The Project Gutenberg eBook of the Provinces of the Roman Empire, Vol. II., by Theodor Mommsen.

101 That Odaenathus, as well as after him his son Vaballathus (apart, of course, from the time after the rupture with Aurelian), were by no means Augusti (as the vit. Gallieni, 12, erroneously states), is shown both by the absence of the name of Augustus on the coins and by the title possible only for a subject, v(ir) c(onsularis) = ὑ(πατικός), which, like the father (p. 97, note 3), the son still bears. The position of governor is designated on the coins of the son by im(perator) d(ux) R(omanorum) = αὐτ(οκράτωρ) σ(τρατηγός); in agreement therewith Zonaras (xii. 23, and again xii. 24) and Syncellus (p. 716) state that Gallienus appointed Odaenathus, on account of his victory over the Persians and Ballista, as στρατηγὸς τῆς ἑῴας, or πάσης ἀνατολῆς; and the biographer of Gallienus, 10, that he obtinuit totius Orientis imperium. By this is meant all the Asiatic provinces and Egypt; the added imperator = αὐτοκράτωρ (comp. Trig. tyr. 15, 6, post reditum de Perside—Herodes son of Odaenathus—cum patre imperator est appellatus) is intended beyond doubt to express the freer handling of power, different from the usual authority of the governor.—To this was added further the now formally assumed title of a king of Palmyra (Trig. tyr. 15, 2: adsumpto nomine regali), which also the son bears, not on the Egyptian, but on the Syrian coins. The circumstance that Odaenathus is probably called melekh malke, “king of kings,” on an inscription set up in August 271, and so after his death and during the war of his adherents with Aurelian (Vogué, n. 28), belongs to the revolutionary demonstrations of this period and forms no proof for the earlier time.

102 The numerous inscriptions of Septimius Vorodes, set up in the years 262 to 267 (Waddington, 2606–2610), and so in the lifetime of Odaenathus, all designate him as imperial procurator of the second class (ducenarius), but at the same time partly by the title ἀργαπέτης, which Persian word, current also among the Jews, signifies "lord of a castle," “viceroy” (Levy, Zeitsch. der deutschen morgenl. Gesellschaft, xviii. 90; Nöldeke, ib. xxiv. 107), partly as δικαιοδότης τῆς μητροκολωνίας, which, beyond doubt, is in substance at any rate, if not in language, the same office. Presumably we must understand by it that office on account of which the father of Odaenathus is called the “head of Tadmor” (p. 97, note 2); the one chief of Palmyra competent for martial law and for the administration of justice; only that, since extended powers were given to the position of Odaenathus, this post as a subordinate office is filled by a man of equestrian rank. The conjecture of Sachau (Zeitschr. der d. morgenl. Gesellsch. xxxv. 738) that this Vorodes is the “Wurud” of a copper coin of the Berlin cabinet, and that both are identical with the elder son of Odaenathus, Herodes, who was killed at the same time with his father, is liable to serious difficulties. Herodes and Orodes are different names (in the Palmyrene inscription, Waddington, 2610, the two stand side by side); the son of a senator cannot well fill an equestrian office; a procurator coining money with his image is not conceivable even for this exceptional state of things. Probably the coin is not Palmyrene at all. “It is,” von Sallet writes to me, "probably older than Odaenathus, and belongs perhaps to an Arsacid of the second century A.D.; it shows a head with a headdress similar to the Sassanid; the reverse, S C in a chaplet of laurel, appears imitated from the coins of Antioch."—If subsequently, after the breach with Rome in 271, on an inscription of Palmyra (Waddington, 2611) two generals of the Palmyrenes are distinguished, ὁ μέγας στρατηλάτης, the historically known Zabdas, and ὁ ἐνθάδε στρατηλάτης, Zabbaeos, the latter is, it may be presumed, just the Argapetes.

103 The state of the case speaks in favour of this; evidence is wanting. In the imperial biographies of this epoch the Armenians are wont to be adduced among the border peoples independent of Rome (Valer. 6; Trig. tyr. 30, 7, 18; Aurel. 11, 27, 28, 41); but this is one of their quite untrustworthy elements of embellishment.

