sand miles)—who here assembled to celebrate the great Festival of Adonis and Astarte, whose statues they carried through the city in joyous procession, strewing flowers and perfumes by the way.

Even

Among the first traces of the olden days which we searched out were the Catacombs, which lie about two miles from the city on the edge of the Libyan Desert, and which run underground in every direction from near Pompey's Pillar, and all along the ridge of low shore where the busy windmills at first caught our attention. They are strangely little known, even to the natives, and travellers are by no means sure of finding the right entrance. the coachmen from the principal hotels are more likely to waste your afternoon in driving you about over sands and ruins and execrable masses of disintegrated rock, miscalled roads; and after all may be compelled to acknowledge that they do not know where to go next. Indeed, the ancient entrance is unknown. One great chamber, however, has been forced open and made into a stable for Egyptian cavalry. From this, other chambers open; one of these is about thirty feet in diameter, and all round the walls are niches for bodies, in which skulls and mouldering bodies still lie. All along the seacoast are caves or chambers scooped out, which probably led into some of the longer passages.

One of these especially attracted our interest having something the form of a chapel; and remembering how the early Christians were driven to take refuge in these cata

combs, we felt that the ground was hallowed-that Apollos, the fellow-worker of St. Paul (whose birthplace was in this city), or perhaps St. Mark himself, had here ministered to their persecuted brethren.

Leaving the Catacombs we next turned to Pompey's Pillar, which received in its old age a Roman dedication. It was originally the great central pillar of the Serapiumthe gorgeous temple of Serapis-second only in its magnificence to the Capitol of Rome. This lofty column stood alone in the centre of a great roofless court, surrounded with pillars and porticoes, all of which it overtopped, so as to be seen by the sailors when far out at sea. Four hundred of the surrounding pillars were still standing in the days of Saladin (so say various Arabian writers), but these were eventually cast into the sea, and now there remains only this mighty column, which the Arabs call the Pillar of the Colonnades: it stands alone, almost the only specimen of Greek Art that could in size and strength vie with the old Egyptian work.

As we stood amid the desolate mounds of sand and ruin, we tried to picture to ourselves the once magnificent temple, glittering with all the gorgeous ceremonial of Egyptian worship. It was built entirely of marble, the inner walls being faced with gold. Moreover, it was filled with with votive offerings of solid

statues plated with gold and gold. When the Christians gained the ascendancy in the city, the Emperors for many years spared this and other rich temples of their heathen subjects, but at length there

came a bishop of Alexandria, so avaricious that he determined to appropriate all this treasure. So he laid siege to the building and pillaged the temple, storing the gold and precious stones in the cellars of his palace, till he could therewith decorate some costly church with offerings that had cost him nothing, save his good name. For the people no longer called him Theophilus-"Lover of God"--but Lithomanus" one with a mania for stones," and Chrysolater" the worshipper of gold."

His nephew Cyril (the most bigoted, fiery, and intolerant bishop who ever made the standard of the Cross hateful in the sight of the heathen) chose this place for his headquarters and the Temple of Serapis became the Temple of Christ; and its courts gave shelter to these hordes of cruel and ignorant monks who proved their own faith chiefly by such acts of violence as the wholesale plundering of the wealthy Jews, or the barbarous murder of that beautiful heathen maiden Hypatia, who by her subtle teaching of philosophy, no less than by her loveliness, held captive the men of Alexandria, and strove to uphold the falling credit of the gods whom she herself worshipped. Such were the scenes of riot and bloodshed which disgraced the Christian cause in these later days.

THE OLYMPIAN JUPITER

LUCY M. MITCHELL

HEIDIAS'S ripest powers were not to be exercised

PHE

first in Athens. According to Loeschcke's satisfactory investigations, he was called to Elis, about Olymp. 80, to erect in the new temple there a statue of the great Zeus. This new view of Pheidias's life, making the Zeus at Olympia precede his Athena for the Parthenon at Athens, is shown to be in harmony with the statements of Pausanias, and places the execution of the Zeus immediately after the completion of its temple at Olympia, which we know from the excavations was Olymp. 80. From this time Pheidias was probably engaged at Olympia during three Olympiads, whereupon he returned to Athens; his activity in his native city being attested to by the works he was there called to execute: the date, Olymp. 83, after he had completed the Zeus, is, moreover, given by Pliny as his prime.

To the quiet vale of Olympia, then, the master repaired soon after 460 B. C., accompanied by his kinsman (the painter Panainos), and some of his scholars. Near the holy grove a workshop, seen afterwards by Pausanias, was built, and in its centre an altar to the twelve great gods, invoked by the artists when they commenced their various work. The god to be represented was not the ruler of a

single state, but of all Greece-the Olympian Zeus "whose power," as Homeric poetry says, "surpasses all the power of gods and men.' For its execution costly materials were placed at Pheidias's disposal-gold, ivory, silver, gems, bronze and choice woods-making the work most complicated in its construction. A genius for grand composition was required for conceiving the whole, an architect's skill in building up the colossal wooden framework, the carver's subtle fancy and fingers to give form to the delicate ivory, and a metal worker's knowledge in dealing with the broad masses or elaborate finish of the gold-work. The wooden frame was supported by inserted iron stays, and incrusted with thin sheets of ivory, made pliable by fire, and then modelled and fitted together with consummate skill; the creamy colour and texture well representing the natural skin. Appurtenances of drapery, weapons and hair, were of massive gold, or of silver gilded, and the eyes of lambent gems; all these materials making up the fabric of the chryselephantine colossi of the gods, which were the masterpieces of the Pheidian age, but were seldom executed in the following century. Pheidias represented the god as seated on an imposing throne, which rested on a low pedestal, measuring 6.50 by 9.50 meters, as the excavations have shown, and standing out some distance from the rear of the cella. The uncovered space in front of the statue, from which it received light, was divided off by a partition, extending part of the way between the pillars, and may have been the portion of the work painted by Panainos.