T. E. Lawrence’s Undergraduate Dissertation – Page 78

of the inmost wall. Procopius lays down that the space between the two walls should be one quarter the height of the inner : and this unusual nearness was intended to enable both walls to be manned at once against attack. The inner wall, τεῖχος , was to have two rows of defenses : the ground floor of loop-holes in embrasures of some size : the upper a gallery, often vaulted, or wood-roofed, sometimes open, shielded outside by merlons of a certain strength and height. The thickness of a wall should be one-fourth its height and at intervals upon it must be towers, three-storied, and usually square. The Byzantine curtain-towers are mysteriously inadequate. The Tactics demands that towers be octagonal outside, and circular inside : and one of this pattern exists at Bash Dagh in Asia Minor : but generally there are none such. Occasion- ally towers are octagonal, inside and out, more often hexagonal : . nine-tenths are simply rectangular : in the African fortresses round towers are sometimes used at the angles of the larger places, and very occasionally there is one on the curtain wall. Procopius mentions towers that commence square, with a circular superstructure : - and there is one at Bash Dagh,(1) and three or four in Africa. The shallow rectangular shape is however the usual one : the towers have the thinnest walls on the --------------------------------------------------------- (1) "The Thousand and One Churches," p. 283, Ramsay and Miss Bell.