THE GIANT STONES OF BAALBEK
her nephew Varius[1] usurped the throne, he assumed the new imperial title of "High Priest of the Sun-God" and erected a temple to that deity on the Palatine Hill. At Baalbek itself the worship was accompanied by licentious orgies until the conversion of Constantine the Great, who abolished these iniquitous practices, erected a church in the Great Court of the Temple of the Sun, and consecrated a bishop to rule over the still heathen inhabitants of the new see.
Since then, the history of Baalbek has been parallel to that of every other stronghold in Syria, a history of battles and sieges and massacres and a long succession of conquerors with little in common except their cruelty. When the Arabs captured the city in the seventh century, they converted the whole temple area into a fortress whose strategic position, overlooking the Bika' and close to the great caravan routes, enabled it to play an important part in the wars of the Middle Ages. Many a great army has battered at this citadel. Iconoclastic Moslems have done all they could to deface its carvings and statues, earthquake after earthquake has shaken the temples, scores of buildings in the present town have been constructed from materials taken from the acropolis, col-
- ↑ Varius Avitus Bassanius, who took the name Heliogabalus upon his appointment as high priest of the sun-god, was born at Homs, A. D. 204, usurped the imperial throne at the death of his cousin Caracalla in 218 and, after a brief reign marked chiefly by its infamous debaucheries, was murdered by the Prætorians in 222.
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