On the right and left there were palaces, and between them extended indefinitely double colonnades of marble, leaving separate ways for footmen, beasts, and chariots; the whole under shade, and cooled by fountains of incessant flow.
Ben-Hur was not in mood to enjoy the spectacle.

The story of Simonides haunted him.

Arrived at the Omphalus--a monument of four arches wide as the streets, superbly illustrated, and erected to himself by Epiphanes, the eighth of the Seleucidae--he suddenly changed his mind.
"I will not go to the citadel to-night," he said to the porters.
"Take me to the khan nearest the bridge on the road to Seleucia." The party faced about, and in good time he was deposited in a public house of primitive but ample construction, within stone's-throw of the bridge under which old Simonides had his quarters.

He lay upon the house-top through the night.

In his inner mind lived the thought, "Now--now I will hear of home--and mother--and the dear little Tirzah.
If they are on earth, I will find them.".