Hierapolis Frontinus Gate
About
A monumental triple gate flanked by two round towers, dedicated to Domitian by Sextus Julius Frontinus, proconsul of Asia, around 84 to 86 CE. It opened onto Frontinus Street, the city's 14-meter-wide colonnaded main artery running north-south through its center. Already three decades old and a fixed civic landmark by the time Trajan died in 117 CE.
What happened here
The gate is where a town shows itself and where it counts what comes in. Traffic is funnelled between towers into arched passages — the wide ones for carts, the narrow ones for people — and closed at night with timber leaves shod in iron. A customs post takes duty on goods; a clerk records what passes. The outward face is the decorated one, with an inscription naming the emperor and the town, because this is the first thing a visitor reads. Guards are usually the town's own watchmen rather than soldiers. Just outside, the tombs begin; just inside, the shops. In a town whose walls have long stopped mattering militarily, the gate is kept up anyway, for the look of the thing.
Sources
Nearby
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Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →