FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER VIII
[321] “Wars,” V. xi. 1.
[322] “Ant.,” XVII. x. 1–10; “Wars,” II. iii. 1–4.
[323] The rulers of Jerusalem were procurators except Agrippa I., who was king. They were as follows: Coponius, from 10 A. D.; M. Ambivius, c. 12 A. D.; Annius Rufus, c. 13 A. D.; V. Gratus, 14 A. D.; P. Pilatus, 25 A. D.; Marcellus, 35 A. D.; Marullus, 37 A. D.; Agrippa I., 41 A. D.; Cuspius Fadus, 44 A. D.; Tib. Alexander, 47 A. D.; V. Cumanus, 49 A. D.; Felix, 52 A. D.; P. Festus, 60 A. D.; Albinus, 62 A. D.; Gessius Florus, 64 A. D. The final revolt began in 65 A. D.
[324] “Ant.,” XVIII. iii. 1, 2, 3, iv. 1–3.
[325] “Ord. Survey Notes,” pp. 80–3; “Mem. Survey West Pal.,” vol. iii. pp. 89–91; Bliss, “Excavat. at Jer.,” pp. 53–6, 332.
[326] “Ant.,” VIII. vii. 3; Cant. iv. 12.
[327] “Wars,” V. iv. 2, 3. See “Ant.,” XIX. vii. 2; and for the Women’s Towers, “Wars,” V. ii. 2, iii. 3; for Helena’s tomb, “Ant.,” XX. iv. 3; Pausanias, “Greciæ Descript.,” viii. 16; Jerome (“Epist. Paulæ”).
[328] “Ant.,” XX. iv. 3.
[329] “Ord. Survey Notes,” p. 66 and pl. xxv.; de Saulcy, “Voyage en Terre Sainte,” 1865, vol. i. De Saulcy misread the inscription as “Queen Sarah.”
[330] The Rev. Selah Merrill follows Robinson as to the course of this wall, and as to most of the other disputed questions.
[331] Robinson, “Bib. Res.,” 1838, i. p. 315; “Ord. Survey Notes,” 1864, p. 72, and pl. xxxi.; Schick in Pal. Expl. Fund Quarterly, 1895, p. 30.
[332] “Wars,” V. vi. 2.
[333] “Ant.,” XX. i. 1, v. 2, vii. 1, viii. 5, 9, 11, ix. 1, 2, xi. 2; “Wars,” II. xii. 1, xiii. 2, xiv. 1, 2, 6, xv. 1–6, xvi. 1–3, xvii. 1–10, xviii. 1, down to xix. 9.
[334] Acts xii. 1–23.
[335] Tacitus, “Hist.,” V. ix., “Annals,” xii., as quoted by Whiston.
[336] “Ant.,” XX. ix. 7, viii. 11; “Wars,” V. i. 5.
[337] “Ant.,” XX. ix. 1; Acts xxi. 18; 1 Cor. ix. 5; Gal. ii. 9.
[338] Matt. xxiv. 4–42; Mark xiii. 5–37; Luke xix. 42–4, xxi. 5–36.
[339] “Wars,” II. xiv. 2-xix. 9.
[340] “Wars,” II. xviii. 10-xix. 9; Tacitus, “Hist.,” V. x.
[341] “Wars,” V. i. 6; Tacitus, “Hist.,” V. i.
[342] “Wars,” IV. iv. 1, v. 1, vi. 1, vii. 1, 2, ix. 3–12, V. i. 4.
[343] No doubt at the Gate Korban (“of the offering”).
[344] See journal of siege, “Mem. West Pal. Survey,” Jerusalem vol., p. 4. Canon Williams made the curious mistake of reckoning by solar months, for the details show that lunar months, of alternately 30 and 29 days, are intended by Josephus.
[345] “Wars,” V. vi. 1, VI. vi. 4.
[347] The old camp at Tellilia above a valley west of Skopos is quite possibly one of those made in 70 A. D. See my description (“Mem. Survey West Pal.,” iii. p. 161).
[348] “Wars,” V. ii. 3–5, iii. 2.
[349] This passage (“Wars,” V. vi. 3) indicates the Aramaic original of the book. The Greek translator renders eben “son,” instead of “stone.”
