The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-02-19

sented beardless young man clad in armor standing between two golden bulls
 He held a whip in his right hand and
 thunderbolt and some ears of corn in his left. There were also statues of Mer-
 cury and Venus, a Hall of Bacchus, and
 ste tues and statuettes of exquisite work
 nenship. These images were destroyed by the early Christians. who threw down
 parts of the temples and broke up the carvings.
 In the Great Temple
 It Is impossible to give pictures of the
 ruins and of the mighty temples as they were in their wonderful beauty. The ruins of themselves cover more than ten acres. and the Great Temple alone was about 300 feet long by 100 feet wide. It had a roof upheld by Corinthian columns SIX of which are still standing. These col
 umns are 30 feet high and 22 feet in cir conference In entering the temples went up a gigantic staircase. a gerat part of which has been destroyed, and came into what Is known as the fore court. which is about 200 feet from one side to the other. the floor of which was , paved with mosaic.
 We next went through another court known as the court of the altar, which must cover five or six acres. It Is mass of marble and granite, gi- gantic columns and delicate carvings being thrown helter-skelter together. Beyond this and up series of steps are the ruins of the Great Temple, which cover, venture. an area as great as that of the capitol at Wash ington. At the left is the exquisite Temple of Bacchus. and everywhere are great shafts of marble so wonderful ly carved that they would be treasures in any museum.
 Wonders of Mechanical Engineering All this, however. gives no idea of the construction. People wonder how the mighty stones of the pyramids were put into place. and books have been written to show how the obelisks were taken from the quarries to the sites where they have served as monuments.
 The work of this temple was a far greater mechanical triumph. The ma terials for 1t, including columns weigh ing hundreds of tons, had to be brought up the steep Lebanon mountains and carried over passes higher than the tops of the Alleghenies. There is gran ite here which came from far up the Nile; there are marbles from Greece, and limestone blocks weighing hund- reds of tons from the quarries near by The temple has walls 60 feet high and the mighty columns. seven feet in diameter and, including the pedes- tals and capitals. as tall as an eight
 story house. rest upon a platform
 
 mighty pillars are put up in three
 blocks. each 20 feet or more in height {
 and seven feet in diameter. They are so
 placed that each looks like one solid block and the erection was without the aid of machinery
 Worlds Biggest Building Stones In the walls of the temple foundation
 ere what are, venture. the biggest building blocks ever gotten out of the quarry by man. One of the walls. which
 has been recently uncovered by the Ger
 mans, has three great limestone blocks each of which measures 64 feet in length.
 1s feet in width and la feet in thickness. If such stones were placed end to end 1t
 would take only about 30 of them to make one mile, and if they were laid down be- tween the capitol and the treasury at
 Washington they would fill the sidewalk
 of Pennsylvania avenue with a wall
 reaching to the height of the second stories of the buildings on that street, from one structure to the other These stones were brought from quarry which
 lies to the side of Baalbsk more than .
 mile from the temples. Some of them