Rome and the East
tion of the conditions under which a city could call itself ametropolis,itisnot
clear in our sources. It is at least certain that the title could be formally asked
for from the emperor and conferred by him.^92 But it is equally clear that it
proliferated in the course of the empire and was not, for instance, confined
toonecityineachprovince.
More important in the present context is the fact that it is a Greek status
title, which could be borne bycoloniaeas by purely Greek cities. In the case
of the two inscriptions just cited indeed, while the use of Latin has survived,
the actual titlecoloniahas been displaced bymetropolis. By contrast the coin-
age of Caesarea from Severus Alexander to Volusianus gives the titleCol. I
F. Aug. F(elix?) C(?) Caes. Metrop.^93 All the evidence combines to suggest that
the normal language of Caesarea was Greek. It was there that, according to
the Talmud of Jerusalem, Rabbi Levi bar Haitah, heard the Shema (‘‘Hear,
O Israel’’) being recited in Greek.^94 He will have been in little danger of en-
countering the same phenomenon in Latin.
The last of thecoloniaeof this period was Aelia Capitolina, Jerusalem. Alone
of all thecoloniaeof the Near East, it arose from the destruction of an exist-
ing city and the wholesale replacement of its population by a new one. It
is not necessary here to enter into the question of the situation of Jerusa-
lem after the Jewish War of.., the problem of whether the foundation
of acoloniahad been decided on before the Bar Kochba war of..–
, or whether Jerusalem was ever captured by the rebels, and then recap-
tured by the Romans.^95 Whatever the immediate background, there is no
reason to doubt Cassius Dio’s report that a new city called Aelia Capitolina
was founded in the place of the one which had been destroyed, and that the
temple was replaced by a pagan temple to ‘‘Zeus’’ ( Juppiter Capitolinus);^96 a
gentile pagan population also took the place of a Jewish one;^97 hence the first
bishop of non-Jewish origin was in office there soon after the re-foundation
(Eusebius,HE, , ). We can assume that in this case large-scale re-building
accompanied the foundation, and accounts of this process are offered later by
. See, e.g., F. Millar,The Emperor in the RomanWorld(), . No detailed study of
the use of the term is known to me.
. Kadman (n. ), –.
.Jerusalem Talmud,Sotah, , a.
. For the basic evidence, see Schürer, Vermes, and Millar,HistoryI, –.
. Dio , , –. If he meant by sayingκαὶεἰςτὸντοῦναοῦτοῦθεοῦτόπον ναὸν
τῷΔιὶἕτερονἀντεγείραντοςthat the temple of Juppiter literally stood on the site of the
Temple, he was wrong.
. Zonaras , C; Malalas,Chron. .