The stadium[222] is on the right hand of a person facing the theatre, and it is undoubtedly the oldest work remaining of all that belonged to the ancient city. The walls exactly resemble those of Mycenæ and Tiryns; we may, therefore, class it among the examples of the Cyclopean masonry. It is, in other respects, the most remarkable structure of the kind existing; combining at once a natural and artificial character. The persons by whom it was formed, finding that the mountain whereon the coilon of the theatre has been constructed, would not allow a sufficient space for another oblong cavea of the length requisite to complete a stadium, built upon an artificial rampart reaching out into the plain, from the mountain toward the sea; so that this front-work resembles half a stadium thrust into the semi-circular cavity of a theatre; the entrance to the area, included between both, being formed with great taste and effect at the two sides or extremities of the semicircle. The ancient masonry appears in the front-work so placed. The length of the whole area equals two hundred and sixty-seven paces; the width of the advanced bastion thirty-six paces; and its height twenty-two feet six inches.
Besides these there are some few other antiquities, but of too minute a kind to merit description.
Even her ruins[223] speak less emphatically of the melancholy fate of Greece than her extensive solitudes. Oppression has degraded her children, and broken her spirit. Hence those prodigious plains, which God hath given for their good, are neglected; hence, too, the beauteous seas are without a sail; the lands of ancient Sicyon so thinly peopled!
’Tis Greece, but living Greece no more! So coldly sweet, so deadly fair, We start—for soul is wanting there! Hers is the loveliness in death, That parts not quite with parting breath; But beauty with that fearful bloom, That hue which haunts it to the tomb— Expression’s last receding ray, A gilded halo, hovering round decay, The farewell beam of feeling past away; Spark of that flame, perchance of heavenly birth, Which gleams, but warms no more its cherished earth![224]
NO. XXX.—SIDON.
Phœnicia comprised Sidon, Tyre, Ptolemais, and Berytus. Its mountains were Libanus and Anti-Libanus. Its most ancient city was Sidon; which was an opulent city even at so early a period as that in which the Greeks are said to have lived upon acorns. It is situated on the shores of the Mediterranean, at a distance of about twenty miles from Tyre, and fifty from Damascus.
Sidon is supposed to have been built by Canaan’s first-born, whose name was Sidon[225]. It is, therefore, celebrated as the most ancient of the cities of Phœnicia. It is frequently mentioned in holy writ. It is named by Jacob[226], in his prophetic speech concerning the country which his sons were to inhabit; and it is stated as a place for some of the kings who were driven out by Joshua. Its remote origin, however, is perhaps still uncertain, though Justin speaks of it in the following manner:—“The nation of the Tyrians, descended from the Phœnicians, being shaken by an earthquake, and having abandoned their country, did first inhabit the Assyrian marsh; and, not long afterwards, the shore next unto the sea, where they built a city, and called it Sidon, from the abundance of fishes that were there: for the Phœnicians call a fish sidon. After the process of many years, being overcome by king Ascalon, they took shipping again, and built Tyre in the year before the destruction of Troy.”
“I cannot help thinking,” says Mr. Drummond, “that the city, called Tsidon by the Hebrews; Tsaid or Tsaida, by the Syrians; and Said or Saida, by the Arabians; originally received its name from the language of the last. The Tsidonians were celebrated for their skill in metallurgy, and for the art with which they worked in gold, silver, and brass. Much iron and brass existed in Phœnicia, and the possession of this country having been once intended for the tribe of Ashur, Moses said to that tribe, ‘under thy shoes shall be iron and brass:’ (Deut. xxxiii. 25.): that is, the soil under thy feet shall abound with iron and brass. Now I consider Sidon, or rather Saida, to have been so called from its abounding with saidi or saidan, viz. brass.”[227]