e.
Hence the title of "country of the Gadarenes" applied to the locality
of the porcine catastrophe becomes easily intelligible. The swine may
well be imagined to have been feeding (as they do now in the adjacent
region) on the hillsides, which slope somewhat steeply down to the
lake from the northern boundary wall of the valley of the Hieromices
(_Nahr Yarmuk_), about half-way between the city and the shore, and
doubtless lay well within the territory of the _polis_ of Gadara.

The proof that Gadara was, to all intents and purposes, a Gentile, and
not a Jewish, city is complete. The date and the occasion of its
foundation are unknown; but it certainly existed in the third century
B.C. Antiochus the Great annexed it to his dominions in B.C. 198.
After this, during the brief revival of Jewish autonomy, Alexander
Jannaeus took it; and for the first time, so far as the records go, it
fell under Jewish rule.[102] From this it was rescued by Pompey (B.C.
63), who rebuilt the city and incorporated it with the province of
Syria. In gratitude to the Romans for the dissolution of a hated
union, the Gadarenes adopted the Pompeian era of their coinage. Gadara
was a commercial centre of some importance, and therefore, it may be
assumed, Jews settled in it, as they settled in almost all
considerable Gentile cities. But a wholly mistaken estimate of the
magnitude of the Jewish colony has been based upon the notion that
Gabinius, proconsul of Syria in 57-55 B.C., seated one of the five
sanhedrins in Gadara. Schuerer has pointed out that what he really did
was to lodge one of them in Gadara, far away on the other side of the
Jordan. This is one of the many errors which have arisen out of the
confusion of the names Ga_d_ara, Ga_z_ara, and Ga_b_ara.

Augustus made a present of Gadara to Herod the Great, as an appanage
personal to himself; and, upon Herod's death, recognising it to be a
"Grecian city" like Hippos and Gaza,[103] he transferred it back to
its former place in the province of Syria. That Herod made no effort
to judaise his temporary possession, but rather the contrary, is
obvious from the fact that the coins of Gadara, while under his rule,
bear the image of Augustus with the superscription [Greek: Sebastos]--a
flying in the face of Jewish prejudices which, even he, did not dare
to venture upon in Judaea. And I may remark that, if my co-trustee of
the British Museum had taken the trouble to visit the splendid
numismatic col