104 This more modest account (Eutropius, ix. 10; vita Gallieni, 10; Trig. tyr. 15, 4; Zos. i. 39, who alone attests the two expeditions) must be preferred to that which mentions the capture of the city (Syncellus, p. 716).

105 This is shown by the accounts as to Carinus (cont. of Dio, p. 8) and as to Rufinus (P. 106, note 2). That after the death of Odaenathus Heraclianus, a general acting on Gallienus’s orders against the Persians, was attacked and conquered by Zenobia (vita Gallieni, 13, 5), is in itself not impossible, seeing that the princes of Palmyra possessed de iure the chief command in all the East, and such an action, even if it were suggested by Gallienus, might be treated as offending against this right, and this would clearly indicate the strained relation; but the authority vouching it is so bad that little stress can be laid on it.

106 This we learn from the characteristic narrative of Petrus, fr. 10, which is to be placed before fr. 11.

107 The account of the continuator of Dio, fr. 7, that the old Odaenathus was put to death, as suspected of treason, by one (not elsewhere mentioned) Rufinus, and that the younger, when he had impeached this person at the bar of the emperor Gallienus, was dismissed on the declaration of Rufinus that the accuser deserved the same fate, cannot be correct as it stands. But Waddington’s proposal to substitute Gallus for Gallienus, and to recognise in the accuser the husband of Zenobia, is not admissible, since the father of this Odaenathus was Hairanes, in whose case there existed no ground at all for such an execution, and the excerpt in its whole character undoubtedly applies to Gallienus. Rather must the old Odaenathus have been the husband of Zenobia, and the author have erroneously assigned to Vaballathus, in whose name the charge was brought, his father’s name.

108 All the details which are current in our accounts of Zenobia originate from the imperial biographies; and they will only be repeated by such as do not know this source.

109 The name Vaballathus is given, in addition to the coins and inscriptions, by Polemius Silvius, p. 243 of my edition, and the biographer of Aurelian, c. 38, while he describes as incorrect the statement that Odaenathus had left two sons, Timolaus and Herennianus. In reality these two persons emerging simply in the imperial biographies appear along with all that is connected with them as invented by the writer, to whom the thorough falsification of these biographies is to be referred. Zosimus too, i. 59, knows only of one son, who went into captivity with his mother.

110 Whether Zenobia claimed for herself formal joint-rule, cannot be certainly determined. In Palmyra she names herself still after the rupture with Rome merely βασιλίσση (Waddington, 2611, 2628), in the rest of the empire she may have laid claim to the title Augusta, Σεβαστή; for, though there are no coins of Zenobia from the period prior to the breach with Rome, yet on the one hand the Alexandrian inscription with βασιλίσσης καὶ βασιλέως προσταξάντων (Eph. epigr. iv. p. 25, p. 33) cannot lay any claim to official redaction, and on the other hand the inscription of Byblos, C. I. Gr. 4503 b = Waddington, n. 2611, gives in fact to Zenobia the title Σεβαστή alongside of Claudius or Aurelian, while it refuses it to Vaballathus. This is so far intelligible, as Augusta was an honorary designation, Augustus an official one, and thus that might well be conceded to the woman which was refused to the man.

111 So Zosimus, i. 44, narrates the course of events with which Zonaras, xii. 27 and Syncellus, p. 721, in the main agree. The report in the life of Claudius, c. 11, is more displaced than properly contradictory; the first half is only indicated by the naming of Saba; the narrative begins with the successful attempt of Timagenes to ward off the attack of Probus (here Probatus). The view taken of this by me in Sallet (Palmyra, p. 44) is not tenable.

112 The determination of the date depends on the fact that the usurpation-coins of Vaballathus cease already in the fifth year of his Egyptian reign, i.e. 29th August 270–71; the fact that they are very rare speaks for the beginning of the year. With this essentially agrees the circumstance that the storming of the Prucheion (which, we may add, was no part of the city, but a locality close by the city on the side of the great oasis; Hieronymus, vit. Hilarionis, c. 33, 34, vol. ii. p. 32 Vall.) is put by Eusebius in his Chronicle in the first year of Claudius, by Ammianus, xxii. 16, 15, under Aurelian; the most exact report in Eusebius, H. Eccl. vii. 32, is not dated. The reconquest of Egypt by Probus stands only in his biography, c. 9; it may have happened as it is told, but it is possible also that in this thoroughly falsified source the history of Timagenes has been mutatis mutandis transferred to the emperor.

