CHAPTER XXII

The Colony Aelia Capitolina

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As Jerusalem still existed, even in its ruins, and as these could not be at once obliterated, it was determined that the former capital of Judaea should for ever lose its name and fame. All the Jews who had been living there and in the environs were driven out, and Roman veterans, Phoenicians and Syrians, were settled there as a new colony,' which the emperor called Aelia Capitolina. dedicated it to himself, and to the Jupiter of the Capitol, by whom the Jehovah of the Hebrews had been overcome. This sanctuary would then take the place of the old temple on Moriah.2 The victory of Jupiter over Jehovah was however only nominal, for in a Christian form the ancient God of the Jews conquered both Rome and the world.

The colony had been planned and begun before the Jewish war, and immediately after the war was ended the

1 Eusebius, H.E. iv., c. 6, who, quoting from Ariston of Pella, says: the Roman colony was built because the city was completely depopulated after the expulsion of the Jews and the loss of the old inhabitants : ἐξ ἀλλοφύλου τε γένους συνοικισθείσης, ἡ μετέπειτα συστᾶσα Ρωμαϊκή πολίς τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν ἀμείψασα-Αἰλία προσαγορεύεται.

It is called Capitolina in Dion, Ulpian, in the tabula Peutingeriana etc., and not Capitolia or Capitolias. Deyling has corrected the error of Harduin, that Domitian had already called Jerusalem Capitolias; this is a confusion with Capitolias in Coele-Syria. Sepp. i. 102, 179, asserts that that part of the city where the Xth legion was quartered, had been called Capitolias, and that the Aelia derived its name from it. Two editions of Ptolemy (Argentor. 1522, and by Victor Langlois, Paris, 1867), have indeed Capitolias; the Wilberg edition (1838) has Alla Kawirwλla.

new building was taken up again and vigorously carried on. Eusebius gives the 20th, Jerome the 21st year of Hadrian as the date of the (second) foundation of the Aelia, the colony must therefore have been consecrated in the year 136 A.D. or 137 A.D.1 Coins with the legend COLONIA. AELIA CAPITOLINA. CONDITA Commemorated this foundation.2

It is only a Christian legend that Hadrian entrusted the building of the new Jerusalem to the Greek Acylas from Sinope, who, at one time a Christian, was turned out of the community, and went over to Judaism. He made a reputation by translating the Bible into Greek.

If the Talmudists say that the emperor ploughed up the ground round Jerusalem in token of its degradation, and then built the new city, this fable is explained by the coins of the colony which bear the usual symbol of the husbandman, or by the Roman rite of making a circle with the plough-share round the city about to be founded.1

The colony was built on the site of the old city, but it had a diminished circumference. For, as is admitted by all explorers in Palestine, the eastern slopes down to the brook Cedron, as well as mount Zion to the south,

'The Chron. Paschale erroneously gives 119 A.D. as the foundation year. A distinction must be drawn between a first foundation and, after the interruption arising from the war, the second one, which Madden (Hist. of Jew. Coinage), p. 200, acknowledges as correct. He places the first in the year 131 A.D., the last in 136 A.D. The assumption that the new colony had been consecrated at the time of Hadrian's Vicennalia has some probability in its favour. Deyling, p. 293.-De Saulcy, Rech., p. 158.

2 De Saulcy (Num. de la T. S., p. 85), gives two such coins; n. I represents a colonist with two bulls; n. 2, as he believes, the genius of the colony in a tetrastyle. The same in Madden, Coins of the Jews, p. 249. He wrongly considers the aratum templum the emblem of the colony. The figure n. 2, which is repeated in a coin of M. Aurelius and of L. Verus, is, according to him, either Jupiter or the city. He places the colony-coins in the year 136 A.D. De Saulcy in the year 137 A.D.

3 This is related by Epiphanius of Eleutheropolis in Palestine, Bishop in Cyprus about 367 A.D., de pond. et mens. c. 14. Curiously enough, he makes Acylas a brother-in-law (πev@epidns) of Hadrian. He is supported by Chron. Paschale for the year 132 A.D.

4 Graetz, iv., n. 14, p. 451.

were outside the walls of Hadrian.1 The Aelia established the ground plan of the later Jerusalem, and it was the city of Hadrian which Constantine and Helena found, when they built their famous churches, and it was this Jerusalem, irrespective of the changes wrought by time, which became the prey both of Arabs and Crusaders.

Hadrian had the new city divided into seven quarters, over which he placed civil magistrates (Amphodarchs). He built two market-places, a theatre for gladiatorial combats, and other public buildings, many of which were only finished after his time. As a military colony was required to be a strong place, it must have had a fort, and this can only have stood on the site of the present fortress of the Turks, namely the citadel of David by the Jaffa gate, where the indestructible remains of Herod's towers would certainly have been used by Hadrian for his fort.3

No spot could be more appropriate for the new temple of the god of the Romans than the rocky plateau of Moriah, supported by its gigantic walls. It had indeed been encumbered since the days of Titus with masses of ruins from the temple of Herod, but these gradually disappeared, as the material was used for the building of the new city. The temple of Jupiter had already been begun before the war, for Dion states that its erection on the site of the temple of Jehovah was one of the causes of the Jewish rebellion.* Even in the fourth century, when Hadrian's

1 Robinson, ii. 467. Sepp. i. 241 sq.

These statements only in the Chron. Pasch. for the year 119 A.D.: ἔκτισε τὰ δυὸ δημόσια καὶ τὸ θέατρον, τὸ Τρικάμαρον, -Τετράνυμφον-Δωδεκάπυλον τὸ πρὶν ὀνομαζόμενον ̓Αναβαθμοὶ, καὶ τὴν Κόδραν ἑπτὰ ἄμφοδα.... Some expressions are obscure.

