Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/362

 340 HISTORY OF ART IN PIKI.NICIA AND ITS DKPENDENCIKS. role in the struggle waged by Carthage first against the Greek cities and secondly against the armies of Rome. Close to the excellent harbour of Drepanum, Eryx rises to a height of about 2,350 feet above a rich and fertile plain. On its summit stood a temple of Astarte, the platform being artificially enlarged by embanking ; this was a work of some difficulty and was ascribed by the Greeks to Daedalus. 1 Below the temple, on the side next the sea, the houses of the town rose in stages one above another. The Carthaginians were not content with fortifying the temple and the city, they drew a line of circumvallation round the whole base of the mountain. Their ramparts thus inclosed a space wide enough to shelter a large army, which was put beyond fear of thirst by numerous springs. Neither these works nor the remains of the zigzag road which led up from the sea-shore to the top of the mountain have yet been thoroughly explored, but a learned farta. t/tnda FK;. 239. Tlan of the Pha-nician wall at Fryx. From Salinas. archaeologist, Signor Salinas, has recently made a study of that section of -the wall which lies to the north-west of Monte San- Giuliano. 2 The wall by which this little modern town is embraced coincides in that direction with the ramparts of Carthaginian Eryx. The upper sections have been reconstructed again and again, but all the lower courses of the ancient wall are still in place and bear the mark of the Phoenician masons ; ;>> even the modern gateways stand upon the antique sites. On this north-western side the wall of Eryx is still standing for a distance of about 1,100 yards (Fig. 239). The irregularity of its trace is to be explained by the necessity under which its 1 DIODORUS, iv. Ixviii. 4; Pom;n:s, i. lv. 6, 9; Iviii. 2 ; VIRGIN, sEneid, v. 759; STRABO, vi. ii. 6. - A. SALINAS, Le Mura fenicie di Erice (Roma, 1883, in 4(0, 8 pages and 3 plates). 3 See above, Figs. 34 and 35.