The columns of this temple are thick in proportion to their elevation, and much closer to each other than they are generally found to be in Greek temples; “and this,” says Mr. Forsyth, “crowds them advantageously on the eye, enlarges our idea of the space, and gives a grand and heroic air to a monument of very moderate dimensions.”
In the open space[104] between the first and second temples, were two other large buildings, built of the same sort of stone, and nearly of the same size. Their substructions still remain, encumbered with fragments of the columns of the entablatures; and so overgrown with brambles, nettles, and weeds, as scarcely to admit a near inspection.
The second[105], or the Temple of Neptune, is not the largest, but by far the most massy and imposing of the three: it has six columns in front and fourteen in length; the angular column to the west, with its capital, has been struck and partially shivered by lightning. It once threatened to fall and ruin the symmetry of one of the most perfect monuments now in existence, but it has been secured by iron cramps. An inner peristyle of much smaller columns rises in the cella, in two stories, with only an architrave, which has neither frieze nor cornice between the columns, which thus almost seem standing, the one on the capital of the other—a defect in architecture, which is, however, justified by Vitruvius and the example of the Parthenon. The light pillars of this interior peristyle, of which some have fallen, rise a few feet above the exterior cornice and the massy columns of the temple. Whether you gaze at this wonderful edifice from without or from within, as you stand on the floor of the cella, which is much encumbered with heaps of fallen stones and rubbish, the effect is awfully grand. The utter solitude, and the silence, never broken save by the flight and screams of the crows and birds of prey, which, your approach may scare from the cornices and architraves, where they roost in great numbers, add to the solemn impression, produced by those firm-set and eternal-looking columns.
The third edifice is the largest[106]. It has nine pillars at the end and eighteen on the sides. Its size is not its only distinction; a row of pillars, extending from the middle pillar at one end to the middle pillar on the other, divides it into equal parts, and it is considered that though it is now called a temple, it was not one originally. Some imagine it to have been a Curia, others a Basilica, and others an Exchange.
These relics stand on the edge of a vast and desolate plain[107], that extends from the neighbourhood of Salerno nearly to the confines of Calabria. The approach to them is exceedingly impressive. For miles scarcely a human habitation is seen, or any living creature, save herds of buffaloes. And when you are within the lines of the ancient walls of the town—of the once opulent and magnificent Pæstum—only a miserable little taverna, or house of entertainment, a barn, and a mean modern edifice, belonging to the nominal bishop of the place, and nearly always uninhabited, meet your eye. But there the three ancient edifices rise before you in the most imposing and sublime manner—they can hardly be called ruins, they have still such a character of firmness and entireness. Their columns seem to be rooted in the earth, or to have grown from it!
“Accustomed as we were[108] to the ancient and modern magnificence of Rome,” says Stuart, “in regard to the Parthenon, and, by what we had heard and read, impressed with an advantageous opinion of what we were to see, we found the image our fancy had preconceived greatly inferior to the real object.” Yet Wheler, who upon such a subject cannot be considered as of equal authority with Stuart, says of the monuments of antiquity yet remaining at Athens,—“I dare prefer them before any place in the world, Rome only excepted.” “If,” continues Dr. Clarke, “there be upon earth any buildings, which may be fairly brought into a comparison with the Parthenon, they are the temples of Pæstum in Lucania. But even these can only be so with reference to their superior antiquity, to their severe simplicity, and to the perfection of design visible in their structure. In graceful proportion, in magnificence, in costliness of materials, in splendid decoration, and in every thing that may denote the highest degree of improvement to which the Doric style of architecture ever attained, they are vastly inferior.” This is, at least, that author’s opinion. Lusieri, however, entertained different sentiments. Lusieri had resided at Pæstum; and had dedicated to those buildings a degree of study which, added to his knowledge of the arts, well qualified him to decide upon a question as to the relative merits of the Athenian and Posidonian specimens of Grecian architecture. His opinion is very remarkable. He considered the temples at Pæstum as examples of a pure style, or, as he termed it, of a more correct and classical taste. “In these buildings,” said he, “the Doric order attained a pre-eminence beyond which it never passed; not a stone has been there placed without some evident and important design; every part of the structure bespeaks its own essential utility[109].”
“Can there be any doubt,” says Mr. Williams, “that in the temple of Neptune at Pæstum, the very forms have something within themselves, calculated to fill the mind with the impression which belongs to the sublime; whilst, in the temple of Theseus (at Athens), the simple preservation of its form bespeaks that species of admiration, that peculiar feeling, which beauty is calculated to draw forth? It required not age to constitute the one sublime, or the other beautiful. In truth, their respective characters must have been much more deeply impressed upon them in their most perfect state, than in the mutilated form in which they now stand; surrounded by the adventitious attributes with which antiquity invests every monument of human art.”
Several medals[110] have been found at Pæstum; but they denote a degeneracy from Grecian skill and elegance, being more clumsily designed and executed than most coins of Magna Græcia.
The private habitations[111] were unable to resist the dilapidations of so many ages; but the town wall is almost entire, and incloses an area of three miles in circumference. In many places it is of the original height, and built with oblong stones, dug out of the adjacent fields. They are a red tavertino, formed by a sediment of sulphureous water, of which a strong stream washes the foot of the walls. It comes from the mountains, and, spreading itself over a flat, forms pools, where buffaloes are in summer continually wallowing up to their noses.