CHAPTER XVIII.

SABBATH MUSINGS IN THE RUINS OF BAALBEC.

If a traveller, when he first comes to Rome, instead of being driven to a modern hotel, could be permitted to pitch a tent in the Coliseum, he would find it easier to realize the grandeur of the Imperial city. He would not need to go to history; history would come to him: he would see it in the mighty walls reared eighteen hundred years ago, within which were crowded a hundred thousand spectators, and be a witness of the combats of lions and tigers, and of the fights of gladiators. Something of this vivid reality of the past we had as we camped within the ruins of the ancient Temple of Baalbec.

In those far-off times, when Syria was a province of the Roman Empire, in the second century of the Christian era, was reared in this beautiful valley of Coele-Syria, between the two Lebanons, a Temple which was designed to be at Baalbec what the Parthenon was in Athens, the glory and wonder of the Eastern world. Erected by the first of the Antonines, it was designed to be a monument of Roman greatness and power, that should endure to all generations. We have come to see how much of it remains after the lapse of seventeen centuries.

CYCLOPEAN ARCHITECTURE.

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I will not add another to the many descriptions of Baalbec. It is difficult to convey an idea, by mere architectural measurements, of structures so vast. Petty details rather detract from their full grandeur, which depends on their being taken in with the eye as a whole. A few general impressions must therefore take the place of minute description. When one rides into the great court, around which the temples are grouped, the first impression is of the vast scale on which the whole construction is planned. Everything is colossal. The area is larger than that of the Temple at Jerusalem. We may begin with the walls, which are half a mile around, and of such height as is rarely attained in the most tremendous fortress. When from within I climbed to the top, it made me giddy to look over the perilous edge to the depth below; and when from without the walls, I looked up at them, they rose high in air. Some of the stones seem as if they must have been reared in place, not by Titans, but by the gods. There are nine stones thirty feet long and ten feet thick, which is larger than the foundation-stones of the Temple at Jerusalem, dating from the time of Solomon, or any blocks in the Great Pyramid. But even these are pigmies compared with the three giants of the western wall-sixty-two, sixty-three and a half, and sixtyfour feet long! These are said to be the largest stones ever used in any construction. They weigh hundreds of tons, and instead of being merely hewn out of a quarry which might have been on the site, and left to lie where they were before, they have been lifted nineteen feet from the ground, and there embedded in the wall! Never was there such Cyclopean architecture. How such enormous masses could be moved, is a problem with modern engiSir Charles Wilson, whom I met in Jerusalem, is at this moment in Baalbec. Standing in the grounds of

neers.

216 HOW THE GREAT STONES WERE MOVED.

the Temple, he tells me that in the British Museum there is an ancient tablet which reveals the way in which such stones were moved. The mechanics were very simple. Rollers were put under them, and they were drawn up inclined planes by sheer human muscle the united strength of great numbers of men. In the rude design on the tablet, the whole scene is pictured to the eye. There are the battalions of men, hundreds to a single roller, with the taskmasters standing over them, lash in hand, which was freely applied to make them pull together, and the king sitting on high to give the signal for this putting forth of human strength en masse, as if an army were moving to battle. A battle it was in the waste of human life which it caused. Who can estimate the fearful strain on all that host-how ranks on ranks fell down in the cruel task and died, only to be replaced by others, who were pushed on with the same remorseless tyranny! These Temples of Baalbec must have been a whole generation in building, and have consumed the population of a province and the wealth of an empire. Each course of stones must have been laid in blood and tears, as if it were a foundation of an altar of Moloch, who could only be appeased by a daily offering of human sacrifices.

The interior is laid out like an Acropolis, on which several temples are grouped together, and all enclosed within the same wall. Of these the most perfectly preserved is the Temple of the Sun, the walls of which are still standing, although the heavy stone roof has fallen in. The style of architecture is that of a Greek temple, and shows where the Romans found their masters and their models. Laid out in the form of a parallelogram, and surrounded by columns, its general shape is that which has been so often copied from the Greeks, as in the Madeleine at Paris, and in Girard College in Philadelphia. It

THE GREAT TEMPLE.

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had a double row of columns in front, and a single row on either side and in the rear. Of these the greater part are fallen, except on the northern side, where the peristyle remains nearly perfect, thirteen out of the fifteen original columns being still erect. They are forty-six feet high, and support an entablature of large slabs of stone, which are richly sculptured in ornament, wreaths of foliage encircling the busts of emperors and gods.

But the glory of Baalbec, upon which the pious Antonine lavished the wealth of Rome, is the Great Temple, of which there are far less remains than of the Temple of the Sun, but enough to show its magnitude and splendor. It was approached by a raised platform, or esplanade, 440 feet long by 370 wide, which led to the steps of the Temple. Of the vastness of the structure which rose on this Acropolis, some idea is given by the six Corinthian columns, sixty feet long and between seven and eight feet in diameter, which are still standing, and which from their position and height are conspicuous at a great distance across the plain, as one approaches Baalbec. What must have been the glory of that Temple when it stood complete, its roof of burnished gold reflecting the light of the rising or the setting sun, to the dwellers on the sides of Lebanon or Anti-Lebanon!

It was built to last for eternity. But alas for the dreams of ambition! It has been the spoil of ages. Attacked in the fury of the Moslem conquest, sacked by Tamerlane, and shaken by earthquakes, it has seemed as if man and nature had conspired for its destruction, till at last its columns lie prone upon the earth, or fallen one upon another, the whole a mighty ruin, a monument at once of the greatness and the littleness of man; of the pride which seeks to perpetuate his power and his name; and of the fate which overtakes the work of his hands.

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SABBATH MUSINGS.

But other and graver reflections come to us here. It is the day of rest: we are keeping our Sabbath amid these mighty ruins and our thoughts take the form of a religious meditation. These are not the ruins of Palaces, but of Temples, which show that there was in that day a belief in the higher powers. The Antonine by whom they were reared bore the name of Antoninus Pius. Though an Emperor on his throne, he was grave, serious, and devout, and devoted to the worship of the gods. We are accustomed to think that those who reared these ancient temples knew how absurd was the worship for which they were intended, and built them only to embody certain ideals of their imagination, as the Greeks fixed in marble their conceptions of beauty in the statues and temples of Venus, or of Divine majesty and power in the temples of Jupiter. But it is hard to believe that wise rulers would waste the resources of a kingdom to perpetuate a faith which they knew to be false. They might indeed build temples, as the Pharaohs of Egypt built Pyramids, as their own monuments; so that a Temple which bore the name of Jupiter should celebrate the glory of Cæsar, rather than the greatness of the god whom he professed to adore.

But after all, who can say that Antoninus Pius, in building the Temple at Baalbec, did not believe in the gods as much as Leo X. believed in Christ when he drained the resources of Christendom to build St. Peter's at Rome? Why should he not have so believed? Was there anything so ignoble in his belief as to be unworthy of the grave and thoughtful mind of the pious Emperor? One of these temples was devoted to the worship of the Sun, which, if any material object was to be adored, might well be worshipped as the Lord and Creator of life on the earth. Was it not true then-is it not true to-day-that but for the great Luminary which daily rises in the East and