Ruins of Ancient Cities (Vol. 2 of 2)

Our traveller was then led toward the mountain; when, on a turning of the road, he was struck with the view of a ruin of a temple, in a retired situation beyond the Pactolus, and between Mount Tmolus and the hill of the Acropolis. Five columns were standing, one without the capital, and one with the capital awry, to the south. The architrave was of two stones. A piece remains of one column, to the southward; the other part, with the column which contributed to its support, has fallen since the year 1699. One capital was then distorted, as was imagined, by an earthquake; and over the entrance of the Naos was a vast stone, which occasioned wonder by what art or power it could be raised. That magnificent portal has since been destroyed; and in the heap lies that huge and ponderous marble. The soil has accumulated round the ruin; and the bases, with a moiety of each column, are concealed. This, in the opinion of Dr. Chandler, is probably the Temple of Cybele; and which was damaged in the conflagration of Sardis by the Milesians. It was of the Ionic order, and had eight columns in front. The shafts are fluted, and the capitals designed with exquisite taste and skill. “It is impossible,” continues our traveller, “to behold without deep regret, this imperfect remnant of so beautiful and so glorious an edifice!”

In allusion to this, Wheler, who visited Sart towards the latter part of the seventeenth century, says: – “Now see how it fareth with this miserable church, marked out by God; who, being reduced to a very inconsiderable number, live by the sweat of their brows in digging and planting the gardens of the Turks they live amongst and serve; having neither church nor priest among them. Nor are the Turks themselves there very considerable, either for number or riches; being only herdsmen to cattle feeding on those spacious plains; dwelling in a few pitiful earthen huts; having one mosque, perverted to that use from a Christian church. Thus is that once glorious city of the rich king Crœsus now reduced to a nest of worse than beggars. Their Pactolus hath long since ceased to yield them gold,208 and the treasures to recover them their dying glories. Yet there are some remains of noble structures, remembrances of their prosperous state, long since destroyed. For there are the remains of an old castle, of a great church, palaces, and other proud buildings, humbled to the earth.”

Several inscriptions have been found here; and, amongst these, one recording the good will of the council and senate of Sardis towards the emperor Antoninus Pius. Medals, too, have been found; amongst which, two very rare ones; viz. one of the Empress Tranquillina, and another of Caracalla, with an urn on the reverse, containing a branch of olives; under which is an inscription, which translated, is, “The sport Chysanthina of the Sardians twice Nercorus.” Another, stamped by the common assembly of Asia there, in honour of Drusus and Germanicus. Also one with the Emperor Commodus, seated in the midst of a zodiac, with celestial signs engraved on it: on the reverse, “Sardis, the first metropolis of Asia, Greece, Lydia.”209

NO. XXVII. – SELEUCIA

There were no less than thirteen cities, which were called Seleucia, and which received their name from Seleucus Nicanor. These were situated in Syria, in Cilicia, and near the Euphrates.

“It must be acknowledged,” says Dr. Prideaux, “that there is mention made of Babylon, as of a city standing long after the time I have placed its dissolution, as in Lucan210, Philostratus211, and others. But in all those authors, and wherever also we find Babylon mentioned as a city in being, after the time of Seleucus Nicanor, it must be understood, not of old Babylon, on the Euphrates, but of Seleucia, on the Tigris. For as that succeeded to the dignity and grandeur of old Babylon, so also did it in its name.”

“Since the days of Alexander,” says Sir R. Porter, “we find four capitals, at least, built out of the remains of Babylon; Seleucia by the Greeks; Ctesiphon by the Parthians; Al Maidan by the Persians; Kufa by the Caliphs; with towns, villages, and caravanserais, without number. That the fragments of one city should travel so far, to build or repair the breaches of another, appeared, on the first view of the subject, to be unlikely to myself; but, on traversing the country between the approximating shores of the two rivers, and observing all the facilities of water-carriage from one side to the other, I could no longer be incredulous of what had been told me; particularly when scarce a day passed without my seeing people digging the mounds of Babylon for bricks, which they carried to the verge of the Euphrates, and thence conveyed in boats to wherever they might be wanted.”

