As the building rises, the stones diminish in size, and the upper courses are often in no way remarkable.

Stones of various sizes are used, and often the courses are not regular, but one runs into another.

A tower in the wall of Eryx is a good specimen of this kind of construction.[68] Where the stones are small, mortar has been employed by the builders, but where they are of a large size, they are merely laid side by side in rows or courses, without mortar or cement of any kind, and remain in place through their own mass and weight.

In the earliest style of building the blocks are simply squared,[69] and the wall composed of them presents a flat and level surface, or one only broken by small and casual irregularities; but, when their ideas became more advanced, the Phoenicians preferred that style of masonry which is commonly regarded as peculiarly, if not exclusively, theirs[610]--the employment of large blocks with deeply bevelled edges.

The bevel is a depression round the entire side of the stone, which faces outwards, and may be effected either by a sloping cut which removes the right-angle from the edge, or by two cuts, one perpendicular and the other horizontal, which take out from the edge a rectangular bar or plinth.