Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/493

ADDITIONAL FORTIFICATIONS. 471 connected AV! Ji the cross-wall just mentioned by a single all of junction carried down the slope of Epipolae. 1 Both the danger which Syracuse had then incurred, and the means whereby it had been obviated, were fresh in the recollec- tion of Dionysius. Since the Athenian siege, the Syracusans may perhaps have preserved the fort erected by Gylippus near Euryalus ; but they had pulled down the wall of junction, the cross-wall, and the outer wall of protection constructed between the arrival of .Nikias in Sicily and his commencement of the siege, enclosing the sacred precinct of Apollo Temenites. The outer city of Syracuse was thus left with nothing but the wall of Ach- radina, with its two suburbs or excrescences, Tyche and Neapo- lis. Dionysius now resolved to provide for Syracuse a protection substantially similar to that contrived by Gylippus, yet more com- prehensive, elaborate, and permanent. He carried out an outer line of defence, starting from the sea near the port called Trogi- lus, enclosing the suburb called Tyche (which adjoined Acliradina to the north-west), and then ascending westward, along tliu brink of the northern cliff of Epipolas, to the summit of that slope at Euryalus. The two extremities thus became connected together, not as in the time of Gylippus, 2 by a single cross-wall carried out from the city-wall to the northern cliff, and then joined at an angle by another single wall descending the slope of Epipolae from Euryalus, but, by one continuous new line bordering the northern cliff down to the sea. And the new line, instead of being a mere single wall, was now built under the advice of the best engineers, with lofty and frequent towers interspersed throughout its length, to serve both as means of defence and as permanent quarters for soldiers. Its length was thirty stadia (about three and a half English miles) ; it was constructed of large stones carefully hewn, some of them four feet in length. 3 The quarries at hand supplied abundant materials, and for the labor necessary, Dionysius brought together all the population of the city and its neighborhood, out of whom he selected sixty thousand of the most 1 See, for a farther exposition of these points, my account of the siege of Syracuse -by the Athenians, Vol. VII, ch. lix, Ix. 2 Thucyd. vi, 75. 3 Diodor. xiv, 18. "hiduv Terpanoduv. The stones may have been cubes of four feet; hut this docs not certainly appear