Seleucus built many cities; of which far the greater part was raised from superstitious motives; many were peopled from the ruins of places in their neighbourhood, whose sites were equally convenient; and only a very few were erected in conformity with those great military and commercial views, by which, in this particular, his master (Alexander) had uniformly been guided. He named nine after himself; and four in honour of four of his wives; three Apameas; and one Stratonice; in all thirty-five. Sixteen were named Antioch; five Laodicea, after his mother. Many foundations were laid of other cities. Some, after favourite scenes in Greece or Macedon; some in memory of glorious exploits; and not a few after his master Alexander.

This Seleucia was built of the ruins of Babylon; and Pliny, the naturalist, gives the following account: – “Seleucia was built by Seleucus Nicanor, forty miles from Babylon, at a point of the confluence of the Euphrates with the Tigris, by a canal. There were 600,000 citizens here at one time; and all the commerce and wealth of Babylon had flowed into it. The territory in which it stood was called Babylonia; but it was itself a free state, and the people lived after the laws and manners of the Macedonians. The form of the walls resembled an eagle spreading her wings.”

In a country, destitute of wood and stone, whose edifices were hastily erected with bricks baked in the sun, and cemented with the native bitumen, Seleucia speedily eclipsed the ancient capital of the East.

Many ages after the fall of the Macedonian empire, Seleucia retained the genuine character of a Greek colony; arts, military virtue, and a love of freedom: and while the republic remained independent, it was governed by a senate consisting of three hundred nobles. The walls were strong; and as long as concord prevailed among the several orders of the state, the power of the Parthians was regarded with indifference, if not with contempt. The madness of faction, however, was sometimes so great, that the common enemy was occasionally implored; and the Parthians212 were, in consequence, beheld at the gates, to assist sometimes one party, and sometimes the other. Ctesiphon was then but a village213, on the opposite side of the Tigris, in which the Parthian kings were accustomed to reside during the winter, on account of the mildness of the climate. The summer they passed at Ecbatana.

Trajan left Rome A. D. 112, and after subduing several cities in the East, laid siege to Seleucia and Ctesiphon. Chosroes, the king, being absent quelling a revolt in some part of his more eastern dominions, these cities soon surrendered to the Roman hero, and all the neighbouring country. “The degenerate Parthians,” says the Roman historian, “broken by internal discord, fled before his arms. He descended the Tigris in triumph from the mountains of Armenia to the Persian gulf. He enjoyed the honour of being the first, as he was the last, of the Roman generals who ever navigated that remote sea.” At his death, which occurred soon after his return to Rome, most of the cities of Asia, that he had conquered, threw off the Roman yoke; and among these were Seleucia and Ctesiphon.

Under the reign of Marcus, A. D. 165, the Roman generals penetrated as far as these celebrated cities. They were received as friends by the Greek colony; they attacked, as enemies, the seat of the Parthian kings; and yet both experienced the same treatment. Seleucia was sacked by the friends they had invited – though it has been alleged in their favour, that the citizens of Seleucia had first violated their faith.

More than 300,000 of the inhabitants were put to the sword; and the city itself nearly destroyed by conflagration.

Seleucia never recovered this blow: but Ctesiphon, in about thirty-three years, had sufficiently recovered its strength to maintain an obstinate siege against the emperor Severus. It was at last, nevertheless, taken by assault; and the king, who defended it in person, escaped with precipitation. The Romans netted a rich booty, and took captive 100,000 persons214.

“Below Bagdad,” says a celebrated French writer, on geography, (Malte-Brun), “the ruins of Al-Modain, or the two cities, have attracted the attention of every traveller. One of them is unquestionably the ancient Ctesiphon; but the other, which lies on the western bank of the Tigris, is not Seleucia, as all the travellers affirm215: it is Kochos, a fortress situated opposite to Seleucia, and which, according to the positive testimony of Arrian and Gregory of Nazianzus, was different from Seleucia216.” In this account Malte-Brun appears to us to be exceedingly mistaken217.

