base could easily be threatened, first.  It might really have been fair evidence of demoniac possession, if the best general of Rome had marched forty odd miles, as the crow flies, through hostile Galilee, to take a city (which, moreover, had just tried to abolish its Jewish population) on the other side of the Jordan; and then marched back again to a place fourteen miles off his starting-point.[105] One would think that the most careless of readers must be startled by this incongruity into inquiring whether there might not be something wrong with the text; and, if he had done so, he would have easily discovered that since the time of Reland, a century and a half ago, careful scholars have read Ga_b_ara for Ga_d_ara.[106]

Once more, I venture to point out that training in the use of the weapons of precision of science may have its value in historical studies, if only in preventing the occurrence of droll blunders in geography.

In the third citation ("Wars,” IV. vii.) Josephus tells us that Vespasian marched against “Gadara,” which he calls the metropolis of Peraea (it was possibly the seat of a common festival of the Decapolitan cities), and entered it, without opposition, the wealthy and powerful citizens having opened negotiations with him without the knowledge of an opposite party, who, “as being inferior in number to their enemies, who were within the city, and seeing the Romans very near the city,” resolved to fly.  Before doing so, however, they, after a fashion unfortunately too common among the Zealots, murdered and shockingly mutilated Dolesus, a man of the first rank, who had promoted the embassy to Vespasian; and then “ran out of the city.”  Hereupon, “the people of Gadara” (surely not this time “Hebrews bound by the Mosaic law”) received Vespasian with joyful acclamations, voluntarily pulled down their wall, so that the city could not in future be used as a fortress by the Jews, and accepted a Roman garrison for their future protection.  Granting that this Gadara really is the city of the Gadarenes, the reference, without citation, to the passage, in support of Mr. Gladstone’s contention seems rather remarkable.  Taken in conjunction with the shortly antecedent ravaging of the Gadarene territory by the Jews, in fact, better proof could hardly be expected of the real state of the case; namely, that the population of Gadara (and notably the wealthy and respectable part of it) was thoroughly Hellenic; though, as in Caesarea and elsewhere among the Palestinian cities, the rabble contained a considerable body of fanatical Jews, whose reckless ferocity made them, even though a mere minority of the population, a standing danger to the city.

Thus Mr. Gladstone’s conclusion from his study of Josephus, that the population of Gadara were “Hebrews bound by the Mosaic law,” turns out to depend upon nothing better than the marvellously complete misinterpretation of what that author says, combined with equally marvellous geographical misunderstandings, long since exposed and rectified; while the positive evidence that Gadara, like other cities of the Decapolis, was thoroughly Hellenic in organisation, and essentially Gentile in population, is overwhelming.