TURKEY IN ASIA. 11 



must be 1135 tons. A coarse white marble quarry, at a greater dis- 

 tance, furnished the ornamental parts. 



Palmyra, or, as it was called by the ancients, Tadmor in the de- 

 sert, is situated in the wilds of Arabia Petraea, in about 33 degrees 

 of north latitude, and 200 miles to the south-east of Aleppo. It is 

 approached through a narrow plain, lined as it were with the re- 

 mains of antiquity ; and opening all at once, the eye is presented with 

 the most striking objects that are to be found in the world. The 

 temple of the Sun lies in ruins; but the access to it is through a 

 vast number of beautiful Corinthian columns of white marble, the 

 grandeur and beauty of which can only be known by the plates of it, 

 which have been drawn and published by Mr. Wood, who, with his 

 friends, visited it about fifty years ago, purposely to preserve some 

 rememorance of such a curiosity. As those drawings, or copies 

 from them, are now common, we must refer the reader to them, 

 especially as he can form no very adequate ideas of the ruins from a 

 printed relation. Superb arches, amazing columns, a colonnade ex- 

 tending 4000 feet in length, terminated by a noble mausoleum, tem- 

 ples, fine porticoes, peristyles, intercolumniations, and entablatures, all 

 of them in the highest style, and finished with the most beautiful ma- 

 terials, appear on all hands, but so dispersed and disjointed, that it is 

 impossible from them to form an idea of the whole when perfect. 

 These striking ruins are contrasted by the miserable huts of the 

 wild Arabs, who reside in or near them. 



Nothing but ocular proof could convince any man that so superb 

 a city, formerly ten miles in circumference, could exist in the midst 

 of what now are tracts of barren uninhabitable sands. Nothing how- 

 ever is more certain than that Palmyra was formerly the capital of a 

 great kingdom, that it was the pride as well as the emporium of 

 the eastern world, and that its merchants dealt with the Romans and 

 the western nations, for the merchandises and luxuries of India and 

 Arabia. Its present altered situation, therefore, can be accounted 

 for only by natural causes, which have turned the most fertile tracts 

 into barren deserts. The Asiatics think that Palmyra, as well as 

 Balbec, owes its original to Solomon ; and in this they receive some 

 countenance from sacred history. In profane history it is not men- 

 tioned before the time of Mark Antony; and its most superb build- 

 ings are thought to be of the lower empire, about the time-of Gallie- 

 nus. Odenathus, the last king of Palmyra, was highly caressed by 

 that emperor, and even declared Augustus. His widow, Zenobia, 

 reigned in great glory for some time ; and Longinus, the celebrated 

 critic, was her secretary. Unwilling to submit to the Roman tyranny, 

 she declared war against the emperor Aurelian, who took her prison- 

 er, and led her in triumph to Rome, and butchered her principal no- 

 bility, and, among others the excellent Longinus. He afterwards 

 destroyed her city, and massacred its inhabitants, but expended large 

 sums out of Zenobia's treasures in repairing the temple of the Sun, 

 the majestic ruins of which have been mentioned. None of the Pal- 

 myrene inscriptions reach above the Christian aera, though there can 

 be no doubt that the city itself is of much higher antiquity. The 

 emperor Justinian made some efforts to restore it to its ancient 

 splendor, but without effect, for it dwindled, by degrees, to its pre- 

 sent wretched state. It has been observed, very justly, that its archi- 

 tecture, and the proportions of its columns, are by no means equal in 

 purity to those of Balbec, 



