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Near Puzzuoli, in the Bay of Baiae, and not far from Monte Nuovo, stand the ruins of the Temple of Serapis, so interesting to geologists.
Such is the character of the general floor on which the more recent crater-cones of this district have been built. These are numerous, and all extinct with the exception of the Solfatara, near Puzzuoli, from which gases mixed with aqueous vapour are continually being exhaled. The gases consist of sulphuretted hydrogen mixed with a minute quantity of muriatic acid.
Methods of making blue were first discovered in Alexandria, and afterwards Vestorius set up the making of it at Puzzuoli. The method of obtaining it from the substances of which it has been found to consist, is strange enough.
They are the products of a feeble and prolonged volcanic action, as may be easily ascertained in the solfataras of Puzzuoli and the Peak of Teneriffe.
A quotation from Lyell's "Principles of Geology" says that the perforations of Lithophagi in limestone cliffs and in the three upright columns of the Temple of Jupiter Serapis at Puzzuoli afford conclusive evidence of changes in the level of sea-coasts in modern times the borings of the mollusc prove that the pillars of the temple must have been depressed to a corresponding depth in the sea, and to have been raised up again without losing their perpendicularity.
This eruption took place near the town of Puzzuoli, a place which was then the seat of a university, the people of which have left us records of the accident. The outbreak which formed Monte Nuovo was slight but very characteristic. It occurred in and beside a circular pool known as the Lucrine Lake, itself an ancient crater.
The majesty of the site consists in its elevation above the level of the sea, in the profound solitude of these lofty regions, and in the immense space over which the eye ranges from the summit of the mountain. The wall of compact lava, forming the enclosure of the Caldera, is snow-white at its surface. The same colour prevails in the inside of the Solfatara of Puzzuoli.
There are also proofs, during the same recent period, of a permanent alteration of the relative levels of the land and sea in several places, and of the same tract having, near Puzzuoli, been alternately upheaved and depressed to the amount of more than twenty feet.
This last substance is very common at Teneriffe, where it forms the basis of the tephrinic lava. These analogies between the peak of Teneriffe and the Solfatara of Puzzuoli, might no doubt be shown to be more numerous, if the former were more accessible, and had been frequently visited by naturalists.
The most interesting evidence of this nature is afforded by the studies which have been made on the ruins of the Temple of Serapis at Puzzuoli. This edifice was constructed in pre-Christian times for the worship of the Egyptian god Serapis, whose intervention was sought by sick people.
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