DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11789#0177
THE GREAT TEMPLE.
167
ed by fifty-four magnificent Corinthian columns,
having nineteen on the side and ten in front, of
-which six only, with capitals and entablature of
surpassing beauty, are still standing. They are
seven feet and ten inches in diameter, and with the
pedestals about seventy-two feet in height; the
entablature is about twelve feet high, making in all
an elevation of near eighty-four feet. The shafts
of the columns are composed of three pieces, fitted
and united so perfectly that a knife-blade cannot
be inserted between them. The whole of the great
temple, with its two courts, having been raised upon
a platform of masonry, from fifteen to twenty feet
above the ground in the vicinity, this portion of
the ruins are seen to great advantage, especially
when viewed from the west. By the unanimous ad-
mission of all travellers who have visited Balbec,
those six columns are among the finest, if they be
not the very finest of all the architectural remains
that antiquity has bequeathed to us.
Nearly south from the site of the greater build-
ing just described, there is another temple (e) of
smaller dimensions, but much better preserved. It
is two hundred and twenty-five feet long, and one
hundred and eighteen wide, and rather more than
one hundred feet high from the base of the columns
167
ed by fifty-four magnificent Corinthian columns,
having nineteen on the side and ten in front, of
-which six only, with capitals and entablature of
surpassing beauty, are still standing. They are
seven feet and ten inches in diameter, and with the
pedestals about seventy-two feet in height; the
entablature is about twelve feet high, making in all
an elevation of near eighty-four feet. The shafts
of the columns are composed of three pieces, fitted
and united so perfectly that a knife-blade cannot
be inserted between them. The whole of the great
temple, with its two courts, having been raised upon
a platform of masonry, from fifteen to twenty feet
above the ground in the vicinity, this portion of
the ruins are seen to great advantage, especially
when viewed from the west. By the unanimous ad-
mission of all travellers who have visited Balbec,
those six columns are among the finest, if they be
not the very finest of all the architectural remains
that antiquity has bequeathed to us.
Nearly south from the site of the greater build-
ing just described, there is another temple (e) of
smaller dimensions, but much better preserved. It
is two hundred and twenty-five feet long, and one
hundred and eighteen wide, and rather more than
one hundred feet high from the base of the columns