PAESTUM, an ancient Greek city in Lucania (Gr. HocrEc &Ma- mod. Pesto), near the sea, with a railway station 24 m. S.E. of Salerno, 5 m. S. of the river Silarus (Salso), founded by Tro ezenian and Achaean colonists from Sybaris, probably about 600 B.C. for it was flourishing about 540 B.c., when the neighbour ing city of Vella was founded. For many years the city maintained its independence against the Lucanians but at last fell into their hands; and in 273 B.C. it came under Roman rule, the name being changed to Paestum. It successfully resisted the attacks of Han nibal. Under Augustus and Tiberius, the neighbourhood was healthy, highly cultivated, and celebrated for its flowers ; the "twice blooming roses of Paestum" are mentioned by several Latin poets. Its present deserted and malarious state is due to the silting up of the mouth of the Silarus. In 871 Paestum was sacked and partly destroyed by Saracen invaders; in the i 1 th century it was further dismantled by Robert Guiscard, and in the i6th was finally deserted.
The ruins are among the most interesting and imposing of the Hellenic world. The earliest temple is the so-called Basilica. Terra cottas of the first quarter of the 6th cent. B.C. have been found, and also a fragment of a dedication to Poseidon, so that his name should be applied to this, and not to the great hexastyle temple. It is of unique plan, with nine columns in the front and eight een at the sides, 44 f t. in diameter. A line of columns runs down the centre of the cella. The columns and the architraves upon them are well preserved, but there is nothing above the frieze existing, and the cella wall has entirely disappeared. Next in
point of date comes the so-called temple of Ceres, a hexastyle peripteros (after 54o B.C.). The columns are all standing, and the west and part of the east pediment are still in situ. In front stood a sacrificial altar as long as the temple itself.
The temple hitherto attributed to Neptune, was built about 420 B.C. It is a hexastyle peripteros with fourteen columns on each side, and is remarkably well-preserved, both pediments and the epistyle at the sides being still in situ. The cella, the outer walls of which have to a great extent disappeared, has two internal rows of seven columns 4-1 ft. in diameter, upon which rests a simple epistyle, supporting a row of smaller columns, so that the interior of the cella was in two storeys.
The Temple of Peace (2nd cent. B.c.) was in 1830, but is now covered up. Traces of a Roman theatre and other buildings, as well as of the main street (cardo) have also been found. The circuit of the town walls, well built of squared blocks of travertine, and 16 ft. thick, of the Greek period, is almost entire; they are about 3 m. in circumference, enclosing a roughly rectangular area. There were four' gates, that on the east with a single arched opening being well-preserved. Outside the north gate is a street of tombs (the contents are in the Naples Museum).
(T. A.)