113 This is perhaps what the report on the battle of Hemesa, extracted by Zosimus, i. 52, wished to bring out, when it enumerates among the troops of Aurelian the Dalmatians, Moesians, Pannonians, Noricans, Raetians, Mauretanians, and the guard. When he associates with these the troops of Tyana and some divisions from Mesopotamia, Syria, Phoenice, Palestine, this applies beyond doubt to the Cappadocian garrisons, which had joined after the capture of Tyana, and to some divisions of the armies of the East favourably disposed to Rome, who went over to Aurelian upon his marching into Syria.

114 By mistake Eutropius, ix. 13, places the decisive battle haud longe ab Antiochia: the mistake is heightened in Rufius, c. 24 (on whom Hieronymus, chron. a. Abr. 2289 depends), and in Syncellus, p. 721, by the addition apud Immas, ἐν Ἴμμαις, which place, lying 33 Roman miles from Antioch on the road to Chalcis, is far away from Hemesa. The two chief accounts, in Zosimus and the biographer of Aurelian, agree in all essentials.

115 This is the name given by Zosimus, i. 60, and Polemius Silvius, p. 243; the Achilleus of the biographer of Aurelian, c. 31, seems a confusion with the usurper of the time of Diocletian.—That at the same time in Egypt a partisan of Zenobia and at the same time robber-chief, by name Firmus, rose against the government, is doubtless possible, but the statement rests only on the imperial biographies, and the details added sound very suspiciously.

116 The chronology of these events is not quite settled. The rarity of the Syrian coins of Vaballathus as Augustus shows that the rupture with Aurelian (end of 270) was soon followed by the conquest. According to the dated inscriptions of Odaenathus and Zenobia of August 271 (Waddington, 2611), the rule of the queen was at that time still intact. As an expedition of this sort, from the conditions of the climate, could not well take place otherwise than in spring, the first capture of Palmyra must have ensued in the spring of 272. The most recent (merely Palmyrene) inscription which we know from that quarter (Vogué, n. 116) is of August 272. The insurrection probably falls at this time; the second capture and the destruction somewhere in the spring of the year 273 (in accordance with which, I. 166, note 1, is to be corrected).

117 It throws no light on the position of the Armenians, that in descriptions otherwise thoroughly apocryphal (vita Valer. 6; vita Aurel. 37, 28) the Armenians after the catastrophe of Valerian keep to the Persians, and appear in the last crisis of the Palmyrenes as allies of Zenobia by the side of the Persians; both are obvious consequences from the general position of things. That Aurelian did not subdue Armenia any more than Mesopotamia, is supported in this case partly by the silence of the authorities, partly by the account of Synesius (de regno, p. 17) that the emperor Carinus (rather Carus) had in Armenia, close to the frontier of the Persian territory, summarily dismissed a Persian embassy, and that the young Persian king, alarmed by its report, had declared himself ready for any concession. I do not see how this narrative can be referred to Probus, as von Gutschmid thinks (Zeitschr. d. deutsch. morgenl. Gesell. xxxi. 50); on the other hand it suits very well the Persian expedition of Carus.

118 The reconquest of Mesopotamia is reported only by the biographer, c. 8; but at the outbreak of the Persian war under Diocletian it is Roman. There is mention at the same place of internal troubles in the Persian empire; also in a discourse held in the year 289 (Paneg. iii. c. 17) there is mention of the war, which is waged against the king of Persia—this was Bahram II.—by his own brother Ormies or rather Hormizd adscitis Sacis et Ruffis (?) et Gellis (comp. Nöldeke, Tabarî, p. 479). We have altogether only some detached notices as to this important campaign.

