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.