BOOKS.
CARTHAGE AND HER REMAINS.*
To the accident that "Dido" was a theme allotted to a school- boy, an accident not much more uncommon than that whioh led Newton to reveal the law of gravity, the world is indebted for the surprising discoveries lately made on the site of the ancient Punic capital. Their author had written about Dido in his boy- hood, pitying and admiring her with his whole heart; and when at the age of seventeen or eighteen he stood upon the very scene of her sad story, his old enthusiasm revived with a force that determined the subsequent tenour of his life. He applied him- self to the study of Carthaginian history and the Punic lan- guage, often visited the site of Dido's city, and gradually became possessed with the belief that some relics of its former greatness might still be found under the pulverized remains of the Roman city that had been reared upon its ruins. It was a solitary belief, opposed to the convictions of all preceding investigators, and to the often-repeated assertion of poets and historians, that nothing but dust and earth remained of ancient Carthage—etiam periere ruins). "I was prepared," says Sir Grenville Temple, describing his first visit to Carthage, " to see but few vestiges of its former grandeur ; it had so often suffered from the devastating effects of war, that I knew many could not exist ; but my heart sank within me, when, ascending one of its hills (from whose summit the eye embraces a view of the whole surrounding country to the edge of the sea), I beheld nothing more than a few scattered and shapeless masses of masonry. Yes, all vestiges of the splendour and magnificence of the mighty city had indeed passed away, and its very name is now unknown to the present inhabitants."
" Giace Pelt° Cartago : a pena i segni Dell 'alte sue ruine it lido serba.
Muoiono le citta, muoiono i regni ; Copri i fasti e le pompe arena ed erba.
—(Ger. Lib. ay., 20.)
" Great Carthage low in ashes cold doth lie; Her ruins poor, the herbs in height can pass ; So cities fall, so perish kingdoms high, Their pride and pomp lie hid in sand and grass. —(Fairfax.)
Although Dr. Davis stood high in favour with the late Bey of Tunis, many years elapsed before he could overcome the religious and political prejudices, and the court intrigues, that stood in' the way of his design. At last, by much perseverance, he obtained permission to excavate ; his offer to employ it lor the public benefit, and to hand over whatever antiquities he might discover to the trustees of the British Museum, was accepted by Lord Clarendon, on behalf of her Majesty's Government ; and ample means were placed at his disposal. The work began on the 11th of November, 1856, and was continued for months with much activity, in various places, but not with corresponding success. In choosing his ground, Dr. Davis had carefully studied the va- rious ground plans of ancient Carthage published in France and elsewhere, and had directed his researches in accordance with their indications, but the only result of such guidance was much unprofitable labour and many disappointments. Misled by the guesswork of the learned topographers, he found himself com- pelled to fall back on his own resources, after he had " toiled most assiduously, with from forty to fifty men, for nearly three months, without realizing anything worth the labour of a single day." He frankly admits that accident had a large share in the pro- duction of his first discovery, but it was an accident which he had the sagacity to turn to the best account. Happening one day to ride over the site of the Roman temple of Ccelestis, the Astarte of the Phoenicians, a piece of wall attracted his attention, and he dis- mounted to examine it. The poverty of its material had evidently saved it from the ravages of the stone-grubbers, who had carried away all the rest of the temple ; and thereabouts, he concluded, lay the only chance of discovering anything ; for everywhere else the ground had been deeply searched in the work of spoliation, which had gone on for centuries. While he was making his ob- servations, he was himself not unobserved. The custodo of the French chapel, erected in memory of St. Louis, had his eye upon him, and concluded from his long examination of so unattractive a ruin, that he had made a discovery of importance. The follow- ing morning, Dr. Davis, as he rode past the same place, saw, to his great surprise, the custodo and two other men digging busily at the foot of the wall.
