When you stand among the ruins of the Hellenistic city of Scythopolis at Beth Shean, you could almost be in any other province of the Roman empire - and January drizzle in Israel is not so different from January drizzle in Britain!
Looking around, there are the elements of any self-respecting classical city: a theatre with views across the hills over the Jordan valley; the agora which formed the political and commercial heart of the Greek city in the eastern empire; the classical temples; the baths and gymnasium; the fountain-house (or nymphaion); the colonnaded streets.
If you have just come from Jerusalem, you will probably have seen some of the sculptures which once adorned the public spaces of the city in the Israel Museum at Jerusalem.
Renaming Jerusalem
One of the finest bronzes to come from Beth Shean is a bronze portrait of the emperor Hadrian. It is easy to think of Hadrian as a rather benign emperor, drawing the limits of his empire and marking the frontiers with monumental constructions such as Hadrian's Wall.
Yet it was Hadrian's decision to re-name Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina during his eastern tour of AD 130 that led in part to the great Bar Kochba revolt of 132. Hadrian fancied himself as a god - witness his development of Agrippa's Pantheon in the Campus Martius at Rome - and the name of Jupiter Capitolinus was to be linked to the emperor's family name. The temple for the worship of Jupiter Capitolinus (and with him the worship of Hadrian himself) was to be built on the site of the Herodian temple.
Evidence for the grand city which Hadrian created at Jerusalem, wiping out the Jewish predecessor, can still be seen at the Damascus gate. A second piece of Hadrianic Jerusalem, adjoining the site of the Roman forum, is the Ecce Homo arch spanning the Via Dolorosa; the rest of the triumphal arch can still be seen in the chapel of the Sisters of Zion convent.
When you wander through the city of Jerusalem, you will be experiencing something of Hadrian's city which set the ground plan for the later city which is itself represented in the Madaba mosaic map. This clearly shows the colonnaded street, or cardo, which runs across the heart of the town and which can still be seen in parts today. This street had set the orientation for Hadrian's temple of Aphrodite which was to become the site of Constantine's great basilica of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This was to include not only the tip of what was believed to have been Golgotha, but also early tombs nearby which had originally been outside the walls of the Herodian city.
Roman habits
Remains of the first-century city emerge round the Temple Mount. Perhaps some of the most evocative are those of wealthy houses in the upper city. Such houses, destroyed when the Romans captured the city in AD 70, show the impact of Greek and Roman culture on the social elite of Jerusalem. The layout of the dining room, arranged with the door to one side of the room to allow the optimum number of couches to be arranged around the edge of the room, suggests that some of the Jewish elite had adopted Roman dining habits. The presence of exotic Roman glass also suggests contact with the wider Roman world. More telling is the presence of what appear to be Roman theatre tickets which might indicate that the members of the household were attending Greek or Roman plays in the theatre of the city. (Britain a decade or so later during the governorship of Agricola comes to mind, when the Roman historian Tacitus noted that the local population had started to adopt Roman dining habits, to wear the toga and even to start speaking Latin.) Such archaeological clues about the adoption of non-Jewish culture by some of the wealthier groups in the city might well indicate the tensions in Jerusalem of Jesus' day, especially over those who wanted to return to traditional Jewish values.
The Jewish revolt
It is hard not to forget the feature of the Jewish revolt against Rome which led to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. One of the most vivid images came from the excavations alongside the Temple Mount at Jerusalem, where enormous blocks from the Herodian walls had been toppled, crushing and distorting the pavements lying below. At the same time, ascending the Roman siege ramp at Masada will bring to life the account of the great siege recorded by Josephus.
Standing on the summit of Masada, it is possible to make out quite clearly the encircling Roman siege works and camps. The forts themselves are equipped with distinctive gates, claviculae, designed to make an attacker display their unprotected side. (Only weeks before my own visit to Jerusalem, I had been high up in the Brecon Beacons above Llandovery looking at a temporary marching-camp built during the Roman occupation of Wales c. AD 75. From the diagonal corners of empire are found similar monuments, built within a few years of each other.)
Absent ruler
The Herodian winter palace complex at Jericho is yet another reminder of the way that the ruling family of Judaea had adopted Roman culture. A walk down the Wadi Qelt gives a close-up view of the astonishing engineering feat which brought water down the wadi to feed the needs of the palace, not least for Roman-style baths. Standing amidst the ruins of the palace, it is very striking that it was here at Jericho that Jesus told the parable about the absent ruler just as he was making his final ascent to Jerusalem (Luke 19.11-27). The acquisition of such Roman tastes was not unusual for the ruling elites of the Roman empire. (In Britain at about the same time, the large complex at Fishbourne outside Chichester was bring created, some would argue, for the local client-king Cogidubnus.)
The Herodian family were also responsible for creating one of the finest ports in the Mediterranean, that at Caesarea, named in honour of the emperor Augustus. On the shore of the sea of Galilee, Herod Antipas named his new regional capital Tiberias to honour the emperor Tiberius.
Close to Nazareth
Against this multi-cultural backdrop, you can see the creation of major Roman-style cities which brought the 'benefits' of Roman life. Sepphoris is one of those cities, and it is striking how close it is to Nazareth. It may be ironic that Joseph, who is described by Matthew (13.55; cf. Mark 6.3) as a tekton, or craftsman, may have been employed on helping to rebuild this city which had been destroyed after Herod's death in 4 BC by Varus, the Roman governor of the adjoining province of Syria; Varus was later to die in the Roman military disaster in the Teutoburger forest in Germany.
Building continued through the patronage of Herod Antipas through the early years of the 1st century AD until the founding of Tiberias which became the chief city of the region. In Galilee, you cannot help wondering what the impact would have been on the local Jewish population when a cult for the Roman imperial family was established at the site of what some believe was Bethsaida on the northern side of the lake.
It is hard to get away from evidence of the impact of Rome on Judaea. At the same time, a visit to any archaeological site, especially perhaps in Israel with its long and complex pattern of settlement, requires some effort in stripping back the stratified layers, including the monumentalisation of some of the perceived 'holy sites' which can be far removed from the simplicity of the 1st century remains. The 300 years of hellenistic influence from the time of Alexander the Great, as well as the Roman occupation of Judaea, provide as significant a background for the Gospels, as for the Jewish tradition.
Dr. David Gill
Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Wales, Swansea
