ts glorious temples, and retired to a strong position
to the east. The spot chosen for the new residence of these exiles lay
close to the source that supplied with pure water their ancient aqueduct,
known for this reason as Caputaqueum, now corrupted into Capaccio. A link
with the old city, that lay deserted in the plain below, was still
retained by the bishop of the newly founded town in the mountains, who
continued to be known as _Episcopus Paestanus_. In the eleventh century
Robert Guiscard systematically plundered the ruins of Paestum in order to
erect or embellish the churches and palaces of Salerno and Amalfi. Every
remaining piece of sculpture and of marble was removed, and it was only
the vast size of the pillars of the three great temples, and the
consequent difficulty attending their transport by boat across the bay or
along the marshy ground of the coast line, that saved from destruction
these magnificent relics of "the glory that was Greece." But even humble
Capaccio did not afford a final resting-place to the harried Paestani, for
in the year 1245 the great Emperor Frederick II., who had been defied by
the feudal Counts of Capaccio, besieged and utterly destroyed this
stronghold of the mountains that had been the child of Poseidonia of the
sea-girt plains. Another and a yet loftier retreat had to be sought by the
survivors of the Imperial vengeance, so that the ruined Capaccio the Old
was abandoned for another settlement, which still exists as a miserable
village amidst those barren hills that had ever looked down with jealous
envy upon the proud city with its pillared temples. One curious
circumstance with regard to Paestum must finally be mentioned, in that the
existence of its ruins, the grandest and most ancient group of monuments
on the mainland of Italy, remained unknown to the learned world until
comparatively modern times. Only the local peasants and the inhabitants of
the poverty-stricken towns in the Lucanian hills seem to have been aware
of the presence of the gigantic temples standing in lonely majesty by the
shore and as the superstitious nature of these ignorant people attributed
these structures to the work of a magician--perhaps to the great wizard
Vergil himself--they were shunned both by night and by day as the haunt of
malignant spirits. Poor fisher-folk and buffalo-drivers, who had of
necessity to pass near the ruined fanes, were wont to slink by in fear and
trembling, and doubtless they br