The enclosure of Banias (Balaneum), between Tortosa and Latakieh, is still partly standing; but is it of Phœnician or of Pelasgic origin? It extends to a length of about 1,970 ft.; the wall, pierced by three gates, from 26 ft. to 32½ ft. broad, is built of blocks of grey limestone of irregular form, which are neither trimmed nor cemented. It is from 16 ft. to 26 ft. thick, and, in places, is still as much as 32½ ft. high. Broken lines, recesses and projections seem to announce the approaching appearance of bastions and towers in the art of fortification. The Pelasgic walls of Eubœa, Tiryns and Sipylus present analogous features. What remains of the substructures of the walls of Aradus, Berytus, and Sidon, indicates the employment of large and fine blocks irregularly laid. In the Carthaginian ramparts of Eryx, in Sicily, the stones bear Phœnician letters which acted as position marks for the masons, but this fortified enclosure does not date from an earlier period than the fourth century, and the Punic architects must have imitated their neighbours the Greeks. The walls of Carthage, which roused the astonishment of the ancients, were from six to seven leagues in circumference; they consisted, at least at certain points, of three concentric walls, arranged in steps in consequence of the declivity of the ground. Nothing is left of them except a sort of talus at intervals, which serves as the boundary of cultivated fields. Constructed of hewn stone, they were, according to the statements of ancient writers, 77 ft. high and 34 ft. thick; the towers were still higher and stronger. Since temples and ramparts have always been constructed in the most solid form, and that most capable of resisting the attacks of time and of men, if very little of these is left there is a much stronger reason why hardly anything should remain of civil monuments and private houses. In the soft limestone of the Phœnician coast the primitive inhabitants hewed out their dwellings like Troglodytes. In later times, by the aid of civilisation, the tombs alone were opened in the sides of the mountains, and the living cut out enormous blocks of stone with their picks, in which they hewed doors and chambers. At Amrith there is a monolithic house cut in this fashion, which M. Renan considers as the type of the genus. It is 98 ft. square and 71 ft. high; the walls are 2 ft. 7 in. thick; in the interior three chambers are divided by thin partitions contrived during the hollowing of the rock. Sometimes only the lower part of the walls have been hewn in the rock, which thus only forms a monolithic plinth one or several yards high, and completed to the roof by light masonry.