culties of manufacture and handling.

Crude brick never becomes hard enough to resist the action of water. In
Greek history we read how Agesipolis, King of Sparta, when besieging
Mantinea, directed the stream of the Ophis along the foot of its walls of
unburnt brick, and so caused them to crumble away. Cimon, son of Miltiades,
attacked the defences of Eion, on the Strymon, in the same fashion. When
desiccation was carried far enough, such materials could be used, in
interiors at least, so as to fulfil the same functions as stone or burnt
brick. Vitruvius tells us that the magistrates who had charge of building
operations at Utica would not allow brick to be used until it was five
years old.[130] It would seem that neither in Chaldaea nor still less in
Assyria was any such lengthy restriction imposed. It is only by exception
that crude bricks of which the desiccation has been carried to the farthest
possible point have been found in the palaces of Nineveh; almost the only
instance we can give is afforded by the bricks composing the arches of the
palace doorways at Khorsabad. They are rectangular, and into the
wedge-shaped intervals between their faces a softer clay has been poured to
fill up the joints.[131] As a rule things were done in a much less patient
fashion. At the end of a few days, or perhaps weeks, as soon, in fact, as
the bricks were dry and firm enough to be easily handled, they were carried
on to the ground and laid while still soft.

This we know from the evidence of M. Place, who cut many exploring shafts
through the massive Assyrian buildings, and could judge of the condition in
which the bricks had been put in place by the appearance of his
excavations. From top to bottom their sides showed a plain and uniform
surface; not the slightest sign of joints was to be found. Some might think
that the bricks, instead of being actually soft, were first dried in the
sun and then, when they came to be used, that each was dipped in water so
as to give it a momentary wetness before being laid in its place. M. Place
repels any such hypothesis. He points out that, had the Assyrian
bricklayers proceeded in that fashion, each joint would be distinguishable
by a rather darker tint than the rest of the wall. There is nothing of the
kind in fact. The only things that prove his excavations to have been made
through brick and not through a mass of earth beaten solid with the rammer
are, in the first place, that the substance