of blood-shedding took place in the open air and
outside the temple. With a length of 190 feet and a breadth of 84 feet,
this building is hypoethral, which means that the _cella_, or sanctuary
that held the statue of the deity, was constructed open to the sky. It is
peripteral, and presents a row of six pillars fluted at base and top, with
twelve on each side, making thirty-six in all. The _cella_ itself in the
interior is upheld by sixteen columns about six feet in diameter, which in
their turn are surmounted by two rows of smaller pillars above that
support the roof. With the exception of one side of the upper stage of the
interior every column of the temple remains intact, as do likewise the
entablature and pediments. Only the wall of the _cella_ has been pulled
down; doubtless to supply material for building."(8)

Having quoted Monsieur Lenormant's careful description of the chief pride
of Poseidonia, we shall confine ourselves to as few remarks as possible
concerning the two remaining temples. The Basilica, a misnomer of which
the veriest amateur must at once perceive the absurdity, is inferior both
in size and in beauty of proportion to its close neighbour of Neptune. Its
chief peculiarity from an architectural point of view will be at once
remarked, for it has its two facades composed of seven--an odd number--of
columns, so that its interior easily divides itself into two narrow
chambers of equal length, affording ample ground for the theory, now
generally held, that this building was not a hall of Justice, or
_Basilica_, but a temple intended expressly for the worship of dual
divinities. Almost without a doubt it was erected--probably not long after
the Temple of Poseidon--in honour of Demeter (Ceres) and of her only child
Persephone (Proserpine), who was seized from her mother's care by the
amorous god of the Infernal Regions, as she was plucking anemones in the
verdant meadows of Enna. We all know "the old sweet mythos"; we all
understand its hidden allegory with regard to the sowing, the up-springing
and the garnering of the yellow corn, that spends half the year in the
embraces of the earth, the palace of Pluto, and half the year on the broad
loving bosom of Mother Demeter. Here then within these bare and ruined
walls were mother and daughter worshipped by the people of Poseidonia, who
reasonably considered that the two goddesses of the Earth should have
their habitation as near as possible to the Sanctuary o