Porta Septentrionalis Gerasae
About
A dedicatory inscription of 115 CE hails Trajan as founder and saviour of the city, dating this gate two years before the emperor died. Its builders gave it a trapezoidal plan, wedging the road in from the northwest so it lined up dead straight with the Cardo. In 117 CE it was the newest monument in Gerasa and the main entrance from Pella. The trick of the skewed walls stays invisible until you stand inside the passage.
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.
In ancient writing
- Anonymous, Greek dedicatory inscription of the North Gate, Gerasa dated 115 CE
Names Trajan as founder and saviour of the city.
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 →