made some preliminary
investigations; soon after, an extensive discovery of antiquities was
made by peasants, digging without authority; and after this M. Carapanos
made a systematic excavation of the whole site to a considerable depth.
The topographical and architectural results are disappointing, and show
either that the site always retained its primitive simplicity, or else
that whatever buildings once existed have been very completely
destroyed.

To the south of the hill, on which are the walls of the town, and to the
east of the theatre, is a plateau about 200 yds. long and 50 yds. wide.
Towards the eastern end of this terrace are the scanty remains of a
building which can hardly be anything but the temple of Zeus; it appears
to have consisted of pronaos, naos or cella, and opisthodomus, and some
of the lower drums of the internal columns of the cella were still
resting on their foundations. No trace of any external colonnade was
found. The temple was about 130 ft. by 80 ft. It had been converted into
a Christian church, and hardly anything of its architecture seems to
have survived. In it and around it were found the most interesting
products of excavation--statuettes and decorative bronzes, many of them
bearing dedications to Zeus Naius and Dione, and inscriptions, including
many small tablets of lead which contained the questions put to the
oracle. Farther to the west, on the same terrace, were two rectangular
buildings, which M. Carapanos conjectures to have been connected with
the oracle, but which show no distinguishing features.

Below the terrace was a precinct, surrounded by walls and flanked with
porticoes and other buildings; it is over 100 yds. in length and
breadth, and of irregular shape. One of the buildings on the
south-western side contained a pedestal or altar, and is identified by
M. Carapanos as a temple of Aphrodite, on the insufficient evidence of a
single dedicated object; it does not seem to have any of the
characteristics of a temple. In front of the porticoes are rows of
pedestals, which once bore statues and other dedications. At the
southern corner of the precinct is a kind of gate or propylaeum, flanked
with two towers, between which are placed two coarse limestone drums. If
these are _in situ_ and belong to the original gateway, it must have
been of a very rough character; it does not seem probable that they
carried, as M. Carapanos suggests, the statuette and bronze bowl by
which di