and the barren mountains of Lucania; yet it somehow
contrived to retain its independence until the close of the fourth century
B.C., when the Samnite hordes, forcing the fortified line of the Silarus,
made themselves masters of Poseidonia, and put an end, practically for
ever, to its existence as a purely Hellenic city. From its Lucanian
masters the captured t