Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/263

245 LOCAL CIRCUMSTANCES OF SVKACL'gV 245 To the northwest of the outer city wall, in the direction of the port called Trogilus, stood an unfortified suburb which afterward* became enlarged into the distinct walled town of Tyche. Wesi of the southern part of the same outer city wall, nearly south- west of the outer city itself, stood another suburb, afterwarcb known and fortified as Neapolis, but deriving its name, in the year 415 B.C., from having within it the statue and consecrated ground of Apollo Temenites, 1 which stood a little way up on the ascent of the hill of Epipolse, and stretching from thence down southward in the direction of the Great Harbor. Between these two suburbs lay a broad open space, the ground rising in gradual acclivity from Achradina to the westward, and diminishing in breadth as it rose higher, until at length it ended in a small conical mound, called in modern times the Belvedere. Thia acclivity formed the eastern ascent of the long ridge of high ground called Epipolte. It was a triangle upon an inclined plane, of which Achradina was the base : to the north as well as to the south, it was suddenly broken off by lines of limestone cliff (forming the sides of the triangle), about fifteen or twenty feet high, and quite precipitous, except in some few openings made for convenient ascent. From the western point or apex of the triangle, the descent was easy and gradual excepting two or three special mounds, or cliffs towards the city, the interior of which was visible from this outer slope. According to the warfare of that time, Nikias r could only take Syracuse by building a wall of circumvallation so as to eut off its supplies by land, and at the same time blockading it by sea. Now looking at the inner and outer city as above described, at the moment when he first reached Sicily, we see that after defeating the Syracusans and driving them within their walls, which would be of course the first part of the process he might have carried his blockading wall in a direction nearly south- erly from the innermost point of the cleft of Santa Bonagia, between the city wall and the Temenites so as to reach the 1 At the neighboring city ot ela, also, a little without the walls, there stood a large brazen statue of Apollo ; of so much sanctity, beauty, or noto- rie'-y, that the Carthaginians in their invasion of the island, seven years after the siege of Syracuse by Nikias, earned it away with them vnd trans por'd it to Tyre (Diodor. xiii, 108).