around it, both the upper courts and the lower temple, walling the latter up, in the lowest part, from a depth of three hundred cubits, (450 feet,) and in some places more. And yet the whole depth of the foundations did not show itself, because they had greatly filled up the ravines, with a view to bring them to a level with the streets of the city. The stones of this work were of the size of forty cubits, (60 feet,) for the profusion of means and the lavish zeal of the people advanced the improvements of the temple beyond account; and a perfection far above all hope was thus attained by perseverance and time.
"And well worthy of these foundations were the works which stood upon them. For all the colonnades were double, consisting of pillars twenty-five cubits (40 feet) in highth, each of a single stone of the whitest marble, and were roofed with fretwork of cedar. The natural beauty of these, their high polish and exquisite proportion, presented a most glorious show; but their surface was not marked by the superfluous embellishments of painting and carving. The colonnades were thirty cubits broad, (that is, forty-five feet from the front of the columns to the wall behind them;) while their whole circuit embraced a range of six stadia, (more than three-quarters of a mile!) including the castle of Antonia. And the whole hypethrum ([Greek: upaithron], the floor of the courts or inclosures of the temple, which was exposed to the open air, there being no roof above it) was variegated by the stones of all colors with which it was laid," (making a Mosaic pavement.) Sec. 1. * * * * * * * *
"The outside of the temple too, lacked nothing that could strike or dazzle the mind and eye. For it was on all sides overlaid with massy plates of gold, so that in the first light of the rising sun, IT SHOT FORTH A MOST FIERY SPLENDOR, which turned away the eyes of those who compelled themselves (mid. [Greek: biazomenous]) to gaze on it, as from the rays of the sun itself. To strangers, moreover, who were coming towards it, it shone from afar like a complete mountain of snow: for where it was not covered with gold it was most dazzlingly white, and above on the roof it had golden spikes, sharpened to keep the birds from lighting on it. And some of the stones of the building were forty-five cubits long, five high, and six broad;"—(or sixty-seven feet long, seven and a half high, and nine broad.) Sec. 6.
"The Antonia was placed at the angle made by the meeting of two colonnades of the outer temple, the western and the northern. It was built upon a rock, fifty cubits high, and precipitous on all sides. It was the work of king Herod, in which, most of all, he showed himself a man of exalted conceptions." Sec. 8. * * * *
In speaking of Solomon's foundation, he also says, (Ant. book VIII. chap. iii. sec. 9,) "But he made the outside of the temple wonderful beyond account, both in description and to sight. For having piled up huge terraces, from which, on account of their immense depth, it was hardly possible to look down, and reared them to the highth of four hundred cubits, (six hundred feet!) he made them on the same level with the hill's top on which the shrine ([Greek: naos]) was built, and thus the open floor of the temple ([Greek: hieron], or the outer court's inclosure) was level with the shrine." * * * *
I have drawn thus largely from the rich descriptions of this noble and faithful describer of the old glories of the Holy Land, because this very literal translation gives the exact naked detail of the temple's aspect, in language as gorgeous as the most high-wrought in which it could be presented in a mere fancy picture of the same scene; and because it will prove that my conception of its glory, as it appeared to Christ and the four disciples who "sat over against it upon the Mount of Olives," is not overdrawn, since it is thus supported by the blameless and invaluable testimony of him who saw all this splendor in its most splendid day, and afterwards in its unequaled beauty and with all its polished gold and marble, shining and sinking amid the flames, which swept it utterly away from his saddening eyes forever, to a ruin the most absolute and irretrievable that ever fell upon the works of man.
This was the temple on which the sons of Jonah and Zebedee gazed, with the awful denunciation of its utter ruin falling from their Lord's lips, and such was the desolation to which those terrible words devoted it. This full description of its location shows the manner in which its terraced foundations descended with their vast fronts, six hundred feet into the valley of Kedron, over which they looked. To give as clear an idea of the place where they sat, and its relations to the rest of the scene, I extract from Conder's Modern Traveler the following description of Mount Olivet.
"The Mount of Olives forms part of a ridge of limestone hills, extending to the north and the south-west. Pococke describes it as having four summits. On the lowest and most northerly of these, which, he tells us, is called Sulman Tashy, the stone of Solomon, there is a large domed sepulcher, and several other Mohammedan
