58 the legio fretensis welcomes the emperor · the legio fretensis welcomes the emperor to the...

58The Legio X Fretensis Welcomes the Emperor

Fig. 1 Reconstruction of the Hadrian inscription. Photo © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, by Elie Posner

59Israel Museum Studies in Archaeology 9 · 2018–2019

The 2014 Israel Antiquities Authority excavations carried out by Rina Avner and Roi Greenwald some 300 m north of the Damascus Gate uncovered the right-hand side of an inscription whose left-hand side has been known ever since its discovery and eventual publication by C. Clermont-Ganneau in 1903. It has since been on display in the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum Museum in the Old City of Jerusalem and was republished by Werner Eck as no. 715 in the Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae (CIIP) I.2. The new fragment (IAA 2014-2306), which was reused in a Byzantine pavement, was cut so as to fit the mouth of a water cistern over which it lay. This accounts for the circular hole in the center of the “new” fragment as well as for a gap of ca. 40 cm between the two fragments.1 Owing to the excavators’ generosity we were able to study the new fragment at an early stage, and a preliminary publication of the whole inscription appeared in Hebrew shortly thereafter.2

The combined inscription, which is six lines long, was set inside a tabula ansata on a 30-cm-thick hard limestone slab (fig. 1). The length of the inscription, taking account of the above-mentioned lacuna of ca. 40 cm, would have been 2.75 m; its height is 1.09 m. The backs of the slabs are rough. The letters in lines 1–5 are ca. 12 cm high and those in line 6 measure ca. 9 cm.

In the transcription below both the letters in the missing part as well as those almost illegible on the new fragment are in square brackets.

Imp(eratori) Cae[sari di]v[i Traiani]

Parthic(i) [f(ilio) divi Nerv]ae nep(oti)

Traiano [Hadri]ano Augst(o)

pont(ifici) ma[xi]m(o) trib(unicia) pot(estate) XIIII

c[o(n)]s(uli) III P(atri) P(atriae)

L[eg(io) X F]reten[sis (2nd hand) Antoninia]nae (sic!)

The Legio X Fretensis Welcomes the Emperor:A Latin Inscription on a Monument Erected for Hadrian in 129/130 CE

Avner Ecker Bar-Ilan University

Hannah M. CottonThe Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The authors wish to dedicate this article to Dudi Mevorach, Senior Curator of Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Periods, the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.


To the Imperator Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus, son of the

deified Traianus Parthicus, grandson of the deified Nerva, high

priest, invested with tribunician power for the 14th time, consul

for the third time, father of the country (dedicated by) the 10th

legion Fretensis (2nd hand) Antoniniana.

The use of the dative case (i.e., “to,” “for”) in the imperial titulature and the size of the letters3 suggest one of two types of an imperial statue base: an equestrian statue or an arch. Based on the form and size of the first fragment, Werner Eck suggests that it “may have been part of an arch with the statue of Hadrian on top.…” However, he mentions as “interesting” and “possible” a suggestion by Yves Blomme that the inscription was fixed to the large base of a column supporting a statue of Hadrian.4

In the last line of the inscription, an unskilled hand added a graffito of which only the last three letters remain: “NAE,” which must be the end of the honorary title “Antoniniana,” received by the legion sometime between 211 and 222 CE, probably from Caracalla – perhaps by Elegabal.5 Of course, it should have read [Antoninia]na (the nominative case) rather than [Antoninia]nae (the genitive case) since it was the legion that dedicated the monument to Hadrian. The mistake (as Werner Eck suggests) was probably due to the fact that usually the name of the legion and its epithets appear in the genitive case. CIIP I.2 no. 721, a legionary inscription located near the Jaffa Gate (on the other side of the Old City of Jerusalem) is an example of the common practice. This is a dedication to the legate of the Tenth Legion: the genitive, Antoninianae, here is quite in order: M(arco) Iunio Maximo leg(ato) Augg(ustorum) legionis X Frtensis Antoninianae…etc.