[350] “Hist.,” V. xi. xii.
[351] “Wars,” V. vii. 2-xi. 4.
[352] Ibid., V. vi. 2, vii. 3, ix. 2, xi. 4.
[353] Ibid., Preface, 1.
[354] “Ant.,” XIII. viii. 2.
[355] “Wars,” V. ix. 3, 4.
[356] “Life,” 3; “Wars,” III. vii. 2-viii. 9.
[357] “Wars,” VI. ii. 1; Mishnah, Taanith, iv. 6.
[358] “Wars,” V. xii. 2.
[359] See my plan and account, “Mem. West Pal. Survey,” iii. p. 417.
[360] “Ord. Survey Notes,” p. 64.
[361] “Mem. West Pal. Survey,” Jerusalem vol., p. 419.
[362] Perhaps the Aramaic really read Beth ha Rababthi (B and N being much alike), thus connecting the place with the present Valley of Rabâbeh—the Hinnom gorge.
[363] “Wars,” VI. i. 6-iv. 6; Mishnah, Taanith, iv. 6, 7.
[364] “Wars,” VI. viii. 1–4.
[365] Josephus, “Life,” 75.
[366] Madden, “Coins of the Jews,” pp. 183–97.
[367] Tacitus, “Hist.,” V. xiii.; Josephus, “Wars,” VI. v. 3.
CHAPTER IX
THE ROMAN CITY
When the last smouldering fires had burned out among the ruins, the silence of death came over the desolate heaps which had once been Jerusalem, nor does it appear certain that any buildings were erected, or any native population allowed to dwell on the site, for sixty-five years after the fall of the city. The camp of the 10th legion was built on the plateau of the upper city, and was defended by the three great towers, which would form a citadel still in case of need. The demolition of the walls appears otherwise to have been so complete as to leave no traces of their lines thereafter, though the huge blocks lay on the ground, and were used again when the Roman colonial city, Ælia Capitolina, was built. Every stone of the Holy House seems to have been deliberately removed. The outer Temple ramparts were overthrown into the valleys, down to the level of the plateau formed by Herod within them. Two buttresses only were left on the north-west, close to Antonia, while on the south-east the corner of the wall stood up alone, as it was seen by the pilgrims down to the time of Justinian in our sixth century, with the spring of a huge arch which supported vaults at this angle. The great bridge was broken down to the ground, and the stones of its arch still lie on the Herodian pavement of the street that passed under it. Zion was a “ploughed field,” and the rabbis who ventured to visit the desolate sanctuary mourned as they saw the jackals prowling in its ruins.[368]
THE EARLY BISHOPS
The Sanhedrin established itself at Bureir, in Philistia, and afterwards at Jamnia, south of Joppa, where a famous school of doctors studied the Scriptures down to the time of the later revolt in 135 A. D.; but it would seem that the Jews were not allowed to approach their Holy City, and only visited it by stealth. Nor have we any certain indication that the Christians returned till after the Roman city was built. Eusebius[369] gives a list of fourteen bishops following James the Just; but the first of these (St. Simeon) must have left Jerusalem in 64 A. D. The second is supposed to have been consecrated in 107 A. D. They all bear Jewish names, except Seneca (125 A. D.) and his successor Justus. As to this “line of the circumcision,” which was supposed to end in 135 A. D., Eusebius himself says, “The space of time which the bishops of Jerusalem spent in their see I could in no wise find preserved in writing ... but this much I have been informed from records, until the siege of the Jews in Hadrian’s time there were fifteen bishops.”
The presence of the 10th legion, Fretensis, is, on the other hand, shown by the recovery of inscribed objects found by Mr. Bliss,[370] namely, three fragments of Roman tiles bearing the abbreviated title of the “Legio X Fretensis,” and in one case a representation of the boar, which was the emblem of this legion. But at some time before the year 117 A. D. this garrison was changed and the 3rd legion, Cyrenaica, took its place. It was also perhaps during this period that the Jews and Jewish Christians began to adopt a custom which continued in use down to the Middle Ages. The “lovers of Zion” desired that their bones might rest at the Holy City, and it became a pious duty to gather them, and to rebury them near it. There was also, in later times at least, a superstitious belief that those who were not buried in the “Valley of Decision” (Jehoshaphat) would have to find their way there through Sheol from their graves[371]—a survival of the ancient Egyptian belief in the journey of the soul through Amenti to the judgment hall of Osiris. It is said that, to the present day in Russia, Jewish cemeteries are called “Jehoshaphat,” and that this ancient superstition still survives. Stone caskets, adorned by geometrical patterns engraved on the sides, were prepared to bring the bones from other regions. Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela (about 1163 A. D.) speaks of these as existing in the cave of Machpelah at Hebron: “You there see caskets filled with the bones of Israelites; for unto this day it is a custom in the house of Israel to bring thither the bones of their relicts, and of their forefathers, and to leave them there.”