119 This is stated clearly by Mamertinus (Paneg. ii. 7, comp. ii. 10, iii. 6) in the oration held in 289: Syriam velut amplexu suo tegebat Euphrates antequam Diocletiano sponte (that is, without Diocletian needing to have recourse to arms, as is then further set forth) se dederent regna Persarum; and further by another panegyrist of the year 296 (Paneg. v. 3): Partho ultra Tigrim reducto. Turns like that in Victor, Caes. xxxix. 33, that Galerius relictis finibus had marched to Mesopotamia, or that Narseh, according to Rufius Festus, c. 25, ceded Mesopotamia in peace, cannot on the other hand be urged; and as little, that Oriental authorities place the Roman occupation of Nisibis in 609 Sel. = 297/8 A.D. (Nöldeke, Tabarî, p. 50). If this were correct, the exact account as to the negotiations for peace of 297 in Petrus Patricius, fr, 14, could not possibly be silent as to the cession of Mesopotamia and merely make mention of the regulation of the frontier-traffic.

120 That Narseh broke into Armenia at that time Roman, is stated by Ammianus, xxiii. 5, 11; for Mesopotamia the same follows from Eutropius, ix. 24. On the 1st March 296 peace was still subsisting, or at any rate the declaration of war was not yet known in the west (Paneg. v. 10).

121 The differences in the exceptionally good accounts, particularly of Petrus Patricius, fr. 14, and Ammianus, xxv. 7, 9, are probably only of a formal kind. The fact that the Tigris was to be the proper boundary of the empire, as Priscus says, does not exclude, especially considering the peculiar character of its upper course, the possibility of the boundary there partially going beyond it; on the contrary, the five districts previously named in Petrus appear to be adduced just as beyond the Tigris, and to be excepted from the following general definition. The districts adduced by Priscus here and, expressly as beyond the Tigris, by Ammianus—these are in both Arzanene, Carduene, and Zabdicene, in Priscus Sophene and Intilene ("rather Ingilene, in Armenia Angel, now Egil"; Kiepert), in Ammianus Moxoene and Rehimene (?)—cannot possibly all have been looked on by the Romans as Persian before the peace, when at any rate Armenia was already Romano iuri obnoxia (Ammianus, xxiii. 5, 11); beyond doubt the more westerly of them already then formed a part of Roman Armenia, and stand here only in so far as they were, in consequence of the peace, incorporated with the empire as the satrapy of Sophene. That the question here concerned not the boundary of the cession, but that of the territory directly imperial, is shown by the conclusion, which settles the boundary between Armenia and Media.

122 We cannot exactly determine the standing quarters of the Syrian legions; yet what is here said is substantially assured. Under Nero the 10th legion lay at Raphaneae, north-west from Hamath (Josephus, Bell. Jud. vii. 1, 3); and at that same place, or at any rate nearly in this region under Tiberius the 6th (Tacitus, Ann. ii. 79); probably in or near Antioch the 12th under Nero (Josephus, Bell. Jud. ii. 18, 19). At least one legion lay on the Euphrates; for the time before the annexation of Commagene Josephus attests this (Bell. Jud. vii. 1, 3), and subsequently one of the Syrian legions had its headquarters in Samosata (Ptolemaeus, v. 15, 11; inscription from the time of Severus, C. I. L. vi. 1409; Itin. Antonini, p. 186). Probably the staffs of most of the Syrian legions had their seat in the western districts, and the ever-recurring complaint that encamping in the towns disorganised the Syrian army, applies chiefly to this arrangement. It is doubtful whether in the better times there existed headquarters proper of the legions on the edge of the desert; at the frontier-posts there detachments of the legions were employed, and in particular the specially disturbed district between Damascus and Bostra was strongly furnished with legionaries provided on the one hand by the command of Syria, on the other by that of Arabia after its institution by Trajan.

123 There is a coin of Byblus from the time of Augustus with a Greek and Phoenician legend (Imhoof-Blumer, Monnaies grecques, 1883, p. 443).

124 Johannes Chrysostomus of Antioch († 407) points on several occasions (de sanctis martyr. Opp. ed. Paris, 1718, vol. ii. p. 651; Homil. xix. ibid. p. 188) to the ἑτεροφωνία, the βάρβαρος φωνή of the λαός in contrast to the language of the cultured.

