Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/142

 122 HISTORY OF Aur IN PIKI.NK i. AM> ITS DEPENDENCIES. Grotto (Fig. 57). This monument seems to date from the Roman decadence, hut there are peculiarities ahout it which deserve attention. To the under surface of the architrave the remains of one or two capitals still cling, which, by their sixe, must have belonged to very slender shafts indeed, so slender that it is in the last decree unlikely that their material was stone. 1 Phoenician O J was still spoken and written in Sardinia after the Roman conquest," and there is nothing- surprising in the fact that architects and ornamentists should also have preserved their taste for arrange- ments with which they had become familiar during the long Pruimician supremacy. Fit;. 57. The Serpent (Jrotto. From Chipiez.' 1 Besides the columns we have just described, which served either as real or make-believe supports, the temples of Phoenicia and of the countries over which her influence extended seem to have possessed others which upheld nothing, but played a part not un- like that of the Egyptian obelisks. No examples of these columns have come down to us, but they may be recognized on several of those coins whose types show the fronts of Phoenician or Cypriot temples, on those, for instance, which preserve the appearance of 1 CHIPIF.Z, Histoire critique de rOrigine et de la Formation des Or if res grecs, p. 121. - See Corpus Itiscriptionum Semiticarum. pars i. Nos. 143 and 149. 3 Histoire critique de rOiigine et de la Formation des Ordres gf'trs, p. 121.