supported them and the
drums of their gigantic columns are tufted with wild palm, aloe,
asphodel, and crimson snapdragon. Yellow blossoming sage, and mint,
and lavender, and mignonette, sprout in the crevices where snakes
and lizards harbour. The grass around is gemmed with blue pimpernel
and convolvulus. Gladiolus springs amid the young corn-blades
beneath the almond-trees; while a beautiful little iris makes the
most unpromising dry places brilliant with its delicate greys and
blues. In cooler and damper hollows, around the boles of old olives
and under ruined arches, flourishes the tender acanthus, and the
road-sides are gaudy with a yellow daisy flower, which may perchance
be the [Greek: elichrysos] of Theocritus. Thus the whole scene is a
wilderness of brightness, less radiant but more touching than when
processions of men and maidens bearing urns and laurel-branches,
crowned with ivy or with myrtle, paced along those sandstone roads,
chanting paeans and prosodial hymns, toward the glistening porches
and hypaethral cells.

The only temple about the name of which there can be no doubt is
that of Zeus Olympius. A prostrate giant who once with nineteen of
his fellows helped to support the roof of this enormous fane, and
who now lies in pieces among the asphodels, remains to prove that
this was the building begun by the Agrigentines after the defeat of
the Phoenicians at the Himera, when slaves were many and spoil was
abundant, and Hellas both in Sicily and on the mainland felt a more
than usual thrill of gratitude to their ancestral deity. The
greatest architectural works of the island, the temples of Segeste
and Selinus, as well as those of Girgenti, were begun between this
period and the Carthaginian invasion of 409 B.C. The victory of the
Hellenes over the barbarians in 480 B.C., symbolised in the victory
of Zeus over the enslaved Titans of this temple, gave a vast impulse
to their activity and wealth. After the disastrous incursion of the
same foes seventy years later, the western Greek towns of the island
received a check from which they never recovered. Many of their
noblest buildings remained unfinished. The question which rises to
the lips of all who contemplate the ruins of this gigantic temple
and its compeer dedicated to Herakles is this: Who wrought the
destruction of works so solid and enduring? For what purpose of
spite or interest were those vast columns--in the very flutings of
which a man can stand