Livias

Livias

A titular see in Palestina Prima, suffragan of Cæsarea. It is twice mentioned in the Bible (Num xxxii, 36; Jos., xiii, 27) under the name of Betharan. About 80 B.C. Alexander Jannæus captured it from the King of the Arabs (Josephus, "Ant. Jud.", XIV, i, 4); it was then called Betharamphtha. Somewhat later Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee, fortified it with strong walls and called it Livias after the wife of Augustus; Josephus calls it Julias also, because he always speaks of the wife of Augustus as Julia ("Ant.", XVIII, ii, 1; "Bel. Jud.", II, ix,l). Nero gave it with its fourteen villages to Agrippa the Younger (Josephus, "Ant. Jud.", XX, viii, 4), and the Roman general Placidus captured it several years later (Josephus, "Bel. Jud.", IV, vii, 6). From the time of Eusebius and St. Jerome the natives always called it Bethramtha. Lequien (Oriens Christ., III, 655) mentions three bishops: Letoius, who was at Ephesus in 431; Pancratius, at Chalcedon in 451; Zacharias, at Jerusalem in 536. To-day Livias is known as Teller-Rameh, a hill rising in the plain beyond Jordan, about twelve miles from Jericho.

RELAND, Palæstina, I (Utrecht, 1714), 496; HEIDET in VIGOUROUX, Dict. de la Bible, s. v. BÈtharan.

S. VAILHÉ