Abba Kolon is a mythical Roman mentioned in a Talmudic legend concerning the foundation of Rome, which, according to the

Haggadah The Haggadah ( he, הַגָּדָה, "telling"; plural: Haggadot) is a Jewish text that sets forth the order of the Passover Seder. According to Jewish practice, reading the Haggadah at the Seder table is a fulfillment of the mitzvah to each J ...

, was a result of the impious conduct of the Jewish kings. According to the legend, the first settlers of Rome found that their huts collapsed as soon as built, whereupon Abba Ḳolon said to them, "Unless you mix water from the

Euphrates The Euphrates () is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Tigris–Euphrates river system, Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia ( ''the land between the rivers'') ...

with your mortar, nothing that you build will stand." Then he offered to supply such water, and for this purpose journeyed through the East as a cooper, and returned with water from the Euphrates in wine-casks. The builders mixed this water with the mortar and built new huts that did not collapse. Hence the proverb, "A city without Abba Ḳolon is not worthy of the name." The newly built city was therefore called "Babylonian Rome".Shir Hashirim Rabbah 1:6 Probably this legend was intended to show the dependence of the Roman empire upon the natural resources of the East; but it contains a number of points that still remain unexplained. The above-mentioned Roman, or, more properly, Greco-Roman, proverb is just as obscure as the name "Abba Ḳolon," which, originating in some classic word, was distorted by the Jews into "a father of a colony," not without the mental reservation that "Ḳolon" is the Aramaic equivalent of "shame." An attempt has been made to identify the name with that of Deucalion, to which it bears no philological or historical relation. The most probable identification is that by Brüll, who refers to a legend in John Malalas' "Chronicles," p. 301, of a magician named Ablaccon, under the emperor

Tiberius Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus (; 16 November 42 BC – 16 March AD 37) was the second Roman emperor. He reigned from AD 14 until 37, succeeding his stepfather, the first Roman emperor Augustus. Tiberius was born in Rome in 42 BC. His father ...

. This Ablaccon protected the city of Antioch, by the aid of a rampart of stone, against the overflow of the mountain streams.

References

Talmudic mythology Fictional ancient Romans {{myth-stub