Ancient Gadara City of Philosophers

Index

History of Gadara and pictures of the archaeological sites

Cynics of Gadara

Menippus
Meleager
Oenomaus

Other philosophers

Philodemus of Gadara
Iamblichus of Syrian Chalcis

Rhetoricians of Gadara

Theodorus
Apsanes

Philo the mathematicians

Roman Inscriptions and papyri

the witch of Gadara
Quintus of Gadara

the Byzantine baths

the Byzantine synagogue

Introduction
I have often been asked, Why Gadara City of Philosophers? and why a picture (117K) of the late Greco-Roman entrance to its baths on my welcome page? The answer is quite simple: ancient Gadara (Hebrew: Gader) was the birthplace of
three famous Cynic philosopher- satirists,
one famous Epicurean philosopher-poet,
two important rhetoricians
and one famous mathematician
In addition, a famous neo-Platonic philosopher once taught in its baths of Hammat-Gader.
there are also indications of popular poets, charmers and witches from this city mentioned in various ancient inscriptions and papyri.
We also know of an active Jewish community in the area from synagogue inscriptions of the Byzantine era.
Finally, recent excavations have uncovered some important Christian inscriptions concerning the baths (el-Hameh) at Hammat-Gader, including a short epic poem in praise of its hot springs apparently written by the Empress Eudocia herself
I also include below a few details concerning:
the city's history and its archaeological sites, exemplified with original photographs.
the origin of its name
and its cultural contribution to the Hellenistic and Greco-Roman world.

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History of the City and Pictures of the Ancient Sites
The city of Gadara once belonged to the territory of the ancient commercial and geographical confederacy known as the Decapolis, the Ten Cities, which were scattered over a wide area of Syro-Palestine in Greco-Roman times.

See my map of the Decapolis (57k).

On the Decapolis, see: A. Spijkeman, The Cities of the the Decapolis and Provincia Arabia Historical Outline
See also tourist websites on the Decapolis and its cities)
As other Greek cities of the area, Gadara was conquered by the Hasmonean King, Alexander Jannaeus (104/3-76 B.C.). Many of its Greek inhabitants went into exile, including some of the authors that we will discuss below. However, in 63 B.C., the Decapolis was liberated by Pompey, which year was now reckoned as the new foundation date of the cities. Gadara itself was rebuilt by Pompey at the special request of his freedman Demetrius of Gadara, who later moved to Rome where he financed some of Pompey's building projects.
The cities of the Decapolis are mentioned several times in the New Testament and Josephus. Gadara in particular is famous for the tale of the Gadarene Swine (Matt. 8, 28), even though manuscripts of the New Testament also refer to the Gergasene Swine!

Archaeological Sites
Today, the archaeological site of ancient Gadara ajoins the Jordanian village of Um-Qeis (98K), where you can still walk down Gadara's once colonaded city streets (117K), that criss-crossed beneath its basilica. The city's late structures include a mysterious subterranean hypogeion (117K), whose purpose is uncertain, and see its (one of two little Greco-Roman) theatres (137K), an octagonal market-place as well as the basilica (97K) itself.
See Arthur Segal, Monumental Architecture in Roman Palestine and Provincia Arabia(Haifa, 1995)

On the Israeli side of the Yarmuk Valley (98K), adjoining a collective village, is found the valley of Hammat-Gader (el-Hammeh), where there still flow four naturally cold and hot springs, famous for their therapeutic powers. These once filled the large pool (137K) and small pools (98K) of an early Byzantine spa, supplying it with hot and cold waters. Besides the remains of the ancient spa complex, the valley also sites the ruins of Roman baths and a small Greco-Roman theatre.
Y. Hirschfield: The Roman Thermae at Hammat-Gader- Final Report (Jerusalem, 1997)

Close by, on a mound in the valley, there are preserved the remains of a Byzantine Jewish synagogue in which mosaiques with Hebrew-Aramaic inscriptions are preserved.

E.L. Sukenik: The Ancient Synagogue of El-Hammeh (Jerusalem, 1935),

Today one may still bathe in these waters at the spa of the neighbouring spa and park of Hammat Gader, that is also famous for its crocodile farm, kept safely apart from the bathers.
Tread lightly, the next time you visit Hammat-Gader, there is more beneath your feet than the local crocodiles.

