Plucking a memorial leaf from the tomb, we followed the broad, level belt of land to the southwest side of the hill, where are the remains of Herod’s colonnade. It is impossible to speak with accuracy of its vastness and magnificence. According to Josephus, Herod enlarged the city, surrounded it with a wall 20 furlongs in circumference, in the midst of which he left an open area a furlong and a half in circumference, where he erected a temple to Augustus, remarkable alike for the vastness of its dimensions and the exquisite beauty of its finish.[504] To rival the renowned city of Palmyra, he constructed a colonnade 50 feet wide and 3000 long, consisting of two rows of polished limestone columns 16 feet high and two feet in diameter, ornamented with Corinthian capitals. Through this imposing colonnade the royalty, the beauty, and military of Sebaste passed up to the temple of Augustus, which crowned the hill of Omri; but, like the grim skeleton of departed beauty, it is now a ruin. For more than 200 feet this avenue is marked by prostrate columns and broken bases. A hundred shafts still stand erect as when reared eighteen centuries ago, but now marred by the rude plowshare of the equally rude Arab. Ascending to the site of the temple, 200 feet above the colonnade, we found 17 columns without capitals, two of which were lying prostrate, overgrown with the ripening grain. Half a mile distant to the right were 15 columns, which are all that remain of that famous quadrangle composed of 170 columns. Where marble walks once ran and exquisite statuary stood, venerable Nature, outliving the monuments of human greatness, has resumed her ancient sway, bearing on her fertile bosom clustering vines and ripening grains. From the summit the prospect is no less extensive than captivating. Unrivaled by any other hill as a site for a capital, the position of Samaria is strong and central, its environs are fertile, and its summit is fanned with breezes from the distant sea. The vineyards, the cotton-fields, the circlet of mountains green with corn, and the rich Plain of Sharon beyond, bounded by the blue waters of the Mediterranean, form a picture of more than ordinary beauty, and one which Elisha and Herod, Philip, and Peter, and John must have contemplated with delight. As we descended from the ruins of Sebaste, whose citizens were great in crime as they were great in wealth and power, the prophetic denunciations against the city and their fulfillment were recalled to mind: “I will make Samaria as an heap of the field and as plantings of a vineyard; and I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley, and I will discover the foundations thereof.”[505] “Samaria shall become desolate, for she hath rebelled against her God.”[506]