THE OSSUARIES
We have already seen that the bones of the family of Nicanor were so buried on Olivet, and that similar caskets (or ossuaries) were found in the tomb of Helena of Adiabene[372]; these latter may belong to the first century, as the only coins found with them were of the reign of Titus. Several other examples were found buried on the south spur of Olivet in 1873, and were studied by M. Clermont-Ganneau. Hebrew names are scratched upon them, and in one instance a rough cross, as though marking the presence of a Hebrew Christian from Pella or from Kaukabah in Bashan, where Ebionite Christians were living down to our fourth century. The exact age of these examples is uncertain, and the presence of the cross—an emblem only used in secret before 326 A. D.—rather favours the supposition that they are late. In 1900 other Jewish tombs were explored on the north of Olivet, and similar ossuaries were found; three of these bore Greek texts, and another was inscribed in Hebrew. The names Protas and Papos are clearly written, and that of “Yehoḥanan bar Ṣabia” seems to be decipherable. Quite recently also Jewish texts have been found in a tomb near the village of Silwân, with the names of “Abishalom father of Yehoḥanan,” and of “Shemra.” They are cut in soft rock and blacked in, but the last letter of the second name is painted in red. To the same class belong probably the graffiti in the so-called “Tombs of the Prophets” on Olivet, one of which was discovered by de Vogüé with the words “Phlôrianos Astaros” in Greek, and the Hebrew broken text “Peace be to ’Ab...” There are, however, fragments of Greek Christian graffiti at this site,[373] and though the expression “father of Yehoḥanan” points to burial or re-burial by a son, it seems probable that these interments of the bones of ancestors may be supposed to be of very various ages. The tombs in which they occur are certainly old, for they contain kokîm tunnels as graves instead of the loculi of the Greco-Jewish age.
In the reign of Trajan[374] the Jews of Mesopotamia and of Egypt broke out into revolt and were subdued, but there is no notice of any such rebellion in Palestine. We have evidence that Jerusalem was then held by the 3rd legion, which was originally called Augusta, but afterwards Cyrenaica on account of its success against the Jewish rebels at Cyrene; for a Latin text was found in 1895, built into the Turkish wall near the south or Sion Gate. “To Jove the best and greatest, Serapis, for the health and victory of the Emperor Nerva Trajanus Cæsar, the best, the august, the German, Dacian, Parthian [victor]; and to the Roman people, the standard bearer of the third Cyrenaic legion made” (this). This text cannot be earlier than 116 A. D., and Trajan died the next year.
The invocation of Serapis is interesting because the Jerusalem coins of Hadrian, the next emperor, represent a temple with a statue which seems clearly to be that of Serapis as Jove. Serapis, though adored at Alexandria with Isis, was not an Egyptian god. He was worshipped by the Romans in the second century as a supreme deity, but his image was brought from Pontus by the first Ptolemy, in the third century B. C., to Alexandria, where was his most famous temple.[375] His statues and his busts on coins represent him as a bearded Jupiter sometimes accompanied by the infernal dog Cerberus; on his head appears the modius, or “measure,” which may perhaps mean that he was the god of measurement and retribution. The name is probably very ancient and even of Akkadian origin, Sar-api being “the king of the waves” or of the “depth.”[376] He thus answers to the ancient sea-god Ea, who was supreme in the depths and who also resembled Pluto, being the judge of the dead in the under-world. His original temple at Sinope was on the shore of the Black Sea. Nothing could more remarkably illustrate the substitution of pagan worship at Jerusalem for that of Jehovah than this remarkable text, and the site of the Temple was soon after consecrated to this Asiatic Jove.