125 The extract of Photius from the romance of Jamblichus, c. 17, which erroneously makes the author a Babylonian, is essentially corrected and supplemented by the scholion upon it. The private secretary of the great-king, who comes among Trajan’s captives to Syria, becomes there tutor of Jamblichus, and instructs him in the "barbarian wisdom," is naturally a figure of the romance running its course in Babylon, which Jamblichus professes to have heard from this his instructor; but characteristic of the time is the Armenian court-man-of-letters and princes’ tutor (for it was doubtless as “good rhetor” that he was called by Sohaemus to Valarshapat) himself, who in virtue of his magical art not merely understands the charming of flies and the conjuring of spirits, but also predicts to Verus the victory over Vologasus, and at the same time narrates in Greek to the Greeks stories such as might stand in the Thousand and One Nights.

126 Syriac literature consists almost exclusively of translations of Greek works. Among profane writings treatises of Aristotle and Plutarch stand in the first rank, then practical writings of a juristic or agronomic character, and books of popular entertainment, such as the romance of Alexander, the fables of Aesop, the sentences of Menander.

127 The Syriac translation of the New Testament, the oldest text of the Syriac language known to us, probably originated in Edessa; the στρατιῶται of the Acts of the Apostles are here called “Romans.”

128 This is said by Diodorus, xx. 47, of the forerunner of Antioch, the town of Antigonea, situated about five miles farther up the river. Antioch was for the Syria of antiquity nearly what Aleppo is for the Syria of the present day, the rendezvous of inland traffic; only that, in the case of that foundation, as the contemporary construction of the port of Seleucia shows, the immediate connection with the Mediterranean was designed, and hence the town was laid out farther to the west.

129 The space between Antioch and Daphne was filled with country-houses and villas (Libanius, pro rhetor. ii. p. 213 Reiske), and there was also here a suburb Heraclea or else Daphne (O. Müller, Antiq. Antioch, p. 44; comp. vita Veri, 7); but when Tacitus, Ann. ii. 83, names this suburb Epidaphne, this is one of his most singular blunders. Plinius, H. N. v. 27, 79, says correctly: Antiochia Epidaphnes cognominata.

130 “That wherein we especially beat all,” says the Antiochene Libanius, in the Panegyric on his home delivered under Constantius (i. 354 R.), after having described the springs of Daphne and the aqueducts thence to the city, “is the water-supply of our city; if in other respects any one may compete with us, all give way so soon as we come to speak of the water, its abundance and its excellence. In the public baths every stream has the proportions of a river, in the private several have the like, and the rest not much less. He who has the means of laying out a new bath does so without concern about a sufficient flow of water, and has no need to fear that, when ready, it will remain dry. Therefore every district of the city (there were eighteen of these) carefully provides for the special elegance of its bathing-establishment; these district-bathing-establishments are so much finer than the general ones, as they are smaller than these are, and the inhabitants of the district strive to surpass one another. One measures the abundance of running water by the number of the (good) dwelling-houses; for as many as are the dwelling-houses, so many are also the running waters, nay there are even in individual houses often several; and the majority of the workshops have also the same advantage. Therefore we have no fighting at the public wells as to who shall come first to draw—an evil, under which so many considerable towns suffer, when there is a violent crowding round the wells and outcry over the broken jars. With us the public fountains flow for ornament, since every one has water within his doors. And this water is so clear that the pail appears empty, and so pleasant that it invites us to drink.”

131 “Other lights,” says the same orator, p. 363, “take the place of the sun’s light, lamps which leave the Egyptian festival of illumination far behind; and with us night is distinguished from day only by the difference of the lighting; diligent hands find no difference and forge on, and he who will sings and dances, so that Hephaestos and Aphrodite here share the night between them.” In the street-sport which the prince Gallus indulged in, the lamps of Antioch were very inconvenient to him (Ammianus, xiv. 1, 9).

