Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

December 6, 2022

A Road through Ancient Israel, Built by One of Its Most Notorious Enemies

Hadrian’s highway.

To Niccolò Machiavelli, Hadrian was one of Rome’s “five good emperors,” who presided over an unrivaled period of prosperity and stability; to Britons, he was the builder of the famous wall that runs the width of England; to Jews, he was the ruler who directed the bloody suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE and the subsequent persecutions, renamed Jerusalem “Aelia Capitolina” (after himself), and erased Judea from the map—dubbing it Syria Palistaena. He also built one of the ancient Levant’s major thoroughfares, a segment of which was recently excavated. The Times of Israel reports:

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