ÆLIA CAPITOLINA
Much confusion as to the history of Jerusalem under Hadrian has been caused by following the later statements of Byzantine historians, and by the anachronisms of the Talmud, as also by a strange theory which attributes the stamping of certain coins to the time of the revolt at Bêther in 135 A. D. Jerome[377] says that “remains of the city existed even to the time of prince Hadrian throughout fifty years”—a statement which is evidently true since they remain still, but which does not suggest that any town had been built over the ruins till the time of this emperor. It was the policy of Trajan and of Hadrian to break up the nationality of the Jews, who were recovering from the catastrophe of the fall of Jerusalem, and showed signs of determination to revive their ancient independence in regions where they were numerous, and had grown rich by trade. Hadrian acceded in 117 A. D., and may possibly have visited Palestine in 130 A. D. It was then probably that he conceived the idea of refounding Jerusalem as an ordinary Roman colonial city. Dion Cassius,[378] writing less than a century later, says of Hadrian that he “stirred up a war ... by founding a city at Jerusalem which he named Ælia Capitolina, and by setting up another temple to Jupiter on the site of the Lord’s Temple.” But it would seem more correct to say that the intention thus to paganise the Holy City was the immediate cause of the desperate revolt at Bêther. Renan[379] very truly remarks that “the really historic texts do not speak of a taking and destruction of Jerusalem” (at this time), “but by the way they read exclude such an event.” Eusebius, when following the contemporary account of the war by Ariston of Pella, says nothing at all about Jerusalem. Tertullian, Jerome, and Chrysostom, who believed in a siege of Jerusalem by Hadrian, are late authorities. References to the exclusion of the Jews from Jerusalem, to be found in the writings of Justin Martyr and Eusebius, may belong to the time after 135 A. D., and the prohibition of circumcision in 132 A. D. was quite sufficient to account for Jewish rebellion.
THE BÊTHER REVOLT
The story of this rebellion is overgrown with legend, and the Rabbinical references seem sometimes to confuse the events of the great siege by Titus with those of the war against Hadrian. Bêther was identified by Canon Williams at the present village Bittîr, six miles south-west of Jerusalem, and its proximity to the capital may have led to some confusion between the siege of this fortress and that of Jerusalem. The place is still a village[380] on a cliff, with a fine spring, and a Latin inscription, while the name “ruin of the Jew,” close by, may preserve some memory of the desperate struggle led by Bar Cocheba and Rabbi ’Aḳîbah. Jerusalem, on the other hand, according to Jerome,[381] “was razed and burned to the ground after fifty years, under Ælius Hadrianus, so that it even lost its former name.” The siege and capture of Bêther put an end to further attempts of the Jews to become free from Rome, especially because an age of toleration and good government followed. The Cyrenaic legion was probably used against them, which accounts for the text found in Rome speaking of the employment of Getulæ from Mauritania in this Jewish war, which took place when Lucius Quietus had been murdered, and replaced by Tineius Rufus as governor of Palestine. During its course the latter was superseded by Sextus Julius Severus, who was summoned as legate from Britain to put down this formidable revolt.[382]
In the Mishnah we read that on Ab 9 “Bêther was taken and the city was ploughed up.” Later commentators refer the latter statement to the time when “Turannus Rufus ploughed up Sion.” Jerome says that “the city Bethel [Bêther] being taken, ... the Temple was ignominiously ploughed, the people being oppressed by Titus Annius Rufus.” The Mishnah, again, speaks of the “wars of Vespasian and of Ḳîṭus” (Quietus), and apparently means by the latter the war of 135 A. D. There thus seems to be a confusion between the demolition of Jerusalem by Terennius (or Terentius) Rufus in 70 A. D., and the later war which began under Tineius Rufus,[383] and which had nothing to do with any ploughing up either of the Temple or of Sion. As regards the exclusion of the Jews from Jerusalem, it appears from Eusebius that after 135 A. D. they purchased the right to weep at the ruins of the temple, for “after the Jewish disturbance the place became inaccessible to Jews.” Justin Martyr, speaking to a Jew about Jerusalem, says “that it is guarded from you, that none should be in it; and it is death” to enter. Sulpicius Severus relates that a cohort of soldiers was placed as a guard, to forbid the entry of any Jew into the city. This edict seems to have fallen into disuse under the tolerant Antonines and in the third century, but it was renewed by Constantius II. after the revolt of the Jews in Galilee in 339 A. D.; and Jerome says, “Still you may see a sad crowd, a wretched people, who fail to gain pity, assemble and draw nigh. Decrepit women, old men in rags ... all weeping; and while tears drown their cheeks, while they raise their livid arms and tear their locks, the soldier comes and demands money to allow them to weep a little more.”[384] This pathetic account reminds us of scenes which may still be witnessed at Jerusalem, but none of these passages serve to show that it was an inhabited place, once more besieged and ruined by Hadrian, nor that it was ever occupied by the rebels of 135 A. D.