The joining together of the two parts of the inscription at the Israel Museum has given us for the first time a definite name for the honorand, a date, and perhaps an occasion. The honorand, as already suggested by Werner Eck in CIIP I.2, was Emperor Hadrian. In other words, this inscription dates to the Emperor s famous (rather infamous in Jewish circles) visit to Jerusalem, which must have taken place no earlier

than December 10 in 129 CE and sometime before June/July 130 when Hadrian arrived in Alexandria.6

Furthermore, we now know that it was the Legio Decima Fretensis that was directly responsible for the raising of the monument on which the dedication was inscribed.7 Unfortunately, this text does not assist us in determining whether the decision to found Colonia Aelia Capitolina was taken on this occasion, and, as Cassius Dio (69.12.1–2) noted, led to the Bar Kokhba Revolt; or whether, as according to Eusebius (Historia Ecclesiastica, 4.6.4), it was a consequence of and the punishment for the revolt.8

The precise “architectural” context of the inscription, which, as we noted above, was found ca. 300 m north of what is today the Damascus Gate (which eventually became the main entrance to the future Aelia Capitolina) is still a moot point. At first it was suggested that the inscription appeared either on the city gate of Jerusalem or on an arch raised specifically for the occasion of Hadrian’s visit over the road leading to the city – as was the case in Gerasa at about the same time.9 The latter option is in doubt owing to the fact that there is only a single example of an arch dedicated by a legion across the entire Roman Empire, namely the one in Dura Europos.10

A third option was a monumental column known from the Madaba Map to have adorned the piazza south of the Damascus Gate. Finally, and most recently, Gibson and Nagorsky raised the option of the gate in the “Third Wall” as the site of the inscription. This gate opened ca. 300 m northeast of the find-spot of the inscription and is known to have been renovated in the late Roman Period.11

Unfortunately, it is impossible at present to determine to which one of these monuments, if to any, the inscription belonged. However, it is most likely that it was found near its original location, so we suggest that the surrounding area was associated in one way or another with the Tenth Legion. This conclusion is supported by CIIP I.2 717 discovered nearby


– a similar monumental building inscription dedicated either to Hadrian or to Antoninus Pius by an imperial freedman and at least five legionary vexillationes.12 These legionary monuments are the only confirmed structures in the area between the “Third Wall” and the line of the Damascus Gate (which corresponds to the current Ottoman northern wall around the Old City of Jerusalem) between 70 CE and the beginning of the fourth century CE, by which time the legion had left Jerusalem.13 This is the same area that Josephus called the “Camp of the Assyrians,” where Titus set up his headquarters during the siege of Jerusalem (BJ 5 303, 505). As it is the most level ground around Jerusalem, it was a good place for a siege camp,14 as well as for the legionary parade and training ground, that is, the campus.15

Legionary monuments are known to have been erected in the campus, where the emperors used to come to inspect the army. Most famously, the Legio III Augusta erected a monumental column in the campus of Lambaesis in honor of Hadrian s visit and adlocutio in 128 CE.16 The latter, as well as a dedication to Hadrian, was inscribed on the pedestal.

The size of the letters of the Lambaesis dedication is similar to that of the Jerusalem inscription; both contrast sharply with the letter size on an “arc de triomphe,” such as the one from Tel Shalem – now on display in the Israel Museum – commemorating the end of the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 136 CE. The letters on the Tel Shalem inscription are 40 cm high, and the surface on which they are written is 11 m long. They dwarf those of the Jerusalem and the Lambaesis inscriptions, which were appropriate for the more modest occasion of an imperial visit.

We consider that this inscription, whose date and purpose cannot be contested, confirms fully Werner Eck’s reading and interpretation of the date and purpose of the Tel Shalem inscription, which are to a certain extent still contested: both Glen Bowersock and Menachem Mor date the latter to the imperial visit in 129/130 CE (the uncontested date of the inscription discussed here).17 If nothing else, the sheer

contrast in size between the two inscriptions seems to support Eck’s claim for dating the one from Tel Shalem to 136 and associating it with the conclusion of the Bar Kokhba Revolt, when, for the first time since becoming the emperor, Hadrian took the title “imperator.”18

Furthermore, Eck’s claim that the Bar Kokhba Revolt came to an end in 136 CE, and not in 135, the traditional date for its conclusion, has now been confirmed: a recently published military diploma dated to the very end of December 135 (pr(idie) K(alendas) Ian(uarias) / P(ublio) Rutilio Fabiano / Cn(aeo) Papirio Aeliano co(n)s(ulibus), is still missing the IMP II in the imperial titulature.19

Thus, the monument bearing the inscription published here is likely to have stood in the legionary campus, at least up to the early third century CE, when the epithet Antoniniana was added to the legion’s name.

