Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/72

56 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. walls, obviously remains of an ancient city and of its stronghold. 1 Some few yards below, eastward, is an extensive plateau, begirt by a wall. Then about midway up the hill, between two rocky ridges which descend towards the Turkish cafe" (Belcaive), a wall 6 m. 50 c. thick, and here and there from 2 m. to 3 m. high, runs for about 50 m. with direction from north-west to south-west. Like the Acropolis of the lamanlar-Dagh, its style of masonry exhibits great variety. Certain blocks left in the rough are very irregular ; elsewhere the courses are nearly horizontal, set with dressed stones by no means of uniform calibre ; nevertheless, the prevailing system is still polygonal. The rock was cut in places, and abutting on the wall is a circular ruin in which M. Weber recognizes a tumulus. " Fragments of pottery strew the ground ; most are plain red with- out ornament, and not a few are of fine black ware, like ancient Greek vases, with here and there a bit of archaic make." 2 From the day when the tribe settled here began to build the little town whose harbour is now covered by the Bournabat level, they must have been alive to the importance of closing the pass through which alone, by following the course of the Hermus, the enemy could descend upon them. Part of the population, there- fore, occupied a post within easy reach of the plain and the slopes proper to cultivation, whence the defile could be easily guarded. A situation offering so many advantages must have tempted Greek colonists who probably superseded the primitive settlers to occupy the site and make use of the means of defence erected by former generations, whose name had passed out of men's memory. The second group of the early monuments of Sipylus is found on its northern slope, in the Manissa-Dagh, eastward of the old site of Magnesia. Scholars had surmised that the race which, whilst cultivating the fertile plain of the Hermus, had its places of worship, its shelters, and tombs in the depths of the mountain, above or at the base of its formidable escarp, had probably left other traces of its activity in the neighbourhood of the colossal statue of their famous goddess Cybele. And this expectation recent researches have fully realized. As you leave Manissa, coasting Sipylus up to the head of the valley, on some six hundred yards beyond the gigantic statue of Cybele, you suddenly come upon a narrow gorge, flanked by 1 RAMSAY, Newly discovered Sites, etc., pp. 63-68 ; WEBER, Le Sipylos, pp. 1 14, 115. 2 Ramsay, loc. cit.