The leaders of the revolt were Bar Cocheba (Kôkeba), “the Son of the Star,” and Rabbi ’Aḳîbah, who believed this pretender to be the true Messiah, in spite of the warning of Rabbi Jehoḥanan, “’Aḳîbah, the grass will be growing between thy jaws before the Son of David comes.”[385] The rabbinical accounts of the Bêther war are late and legendary, and the “Son of the Star” is called in the Talmudic allusions “the son of falsehood”—Bar Kôzîba—probably as a term of contempt. The theory according to which he struck coins in Jerusalem demands notice, in connection with the history of the city, but it appears to be one of those learned fallacies which are very long in dying.[386]
COINS OF SIMON
Certain silver coins of “Eleazar the Priest,” marked (by the alphabetic characters used) as being of the Hasmonæan age, have been rashly attributed to Eleazar, who defended the Temple in 70 A. D. In at least one instance the coin is regarded as a forgery by both de Vogüé and de Saulcy, and this appears to apply to all the so-called “coins of the revolts.” The copper ones bear blundered imitations of genuine inscriptions from coins of Simon the Hasmonæan. They have been struck on much defaced Roman coins of Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, and Trajan, but more probably in the nineteenth century than in the second century. One such coin bears the name Simon, and is struck on a silver tetradrachm of Antioch attributed to Vespasian. It does not seem to have occurred to the scholars who suppose it to have been struck by Simon, son of Gioras, in 70 A. D., that as Vespasian had then only been emperor a few months, and as Jerusalem was besieged, it is quite impossible that an old coin of his reign could have been found in the city in the year of its fall. The forgery of Jewish coins is still common in Palestine, and the forgers did not foresee that the remains of the original legend on a coin would be read by the trained eye of some European specialist, while they thought that the worn surface of the coin would show its antiquity, but that its value would be much higher if it was regarded as being Jewish. The same observation applies to all the restruck copper coins, which have been variously attributed to Simon son of Gioras, to Simon son of Gamaliel, and to Bar Cocheba, who has been conjectured to have been also named Simon—of which there is no proof at all. The latter assumption was necessitated by the fact that some of the coins used by the forgers were as late as the reigns of Domitian and Trajan. It may, however, be remarked that if the Jews, in 135 A. D., struck any coins at all, the lettering is not likely to have been in the same characters used about 139 B. C., but would have been in those used at the time, that is to say, practically in square Hebrew. We may regard these coins, therefore, as forged imitations of those of Simon the Hasmonæan, and they have no bearing on the question whether Jerusalem had been rebuilt before 135 A. D. Appian[387] was a contemporary historian, but says nothing about any siege of Jerusalem, which city he tells us was “razed to the ground by Vespasian.” He adds, “And anew by Hadrian in my time”—the word “built” having perhaps dropped out, unless further demolitions were needed to clear the site for the new city.
FORGED COINS
There is no allusion to any coins of Bar Cocheba in the Mishnah, and certain passages in the Aramaic commentaries which are supposed to support this theory seem to have been ill translated,[388] and belong to later ages. Thus in the Tosiphta (after 500 A. D.) a passage referring to “second tithes” appears to say that they are “not to be redeemed by coins of persecution [marud] not current, or not engraved. How is this to be understood? When they have false coins, even coins of Jerusalem, they must not redeem with them ... yet they might redeem with coins of former kings.”[389] This statement, at most, indicates the existence of forged Jewish coins in our sixth century. Again, in the Jerusalem Talmud—a little earlier—the passage on which the above is a comment runs: “Coins of persecution, or of a son of falsehood [Ben Kôzîba, that is, “a forger”], cannot be used for release. Depreciated coin, according to the decision of a case by Rabbi Ime, is to be thrown into the Salt Sea.”[390] A third passage, yet later, reads: “They durst not release with coins not current, as for instance false coins of Jerusalem, or of former kings.”[391] The last passage quoted by scholars is equally indefinite: “They wanted to retain denarii of Hadriana Turiyina, coins for Jerusalem.”[392] This passage might, however, have been in the mind of a later Jewish coiner when he used coins of Trajan. It does not clearly refer, any more than the other passages, to Bar Cocheba.
