Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/157

THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FORM. 137 seems to have seen the great temple of Bel while it was still practically intact, but Diodorus speaks of it as an edifice " which time had caused to fall," l and he adds that " writers are not in accord in what they say about this temple, so that it is impossible for us to make sure what its real dimensions were." It would seem, therefore, that the upper stories had fallen long before the age of Augustus. Even Ctesias, ' perhaps, who is Dioclorus's constant guide in all that he writes on the subject of Chaldsea and Assyria, never saw the monument in its integrity. In any case, the building was a complete ruin in the time of Strabo. " The tomb of Belus," says that accurate and well- informed geographer, " is now destroyed." Strabo, like Diodorus, attributes the destruction of these buildings partly to time, partly to the avenging violence of the Persians, who, irritated by the never-ending revolts of Babylon, ruined the proudest and most famous of her temples as a punishment. That the sanctuary was pillaged by the Persians under Xerxes, as Strabo affirms, is probable enough, but we have some difficulty in believing that they troubled themselves to destroy the building itself. 3 The effort would have been too great, and, in view of the slow but sure action of the elements upon its substance, it would have been labour thrown away. The destruction of an Egyptian monument required a desperate and long continued attack, it had to be deliberately murdered, if we may use such a phrase, but the buildings of Mesopotamia, with their thin cuirasses of burnt brick and their soft bodies, required the care of an architect to keep them standing, we might say of a doctor to keep them alive, to watch over them day by day, and to stop every wound through which the weather could reach their vulnerable parts. Abandoned to themselves they would soon have died, and died natural deaths. Materials and a system of construction such as those we have described could only result in a close style of architecture, in a style in which the voids bore but a very small proportion to the solids. And such a style was well suited to the climate. 1 TOV KaTa<TKevd.(r/j,aTO<; Sia rov ^povov 8ia7re7rTa>/coTOs (ll. 9, 4). 2 STRABO, xvi. 5. 3 DIODORUS, after describing the treasures of the temple, confines himself to saying generally, " all this was afterwards spoiled by the king of Persia " (ii. 9> r 9)- T