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Origin of the name Gadara-Gader:
In Semitic languages, gader means a wall or boundary. Later Talmudic legend associatively connected 'Gader' with the area of the vineyard wall (gader) where an angel is said to have halted the prophet Balaam. It was then that his ass was supposed to have miraculously addressed its master complaining of his ill-treatment (Numbers xxii.24-29). However, the site's history really began when Alexander's successors founded a Greek polis at Gader, Hellenizing it as Gadara, perhaps in memory of their Macedonian village of Gadeira.

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Ancient Gadara had a fine tradition of philosophy and poetic satire
Cynics of Gadara:

Its first great son, was Menippus,who probably moved to Greece in the middle of the 3rd century B.C. He was a Cynic philosopher and satirist - but allegedly a slave by origin, who on earning his freedom, made money as a ship-broker, but hanged himself on losing it. Fictitious stories about Menippus seem to be derived from his own self-mocking, pseudo-autobiographic works, such as A Descent into Hades, where he mocked the foibles of the living through the mouths of the dead. Considered, the father of the philosophical satire known as Menippean satire, he was much admired by the satirist Lucian (120-200 A.D.):

Friend:
Is that not that Cynic dog, Menippus? It could not be anyone else unless I have begun to see things. Why, it is Menippus to a hair! But then what is he up to with that piece-meal costume? an oriental felt cap, a harp and a lion's skin? Well, I have no choice now but to go up and greet him.
Hi, Menippus! Where have you set out from? It is a long time since you last put in an appearnace in town!
Menippus
I have come from the hide-out of the dead
the very gates of darkness.
I have left the home of Hades,
set apart from other gods.
(Lucian Menippus or the Descent into Hades 1)

A great admiror of Menippus was the poet-philosopher, Meleager of Gadara (1st century B.C.). Meleager wrote satires, that no longer survive, as well as many beautiful epigrams that do. He also was responsible for one of the first poetic anthologies. His choice later formed the basis of our classical Greek Anthology.
An example of his verse is a mock epigram that he composed for his own tomb. Written as if it were a tri-lingual inscription in Aramaic, Phoenician and Greek, it briefly summarises Meleager's work and life as a cosmopolitan Cynic and satirist:
Tread softly, Stranger, over the sacred dead
Here lies in well-earned sleep the aged
Meleager, Son of Eucrates, who composed
poems about sweet-teared Eros
combining his Muse with delightful grace
The Holy Land of Gadara and Tyre with her divine boys made a man of him
Lovely Cos of the Meropian people received him in old-age
If you are a Syrian, I say to you 'Salam!', if a Phoenician -- 'Naidios!'
and if Greek -- 'Chaire!' and you return me the same.
(Greek Anthology vii. 419)
Other poems in a Portuguese trans. are to be found at: this site

Another great Cynic of Gadara, was the 2nd century A.D. religious critic and nihilist, Oenomaus, perhaps the prototype of the Talmudic philosophical figure Abnimos, friend of R. Meir of neighbouring Tiberias. Oenomaus wrote satiric speeches against the priests of Apollo who hoodwinked the believers. Why should God, as the priests claim, care where Homer is to be buried:

(16) In our inconsequencies, God gives no thought -- no more for a Homer than for a beetle. (17) As if when a beetle was born, lived and grown old in his dung-heep, he encountered some nasty spirit and harsh beetle God, who then bore him up on high to a life in some far harsh and dung-heep land, and then he came to the oracle in Delphi to ask what dung-heep of a father-land had born him - and what earth should receive him on death"
Fr. 1 (Hammerstaedt, p. 74 = Eus. P.E.V. 33.16-17)

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Other Philosophers associated with Gadara:

By far its greatest son, was Philodemus (110-43/45 B.C.), the Epicurean philosopher poet, who moved to Herculaneum, where his library was miraculously preserved after the eruption of Vesuvius on the 24th August 79 B.C. His works include his beautiful surviving epigrams, fragmentary histories of the Stoa and Academy, works on Rhetoric and Poetics and more. Many of these are being translated and reedited in the Philodemus Project -- as well as by Prof. Marcello Gigante
In one of his epigrams, he explains his name, Philodemos = Love (philo-) of the People (demos), self-mockingly giving it a new twist:
Once I loved a girl of Papphos, Demo her name, nothing strange in that
then a Samian, also called Demo -- nothing strange in that too
but then a third Demo, a girl of Nysiake. This was no longer
funny - for worse than that, there was even a fourth Demo, of Argos
This then is the reason I suppose that the Fates decided
that I should be called Philodemos
Since hot love for a 'Demo' has always gripped me!
(Greek Anthology v. 115)

