Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/397

 TOWNS AND THEIR DEFENCES. 381 Without aiming at elegance, the structure throughout evinces that the masons who constructed it were familiar with fortification works. Very similar square towers are likewise figured in the bas-reliefs (Figs. 252, 253, 269, 270). In these, however, the wall runs along the base of the hill upon which the town was built, and both soar upwards towards the Acropolis. Lycian centres did not emerge from their plate of armour to descend and expand in the low level, until the peace brought about by Roman dominion. In the preceding age, wars between rival and neighbouring cities had been frequent ; so that the Lycians were not content to sur- round their dwellings with a belt of ramparts to guard them against their enemies, but readily engaged in works of greater extent. Thus, about a league to the north of their town, the Xanthians barred their valley with a wall which leans against a counter-fort of Massikytos, and runs for a distance of some four kilo- metres close up to the river, where it abuts on a kind of redoubt, or exercising ground crowning the hillock. The materials of which the wall is made, consist of blocks of great size irregularly cut, leaving interstices which are filled by small units. Here, doubt- less, was fought the battle specified by Herodotus between Persians and Lycians, when the latter were obliged to fall back and take shelter behind the walls of their chief town. No monuments exist in Lycia from which to obtain an idea of its temples, such as they appeared before they were rebuilt in Greek fashion, e.g. like the edifices whose remains are still visible at Patara and other points of the country. But for the nature of timber structures, which dooms them to prompt destruction, we might perhaps have lighted upon the outline of what has been sometimes called hut temples. If we except Macri and Elmalu, at the present day, throughout Lycia, mosques, at first sight, are not distinguishable from the houses of the peasantry by which they are surrounded ; so that we should not grasp the purpose for which they were erected, had not the builder taken the precaution to write Mirhab on one of their walls.