e buildings of the Athenian Acropolis, which causes so much
variety of light and shade upon the temple-fronts, and offers so
many novel points of view when they are seen in combination, seems
to have been due originally to the exigencies of the ground. At
Paestum, in planning out the city, there can have been no utilitarian
reasons for placing the temples at odd angles, either to each other
or the shore. Therefore we see them now almost exactly in line and
parallel, though at unequal distances. If something of picturesque
effect is thus lost at Paestum through the flatness of the ground,
something of impressive grandeur on the other hand is gained by the
very regularity with which those phalanxes of massive Doric columns
are drawn up to face the sea.

Poseidonia, as the name betokens, was dedicated to the god of the
sea; and the coins of the city are stamped with his effigy bearing a
trident, and with his sacred animal, the bull. It has therefore been
conjectured that the central of the three temples--which was
hypaethral and had two entrances, east and west--belonged to
Poseidon; and there is something fine in the notion of the god being
thus able to pass to and fro from his cella through those sunny
peristyles, down to his chariot, yoked with sea-horses, in the
brine. Yet hypaethral temples were generally consecrated to Zeus, and
it is therefore probable that the traditional name of this vast
edifice is wrong. The names of the two other temples, _Tempio di
Cerere_ and _Basilica_, are wholly unsupported by any proof or
probability. The second is almost certainly founded on a mistake;
and if we assign the largest of the three shrines to Zeus, one or
other of the lesser belonged most likely to Poseidon.

The style of the temples is severe and primitive. In general effect
their Doric architecture is far sterner than that adapted by Ictinus
to the Parthenon. The entablature seems somewhat disproportioned to
the columns and the pediment; and, owing to this cause, there is a
general effect of heaviness. The columns, again, are thick-set; nor
is the effect of solidity removed by their gradual narrowing from
the base upwards. The pillars of the _Neptune_ are narrowed in a
straight line; those of the _Basilica_ and _Ceres_ by a gentle
curve. Study of these buildings, so sublime in their massiveness, so
noble in the parsimony of their decoration, so dignified in their
employment of the simplest means for the attainment of an