AREOPOLIS (ar'e-op'o-lis). See AR; AROER. ARETAS (ar'e-tas) (Gr. 'Apftas, ar-et'as), the common name of several Arabian kings.
1. The first of whom we have any notice was a contemporary of the Jewish high-priest Jason and of Antiochus Epiphanes about B.C. 17o (2 Mace. v:8).
2. Josephus (Antiq. xiii:: 3, 3) mentions an Are tas, king of the Arabians (called Obedas, xiii:t 3, 5), contemporary with Alexander Jantius (died B.C. 79) and his sons. After defeating Antiochus Dion ysus, he reigned over Ccele-Syria, called to the government by those that held Damascus.
He took part with Hyrcanus in his contest for the sovereignty with his brother Aristobulus, and laid siege to Jerusalem, but, on the approach of the Roman general Scaurus, he retreated to Phil adelphia (De Bell. Ind. i :6, 3). Hyrcanus and Aretas were pursued and defeated by Aristobulus at a place called Papyron, and lost above 6,000 men. Three or four years after, Scaurus, to whom Pompey had committed the government of Ccele-Syria, invaded Petrxa, but finding it diffi cult to obtain provisions for his army, he con sented to withdraw on the offer of 30o talents from Aretas (Joseph. Antiq. xiv : 5, 1). Haver camp has given an engraving of a denarius in tended to commemorate this event, on which Are tas appears in a supplicating posture, and taking hold of a camel's bridle with his left hand, and with his right hand presenting a branch of the frankincense-tree. (See Illustration.) 3. Aretas, whose name was originally yEneas, succeeded Obodas ('01368as). He was the father in-law of Herod Antipas. The latter made pro posals of marriage to the wife of his half-brother He rod-Philip, Herodias, thedaughterof Aristobulus, their brother, and the sister of Agrippa the Great. In consequence of this, the daughter of Aretas returned to her father, and a war, which had been fomented by previous disputes about the lim its of their respective countries, ensued between Aretas and Herod. The army of the latter was
totally destroyed ; and on his sending an account of his disaster to Rome, the emperor immediately ordered Vitellius to bring Aretas prisoner alive, or, if dead, to send his head (Joseph. Antiq. xviii: 5, 1). But while Vitellius was on his march to Petra, news arrived of the death of Tiberius, upon which, after administering the oath of allegiance to his troops, he dismissed them to winter-quarters and returned to Rome. It must have been at this juncture that Aretas took possession of Damas cus, and placed a governor in it with a garrison. For a knowledge of this fact we are indebted to the apostle Paul. 'In Damas cus the governor under Aretas the king kept the city of the Damascenes with a garrison,desirous to apprehend me; and through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall, and escaped his hands' (2 Cor. xi:32, compared with Acts ix:24). We are thus furnished with a chronological mark in the Apostle's history. From Gal. i :18, it appears that Paul went up to Jerusalem from Damascus three years after his conversion. The emperor Tiberius died in A. D. 37; and as the affairs of Arabia were settled in the second year of Cali gula, Damascus was then most probably reoccu pied by the Romans. If, then, Paul's flight took place in A. D. 39, his conversion must have oc curred in A. D. 36 (Neander's History of the Planting of the Christian Church, i:io7, English trans.; Lardner's Credibility. etc. Supplement, chap. xi ; Works, ed. 1835, verse 497).