Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 April 1895 — Ancient Lighthouses. [ARTICLE]

Ancient Lighthouses.

Beacon lights to guide the wavetossed mariner to a safe harbor must have been almost coeval with the earliest commerce. There is p< sitive record that lighthouses were built in ancient times, though few evidences remain to us from old writers or in crumbled ruins. This is not strange, for light towers, never the most stable architectural form, were exposed to the storms of sea and war. The Greeks attributed the first lighthouses to Hercules, and he was considered the protector of voyagers. It is claimed by some that Homer refers to lighthouses in the XIX. book of the Iliad. Virgil mentions a light on « temple to Apollo, which, visible fur out at sea, warned and guided mariners. The Colossus at Rhodes, erected about 300 8.C., is said to have shown a signal light from its uplifted hand. The oldest towers known were built by the Libyans in Lower Egypt. They were temples also, at.d the lightkeeper priests taught pil stage, hydrography and navigation. The famous tower on the Isle of Pharos, at Alexandria, built about 285 years B. C., is the first lighthouse c-f undoubted record. This tower, constructed by Sostratus, the architect, was square in plan, of great height and built in offsets. An open brazier at the top of the tower contained the fuel for the light. At Dover and Boulogne, on -either side of the English Channel, were ancient lighthouses, built by the Romans. But the lighthouse at Corrunna, Spain, built in the reign of Trajan, and reconstructed in 1684, is believed to be the oldest existing lighthouse. —[Cassler’s Magazine.