Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/528

512 quite natural that the Tyrians, a Gentile people, should actively maintain the Roman domination. And the Gadarenes on this occasion acted with them. Shall this prove Gadara to be a Gentile city? Certainly not; for Gabara was a Galilæan, and, as Mr. Huxley sees, a thoroughly Jewish city, and yet it shared in the overthrow of Gischala. There can not be a clearer proof that, in certain cases, it was not the question of religion or race that determined the balance of opinion and the action of the community, but the question of war or peace. I rely, then, on the strategical movement of Vespasian to show that Gadara, an important center of Jewish population, was also in the main an important seat of Jewish military strength; most of all, perhaps, as being the center at which the rural population of Gadaris would muster for war in case of emergency.

—Although, in inquiries of this kind, we may speak of Jewish or Hebrew populations, as Dean Milman does, to describe generally those who were adverse to the Roman power, the expressions are not quite satisfactory, because, in themselves, they involve a condition of race; whereas, to say nothing of those descendants of the ancient Canaanites who had conformed to Judaism, we find that the Mosaic law was imposed at the time of which we treat, as a consequence of conquest if not on Gentile yet on mixed populations. And the real question in respect to the Gadarene territory is not exclusively whether the population were of Hebrew extraction, but also, and indeed mainly, whether they were Jewish as being bound by the Jewish law: or, as I should like to call it, whether they were a Mosaic population. To this question let us now further look.

According to Origen, Gadara was simply a city of Judæa. According to Josephus in one passage, it was a Grecian city, as were Hippos and Gaza. But in another place he includes it in a great group of cities which were Syrian, Idumæan, or Phœnician, and he then places it in the Syrian subdivision of that group. We are guided by the nature of the case to the meaning of these two last-named designations. There was no properly Hellenic element reckoned in the population of the country,Strabo, xvi, 2. though there must have been a sprinkling of Greeks concerned in the administration of the kingdoms founded by Alexander's generals. As there were Phœnicians in the earliest Hellas, so now there were important Hellenic settlers in Asia, and, without doubt, a larger number of Hellenized Asiatics. In connection with the name of Gadaris, Strabo | enumerates a few Greek individuals of some distinction. The case has been sufficiently explained by Grote, who allows as the characteristics of what was, he thinks