"And if ever in the course of my life I was actuated by a feeling of jealousy, it was when I beheld the result of their morning's labour. It was the most magnificent piece of mosaic I bad ever seen, and measured about four feet by two and a half. Three months of incessant anxiety and toil, without anything to show for it, was my painful experience, while a few hours' labour rewarded him with such a gem of ancient art. My feelings were wrought up to such a pitch that I could scarcely bear to look at it ; and the Frenchman, as if he could read the secret of my heart, not only continued loud in praise of his discovery, but officiously cleaned away the earth still upon it, and pouring over it a jar of water, which be had ready at hand, disclosed to my view a richness of colour and an exquisiteness of de- sign which perfctly amazed me. To this day am I unable to say with cer- tainty whether the custodo was actuated by a spirit of triumph (for he was aware of my want of success), or by a kindliness of disposition, in taking such pains to exhibit to me such a specimen of ancient art. I am inclined to think that the former was his motive. 'Does this mosaic extend any further ? ' I asked him. 'No, sir,' he replied, laughing; ' you see here is • Carthage and her Remains; beingan Accauntof the Excavations and Researches on the site of the Phmnician Metropolis in Africa, and other adjacent places. Con- ducted under the auspices of her Majesty's Government. By Dr. N. Davis, &c. Published by Bentley.
the wall, and how can it possibly extend beyond it ? To the right is a deep trench, and before it you see is this pit.' Apparently be was right."
The two speakers in this dialogue stood facing the wall. The piece of mosaic lay on the near side of it, just where it abutted at right angles on the trench. On the further aide of the wall there was a mound, and opposite it, on the right-hand side of the trench, there was another, about fourteen feet high. The whole was in a hollow, about six feet below the surface of the adjoining fields. The size of the design convinced Dr. Davis that the mosaic originally covered a.large area, and its abrupt termination at the wall was a clear proof that the latter was of more reoent date, and built right through the ancient pavement. At once, then, he summoned his men to the spot, and set them to out through the right-hand monad. Before evening closed, they had laid bare a large portion, measuring about fifteen feet by nine, of the magni- ficent pavement of whioh the cuatodo of St. Louis had only a frag- ment. This new piece presented, within a beautiful pattern of strolls, spirals, and foliage, two panels, with the figure of a priestess in each nearly complete, and a medallion bust of a god- dess in the right-hand corner. It was evident that there must have been a corresponding medallion in each of the other corners of the pavement, and one of these was to be sought for under the mound on the left-hand side of the trench. The next two days were spent in removing that mound, and then another large por- tion of mosaic was disclosed, on which were one panel and a me- dallion bust of Ceres, " the most magnificent of the kind in ex- istenee."
The position in which these relics were found affords very strong proof of their Punic origin. Before they were reached, two distinct pavements were out through, separated from each other by a stratum of earth about three or four feet thick, and marking successive reconstructions at some considerable interval of time between them. The uppermost pavement was undoubtedly Roman ; probably the next to it was also Roman, but the fact is not explicitly stated. It was separated by a depth of three or four inches from the lowermost layer of mosaic, but it is evident that the existence of the latter was unknown to the builders of the second edifice, for otherwise they would not have broken through it to lay the foundation of an ordinary wall. The temple to which the grand mosaio belonged had perished by fire, as was shown by a thin stratum of charcoal which lay upon it ; and Dr. Davis says, that "the presence of charcoal, or the action of lire in some other way, was always clearly traced upon those mosaics to which we assign a Punic origin." A very important inference as to the different origins of the three pavements, may also be drawn from the character of the cements attached to them. The two upper layers were imbedded in an excessively hard cement, two inches thick and upwards, and composed of lime, pounded bricks, and a sprinkling of ashes. The bed on which the lowermost pavement lay was much thicker, consisted apparently of lime alone, and had entirely lost its adhesive power. It could be cut through with perfect ease. On the other hand, the cement which had been used, not in imbedding, but in making the supposed Phoenician mosaic, that is to say, in joining its pieces together, was much stronger than that used for a similar purpose in the two floors above it. The tendency of these facts is obvious, and apparently irresistible. It is scarcely possible to believe that the men who used such choice cement and such ill-made mortar were Romans. Lastly, the costume of the priestesses in the panels argues a Punic designer, for it is unlike anything which has come down to us from the hands of Greek or Roman artists.