3 Perhaps the citadel was the Dodecapylon. Robinson, ii. 454, places the building of the citadel absolutely in the time of Hadrian.

Eusebius and Chron. Pasch. do not mention the temple of Zeus, and the fathers speak only of monuments of Zeus and of Hadrian on the site of the temple. Hieron in Isaiam ii., c. 2: Ubi quond. erat templum Dei-ibi Adriani statua et Jovis idolum collocatum est. The equestrian statue of Hadrian was still seen by Jerome "in ipso sancto sanctor loco" (in Matth. c. 24, 15). But he also says (ad Paulin. Ep. 18), that a statue of Zeus stood over the tomb of Christ. Joh. Chrysostom (Adv. Judaeos, v. c. 11), speaks only in general of a statue of Hadrian in Jerusalem.

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building no longer existed, the pilgrim of Bordeaux, and after him Jerome, saw on the site of the temple Hadrian's equestrian statue and the "perforated stone" (now el Sachra) which the sorrowing Jews were accustomed to anoint. Hadrian's temple can only have been of small dimensions, for it is not mentioned in the catalogue of the emperor's buildings in Jerusalem, which are enumerated in the Alexandrian chronicle. Coins of Aelia show a small round building with the figure of Zeus in the centre, standing either alone, or between Pallas and Hera, but it is doubtful whether the building is intended to represent the temple of Zeus.' As for the rest of the coins of the colony, they show, in addition to the image of Zeus, the image of Astarte, of Serapis (this latter more frequently after the time of Marcus Aurelius), of Apollo, of Dionysus, and the Dioscuri, thus proving that it was not the Capitoline Jupiter alone who was worshipped there.2

When Jerusalem again became the holy city of the Christians in the time of Constantine, the temple of Zeus was destroyed, with all the other sanctuaries of the gods. As the Christians found heathen temples and idols on the spot, which according to their belief was the site of Mount Calvary and of the sepulchre of Christ, they maintained that the Romans had intentionally profaned the holy places, and made them impossible to identify. Over the grave of our Saviour, they assert, stood a shrine of Astarte, or the Syrian Aphrodite; the same goddess was worshipped on Mount Calvary, and Thammus or Adonis in the grotto at Bethlehem.3 In the marble image of a

1 De Saulcy, Numismatique de la Terre Sainte, p. 85, n. 3. Madden, p. 250. Jupiter seated, at his sides Minerva and Juno, or perhaps the genius of the city.---Coin of M. Aurelius in Vogüé, Le Temple de Jérusalem, p. 62, a tetrastylon, in the centre Jupiter seated in a vaulted niche, around COL. AEL. CAP.

2 Eckhel, iii., p. 1.

3 Euseb. Vit. Const. iii. 26 (Aphrodite in the vault: he speaks, however, only of deol Tives). Hieron., ad Paulin., Ep. 58 (in crucis rupe statua Veneris; Adonis in Bethlehem). Socrates, H.E. i., c. 17 (Sepulchre of Christ, temple and figure of Aphrodite), likewise Sozomenus, H.E. ii., c. I. Paulinus, Ep. xi., ad Severum (simulacrum Jovis in loco passionis ; temple of Adonis in Bethlehem). Tobler, Golgatha, p. 50 sq.-Sepp,

boar on the gate leading to Bethlehem, Jerome, not without reason, saw an insult to the Jews, although this animal, sacred to Ceres, was a military badge of the Romans.1

There are no remains of Hadrian's buildings in Jerusalem, or none that can be identified as his, for it is only conjecture which ascribes to him the arch of Ecce Homo, the splendid Porta aurea, the triple gate, the ruined columns of the bazaar, or the foundations of the Damascus gate.2 There are no marble inscriptions in Jerusalem to give any information now of this emperor or of the Aelia Capitolina, while so many cities of the empire have afforded written monuments for the learned to read. Jerusalem has refused this service; for only one solitary imperial inscription has been found there bearing the name of Antoninus Pius, and this is of no value; but a happy chance has brought to light an authentic Greek inscription from the temple of Herod, which refuses to the Gentiles entrance within the sacred precincts on pain of death.

It is certain that Hadrian ordered the xth legion Fretensis to stay in Aelia, and the VIth legion Ferrata also remained behind as a garrison in Judaea.

He forbade

the Jews to set foot in Jerusalem and in the surrounding country, and this inhuman edict remained in force for centuries; but in the course of time the Jews were allowed to come once a year, by bribing the Roman guards, to the place of the temple, when they wept, on the anniversary of its foundation, over the destruction of their city by Titus.

Jerusal. u. das heil.-Land i.,2 p. 419, believes in an intentional desecration by Hadrian and his successors; but Robinson, ii. 73, Renan and Tobler doubt the confused statements of the fathers.

Hieron., Chron. On the symbol Spannheim, Hist. Christ, saec. ii., p. 687.

2 Robinson, i. 437. Tobler, Topogr. i. 158.

3 TITO. AELIO. HADRIANO. ANTONIO. aug. pio-p. P. PONTIF. AUGUR (?) D. D., in Vogüé, Le Temple, pl. v., and from C.I.L. iii., n. 16. The inscription has been inversely fixed to the south wall of the Harâm, over the double gate, below the aksa; Tobler, Topagr. i. 60.—The stēlē with the Greek inscription was discovered by Clermont-Ganneau on the Haram wall, Comptis rendus in Acad. d. Inser. 1872, p. 177. It is now in the Louvre, as the one solitary relic of the temple of Herod.

Pfitzner, p. 188, 242.