lection under our charge, he might have seen two coins
of Gadara, one of the time of Tiberius and the other of that of Titus,
each bearing the effigies of the emperor on the obverse: while the
personified genius of the city is on the reverse of the former.
Further, the well-known works of De Saulcy and of Ekhel would have
supplied the information that, from the time of Augustus to that of
Gordian, the Gadarene coinage had the same thoroughly Gentile
character. Curious that a city of "Hebrews bound by the Mosaic law"
should tolerate such a mint!

Whatever increase in population the Ghetto of Gadara may have
undergone, between B.C. 4 and A.D. 66, it nowise affected the gentile
and anti-judaic character of the city at the outbreak of the great
war; for Josephus tells us that, immediately after the great massacre
of Caesarea, the revolted Jews "laid waste the villages of the Syrians
and their neighbouring cities, Philadelphia and Sebonitis and Gerasa
and Pella and Scythopolis, and after them Gadara and Hippos" ("Wars,"
II. xviii. 1). I submit that, if Gadara had been a city of "Hebrews
bound by the Mosaic law," the ravaging of their territory by their
brother Jews, in revenge for the massacre of the Caesarean Jews by the
Gentile population of that place, would surely have been a somewhat
unaccountable proceeding. But when we proceed a little further, to the
fifth section of the chapter in which this statement occurs, the whole
affair becomes intelligible enough.

Besides this murder at Scythopolis, the other cities rose up
against the Jews that were among them: those of Askelon slew
two thousand five hundred, and those of Ptolemais two
thousand, and put not a few into bonds; those of Tyre also
put a great number to death, but kept a great number in
prison; moreover, those of Hippos and those of Gadara did
the like, while they put to death the boldest of the Jews,
but kept those of whom they were most afraid in custody; as
did the rest of the cities of Syria according as they every
one either hated them or were afraid of them.

Josephus is not always trustworthy, but he has no conceivable motive
for altering facts here; he speaks of contemporary events, in which he
himself took an active part, and he characterises the cities in the
way familiar to him. For Josephus, Gadara is just as much a Gentile
city as Ptolemais; it was reserved for his latest commentator, either
igno