Of the ruins of Seleucia, near Antioch, Mr. Robinson speaks thus: – “Being desirous of visiting the ruins of the ancient Seleucia Pieriæ, I rode over to the village of Kepse, occupying the site of the ancient city. We were apprised of our approach to it, by seeing a number of sepulchral grots excavated in the rock by the road-side, at present tenanted by shepherds and their flocks. Some were arched like those I had seen at Delphi; others were larger, with apartments, one within the other. We entered the inclosure of the ancient city by the gate at the south-east side; probably the one that led to Antioch. It is defended by round towers, at present in ruins. Of the magnificent temples and buildings mentioned by Polybius, some remains of pillars are alone standing to gratify the curiosity of the antiquarian traveller. But recollecting, as I sat alone on a stone seat at the jetty head, that it was from hence Paul and Barnabas, the harbingers of Christianity to the West, when sent forth from the church at Antioch, embarked for Cyprus; the place all at once assumed an interest that heathen relics were little calculated to inspire. It came opportunely, also, for I felt particularly depressed at the sight of a large maritime city, once echoing with the voices of thousands, now without an inhabitant; a port formerly containing rich laden galleys, at present choked up with reeds; and finally, a quay, on which for centuries anxious mariners paced up and down throughout the day, at this moment without a living creature moving on its weather-beaten surface but myself.”

NO. XXVIII. – SELINUS, OR SELINUNTUM

This city was founded A. U. C. 127, by a colony from Megara. It received its name from a Greek word meaning parsley, which grew there in great profusion; and its ancient consequence may be learned from the ruins now remaining. It was destroyed by Hannibal. The conduct of the war having been committed to that general, he set sail with a very large fleet and army. He landed at a place called the Well of Lilybæum, which gave its name to a city afterwards built on the same spot.

His first enterprise was the siege of Selinuntum. The attack and defence were equally vigorous; the very women showing a resolution and bravery beyond their sex. The city, after making a long resistance, was taken by storm, and the plunder of it abandoned to the soldiers. The victor exercised the most horrid cruelties, without showing the least regard to age or sex. He permitted, however, such inhabitants as had fled to continue in the city after it had been dismantled, and to till the lands, on condition of their paying a tribute to the Carthaginians. The city had then been built 242 years. It became afterwards an important place; but from the manner in which the columns and other fragments of three stupendous temples lie, it is quite evident they must have been thrown down by an earthquake; but the date of that calamity is not known.

The ruins of Selinus are thus described by Mr. Swinburne: – “They lie in several stupendous heaps, with many columns still erect, and at a distance resemble a large town with a crowd of steeples. On the top of the hill is a very extensive level, seven miles off, on which lie the scattered members of three Doric temples, thirty yards asunder, in a direct line from north to south. The most northerly temple, which was pseudodipterous, exceeded the others very much in dimensions and majesty, and now composes one of the most gigantic and sublime ruins imaginable. They all lie in great confusion and disorder.

“The second temple is easily described. It had six columns in the front, and eleven on each side; in all thirty-four. Their diameter 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. These temples are all of the Doric order, without a base.

“The two lesser ones are more delicate in their parts and ornaments than the principal ruins; the stone of which they are composed is smooth and yellowish, and brought from the quarries of Castel-Franco. There are other ruins and broken columns dispersed over the site of the city, but none equal to these.” Such is the account given by Mr. Swinburne; what follows first appeared in the Penny Magazine.

On the southern coast of Sicily, about ten miles to the east of Cape Granitola, and between the little rivers of Maduini and Bilici, (the Crimisus and Hypsa of ancient times,) a tremendous mass of ruins presents itself in the midst of a solitary and desolate country. These are the sad remains of the once splendid city of Selinus, or Selinuntum, which was founded by a Greek colony from Megara, more than two thousand four hundred years ago. When seen at a distance from the sea, they still look like a mighty city; but on a near approach nothing is seen but a confused heap of fallen edifices – a mixture of broken shafts, capitals, entablatures, and metopæ, with a few truncated columns erect among them. They seem to consist chiefly of the remains of three temples of the Doric order. One of these temples was naturally devoted by a maritime and trading people to Neptune; a second was dedicated to Castor and Pollux, the friends of navigation and the scourge of pirates; the destination of the third temple is uncertain.

