City

Eliopoli

Baalbek

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Eliopoli is the Greek Heliopolis, the city of the sun, today Baalbek in Lebanon, high in the valley between the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon ranges. The Greeks equated the local god Baal with their sun god Helios, and named the town accordingly. Augustus made it a Roman colony with a garrison, and from Antoninus Pius to Caracalla emperors built a vast sanctuary to its great gods, later said to be Jupiter's. Six of its columns, each nineteen metres tall, still stand, and the terrace wall holds three stones about nineteen metres long. Theodosius turned the temple into a church.

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