LITHÓSTROTOS. – A Greek term («paved stone», «flagstone») corresponding to the Aramaic Gabbatha («eminent place», «height»), which in Jn 19:13 designates the place where Pilate set up his tribunal during the trial of Jesus. The Roman procurator, who normally resided in Caesarea in Palestine in the «Herod’s praetorium» (Acts 23:35), when he went to Jerusalem stayed, according to the custom of governors to occupy the palaces of deposed kings, in the palace of Herod (Philo, Legat. ad Caium, 38; Flavius Josephus, Bell. Jud., II, 14, 8), located in the upper city, south of the present Jaffa Gate. In this residence, which by its elevation and the magnificence of its courtyards could claim the antonomasic title of Gabbatha and of L., the procurator Gessius Florus (64–66) pronounced sentence in a trial that in the narrative of Flavius Josephus (Bell. Jud., II, 14, 8) presents various similarities with the trial of Jesus.
Tradition, however, has since antiquity looked to the «lower city» in the vicinity of the Temple, fixing in the Middle Ages on the so-called «Ecce Homo Arch» (q.v.). In the basements of the attic of the monastery of Notre Dame de Saint-Sulpice and of the Convent of the Flagellation, through excavations carried out at various times between the years 1898–1931, there was brought to light and reconstructed the plan of a vast courtyard (3,200 sq. m. in area) covered with large, solid stone slabs (2 m. in length, 1.50 in width, 0.50 in thickness), a work typically Roman, with various delineations of games and traces of grooves to prevent horses from slipping. The grand pavement, flanked by various structures that archaeologists recognize as remains of the fortress Antonia (q.v.), was such that it could be known by the Hellenizers as L., while for conservative Jews it continued to be Gabbatha or the height on which the Antonia stood. It is therefore not improbable that Pilate, as other authorities did (Ant. Jud., XXI, 27; Bell. Jud., I, 4, 3; II, 12, 1) on the occasion of Passover, exceptionally transferred himself to the fortress Antonia to better control the crowds gathered at the Temple and there set up his tribunal to judge Jesus. The unfolding of the trial and the various Gospel scenes fit easily into the fortress Antonia; so that tradition seems to rest on authentic memories.