from Scythia.]

[Sidenote c: Cillenus a hill of Arcadia, where Iupiter begat
Mercurie vpon Maia.]

To this sollitarie place thus desiredlye comming, with vnspeakeable
delight, at pleasure I behelde the straunge manner of the arte, the
hugenesse of the frame, and the woonderfull excellencie of the
woorkmanship. Maruelling and considering the compasse and largenesse of
this broken and decayed obiect, made of the pure glistering marble of
_Paros_[d]. The squared stones ioyned togither without anye cement, and
the pointed quadrangulate corner stones streightlye fitted and smoothlye
pullished, the edges whereof were of an exquisite vermellion coulour, as
is possible to bee deuised: and so iust set, as betwixt the ioynts, euen
the enemie to the woorke (if euer there were anye) could not deuise to
hide the point of the smallest spanish needle vsed of the best
workewomen. And there in this so noble a piece of worke, I found a
proportioned substance to euery shape and likenesse that can be thought
vpon and called to remembrance, partly decayed, and some still whole
remaining, with pillers small vpon great, with their excellent heads of
an exact and most perfect closing, crowned battelments, embost caruings,
bearing forth like embroderie, arched beames, mightie mettaline images,
ouerthrowne and broken in sunder, the trunke of their exact and perfect
members, appearing hollow of brasse. Skyffes, small boates and vessels
of _Numidian_ stone and _Porphyr_, and diuers couloured marble. Great
lauers condites, and other infinite fragments of notable woorkmanship,
far different and inferiour from that they were, in their perfection,
but now brought back as it were to their first vnshapelines, being
fallen and cast downe, some heere, some there, vpon the earth from the
which they were taken. Among the broken and decayed places, wherof great