Dion is also said to have been founded by Alexander the Great and was apparently not far from Pella. It is thought by Merrill[311] and G. A. Smith to have been situated on the site of the modern Eidun, about twenty miles east of Pella, though this is doubted by others.[312] If Dion was at this point few, if any, antiquities remain to bear witness to the fact.
=7. Gerasa=, the modern Jerash, lay on one of the tributaries of the Jabbok about fifty miles southeast of Pella. We do not know what the name of the place was in Old Testament times. It is first mentioned in the time of Alexander Jannæus (104-79 B. C.).[313] It was then called Gerasa and was probably already at that time a Hellenic city. By whom it was built, we do not know, but it was probably one of the early Ptolemies of Egypt. From 100 B. C. till the Mohammedan conquest in 637 A. D., it flourished as a beautiful city, and later it was a city of some importance. It probably was overtaken by some calamity and the site of the Hellenic city abandoned soon after the year 637, as there are no Arabic remains above the Græco-Roman material. In the year 1121 Baldwin II, of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, made a campaign against Gerasa, where the ruler of Damascus had caused a castle to be built. In the next century the Arabian geographer, Yakut, describes it as deserted. It appears to have been ruined by an earthquake.
Apparently the Hellenic city at Gerasa lasted longer than any of the other cities of the Decapolis unless it be Kanatha. One can, accordingly, gain from the ruins of Gerasa an excellent idea of the general appearance of one of these cities.[314] The writer has never seen more beautiful ruins than those at Jerash except the ruins at Athens. As one approached the site from the south he faced a beautiful arched gateway. After passing this gateway one looked northward down a long colonnaded street, which at a little distance from the gate broadened out into a circular forum. At distances approximately equal from one another this main street was crossed by other colonnaded streets. A number of these columns are standing in different parts of the town. The remains of two imposing temples, of two theaters, of a large Christian basilica, and of various other buildings, impress one with the former glory of the city. A number of the buildings at Gerasa were built in the second century A. D. in the reign of the Antonines; (see Figs. 268, 269).