Foreign topography; or, an encyclopedick account, alphabetically arranged, of the ancient remains in Africa, Asia, and Europe; forming a sequel to the Encyclopedia of antiquities / By the Rev. Thomas Dudley Fosbroke.
- Thomas Dudley Fosbroke
- Date:
- 1828
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Foreign topography; or, an encyclopedick account, alphabetically arranged, of the ancient remains in Africa, Asia, and Europe; forming a sequel to the Encyclopedia of antiquities / By the Rev. Thomas Dudley Fosbroke. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![specimen of the Dorick. The flutes do not meet and form an angle, but are sepa- rated by a fillet, after the method adopted in the columns of the lonick, when the cella was a double row of plain columns. There are other temples. (U^ilk. Magn. Grec. 45, 46.) These noble ruins lie in several stupendous heaps, with many columns still erect, and at a distance resemble a large town with a crowd of steeples. The above great temple composes one of the most gigantic and sublime ruins imaginable. [Denon (Sicili/, 172) says, that at the largest temple w’e behold the work of giants. Every co- lumn is a tower, every capital a whole rock.] One of the columns of the pronaos, and two of the sides, are standing, though not entire ; the capital and entablement are totally overturned. The columns measure 9 3 inches in diameter at bottom, and 6 feet 3 inches below the capital. The capitals are of one solid block, uncommonly bulky in the semi-globular part, called the ovolo. The length of the whole edifice was about 330 feet, the breadth 39. The second temple is ruined with more order. It had six columns in the fronts, and eleven on each side, in all thirty-four; their diame- ter is five feet. They were all fluted, and most of them now remain standing as high as the second course of stones. The pillars of the third temple were also fluted, and have fallen down so very entire, that the five pieces which composed them lie almost close to each other, in the order they were placed in when upright. The cella does not exceed the vestibule in extent. All these temples are of the old Dorick order, without a base, and of a much more massive proportion than the Segestan edifice. The two smaller temples are more delicate in their parts and ornaments than the principal ruin. There are other ruins and broken columns dispersed over the site of the town, but none equal to these. Some of the walls of the mole of the harbour still remain above the sands. Selinus was a colony of the Hyblaean Megara, which, after flourishing four centuries, was destroyed by Hannibal, A. U. C. 359. Swinburne, however, thinks that these temples were levelled to the ground by an earthquake. (Swinh. ii. 242, seq.) Denon’s account of the grand ruins is as follows : “ On passing from the three tem- ples, situated on this side to the opposite port, w’e are no less astonished at finding immense walls, and in the same style, which seem to serve as foundations only. The other temples are not less colossal. We are tempted to believe, that the Selinuntians dwelt only in temples, or that they were a people of Priests, wholly consecrated to the worship of the deities. Ruins, fragments, and columns, are visible even into the sea. On this side there is a watch-tower, where we discovered the general plan of the city in the form of a horsC'shoe, the extremities of which were terminated by two bastions, advancing even to the sea-shore. Three temples on each side occupied the lateral parts, and were doubtless its hallowed quarters. The left side was consecrated to the Temples of the Gods, the right possibly to public edifices. The latter had a separate inclosure. Between these was the harbour, which was entirely shut in, and is now choked with sand. The bottom of the horse-shoe appears to have formed the quarter appropriated to the public. Nothing is more discernible, but some inconsiderable fragments of mattoni [Roman reticulated work] the traces of a few small buildings, walls, and cisterns, and so covered with sand as to render it impracticable to distin- guish any thing beyond the general form. It however enables us to judge of the mag- nificence of the whole, and the effect which it must have produced. Of the smallest temple, which is in the middle, the first layers of its columns are preserved in their places. They were, all fluted, resting without bases in a socle, that formed the third row of the stylobate, on which the whole edifice was raised. This](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22012035_0363.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
