Originally There Must Have Been About Fifty Pillars In This Street; A
Little Farther On To The South-East This
Street crosses the principal
street of the town; and where the two streets meet, are four large
cubical masses of
Stone (d), each occupying one of the angles of the
intersection, similar to those which I saw at Shohba, and intended,
perhaps, to imitate the beautiful pedestals in the middle of the great
portico at Palmyra. These cubes are about seven feet high, and about
eighteen spans broad; on each side of them is a small niche; three are
entire, and the fourth is in ruins. They may have served as pedestals
for statues, or, like those at Palmyra, may have supported a small dome
upon columns, under which stood a statue. I endeavoured to examine the
tops of the cubes, but they are all thickly overgrown with shrubs, which
it was not in my power to clear away. There were no traces whatever of
statues having stood upon those which I saw at Shohba.
Following the great street, marked (e), south-westwards, I came again to
the remains of columns on both sides: these were much larger than the
former, and the street, of which some parts of the pavement yet remain,
was much broader than that marked (c). On the right hand side of the
street stand seventeen Corinthian
[p.256]columns, sixteen of which are united by their entablature; they
vary in size, and do not correspond in height either with those
opposite, to them or with those in the same line; a circumstance which,
added to the style of the capitals, seems to prove that the long street
is a patch-work, built at different periods, and of less ancient
construction than the temple. Some of the columns are as high as thirty
feet, others twenty-five; the shortest I estimated at twenty feet. Their
entablatures are slightly ornamented with sculptured bas-reliefs. Where
a high column stands near a shorter one the architrave over the latter
reposes upon a projecting bracket worked into the shaft of the higher
one. Next comes, following the street in the same S.W. direction, on the
right, one insulated column; and three large columns with their
entablature, joined to four shorter ones, in the way just described;
then two columns, and five, and two, all with their entablatures;
making, in the whole, on the right side of the street, counting from the
cubes, thirty-four columns, yet standing. On the left, opposite the
three large ones joined to the four smaller, are five columns of
middling size, with their entablatures, and a single large one; but the
greater number of the columns on this side have fallen, and are lying on
the ground. In some places behind the colonnade on the right, are low
apartments, some of which are vaulted, and appear to have been shops.
They are similar to those which I saw in the long street at Soueida, in
the mountain of the Druses.[See page 81.]
The long street just described terminates in a large open space (f)
enclosed by a magnificent semicircle of columns in a single row; fifty-
seven columns are yet standing; originally there may have been about
eighty.
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