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Updated: May 25, 2025
This semi-circular form was adopted not merely for convenience of vision, but for an aid to the sound. This range for spectators was called the coilon or hollow. The area below was the conistra, or pit. There was no superstructure for a gallery, but around the rim of the building were porticos, by which the spectators entered, and whither they could retire, if it rained.
His statue, 120 feet high, stood in the midst of a court, ornamented with porticos of three files of lofty columns, each full a mile long; the gardens were of vast extent, with vineyards, meadows, and woods, filled with every sort of domestic and wild animals; a pond was converted into a sea, surrounded by a sufficient number of edifices to form a city; pearls, gems, and the most precious materials were used everywhere, and especially gold, the profusion of which, within and without, and ever on the roofs, caused it to be called the Golden House; the essences and costly perfumes continually shed around, showed the extreme extravagance of the inhuman monster who seized on the wealth of the people to gratify his own desires.
When my first transport was a little subsided, and I had examined the graceful design of each particular ornament, and united the just proportion and grand effect of the whole in my mind, I planted my umbrella on the margin of the sea, and reclining under its shade, my feet dangling over the waters, viewed the vast range of palaces, of porticos, of towers, opening on every side and extending out of sight.
It contained some pretty residences, which were occupied by officers as head-quarters: their horses, in some instances, being picketed on the porticos, and in others in the kitchens. The village was nearly deserted by its own people, not more than fifty of the original inhabitants being left, though the population of the town before the war was nearly six hundred.
Numbers were walking in parties upon the pavement; some sought the shade of the porticos with their favourites; others were earnestly engaged in conversation, and filled the gay illuminated apartments, where they resorted to drink coffee and sorbet, with laughter and merriment.
And when the roofs and spires of the town shone over the foliage in the afternoon sun, I felt him give a great sigh that was like a sob. And how shall I describe the splendor of that city? The sandy streets, and the gardens of flower and shade, heavy with the plant odors; and the great houses with their galleries and porticos set in the midst of the gardens, that I remember staring at wistfully.
He had also fine seats in Tusculum, belvederes, and large open balconies for men's apartments, and porticos to walk in, where Pompey coming to see him, blamed him for making a house which would be pleasant in summer, but uninhabitable in winter; whom he answered with a smile, "You think me, then, less provident than cranes and storks, not to change my home with the season."
Our hurry, and the double danger of being seized as prisoners by the Turks, and of our galley raising anchor before we could return, made it seem like a fevered vision of the night the wide plain, the girdling mountains, the ruined porticos and columns, either standing far aloof, as if receding from our hurried footsteps, or else jammed in confusedly among the dwellings of Christians degraded into servitude, or among the forts and turrets of their Moslem conquerors, who have their stronghold on the Acropolis."
The face was encircled by an aureole worked in mosaic, which shot rays of light under the porticos and illuminated the horrible ascension of the head, brightening the glassy orbs of the contracted eyes which were fixed with a ghastly stare upon the dancer. With a gesture of terror, Salome thrusts from her the horrible vision which transfixes her, motionless, to the ground.
No professional contortionist upon the vaudeville stage can compare with these religious mendicants, who give exhibitions in the open air, or in the porticos of the temples in honor of some god and call it worship.
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