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 beheld. It was a full mile in circuit, walled with stone, and without the wall ran a moat. The shape was circular, with seats all round, sixty feet in height, raised one above another, so that no one could deprive his neighbour of beholding the spectacle. Eastward and westward in the circle was erected a gate of white marble. Every craftsman and artisan, even to the sculptor of images, was employed by Theseus to raise and adorn this structure; so that in the like space the earth did not contain so fair a theatre. Upon the east gate were raised an altar and an oratory to Venus, the Goddess of Love; and upon the western one another in honour of Mars: northward also, in a turret on the wall, was a rich oratory of alabaster and white and red coral, in worship of Diana the chaste.

Nor should I leave out the noble carving and the paintings in these three oratories. First, in the temple of Venus might be seen displayed upon the wall, personified in piteous array, the broken sleeps, cold sighs, the sacred tears and lamentings that love's servants endure in this life: pleasure, hope, desire,