For this reason we are led to suppose that the Prætorium was the castle of Antonia.[295] The Greek word (_praitôrion_) borrowed from Latin means “the house of a prætor,” or more generally the residence of a governor. We do not actually know where the procurators lived when they were in Jerusalem, but in 65 A. D. we find that the first object of Florus, on entering the city, was to establish himself in Antonia, and it was not till he failed to reach this citadel that he took refuge in the upper city. Peter’s prison seems also to have been in Antonia, since the gate opened thence into the city. Paul was certainly taken to this “castle” (_parembolê_), up the steps whence he spoke to the mob. The site of these steps is marked by a cutting in the middle of the south scarp of Antonia which is now walled up, and the mob had thus invaded the broad court of the citadel, extending from the scarp to the Temple cloisters. Antonia was the station of an “Italian band” which policed the excited Temple crowds, and we read that Jesus was led by the soldiers “to the Praitorian hall.” But the fourth Gospel gives a yet clearer indication, for it identifies the “pavement” with the Hebrew Gabbatha, or “height,” where was the _bêma_ or tribune--the raised pulpit of the judge. It is not at first evident what a “pavement” has to do with a “height,” but the word (_lithostrôton_) does not mean a tessellated floor but only something “covered with stones,” and Josephus tells us that at Antonia “the rock itself was covered over with smooth pieces of stone from its foundation, both for ornament, and that any one who would try either to get up or go down it might not be able to hold his feet upon it.” Thus an apparent mistranslation of “Gabbatha” is perhaps in reality an indication that the Prætorium was in the citadel of Antonia. [Sidenote: THE PALACES] The “upper palace”--that of Herod the Great, on the west side of the upper city--seems always to have been held by the procurators as a fortress, and when Herod Antipas came to Jerusalem he probably--like Agrippa II.--lived in the old Hasmonæan palace close to the bridge, as this enabled him to go to the Temple without passing through the city.