Ecce Homo Arch
The population of Aelia Capitolina consisted primarily of Roman legionaries, veterans, and other non-Jewish settlers. Jews were forbidden entrance to the city. The city's urban layout was redesigned with broad colonnaded streets, arched gateways, and forums that served as commercial and social hubs. The religious landscape also shifted, with the worship of Roman deities replacing the Jewish religious practices that had been centered around the Temple in Jerusalem. Aelia Capitolina remained a relatively minor city within the Roman Empire, with an estimated population of around 4,000 inhabitants, significantly lower than the population during the late Second Temple period.
The modest colony would change dramatically starting in the early 4th century, when Constantine the Great granted Christianity legal status within the Roman Empire. This led to the construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, laying the groundwork for its eventual transformation into a prominent Christian center during the Byzantine period. The ban on Jews was maintained until the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem in 636. The Aelia part of the name was used in Arabic as Īlyāʾ during the Umayyad Caliphate.
Name
Aelia came from Hadrian's Aelia gens, while Capitolina meant that the new city was dedicated to Jupiter Capitolinus, whom the Romans believed had vanquished and replaced the God of the Jews. A temple to Jupiter was built in the city. The Latin name Aelia is the source of the much later term Īlyāʾ (إيليا), a 7th-century early Arab name for Jerusalem.
History
| Aelia Capitolina (Jerusalem) | |||
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| AD 130 – AD 324–325 | |||
 Jerusalem in the Roman empire under Hadrian showing the location of the Roman legions | |||
Chronology
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Jerusalem, once heavily rebuilt by Herod the Great, was still in ruins following the decisive siege of the city in 70 CE as part of the First Jewish–Roman War.
Emperor Hadrian decided to rebuild the city as a colonia inhabited by his legionaries. Hadrian's new city was to be dedicated to himself and certain Roman gods, in particular Capitoline Jupiter.
Scholars disagree whether Hadrian's anti-Jewish decrees followed the Bar Kokhba revolt or preceded it and were the cause. The older view is that the Bar Kokhba revolt, which took the Romans three years to suppress, enraged Hadrian, and he became determined to erase Judaism from the province. Circumcision was forbidden, and Jews were expelled from the city. Hadrian renamed the province of Judaea to Syria Palaestina, dispensing with the Jewish-associated name.
Jerusalem was renamed Aelia Capitolina and rebuilt in the style of its original Hippodamian plan, although adapted to Roman use. Jews were prohibited from entering the city on pain of death except for one day each year: during the fast day of Tisha B'Av. Taken together, these measures (which also affected Jewish Christians) essentially secularized the city. Historical sources and archaeological evidence indicate that veterans of the Roman military and immigrants from the western parts of the empire now inhabited the rebuilt city.
Archaeological evidence from this period indicates that Roman customs, including pork consumption and the presence of statues and figured decorations, became widespread. Jewish symbols and practices, such as the use of miqvaot (ritual baths) and traditional stone vessels, disappeared.
According to Eusebius, the Jerusalem church was scattered twice, in 70 and 135, with the difference that from 70 to 130, the bishops of Jerusalem have Jewish names. After 135, the bishops of Aelia Capitolina appear to be Greeks. Eusebius' evidence for the continuation of a church at Aelia Capitolina is confirmed by the Itinerarium Burdigalense.
Plan of the city
The city was without walls, protected by a light garrison of Legio X Fretensis during the Late Roman period. The detachment at Jerusalem, which encamped all over the city's western hill, was responsible for preventing Jews from returning to the city. Roman enforcement of this prohibition continued through the 4th century.
Layout and street pattern
The urban plan of Aelia Capitolina was that of a typical Roman town wherein main thoroughfares crisscrossed the urban grid lengthwise and widthwise. The urban grid was based on the usual central north–south road (cardo maximus) and central east–west route (decumanus maximus). However, as the main cardo ran up the western hill, and the Temple Mount blocked the eastward route of the main decumanus, the strict pattern had to be adapted to the local topography; a secondary, eastern cardo, diverged from the western one and ran down the Tyropoeon Valley, while the decumanus had to zigzag around the Temple Mount, passing it on its northern side. The Hadrianic western cardo terminated not far beyond its junction with the decumanus, where it reached the Roman garrison's encampment, but in the Byzantine period, it was extended over the former camp to reach the southern, expanded margins of the city.
The two cardines converged near the Damascus Gate, and a semicircular piazza covered the remaining space; in the piazza, a columnar monument was constructed, hence the Arabic name for the gate, Bab el-Amud ("Gate of the Column"). Tetrapylones were constructed at the other junctions between the main roads.
This street pattern has been preserved in the Old City of Jerusalem to the present. The original thoroughfare, flanked by rows of columns and shops, was about 73 feet (22 meters) wide, but buildings have extended onto the streets over the centuries, and the modern lanes replacing the ancient grid are now quite narrow. The substantial remains of the western cardo have now been exposed to view near the junction with Suq el-Bazaar, and remnants of one of the tetrapylones are preserved in the 19th century Franciscan chapel at the junction of the Via Dolorosa and Suq Khan ez-Zeit.
Western forum
As was standard for new Roman cities, Hadrian placed the city's main forum at the junction of the main cardo and decumanus, now the location for the (smaller) Muristan. Adjacent to the forum, Hadrian built a large temple to Venus, at a site later used for the construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; several boundary walls of Hadrian's temple have been found among the archaeological remains beneath the church.
Valley cardo and eastern forum
The Struthion Pool lay in the path of the northern decumanus, so Hadrian placed vaulting over it, added a large pavement on top, and turned it into a secondary forum; the pavement can still be seen under the Convent of the Sisters of Zion.
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