Science: City of Roses

On a fertile plain 50 miles south of Naples, where the river Sele winds lazily through vineyards and olive groves to the Tyrrhenian Sea. lies one of antiquity's great archaeological caches: the half-buried, 2,500-year-old city of Paestum. Paestum was founded by Greek traders around 600 B.C. and first named Posidonia, in honor of the sea god Poseidon. Across its bustling wharves merchants bought and sold the products of the civilized world: decorated vases from Sicily, bronze and iron weapons from Sardinia, colored glass from North Africa, cloth from Egypt and Greece. The city's middlemen grew wealthy, built a 310-acre city of...