Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/179

MILITARY ARCHITECTURE. to fall into decay in those centuries of peace which marked the rule of the Roman emperors, but which was now set on a proper footing of defence. It is incised with too much care, the letters are too large to be explained as the passing whim of a casual tenant. Quite a different conjecture is suggested. Shut up in this stronghold, which he was to defend against the enemies of the empire and of his faith, the commanding officer of those days may have been a fervent Christian, who wished to affirm his creed in the face of barbarians. When he impressed on stone the holy formula, it may have been from a desire to consecrate to and place under the protection of the new god a peculiar structure due to pagan generations. Our detailed account in respect to Pishmish Kalessi will dis- pense us dwelling at any length upon kindred monuments. All we know of the neighbouring heights, seemingly appropriated to the same uses, is that the rocky mass furnished the material out of which were obtained walls, ramparts, fortified posts, levelled spaces, cisterns, stores, stairways, and so forth. At the foot of the hill which bears the village of Yapuldak is a subterraneous passage, now blocked up, which led towards the plain and a stream. Travellers who have visited the site have no doubt as to its having been inhabited ; 1 they incline to think that on one of these artificial platforms there stood a princely mansion. A plan of this Acropolis and its wall of enclosure, made by M. Ramsay, will be found in Hellenic Studies. He likewise succeeded in taking the plan of a house at Kumbet, where the old city is covered by the modern village (Fig. 46). Works similar to these are also reported from the Ayazeen necropolis, in the rear of the Broken Tomb, where, on the plateau upheld by escarps, hypogeia are seen in vast numbers. 2 If on the summit of several rocky masses are met vestiges of the work of man, the site where they are most marked is undoubtedly the plateau, on one side of which the Midas monument is sculptured. It brings to mind the " violet hills " of Athens, notably the Pnyx and the Museum, where the bare rock covered under clustering asphodels testifies to the laborious activity of the race whose narrow houses, closely packed together, rose in 1 EARTH, Reise, etc., p. 93. 9 With regard to the remains of fortifications which occur on the little Acropolis some three miles north of Ayazeen, see Journal, vol. ix. pp. 352, 353. For plan of the Yapuldak Acropolis, see Journal, vol. x. p. 180, Fig. 26.