Herod as a mark of great personal favour. Yet Mr. Gladstone can gravely tell those who are not in a position to check his statements:
The sense seems to be not that these cities were inhabited by a Greek population, but that they had politically been taken out of Judæa and added to Syria, which I presume was classified as simply Hellenic, a portion of the great Greek empire erected by Alexander. (Pp. 295-6.)
Mr. Gladstone's next reference is to the Wars, III. vii. 1:
So Vespasian marched to the city Gadara, and took it upon the first onset, because he found it destitute of a considerable number of men grown up fit for war. He then came into it, and slew all the youth, the Romans having no mercy on any age whatsoever; and this was done out of the hatred they bore the nation, and because of the iniquity they had been guilty of in the affair of Cestius.
Obviously, then, Gadara was an ultra-Jewish city. Q.E.D. But a student trained in the use of weapons of precision, rather than in that of rhetorical tomahawks, has had many and painful warnings to look well about him before trusting an argument to the mercies of a passage, the context of which he has not carefully considered. If Mr. Gladstone had not been too much in a hurry to turn his imaginary prize to account—if he had paused just to look at the preceding chapter of Josephus—he would have discovered that his much haste meant very little speed. He would have found (Wars, III. vi. 2) that Vespasian marched from his base, the port of Ptolemais (Acre), on the shores of the Mediterranean, into Galilee; and, having dealt with the so-called "Gadara," was minded
to finish with Jotapata, a strong place about fourteen miles south-east of Ptolemais, into which Josephus, who at first had fled to Tiberias, eventually threw himself—Vespasian arriving before Jotapata "the very next day." Now, if any one will take a decent map of Ancient Palestine in hand, he will see that Jotapata, as I have said, lies about fourteen miles in a straight line east-south-east of Ptolemais, while a certain town, "Gabara" (which was also held by the Jews), is situated about the same distance to the east of that port. Nothing can be more obvious than that Vespasian, wishing to advance from Ptolemais into Galilee, could not afford to leave these strongholds in the possession of the enemy; and as Gabara would lie on his left flank when he moved to Jotapata, he took that city, whence his communications with his base could easily be threatened, first. It might really have been fair evidence of demoniac possession, if the best general of Rome had marched forty odd miles, as the crow flies, through hostile Galilee, to take a city (which, moreover, had just tried to abolish its Jewish population) on the other side of the Jordan; and then marched back again to a place fourteen miles off his starting-point.[[158]] One would think that the most careless of readers must be startled by this incongruity into inquiring whether there might not be something wrong with the text; and if he had done so he would
have easily discovered that since the time of Reland, a century and a half ago, careful scholars have read Gabara for Gadara.[[159]]
Once more, I venture to point out that training in the use of the weapons of precision of science may have its value in historical studies, if only in preventing the occurrence of droll blunders in geography.
In the third citation (Wars, IV. vii.) Josephus tells us that Vespasian marched against "Gadara," which he calls the metropolis of Peræa (it was possibly the seat of a common festival of the Decapolitan cities), and entered it without opposition, the wealthy and powerful citizens having opened negotiations with him without the knowledge of an opposite party, who, "as being inferior in number to their enemies who were within the city, and seeing the Romans very near the city," resolved to fly. Before doing so, however, they, after a fashion unfortunately too common among the Zealots, murdered and shockingly mutilated Dolesus, a man of the first rank, who had promoted the embassy to Vespasian, and then "ran out of the city." Hereupon "the people of Gadara" (surely not this time "Hebrews bound by the Mosaic law") received Vespasian with joyful acclamations, voluntarily pulled down their wall, so that the city could not in future be used as a fortress by the Jews, and accepted a Roman garrison for their future protection. Granting that this Gadara really is the city of the Gadarenes, the reference, without citation, to
the passage in support of Mr. Gladstone's contention seems rather remarkable. Taken in conjunction with the shortly antecedent ravaging of the Gadarene territory by the Jews, in fact, better proof could hardly be expected of the real state of the case; namely, that the population of Gadara (and notably the wealthy and respectable part of it) was thoroughly Hellenic; though, as in Cæsarea and elsewhere among the Palestinian cities, the rabble contained a considerable body of fanatical Jews, whose reckless ferocity made them, even though a mere minority of the population, a standing danger to the city.