i KEEPERS OF THE HEKD OF SWINE 377 



whom I have consulted to be very questionable ; 

 and no such town is mentioned in the list of the 

 cities of the Decapolis, in the territory of which 

 (as it would seem from Mark v. 20) the transaction 

 was supposed to take place. About Gerasa, on 

 the other hand, there hangs no such doubt. It 

 was a large and important member of the group 

 of the Decapolitan cities. But Gerasa is more than 

 thirty miles distant from the nearest part of the 

 Lake of Tiberias, while the city mentioned in the 

 narative could not have been very far off the scene 

 of the event. However, as Gerasa was a very im- 

 portant Hellenic city, not much more than a score 

 of miles from Gadara, it is easily imaginable that 

 a locality which was part of Decapolitan territory 

 may have been spoken of as belonging to one of 

 the two cities, when it really appertained to the 

 other. After weighing all the arguments, no 

 doubt remains on my mind that "Gadarene" 

 is the proper reading. At the period under con- 

 sideration, Gadara appears to have been a good- 

 sized fortified town, about two miles in circum- 

 ference. It was a place of considerable strategic 

 importance, inasmuch as it lay on a high ridge at 

 the point of intersection of the roads from Tiberias, 

 Scythopolis, Damascus, and Gerasa. Three miles 

 north from it, where the Tiberias road descended 

 into the valley of the Hieromices, lay the famous 

 hot springs and the fashionable baths of Arnatha, 

 On the north- east side, the remains of the extensive 



