ought back strange stories of its ghostly
occupants with which they regaled their friends or families by the
fire-side of a winter's evening. Yet it is most strange that during the
period of the Renaissance, at a time when enthusiastic research was being
made into the neglected antiquities of Italy, this unique group of Doric
temples should have escaped notice. For neither Cyriaco of Ancona nor
Leandro Alberti, who visited Lucania ostensibly for the sake of recording
its classical remains, make mention of "the ruined majesty of Paestum,"
and it was reserved for a certain Count Gazola (whose name is certainly
worthy of being recorded), an officer in the service of the Neapolitan
King, to present to the notice of scholars and archaeologists towards the
middle of the eighteenth century the first known description of what is
perhaps Italy's chief existing treasure of antiquity. From Gazola's day
onward the beauty and interest of Paestum have been appraised at their
true worth, and numberless artists and writers of almost every nationality
have sketched or described its marvellous temples.

With this brief introduction to the history of a city, whose chief
building is still standing almost intact after a lapse of 2500 years, let
us take a rapid survey of Poseidonia as it exists to-day. Its walls, of
Greek construction but probably built or restored as late as the time of
Alexander of Epirus, who gave the captured town a fleeting spell of
liberty, form an irregular pentagon about three miles in circumference,
whereon the remains of eight towers can be observed, whilst the four
gates, placed at the four cardinal points of the compass, are clearly
traceable. We enter this _citta morta_ by the so-called Porta della
Sirena, the eastern gate that faces the hostile Samnite Hills and (oh, the
prosaic touch!) the modern railway-station. This gate remains in a
tolerable state of preservation, and draws its name from the key-stone of
its arch, which bears in low relief a much defaced design of a mermaid or
siren, its counterpart on the inner keystone being a dolphin: two devices
very appropriate to the entrance of a city dedicated to the Lord of Ocean.
Passing the picturesque yellow-washed Villa Salati, with its high walls
and iron-barred windows testifying only too plainly to the lawlessness
that once reigned in this district, we find ourselves face to face with
the great temple of Neptune or Poseidon, and its companion-fane, the
so-ca