The Founder’s Tomb

IN HIS NATURAL HISTORY, a first-century A.D. book that purports to contain everything then known about the world, the Roman historian Pliny the Elder briefly describes the Decapolis, a region at the Roman Empire’s eastern edge. He notes that, as its Greek name suggests, the Decapolis consists of 10 cities—among them Damascus, Syria; Philadelphia, now Amman, Jordan; and Hippos, Israel—though he adds that “all writers are not agreed” precisely which cities should make the list. A later account, from the second-century A.D. Greek geographer Ptolemy, who lived in the Roman province of Egypt, jettisons one of Pliny’s Decapolis cities, Raphana, but adds nine more, for a total of 18. One of the additions was a newly founded city with the Latin name of Capitolias.

Many cities of the Decapolis were originally Greek colonies settled beginning in the late fourth century B.C. by Alexander the Great of Macedon or his successors. However, Capitolias, which was most likely the last of the Decapolis cities