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Updated: June 11, 2025
One type was square, and of no great height; it had its top ornamented with gradines, below which the sides were either plain or fluted. Besides their sacrifices of animals, the Assyrian kings were accustomed to deposit in the temples of their gods, as thank-offerings, many precious products from the countries which they overran in their expeditions.
At the farther end, beyond the altar, appears a semicircular niche, with seats like the gradines of a diminutive amphitheatre; above rise the quaint forms of the apostles, in red, blue, green, and black mosaic, and in the midst of the goodly group a sort of marble chair, cool and penitential enough, where St. Lorenzo Giustiniani sat to hold a provincial council, the Lord knows how long ago!
An unusual and very effective ornamentation crowns both stages of the tower, consisting of a series of gradines at top with square machicolations below. The other monument of the pair, distant about twenty feet from the one already described, is architecturally far less happy.
The subjects represented are either such scenes as occur upon the sculptured slabs, or else mere patterns scrolls, honeysuckles, chevrons, gradines, guilloches, etc. In the scenes some attempt seems to be made at representing objects in their natural colors.
Winged disks, uraei, scarabs, sphinxes, have been adopted from Egypt; Assyria has furnished gradines, lotus blossoms, rosettes, the palm-tree ornament, the ribbon ornament, and the form of the lion; Greece has supplied pillars, pediments, festoons, and chimaeras.
In the vast oval of the arena, however, the circus ring looked very little, not half so large, say, as the rim of a lady's hat in front of you at the play; and on the gradines of the ancient amphitheatre we were all such a great way off that a good field-glass would have been needed to distinguish the features of the actors.
The obelisk is a monolith, about twelve or thirteen feet high, and two feet broad at the base. It tapers slightly, and, like the Black Obelisk erected by this monarch's son, is crowned at the summit by three steps or gradines.
There were young oaks and pines growing up to the border of the amphitheatre on all sides; blackberry vines and sumach bushes overran the gradines almost to the margin of the pool which filled the centre; at the edge of the water some clumps of willow and white birch leaned outward as if to mirror their tracery in its steely surface.
In its make it sometimes closely resembles the tunic of the first period, but more often it has the peculiar pendent ornament which has been compared to the scotch phillibeg, and which will be here given that name. It is often patterned with squares and gradines.
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