supposed valley), leaving the city generally without any names for its quarters; and they reject the measurements and statements of the Bible and Josephus, except when these are misunderstood as confirming an unpractical theory. Others, on the contrary, would have us believe that the Akra destroyed by Simon the Hasmonæan was the same as the citadel Baris, which he or one of his family built soon after. They have been misled by Whiston’s translation “adjoined the Temple,” where the Greek really reads “lay over against the Temple.” If the Akra was levelled that it might not overlook the Holy House, it could not afterwards have been that rock which defended the Temple in later times, and which still rises with a high scarp above the inner courts. Both views are impracticable, and American scholars[187] seem always to have understood the topography better than some scholars in England, perhaps because they are not unconsciously influenced by the desire to save the traditional site of Calvary, which was the original cause of these attempts to twist the literary evidence from its natural explanation. The first school are involved in the dilemma that the city of David was first lower than the Temple, then--about 800 years later--was higher, and then lower again; while the supposed peak, 150 feet high, is geologically a very improbable feature, and the supposed valley never existed. The second school would make the Hasmonæans first cut down a hill as being a danger to the Temple, and then--later--build on the same hill a fortress overlooking and defending the Temple. Disregarding these dilemmas, we may inquire into the actual statements of ancient writers concerning the position of the _Akra_ or “citadel,” though these have again and again been explained, without any answer having been given to the argument by those who are otherwise convinced. [Sidenote: THE AKRA]