Thee, shining on the well-built mountain's head, Proserpina's imperial seat, By Acragas' sheep-feeding banks outspread. And in the third Olympic ode, I would awake the' Olympic string, We learn from Polybius that the settlers were Rhodians, who introduced the worship of Jupiter Olympius, and dedicated to the god a most sumptuous temple, yielding in splendor to none even in Greece. The people in a very short period rose to vast wealth, and in their buildings exhibited a considerable taste in the fine arts; and it was observed by Plato, "They built as if they were to live forever, and feasted as though they were to die on the morrow." Their duration was marvelously short, for only one hundred and fifty years after their first settlement the Carthaginians besieged the city, and laid it in ruins: the temple of Jupiter was then being roofed in, but the ruin of the people and the devastation were so complete, that no means were left to finish it, The magnificence and gigantic size of the remains bear testimony to the statements made by ancient historians of the extraordinary wealth of the Agrigentines. This temple of Jupiter was, excepting only the temple of Diana at Ephesus, the largest Grecian building applied to sacred purposes. The dimensions given by Mr. Cockerell, who traced the foundation, were, extreme length, three hundred and sixty-nine feet; breadth, one hundred and eighty-two feet. It was of the Doric order, but had no portico, the interval between the columns being filled up by wall: this deviation is supposed to have risen from the impossibility of finding stones large enough to serve as the epistyle or architrave, the distance from center to center of the columns being thirty feet, and a series of masses of stones of that length, and of corresponding depth and thickness, would have been required, had not the superincumbent entablature been sustained by a continual wall. As it is, many of the blocks of the entablature weigh near nine tons. The echinus of each column was formed by two stones, each a quarter of the whole capital, two of which now remain, each of them weighing by computation over twenty-one tons. These enormous masses were raised to a height of seventy feet from the ground. The flutings of the columns were wide enough to contain a man in their hollow, as in a niche. On the pediments were sculptured the wars of the giants, and the siege of Troy. Within, the temple was divided into what we may call a nave and two aisles. To comprehend the immense size of this edifice, the nave may be said to have been eighteen feet higher than the nave of St. Paul's Cathedral, and two feet broader. The walls of the interior were strengthened by massive pilasters, supporting an entablature, upon which stood a row of Atlantes, as the Greeks termed the male figures thus applied. These colossal figures were twenty-five feet high, and supported an upper entablature, which rose about one hundred and ten feet above the floor of the temple. Mr. Cockerell collected sufficient fragments to restore one of these giants; the width of the chest was more than six feet. Of this splendid building, with the exception of the basement, scarce one stone remains above another. Not a single column remains standing, but two capitals, with a portion of the entablature attached, are still to be seen, which, by their gigantic size, excite the wonder and admiration of the traveler. Altogether this temple must have been one of the grandest and most magnificent that ever existed. At Selinus, on the eastern coast of Sicily, a city founded 725 B. C., are the remains of six large temples, all of the most massive and solid construction, and among them a temple supposed to have been dedicated to Jupiter. The blocks of stone are of great magnitude; one which formed the architrave is twenty-one feet in length, near six feet wide, and seven feet in depth, weighing probably fifty tons. We are lost in admiration of the means employed by the ancients in lifting such a mass, and placing it safely upon the capitals of columns upward of forty feet from the ground. The temple of Jupiter at Rome was built by order of Augustus, and is supposed, from a fragment of an inscription on the entablature, to have been restored by Severus and Caracalla. The portico was hexastyle, of the Corinthian order, and the columns, which are deeply fluted, are of white Luna marble. The basement was lined with marble, and the steps are constructed between the columns in the basement. Upon the frieze are sculptured various instruments of sacrifice, and the decorations which remain indicate that the building was highly ornamented. In the Forum at Rome is another temple, said to have been dedicated to Jupiter. The existing ruin consists of three marble Corinthian fluted columns, on an isolated basement of travertine: the columns support a part of the highly-enriched entablature, which is in tolerable preservation. The proportions and execution of this fragment are the finest ever seen, and, since the restoration of true architecture, it has served as the great model of the Corinthian order. John of Malala says that Ælius Antoninus Pius built a great temple to Jupiter at Heliopolis, (Baalbec,) in Phoenicia, which was one of the Wonders of the World, and on one of the coins of Sept. Severus the reverse has the front of the great temple of Baalbec, which is dedicated to Jupiter. The remains are not distinguishable among the rest of the ruins. Jupiter, the supreme Roman deity, known to the Greeks as Zeus, who, on the dethronement of his father, Kronos, had the dominion of the aërial regions, appears to have been originally an elementary deity, who was worshiped as the god of the air: snow, rain, meteors, and all the aërial phenomena are attributed to him. In Homer he is styled the king or father of gods and men: the thunder is the weapon with which he terrifies and punishes the guilty. The Zeus of Homer is like an earthly monarch, partial, capricious, and apt to use his power somewhat tyrannically, yet kind and indulgent to his children: he is to man the guardian of social and civil life, punishing breaches of law and hospitality, and in general the great director of the destinies of mankind. Thus is he depicted by Hesiod: Begin we from the Muses, O my song! Who the great spirit of their father Jove Delight in heaven; whose voice symphonious breathes Sweet, inexhaustible, from every mouth That voice flows on: the palaces of him Who hurleth the loud thunder, laugh with sounds From the beginning, whom the spacious heaven And earth produced, and gods who sprang from these Givers of blessings: then again to Jove, Father of gods and men, those goddesses Give praise, or when they lift the choral hymn, * He in heaven Reigns: the red lightning and the bolt are his; The etymology of the name leads us to the conclusion of its elementary origin, as Jupiter was originally Jovis Pater or Dies pater or Diu-pater, the Diu becoming softened into Ju, as diurnal has become journal. Jupiter or Diu-pater would therefore mean, the father of the day or the air. This is also probably the meaning of the Greek Zeus, which some contend is the same both in meaning and etymology as Deus. There is also a striking similarity between the word Jovis and the Hebrew name of the supreme deity (). Thus the name Jupiter we may fairly assume to be, according to all probability, the Zɛùs пaτǹ of the Greeks, latinized by those natives of southern Italy who wrote in the |