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The important neo-Platonic Philosopher Iamblichus (250-330 A.D.) was not a native of Gadara, but once worked transcendental miracles in its hot-springs at neighbouring Hammat-Gader. There he and his pupils once bathed in its small and large pools. Although the present structures are much later, there still exist at Hammat-Gader remains of Byzantine baths, including a large pool (137K) and a small pool (98K). At any rate, Eunapius relates all the miraculous details of Iamblichus' visit:
Some time after, they decided to go to Gadara, where the warm baths of Syria are situated -- they are second only to the ones in Roman Baeae and cannot be compared to any other. They started out in the high season of the year. He himself set about bathing and they bathed along with him, but pestered him with the same requests as before. Iamblichus smiled and said,
"Although it is not pious to make a demonstration of my powers, it shall be done for your sakes"
Now there were two hot springs that were smaller than the others but prettier. He commanded his pupils to enquire of the locals how they used to be called in olden times. When they had done what he commanded, they said,
"There is no pretense, for this one is called 'Eros' and the neighbouring one 'Anti-eros'"
He immediately touched the water - he happened to be sitting at the edge by the overflow, and uttering some brief words, he summoned up from beneath the spring a child who was fair and well proportioned, with golden locks, his back and chest gleaming so as to seem wholy like one who was bathing or had just bathed.
His companions were struck with amazement but he said,
"Let us go to the next spring"
He lead them out in a thoughtful manner. There he then worked the same (miracle) and summoned up another Eros like the former one, except that his locks were darker and poured down his back loose. Both boys embraced him as if he were their natural father. He sent them back to their own spheres and left to bathe while his companions revered him.
(Eunapius, Lives of the Philosophers459)

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Rhetoricians of Gadara:

The founder of a famous 1st century B.C. rhetorical school, was Theodorus of Gadara, whose inscription was found at Athens - and who taught the future emperor Tiberius rhetoric. It is said of Tiberius that:

even in his boyhood, his cruel and cold nature did not lie hidden. Theodorus of Gadara was his teacher of rhetoric and, in all his wisedom, seems to have been the first to have ubderstood Tiberius and to have capped him with a very pithy saying when he taunted Tiberius, calling him 'Mud kneaded with blood'
(Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars iii: TiberiusLVII.1)

A less famous later rhetorician, called Apsines of Gadara (190-250 A.D.) taught oratory at Athens about 235 A.D. and has left us a handbook of Rhetoric. Philostratus briefly mentioned his abilities:
But I need not write of them and of Apsines the Phoenician who was so advanced in memory and precision, for I would be disbelieved as just handing out compliments since I am personally linked to them all in friendship
(Lives of the Sophists 628)

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Scientists of Gadara
Finally, there is Philo of Gadara (3rd century A.D.), who improved on Archimedes' approximation of mathematical 'pi'. The latter gave a proof for showing that
"the circumference of any circle is greater than the diameter by threefold plus a quantity that is less that a 1/7 of the diameter but greater than 10/71 parts of it" (Archimedes, Measurement of a Circle prop. iii; trans. M. Luz).

This approximation (3.142 857...> pi >3.140 8450....) is inaccurate by comparison with that accepted today (pi=3.141 5927.... ). Although Philo and his pupil, the mathematician Sporus (c. 200 A.D.), were said to have improved on Archimedes' proof producing a better appoximation, Eutocius of Ascalon argued that they both failed to grasp Archimedes's object in reckoning a rough approximation of the relationship between the cirumference and the diameter of a circle:
Sporus observes that his own teacher, Philon of Gadara, reduced (the matter) to a more exact numerical expression than Archimedes did, I mean in (the latter's) 1/7 and 10/71; in fact people seem, one after the other, to have failed to appreciate Archimedes' object
Eutocius Commentary on Archimedes' Measurement of a Circle (trans. Sir Thomas Heath, History of Mathematics I. p. 234)

Eutocius felt that "Archimedes' object in this book was to find an apporoximate figure suitable for use in daily life" (ibid) -- this would imply that Philo and Sporus had a purely mathematical interest at heart. However, in spite of Eutocius, we do know that Archimedes later attempted a better approximation achieving 3.141 697...> pi >3.141 495... (I. Thomas, Greek Mathematics i. 333) although we do not know where Philo's approximation stood in relation to this.
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Inscriptions and Papyri

