"Poe, Edgar Allan - Four Beasts in One - The Homo Cameleopard" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

thirty. Were it later- for example, were it the year of our Lord eighteen
hundred and forty-five, we should be deprived of this extraordinary
spectacle. In the nineteenth century Antioch is- that is to say, Antioch
will be- in a lamentable state of decay. It will have been, by that time,
totally destroyed, at three different periods, by three successive
earthquakes. Indeed, to say the truth, what little of its former self may
then remain, will be found in so desolate and ruinous a state that the
patriarch shall have removed his residence to Damascus. This is well. I
see you profit by my advice, and are making the most of your time in
inspecting the premises- in

-satisfying your eyes

With the memorials and the things of fame

That most renown this city.-




I beg pardon; I had forgotten that Shakespeare will not flourish for
seventeen hundred and fifty years to come. But does not the appearance of
Epidaphne justify me in calling it grotesque?
"It is well fortified; and in this respect is as much indebted to nature
as to art."
Very true.
"There are a prodigious number of stately palaces."
There are.
"And the numerous temples, sumptuous and magnificent, may bear comparison
with the most lauded of antiquity."
All this I must acknowledge. Still there is an infinity of mud huts, and
abominable hovels. We cannot help perceiving abundance of filth in every
kennel, and, were it not for the over-powering fumes of idolatrous
incense, I have no doubt we should find a most intolerable stench. Did you
ever behold streets so insufferably narrow, or houses so miraculously
tall? What gloom their shadows cast upon the ground! It is well the
swinging lamps in those endless colonnades are kept burning throughout the
day; we should otherwise have the darkness of Egypt in the time of her
desolation.
"It is certainly a strange place! What is the meaning of yonder singular
building? See! it towers above all others, and lies to the eastward of
what I take to be the royal palace."
That is the new Temple of the Sun, who is adored in Syria under the title
of Elah Gabalah. Hereafter a very notorious Roman Emperor will institute
this worship in Rome, and thence derive a cognomen, Heliogabalus. I dare
say you would like to take a peep at the divinity of the temple. You need
not look up at the heavens; his Sunship is not there- at least not the
Sunship adored by the Syrians. That deity will be found in the interior of
yonder building. He is worshipped under the figure of a large stone pillar
terminating at the summit in a cone or pyramid, whereby is denoted Fire.