Glucker Carol A.M. The City of Gaza in the Roman and Byzantine Periods

BAR Publishing, 1987. — 180 p. — (BAR International Series 325).During the Roman and Byzantine periods Gaza became one of the largest and most prosperous cities of Palestine. Yet it played little part in the disturbances that troubled the province and its history was uneventful. Its magnificant buildings have disappeared and, because its site has been occupied continuously down to the present day, very little archaeological investigation has been possible. So Gaza has attracted relatively little interest among modern scholars. Yet there does exist evidence for the development and history of the city. In particular, we have documents from the Byzantine period, written in Gaza and providing valuable evidence for the life of the city at that time. One, the Vita Porphyrii of Marcus Diaconus, gives an eye-witness account of a crucial transition in the city's history, the destruction of the pagan temples and the official imposition of Christianity on the people of Gaza. The others, the speeches of Choricius of Gaza, describe vividly the buildings and festivals of the city at the time of its greatest prosperity and eulogize some of its most famous citizens. There is, moreover, some new archaeological evidence, discovered in the last twenty years, and a few new inscriptions have come to light. The materials exist, then, for a fuller study of of Roman and Byzantine Gaza than has yet been provided in the present century.
The purpose of this work is, therefore, to re-examine the literary sources of Gaza, in the light of modern research, together with the new information provided by archaeology and epigraphy, and to attempt to give as full an account as possible of the history of the city, paying attention to such factors affecting its development as its geographical position and trade. I shall also collect the inscriptions of Gaza, bringing previous collections up-to-date by the addition of inscriptions published in the twentieth century.