368 BENGAZI.

prevented them from being confounded in the general wreck. The perfect state in which these still continue to remain will, however, compensate for the losses we have sustained within their limits ; and we may consider them as affording one of the best examples extant of the military walls of the ancients. Procopius has informed us that the city of Teuchira was very strongly fortified by the Emperor Justinian ; and the restoration of the original wall which inclosed it (which we may suppose to have been laid in ruins by the Vandals) was probably the chief point to which the historian alluded. We are not aware of any data by which the precise period of the first erection of these walls may be ascertained ; but their solidity would induce us to refer them to an epoch anterior to the time of the Ptolemies ; while the regularity with which they have, at the same time, been constructed would prevent us from assigning to them a very early date *. It is well know n that the most ancient walls which remain to us are as remarkable for the irregularity as they are for the solidity of their structure ; and the term Cyclopean, which has been generally applied to them, has almost become synonymous with irregular.

The existing walls of Teuchira have undoubtedly been constructed at a period when architecture had attained great perfection; the mode of building adopted in them is uniform and regular, well calculated from its nature to save labour and expense, and is such as could only have been successfully employed where the blocks of * Many of the stones employed in the restoration of the walls have belonged to more ancient buildings, and parts of handsome cornices, friezes, and capitals are often seen built in with the original structure ; among these may be noticed fragments of Ptolemaic inscriptions, which are evidently not in their original jjlaces.