Hippos

Hippos (Greek for “horse”; Aramaic Sussita) was one of the cities of the Decapolis, perched on a flat ridge above the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, opposite Capernaum. Though not named verse-by-verse, it forms part of the Decapolis setting in which Jesus healed and taught, and from which large crowds came to follow him.

Hippos—Greek for “horse,” and Sussita in Aramaic with the same meaning—sat on a flat hilltop overlooking the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. It was a member of the Decapolis (“ten cities”), a league of Greco-Roman cities under Roman rule that, apart from Beth-shean (Scythopolis), lay mostly east of the Jordan and southeast of the lake.Founded or expanded under the Seleucids around the second century B.C.E., Hippos was brought under Roman control by Pompey in 63 B.C.E., attached to Syria, and became an autonomous Decapolis city. It had broad colonnaded streets, temples, a theater, and baths, and its people were largely Hellenistic Gentiles—a sharp contrast to the Jewish towns of Capernaum and Chorazin across the water. From its summit the western shore where Jesus ministered lay in full view.The Gospels mention the “Decapolis” repeatedly, and Hippos was one of its closest and most prominent cities to the Sea of Galilee. Early in Jesus’ ministry, “large crowds followed him from Galilee and Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea and from across the Jordan.” (Matthew 4:25) In the region of the Gadarenes, Jesus healed a demon-possessed man whose name was Legion, and after his recovery “he went away and started to proclaim in the Decapolis the things Jesus had done for him, and all were amazed.” (Mark 5:20) Later Jesus “went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, through the midst of the region of Decapolis,” where he healed a deaf man with a speech impediment. (Mark 7:31-37) The people of these Gentile cities were precisely those Jesus reached and cared for.Excavations at Hippos have uncovered colonnaded streets, Roman baths, churches, and fortifications, tracing its rise and fall from Hellenistic and Roman to Byzantine times. A great earthquake in 749 C.E. finally destroyed the hilltop city. Today the ruins of Sussita National Park stand on the heights above the eastern shore, still evoking the “horse city” facing the lands across the lake where Jesus taught.