Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream

At the sight of this likely referring to a wolf mentioned in the preceding text, which startled the narrator, my hair immediately stood on end, and though I wished to cry out, I had no voice. The creature suddenly fled. And I, having then somewhat returned to myself, lifting my eyes toward that part where the wooded hills appeared to join together, I saw in the far distance an incredible height in the shape of a tower, or rather a very high lookout-tower. Nearby, a great building was also appearing, though as yet imperfectly, which was clearly a work of ancient structure. Where the graceful little hills of the valley rose ever higher toward this building, I saw them joined with the aforementioned structure. It served as a closure between one mountain and the other, creating a valley-closure valliclusio; an architectural barrier blocking a valley. Shrewdly judging this sight to be most worthy of investigation, I eagerly redirected my already anxious journey toward it without delay. And the more I subsequently approached it, the more I discovered a work both immense and magnificent, and my desire to gaze upon it multiplied. For it no longer appeared as a sublime lookout-tower, but proved to be an exalted Obelisk, founded upon a vast mass of stones.

The height of this structure incomparably exceeded the summit of the surrounding mountains, even if they had been the famous mountains I judged to be Olympus, Caucasus, or Cyllene Cyllene is a mountain in Greece, the birthplace of Hermes. Having come eagerly to this deserted place, surrounded by an unthought-of pleasure, I quietly stopped myself to gaze freely at such an extraordinary display of the building art, and the immense structure, and its stupendous height. I stood gazing at and considering the entire solid mass and the thickness of this fragmented and half-ruined structure made of white Parian marble original: "marmo de Paro"; a fine-grained, semi-translucent pure white marble from the Greek island of Paros. The squares and quadrangles were fitted together without any glue of cement, and were equally placed and located, so polished, and their edges so exquisitely marked out as could ever possibly be done. So much so that between one edge and another, or between the joints, even a needle-like thinness, however much one might try to insert it, would not have been able to penetrate even a little. Here, then, I found such noble colonnades of every shape, design, and material as anyone could ever imagine—some broken, some in their proper place, and others preserved unharmed—along with the architraves Epistyli and capitals, which were excellent in their design and sharp carving. There were cornices, friezes Zophori—or Phrygian work—and arched beams. I saw huge fragments of statues, with many of their precise bronze limbs lopped off. There were basins original: "Scaphe", shells original: "Conche", and vases, made of Numidian stone a yellow marble also known as Giallo Antico, of Porphyry a hard purple igneous rock, and of various other marbles and ornaments. There were large wash-basins, aqueducts, and almost infinite other fragments of noble sculpture, though they were totally deprived of the knowledge of what they were when whole, and were almost reduced to their first raw state. They lay collapsed and cast down here and there upon the earth. Above...