Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/341

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. S17 claimed a superior share of honour and danger; but CHAP, the tribes that fought under the Gothic banners, are ' sometimes distinguished and sometimes confounded in the imperfect histories of that age; and as the bar- barian fleets seemed to issue from the mouth of the Tanais, the vague but famihar appellation of Scythians was frequently bestowed on the mixt multitude ^. In the general calamities of mankind, the death of Ruin of the an individual, however exalted, the ruin of an edifice, eXsus. however famous, are passed over with careless inat- tention. Yet we cannot forget that the temple of Diana at Ephesus, after having risen with increasing splendour from seven repeated misfortunes °, was finally burnt by the Goths in their third naval invasion. The arts of Greece, and the wealth of Asia, had conspired to erect that sacred and magnificent structure. It was supported by an hundred and twenty-seven marble co- lumns of the Ionic order. They were the gifts of de- vout monarchs, and each was sixty feet high. The altar was adorned with the masterly sculptures of Praxiteles, who had, perhaps, selected from the fa- vourite legends of the place the birth of the divine children of Latona, the concealment of Apollo after the slaughter of the Cyclops, and the clemency of Bacchus to the vanquished Amazons °. Yet the length of the temple of Ephesus was only four hundred and twenty-five feet, about two thirds of the measure of the church of St. Peter's at Rome p. In the other dimen- sions, it was still more inferior to that sublime produc- tion of modern architecture. The spreading arms of a christian cross require a much greater breadth than the oblong temples of the pagans; and the boldest artists of antiquity would have been startled at the "» Zosimus and the Greeks (as the author of the Philopatris) give the name of Scythians to those whom Jornandes, and the Latin writers con- stantly represent as Goths. " Hist. August, p. 178 ; Jornandes, c. 20. o Strabo, 1. xiv. p. 640 ; Vitruvius, 1. i. c. 1. praefat. 1. vii. ; Tacit. An- nal. iii. 61 ; Plin. Hist. Nat. xxxvi. 14. V The length of St. Peter's is eight hundred and forty Roman palms ; each palm is very little short of nine English inches. See Greave's Miscel- lanies, vol, i. p. 233, on the Roman foot.