A papyrus fragment also gives poetic recipees ascribed to a Gadarene witch in the 1st century B.C. Philinna Papyrus. She prescribed charms against over-heating just as the Thessalian witch Philinna trated aching�(the papyrus text is fragmentary):
A charm of the Syrian Gadarene for every heat
...and in the mountain it was burned: the springs of seven wolves, of seven bears, of seven lions -- and seven maids, dark eyed drew water
in their dark jugs and they put out the inextinguishable fire.
A charm of Philinna the Thesallian for head-ache
Flee head-ache, flee beneath the stone, the wolves flee, the single-hoved horses flee beneath the whip"
(Journal of Hellenic Studies 62.1943 pp 33-38)

Another inscription describe the Graces of Gadara and calls the city 'blessed in the Muses', as it truly was.
My father was Quintus, my Mother Philous
My name was Apion, and my father-land
was the community of Gadara blessed in the Muses
I left a childless home
and at these three cross-roads inhabit this tomb
that my father built. He came after to join me here
mourning (a son) who lived only twenty-two years
(Palestine Exploration Quarterly 1897 pp 185)

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A few of the Inscriptions, newly discovered at the Baths
In the excavations of 1979/1980, there were uncovered at the baths of Hammat-Gader, a number of interesting inscriptions, a few of them reflecting the cultural and literary atmosphere of the city.
Text and historical background in: Leah di Segni, 'The Greek Inscriptions of Hammat-Gader' in: Y. Hirschfield: The Roman Thermae at Hammat-Gader- Final Report (Jerusalem, 1997), 228-233.

South-west of the large pool (137K), was found a marble slab inscribed with a poem in Homeric verse ascribed in its heading to the learned poetess, the Empress Eudocia, a known admiror of Homer. The latter had formerly been the wife of Theodosius II and the image of "Aelia Eudocia Augusta" appears on gold coins. However, by the year 443/2 A.D., the emperor's sister conspired to bring about Eudocia's exile to Jerusalem, where the Empress spent the remainder of her life in mosaiques record in Hebew and Aramaic lists of contributors and donations made for laying out the building and its mosaiques:-

[Remembered for good]: - Ada son of Tanhum son of Monik(os), who gave one tremissis (of a denarius), Jose [son] of Karusa and Monik(os), who contributed halves of a [de]narius for this mosaique (psephasa).
May they have blessing. Amnen Sela Peace!
trans. M. Luz; text and commentary: E.L. Sukenik: The Ancient Synagogue of El-Hammeh (Jerusalem, 1935), 56-5.
Many of the conributors were apparently Galileans, but originated from outside of this immediate area. They may have come to Hammat-Gader in order to be cured by its therapeutic waters:-

Re[membered for g]ood:- Rab[bi] Tanhum ha-Levi son of [Hal]ifa who donated one tremissis (of a denarius).
Remembered for good:- Monik(os) of Susi(tha) the Sepphorite,
the K[yros P]atrik(os) of [Ke]far Akabia and Jose son of Dosi[theos] from Capernaum, who all three donated three scruples.
May the King of the U[niverse g]ive them a blessing for [their] work. Amen Amen Sela Peace!
Remembered for good:- Judan of Arada (?) from Haimais (?) who gave three.
Re[membered for g]ood:- the men of Arbela who donated their linen. May the King of the Univer[se] give them a blessing for their work. Amen Amen Sela.
trans. M. Luz; text: Sukenik, op. cit., 48-58
One should also note how many of the personal names are are Greco-Roman in origin. Nonetheless, many of them are also translations of traditional Hebrew-Aramaic names. This shows how while still being active Jews, they saw themselves as part of Greco-Roman society. Inscriptions like the following also attest the lives of a single family of local (?) Jews, who acted in the family as office-bearers with Greek titles:

Re[membered for g]ood:- the Kyros Hoples and the Kyra Protone; their son-in-law, the Kyros Sallustes and his son, the Comes Pheroros; their (second) son-in-law, the Kyros Photes, and his son, Haninah. They and their children, whose good deeds are constant in every place - and who have here donated five denarii of gold.
May the King of the Universe give them a blessing for their work. Amen Amen Sela.
trans. M. Luz; text: Sukenik, op. cit., 41-47

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