These questions have been noticed in some detail because they effect our conclusions as to the history of Jerusalem before the revolt of Bêther. Christian historians, writing two centuries later, believed in a second destruction of the city by Hadrian. Eusebius, though in one passage he speaks of Jerusalem as in ruins, yet in another says it was half destroyed by Titus and half by Hadrian. Jerome also says that Hadrian “threw down the walls.” They regarded this as a fulfilment of prophecy,[393] especially in connection with that of Daniel, and with the expectation of an approaching end of the world; but a modern student of the passages to which they allude would be more apt to conclude that the history had been misunderstood, and that the true facts did not accord with such interpretations of the prophets.
It is at least generally agreed that Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem in or after the year 135 A. D. The fear, mentioned by Dion Cassius as bringing on the war, that foreigners would dwell in the Holy City, and that strange gods would be there set up, was then justified. The emperor, who was very sarcastic about both Jewish and Christian religions, as we learn from a letter of his own, seems to have recognised the strength of the site, and to have regarded a modernised city as likely to dispel the ancient ideal of Israel, though that was for ever preserved by the “mourners of Zion.” Throughout the second century Roman cities continued to spring up in Palestine and Syria, each built complete at one time by some imperial command, as at Gerasa and Philadelphia, or later at Ba’albek and Palmyra. They were constructed on a definite plan, with a central street of pillars and surrounding city walls. The theatre, the civil basilica, the music hall, and the temples were near the main street and the forum; and the side-streets ran at right angles, while an arch of triumph commemorated the founder. At Jerusalem also this plan was adopted as far as the site and the huge blocks of Herod’s towers and Temple allowed, and some of the remains of Hadrian’s city are still traceable by aid of an ancient map.
(West)
THE MEDEBA MOSAIC.
Outline from Dr. Guthe’s facsimile.
HADRIAN’S WALLS
The map in question was discovered a few years ago at Medeba in Moab.[394] It is a fragment of a mosaic which was laid on the floor of the cathedral, representing Palestine as far north as Shechem, both east and west of Jordan, with the Sinaitic Desert and the Nile Delta. It was evidently constructed before the Moslem Conquest, and is supposed to date earlier than the building by Eudocia of a new wall at Jerusalem about 450 A. D. It shows the basilica of Constantine, which perished in 614 A. D., and all its inscriptions are in Byzantine Greek characters earlier than those in use in the Middle Ages. It is the most remarkable discovery of recent years as affecting the contemporary history of the Holy City, and, though many of the buildings shown are not earlier than the fourth century, it still indicates the plan of the Roman city as built by Hadrian. A street of pillars runs through the town from north to south, and of these two shafts still remain in a vault, west of the bazaar and east of the Holy Sepulchre Cathedral. A second pillared street, diverging on the east, represents the old Herodian street which ran parallel to the western rampart of the Temple enclosure; and at its south end steps seem to be represented, descending the Tyropœon towards Siloam; but the mosaic is unfortunately broken away in this part, and it is not very clear whether the south wall is drawn out of scale, and intended really to enclose the whole of the upper city hill (as Eudocia built it), or whether it is intended to run on the line of the present south wall, excluding the south part of the hill called Sion in and after the fourth century, and excluding Ophel. It is certain, however, that this must have been the line of Hadrian’s wall, since the earliest pilgrim[395] found part of Sion and the Pool of Siloam outside the wall, while the supposed palace of David on Sion—near the so-called “Tower of David”—was inside. The map is also interesting because it shows a great pillar—such as the Romans erected for a statue to stand on—in the middle of an open space just inside the North Gate. The present name of this gate (Bâb el ’Amûd, “gate of the pillar”) seems to preserve a tradition of this column, and the wall of Hadrian evidently ran on the line followed by the present wall on the north, though on the west it seems not to have included quite as much ground as at present north of the Jaffa Gate. This plan must be further considered in dealing with the Jerusalem of Constantine. Our pilgrim[396] seems to agree with the map, placing the Prætorium to the right of those who went from Sion out of the city by the Neapolis (or northern) Gate.
