Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/375

 FORTIFIED WALLS. 353 or sixty-one feet, high, and twenty two cubits, or thirty-four feet, thick. 1 Appian gives about the same thickness, but he reduces the height to thirty cubits, or about forty-six feet. He calls this the height of the curtain beneath the battlements, and says that the towers, which had four stories, were much higher. 2 He adds that the wall was triple at least on the side of Byrsa and the Gulf of Tunis. 3 The author of the best work on the question, the regretted Charles Graux, shows that although these dimensions are out of the common, there is nothing astonishing in them, and that the figures of Appian especially are admissible enough. 4 What follows, however, is not so easily explained. According to Appian there were, at least on the west and south, three walls exactly like each other, and separated by regular distances. In the interior of each there were stables for 300 elephants, and, over them, for 4,000 horses, as well as lodging for 24,000 men, and huge magazines containing food for the elephants and forage for the horses. There are many things in the description of Appian that try our credulity and make us regret the loss of the account left by Polybius, an accurate writer, who was, morever, an eye witness of the great siege. For a right interpretation of Appian's text we cannot do better than turn to the incisive study of Charles Graux, who has no difficulty in showing that the historian in question was nothing more than a compiler, of mediocre skill, and that, being quite ignorant of military matters, he formed an idea of the Carthaginian fortifications which does not bear analysis. Graux gives a very clear explanation of the triple wall. To this end he makes use of the rules laid down by Philo the engineer in his Manual of Fortification; of the Attack and Defence of Places, a work compiled, in the opinion of some scholars, in the third, according to others, in the second, century of our era. He 1 DIODORUS, xxxii. xiv. 2 APPIAN, viii. 95. TWrcov (of the walls) 8' f.Ka<rrov rjv vi/'os /xev TTTJ^WV A, x ^/-" 5 3 There are some words missing from the text of his description ; they may be restored with considerable certainty. 4 CHARLES GRAUX, Note sur les fortifications de Carthage, pp. 192, 193, in the Melanges publics par lecole des Hautes Etudes pour le dixieme anniversaire de sa fondation (8vo, Paris, 1878, pp. 175-208). For all questions of topography reference must be had to the dissertation of DUREAU DE LA MALLE, entitled Recherches sur la topographie de Carthage, with notes by M. DUGASTE: i vol. Svo, 1835. 5 This curious work is the only treatise on fortification left us by antiquity ; the z 7.