Not a single stone is left above ground of the temples raised by the Phœnicians in Sicily, Sardinia, Spain,
Fig. 191.—Roman wall at Byrsa (Boulé, Fouilles à Carthage).
and even Carthage, The famous sanctuary of Astarte, which stood on the scarped peak which overlooks Eryx, in Sicily, has perished; so has the temple of Baal-Hammon at Marsala (Lilybæum) and the Sardo-Phœnician sanctuaries of Baal-Samaim, Astarte, Eshmun, and Baal-Hammon indicated by the Punic inscriptions discovered at Sulci. The temple of Melkarth, at Gades, so much resorted to in the time of Strabo has left no traces. It is in vain that the name of the powerful city of Carthage and of the illustrious men whom she brought forth excite our enthusiastic curiosity; to no purpose has the site upon which she was built become French soil: the Romans respected nothing in the city of their most formidable enemies. The destruction which followed Scipio’s conquest, in the year 146 before our era, was systematic, and extended to the very foundation of the walls. What did escape was altered and transformed for the profit of the Roman colony which rose upon the Punic ruins, and which was itself upon two occasions the object of a savage demolition. There is, therefore, nothing Phœnician to be expected from the archæological excavations at Carthage from the architectural point of view; except mutilated inscriptions, almost all that is discovered is Roman, Christian, or Byzantine. The Chapel of Saint Louis, near which Boulé undertook his excavations, stands on the site of the famous temple of Eshmun in the middle of the acropolis of Byrsa; on the neighbouring hill was the temple of Tanit, whom the Romans called Virgo cœlestis; between Byrsa and the harbour, beside the forum, in the neighbourhood of which I carried on some excavations with M.S. Reinach in 1884, rose the temple of Baal-Hammon. To these topographical indications the memorials of the sanctuaries of Hannibal’s city are limited.
§ II. Civil Architecture.
If hardly anything is left of the Phœnician temples on all the shores of the Mediterranean, it must be admitted that the state of the case is almost the same with regard to civil monuments. The position of the formidable ramparts of Tyre, which held conquerors of cities like Sargon, Nebuchadnezzar, and Alexander so long in check, can with difficulty be recognised at a single point: it is probably marked by a submarine wall of enormous blocks, bonded with a concrete in which lime is mixed with crushed bricks; these walls, according to Arrian, were 147 ft. high.
The enclosure of Banias (Balaneum), between Tortosa and Latakieh, is still partly standing; but is it of Phœnician or of Pelasgic origin? It extends to a length of about 1,970 ft.; the wall, pierced by three gates, from 26 ft. to 32½ ft. broad, is built of blocks of grey limestone of irregular form, which are neither trimmed nor cemented. It is from 16 ft. to 26 ft. thick, and, in places, is still as much as 32½ ft. high. Broken lines, recesses and projections seem to announce the approaching appearance of bastions and towers in the art of fortification. The Pelasgic walls of Eubœa, Tiryns and Sipylus present analogous features.
What remains of the substructures of the walls of Aradus, Berytus, and Sidon, indicates the employment of large and fine blocks irregularly laid. In the Carthaginian ramparts of Eryx, in Sicily, the stones bear Phœnician letters which acted as position marks for the masons, but this fortified enclosure does not date from an earlier period than the fourth century, and the Punic architects must have imitated their neighbours the Greeks. The walls of Carthage, which roused the astonishment of the ancients, were from six to seven leagues in circumference; they consisted, at least at certain points, of three concentric walls, arranged in steps in consequence of the declivity of the ground. Nothing is left of them except a sort of talus at intervals, which serves as the boundary of cultivated fields. Constructed of hewn stone, they were, according to the statements of ancient writers, 77 ft. high and 34 ft. thick; the towers were still higher and stronger.