The city enjoys a most delightful and commodious situation, on the east side of the valley of Bocat. It is of a square figure, compassed with a tolerable good wall, in which are towers all round at equal distances. It extends, as far as I could guess by the eye, about two furlongs on a side. Its houses within are all of the meanest structure, such as are usually seen in Turkish villages.
At the south-west side of this city is a noble ruin, being the only curiosity for which this place is wont to be visited. It was anciently a heathen temple, together with some other edifices belonging to it, all truly magnificent; but in latter times these ancient structures have been patched and pieced up with several other buildings, converting the whole into a castle, under which name it goes at this day. The adjectitious buildings are of no mean architecture, but yet easily distinguishable from what is more ancient.
Coming near these ruins, the first thing you meet with is a little round pile of building, all of marble. It is encircled with columns of the Corinthian order, very beautiful, which support a cornice that runs all round the structure, of no ordinary state and beauty. The part of it that remains is at present in a very tottering condition, but yet the Greeks use it for a church; and it were well if the danger of its falling, which perpetually threatens, would excite those people to use a little more fervour in their prayers than they generally do, the Greeks being, seemingly, the most undevout and negligent at their divine service of any sort of people in the Christian world.
From this ruin you come to a large firm pile of building, which, though very lofty and composed of huge square stones, yet, I take to be part of the adjectitious work; for one sees in the inside some fragments of images in the walls and stones, with Roman letters upon them, set the wrong way. In one stone we found graven DIVIS, and in another line, MOSC. Through this pile, you pass in a stately arched walk or portico, one hundred and fifty paces long, which leads you to the temple.
The temple is an oblong square, in breadth thirty-two yards, and in length sixty-four, of which eighteen were taken up by the πρόναος or ante-temple, which is now tumbled down, the pillars being broke that sustained it. The body of the temple, which now stands, is encompassed with a noble portico, supported by pillars of the Corinthian order, measuring six feet and three inches in diameter, and about forty-five feet in height, consisting all of three stones apiece. The distance of the pillars from each other, and from the wall of the temple, is nine feet. Of these pillars there are fourteen on each side of the temple, and eight at the end, counting the corner pillars in both numbers.
On the capitals of the pillars there runs all round a stately architrave and cornice, rarely carved. The portico is covered with large stones hollowed archwise, extending between the columns and the wall of the temple. In the centre of each stone is carved the figure of some one or other of the heathen gods or goddesses, or heroes. I remember amongst the rest a Ganymede, and the eagle flying away with him, so lively done that it excellently represented the sense of that verse in Martial,
"Illæsum timidis unguibus hæsit onus."
The gate of the temple is twenty-one feet wide, but how high could not be measured, it being in part filled up with rubbish. It is moulded and beautified all round with exquisite sculpture. On the nethermost side of the portal is carved a Fame hovering over the head, as you enter, and extending its wings two-thirds of the breadth of the gate; and on each side of the eagle is described a Fame, likewise upon the wing. The eagle carries in its pounces a caduceus, and in his beak the strings or ribbons coming from the ends of two festoons, whose other ends are held and supported on each side by the two Fames. The whole seemed to be a piece of admirable sculpture.
The measure of the temple within is forty yards in length, and twenty in breadth. In its walls all round are two rows of pilasters, one above the other; and between the pilasters are niches, which seem to have been designed for the reception of idols. Of these pilasters there are eight in a row on each side; and of the niches, nine.
About eight yards' distance from the upper end of the temple stands part of two fine channelled pillars, which seem to have made a partition in that place, and to have supported a canopy over the throne of the chief idol, whose station appears to have been in a large niche at this end. On that part of the partition which remains are to be seen carvings in rilievo representing Neptune, Tritons, Fishes, Sea-gods, Arion and his dolphin, and other marine figures. The covering of the whole fabric is totally broken down; but yet this I must say of the whole as it now stands, that it strikes the mind with an air of greatness beyond any thing that I ever saw before, and is an eminent proof of the magnificence of the ancient architecture.