The theatres have, as a rule, survived the fortresses and the temples.
Rome undertook many things. She would worship, govern, educate, amuse.
Is it not significant that her wreck looks so like a gigantic
playground, as if in those degenerate days of her conquest the Empire
was already finding in the motto “il faut s’amuser” her rule of life?
After all, it is his chief interest that is the immortal thing about any
man or nation. Yet this may be an unjust and fanciful estimate. Relics
of Roman temples and fortresses also remain. A statue of Jupiter has had
its resurrection from the sands of Gaza, and a monument in honour of
Jupiter Serapis now bears a Roman inscription near the Zion Gate of
Jerusalem. Near springs and the fountain-heads of rivers especially, the
ruins of Roman shrines to the Genius of the fountain are found, as at
Banias. Fortresses too, where Roman garrisons used to be located, can
still be traced, in a ring or an oblong trail of loose stones. Such
ruins crown the height of Tabor, the summit of Gerizim, and many another
hill. But these shew little trace of their former meaning. Here and
there the acropolis of a Greek or Roman town may retain its ancient
embankment, built on the steep slope of the hill, as if shoring up the
plateau above where the temple once stood. Elsewhere, some parts of the
curtain wall of a crusader castle may be blocks of Roman fortification
left _in situ_. But the greater part of the Roman building must be
looked for in the walls of village houses, where the contrast between
such fragments and their surroundings is as grotesque as it is pitiful.
The Gadarenes have built into their walls whatever lay nearest them.
Coffins and tombstones, capitals and columns, even altars themselves,
are there, “stopping holes to keep the wind away”; it is exactly what
“imperial Cæsar” has come to in Gadara.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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