132 The remarkable description of the empire from the time of Constantius (Müller, Geog. Min. ii. p. 213 ff.), the only writing of the kind in which the state of industry meets with a certain consideration, says of Syria in this respect: “Antioch has everything that one desires in abundance, but especially its races. Laodicea, Berytus, Tyre, Caesarea (in Palestine) have races also. Laodicea sends abroad jockeys, Tyre and Berytus actors, Caesarea dancers (pantomimi), Heliopolis on Lebanon flute-players (choraulae), Gaza musicians (auditores, by which ἀκροάματα is incorrectly rendered), Ascalon wrestlers (athletae), Castabala (strictly speaking in Cilicia) boxers.”

133 From the Syrian word abbubo, fife.

134 The little treatise, ascribed to Lucian, as to the Syrian goddess at Hierapolis adored by all the East, furnishes a specimen of the wild and voluptuous fable-telling which was characteristic of the Syrian cultus. In this narrative—the source of Wieland’s Kombabus—self-mutilation is at once celebrated and satirised in turn as an act of high morality and of pious faith.

135 The Austrian engineer, Joseph Tschernik (Petermann’s Geogr. Mittheil. 1875, Ergänzungsheft, xliv. p. 3, 9) found basalt-slabs of oil-presses not merely on the desert plateau at Kala’at el-Hossn between Hemesa and the sea, but also to the number of more than twenty eastward from Hemesa at el-Ferklûs, where the basalt itself does not occur, as well as numerous walled terraces and mounds of ruins at the same place; with terracings on the whole stretch of seventy miles between Hemesa and Palmyra. Sachau (Reise in Syrien und Mesopotamien, 1883, p. 23, 55) found remains of aqueducts at different places of the route from Damascus to Palmyra. The cisterns of Aradus cut in the rock, already mentioned by Strabo (xvi. 2, 13, p. 753), still perform their service at the present day (Renan, Phénicie, p. 40).

136 In Aradus, a town very populous in Strabo’s time (xvi. 2, 13, p. 753), there appears under Augustus a πρόβουλος τῶν ναυαρχησάντων (C. I. Gr. 4736 h, better in Renan, Mission de Phénicie, p. 31).

137 Totius orbis descriptio, c. 24: nulla forte civitas Orientis est eius spissior in negotio. The documents of the statio (C. I. Gr. 5853; C. I. L. x. 1601) give a lively picture of these factories. They serve in the first instance for religious ends, that is, for the worship of the Tyrian gods at a foreign place; for this object a tax is levied at the larger station of Ostia from the Tyrian mariners and merchants, and from its produce there is granted to the lesser a yearly contribution of 1000 sesterces, which is employed for the rent of the place of meeting; the other expenses are raised by the Tyrians in Puteoli, doubtless by voluntary contributions.

138 For Berytus this is shown by the Puteolan inscription C. I. L. x. 1634; for Damascus it is at least suggested by that which is there set up (x. 1576) to the Iupiter optimus maximus Damascenus.—We may add that it is here apparent with how good reason Puteoli is called Little Delos. At Delos in the last age of its prosperity, that is, nearly in the century before the Mithradatic war, we meet with Syrian factories and Syrian worships in quite a like fashion and in still greater abundance; we find there the guild of the Herakleistae of Tyre (τὸ κοινὸν τῶν Τυρίων Ἡρακλεϊστῶν ἐμπόρων καὶ ναυκλήρων, C. I. Gr. 2271) of the Poseidoniastae of Berytus (τὸ κοινὸν Βηρυτίων Ποσειδωνιαστῶν ἐμπόρων καὶ ναυκλήρων καὶ ἐγδοχέων, Bull. de corr. Hell. vii., p. 468), of the worshippers of Adad and Atargatis of Heliopolis (ib. vi. 495 f.), apart from the numerous memorial-stones of Syrian merchants. Comp. Homolle ib. viii. p. 110 f.