HADRIAN’S STATUE
The coins of Hadrian and of his successors, and the actual remains of the Roman age, including the head of Hadrian’s statue, the inscription which once belonged to it, and the arch of triumph which he—or some later emperor—built, exist in illustration of the statements made by early Christian writers as to the erection of pagan shrines in Jerusalem. The statues set up in Ælia Capitolina were still standing in the fourth century. Jerome[397] tells us that “where once was the Temple and the religion of God there stands the statue of Hadrian and the idol of Jove”; and again: “A statue of Hadrian on horseback stood, till the present day, in the very place of the Holy of Holies.” The Bordeaux Pilgrim (in 333 A. D.) mentions the existence in the temple court of “two statues of Hadrian, and not far from the statues is the Pierced Stone.” These two were perhaps one of Hadrian himself and one of Jove, and they were clearly erected on the site of the Holy House near the Ṣakhrah rock. The head of a statue representing a Roman, crowned with bay leaves and with the imperial eagle in front, was picked up by a peasant in 1873 near the tomb of Helena of Adiabene, lying on its face in the road among the stones.[398] It is believed to represent Hadrian by comparison with his known portraits, and may have belonged to his statue in the Temple. In the south wall of the Ḥaram, at the Double Gate, a Latin inscription has been built in upside-down, and reads: “To Titus Ælius Hadrianus Antoninus Augustus Pius, father of his country, pontif, augur, by decree of the decurions.”[399] This no doubt was the dedicatory text of the Temple statue of Hadrian. None of these indications show that any temple of Jupiter was erected on Mount Moriah, though the so-called “Cradle of Christ,” in the vault at the south-east angle of the Ḥaram, is very clearly a Roman niche to hold a statue. The coins of Hadrian and of his successors, however, show a shrine of Jupiter Capitolinus as if existing somewhere at Jerusalem, which was renamed Ælia Capitolina after Ælius Hadrianus and Jupiter Capitolinus. There may have been a small arcaded building near the Ṣakhrah which had been pulled down before 333 A. D., leaving the statues standing; or the temple of Jove may have been elsewhere in the city. Dion Cassius[400] says that Hadrian “called it Ælia Capitolina, and in the place of the shrine [naos] of God he erected in opposition another shrine to Zeus”; but this rhetorical sentence need not perhaps be read in a very literal sense.
The coins of the period appear to show that Serapis, as Jove, was the deity adored in the new shrine, wherever it may have been.[401] A coin of Hadrian’s, representing him crowned with bay leaves, bears on the reverse the words “Æl. Col.,” and represents a seated Jupiter with two attendant nymphs or goddesses in a temple. Others of Antoninus Pius, also struck at Jerusalem, give the head of Serapis, or represent a deity standing in a temple, or again with a dog, or have a representation of the city itself as a tower-crowned female. The Serapis head recurs later under Marcus Aurelius, Caracalla, and Elagabalus, and the temple, with an arched nave and two side cloisters, under a pediment, again contains a deity standing, with attendants on either side. We can hardly doubt, therefore, the existence of a Serapis temple at Jerusalem as early as Hadrian’s time.
Jerome, however, indicates the existence of a temple built by this emperor in the city itself. He speaks of a marble statue of Venus on the “rock of the cross,” and of an image of Jupiter over the “place of the resurrection.” Later historians do not attribute these to Hadrian, and Eusebius only says that “impious men” had founded, above the Holy Sepulchre, a “dark shrine of the unchaste demon Aphrodite.”[402] But it is very likely that Jerome is right, for Serapis and Isis (as Jove and Aphrodite) were adored together in Rome, and the site of Constantine’s great basilica, where this shrine of Venus was still standing early in the fourth century, was one very probable for a temple in a Roman city such as Ælia Capitolina, facing east towards the central pillared street of the city. It is this temple, perhaps, which is represented on the coins above noticed.