Postscript

Our friend and colleague, Werner Eck, drew our attention to the fact that the word “proconsul” is missing from Hadrian’s titulature in this inscription. At the time, as he points out, this element constituted part and parcel of the imperial titulature; it is attested without exception in all the constitutions that granted Roman citizenship to soldiers between April 129 and the beginning of 133. Moreover, from the end of Trajan’s reign onward the Emperor invariably used “proconsul” in his title whenever he left Italy. However, not everyone stood by that rule as one can see in the inscription discussed here; whoever formulated the text omitted this element from the imperial title.


1 The calculation was made by the conservation team at the Israel Museum:

Andrei Vainer, Victor Uziel, and Paolo Recanati, when the two fragments

were joined. We are very grateful to them.

2 Avner, Greenwald, Ecker, and Cotton 2014.

3 For comparison one can use the letter size provided for twenty-six Latin

inscriptions out of the eighty-six arches gathered in Højte 2005: twelve

were written in letters whose size does not exceed 10–15 cm; of the latter

at least three are gates rather than free-standing monumental arches.

The marble pedestal (3.05 × 1.75 × 0.3) of the column in honor of Hadrian

erected by the Legio III Augusta in Lambaesis contains six lines of text;

the letters are 15 cm high in the first five lines and 9 cm high in the last

one; see: Gassend and Janon 1977–1979; Speidel 2006, 25–26 no. 1.

4 CIIP I.2, p. 14. For the other inscribed arches from Aelia Capitolina, see

CIIP I. 2 716, 719 and the bibliography there.

5 Ecker 2009. For the Empire-wide phenomenon of adding the title

Antoniniana to inscriptions, see Lörincz 1982. See also Eck 2010, 2012.

6 Halfmann 1986, 193, 207. To Halfmann’s list one can add Hadrian’s letter

to the people of Hierapolis, which mentions his 14th tribunicia potestas and

is signed “in Jerusalem”: Ritti 2004, 336ff = SEG 55, 1416 = AE 2004, 1424.

7 The same may be true for the dateless CIIP 1.2 no. 716.

8 In 2012 Baker proved incontrovertibly that Epiphanius (de Ponderibus

14), who put the foundation date in 117 CE, was untrustworthy. Di Segni’s

2014 attempt to refute Baker is not convincing. See the discussions and

bibliographies in Horbury 2014.

9 Welles 1938, 401–402, no. 58; Magness 2011, 313.

10 Højte 2005 (above note 4), Trajan no. 196; AE 1933, 225; 1937, 243. For this

observation (and the text of the Dura inscription), see Eck and Foerster

1999, 306; see also Eck 2003, 158–159.

11 Gibson and Nagorsky 2016.

12 For a full discussion of the inscription, see Eck 2009.

13 Magness 2000; Avni 2005, 390–392; Avni and Adawi 2015. For a discussion

of the walls of Aelia Capitolina, see Weksler-Bdolah 2006–2007.

14 Dąbrowa 2015.

15 The campus in Caerleon in Wales was set just outside the wall of the

main camp, probably over the debris of a dismantled compound: see Boon

1972, 31–32, 44–45.

16 For a discussion of campi, including imperial inspections and monuments,

see Le-Bohec 1989, 113–115; Davies 1989, 93–119. For imperial adlocutiones,

specifically Hadrian’s, to the Roman army, see Campbell 1984, 69ff. esp.

76–78.

The best-preserved legionary campus is the one in Lambaesis, where

Hadrian visited the Legio III Augusta in 128 CE. It was located 2 km away

from the main camp, in an open field, surrounded by a low wall and

marked at the center by a commemorative column dedicated to Hadrian,

upon which his adlocutio (speech) to the soldiers was recorded. For the

reconstruction of the column see Gassend and Janon 1977–1979. For the

text of the dedication on the pedestal, see Speidel 2006, 25–26 no.1; AE

2006, no. 1800a.

