49
Chap. 7.
ping and tale telling. Young women may be seen coming from it ingroups, and singing, with vases on their heads, precisely as representedon ancient marbles. It was at Scyros where yonng Achilles was concealedto prevent his going to the Trojan war. He was placed among, and habitedlike, the daughters of Lycomedes ; but Ulysses adroitly discovered him,by offering for sale, in the disguise of a pedler, a fine suit of armor, amongtrinkets for women.
Heliopolis, the city of the Sun, the On of Genesis, of which Joseph’sfather-in-law was governor and priest, and whose inhabitants, accordingto Herodotus , (li. 3.) were the most ingenious of all the Egyptians, andwhere the philosophers of Greece assembled to acquire “the wisdom ofEgypt, ” was famous for its fountain of excellent water:—this fountain,with a solitary obelisk, is all that remains to point out the place wherethat splendid city stood.
Aqueducts, fountains, cisterns and wells, are in numerous instances theonly remains of some of the most eelebrated cities of the ancient World.Of Heliopolis , Syene and Babylon in Egypt ; of Tyre, Sidon , Palmyra,Nineveh , Carthage, Utica, Barca, andmany others; and when, in the courseof future ages, the remaining portals and columns of Persepolis areentirely decayed, and its sculptures crumbled to dust: its cisterns andand aqueduct (both hewn out of the rock) will serve to excite the curi-osity of future antiquaries, when every other monument of the city towhich they belonged has perished. The features of nature, says Dr.Clarke, continue the same, though works of art may be done away: the‘beautiful gate’ of the Jerusalem temple is no more, but Siloah’s Foun-tain still flows, and Kedron yet murmurs m the Valley of Jehoshaphat.According to Chateaubriand, the Pool of Bethesda, a reservoir, one hun-dred and fifty feet by forty, constructed of large stones cramped withiron, and lined with flints embedded in cement, is the only specimen re-maining of the ancient architecture of that city.
Ephesus , too, is no more; and the temple of Diana, that according toPliny was 220 years in building, and upon which was lavished the talentand treasure of the east; the pride of all Asia , and one of the wondersof the world, has vanished; while the fountains which furnished the citi-zens with water, remain as fresh and perfect as ever. And as a tremen-dous satire on all human grandeur, it may be remarked, that a few solitarymarble sarcophagi, which once enclosed the mighty dead of Ephesus ,have been preserved—but as watering tronghs for cattle /“ Cisterns havebeen discovered in the oldest citadels of Greece . The fountains ofBounarbasM are perhaps the only objects remaining, that can be relied on,m locating the palace of Priam and the site of ancient Troy. And thewell near the outer walls of the temple of the sun at Palmyra, will, inall probability, furnish men with water, when other relics of Tadmor inthe wilderness have disappeared. b
To conclude, a great number of the wells of the ancient world stillsupply man with »water, although their history generally, is lost in the.night of time.
a Mi. Addison, in his journey southward from Damascus , says the fountain at Nazera,in Gallilee, “ trickles from a spout into a marble trough, which appears to have beenan ancient sarcophagus.” And close by the well at Mizra, he observed fragments of an-other, which had been used for a similar purpose. We may add, that Speed, the oldEnglish historian, remarks that the stone coffin of Richard 3d, “ is now made a drinkingtrough for horses at a common Inn .” Edition of 1615, p. 737.b Lord Lindsay’s Letters, (10.)—Phil. Trans. Lowthorp’s Abridg. iii, 490.