Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream

And among those rugged ruins many wild saplings had sprouted, especially the non-quivering bean trefoil original: Anagyro non quassabondo; the stinking bean trefoil, known for its unpleasant odor with its pod-filled husks, and both types of Mastic-tree original: Lentisco, and Bear’s-foot original: Vngula ursi; likely Acanthus mollis, a plant often depicted in Corinthian capitals, and Snapdragon original: Cynocephalo, and Stinking Iris original: Spatula fetida, and the rough Bindweed original: Smylace, and Centaury, and many others sprouting among the fallen stones. And on the cool walls grew many Houseleeks original: Aizoi and the hanging Ivy-leaved Toadflax original: cymbalaria, along with thickets of stinging briars. Among these, some lizard-like creatures slithered, and they also crawled over the vine-covered walls, frequently in those deserted and silent places causing no small horror in me at their first movement, for I stood there entirely in suspense.

In many parts there were great pieces of flat circular stones, and of Serpentine original: Ophites; a green, snake-patterned marble, and Porphyry original: Porphyrite; a deep purple-red rock, and coral-colored stone, and many other pleasing colors. There were fragments of various stories in high-relief original: panglypho; a Greek-derived term for a fully carved, three-dimensional relief and half-relief original: hemiglypho; bas-relief or shallow carving, of finished and semi-sculpture. These indicated an excellence of art that has surely failed in our own times, and they seemed to accuse our age of allowing the perfection of such skill to fall asleep. Therefore, having approached the middle front of the great and illustrious work, I saw an intact portal, marvelous and conspicuous, and perfectly proportioned to the whole building.

I saw this structure placed continuously between the slopes of two mountains, which I could roughly guess to be twenty paces wide and six stadia long. The slopes of these mountains were leveled perpendicularly from the summit down to the base area. Because of this, I stood deep in thought, wondering with what iron tools, and with how much wear on men’s hands, and with what great number of people such a massive work had been violently carried out, for it was a labor beyond belief and must have cost a great wasting of time. Here, then, this admirable structure joined with both mountains in a conscious bond. By this conjunction, as said above, the valley was fortified with a closure, so that no one could leave from there, nor return back, nor enter except through this wide-open gate.

Now, atop this so huge work of masonry—the height of which could easily be guessed to be a fifth of a stadium from the highest crown down to the pedestal and the base platform original: Areobate; the solid base upon which a building or colonnade stands—was founded a pyramid, peaked like a diamond and most portentous. Therefore I reasonably judged that never, without inestimable expense, time, and a maximum multitude of mortals, could such an incredible artifice have been devised and erected. Wherefore, if I deservedly deemed the contemplation of its excess to be an unthinkable thing beyond belief—for gazing upon it tired my visual power in no small way and weakened my other spiritual senses—how much more would the reality of it? Thus, so that the grasp of my intellect may be provided to me at least in some part, I now briefly describe it in this manner.