17 Bowersock 2003; Mor 2015, 2016, 173–191.

18 Eck and Foerster 1999; see Bowersock’s 2003 criticism of Werner Eck’s

interpretation of the inscription and Eck’s 2003 reply.

19 RMD 5, 00382 = ZPE 142:257 = AE 2003, 02034 = AE 2006, +00089.

Notes


Avner, R., Greenwald, R., Ecker, A., and Cotton H. M.

2014 A New Old Monumental Inscription from Jerusalem

in Honor of the Emperor Hadrian. New Studies in the

Archaeology of Jerusalem and Its Surroundings 8: 96–101

(Hebrew).

Avni, G.

2005 The Urban Limits of Roman and Byzantine Jerusalem: A

View from the Necropolis. JRA 18: 373–396.

Avni, G., and Adawi, Z.

2015 Excavations on Salah ed-Din Street, Jerusalem, and the

Northern Cemetery of Aelia Capitolina. ‘Atiqot 80: 45–71.

Baker, R.

2012 Epiphanius on Weights and Measures §14: Hadrian’s

Journey to the East and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem. ZPE

182: 157–167.

Boon, G. C.

1972 The Roman Legionary Fortress at Caerleon, Mon. Cardiff.

Bowersock, G.

2003 The Tel Shalem Arch and P. Nahal Hever/Seiyal 8. In

The Bar Kokhba War Reconsidered, ed. P. Schäfer, 171–180.

Tübingen.

Campbell, J. B.

1984 The Emperor and the Roman Army, 31 BC–AD 235. Oxford.

Dąbrowa, E.

2015 The Camp of the Assyrians and the Third Wall of

Jerusalem. Scripta Iudaica Cracoviensia 13: 19–30.

Davies, R. W.

1989 Service in the Roman Army. New York.

Di Segni L.

2014 Epiphanius and the Date of Foundation of Aelia Capitolina.

Liber Annuus 64: 441–451.

Eck, W.

2003 Hadrian, The Bar Kokhba Revolt, and the Epigraphic

Transmission. In The Bar Kokhba War Reconsidered: New

Perspectives on the Second Jewish Revolt, ed. P. Schäfer,

153–170. Tübingen.

2009 Revision lateinscher Inschriften aus Jerusalem. ZPE 169:

224–229.

2010 Eine Rasur auf einer Statuenbasis aus Jerusalem. ZPE 173:

219–222.

2012 Iulius Tarius Titianus als Statthalter von Syria Palaestina

in der Herrschaftszeit Elagabals in Inschriften aus

Caesarea Maritima und Hippos. Gephyra 9: 69–73.

Eck, W., and Foerster, G.

1999 Ein Triumphbogen für Hadrian im Tal von Beth Shean bei

Tel Shalem. JRA 12: 294–313.

Ecker, A.

2009 Who Gave the Title Antoniniana to the Legio X Fretensis. In

Israel’s Land: Papers Presented to Israel Shatzman on his Jubilee,

eds. J. Geiger, H. M. Cotton, and G. D. Stiebel, 219–228.

Jerusalem (Hebrew).

Gassend J. M., and Janon M.

1977– 1979 La colonne d’Hadrien à Lambèse. Bulletin d’archéologie

algérienne 7: 239–258.

Gibson, S., and Nagorsky, A.

2016 On the So-Called Head of Hadrian and a Hypothetical

Roman Triumphal Arch on the North Side of Jerusalem. In

Arise, Walk Through the Land – Studies in the Archaeology and

History of the Land of Israel in Memory of Yizhar Hirschfeld on

the Tenth Anniversary of his Demise, eds. J. Patrich, O. Peleg-

Barkat, and E. Ben-Yosef, 157*–165*. Jerusalem.

Bibliography


Halfmann, H.

1986 Itinera principum: Geschichte und Typologie der Kaiserreisen im

Römischen Reich. Wiesbaden.

Højte J. M.

2005 Roman Imperial Statue Bases from Augustus to Commodus.

Aarhus.

Horbury, W.

2014 Jewish War under Trajan and Hadrian. Cambridge.

Le-Bohec, Y.

1989 The Imperial Roman Army, London.

Lörincz, B.

