This gives us some notion of his wealth; but there are other accounts still more indicative of his humanity. He entertained the people with spectacles and feasts, and, during a famine, prevented them from dying with hunger; he gave portions to poor maidens also, and rescued the unfortunate from want and despair. He had houses built in the city and country purposely for the accommodation of strangers, whom he usually dismissed with handsome presents. Five hundred shipwrecked citizens of Gela applying to him, were bountifully relieved; and every man supplied with a cloak and a coat out of his wardrobe.

Agrigentum was first taken by the Carthaginians. It was strongly fortified, and was situated, as were Hymera and Selinuntum, on that coast of Sicily which faces Africa. Hannibal, believing it to be impregnable except on one side, turned his whole force that way. He threw up banks and terraces as high as the walls, and made use of the fragments of the tombs around the city, which he demolished for this purpose. Soon after, the plague infected the army, and swept away great numbers of the soldiers. The Carthaginians interpreted this disaster as a punishment inflicted by the gods, who revenged in this manner the injuries done to the dead, whose ghosts many fancied they had seen stalking before them in the night. No more tombs, therefore, were destroyed; prayers were ordered to be offered according to the practice of Carthage; a child was sacrificed to Saturn, in compliance with a most inhumanly superstitious custom; and many victims were thrown into the sea in honour of Neptune.

The besieged, who at first had gained several advantages, were at length so pressed by famine, that, all hopes of relief seeming desperate, they resolved to abandon the city. The following night was fixed on for this purpose. The reader will naturally imagine to himself the grief with which these miserable

people must have been seized, on being forced to leave their houses, their rich possessions, and their country; but life was still dearer to them than even these. Never was a more melancholy spectacle presented. To omit the rest, a crowd of women, bathed in tears, were seen dragging after them their helpless infants, to secure them from the brutal fury of the victor. But the most grievous circumstance was the necessity they were under of leaving behind them the aged and sick, who were unable either to fly or to make any resistance. The unhappy exiles arrived at Gela, which was the nearest city in their way, and there received all the comforts they could expect in the deplorable condition to which they were reduced.

In the mean time, Imilcon entered the city, and put to death all who were found in it. The plunder was immensely rich, as might have been expected in one of the most opulent cities of Sicily, contain ing two hundred thousand inhabitants, and which had never been besieged, and, consequently, never pillaged before. Numberless pictures, vases, and statues were found here, the citizens having an exquisite taste for the polite arts. Among other curiosities was the famous bull of Phalaris, which was sent to Carthage.

At a subsequent period the Romans attacked and took this city, then in possession of the Carthaginians; when the principal citizens were, by the consul's order, first scourged with rods and then beheaded. The common people were made slaves, and sold to the highest bidder. After this, Agrigentum is seldom mentioned in history; nor is it easy to ascertain the precise time when the old city was destroyed, and the new one (Gergenti) built. It was crushed in the general fall of the Greek empire, and its unfortunate inhabitants, expelled by the Saracens, took refuge among the inaccessible rocks of Girgenti.

VOL. I.-C

In ancient times, this city was greatly celebrated for the hospitality and the luxurious mode of living of its inhabitants. On one side of the city there was a large artificial lake, about a quarter of a league in circumference, excavated from the solid rock by the Carthaginian captives, and to which water was conveyed from the hills. It was thirty feet deep; great quantities of fish were kept here for the public feasts, and swans and other fowls for the amusement of the citizens; while the depth of its waters secured the city from sudden assault by an enemy. It is now dry, and converted into a garden.

It is a curious fact, that, though the whole space within the walls of the ancient city abounds with traces of antiquity, there are no ruins which can be supposed to have belonged to places of public entertainment. Still the Agrigentines were remarkably fond of shows and dramatic amusements; and their connexion with the Romans must have introduced among them the savage games of the circus. Theatres and amphitheatres seem peculiarly adapted to resist the ravages of time; yet not a vestige of these are to be seen on the site of Agrigentum. The people of this city appear, however, to have been quite alive to the pleasures derived from sculpture and painting.

The temple of Juno was adorned by one of the most famous pictures of antiquity. Zeuxis was determined to excel everything that had gone before him, and to form a model of human perfection. To this end, he prevailed on all the finest women of Agrigentum who were ambitious of the honour, to appear before him. Of these he chose five for his models; and, moulding all the perfections of these into one, he composed the picture of the goddess. This was ever looked upon as his master-piece; but it was unfortunately burned when the Carthaginians took the city. At that period, many of the citizens

retired into this temple as to a place of safety; but, as soon as they found the gates attacked by the enemy, they agreed to set fire to it, and chose rather to perish in the flames than submit to the power of the conqueror. In the temple of Hercules there was another picture by Zeuxis. The infant god was represented in his cradle, killing the two serpents; Alcmena and Amphitryon, having just entered the apartment, were painted with every mark of terror and astonishment. Pliny says the painter looked upon this piece as invaluable, and, therefore, could never be prevailed upon to put a price upon it, but gave it as a present to the people of Agrigentum, to be placed in the temple of Hercules.

The temple of Esculapius, two columns and two pilasters of which now support the end of a farmhouse, was no less celebrated for a statue of Apollo. It was taken from them by the Carthaginians at the time the temple of Juno was burned, and continued the greatest ornament of Carthage for many years, but was at last restored by Scipio, on the final destruction of that city. Some of the Sicilians allege, but it is supposed without ground, that this statue was afterward carried to Rome, where it still remains, the wonder of every age, and known to the world under the name of the Apollo Belvidere.

An edifice of the Doric order, called the temple of Concord, has still its walls, its columns, entablature, and pediments entire. In proceeding from this temple, you walk between rows of sepulchres, cut in the rock wherever it admitted of being excavated by the hand of man. Some masses are hewn into the shape of coffins; others drilled full of small square holes, employed in a different mode of interment, and serving as receptacles of urns. One ponderous piece of the rock lies in a singular position. By the failure of its foundation or the shock of an earthquake, it has been loosened from the general quarry and rolled down the declivity, where it now re

mains, with the cavities turned upward. There was also a temple dedicated to Ceres and Proserpine, with the ruins of which has been formed a church, still existing; the road leading to it having been cut out of the solid rock. In respect to the temple of Castor and Pollux, vegetation has covered the lower parts of the building, and only a few fragments of two columns appear among the vines. Of the temple of Venus about one half remains; but the glory of the place was the temple of Jupiter Olympius, three hundred and forty feet long, sixty broad, and one hundred and twenty in height. Its columns and porticoes were in the finest style of architecture, and its bas-reliefs and paintings executed with admirable taste. On its eastern walls was sculptured the Battle of the Giants; while the western represented the Trojan War, corresponding exactly with the description which Virgil has given of the painting in the temple of Juno at Carthage.

Diodorus Siculus extols the beauty of the columns which supported this building, the admirable structure of the porticoes, and the exquisite taste with which the bas-reliefs and paintings were executed; but he adds that the stately edifice was never finished. Cicero, in his speech against Verres, speaks of the statues he carried away. Mr. Swinburne says, that now it has not remaining one stone upon another; and that it is barely possible, with the liberal aid of conjecture, to discover the traces of its plan and dimensions. He adds, however, that St. Peter's at Rome exceeds this celebrated temple more than doubly in every dimension, being two hundred and fifteen feet higher, three hundred and thirty-four longer, and four hundred and thirty-three wider.

Added to these, there is still remaining a monument of Tero, king of Agrigentum, one of the earliest of the Sicilian tyrants. The great antiquity of this monument may be gathered from the fact, that Tero is not only mentioned by Diodorus, Polybius,