139 When Salvianus (towards 450) remonstrates with the Christians of Gaul that they are in nothing better than the heathens, he points (de gub. Dei, iv. 14, 69) to the worthless negotiatorum et Syricorum omnium turbae, quae maiorem ferme civitatum universarum partem occupaverunt. Gregory of Tours relates that king Guntchram was met at Orleans by the whole body of citizens and extolled, as in Latin, so also in Hebrew and in Syriac (viii. 1: hinc lingua Syrorum, hinc Latinorum, hinc ... Judaeorum in diversis laudibus varie concrepabat), and that after a vacancy in the episcopal see of Paris a Syrian merchant knew how to procure it for himself, and gave away to his countrymen the places belonging to it (x. 26: omnem scholam decessoris sui abiciens Syros de genere suo ecclesiasticae domui ministros esse statuit). Sidonius (about 450) describes the perverse world of Ravenna (Ep. 1, 8) with the words: fenerantur clerici, Syri psallunt; negotiatores militant, monachi negotiantur. Usque hodie, says Hieronymus (in Ezech. 27, vol. v. p. 513 Vall.) permanet in Syris ingenitus negotiationis ardor, qui per totum mundum lucri cupiditate discurrunt et tantam mercandi habent vesaniam, ut occupato nunc orbe Romano (written towards the end of the fourth century) inter gladios et miserorum neces quaerant divitias et paupertatem periculis fugiant. Other proofs are given by Friedländer, Sittengeschichte, ii.⁵ p. 67. Without doubt we may be allowed to add the numerous inscriptions of the West which proceed from Syrians, even if those do not designate themselves expressly as merchants. Instructive as to this point is the Coemeterium of the small north-Italian country-town Concordia of the fifth century; the foreigners buried in it are all Syrians, mostly of Apamea (C. I. L. iii. p. 1060); likewise all the Greek inscriptions found in Treves belong to Syrians (C. I. Gr. 9891, 9892, 9893). These inscriptions are not merely dated in the Syrian fashion, but show also peculiarities of the dialectic Greek there (Hermes, xix. 423).—That this Syro-Christian Diaspora, standing in relation to the contrast between the Oriental and Occidental clergy, may not be confounded with the Jewish Diaspora, is clearly shown by the account in Gregorius; it evidently stood much higher, and belonged throughout to the better classes.

140 This is partly so even at the present day. The number of silk-workers in Höms is estimated at 3000 (Tschernik, l.c.)

141 One of the oldest (i.e. after Severus and before Diocletian) epitaphs of this sort is the Latin-Greek one found not far from Lyons (Wilmanns, 2498; comp. Lebas-Waddington, n. 2329) of a Θαῖμος ὁ καὶ Ἰουλιανὸς Σαάδου (in Latin Thaemus Iulianus Sati fil.), a native of Atheila (de vico Athelani), not far from Canatha in Syria (still called ’Atîl, not far from Kanawât in the Haurân), and decurio in Canatha, settled in Lyons (πάτραν λείπων ἧκε τῷδ' ἐπὶ χώρῳ), and a wholesale trader there for Aquitanian wares ([ἐς πρ]ᾶσιν ἔχων ἐνπόρ[ιο]ν ἀγορασμῶν [με]στὸν ἐκ Ἀκουιτανίης ὧδ' ἐπὶ Λουγουδούνοιο—negotiatori Luguduni et prov. Aquitanica). Accordingly these Syrian merchants must not only have dealt in Syrian goods, but have, with their capital and their knowledge of business, practised wholesale trading generally.

142 Characteristic is the Latin epigram on a press-house, C. I. L. iii. 188, in this home of the “Apamean grape” (vita Elagabali, c. 21).

143 That the Decapolis and the reorganisation of Pompeius reached at last as far as Kanata (Kerak), north-west of Bostra, is established by the testimonies of authors and by the coins dated from the Pompeian era (Waddington on 2412, d). To the same town probably belong the coins with the name Γαβ(ε)ίν(ια) Κάναθα, with the name and dates of the same era (Reichardt, Num. Zeitschrift, 1880, p. 53); this place would accordingly belong to the numerous ones restored by Gabinius (Josephus, Arch. xiv. 5, 3). Waddington no doubt (on no. 2329) assigns these coins, so far as he knew them, to the second place of this name, the modern Kanawât, the proper capital of the Haurân, to the northward of Bostra; but it is far from probable that the organisation of Pompeius and Gabinius extended so far eastward. Presumably this second city was younger and named after the first, the most easterly town of the Decapolis.

144 The “refugees from the tetrarchy of Philippus,” who serve in the army of Herodes Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee, and pass over to the enemy in the battle with Aretas the Arabian (Josephus, Arch. xviii. 5, 1), are beyond doubt Arabians driven out from the Trachonitis.

