Identifier: museumofclassical00falk (find matches)
Title: The museum of classical antiquities : being a series of essays on ancient art
Year: 1860 (1860s)
Authors: Falkener, Edward, 1814-1896 Wood, J. E Davies, Benjamin Rees
Subjects: Classical antiquities Archaeology
Publisher: London : Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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enclosure. The narroweropening next the city, made secure, would stop the furtherprogress of the attack; and until this was cleared the slaughterwould be immense. The arrangement of these gates is thereverse of that adopted at Messene,* where the outer gate wasvvith a single aperture, and the inner ones on the other side ofthe circular court and next the city double, if not triple,there being one for the carriages, and one if not two for the foot-passengers. In the plan of the Hexapylon of Syracuse, as drawnby C. R. Cockerell, R.A., in Hughess Travels in Sicily, Greece,and Albania, there are double gates, but no court. Some of Supplementary Volume of the Antiquities of Athens: Entrance Gate of Messene. THE CITY GATES OF P^STUM. 39 the walls are twelve feet thick, where they consist of solidmasonry; but where they are constructed of emplecton, as atPtestura, they are sixteen feet thick, which is a remarkable coin-cidence, the thickness of the Passtum walls being sixteen feet sixinches.
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The restoration here presented is founded upon variousauthorities. Other gates of Psestum present this class ofmasonry—the pseudi-sodomum of Vitruvius. The large lintelsover the doorways are frequent, and notably in the exampleof Messene; and the loop-holes are like those in the towers ofthat city. As regards the height of the walls, it was a strangerule of the Greeks, as stated by an ancient writer, to makethem as many cubits high as they were stadia long; and those ofAthens, part of which were built by Callicrates, the architectemj)loyed by Pericles, appear to have been forty cubits high,equalling about sixty feet of our measure. These walls are 40 THE CITY GATES OF P^STUM. represented as forty feet high; that over the gateways fifty feet;and the towers sixty-five feet, in order more completely to riseabove the probable height of the moveable war-turrets (wvpyoi)of the besiegers. There are no remains of the pavement of theroadway, nor of the parapets or construction of the bridges

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