MED. PARTH. . . . . . . . MARCVS . SIMPLEX .
REGILLIANVS . SVA . P.F.
The door of the cella is nearly all that remains of that part of the temple. It consists of three huge stones, a lintel and two door-posts, the former of which projects a considerable distance beyond the latter. These are enriched with a moulding on the exterior edge of the stones, which, instead of mounting in a straight line from the ground to the top of the lintel, as would probably have been the case in an earlier period of Roman art, follows at right angles the course of the projecting portions of the lintel. A similar style is often met with in Etruscan architecture, but in such cases the line of moulding under the projections hardly ever formed horizontal straight lines and right angles, unless painted or cut in the inside of tombs.
On this lintel is a second inscription:—
L. MARCVS . SIMPLEX . ET . L. MAR
CIVS . SIMPLEX . REGILLIANVS . S.P.F.
From these inscriptions it is evident that the temple was built by two brothers, L. M. Simplex and L. M. Simplex Regillianus, at their own expense, sua pecunia fecerunt, in honour of Jupiter and Minerva, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius and his colleague in the Empire, L. Aurelius Verus, between the years A.D. 161 and 169.
No strong marks of decadence strike the eye at first sight, but the antæ at the end of the cella walls are wanting, and perhaps other signs of decadence would have been apparent in the cella itself, had it been preserved.
Bruce states that the material of which the temple is built is white marble. If this is not actually the case, it is a very compact and crystalline limestone, full of fossil shells, and susceptible of receiving a high polish; when new it must have been even more effective than the finest description of marble. I am inclined to believe that it is none other than the Lumacchella antica, one of the lost Numidian marbles, of which only two or three specimens are known to exist, and which at the present moment is worth something like its weight in gold. A bold and conspicuous hill was pointed out to us as the spot whence the stone of the temple was obtained, but it was too remote to be included in our visit. I leave the solution of this question to some future traveller.[209]
Altogether this grand monumental fragment is a most interesting historical specimen of the workmanship and architectural genius displayed by the Romans in their African possessions.