The City of Baal
The City of Baal, or Baalbek, is between the desert and the deep sea. It lies at the foot of Anti-Libanus, in the sunny plains of Coele-Syria, a day’s march from either Damascus or Beirut. It is a city with a past as romantic as Rome’s, as wicked as Babel’s; its ruins testify both to its glory and its shame. It is a city with a future as brilliant as any New-World city; the railroad at its gate, the modern agricultural implements in its fields, and the porcelain bathtubs in its hotels, can testify to this. It is a city that enticed and still entices the mighty of the earth; Roman Emperors in the past came to appease the wrath of its gods, a German Emperor today comes to pilfer its temples. For the Acropolis in the poplar grove is a mine of ruins. The porphyry pillars, the statues, the tablets, the exquisite friezes, the palimpsests, the bas-reliefs—Time and the Turks have spared a few of these. And when the German Emperor came, Abdul Hamid blinked, and the Berlin Museum is now the richer for it.
Of the Temple of Jupiter, however, only six standing columns remain; of the Temple of Bacchus only the god and the Bacchantes are missing. And why was the one destroyed, the other preserved, only the six columns, had they a tongue, could tell. Indeed, how many blustering vandals have they conquered, how many savage attacks have they resisted, what wonders and what orgies have they beheld! These six giants of antiquity, looking over Anti-Lebanon in the East, and down upon the meandering Leontes in the South, and across the Syrian steppes in the North, still hold their own against Time and the Elements. They are the dominating feature of the ruins; they tower above them as the Acropolis towers above the surrounding poplars. And around their base, and through the fissures, flows the perennial grace of the seasons. The sun pays tribute to