The size of the columns and the masses of stone that lie heaped about them is prodigious. The lower circumference of the columns is thirty-one feet and a half; many of the stone blocks measure twenty-five feet in length, eight in height, and six in thickness. Twelve of the columns have fallen with singular regularity, the disjointed shaft-pieces of each lying in a straight line with the base from which they fell, and having their several capitals at the other end of the line. If architects and antiquaries have not been mistaken in their task of measuring among heaps of ruins that in good part cover and conceal the exterior lines, the largest of the three temples was three hundred and thirty-four feet long, and one hundred and fifty-four feet wide.

These are prodigious and unusual dimensions for ancient edifices of this kind. That wonder of the whole world, the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, itself did not much exceed these admeasurements. The great Selinuntian temple seems to have had porticoes of four columns in depth, and eight in width, with a double row of sixteen columns on the lateral sides of the cella. It is somewhat singular, from having had all the columns of the first row on the east front fluted, while all the rest of the columns were quite plain. One of these fluted columns is erect and tolerably entire, with the exception of its capital. The fluting, moreover, is not in the Doric style; for each flute is separated by a fillet. The material of which this and the other edifices were formed, is a species of fine-grained petrifaction, hard, and very sonorous on being struck with a hammer. It was hewn out of quarries near at hand, at a place called Campo Bello, where many masses, only partially separated from the rock, and looking as if the excavation had been suddenly interrupted, are still seen.

A flight of ancient steps, in tolerable preservation, leads from the Marinella to the Acropolis, where the covert-ways, gates, and walls, built of large squared stones, may still be traced all round the hill. A little to the west of the Acropolis is the small pestiferous lake, Yhalici, partly choked up with sand. In ancient times this was called Stagnum Gonusa, and it is said the great philosopher Empedocles purified it and made the air around it wholesome, by clearing a mouth towards the sea, and conveying a good stream of water through it. The Fountain of Diana, at a short distance, which supplied this stream, still pours forth a copious volume of excellent water; but it is allowed to run and stagnate over the plain, and now adds to the malaria created by the stagnant lake. The surrounding country is wholly uncultivated, and, where not a morass, is covered with underwood, dwarf palms, and myrtle-bushes of a prodigious growth.

For six months in the year, Selinunte is a most unhealthy place; and though the stranger may visit it by day-time without much danger of catching the infection, it seems scarcely possible to sleep there in summer and escape the malaria fever in one of its worst forms. Of four English artists who tried the experiment in 1822, not one escaped; and Mr. Harris, a young architect of great promise, died in Sicily from the consequences. These gentlemen made a discovery of some importance. They dug up near one of the temples some sculptured metopæ with figures in rilievo, of a singular primitive style, which seems to have more affinity with the Egyptian or the Etruscan, than with the Greek style of a later age. There are probably few Greek fragments of so ancient a date in so perfect a state of preservation.

The government claimed these treasures, and caused them to be transported to Palermo; but Mr. Samuel Angel, an architect, and one of the party, took casts from them, which may now be seen at the British Museum; and of which we present the reader with an account, drawn up, we believe, by a gentleman named Hamilton. – “Within a temporary building opening from the fifth room, are the casts from the marble metopæ of the great temple of Jupiter Olympius, at Selinus, in Sicily. Valuable as they are, as belonging to a school of art prior to that of Ægina, and probably of a date coeval with the earliest Egyptian, a short notice of them may not be unacceptable, as no account of them is to be found in the Synopsis, although to the public in general subjects of great curiosity and inquiry. The legend which they tell and their appearance, are altogether as unaccountable as mysterious. At Selinus, in Sicily, there are the remains of six temples of the earliest Doric, within a short distance of each other, and it was during the researches into the ruins of the largest, called the Western, and the one farthest from it, named the Eastern, by Messrs. Harris and Angell, in 1832, that these ancient sculptures were found: among them there were no single and perfect statues as in the temple of Ægina, which probably arose from the neighbourhood being well peopled, and they had no doubt been repeatedly ransacked. These temples may be reckoned among the largest of antiquity, being equal in their dimensions to those at Agrigentum, in the fluting of whose columns there is sufficient space for a man to stand. Immediately after the discovery, application was made to the Neapolitan Government to allow them to be shipped for England; but permission was refused, and they are now in the Royal Gallery at Palermo. Casts were, however, allowed to be taken, and they are these we now describe.

