page_title: Caesarea Philippi
section_title: Hellenistic Paneas
hierarchical_section_title: Caesarea Philippi / History / Hellenistic Paneas
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Caesarea Philippi: Ausgrabungsgebiet
context_page_description: Caesarea Philippi was an ancient Roman city located at the southwestern base of Mount Hermon. It was adjacent to a spring, grotto, and related shrines dedicated to the Greek god Pan. Now nearly uninhabited, Caesarea is an archaeological site in the Golan Heights.
  Caesarea was called Paneas, later Caesarea Paneas, from the Hellenistic period after its association with the god Pan, a name that mutated to Banias, the name by which the site is known today. For a short period, the city was also known as Neronias; the surrounding region was known as the Panion.
  Caesarea Philippi is mentioned by name in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. The city may appear in the Old Testament under the name Baal Gad; Baal Gad is described as being "in the Valley of Lebanon below Mount Hermon." Philostorgius, Theodoret, Benjamin of Tudela, and Samuel ben Samson all incorrectly identified Caesarea Philippi with Laish. Eusebius of Caesarea, however, accurately placed Laish in the vicinity of Paneas, but at the fourth mile on the route to Tyre.
context_section_description: Alexander the Great's conquests started a process of Hellenisation in Egypt and Syria that continued for 1,000 years. Paneas was first settled in the Hellenistic period. The Ptolemaic kings, in the 3rd century BC, built a cult centre.
  Panias is a spring, today known as Banias, named for Pan, the Greek god of desolate places. It lies close to the "way of the sea" mentioned by Isaiah, along which many armies of Antiquity marched. In the distant past a giant spring gushed from a cave in the limestone bedrock, tumbling down the valley to flow into the Huela marshes. Currently it is the source of the stream Nahal Senir. The Jordan River previously rose from the malaria-infested Huela marshes, but it now rises from this spring and two others at the base of Mount Hermon. The flow of the spring has decreased greatly in modern times. The water no longer gushes from the cave, but only seeps from the bedrock below it.
  Paneas was certainly an ancient place of great sanctity and, when Hellenised religious influences were overlaid on the region, the cult of its local numen gave place to the worship of Pan, to whom the cave was dedicated and from which the copious spring rose, feeding the Huela marshes and ultimately supplying the river Jordan. The pre-Hellenic deities that have been associated with the site are Ba'al-gad or Ba'al-hermon.
  The Battle of Panium is mentioned in extant sections of Greek historian Polybius's history of "The Rise of the Roman Empire". The battle of Panium occurred in 198 BC between the Macedonian armies of Ptolemaic Egypt and the Seleucid Greeks of Coele-Syria, led by Antiochus III. Antiochus's victory cemented Seleucid control over Phoenicia, Galilee, Samaria, and Judea until the Maccabean revolt. The Hellenised Sellucids built a pagan temple dedicated to Pan (a goat-footed god of victory in battle [creator of panic in the enemy], desolate places, music and goat herds) at Paneas.
caption: Ruins of the Agrippa palace in "Neronias/Caesarea Philippi"
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