X.] DESCRIPTIONS OF CITIES. 213
adorned in other respects also with temples and colonnades. The
temple of Zeus Olympius is still unfinished, but in its plan and
dimensions it seems to be inferior to no temple whatever in all
Greece1."
Again, when a city has been the scene of events of the first
importance, its site and the ground in its neighbourhood are
delineated with the fullest detail. This is the case with New
Carthage in Spain:—
" It stands about half-way down the coast of Iberia in a gulf
which faces south-west, running about twenty stades
inland, and about ten stades broad at its entrance. $£££ Car"
The whole gulf is made a harbour by the fact that
an island lies at its mouth, and thus makes the entrance channels
on each side of it exceedingly narrow. It breaks the force of the
waves also, and the whole gulf has thus smooth water, except
when south-west winds setting down the two channels raise a
surf: with all other winds it is perfectly calm, from being so
nearly landlocked. In the recess of the gulf a mountain juts out
in the form of a chersonese, and it is on this mountain that the
city stands, surrounded by the sea on the east and south, and on
the west by a lagoon extending so far northward that the remaining
space to the sea on the other side, to connect it with the
continent, is not more than two stades. The city itself has a
deep depression in its centre, presenting on its south side a level
approach from the sea; while the rest of it is hemmed in by hills,
two of them mountainous and rough, three others much lower,
but rocky and difficult of ascent; the largest of which lies on the
east of the town running out into the sea, on which stands a
temple of Asclepius. Exactly opposite this lies the western
mountain in a closely corresponding position, on which a palace
had been erected at great cost, which it is said was built by
Hasdrubal, when he was aiming at establishing royal power.
The remaining three lesser elevations bound it on the north, of
which the westernmost is called the hill of Hephaestus, the next
to it that of Aletes,—who is believed to have attained divine
honours from having been the discoverer of the silver mines,—
and the third is called the hill of Cronus. The lagoon has been
1 Polyb., 9.27*