Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/128

 io8 HISTORY OF ART IN PIKKNICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. The effects of this propensity are to be most clearly traced in the wall which still exists on the south and west of the island of Arvad (Fig. / ) " Carried on the outer edges of the rocks, it is composed of quadrangular prisms ten feet high and from about twelve to sixteen feet long ; these prisms are fixed sometimes with skill and care, sometimes with strange negligence ; in some places joints are allowed to vertically coincide, in others they are alternated with great elaboration. Sometimes the courses are regular, with their interstices closed by small blocks ; elsewhere they are not even dressed to an even front, although the lines of the courses are always horizontal. The ruling idea of the builders was to make the best possible show with the finest blocks. A huge stone com- manded its own place. No sacrifice of its mass was made, it was put wherever its size would be most imposing, and the hollows about it were filled in with smaller stones. . . . There was no cement .... I do not think there is any ruin in the world more imposing, more characteristic. There can be no doubt that it is a relic from the ancient city of Arvad, a really Phoenician work, and affording a criterion for other buildings of the same origin. It is entirely built of the indigenous stone of the place ; its materials were taken, in fact, from the great ditch which separates it from the modern town." ' The solidity of this architecture was not in due proportion to the size of its units. 2 To obtain the height they required the builders were often obliged to bed the stone the wrong way ; the slightest "vent" was then fatal to the structure. And the limestone of those coasts is apt to crumble, so that small stones when asked to support great blocks were crushed by their weight ; this we find a wall 60 feet long. M. DE SAULCY believes that these enormous substructures date from an epoch much earlier than the temples they support (Revue Archeologique, 2nd series, vol. xxxiii. p. 267) ; other travellers think the same, notably M. G. REY (Rapport snr une Mission en Syne, in the Archives des Missions, 1866, p. 329). To me, however, the hypothesis in question is rendered very doubtful by the simple fact that these gigantic stones rest upon courses of well-jointed masonry in which the single stones are of comparatively small size. Taken by themselves, we should hardly refer these courses to an earlier epoch than that of the Seleucidae. More- over, we find that in the undoubtedly Roman parts of the work units of extraordinary size have been used, as, for example, in the monolithic jambs of the doorway of the round temple, which dates from the decadence. Se M. KENAN'S reflections on this subject and the doubt he expresses as to the theory of M. de Saulcy (Mission, pp. 3 1 4-3 1 6). 1 RENAN, Mission de Fhenicif, pp. 39, 40. and plate ii. 2 //>/,/. p. 67.