Passing through the village we came to a grand artificial platform on its western side, called the Acropolis.  It is of solid masonry, five hundred feet square, and averaging ten feet in height.  On the eastern side it is supported on rude though massive arches, resembling Etruscan workmanship.  On the top and around the edges of this platform lie great numbers of fluted columns, and immense fragments of cornice and architrave.  In the centre, on a foundation platform about eight feet high, stands a beautiful Ionic temple, one hundred feet in length.  On approaching, it appeared nearly perfect, except the roof, and so many of the columns remain standing that its ruined condition scarcely injures the effect.  There are seventeen columns on the side and eight at the end, Ionic in style, fluted, and fifty feet in height.  About half the cella remains, with an elegant frieze and cornice along the top, and a series of tablets, set in panels of ornamental sculpture, running along the sides.  The front of the cella includes a small open peristyle, with two composite Corinthian columns at the entrance, making, with those of the outer colonnade, eighteen columns standing.  The tablets contain Greek inscriptions, perfectly legible, where the stone has not been shattered.  Under the temple there are large vaults, which we found filled up with young kids, who had gone in there to escape the heat of the sun.  The portico was occupied by sheep, which at first refused to make room for us, and gave strong olfactory evidence of their partiality for the temple as a resting-place.

On the side of a hill, about three hundred yards to the north, are the remains of a theatre.  Crossing some patches of barley and lentils, we entered a stadium, forming an extension of the theatre—–­that is, it took the same breadth and direction, so that the two might be considered as one grand work, more than one thousand feet long by nearly four hundred wide.  The walls of the stadium are hurled down, except an entrance of five arches of massive masonry, on the western side.  We rode up the artificial valley, between high, grassy hills, completely covered with what at a distance resembled loose boards, but which were actually the long marble seats of the stadium.  Urging our horses over piles of loose blocks, we reached the base of the theatre, climbed the fragments that cumber the main entrance, and looked on the spacious arena and galleries within.  Although greatly ruined, the materials of the whole structure remain, and might be put together again.  It is a grand wreck; the colossal fragments which have tumbled from the arched proscenium fill the arena, and the rows of seats, though broken and disjointed, still retain their original order.  It is somewhat more than a semicircle, the radius being about one hundred and eighty feet.  The original height was upwards of fifty feet, and there were fifty rows of seats in all, each row capable of seating two hundred persons, so that the number of spectators who could be accommodated was eight thousand.