HADRIAN’S CITY
Eusebius speaks of Sion—the hill of the upper city—as a “ploughed field” in fulfilment of prophecy, and Cyril of Jerusalem says the same[403]; but Epiphanius believed that Hadrian had found seven synagogues and a small church on Mount Sion; and the Bordeaux Pilgrim—probably influenced by this tradition—thought that one synagogue still remained in his own time, though the rest had disappeared, having been covered by ploughed and sown lands. The existence of these synagogues in Hadrian’s time is extremely unlikely. That his wall ran over the top of the hill is further confirmed by the fact that this was the line of defence even in 680 A. D., after the outer wall of Eudocia had been built to include Siloam. The actual buildings, inside the city, according to the Paschal Chronicle (though this is rather a late authority), were pagan. The passage reads thus: “Pulling down the shrine of the Jews in Jerusalem, he [Hadrian] established the two markets, the theatre, the mint, the trikameron [or “three-roomed” building], the tetranumphon [or “four-nymph” place], the dodeka-pulon [or “twelve-gate” place], which was formerly called the steps, and the quadrant, and he divided the city into seven quarters.”
We cannot, unfortunately, recognise under their new names these features of Roman Jerusalem, but the streets were on the old lines, and these give three quarters west of the central street of pillars, and two to its east; the sixth would be on Bezetha, and the seventh was the Temple enclosure.[404] The principal monument of the period, still standing, is the triumphal arch west of Antonia, now called the Ecce Homo arch. The central archway spans the Via Dolorosa, and the smaller one to the north is seen in the chapel of the Sisters of Zion, while the corresponding one to the south has been destroyed. A similar arch is still standing at Gerasa in Gilead—a city also of the second century A. D. It is possible that the north wall of the Ḥaram, which is of large Roman masonry, was built at this time, unless it is to be regarded as the work of Julian or of Justinian. Other fragments of Roman times, recently found,[405] include a Roman bath near Siloam, with tesseræ of the 5th legion, and a fresco in a tomb near that of Queen Helena. We may also attribute to this period the pagan epitaph in the “Cave of St. Pelagia” on Olivet[406] reading “Courage, Dometila, no one is immortal”—a sentiment found, in other cases, in texts of Bashan and Syria of the same age. No doubt there are many other relics of Hadrian’s city hidden beneath the surface of the present town, and the wall west of “Hezekiah’s Pool”[407] may have been the west wall of Ælia Capitolina.
The “high-level” aqueduct, from a well (now dry) in Wâdy el Bîâr, south of Solomon’s Pool, appears to be of this period. Its course near the pool is lost, but it was carried over the hill near Bethlehem on stone pipes. It disappears a little farther north, but probably fed the Birket Mâmilla. Inscriptions in Latin along its course refer to the Centuria of Valerius Æmilianus and the Centuria Natalis, and show that it was made, or repaired, at some period later than 70 A. D.[408]
THE CHRISTIANS
The age of Hadrian was followed by that of the Antonines (138–80 A. D.), when the Jews lived content and prospered as traders. The Sanhedrin, leaving Jamnia after 135 A. D., finally settled at Tiberias, and synagogues in Roman style—but with Hebrew texts—were built in Galilee. Under Severus (193–211) the Jews were granted civil immunities, and they did not again revolt till 339 A. D. According to Eusebius, a new line of Christian bishops began to rule the church at Jerusalem in Hadrian’s time, though more probably they would not have returned to the city till somewhat later. Under Marcus Aurelius the Christians had become numerous in the Roman world, and in the third century—after the persecution by Decius—their bishops began to be recognised by the State, while a congregation under one in Jerusalem certainly existed in Cyprian’s time. He also mentions a female pilgrim to the Holy City, and speaks of Bishop Alexander, who—according to Eusebius—succeeded Narcissus,[409] having previously ruled a church in Cappadocia. But during this age of prosperity we hear nothing else about the restored city, nor have we any account of sacred Christian sites. For three generations the Christians were absent from the ruined town, and when they did return it was entirely altered. There is a break of at least seventy years in their connection with Jerusalem, and it is not probable that the new generation knew anything of the old city or of the Gospel sites.