The territory of Abila, a town in the Barada gorge on the road from Damascus to the coast. Josephus calls it 'Abila of Lysanias' and 'the tetrarchy of Lysanias' (Antiquities 19.275; 20.138); the emperor Claudius later gave it to Herod Agrippa I. ⚠ Named once in the New Testament: 'Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene' (Luke 3:1). An inscription cut in the rock beside the ancient road here records a road and a temple built by a freedman 'of Lysanias the tetrarch' for the safety of 'the lords Augusti', usually dated to AD 14–29 — the chief evidence that there was a tetrarch Lysanias in Luke's period, and not only the earlier Lysanias whom Mark Antony executed.