combination in a single mass of distinct architectural members; for
instance, of the shaft and capital of pillars, of entire pediments with
a portion of the wall below them, and of the walls of monuments with the
cornice and architrave. M. Renan has made some strong remarks on this
idiosyncrasy. "In the Grecian style," he says, "the beauty of the wall
is a main object with the architect, and the wall derives its beauty
from the divisions between the stones, which observe symmetrical laws,
and are in agreement with the general lines of the edifice. In a style
of this kind the stones of a wall have, all of them, the same dimension,
and this dimension is determined by the general plan of the building; or
else, as in the kind of work which is called 'pseud-isodomic,' the very
irregularity of the courses is governed by a law of symmetry. The
stones of the architrave, the metopes, the triglyphs, are, all of them,
separate blocks, even when it would have been perfectly easy to have
included in a single block all these various members. Such facts, as one
observes frequently in Syria, where three or four architectural members
are brought out from a single block, would have appeared to the Greeks
monstrous, since they are the negation of all logic."[614]

In cannot be denied that the habit of preferring large to small blocks,
even in monuments of a very moderate size, involved the Phoenician
architects in awkwardnesses and anomalies, which offend a cultivated
taste; but it should be remembered, on the other hand, that massiveness
in the material conduces greatly to stability, and that, in lands
where earthquakes are frequent, as they are along all the Mediterranean
shores, not many monuments would have survived the lapse of three
thousand years had the material employed been of a less substantial and
solid character.

Among the Phoenician constructions, of which it is possible to give some