The massive platform built by Herod the Great in his refurbished temple in Jerusalem was rimmed on all sides by porticoes, of which the ones along the southern wall have come to be called the Royal Stoa. Many commentators believed that it was here that Jesus upset the tables of the money-changers in the so-called 'cleansing of the temple' (Matt 21:12-13; Mk 11:15-16; Jn 2:14-16).
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620 feet long, it consisted of a central hall flanked on its sides with aisles, and held up by 162 columns capped with massive Corinthian capitals. Of all the porticoes, Josephus singled these out for mention; he said:
. . . this cloister deserves to be mentioned better than any other under the sun; for while the valley was very deep, and its bottom could not be seen, if you looked from above into the depth . . . he would be giddy . . . This cloister had pillars that stood in four rows . . . all along, for the fourth row was interwoven into the wall . . . and the thickness of each pillar was such that three men might, with their arms extended, fathom it round and join their hands again, while its lenght was twenty-seven feet, with a double spiral at its base . . . and there were one hundred and sixty-two of them. Their capitals were made in the Corinthian style, the grandeau of the whole was a cause for amazement among those who saw them. (Antiquities, XV.11.5)
Not quite three 'men' but this Corinthian-style capital left from the Temple's destruction outside where the Stoa used to be makes Josephus' point.
Online Resources:
☰ Biblical Archaeology Society Royal Portico on the Temple Mount
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