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 Jus- 
tinian ; and the restoration of the original wall which inclosed it (which 
we may suppose to have been laid in ruins by the Vandals) was pro- 
bably 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, w^ell 
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. 
