Let us go up into the wrecked city.
This triumphal arch, with its three gates and its lofty Corinthian columns, stands outside of the city walls: a structure which has no other use or meaning than the expression of Imperial pride: thus the Roman conquerors adorn and approach their vassal-town.
Behind the arch a broad, paved road leads to the southern gate, perhaps a thousand feet away. Beside the road, between the arch and the gate, lie two buildings of curious interest. The first is a great pool of stone, seven hundred feet long by three hundred feet wide. This is the Naumachia, which is filled with water by conduits from the neighbouring
stream, in order that the Greeks may hold their mimic naval combats and regattas here in the desert, for they are always at heart a seafaring people. Beyond the pool there is a Circus, with four rows of stone seats and an oval arena, for wild-beast shows and gladiatorial combats.
The city walls have almost entirely disappeared and the South Gate is in ruins. Entering and turning to the left, we ascend a little hill and find the Temple (perhaps dedicated to Artemis), and close beside it the great South Theatre. There is hardly a break in the semicircular stone benches, thirty-two rows of seats rising tier above tier, divided into an upper and a lower section by a broader row of "boxes" or stalls, richly carved, and reserved, no doubt, for magnates of the city and persons of importance. The stage, over a hundred feet wide, is backed by a straight wall adorned with Corinthian columns and decorated niches. The theatre faces due north; and the spectator sitting here, if the play wearies him, can lift his eyes and look off beyond the proscenium over the length and breadth of Gerasa.
"But he looked upon the city, every side,
Far and wide,
All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades
Colonnades,
All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,—and then,
All the men!"
In the hollow northward from this theatre is the Forum, or the Market-place, or the Hippodrome—I cannot tell what it is, but a splendid oval of Ionic pillars incloses an open space of more than three hundred feet in length and two hundred and fifty feet in width, where the Gerasenes may barter or bicker or bet, as they will.
From the Forum to the North Gate runs the main street, more than half a mile long, lined with a double row of columns, from twenty to thirty feet high, with smooth shafts and acanthus capitals. At the intersection of the cross-streets there are tetrapylons, with domes, and pedestals for statues. The pavement of the roadway is worn into ruts by the chariot wheels. Under the arcades behind the columns run the sidewalks for foot-passengers. Turn to the right from the main street and you come to
the Public Baths, an immense building like a palace, supplied with hot and cold water, adorned with marble and mosaic. On the left lies the Tribuna, with its richly decorated façade and its fountain of flowing water. A few yards farther north is the Propylæum of the Great Temple; a superb gateway, decorated with columns and garlands and shell niches, opening to a wide flight of steps by which we ascend to the temple-area, a terrace nearly twice the size of Madison Square Garden, surrounded by two hundred and sixty columns, and standing clear above the level of the encircling city.