Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/376

 354 HISTORY OF ART IN PII<I:XICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. compares the results so obtained with the inductions we may draw from the different episodes of the s'egc, and with the descriptions given by Daux of the ramparts of Thapsus and Adrumetum ; these towns were closely related to Carthage, and they must have possessed lines of circumvallation differing from those of the parent city only in extent ; they were built by the same architects and on the same plan. On this point the evidence of Daux is so exact and precise as to leave no room for doubt. 1 Appian must have been mistaken when he says there were three similar lines of circumvallation. On no ancient site have any traces of such an arrangement been found, and the reason of their absence is not far to seek. The first circle once captured would afford a splendid vantage-ground from which to attack the second, and so on to the third. The great object in ancient sieges was to raise the batteries of the besiegers to at least the same o level as the battlements of the wall attacked, and this result would follow at once from the capture of the first enceinte ; after that the reduction of the second and third would be simple enough. So that a triple wall such as that described by Appian would add very little to the strength of a place. The real meaning of the author, Polybius perhaps, upon whom Appian based himself, was very different. As we know from Philo, the custom in fortifying a city according to the full rules of the art was to dig three concentric ditches, each as wide and deep as circumstances would allow, and behind the first of these, that is, behind the ditch nearest to the town, to build the wall proper, with its towers and crenellations. Behind the second ditch the , or advanced-wall, was built. This was much lower text has only once been published, namely, in the I'eteres mathematici (Paris, Imprimerie Royale, i vol. folio). It is generally known as Philonis Byzantii liber qtiintus. The text from which Graux gives so many quotations in his Note sur les fortifications de Carthage differs sensibly from the one published ; Graux had a new edition of Philo in preparation, and had therefore collated the three extant manu- scripts of his work. An able officer of engineers, M. Albert de Rochas d'Aiglun, published a translation of it in 1872 under the title: Poliorcetique des Grccs. Traite de fortification, d'atta</ne et de defense des places, par Philon de Byzance, traduit pout- la premiere fois du Grec en Fiancais, commente et accompagne defragments explicatifs tires des ingenieurs et liistoriens Grecs ; Paris, 8vo, 1872 (Tanera). 1 A. DAUX, Recherches sur forigine et I" emplacement des tmporia phcniciens dans le Zeugis et le Byzacium (i vol. 8vo, 1869), p. 278.