Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/133

 FORMS. 1 1 o very soon covered up again by the fall of the excavated earth a masonry hardly inferior to that of the Greeks may be recognized ; but the blocks are larger as a rule than those employed in Greece ; some of the stones are five feet lono^, more than four feet hieh, and O O ' between three and four deep, measurements which give a cube of considerable size (Fig. 47). l Having thus an abundant supply of easily worked rock close at hand, the Phoenicians of Syria seem to have made no use of artificial stone, at least before the Roman period. No brick structure has been found in the country. Elsewhere, however, they did not refuse to employ a material which must have be- come well known to them during their voyages into Egypt and Mesopotamia. It has been asserted that some of the Cyprian temples ascribed to the Phoenicians have been been built on a system often followed in Assyria. They have crude brick walls standing on a substructure of masonry. 2 2. Forms. The monuments of which the soil of Phoenicia can still show some traces may be divided into three classes : 1. Old monuments, dating from a time anterior to the first glimmerings of Greek taste ; as, for example, the remains at Amrit (Figs. 6 and 40). 2. Mixed monuments, on which the ideas, habits, and style of Phoenicia have left their trace, but which date from the Greek or Roman periods and bear the mark of Graeco- Roman influence; of such is the stone in the baptistery of Gebal (Fig. 48). 3 3. Monuments purely Greek or Roman, such as the theatre at Batroun. 4 Here we have nothing to do with monuments in the last-named c> category ; as for those in the second they afford many useful points of comparison, and the persistence with which motives quite Oriental in character hold their ground proves how dear they were 1 BEULE, Fouilles a Carthage (4to, 1861, 6 plates), pp. 59-62. 2 G. COLONNA CECCALDI, Revue Archeologique (2nd series, vol. xxii. p. 362). 3 REN AN, Mission, pp. 157, 158. 4 M. RENAN was the first to establish this classification ; its foundations appear sound (Ibid. pp. 835, 836). VOL. I. Q