LITHÓSTROTOS. – A Greek term (“stone layer,” “pavement”) corresponding to the Aramaic Gabbatha (“elevated place,” “height”), by which Io. 19:13 designates the place where Pilate set up the tribunal during the trial of Jesus. The Roman procurator, who ordinarily resided at Caesarea in Palestine in the “praetorium of Herod” (Act. 23:35), when he went to Jerusalem lived, in accordance with the practice of governors occupying the palaces of deposed kings, in Herod’s palace (Philo, Legat. ad Caium, 38; Fl. Josephus, Bell. Iud., II, 14, 8), situated in the “upper city,” south of the present Jaffa Gate. In this residence, which by virtue of its elevation and the magnificence of its courtyards could claim the antonomastic designation of Gabbatha and L., the procurator Gessius Florus (64–66) pronounced sentence in a trial which, in the account of Fl. Josephus (Bell. Iud., II, 14, 8), presents various similarities to the trial of Jesus.
Tradition, however, has since antiquity looked to the “lower city” in the vicinity of the Temple, settling in the Middle Ages on the so-called “Ecce Homo Arch” (v.). In the underground area of the adjacent Notre Dame de Sion monastery and Convent of the Flagellation, excavations carried out at various times between 1898 and 1931 brought to light and reconstructed the plan of a vast courtyard (2,500 sq. m. in area), paved with broad, solid stone slabs (2 m. long, 1.50 m. wide, 0.50 m. thick), a typically Roman work, with various outlines of games and traces of grooves intended to prevent horses from slipping. The grand pavement, flanked by various structures that archaeologists recognize fortress (v.), was such that it could have been known to Hellenizers as L., while for conservative Jews it continued to be the Gabbatha, or the height on which the Antonia stood. It is therefore not unlikely that Pilate, as other authorities did (Antiq. Iud., XXI, 27; Bell. Iud., I, 4, 3; II, 12, 1) on the occasion of Passover, exceptionally transferred himself to the Antonia fortress in order to better control the crowds that had gathered at the Temple, and brought the tribunal there to judge Jesus. The proceedings of the trial and the various Gospel scenes fit easily within, and can readily be localized in, the Antonia fortress; hence the tradition seems to rest on authentic memories.