Listed 2 sub titles with search on: Information about the place for wider area of: "FILIPPOUPOLIS Ancient city SYRIA" .
Market town at the N end of the mountains of the Hauran, on the road
from Damascus to Dionysias (Soueida) and Bostra, the home of the emperor Philip
the Arab (A.D. 244-49), who made it into a city.
The town was the usual large quadrilateral, and the cardo (the main
axis of traffic) and the decumanus (on a steep slope) are well preserved. A tetrapylon
marked their crossing. Large public baths and the piers and arches of an aqueduct
are visible in the SE district, while the columns of the portico of a hexastyle
temple stand to the W, on the N side of the decumanus. The Philippeion, the temple
of the imperial family, is a little farther S, and nearby is a theater built of
basalt, partly against the hill. All the arcades of the exterior facade, the scaenae
frons, and the greater part of the hemicycle are preserved. The entrances, corridors,
vomitoria, and stairways are well arranged.
Polychrome mosaic pavements have been found in the houses, depicting
individuals or vast allegorical or mythological tableaus. They date from the middle
of the 3d c. A.D. and some of them are now in the Damascus museum and in the Soueida
museum.
J. P. Rey-Coquais, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Nov 2002 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
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