Читать книгу Looking for Aphrodite - David Price Williams - Страница 17

Incredibly, the whole site was to be defended by a massive stone wall, probably twelve to twenty metres in height, running down the side of the island from near the present lighthouse, across the mouth of the western harbour, along the mole and up the precipitous slope of the ridge behind the site to an acropolis at the top of the mountain where the planners conceived to build a huge block-walled fortress, a redoubt of monumental proportions, from where the city wall ran down the slope to the city’s eastern gate, around the commercial harbour and up the eastern slope of the island. The wall was punctuated with no fewer than sixty one protruding towers. When one considers the vast numbers of masonry blocks required both for the defensive wall and the city terraces, and their immense weight and the physical difficulties of parts of the site, this was an extraordinary accomplishment for the 4th century BC. And all this was to be done before any buildings were to be erected inside the city proper. The terrace wall blocks were to be laid in pseudo-isodomic, orthogonal courses (variously sized but neatly horizontal), but left with a rustica outer finish, a rough ‘countrified’ facing which when complete created the appearance of a series of ‘natural’ rock outcrops, each one above and behind the other. On these artificial scarps the formal, often pillared, buildings were to be laid out tier upon tier, giving the whole as seen by an approaching vessel a deliberately dramatic, ascending perspective of classic facades. Also, for the inhabitants of the mainland, the view over the sea and the adjacent islands would be idyllic.

All that was envisaged was accomplished. The mighty terrace walls were erected, the blocks being hewn from immense quarries on the eastern side of the city. The protective breakwaters were thrown up in the sea across the narrows. To see the one leading from the island defending the eastern harbour is to appreciate the scale of the work. Some of the blocks are the size of small trucks and must weigh many tons. The blocks are truly massive, especially in the moles and the upper theatre. It was as if they had been placed there by giants, which in a way they had …cultural giants, at least.

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