Wordsworth, Christopher: Greece: pictorial, descriptive and historical (London, 1840)

318 OBJECT, SITE, AND REMAINS

But there is another relic of antiquity which, from its position, its pur-
pose, and its intrinsic beauty, has more powerful attractions for the
traveller than either of these two. It was expressed in the noble edict
wherewith the Senate of Florence gave orders for the erection of their
Cathedral, by which the mind of Brunelleschi inspired the genius of Michael
Angelo, that having obtained renown in war and wealth in peace, it
became the inhabitants of their illustrious City to erect a Christian temple
worthy of a powerful and prosperous State; but in the beautiful structure of
Bassae, on one of the ridges of Mount Cotylium, three miles to the west

of Diophorti, we have an evidence of the operation of a somewhat similar
feeling attended by circumstances more striking than those to which we
have alluded. For this edifice was erected, not by a large and wealthy
metropolis like Florence, but by a small village of Arcadia, namely, by the
neighbouring community of Fhigaleia. It was founded, not in a spot to
which the materials for building could readily be brought, or where it might