He was stirred by recollections of his countrymen, their triumphs and vicissitudes, their history the history of God.
The city was of their building, at once a lasting testimony of their crimes and devotion, their weakness and genius, their religion and their irreligion.

Though he had seen Rome to familiarity, he was gratified.

The sight filled a measure of pride which would have made him drunk with vainglory but for the thought, princely as the property was, it did not any longer belong to his countrymen; the worship in the Temple was by permission of strangers; the hill where David dwelt was a marbled cheat--an office in which the chosen of the Lord were wrung and wrung for taxes, and scourged for very deathlessness of faith.

These, however, were pleasures and griefs of patriotism common to every Jew of the period; in addition, Ben-Hur brought with him a personal history which would not out of mind for other consideration whatever, which the spectacle served only to freshen and vivify.
A country of hills changes but little; where the hills are of rock, it changes not at all.

The scene Ben-Hur beheld is the same now, except as respects the city.