Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/429

 HARBOURS. 407 of dressed stone ; but these partial retouches in no way changed the general character of the work ; their only object was to preserve it from destruction. During the long years of peace under the Roman power the old Phoenician stronghold must have been in much the same position as more than one of our mediaeval castles are now ; it had nothing to do in a port which no enemy threatened, and if kept up at all it was kept up as a storehouse or prison. The particulars we have been able to collect as to the Cothons of Carthage and Utica are enough to show how much labour and thought the Phoenicians gave to their forts, and how much skill their architects displayed in making the best use of the space at their command. They soon awoke to the need of separating the commercial from the naval harbour ; the former had to be always open, so that the merchant captains could profit by a favourable wind at any moment of the day or night. The case of the naval harbour was quite different. There all had to give way before the necessity for defence ; the governing idea was to put the war- fleet beyond the reach of attack or even of prying eyes. Open enemies were not the only ones to be feared ; there were also sharp-eyed spies to be kept out, men who could tell at a glance how many ships were on the stocks and how many ready to take the sea, and foreign workmen smiths, carpenters, caulkers had also to be prevented from learning the trade secrets of the dockyard. In all matters of industry, of commerce, and navigation the Phoenicians pretended to a monopoly, and they guarded the secrets of their methods and operations with the most pitiless jealousy. Nothing could be more in character with their whole course of proceeding than the arrangement of such harbours as those of Utica and Carthage. They cut their basins inland not only for reasons connected with the shape of the coast, but also that they might keep them, as it were, under lock and key, might surround them with a double rampart, first with that of the city as a whole, and secondly with that inner wall by which the harbours were turned into a kind of town within a town, the admiral's palace being the citadel. This inner town had its water-gates and its land-gates, through which neither boat nor pedestrian could pass without permission. Venice, the modern Carthage, took