Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/50

 within the partition walls. From these conduits the city also derives a secret supply of water not likely to be tampered with by a besieging army.

(2) At a distance of about twenty yards from the inner edge of the moat, rising to a height of nearly thirty feet, with dentated parapets, stands the lesser wall. Towers of various shapes, square, round, and octagonal, project from its external face at intervals of about fifty yards. Each tower overtops the wall and possesses small front and lateral windows, which overlook the level tract stretching from the foss. High up in each tower is a floorway having an exit on the intramural space behind, and they have also steps out-*side which lead to the roof. The vacant interval between the walls is about fifty feet wide, usually called the peribolos. It has been artificially raised to within a few feet of the top of the wall by pouring into it the earth recovered in excavating the moat. This is the special vantage-ground of the de-*; Const. Porph., ''loc. cit.''; or rather, perhaps, the [Greek: prôteichisma]; see the Anon., [Greek: Stratêgikê] (Koechly, etc.), 12 (c. 550). Paspates calls it the [Greek: proteichion], "because," says he, "I have found no name for it in the Byzantine historians."]and [Greek: staurôma] are more definite; Critobulos, i, 60. Paspates states that the ground here has been raised six feet above its ancient level.]*