A district embracing ten cities (as its name implies). After the conquest of Palestine by the Romans these cities were rebuilt and partly colonized, having peculiar privileges. Historians are not quite agreed as to which were the ten cities, but they are now generally held to have been Hippos, Gadara, Pella, Philadelphia, Gerasa, Dion, Canatha, Damascus, Raphana, and Scythopolis. All were on the east of the Jordan except Scythopolis: but the name Decapolis seems to have been used for a district on the west of the Jordan as well as on the east (Matt. 4:25; Mark 5:20; Mark 7:31). It was to Pella that the Christians fled just before the destruction of Jerusalem.