1982 Zur Datierung des Beinamens Antoniniana bei

Truppenkörpern. ZPE 48: 142–148.

Magness, J.

2000 The North Wall of Aelia Capitolina. In The Archaeology of

Jordan and Beyond: Essays in Honor of James A. Sauer, eds. L. E.

Stager, J. A. Greene, M. D. Coogan, 328–339. Winona Lake, IN.

2011 Aelia Capitolina: A Review of Some Current Debates about

Hadrianic Jerusalem. In Unearthing Jerusalem – 150 Years of

Archaeological Research in the Holy City, eds. K. Galor and G.

Avni, 313–324, Winona Lake, IN.

Mor, M.

2015 From Shalem to Tel Shalem: Hadrian’s Visit to Provincia

Iudaea. New Studies in the Archaeology of Jerusalem and Its

Surroundings 9: 299–312 (Hebrew).

2016 The Second Jewish Revolt: The Bar Kokhba War, 132–136 CE.

Leiden/Boston.

Ritti, T.

2004 Documenti adrianei de Hierapolis di Frigia: le epistole di

Adriano alla cità. In L’hellénisme d’époque romaine: nouveaux

documents, novelles approaches, Ier s.a. C–IIIe s.p. C. Actes du

colloque international à la mémoire de Louis Robert, Paris, 7–8

juillet 2000, ed. S. Follet, 309–311. Paris.

Speidel M. P.

2006 Emperor Hadrian’s Speeches to the African Army – A New Text.

Mainz.

Weksler-Bdolah, S.

2006–2007 The Fortifications of Jerusalem in the Byzantine

Period. Aram 18/19: 85–112.

Welles, C. B.

1938 The Inscriptions. In Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, ed. C. H.

Kraeling, 355–494. New Haven.


He was, in the same person, austere and genial, dignified and

playful, dilatory and quick to act, niggardly and generous, deceitful

and straightforward, cruel and merciful, and always in all things

changeable.

This is how Hadrian’s biographer sums him up: “In all things changeable,” “an assembly of contrasts” to render the succinct and beautiful Latin phrase: in omnibus varius! The restless emperor, who spent much of his reign away from Rome and Italy, roaming his vast empire, captivated by the spirit of Athens and challenging the austere Roman ethos. Do not misunderstand me: he was not a Caligula nor a Nero! On the contrary: he was interested and well versed in law and administration – and in all the details that running his vast Empire entailed.

I have become obsessed with his chameleon and fascinating personality, which emerges larger than life not only in his statues but in his entire career and actions – not least in the monuments he left behind: just think of the Pantheon, of his mausoleum, the Castel Sant’Angelo, and the Villa Hadriana, which I visited a couple of days ago in preparation for this lecture!

And there is drama and romance as well: the drowning of his boyfriend Antinous, “This shameless and scandalous boy.”…

I can go on and on, but must now turn to the Jerusalem part of my title, and to the very recent discovery of the right-hand side of an inscription whose left-hand side has been known since 1903, and until very recently was on display in the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum Museum on the Via Dolorosa. The joining together of the two parts of the

inscription, which is now on display at the Israel Museum, has given us for the first time a definite name for the honorand, a date, and perhaps an occasion:

To the Imperator Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus, son of the

deified Traianus Parthicus, grandson of the deified Nerva, high

priest, invested with tribunician power for the 14th time, consul

for the third time, father of the country, (dedicated by) the 10th

Legion Fretensis.

The honorand was the Roman Emperor Hadrian, more formally P. Aelius Hadrianus; the date was between the 9 of December 129 CE and the 8 December 130 as implied by his holding the tribunician power for the 14th time (this is how regnal years were counted); and the occasion was very likely an imperial visit to Jerusalem and its fatal consequences.

But I am not quite sure if I can satisfy you about the last point.

We have always known from the ancient sources, written long after the event, that Hadrian passed through Judea on his way from Arabia (in Transjordan) to Egypt. However, we lacked concrete, tangible, and above all contemporary evidence for his trip through Judea, which can be added to the evidence of the coins. Above all we lacked specific evidence for a visit to the city of Jerusalem.

