Walls of Syracuse
In 402 BC Dionysius I began building the Circuit Walls of Syracuse. They were completed in 397 BC and had the following characteristics:
- Length: 27 kilometers
- Width at base: 3.3 m to 5.35 m
- Number of known towers on circuit: 14 (including Euryalos)
- Largest tower: 8.5 m x 8.5 m
- Deepest ditch (at Euryalos fortress): 9 m
Building so big a fortress would have involved installing well over 300 tons of stone every day for 5 years.
Read more about this topic: Dionysius I Of Syracuse
Famous quotes containing the words walls of, walls and/or syracuse:
“a child who traced voyages
indelibly all over the atlas, who now in a far country
remembers the first river, the first
field, bricks and lumber dumped in it ready for building,
that new smell, and remembers
the walls of the garden, the first light.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“Wherever there are walls I shall inscribe this eternal accusation against Christianity upon them—I can write in letters which make even the blind see ... I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty—I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind....”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The Dada object reflected an ironic posture before the consecrated forms of art. The surrealist object differs significantly in this respect. It stands for a mysterious relationship with the outer world established by man’s sensibility in a way that involves concrete forms in projecting the artist’s inner model.”
—J.H. Matthews. “Object Lessons,” The Imagery of Surrealism, Syracuse University Press (1977)