  An analysis of the temperature dependence of the leading contributions to the
gluon condensate for SU(N) lattice gauge theory is presented using the data
from recent Monte Carlo simulations. The gluon condensate is calculated
directly from the new lattice calculations of the interaction measure. It is
shown how these computations provide a simple picture for the melting of the
condensate around the deconfinement temperature, and the fact that it is
negative, and increases in magnitude, above Tc. We close with a discussion of
the implications for full QCD of recent results from simulations including
fermions.
