of Sidi bu Said lay the city of Carthage. The
pretty steep declivity of that height towards the
gulf and its numerous rocks and shallows gave natural
strength to the side of the city next to the gulf,
and a simple circumvallation was sufficient there.
On the wall along the west or landward side, on the
other hand, where nature afforded no protection, every
appliance within the power of the art of fortification
in those times was expended. It consisted, as
its recently discovered remains exactly tallying with
the description of Polybius have shown, of an outer
wall 6 1/2 feet thick and immense casemates attached
to it behind, probably along its whole extent; these
were separated from the outer wall by a covered way
6 feet broad, and had a depth of 14 feet, exclusive
of the front and back walls, each of which was fully
3 feet broad.(9) This enormous wall, composed throughout
of large hewn blocks, rose in two stories, exclusive
of the battlements and the huge towers four stories
high, to a height of 45 feet,(10) and furnished in
the lower range of the casemates stables and provender-stores
for 300 elephants, in the upper range stalls for horses,
magazines, and barracks.(11) The citadel-hill, the
Byrsa (Syriac, birtha = citadel), a comparatively considerable
rock having a height of 188 feet and at its base a
circumference of fully 2000 double paces,(12) was
joined to this wall at its southern end, just as the
rock-wall of the Capitol was joined to the city-wall
of Rome. Its summit bore the huge temple of the
God of Healing, resting on a basement of sixty steps.
The south side of the city was washed partly by the
shallow lake of Tunes towards the south-west, which
was separated almost wholly from the gulf by a narrow
and low tongue of land running southwards from the
Carthaginian peninsula,(13) partly by the open gulf
towards the south-east. At this last spot was
situated the double harbour of the city, a work of
human hands; the outer or commercial harbour, a longish
rectangle with the narrow end turned to the sea, from
whose entrance, only 70 feet wide, broad quays stretched
along the water on both sides, and the inner circular
war-harbour, the Cothon,(14) with the island containing
the admiral’s house in the middle, which was
approached through the outer harbour. Between
the two passed the city wall, which turning eastward
from the Byrsa excluded the tongue of land and the
outer harbour, but included the war-harbour, so that
the entrance to the latter must be conceived as capable
of being closed like a gate. Not far from the
war-harbour lay the marketplace, which was connected
by three narrow streets with the citadel open on the
side towards the town. To the north of, and
beyond, the city proper, the pretty considerable space
of the modern El Mersa, even at that time occupied
in great part by villas and well-watered gardens,
and then called Magalia, had a circumvallation of
its own joining on to the city wall. On the
opposite point of the peninsula, the Jebel-Khawi near