“They are probably of as early a date as any that have reached our times, and are of different styles of art; those which belonged to the temple called Eastern, whence the sculpture of the head of the dying warrior, and the chariot drawn by horses, were taken, possess much of the Æginitan character; those of the Western are of a ruder age. In most of the figures the anatomy resembles that of the earliest coins, but differs in many respects from the Greek sculptures; and there is a short and full character in the faces approaching the Egyptian. From the short proportions, the fleshy part of the thigh overcharged, and the peculiar manner in which the hair is arranged, they might be taken for specimens of Æginitan art; but on a close inspection it will be found, that they are the work of artists educated on different principles. At a much later period it is known that the artists of Ægina were employed by the kings of Sicily; and these, therefore, are not unlikely to have been the work of Carthaginian sculptors brought to decorate a city in alliance and newly founded, which will account for the Egyptian character given to the whole.

“The cast, which consists of the body and head of a dying soldier, a part of a female figure behind, formed the third metope of the Eastern Temple, and is a most valuable and curious fragment, and determines the style and character of the sculpture of the temple. It bears a marked resemblance to some of the heads in the Ægina marbles, but it has much more expression; the artist has evidently intended to mark the agonies of death, by the closed eyes, the mouth slightly opened, and the tongue appearing between the teeth; the hair and beard are most carefully and symmetrically arranged and most elaborately finished; the helmet is thrown back, and is of the kind called ‘γεῖσον’ – part of the crest ‘λόφος’ is visible under the left shoulder of the figure. The fragment of the female is very spirited, and evidently in strong action. Those metopes, like those of the Parthenon, are in high relief, and in some parts detached. Thorwaldsen has pronounced them equal in execution to the Ægina. The next, which consists of three figures, one of which has a horse under the arm, is particularly interesting, from the illustration it presents of the death of the Gorgon Medusa. Perseus, emboldened by the presence of Minerva, is represented in the act of slaying Medusa; his eyes are averted from the object of his honour, while his right arm, guided by the goddess, thrusts his sword into the throat of the monster. Pegasus, a winged foal, springs from her blood, and Medusa presses him to her side with apparent solicitude. The monstrous face of the Gorgon is finely represented; the large round head and hideous face rise from the shoulders without the intervention of a neck; all the features are frightfully distorted, the nose is flat and spreading, and the mouth is nearly the whole width of the face, and is armed on each side with two immense tusks; the hair over the forehead is curiously shown, and almost appears to have represented the serpents to which it was changed. The figure of Minerva on the right is draped with the ‘πέπλον,’ and has the Mæander ornament on the edge. The figure of Perseus is in the centre; he is armed with the harp of Mercury and the helmet of Pluto, which latter has a pendant falling on each side; the ‘πτηνὰ πέδιλα,’ or talaria, are represented as covering the feet entirely, and bear some resemblance to the ancient greaves; the front part is attached to the ancle by thongs. The form of the young Pegasus is exceedingly beautiful; he seems bounding from the earth. The metope, containing the figure bearing two others on its shoulders, represents the adventure of Hercules, surnamed Melampyges, from the black and hairy appearance of his loins. The story is as follows: – Passalus and Achemon, two brothers, reviled their mother, who warned them to beware of a man whose loins were covered with black hair. They attempted to rob Hercules while asleep, and from that had the name of Cercopes; in the attempt they failed and awoke him, and he bound them hand and foot to his bow, with their heads downwards, and carried them in that manner. They began laughing on the accomplishment of their mother’s prophecy; Hercules asked them why they laughed, and on their telling him the reason, he also laughed and liberated them. The figure of the god is represented as strong and muscular, and the two prisoners have a very ludicrous appearance; in the reversed position, the hair falls in a curious manner; the whole group has been painted in various colours, and in the countenances much of Egyptian expression is to be observed. The horses which draw the chariot formed part of the centre metope of the Eastern Temple; it is very imperfect, and is supposed to represent the celebration of the race of Pelops and Œnomaus; they are drawn full of fire and courage, and are finely fore-shortened; they have the cropped ears and manes which are observable in those of the Parthenon.