The Provinces of the Roman Empire 58

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 58

 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.

 

[148] The Nabataean inscription found recently near Dmêr, to the

north-east of Damascus on the road to Palmyra (Sachau, _Zeitschr. der

deutschen morgenl. Gesellschaft_, xxxviii. p. 535), dates from the

month Ijjar of the year 410 according to the Roman (_i.e._ Seleucid)

reckoning, and the 24th year of king Dabel, the last Nabataean one, and

so from May A.D. 99, has shown that this district up to the annexation

of this kingdom remained under the rule of the Nabataeans. We may add

that the dominions here seem to have been, geographically, a tangled

mosaic; thus the tetrarch of Galilee and the Nabataean king fought

about the territory of Gamala on the lake of Gennesaret (Josephus,_Arch._ xviii. 51).