Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/58

 4o A History of Art in Sardinia and Jud.ka. tiring out the foe, and compelling him to disperse ; helped too by their friends who had hastened to the rescue and taken the adver- sary on his rear. Hard at all times must have been the fate of the besieged ; closely packed in narrow gloomy chambers, with no air or light, except what was let in through the tiny loopholes already mentioned, or when the business at hand allowed them a little breathing time on the terrace. In "agglomerated towers," where the number of chambers and the size of terraces were considerable, the whole tribe could be housed and the cattle enclosed in the inner courtyards ; whilst the men told off to fetch water from the neighbouring springs or wells were protected by their friends on the terrace. 1 Some few were very extensive and veritable en- trenched camps, wherein several tribes with their flocks found refuge. Such was the Giara dei Gestori, in the division of Iglesias (Fig. 31), about ten kilometres long by five broad, of which seven- teen towers still attest its former importance. Like so many outposts, they rose on every peak or precipitous crag, forming a belt around the principal buildings which, giant-like, occupied the two hillocks in the centre of the plateau. Nor is this a solitary instance ; the same impression of towers having surrounded a vast refuge is conveyed by the nuraghs dis- tributed in the Sinis peninsula. 2 If at the outset it is difficult to explain the destination of small, isolated towers, it becomes easy reading when we approach them in their full development, either as agglomerated (the Sarecci and Ortu) or as fortified plateaux, in which the leading principle which created them is clearly evinced. 3 In a state of barbarism, when insecurity and violence were rife between families and clans of the same stock, notably between tribes of different race, it was natural that each group should have been possessed of structures in which to stow away a few valuables, and find refuge in seasons of great distress for themselves and families. We need not go far back to find parallel cases in com- paratively recent times. In the Middle Ages the great Italian families, more particularly in the Romagne and Tuscany, owned 1 Pais, La Sardegna, p. 36. 2 La Marmora, Atlas, Plate VIII., figs. 6 and 7 : "Nuraghs, posted on the spurs of the hill range along the high road leading to Paoli-Latino, guarded the Beauladu Valley." 8 The solution proposed in these pages is M. Pais's, or, at least, that towards which he seems to incline ; whilst fully admitting that nuraghs may have been some- times used as temples and sepulchres, we are more affirmative, and believe that they were above all fortresses, and that if used for any other purpose it was secondary.