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