Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/978

 958 SELINUS. walls; but the outlines of two large edifices, built of squared stones and in a massive style, are dis- tinctly traceable outside the walls, near the NE. and SELINUS. NW. angles of the city, though we have no clue to their nature or purpose. But much the most remarkable of the ruins at PLAN OF SELINUS. A C D. Temples within the city. B. Small temple or aedicula in the city. E F G. Great temples without the city. Selinns are those of three temples on the hill to the E., which do not appear to have been included in the city, but, as was often the case, were built on this neighbouring eminence, so as to front the city itself. All these temples are considerably larger than any of the three above described; and the most northerly of them is one of the largest of which we have any remains. It had 8 columns in front and 17 in the sides, and was of the kind called pseudo-dipteral. Its length was 359 feet, and its breadth 162, so that it was actually longer tiian the great temple of Ju- piter Olympius at Agrigentum, though not equal to it in breadth. From the columns being only par- tially fluted, as well as from other signs, it is clear that it never was completed ; but all the more im- portant parts of the structure were finished, and it must have certainly been one of the most imposing fabrics in antiquity. Only three of the columns are now standing, and these imperfect; but the whole area is filled up with a heap of fallen masses, por- tions of columns, capitals, &c., and other huge archi- tectural fragments, all of the most massive character, and forming, as observed by Swinburne, " one of the most gigantic and sublime ruins imaginable." The two other temples are also prostrate, but the ruins have fallen with such regularity that the portions of almost every column lie on the ground as they have fallen ; and it is not only easy to restore the plan and design of the two edifices, but it appears as if they could be rebuilt with little diiSculty. These tem- ples, though greatly inferior to their gigantic neigh- bour, were still larger than that at Segesta, and even exceed the great temple of Neptune at I'aestum ; so that the three, when standing, must have presented a spectacle unrivalled in antiquity. All these build- ings may be safely referred to a period anterior to H M. Remains of edifices outside the walls. N. River Selinus, now the Madiuni. the Carthaginian conquest (b. c. 409), though the three temples last described appear to have been all of them of later date than those within the walls of the city. This is proved, among other circumstances, by the sculptured metopes, several of which have been discovered and extricated from among the fallen fragments. Of these sculptures, those which be- longed to the temples within the walls, present a very peculiar and archaic style of art, and are universally recognised as among the earliest extant specimer." of Greek sculpture. (They are figured by Miiller, Denhmaler, pi. 4, 5, as well as in many other works, and casts of them are in the British Bluseum.) Those, on the contrary, which have been found among the ruins of the temple marked E. on the opposite hill, are of a later and more advanced style, though still retaining considerable remains of the stiffness of the earliest art. Besides the interest attached to these Selinuntine metopes from their important bearing on the history of Greek sculpture, the remains of these temples are of value as aSbrding the most une- quivocal testimony to the use of painting, both for the architectural decoration of the temples, aud as applied to the sculptures with which they were adorned. A very full and detailed account of trie ruins at Selinus is given in the Duke of Serra di Falco's Antichita Sidliane, vol. ii., from which the preceding plan is derived. A more general descrip- tion of them will be found in Swinburne's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 242—245; Smyth's Sicily, pp.219— 221; and other works on Sicily in general. The coins of Selinus are numerous and various. The earliest, as already mentioned, bear merely tlio figure of a parsley-leaf on the obverse. Those of somewhat later date (including the one figured below) represent a figure sacrificing on au altar,