Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/369

 FORTIFIED WALLS 347 of myrtles, carob-trees, mastics and wild olives, which a perfect network of bramble and bindweed renders quite impenetrable at many points. M. Tissot, from whom we have taken the figures and other details we are about to give on the subject of Lixus, succeeded, however, in traversing the whole area in two different .directions and in following the complete trace of the walls. 1 The enceinte of the lower city was entirely built of small stones ; it is identical in character with many other structures in the same region, and they date from the Roman period, as we know by the fragments of Latin epigraphy and sculpture imbedded in them. In the whole of this country the only strangers who preceded the Roman colonists and brought the germs of civilization to its FIG. 245. The uall of Motya. From Ilouel. natives were the Phoenicians. To the Phoenicians, therefore, without a moment's hesitation, were the remains of a very different wall at the same place attributed. The difference between this and the rampart of the lower town is made all the more conspicu- ous by the way the latter has been repaired. Wherever a breach 1 These ruins had already been pointed out under their right name by EARTH ( Wanderungen durch die Kiistenlander des Mittelmeers, pp. 21, 22); but we owe our only circumstantial description of them, with maps and views, to M. CHARLES TISSOT, formerly Minister Plenipotentiary of France in Morocco (Recherches sur la geographic compares de la Mavritanie Tingitane, pp. 203-221 ; and Memoires pr'esentes a r Academic des Inscriptions par divers savants etrangers, vol. ix. p. 139). The map we reproduce was perforce omitted from the Academy memoir.