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Updated: June 24, 2025
The landscape was changing on both sides of the way, as now they were crossing over marshy portions of land. On the soft meadows flocks of buffaloes, rude animals that appeared carved out in hatchet strokes, were wading and grazing. The doctor spoke of Paestum, the ancient Poseidonia, the city of Neptune, founded by the Greeks of Sybaris six centuries before Christ.
But if the fare was rough, it was cheap and smacked of classical times, and our reception by the Paestani of to-day was most cordial. We left Poseidonia late in the afternoon, casting back many regretful glances at the three giant sentinels of the plain, looming preternaturally large in the rapidly fading light of a starless evening.
As the sun dropped lower towards the sea, changing its silver line to gold, we pulled ourselves together, and for an hour or more sketched vigorously; but the mood was not on us. It was "too jolly fine to waste time working," as Tom said; so we started off to explore the single street of the squalid town of Pesto that was lost within the walls of dead Poseidonia.
We ourselves were especially fortunate on the occasion of our last visit to Poseidonia on a mild day in December, a month which on the Lucanian shore somewhat resembles a northern October. A soft luminous haze hung over the landscape and over the Bay of Salerno itself, rendering the classic mountains at once indistinct in outline and unnaturally lofty to the eye.
We have no details of its early history, but it is quite certain that under the protection of Sybaris the new city of Poseidonia rose by degrees to such wealth and importance that in course of time it gave its own name to the whole Bay of Salerno, which henceforth became known to the Greeks as the Poseidonian Gulf and later, to the Romans, as the Bay of Paestum.
Miriam looked at him and smiled. "You know Mr. Seaborne?" he inquired of her, abruptly. "He was with us a fortnight in Athens." As they were idling about, after their lunch, Mallard kept near to Miriam, but without speaking. He saw her stoop to pick up a piece of stone; presently another. She glanced at him. "Bits of Paestum," he said, smiling; "perhaps of Poseidonia.
Only the wall of the cella has been pulled down; doubtless to supply material for building.” Having quoted Monsieur Lenormant’s careful description of the chief pride of Poseidonia, we shall confine ourselves to as few remarks as possible concerning the two remaining temples.
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