The first pharos which performed its duties in a regular manner seems to have been that which Lesches, the author of the “Little Iliad” (who flourished about the 9th Olympiad), erected on the promontory of Sigeum, at the entrance of the Hellespont. It is figured in the Iliac Table.
Though the most ancient in our records, the honour was not reserved to it of bequeathing its name to its successors, any more than to Columbus the glory of leaving his name to the New World. This honour was gained by the mighty tower elevated on the island of Pharos, at Alexandria, which served as a model for some of the most celebrated lighthouses erected in later times. Such was the case with the pharos built by the Emperor Claudian at Ostia, which appears to have been the most remarkable of any on the Latin coast. It was situated upon a breakwater, or artificial island, which occupied the mid space between the two huge moles that formed the harbour;[4] and its ruins were extant as late as the fifteenth century, when they were visited by Pope Pius II. Not less stately was the pharos which guided the seamen into the port of Puteoli, the emporium of the foreign trade of Imperial Rome; nor that which Augustus erected at the entrance of his new harbour of Ravenna, and which Pliny describes with so much enthusiasm; nor that, again, which shed its warning light from the mole of Messina over the whirlpool of Charybdis and the rock of Scylla; nor that which blazed in the island of Capreæ, and was destroyed by an earthquake shortly before the death of Tiberius.
Dionysius of Byzantium[5] describes a celebrated lighthouse planted at the mouth of the river Chrysorrhoas, where the latter mingles its waters with those of the Thracian Bosphorus (the modern channel of Constantinople). “On the crest of the hill,” he says, “whose base is washed by the Chrysorrhoas, may be seen the Timean tower, of an extraordinary height; and from its summit the spectator beholds a vast expanse of sea. It has been built for the safety of the navigator, fires being kindled for their guidance; which was all the more necessary because the shores of this sea are without ports, and no anchor can reach its bottom. But the barbarians of the coast lighted other fires on the loftiest points of the coast, to deceive the mariner, and profit by his shipwreck. At present,” adds our author, “the tower is partly ruined, and no lantern is lighted in it.”
Strabo refers in exaggerated terms to a superb pharos of stone at Capio, or Apio, near the harbour of Menestheus—the modern Puerto de Santa Maria. It stood on a rocky headland, nearly surrounded by the sea, and served as a guide for vessels through the shallow channels at the mouth of the Guadalquivir.[6]
What was the form of the Roman light-towers? This is a question not easily answered, when we remember that Herodian compares them to the catafalques of the emperors. The catafalques were square; but it is certain that quadrangular lighthouses were very seldom constructed. Montfaucon reproduces a medallion, from the famous cabinet of the Maréchal d’Estrées, which represents a Roman lighthouse as a circular tower, built in four stories of decreasing diameter. Another medal, discovered at Apameia, in Bithynia, and also figured by Montfaucon, likewise depicts a circular building. This medal bore the following inscription:—“Colonia Augusta Apameia, Colonia Julia Concordia decreto decurionum.”
A ROMAN PHAROS (FROM A MEDAL IN THE D’ESTREES’ COLLECTION).