In order to understand the topography of Jems., and to di&* Ung^uitih iU lat«r remains, it U necessary briefly to follow the history from a.o. 70 down to the presentday. After the capture of tha upper city, the walls of tne city and of the Temple were thrown down, with the exception of the royal towere and part of the W. wall {Wars, vii. i. 1), which remained aa the fortress of the legion left in charge. Jerus. has no history for si\ty years after its dt-struction, but an inscription of the time of Trajan (a.d. 117) appears to record the worship there of Serapis by a veteran who may even have been present with Titus. In A.D. 130 Hadrian visited Jcrus., and in a.d. 134 occurred the desperate rebellion of the Jews under Bar Cochba and Rabbi Akiba. They were expelled from Jems, by Julius Severus (Dion Cossius, Ixix. IS), and according to later statements (Talm. Jer. Taaiiith iv. and Jerome, Comm. cm Zee tii") T. Annius Kufus ploughed up the foundations of the Temple. In the following year they were massacred at Bether (Hittir) close to Jems, on the W. In A.D. 136 Hadrian rebuilt the city, and called it <£lia CapitoLina. Ue dedicated the Temple site to Jupiter Capitol- tnus, and decreed the exclusion of the Jews from Jems.— adecree which, though perhaps not always enforced, was still in exist- ence in the time of Constantine (Dion C'assius, Ixix. 12; Euse- bius, Huit. Ecclet. iv. 6). The city of Hadrian appears to have been smaller than that of the time of Titus, since the S. part of the upper cit^ was outside the wall in the 4th cent. a.d. In A.D. 130 Hadrian found only a few houses and seven synagogues (see BUAia Sacra, pp. 393-465). Only one of these was standing in the 4th cent. (Bordeaux Pilgrim). Hadrian appears to have repaired the walls (Orosius, nist. xr.^ written aLout a.d, 416), and, according to tne Fagchal Chronicle (which is, however, a late authority), the new buildings included * the two markets' {Inf^fta.), a theatre, a mink, a tricameroix, a tetTan]pnpkon, and a dodckapylon, formerly called anabathmoi (In Ami, 3 j£L Uatlr.). Kusebius {L\j'e of CongtantiTif, ill. 36) speaks of a temple of Venus erected in the city, at the site of the subse- quent Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This was afterwards (see Petellus in a.d. 1161-1167) attributed to Hadrian. Jerome {£pi8t. 49) speaks of a marble statue of Venus *on the rock of the Cross,' and Eusebius connects her worship with the dark cave (awx^*) under this rock. A coin of Antoninus Tins repre- sents Venus in a tctrastyle temple with the legend O.A.O., and later coins of Aurelius and Severus have the same reverse with the legend CoL ^L Cap. It seems clear that either Hadrian or the Antonines erected this Venus t«mple in the N. quarter of Jems., when it was rebuilt as a pagan city. A coin of Hadrian, stmck in Jems., shows a temple which may be Che same. J*erome also informs as {Conim. Is 2!^ and Mt 24iB) that equea* trian statues of Hadrian were placed on the site of the Holy of Hotiee, together with an idol of Jove. These were still standing In A.D. 333 (bordeaux Fil|j^rtm), and an inscription on a stone now built upside down mto the S. wall of the Temple en> closure bears the name of Ha^Irian, and probably belonged to one of these statues. The head of a small statue was picked up by a peasant, In the road N. of the Damascus Gate, in 1873. It Is crowned with laurel, and the Rom. eagle appears on the front of the crown. The features resemble those of known statues of Hadrian, and the head may have belonged to one of the above statues.
A cohort was stationed at Jems, to prevent the Jews enter- ing the city (iiulpic, Severus, UUt. Sac. ii. IL), and the decree slHl held In A.n. 312 (Evis'-bius, Thcoyhauia). But In a.d. 333 (Bordeaux Pilgrim) we llnd the Jews allc>%vtd annually to visit the 'pierced alone,' which was near Hadrian's statue In the Temple. They anointed tlio stone, lamented over it^ and tore their garments. It apiwirently reprcsmtcd the site of the Temple, over which no building is nu'ntioned, and Is usually Identified with the SaJehrah or sacred 'rock,' still remarkable (or the shaft which pierces down to the cave beneath from the surface of the ruck. Jerome alttu siH'uktt {('omm. Bzk V^) of the Jews entering Jerus. to w.ii!, in his own llnte. He nnyt Ihat for fifty years (or until A.n. 13i>)JemB. rt-niaincd laid even with the ground, and lost its former name (C'vinm. Exk 60 1
but under Hadrian it regained the position of an ordinary provincial capital.
We hear no more of its histoiy for nearly two centuries, until the esiublishmeut of Christianity by Cunbtantine ; but, in the tombs on Olivet, stone boxes have been foujid (o«r«'o> phani) belonging to the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th cents. A.n., which iKla the bones of Jews and Jewish Christians there collected close to the Valley of Judgment. The traditional tomb of fcit. Pelagia (noticed from the 4th cent, down) contains also an early Gr. text — 'Courage Domitela, none is immortal '—which may (as compared with others in Boshon) belong to the 2nd or 3rd cent. a.d. Pilgrimages began to be customary in the latter cent., when Alexander, a bishop of Cappadocia, visited Jems.; and a female pilgrim is noticed by C^'pnan, In A.D. 316 Eusebius speaks of pilgrims coming from all parts of the world to witness the fulfilment of prophecy, and to worship on the Mount of Olives (where the footprints of Christ were shown), which appears to have been the only sacred station then known. Our tirst account of the city under its new conditions is that of the Bordeaux Pilgrim, who arrived while the new cathednd of the Holy Sei'ulchre (or 'Church of the Anastasis') was being built by Constiin tine's order in a.d. 333. As regards the recog- nition of the site, we have no statement in earlier authors to show that the true locality was presen-ed by tradition. The legend of Helena's miraculous discovery of the Cross is un- noticed by contempora^ writers, though in A.D. 326 the mother of Constantine visited Bethlehem and Olivet. The Cross itseli is only noticed by St. Cyril twenty years aft«r the great Basilica was built, and in A.n. 383 by Jerome {Epit. Pauux, 6). Euse- bius gives what purports to be Constantine's letter to Macarius (Ckron. Ann, 339) ordering the erection of the new buildings which he elsewhere fully describes (Li/e of Constantine, bk. in. chs. 34-39). There Is no doubt that the sites described are the same still shown, but the letter to Macarius speaks of them as 'long hidden under the earth'; and Eusebius Ba>'8 that the Venus temple was first destroyed, and * beyond all ho])e* the sacred tomb was found under the mound then cleared away. There is no doubt that an ancient Jen'ish tomb (now called that of Nicodemus) was discovered, and that the traditional Holy Sepulchre (a tomb of the Gr. and Rom. type) is rock-cut ; the surrounding rock is said to have been cut away to leave the monument isolated in the flat surrounding space.