DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.57734#0090
an elevation of, at least, 18 metres — that is to say
the height of a four-storeyed-house.
’ The dominant position, towering high over the
City of Capreae, and the broad highway leading up
to the mountain-top — which way was well-suited to festival-
processions —• both speak in favor of this inference —
which is, however, incapable of proof.
Another fact in support of this view is that in a
small vaulted chamber in the substructure is found a
Christian chapel with paintings, in a tolerable state of
preservation, which belong to the earlier Byzantine period,
and would seem to have been intended both as an
atonement and as a consecration of the seat of the
ancient heathen cult — such as is found in other places.
Thus, for instance, the later Christian inhabitants cut
wdth hammer and chisel the tombs of their co-religionists
into the stone - substructure of the fallen temples at
Selinunt, the bones of whom are still gruesomely visible
between the broken slabs which once covered them up.
Examples in support of this are also furnished by the
Pantheon, the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva
and that of San Teodoro at Rome.
It may, possibly, be objected that this assumption
with regard to the building which once crowned the
Monte San Michele might have been kept in the back-
ground until more precise researches shall have furnished
more reliable evidence. But such further researches
had to be broken off, owing to the author hereof being
compelled to start on his return home; moreover, these
pages are hardly intended to contain a scientific treat-
ment of the subject.
It proved impossible for the author to recognise
in the plateau of the Monte San Michele the sub-
structures of an imperial palace and yet he could not
well pass over in silence the important ruins and the
terrace running round the mountain. He hopes,
however, to be enabled at some future time to prove
his assumption and to add to the picture of ancient
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