Balbec was visited, in 1751, by Mr Dawkins and Mr Wood, the latter of whom has given a set of most faithfiil and splendid drawings of the ruins. Mr Bruce also visited Balbec, and made numerous drawings, which he presented to the king, and which he boasts of being the richest offering of the kind ever presented by a subject to his sovereign : if, in deed,' they are in the style of Mr Bruce's other drawings, they must be excellent. A great many plates of the ruins may also be found in Po coeke. Several changes have taken place since the journey of Messrs Dawkins and 'Wood. Such a con:. tinual system of barVarons dilapidation is carried on, that perhaps at no very distant period, travellers Will be -forced to say, Etians periere mince. The truth of this observation is confirmed by the ivords of M. Volney. " They (Dawkins and Wood)' found nine large columns standing, and, in 1784, I found but six. They reckoned nine-and-twenty at •the lesser temple, but there now remain but twenty. The others have been overthrown by the earthquake of 1759. It has likewise so shaken the walls of the lesser temple, that the stone of the soffit of the gate has slid between the two adjoining ones, and descend ed eight inches ; by which means the body, of the bird sculptured on that stone is suspended detached from its wings, and the two garlands which hung from its beak, and terminated in two genii. Nature alone has not effected this devastation : the Turks have had their share in the destruction of the co lumns. Their motive is to procure the iron cramps, which serve to join the several blacks of which each column is composed. These cramps ansWer so well the end intended, that several of the columns are not even disjointed in their fall ; one among others, as Mr Wood observes, has penetrated-a stone of the tem ple wall without giving way. Nothing can surpass the workmanship of these columns: they are joined with out any cement, yet there is not room for the blade of a knife between their interstices. But what•occa-: sions more astonishment, the enormous stones that compose the sloping wall, which surrounds the tem ple on the west and north. To the west, the second layer is formed of stones which are from twenty-eight to thirty feet long, by about nine in height. Ovet this layer, at the north-west angle, there are three stones, which alone occupy a space of one hundred and seventy-five feet and a half; viz. the first'fifty eight seven inches, the second fifty-eight feet. eleven, and the third exactly fifty-eight feet long, and each of these is twelve feet thick. ' There is still lying in a quarry in the adjacent mountain, a stone, hewn on three sides, which is sixty-nine feet two inches long, twelve feet ten inches broad, and thirteen feet three inches thick..
"When we consider the extraordinary' magni-; ficence of the temple of Balbec, we cannot but be astonished at the silence of the Greek and Ro man authors. Mr Wood, who has carefully ex amined all the ancient writers, has found no mention• of it except in a fragment of John of Antioch, who' attributes the construction of this edifice to Antoni-• nus Pius. The inscriptions that remain- corrobo
rate this opinion, which perfectly accounts for the constant use of the Corinthian order, which was not in general use before the third age of Rome : but we ought by no means to allege as an additional proof, the bird sculptured over the gate ; for if his crooked' beak, large claws, and the cAticeus he bears,.give, ', him the appearance of an eagle, the tuft of feathers on his head, like that of certain pigeons, proves that J he is not the Roman eagle: besides, the same bird is found in the temple of Palmyra, and is therefore evidently an oriental eagle, consecrated to the sun, who was the divinity adored in both these temples. His worship existed at Balbec, in the most remote antiquity." Mr Wood supposes that Balbec, or ra ther Balbeth, which signifies in Hebrew, the city of' Baal, or the sun, had its name from the worship of this deity. It was literally translated Heliopolis, or the city of the sun, by the Greeks. There can be no doubt that Balbec is the ancient name, which has again recovered its place after it had been expunged by the Greeks : in the same manner as Tadmor, by which alone Palmyra is known by the Arabs, is un doubtedly the ancient name of that place. The Greeks have confounded both geography and history, by translating the names of places into their own lan guage, instead of giving them their proper unalien able appellations. We know nothing of the state of Balbec in remote antiquity, but as it lies in the road between Tyre and Palmyra, it probably shared the commerce of these opulent cities. It was a gar rison town in the time of Augustus ; and we read of its garrison being strengthened by the emperor He raclius, that it might be enabled to withstand the Arabs.- On the wall near one of the gates, there is a Latin inscription, in Greek characters, still very le gible, viz. Kenturia prima, evidently marking it out as a Roman station. When Christianity gained the Tascendancy under Constantine, part of the temple was converted into a Christian church, a wall of which is still remaining.
When describing the temple of Palmyra, M. Vol ney says, " It is a remark worthy the observation of historians, that the front of the portico has twelve pillars, like that of Balbec ; but what artists will es teem still more curious is, that these two fronts re semble the gallery of the Louvre, built by Perrault, long before the existence of the drawings which made us acquainted with them ; the only difference is, that the columns of the Louvre are double, whereas those of Balbec and Palmyra are detached. The popula tion of Balbec was estimated at five thousand, in 1751 ; in 1784, it did not exceed twelve hundred." See Volney's Travels in Egypt and Syria, vol. ii. Pococke's Travels, vol. ii. Wood's Rians of Balbcc. Bruce's Travels, introduction. (g)