A Monsieur Beule, who had spent seventy days in digging about the ruins of Carthage, has spoken with an air of authority about Dr. Davis's discoveries, denying that they reach back be- yond the Roman period, and his papers on the subject, endorsed by the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, has been pub- lished in the 211oniteur. The writer states that the British Mu- seum is indebted to Dr. Davis's zeal for " a certain number of Roman and Byzantine mosaics and inscriptions "—and nothing more. Now, Dr. Davis declares that " M. Beule never saw the mosaics he thus characterizes ; and the inscriptions he mentions in connexion with Roman and Byzantine mosaics convey, of course, the idea that they were either Latin or Greek, whereas they were all Phoenician?' Other critics argue from the exqui- site art displayed in the Davis mosaics, that they cannot belong to the period and the people that produced the clumsy and un- couth bas-reliefs, and the tracings of figures on the votive stones, which are beyond all doubt of a Punio date. As there is nothing new under the sun, there will no doubt be archaeologists of the year of our Lord 4500 who will reason in the same way in similar cases. Should one of Landseer's pictures perchance survive until that time, there will be wiseacres who will deny that it could have been the work of an Englishman in the nineteenth century ; for what is there in common, they will ask, between its lifelike form, and the preposterous figures of animals and monsters to be seen on the heraldic tablets, which were certainly produced in England in that barbarous age ? It is not unknown that religion, like heraldry, has been a great conservator of conventional styles of art, and that the rude figures which it sometimes prescribes are not always safe measures of the artistic capacity of their age. In spite of illogical inferences from misshapen rams, such as Red Indians might have carved, the head of Astarte and the Horse upon Punic coins, sufficiently testify that Carthage was not ignorant of the arts. Letters were a gift of the Phoanicians to Greece, and it is not a violent supposition that she derived the rudiments of art from the same people. " Homer, Herodotns, Virgil, Liman, and others, oombine in bearing testi- mony to the artistic genius of the Phoenicians et a period when Greece was only beginning to learn, and when Rome had not even entered school. The inhabitants of Sidon are called by Homer iroXv&iidaXoi, when the future rival of the great Pluenician empire in Africa had as yet no idea of the ru- diments of art Greece, having been instructed by the Phoenicians, was in her turn the teacher of &Any. It was then no humiliation to the Romans to learn likewise from the Phoenicians themselves, when the oppor- tunity offered itself. From the Phoenicians they learned the art of con- structing ships ; from them they borrowed the sledge used in threshing out the corn, and actually called by Varro Pcenicum plostellum, a Punic or Car- thaginian cart ; from the Carthaginians, too, they learned how to pave their roads. If, then, the Romans were in the habit of borrowing from the Carthaginians, why should it be considered anything so very extraordinary if we say that they learned from them likewise the art of making mosaic pavements? Indeed, the fact that they were only. introduced into Rome (as Pliny informs us) by Sylla, who visited the ruins of her fallen rival,. sufficiently indicates their origin ; and the resemblance there exists be. tween the Pompeian mosaics and some of those we dug up at Carthage (which unquestionably appertain to the Roman era) tends greatly to corro- borate this opinion."
There can be but one opinion as to the consummate ability with which Dr. Davis accomplished his most interesting enterprise, and the exceeding value of his discoveries. We cannot speak so favourably of his book. It is ill-written and very ill-arranged. These are faults which might be endured with more or less pa- tience ; but we cannot so easily forgive either the author or the publisher for sending forth such a large mass of heterogeneous matter without an index, or even a tolerably full table of contents.
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