She measures time, not by days and months and years, but by the empires she has seen rise, and prosper and crumble to ruin.

She is a type of immortality.

She saw the foundations of Baalbec, and Thebes, and Ephesus laid; she saw these villages grow into mighty cities, and amaze the world with their grandeur--and she has lived to see them desolate, deserted, and given over to the owls and the bats.

She saw the Israelitish empire exalted, and she saw it annihilated.

She saw Greece rise, and flourish two thousand years, and die.