No important event occurred in connection with Samaria for 700 years, till the reign of the Emperor Augustus, who bestowed it as a gift upon Herod the Great, by whom it was enlarged and beautified, rivaling Baalbec and Palmyra in the magnificence of its architecture. Herod reared a temple on the summit of the hill in honor of his patron, and inclosed its base with a colonnade, consisting of two ranges of columns 50 feet apart, and extending 3000 feet in length. Such was the splendor of Samaria in the apostolic age, when Philip, together with Peter and John, preached the kingdom of heaven to the Samaritans, and encountered Simon Magus, the sorcerer of Sebaste.[503] The ancient city was located on one of the most imposing and picturesque hills in Palestine. Situated in a basin-like plain six miles in diameter, it rises in an oval shape to the height of 300 feet. Connected with the mountains on the east by a gentle swell of land, it has the appearance of a noble promontory. Midway its sides is a broad, irregular terrace, the site of the modern town, while its summit is a long, level plateau. On the north and south are valleys, converging on the west into the Valley of Nablous and running to the sea, bounded on either side by higher mountains, dotted with villages, and fertile in groves of fruit-trees and fields of grain. Nothing evinces the refinement and elegance of Omri’s taste more than the selection of this hill to be the site of his imperial city; but, under the degenerating influences of Mohammedanism, the beautiful in nature and the grand in art sink into insignificance. The footfalls of the Prophet are the pitfalls of civilization. Here, as every where else in the East where he sways his sceptre and lifts his sword, shame succeeds glory. Filth and rags, indolence and turbulence, crime and misery, are the chief features of the 400 inhabitants of the modern town. Their sixty wretched huts are constructed of mud, in which are imbedded the polished but now broken columns of costlier edifices. In a region where plenty waits on ordinary industry, they are but little above the condition of common beggars. In such a land indolence is a crime and poverty a dishonor.