Porta Meridionalis Gerasae
About
Gerasa's southern entrance copied the acanthus-wreathed column bases of Hadrian's arch downhill and went up around 130 CE, fifteen years after the north gate. A single arched passage pierced the wall and fed traffic straight into the oval plaza. It postdates the 117 CE snapshot. Olive presses later crowded the ground just inside the threshold, turning the ceremonial entry into a working yard.
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
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 →