Note 15 — AUGUST.

"The great interest is not in the present city of Syracuse" (writes a traveller, Feb. 9, 1869), "but in its vicinity, where we inspect the doings of Greeks twenty-five to three thousand years ago, and of the Romans at a later date. Their works are constructed out of the solid rock, and have withstood the terrible earthquakes which have completely destroyed all traces of other works. Among the interesting objects in the city is the cathedral, formerly the temple of Minerva, which is a magnificent specimen of Doric architecture, and has continued to be a place of worship through all the changes of idolatry and Christianity, for twenty-five hundred years; the church of St. Marcian here puts in its claim to have been the first church in Europe in which Christian worship was celebrated. Full of interest are the catacombs and the ancient prisons in the quarries from which the materials of Syracuse were taken; here is the Ear of Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, a prison so arranged that every word spoken within it was re-echoed into his chamber, where it is said he passed entire days listening to the complaints of his victims. Here, too, is the famous fountain of Arethusa, one of the Nereads, and whom Virgil reckons among the Sicilian nymphs, as the divinity who inspired pastoral poetry. Syracuse was at different periods the residence of Plato, Simonides, Zeno, and Cicero; it was the place where Hicetus first propounded the true revolution of the earth; it was the birthplace of the poets Theocritus and Moschus, and the philosopher Archimedes, who lost his life at the capture of the city by the Romans."