DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18096#0050
22
Roman Africa
was 1,730 feet long and 250 feet wide. The amphitheatre, which
is clearly defined, was hollowed out of a plateau on the summit
of a hill. The great cisterns are six in number, side by side,
each measuring 135 feet by 20 feet, with a height to the crown
of the vault of 24 feet. Three of these cisterns are in good
condition, and are occupied as farm-stables. Their construc-
tion is Phoenician, but the vaulting is Roman. The streets of the
city were narrow, not exceeding fourteen feet, and they were
paved. Servius says that the Romans borrowed the idea of
street-paving from the Carthaginians—a statement which is
borne out by Isidore of Seville and other writers. ' The
adjacent country,' says Caesar in his Commentaries, 1 is of
great fertility. The trees supply quantities of timber. The
fields are covered with corn, and there is water in abundance.'
To testify his appreciation of the commercial wealth of the
inhabitants, Csesar, we are told, mulcted three hundred merchants
of the city in a sum equivalent to one million sterling. Plutarch
also informs us that, on his return from Africa after a campaign
of three whole years, Caesar spoke of his triumph in magniloquent
terms. He said that the country he had just conquered was so
extensive that the Roman people might draw from it every year
two hundred thousand Attic bushels of corn and three million
pounds of oil.
The remains of Utica, as well as of other towns on the coast,
present opportunities of comparing the Punic and Roman
methods of building, in the use of stone and rubble, as well as
the application of concrete or rammed earth commonly known
as pise. At Utica the distinction is very marked. The earliest
walls, which are massive, are entirely of rubble, but the stones
being small and the lime being made from the same stone, they
have the appearance of concrete construction. The vaulting of
Punic times is with the same materials, but the art of constructing
arches by voussoirs, or of vaults on the same principle, was
unknown to these Phoenician builders. The inner faces of walls
appear to have been coated with thin lime, and from the absence
of cut stones, the bold rounding of angles, and the prevalence of
rounded forms, it would appear that implements for the dressing
and squaring of stone were then unknown. The remains of the
admiral's palace, which form a conspicuous mass among the
ruins of Utica, are a good example of this kind of building with
Roman Africa
was 1,730 feet long and 250 feet wide. The amphitheatre, which
is clearly defined, was hollowed out of a plateau on the summit
of a hill. The great cisterns are six in number, side by side,
each measuring 135 feet by 20 feet, with a height to the crown
of the vault of 24 feet. Three of these cisterns are in good
condition, and are occupied as farm-stables. Their construc-
tion is Phoenician, but the vaulting is Roman. The streets of the
city were narrow, not exceeding fourteen feet, and they were
paved. Servius says that the Romans borrowed the idea of
street-paving from the Carthaginians—a statement which is
borne out by Isidore of Seville and other writers. ' The
adjacent country,' says Caesar in his Commentaries, 1 is of
great fertility. The trees supply quantities of timber. The
fields are covered with corn, and there is water in abundance.'
To testify his appreciation of the commercial wealth of the
inhabitants, Csesar, we are told, mulcted three hundred merchants
of the city in a sum equivalent to one million sterling. Plutarch
also informs us that, on his return from Africa after a campaign
of three whole years, Caesar spoke of his triumph in magniloquent
terms. He said that the country he had just conquered was so
extensive that the Roman people might draw from it every year
two hundred thousand Attic bushels of corn and three million
pounds of oil.
The remains of Utica, as well as of other towns on the coast,
present opportunities of comparing the Punic and Roman
methods of building, in the use of stone and rubble, as well as
the application of concrete or rammed earth commonly known
as pise. At Utica the distinction is very marked. The earliest
walls, which are massive, are entirely of rubble, but the stones
being small and the lime being made from the same stone, they
have the appearance of concrete construction. The vaulting of
Punic times is with the same materials, but the art of constructing
arches by voussoirs, or of vaults on the same principle, was
unknown to these Phoenician builders. The inner faces of walls
appear to have been coated with thin lime, and from the absence
of cut stones, the bold rounding of angles, and the prevalence of
rounded forms, it would appear that implements for the dressing
and squaring of stone were then unknown. The remains of the
admiral's palace, which form a conspicuous mass among the
ruins of Utica, are a good example of this kind of building with