Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/330

 14 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. RELIGIOUS AND MILITARY ARCHITECTURE. The temples of Caria, as those of Lydia, were all rebuilt after the fourth century B.C., on the actual sites of the primitive ones. The public ritual which had marked the old religion was continued without a break in the new buildings ; so that they retained, for example at Lagina, a very distinct physiognomy. At the present day, however, all that remains are Corinthian and Ionian capitals of mediocre workmanship, fragments of friezes carved by second- rate Greek artists ; in which dry, finicky make are the distinguish- ing features, as indeed in all buildings erected by the successors of Alexander and the Roman proconsuls. 1 These unlovely debris, which commonplace ornament does nothing to redeem, may perhaps conceal remains of primal structures which excavations, that should go deep enough, would bring to light ; when, who knows but that we might come upon ex-votos that Carian soldiers had offered to their "god of hosts," or their Zeus Stratios, on their return home after the many adventures and hardships they had experienced with Psammeticus, in his distant campaigns up the Nile as far as Nubia, or the expeditions Alyattes and Croesus had carried across the Halys against Medes and Persians ? Per contra, on the crested heights where the primitive inhabitants built their first cities, more than one wall fragment is seen with no resemblance to Hellenic work. If there is a monument more likely than another to tempt one to seek in it a very old specimen, such as popular fancy, in the day of Strabo, connected with the early owners of the soil, it assuredly is the singular rampart discovered by Texier near lasus, and which he calls " Leleges' Wall." Its length is several kilo- metres ; and its trace on the mainland is within a certain distance of the shore, and contiguous to the islet bearing the Greek city ; it runs over a broken uncultivated tract, without trace of habitation. The fact that the defences, towers, and resaults of the wall under notice are turned towards the sea, forbids seeking in it advanced works of the lasians to protect their suburbs against invasions from the interior. The notion that it was intended to cover the territory of a city on the main- 1 As regards the remains of the temple of Lagina, see NEWTON, A Hist, of Dis- cweries, Atlas, Plate LXXVII.