it has long been in ruins as. the art craft it by the sculptors of antiquity lies in fragments on the ground. we wander amidst the ruins and find them quite prodigious wrote the great french novelist was stuff flow back when he visited the orient in eight hundred fifty. prodigious indeed doffing all around them the pillows of the temple of jupiter are three times as high as those of the parthenon athens. this is the roman past in today s arab world what was then the province of asia the inscriptions cut in stone were intended to last forever.