ings that are shut. But I perceived that the parts of the gates
that joined on the inside were covered with steel, and just where the said
gates touched when they were opened I saw two square Indian loadstones of a
bluish hue, well polished, and half a span broad, mortised in the temple
wall. Now, by the hidden and admirable power of the loadstones, the steel
plates were put into motion, and consequently the gates were slowly drawn;
however, not always, but when the said loadstone on the outside was
removed, after which the steel was freed from its power, the two bunches of
scordium being at the same time put at some distance, because it deadens
the magnes and robs it of its attractive virtue.

On the loadstone that was placed on the right side the following iambic
verse was curiously engraven in ancient Roman characters:

Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.

Fate leads the willing, and th' unwilling draws.

The following sentence was neatly cut in the loadstone that was on the
left:

ALL THINGS TEND TO THEIR END.

Chapter 5.XXXVIII.

Of the Temple's admirable pavement.

When I had read those inscriptions, I admired the beauty of the temple, and
particularly the disposition of its pavement, with which no work that is
now, or has been under the cope of heaven, can justly be compared; not that
of the Temple of Fortune at Praeneste in Sylla's time, or the pavement of
the Greeks, called asarotum, laid by Sosistratus at Pergamus. For this
here was wholly in compartments of precious stones, all in their natural
colours: one of red jasper, most charmingly spotted; another of ophites; a
third of porphyry; a fourth of lycophthalmy, a stone of four different
colours, powdered with sparks of gold as small as atoms; a fifth of agate,
streaked here and there with small milk-coloured waves; a sixth of costly
chalcedony or onyx-stone; and another of green jasper, with certain red and
yellowish veins. And all these were disposed in a diagonal line.

At the portico some small stones were inlaid and evenly joined on the
floor, all in their native colours, to embellish the design of the figures;
and they were ordered in such a manner that you would have thought some
vine-leaves and branches had been carelessly strewed on the pavement; for
in some places they were thick, and thin in others. That inlaying was very
wonderful everywhere. Here were seen, as it were in the shade, some snails
crawling on the grapes