Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/149

 P A E P A E 133 to the silting up of the mouth of the Silarus, which has overflowed its bed, and converted the plain into unproduc tive marshy ground. Herds of buffaloes, and the few peasants who watch them, are now the only occupants of this once thickly populated and garden-like region. In the 9th century Paestum was sacked and partly destroyed by Arab invaders; in the llth century it was further dis mantled by Robert Guiscard, and in the 16th century was finally deserted. The ruins of Posidonia are, however, among the most interesting of the Hellenic world. Remains of the city wall, sufficient to indicate the whole circuit (an irregular polygon about 3 miles round), still exist. The lower part of one of the gates, a fine specimen of Greek masonry, is still fairly perfect. This is a large square tower with inner and outer doorways, and on each side a projecting bastion, semicircular in plan ; the whole is .skilfully arranged so as to thoroughly command the door ways. A ditch, about 40 feet outside the wall, gave additional security. The main wall is 16 feet 6 inches thick. The general design of this fortification much resembles the very perfectly preserved walls and towers of Messene in the Peloponnesus. For plan and description of this gate see a paper by T. L. Donaldson, Museum of Clascal Antiquities, vol. i. p. 35, 1851. Outside the north gate there is a long street of tombs, some of which have been excavated, and have yielded a number of interesting arms, vases, and mural paintings, mostly now. in the museum at Naples. The chief glory of Posidonia is its wonderful group of three well-preserved Doric temples. The largest of tliesc,conjecturally called the &quot;Temple of Poseidon,&quot; is on the whole the most complete Greek temple now existing, and, judging from other specimens of the Doric style, can hardly be later than 500 B. c. The characteristics which point to its remote age are the shortness (comparatively speaking) of the columns, their rapid diminution, the complete absence of entasis, the great projec tion of the capitals, and the massiveness of the entablature. Another peculiarity is that the columns have twenty-four flutes, while other Doric examples rarely exceed twenty. The columns on the flanks are fourteen in all, about an average number for a Doric hexastyle temple. Fig. 2 gives the plan, in which there is nothing con- 4-r&quot;

FIG. 3. Plan of the (so-called) FIG. 2. Plan of the Gre.it Temple. Basilica. The s .aded part does not now exist. jectural ; the only serious loss is the absence of the greater part of the cella wall, and some of the upper range of interior columns ; the seven columns of this upper order which still remain in situ are specially valuable, as no other temple still possesses any of them. The peristyle columns are 6 feet 10 inches in diameter at the base, except those at the angles, which measure 7 feet. The inter- columniation at the angles is closer than elsewhere, after the usual Doric rule. The height of the columns, including capitals, is 29 feet. The stylobate consists of three steps, and the cella floor is four steps above the peristyle pavement, i.e., nearly 5 fret, an un usual height. Indications still exist of the stairs leading to the roof or to the upper floor, which probably formed the internal ceil ing over the aisles. The main dimensions of the building are, on the top step of the stylobate, nearly 196 feet in length by 79 feet wide, more than double the length of the celebrated temple of Mgina,, though not quite double the width. The material of which this and the other temples are built is a coarse calcareous stone from the neighbouring hills, formed by water deposit. None of this stone was, however, left exposed. The whole building, inside and out, like that at Mgma. and other^ places, was carefully covered with a fine hard stucco formed of* lime and pounded white marble, which took a high polish, and could hardly have been distinguished from real marble. On this was painted the usual coloured ornaments with which all important Greek buildings appear to have been decorated. Archaisms of style, like those in this temple, are also to be found in the scanty remains still existing of the temples at Corinth and Ortygia (Syracuse), the latter probably an even earlier example of the Doric style. The other temples, though fine and well-pre served, are inferior both in size and interest. Though Greek in their general outline, and of the Doric order, yet the details, such as cornices, shafts, and capitals, are debased in style, and can hardly belong to the autonomous period of Posidonia ; more probably they were built under the native Lucanian or Roman domination, while Hellenic traditions still lingered among the peorje. The larger of these, popularly called the Basilica,&quot; is quite unique in plan (see fig. 3). It has nine columns (an unequal number) on its front, and a range of columns down the centre of the cella. It is pseudo-dipteral, and has eighteen columns on the flanks ; all that is black in the plan still remains. The columns are very ungraceful in shape, with an extravagant amomit of entasis, and a curious circlet of leaves immediately under the echinus. The most probable explanation of the strange arrange ment of the cella is that the temple was dedicated to two deities each half containing one statue. The third temple, popularly called that of Ceres, is hexastyle peripteral, about 108 feet by 48 on the top of the stylobate, with thirteen columns on the flanks. In plan it is abnormal in having an open vestibule within the peristyle. There is an opisthodomos behind the cella. Its details throughout are very debased and un- Hellenic. Both these latter buildings offer a striking contrast to the pure and severe Doric of the great temple. Ruins and traces of several other buildings within the city wall still exist, all apparently of the Roman period. Part of an amphitheatre, and of what may have been a circus, can be distinguished, as well as ruins of an aqueduct outside the city. Various mounds and other inequalities in the ground suggest that much still remains hidden, and that Piestum would probably afford a rich harvest to the careful explorer, while a very simple system of drainage might again restore to this once fertile plain its long-lost wholesomeness of air and richness of soil. See Strabo, v. and vi.; Wilkins, Magna Grxcia, 1807; Piranesi, ViUe &amp;lt;Ie Pestitm, Rome, 1778; Major, Ruins of Pxstum, 17(58; La Gardette, Ruines tin Piestum, 1779; Botticher, Die Tektoiiik der Hellrnen, 1844-52, vol. ii. p. 32;&quot;), and plates; Fergusson, The Parthenon, 1883, p. 82; Labrouste, L?s Temples &amp;lt;ti- PxKtum, 1877. This las_t work has the best and most accurate draw ings, specially executed for the Paris Ecole des Beaux Arts. (J. H. M.) PAEZ, JOSE ANTONIO, one of the leaders of the struggle for South-American independence, and the first president (1830-38) of the republic of Venezuela, was born of Indian parents in the neighbourhood of Acarigua in the province of Barinas, and died in exile at New York, May 6, 1873. His military career, which began about 1810, was distinguished by the defeat of the Spanish forces at Mata de la Miel (1815), at Montecal and throughout the province of Apure (1816), and at Puerto Cabello (1823). At first he acted in concert with BOLIVAR (&amp;lt;?.&amp;gt;.), but in 1829 he procured the secession of Venezuela from the republic of Colombia. For his later life see VENEZUELA. His autobiography was published at New York in 1867- 69, and his son Ramon Paez (otherwise known as an author) wrote Public Life of J. A. Paez (1864). PAEZ, PEDRO (1564-1622), Jesuit missionary to Abyssinia, was born at Olmedo in Old Castile in 1564. Having entered the Society of Jesus, he was set apart for foreign mission service, and sent to Goa in 1588. Within a year he was despatched from that place along with a