There does not seem to be any difficulty in understanding these notices when taken together, nor do they contradict one another. The city lay over against the Temple “like a theatre,”[196] the upper city being on the south, and the lower city in the broad Tyropœon to the north; the horseshoe head of the valley gave the theatre form, and the hill defending the lower city was that “gibbous” spur--resembling the moon in the third quarter--which bulges out eastwards near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. At its highest point--the rock of the traditional Calvary--it is 2,497 feet above sea-level, or more than 60 feet higher naturally than the rock site of the Temple. Originally the high ground stretched farther east, not far from the Temple, but separated from it by a flat valley 40 feet deep, which is the confluent of the Tyropœon, having its head near the present Damascus Gate on the north side of the city. By digging down this ridge, and filling the valley east of it, the surface in this part of Jerusalem became much what it now is; for the rock in the confluent valley--usually known as the Hasmonæan Valley--is now 40 feet under the street, and the visitor who follows the Via Dolorosa from the cathedral to Antonia (the Turkish barracks) is unaware of the original depth of this valley, though the street is not quite level throughout. East of this valley the present street rises towards Antonia, running over the fosse north of that citadel, which was filled in in 70 A. D., and over the Byzantine roof vaults of the Twin Pools, which were cut in that fosse. It is thus 40 feet higher than it was in the Hasmonæan age when the fosse was visible, and the road nearly level. There was plenty of room on the Akra spur for a citadel with towers, and the keep of the fortress was probably at the rock of the orthodox Calvary. The valley has been filled in at some period of history, and there is no reason to doubt that this was done by Simon the Hasmonæan. Josephus does not say that the rock was cut away, but merely that the “mound” on which the Akra stood was “worked down.” [Sidenote: THE HASMONÆANS]