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The height of the trilithons varies from 16 to 21-1/2 feet, the lowest being the two that stand at the open end of the horseshoe, and the highest that which is at the apex. Here again all the stones are sarsens and all are carefully worked.
Sir Norman Lockyer has since modified his views. He now argues that the trilithons and outer circle are later additions to an earlier temple to which the blue-stones belong. This earlier temple was made to observe "primarily but not exclusively the May year," while the later temple "represented a change of cult, and was dedicated primarily to the solstitial year."
Two of the inner trilithons, the highest rising twenty-five feet, remain perfect, and there are two single uprights, which lean considerably. The flat slab or altar-stone is lying on the ground. The avenue of approach opens in front of the inner ellipse and in a line with the altar-stone.
A striking feature of the grounds is the massive sculptured trilithons, about 2000 years old, brought from a ruined temple in southern India, and erected here in picturesque surroundings. The colony at Krotona is of more recent origin, and its environment is similar in some respects to that of Point Loma.
The fact is that the word 'dolmen-like, which has become current coin in archæological phraseology, is a question-begging epithet. The Maltese cells are not like dolmens at all, they are either trilithons or tables resting on a pillar. They are always open to the front, and instead of the rough unhewn block which should cover a dolmen they are roofed with a well-squared slab.
The inner ellipse was formed by nineteen upright masses of granite, within which was the famous slab of blue marble, by many supposed to have been an altar. The pillars and lintels of the outer portico, and those of the trilithons, are fitted together with the greatest skill, with tenons and mortices, a remarkable exception to the general rule with megalithic monuments.
The uniform concavity of black cloud was lifting bodily like the lid of a pot, letting in at the earth's edge the coming day, against which the towering monoliths and trilithons began to be blackly defined. "Did they sacrifice to God here?" asked she. "No," said he. "Who to?" "I believe to the sun.
We do not, however, know what was the exact nature of the worship carried on in them, though there can be no doubt that the stone tables supported by single pillars and the trilithons found in the niches played an important part in the ritual. Sir Arthur Evans in his famous article Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult has suggested that in Malta we have a cult similar to that seen in the Mycenæan world.
It is merely a heap of stones, and the trilithons on Salisbury Plain are not more desolate. A witty subaltern once described the present war as a period of long boredom punctuated by moments of intense fear. All men would emphasise the boredom, and most men would admit the fear.
Lord Avebury considers that it is part of a great scheme for honouring the famous dead, and many modern writers have adopted the same view. That the Plain near by is a great cemetery is beyond doubt, but then so are more or less all the chalk hills of Britain. There is more than one explanation of the probable method of the construction of the trilithons.
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