Quite recently, however, I have come by such a piece of evidence but somehow failed to register it. In fact, I had forgotten all about it until the discovery of the new inscription from Jerusalem. This evidence comes from a Greek inscription from Hierapolis in Asia Minor, which displays a letter by Hadrian bestowing a privilege on the city

AppendixHadrian: Rome and Jerusalem

Lecture given by Hannah M. Cotton at the opening of the Israel Museum Exhibition: “Hadrian: An Emperor Cast in Bronze,” December 22, 2015


and signed “en Hierosolymois” (“in Jerusalem”). There too the 14th tribunicia potestas dates it between December 9 129 CE and December 8 130.

We can now be sure that Hadrian visited Jerusalem in 129/130 CE and was welcomed by the Tenth Legion on that occasion. And since it was the legion that welcomed the emperor to the city, we can safely conclude that there was no other entity in Jerusalem, no citizen-body or what we might call a municipality.

The date of our inscription seems – at least at first sight – to confirm the claim of the third-century CE Roman historian Cassius Dio that this visit was the occasion for the foundation of Colonia Aelia Capitolina and the cause of the outbreak of the Bar Kokhba Revolt – though we do not know the precise reason for Hadrian’s fatal decision, cited by Cassius Dio: “At Jerusalem he (Hadrian) founded a city … naming it Aelia Capitolina, and on the site of the temple of the god he raised a new temple to Jupiter.”

However, against Dio and his date, there is the diametrically opposed evidence of the Church Father Eusebius in his Historia Ecclesiastica, who gave no cause for the revolt, but contended that the foundation of Aelia Capitolina took place after the Bar Kokhba Revolt, that is, that it was an act of punishment rather than a cause.

And thus, when the city had been emptied of the Jewish nation

and had suffered the total destruction of its ancient inhabitants,

it was colonized by a different race, and the Roman city which

subsequently arose changed its name and was called Aelia, in

honor of the emperor Aelius Hadrianus.

Nothing, so far as I know, has decisively shown which of the two dates is true: was Dio right to date the decision to found Aelia Capitolina to 130 CE, on the occasion of Hadrian’s visit to Jerusalem, thus making it the cause of the revolt, or was Eusebius right to make the foundation of Aelia Capitolina a consequence of and a punishment for the revolt. It may well be that Eusebius, the Christian, had reasons to represent the Jews as being comprehensively punished whatever the truth might have been, whereas Dio, the pagan, had no reason to create an anti-Jewish bias in his narrative.

Like the late Yoram Tsafrir, I am greatly tempted to regard three measures as post-revolt punishments: (1) changing the name of the province from Iudea to Syria Palaestina, (2) expelling the Jews from Jerusalem and its region, and (3) changing the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina. Be that as it may, whether the foundation of Aelia Capitolina was the cause of the revolt or a punishment thereof, we have been taught by our colleague Werner Eck, the well-known historian of imperial Rome and Judea, that Cassius Dio was not exaggerating, but rather understating, when he described the Bar Kokhba Revolt as “a war of no slight importance nor of brief duration… ultimately the whole world, as it were, was in turmoil.”

The war raged for well over 3 years, down to 136 CE, when for the first time after his accession Hadrian took the title imperator. However, there was no triumphal procession in Rome to celebrate the occasion, and no monuments were raised there to immortalize the victory. “So many Romans perished in this war” that in his letter to the senate Hadrian did not use the phrase: “If you and your children are in good health, it is well; I and the legions are in good health.”


In 138 CE, two years after the conclusion of the Bar Kokhba Revolt, Hadrian died in a villa in Baiae on the Bay of Naples. Upon his deathbed, so we are told by his biographer, he composed these touching verses: I chose Russell Duckworth’s, not quite literal, translation, since it renders so beautifully the Latin diminutives in which Hadrian addresses his soul: animula, vagula, blandula….

Animula, vagula, blandula

Hospes comesque corporis

Quae nunc abibis in loca

Pallidula, rigida, nudula,

Nec, ut soles, dabis iocos.

Dear little soul,

Why wilt thou roam?

Long has thou found

In me a home.

Numb, pale, and naked, whither fly

From my companionship, and why?

Thy merry jests no more shall ring—

And must thou leave me, little thing?

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