145 Waddington, 2366 = Vogué, Inscr. du Haouran, n. 3. Bilingual is also the oldest epitaph of this region from Suwêda, Waddington, 2320 = Vogué, n. 1, the only one in the Haurân, which expresses the mute iota. The inscriptions are so put on both monuments that we cannot determine which language takes precedence.

146 At Medain Sâlih or Hijr, southward from Teimâ, the ancient Thaema, there has recently been found by the travellers Doughty and Huber, a series of Nabataean inscriptions, which, in great part dated, reach from the time of Augustus down to the death of Vespasian. Latin inscriptions are wanting, and the few Greek are of the latest period; to all appearance, on the conversion of the Nabataean kingdom into a Roman province, the portion of the interior of Arabia that belonged to the former was given up by the Romans.

147 The city of Damascus voluntarily submitted under the last Seleucids about the time of the dictatorship of Sulla to the king of the Nabataeans at the time, presumably the Aretas, with whom Scaurus fought (Josephus, Arch. xiii. 15). The coins with the legend βασιλέως Ἀρέτου φιλέλληνος (Eckhel, iii. 330; Luynes, Rev. de Numism. 1858, p. 311), were perhaps struck in Damascus, when this was dependent on the Nabataeans; the reference of the number of the year on one of them is not indeed certain, but points, it may be presumed, to the last period of the Roman republic. Probably this dependence of the city on the Nabataean kings subsisted so long as there were such kings. From the fact that the city struck coins with the heads of the Roman emperors, there follows doubtless its dependence on Rome and therewith its self-administration, but not its non-dependence on the Roman vassal-prince; such protectorates assumed shapes so various that these arrangements might well be compatible with each other. The continuance of the Nabataean rule is attested partly by the circumstance that the ethnarch of king Aretas in Damascus wished to have the Apostle Paul arrested, as the latter writes in the 2d Epistle to the Corinthians, xi. 32, partly by the recently-established fact (see following note) that the rule of the Nabataeans to the north-east of Damascus was still continuing under Trajan.—Those who start, on the other hand, from the view that, if Aretas ruled in Damascus, the city could not be Roman, have attempted in various ways to fix the chronology of that event in the life of Paul. They have thought of the complication between Aretas and the Roman government in the last years of Tiberius; but from the course which this took it is not probable that it brought about a permanent change in the state of possession of Aretas. Melchior de Vogué (Mélanges d’arch. orientale, app. p. 33) has pointed out that between Tiberius and Nero—more precisely, between the years 33 and 62 (Saulcy, Num. de la terre sainte, p. 36)—there are no imperial coins of Damascus, and has placed the rule of the Nabataeans there in this interval, on the assumption that the emperor Gaius showed his favour to the Arabian as to so many others of the vassal-princes, and invested him with Damascus. But such interruptions of coinage are of frequent occurrence, and require no such profound explanation. The attempt to find a chronological basis for the history of Paul’s life in the sway of the Nabataean king at Damascus, and generally to define the time of Paul’s abode in this city, must probably be abandoned. If we may so far trust the representation—in any case considerably shifted—of the event in Acts ix., Paul went to Damascus before his conversion, in order to continue there the persecution of the Christians in which Stephen had perished, and then, when on his conversion he took part on the contrary in Damascus for the Christians, the Jews there resolved to put him to death, in which case it must therefore be presupposed that the officials of Aretas, like Pilate, allowed free course to the persecution of heretics by the Jews. Moreover, it follows from the trustworthy statements of the Epistle to the Galatians, that the conversion took place at Damascus (for the ὑπέστρεψα shows this), and Paul went from thence to Arabia; further, that he came three years after his conversion for the first time, and seventeen years after it for the second time, to Jerusalem, in accordance with which the apocryphal accounts of the Book of Acts as to his Jerusalem-journeys are to be corrected (Zeller, Apostelgesch. p. 216). But we cannot determine exactly either the time of the death of Stephen, much less the time intervening between this and the flight of the converted Paul from Damascus, or the interval between his second journey to Jerusalem and the composition of the Galatian letter, or the year of that composition itself.