The ruins are of considerable extent, and comprise among other things a citadel, inclosing a quadrangle of four acres or more within massive walls. The modern village is within this citadel, and contains forty or fifty huts and houses built with flat roofs, like nearly all houses in Syria. How are the mighty fallen! The walls of the city have suffered from earthquakes and vandalism, but more especially from the roots of plants and trees that have forced the stones apart. The same is the case with the castle that overlooks the town at an elevation of quite a thousand feet. A steep path leads up to the castle and it requires an hour of toilsome climbing to reach the top of the hill. The castle has a curious shape; it is about a thousand feet long by two hundred broad, and narrows considerably in the centre, so that it looks like two castles side by side. Many of the stones composing the walls are of great size, for such an elevation; they are frequently ten or twelve feet long, and accurately hewn and dressed. One can spend hours in the castle studying its construction and looking out upon the beautiful panorama that greets the eye from its walls. Antiquarians and archaeologists are at variance concerning this castle; some of them give it an existence from a period long before the Christian Era, while others think it is not more than twelve or fifteen hundred years old.
The city did not become prominent in history until the time of Herod the Great. Josephus relates that “Herod having accompanied Cæsar to the sea and returned home erected to him a beautiful temple of white marble near the palace called Pentium. This is a fine cave in a mountain under which there is a great cavity in the earth, abrupt, deep and full of water. Over it hangs a vast mountain; and under the cavern rise the springs of the river Jordan. Herod adorned this place, which was already a remarkable one, still farther by the erection of this temple which he dedicated to Cæsar.”
The description is accurate. The temple is gone, but there are Greek inscriptions and sculptured niches on the face of the cliff which were made at the time the temple was erected. The great fountain which forms the principal source of the Jordan bursts from the side of the cliff through a cavern, now partially choked with rough rocks and fragments of ancient buildings. The waters roll and break through a rocky channel as they begin their course down the deep ravine which leads them on and on till they are swallowed in the dark and gloomy bosom of the Dead Sea.
Hermon, the high mountain, is in front of us, and its triple summit stands cold and majestic now as it stood in the days that were made memorable by the recorded miracles of Christ.
