Of the Temple of Jupiter-Baal, which was the principal structure of the acropolis, only six columns are now standing; but these six can be seen far up and down the Bikaʿ. As you stand beside them and look up, the columns appear of tremendous bulk, as indeed they are; yet their proportions are so elegant that at a little distance they seem almost frail. When you view them from many miles away, they appear as tenuous as the strings of a colossal harp, awaiting the touch of Æolus himself to set them vibrating in tremendous harmony. Now the columns, crossed by the cornice above, resemble a titanic gate ready to swing open to the Garden of the Gods; now they are seen in profile, like a giant finger pointing upward. When the evening glow falls upon them, the stone takes on a yellowish tinge and the slender shafts look like a golden grating which some old master has put between the panels of his daring picture of brazen clouds and dazzling mountaintops. Even the long colonnades of Palmyra lack something of the peculiar grandeur of the six columns of Baalbek, as they stand guard over the ruined Temple of Baal, with nothing to rival their towering grandeur save the eternal peaks of Lebanon. Yet, though these columns are the most beautiful things in Baalbek, they are not its greatest marvel; for in the foundations of the acropolis are stones so immense that we can only guess at the means employed to quarry and transport and lift into place these huge masses of rock. Parallel to the north side of the Temple of the Sun is an outer wall ten feet thick and composed of nine stones, each thirty feet long and thirteen feet high; in the west foundation-wall of the acropolis are seven other stones of equal size, not lying upon the ground but set on lower tiers; and just above these is a series of three stones which are probably the largest ever handled by man. [Illustration: The stone in the quarry of Baalbek] [Illustration: The Orontes River at Hama]