372 History of Art in Antiquitv. quarter, that is to say works turned towards the curtain. In the West, earth fortifications date from the introduction of siege-guns ; in Persia they were imposed by the absence of stone ; in both cases it led to flankers or lateral fortifications." ' What we may even now consider as established is the analogy of the oonstrucdve scheme adopted at Susa with that practised by the military architects of Babylonia and Assyria. Prodigious thickness of ramparts, earthworks faced with crude or baked brick, obtained in both regions. There is but one feature which seems peculiar to the Susian' fortress, namely the insertion of gravel between the rampart properly so called and its epaulment to drain the mass, a contrivance familiar to modem engineering, but which it is somewhat startling to observe in defensive works of remote antiquity. The lack of stone in the plains of the Euphrates for^ bade the Chaldscan builder to have recourse to precautionary measures of this nature. To carry off water from their artificial mounds, they sometimes used conduits which stretched from the summit to the base.* Excavations have proved that Susa was surrounded by a double rampart, a fact which tends to make for Herodotus, when he spedcs of seven concentric walls which encompassed Ecbatana, along the flanks of the hill at the summit of which stood the palace of Dejoces. Was their number really seven, as the historian states?* The materials he collected for that part of his history had come to him from a great distance* and doubtless had gathered strength and multiplied on the way. Nevertheless, even now, more than one fastness rears its strange and picturesque walls in the hilly range of Zagros, and in both Turici^ and Persian Kur- distan. Their 'Walls have often been rebuilt upon foundations which have disappeared under frequent repairs, but, as of old, they are staged one upon the other and are standing witnesses to the ancient tradition of multiplicity of ramparts of stone or brick. The exhaustless quarries of die Elwend supplied freestone in abundance to Ecbatana, yet her defences, as proved by the crene- lations of the fortress, each painted a diffisrent hue^ were wholly made of brick. Enamel, we know, is fixed on day by firing, and there is no instance of its ever having been applied to stone. There is no valid reason why we should not accept as substantially ■ Choisy, ZesfouiOa de Suse et Fori antipte ie la J^se, p. 1 1.
- NiA «f Art^ torn. ii. pp. 160^ 161. • Herodotus, L 98.
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