All About Lay A Level Or
Slightly Rolling Country, Which In Winter Becomes A Wilderness Of
Mud; Dry Traces Of Vast Slough And Occasional Stagnant Pools Showed
What The State Of Things Would Be A Couple Of Months Hence.
The
properties were divided by hedges of agave - huge growths, grandly
curving their sword-pointed leaves.
Its companion, the spiny cactus,
writhed here and there among juniper bushes and tamarisks. Along the
wayside rose tall, dead thistles, white with age, their great
cluster of seed-vessels showing how fine the flower had been. Above
our heads, peewits were wheeling and crying, and lizards swarmed on
the hard, cracked ground.
We passed a few ploughmen, with white oxen yoked to labour.
Ploughing was a fit sight at Metapontum, famous of old for the
richness of its soil; in token whereof the city dedicated at Delphi
its famous Golden Sheaf. It is all that remains of life on this part
of the coast; the city had sunk into ruin before the Christian era,
and was never rebuilt. Later, the shore was too dangerous for
habitation. Of all the cities upon the Ionian Sea, only Tarentum and
Croton continued to exist through the Middle Ages, for they alone
occupied a position strong for defence against pirates and invaders.
A memory of the Saracen wars lingers in the name borne by the one
important relic of Metapontum, the Tavola de' Paladini; to this my
guide was conducting me.
It is the ruin of a temple to an unknown god, which stood at some
distance north of the ancient city; two parallel rows of columns,
ten on one side, five on the other, with architrave all but entire,
and a basement shattered. The fine Doric capitals are well
preserved; the pillars themselves, crumbling under the tooth of
time, seem to support with difficulty their noble heads. This
monument must formerly have been very impressive amid the wide
landscape; but, a few years ago, for protection against peasant
depredators, a wall ten feet high was built close around the
columns, so that no good view of them is any longer obtainable. To
the enclosure admission is obtained through an iron gateway with a
lock. I may add, as a picturesque detail, that the lock has long
been useless; my guide simply pushed the gate open. Thus, the ugly
wall serves no purpose whatever save to detract from the beauty of
the scene.
Vegetation is thick within the temple precincts; a flowering rose
bush made contrast of its fresh and graceful loveliness with the
age-worn strength of these great carved stones. About their base
grew luxuriantly a plant which turned my thoughts for a moment to
rural England, the round-leaved pennywort. As I lingered here, there
stirred in me something of that deep emotion which I felt years ago
amid the temples of Paestum. Of course, this obstructed fragment
holds no claim to comparison with Paestum's unique glory, but here,
as there, one is possessed by the pathos of immemorial desolation;
amid a silence which the voice has no power to break, nature's
eternal vitality triumphs over the greatness of forgotten men.
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