HIDDEN WONDERS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20110, 31 March 1928, Page 13 (Supplement)

HIDDEN WONDERS

A CITY OF THE PAST TEMPLES OF THE PRE-CHRISTIAN ERA Three Greek temples, majestic in their loneliness and grandeur, mark the site of the most impressive city of the dead in Western Europe. They stand near the southern tip of the Gulf of Salerno, about four hours’ motor run from Naples, and are practically all that is visible above ground of a once-flourishing city which the Greeks called Poseidonia and the Romans Paestum.

This ancient city is not only the oldest site in Western Europe but also the most neglected. No corps of “guides” rise from somnolence at one’s approach. There were no hotels or houses of refreshment. No one offers picture postcards or coral necklaces. No children clamou* ror baksheesh. Boats never call at this deserted shore. Trains on the single-track railway that runs down to the Straits of Messina are infrequent. The sole occupant of the deserted city is a donkey cropping herbage at the base of a large stone in front of one of the temples. If he were a guide he would probably say it was the “stone of sacrifice.”

Half-buried houses peeped from mounds and overgrowth. Some are lair-sized villas, and open doorways invited one to enter. A well-preserved gateway leads to what was evidently a cemetery. The air is heavy with the sweet scent of thyme. •♦' « •

Pompeii flourishes while Poseidonia languishes. The awesome spectacle of Vesuvius, and the impressive resurrection of the buried cities of the plain, have caused the more noble monuments of the sea-born city, less than 150 miles away, to be omitted from the average excursion schedule. But Poseidonia was a greater, older and more famous city than Pompeii. Its remains disclose unbroken levels of culture reaching back to the Stone Age. .Some authorities place the date of construction of these Greek temples in the tenth century before Christ. Poseidonia, in its heyday, harboured a colony of rich Greeks from Sybarls, a name which is a synonym for luxury. They were not too luxurious to fight, and they defeated Hannibal when Hannibal was the terror of the Mediterranean. Chariot Ruts There was much traffic on this forgotten city’s stone-paved thoroughfares. The ruts worn by the chariots on the sea road are in some places six or more inches deep. The stone sills of some of the houses are worn down to the sidewalk level by the passage of innumcrab, e sandalled feet. The worn “orchestra stalls” of a half-obliterated theatre are visible.

Poseidonia’s ground plan suggests that within the walls, portions of which still stand, it was about a mile square. There are outside the walls miles of ploughed fields, the surface of which is covered with millions of fragments of broken pottery, carved stones, and pieces of brick and tile. Much of the city that remains above ground has been carried away to provide local building material. All the way down this lonely coast one sees fragments of Poseidonia’s villas and walls, buttressing Italian hovels, and sections of its noble columns doing duty at door-posts. The flat-tops of the great, round, fluted blocks that formed the unmortared pillars of the Greek temples have found a modern use as dining-tables. Three Temples The best preserved and least spoliated of the three temples of Poseidonia is made of a peculiar brown, warm stone, which hardens by exposure to the air. This magnificent building is 200 feet long, 80 feet wide and 30 feet high. It is supposed to have been dedicated to Neptune, because of the discovery of a stone which bore characters referring to the Greek sea-god, Poseidon. All three temples are examples of Doric art, a standard of dignity and simplicity to which modern art must return. They are a majestic comment on the chaotic degeneracy of decoration in Italian cathedrals and churches. An immense mound conceals yet another temple, which tradition calls “the hall of peace.” Practically all that official history records of Poseidonia is that the malarial surroundings gradually made it untenable by Greeks, Romans and Saracens alike, so that before the year 900 A.D. it was deserted by all except local builders, who came tTiither for material. What lies beneath its tumuli and rank overgrowth no one knows. * ♦ * *

The city’s sole ocupant, the donkey, is stubbornly uncommunicative. He canters away when invrted to make a statement for publication, and the echo of his hoofs on the ancient stone roadway is the only sound that breaks the silence.