Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/356

^4 HISTORY m ART IN PIKI.NH IA AND ITS DKPKNDKNCIKS. cities against an enemy and their dwellings against discomfort. The structures raised to these ends were exposed to the same danger of ruin as temples, while in spite of the services they rendered, they had far less importance in the eyes of contemporary writers and artists. Classic authors only make passing allusion to them, and it is rare that remains of any importance supplement the silence or insufficiency of the texts. All Phoenician cities were fortified. Although the Phoenicians o were masters of the sea for so many centuries, we have seen that the Philistines contrived to capture Sidon by a bold coup-de-main > and the lesson of the disaster was taken to heart. It proved that even the maritime quays and harbours required fortifications, which were still more necessary to the cities on land. Egyptians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Persians and Greeks, must all in turn have been tempted by the riches accumulated "in these seaboard towns towns which were not all so favourably placed as Tyre and Arvad. Those on the mainland were vastly more exposed to hostile attempts, but even Tyre, as the success of Alexander proved, was not quite beyond the reach of an enemy. The cities of Phoenicia were, then, embraced by huge w r alls of defence, at whose construction we are enabled to guess by the remains still to be seen at Arvad and Sidon (Figs. / and 41). The enceinte of Tyre was especially strong. This we know from the stubborn resistance which it offered for seven months to the attacks of Alexander, delivered with all the dash of an ever- victorious army. 1 Practically there is nothing left of the ramparts which so long defied the great conqueror. " I do not think," says M. Renan, " that any city having played for centuries a prominent rblc in the world has left feebler traces than Tyre." Ezekiel was a true prophet when he said to Tyre : " Though thou be sought for, yet shalt thou never be found again." ! A traveller who sjiould sail along the Syrian coast between Kasmie and Ras-el-Ain without knowing exactly where he was, would never guess that he was abreast of the site of an ancient city. The only frag- ment of Phoenician building which M. Renan thought he could recognize at Sour was a wall, now below the sea-level, which had 1 DIODCRUS, xvii. 46 ; PLUTARCH, Alexander, 24. 2 EZEKIEL, xxvi. 21. 3 REN AX, Mission, p. 529.