Overview
The Decapolis was cluster of semi-independent polis, Hellenistic city-states, along the eastern frontier of Roman of occupied Palestine
The Decapolis was the hub of Hellenistic and Roman culture in the Near East, stretching from Beersheba, beside the Dead Sea in the south, west of Jerusalem, to Tyre and Caesura Philippi in the north, near Damascus.
The cities of the Decapolis included the capital of modern Jordan, Philadelphia: Gerasa, Gadara, Pella, Dium (Capitolias, or Aydoun), Raphana (Abila), Scythopolis, Hippos, Canatha and the capital of modern Syria, Damascus.
Placed under the authority of the Roman Governor of Syria, the Decapolis has been called the 'league of cities'. It was constituted by linguistic, religious and cultural sentiment, formed into an imperial trading network. However, the Decapolis never functioned as an official, collective political and economic unit. Formed primarily for security purposes, to assure the protection against neighbouring Semitic hostilities.
Hellenistic Foundations
At the Battle of Issus in 333BC, Alexander the Great defeated Darius II, known as 'King of Kings' in the Achaemenid Empire. Following this victory by Alexander, the territories west of the Euphrates river came under the domain his Hellenistic Empire.
For three-hundred years, despite various revolts, most famously by the Maccabeans and Nabataeans, the Hellenistic dynasties of Selucids, Hasmonaeans and the Herodians cemented their place in the region.
Arrival of Rome
From the on-set of Roman occupation lead by Pompey in 63 BC, these cities were reorganised and, in the case of Philadelphia, underwent a name change, from it's original of Ammonities. Pompey rearranged and granted the Decopolis a form of semi-autonomy, placed under the authority of an official Roman prefect, who reported into the governor of Syria.
A fresh classical 'make-over' was undertaken upon the old Hellenistic foundations. .
Hellenism and the Roman Empire
Since the Roman occupation of Greece in the 2nd century, the Roman Republic had remodelled it's entire aesthetic foundation as 'Greek'. The Roman Republic assimilated the fruits of Hellenistic civilisation, primarily philosophy, art, religion, literature and architecture. The preservation of Ancient Koine, Alexandrian Greek, became the lingua franca and the administrative language of the East.
The Roman Republic, and later Empire, exacted foreign tribune from all its provinces. By doing so, Rome acquired and traded abundant resources, affording the expensive costs of administering a vast expanding empire, providing many Romans with all their extravagant luxuries.
Corn was plucked and shipped from Egypt, whilst the vast stadia and colosseums were built by local slaves, by the resources gained from tribune. Most of Palestine was transformed into a Roman province. Caesarea was the seat of Pontis Pilate's government, south of Carmel, Sepphoris and Tiberias, north of Nazareth along the Lake of Galilee. At the southwestern foot of Hermon dwelt the city of Caesarea Philippi, adjoined at the Golan Heights.
The pledge to all Roman citizens of Panem et Circenses (free bread and circuses) was a grand, expensive pledge, which, by tribune, exacted no loss to Roman coffers. The Cives Romani was the official legal status afforded to free citizens, by laws, property and governance.
Syncretism
Pliny the Elder visited the region in 75 AD, providing key insights such as the issue that not all authorities agreed about the name Decapolis.
His observation is important. It would be wrong to assume that there was consensus over the nature of the Decapolis. It is however clear that it hosted an intersection of indigenous Jewish and Aramean cultures, with Greek and Roman colonists. At the height of the Decapolis, five prominent languages would be spoken throughout the region: Ancient Koine (Alexandrian and Biblical Greek), Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic and Latin.
Like many Roman provinces, the cities were Athenian by model. Judea was modified with a classical instillation of grid-system streets, centred around a cardo, alongside sacred temples to Zeus and Artemis, with forums, stadiums, baths, gymnasiums and public buildings.
A kaylbe was discovered by archaeologists to suggest the enshrinement of an Imperial Cult; divine worship and adornment of the Emperor and his dynasty. There existed religious syncretism, as many interchanged Yahweh with Zeus, Apollo and Dionysus; considered blasphemy to many pious Jewish sects such as the Pharisees.
Likewise, many of the Hellenistic and Roman colonists adopted ancient Semitic and Phoenician deities. One of these was the Arabic indigenous deity Dushara, worshipped by the Nabataeans, discovered on Roman coins, under the rule of Emperor Commodus (177 to 192AD).
Despite the preservation of traditional customs in wholly Jewish areas such as Galilee and Judah, Hellenistic and Roman cultural customs were adopted, such as fashions of clothing, in the forms of tunics, cloaks, shoes and sandals, hats and head coverings. There was the Greek dining custom of reclining at meals. The citizens of the Decapolis would have worn such clothes in fashions as seen in Alexandra, Athens and Rome.
In 106 AD, Emperor Trajan annexed the Arab Nabataean Kingdom, in modern Jordan, reconstituting the region into the Roman province of Arabia Petraea. The senate later declared Trajan-the philanthropic Emperor- as 'optimus princeps', ('the greatest ruler'), after his extensive military and social expansion, bringing the Empire it's largest territorial scope, and instigating an equally expansive building program alongside political reform.
As part of this territorial military reform, Emperor Trajan disintegrated the Decapolis and redistributed the cities into the Roman provinces of Judea, Syria and the newly acquired Arabia Petraea
Bibliography
Andreas J. M. Kropp (2011) Nabataean Dushārā (Dusares) — An Overlooked Cuirassed God, Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 143:3, 176-197, DOI: 10.1179/003103211X13092562976090
Pliny the Elder, Natural History (translated by John Bostock and H.T Riely) (London, Taylor and Francis, MDCCCLV) p. 5.74
Mare, Harold W. (2000). "Decapolis". In Freedman, David Noel (ed.). Eerdman's Dictionary of the Bible. William B. Eerdman's Publishing Company. (pp. 333–334)
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