Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/428

 406 HISTORY OF ART IN Pihr.xiciA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. had no attack to fear, and it is difficult to see why the new masters of Utica should have undertaken such a work. Moreover, the Romans seem to have been ignorant down to our era of all arches but those of carefully-dressed masonry ; the earliest cupolas of brick or concrete in Rome date from the end of the first century. 1 Does the work date from the first 200 years of the empire ? At that time the peace of Rome was more profound and her power more solidly established upon the African coast than ever. More- over, as soon as the seat of government was transported to the new Carthage, Utica seems to have decayed fast ; stripped of her political importance life gradually receded from her, and her harbours were left to be smothered in the sands of the Baorada. o We can hardly believe that she would then set to work at such a building as this. The method of construction is quite different from that used in the numerous Roman buildings in the African province ; the latter resemble the castle at Utica neither in decoration nor in the details of their masonry. Finally, can a single instance be named of the Romans leaving an island in the centre of an artificial harbour as a site for an admiral's palace ? We know, however, that such an arrangement existed at Carthage, and- it is natural to suppose that she, the New Town, borrowed the idea from her elder sister. Utica had already en- joyed centuries of life and prosperity when the development of Carthage began. The Phoenicians understood the principle of the vault. In spite of their love for huge units they had now and then made use of concrete in various forms. In Syria, Spain, and Africa itself, they had raised concrete breakwaters and land de-- fences of pise, or beaten earth ; their tombs, even, were sometimes of such materials ; so that we are justified in supposing that the Phoenicians of Africa had a regular system of architecture founded upon them. W 7 e are, then, inclined to see in the ruins described by Daux the remains of a Phoenician building of no slight antiquity. Certain parts of it appear to have been rearranged in the Roman period ; the terraces were repaired ; a few arches were rebuilt in voussoirs 1 CHOISY, Lart de batir chez hs Romains, pp. 32-33.