Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/414

 39- HISTORY OF ART IN PIKKXICIA AND ITS DKI'F.XDENCIF.S. it? How are we to reconcile the feeble diameter of the fluted Ionic drums found by Beule with the scale of such architectural decorations as would have been required to give any effect round FIG. 268. The harbours of Carthage according to Daux. a basin larger, according to the explorer's own figures, than the Place de la Concorde, at Paris ? } 1 The diameter of the fragment whose plan is given by Beule (pi. v. fig. 9) is eighteen and three-quarters inches. Now if we take the greatest height which could possibly go with such a diameter we arrive at columns between fourteen feet four inches and fourteen feet ten inches high, at most. The columns of Gabriel's two palaces on the north side of the Place de la Concorde are thirty-two feet ten inches high, while, according to the figures given by Beule, the naval dock at Carthage was about one-eighteenth larger in total area than the Parisian place QAL, Dictionnaire^ p. 327). It will be seen therefore that Beule's fragment can only have belonged to small columns better fitted for the decoration of an attic or a balcony than to fill an independent place beside such a vast basin.