that Priscus in Armenia laid out the Καινὴ πόλις and furnished it with
a Roman garrison, his successor Martius Verus silenced the national
movement that had arisen there, and declared this city the first
of Armenia. This was Valarshapat (Οὐαλαρσαπάτ or Οὐαλεροκτίστη in
Agathangelos), thenceforth the capital of Armenia. Καινὴ πόλις was, as
Kiepert informs me, already recognised by Stilting as translation of
the Armenian Nôr-Khalakh, which second name Valarshapat constantly
bears in Armenian authors of the fifth century alongside of the usual
one. Moses of Chorene, following Bardesanes, makes the town originate
from a Jewish colony brought thither under king Tigranes VI., who
according to him reigned 150-188; he refers the enclosing of it with
walls and the naming of it to his son Valarsch II. 188-208. That the
town had a strong Roman garrison in 185 is shown by the inscription _C.
I. L._ iii. 6052.
[64] That Sohaemus was Achaemenid and Arsacid (or professed to be) and
king’s son and king, as well as Roman senator and consul, before he
became king of Great Armenia, is stated by his contemporary Jamblichus
(c. 10 of the extract in Photius). Probably he belonged to the dynastic
family of Hemesa (Josephus, _Arch._ xx. 8, 4, _et al._) If Jamblichus
the Babylonian wrote “under him,” this can doubtless only be understood
to the effect that he composed his romance in Artaxata. That Sohaemus
ruled over Armenia before Pacorus is nowhere stated, and is not
probable, since neither Fronto’s words (p. 127 Naber), _quod Sohaemo
potius quam Vologaeso regnum Armeniae dedisset aut quod Pacorum regno
privasset_, or those of the fragment from Dio (?) lxxi. 1: Μάρτιος
Οὐῆρος τὸν Θουκυδίδην ἐκπέμπει καταγαγεῖν Σόαιμον ἐς Ἀρμενίαν point to
reinstatement, and the coins with _rex Armeniis datus_ (Eckhel, vii.
91, comp. _vita Veri_, 7, 8) in fact exclude it. We do not know the
predecessor of Pacorus, and are not even aware whether the throne which
he took possession of was vacant or occupied.
[65] This is shown by the Mesopotamian royal and urban coins. There are
no accounts in our tradition as to the conditions of peace.
[66] The beginning of the Ursinian excerpt of Dio, lxxv. 1, 2, is
confused. Οἱ Ὀρροηνοὶ, it is said, καὶ οἱ Ἀδιαβηνοὶ ἀποστάντες καὶ
Νίσιβιν πολιορκοῦντες καὶ ἡττηθέντες ὑπὸ Σεουήρου ἐπρεσβεύσαντο πρὸς
αὐτὸν μετὰ τὸν τοῦ Νίγρου θάνατον. Osrhoene was then Roman, Adiabene
Parthian; from whom did the two districts revolt? and whose side did
the Nisibenes take? That their opponents were defeated by Severus
before the sending of the embassy is inconsistent with the course of
the narrative; for the latter makes war upon them because their envoys
make unsatisfactory offers to him. Probably the supporting of Niger by
subjects of the Parthians and their concert with Niger’s Roman partisan
are now strictly apprehended as a revolt from Severus; the circumstance
that the people afterwards maintain that they had intended rather to
support Severus, is clearly indicated as a makeshift. The Nisibenes may
have refused to co-operate, and therefore have been attacked by the
adherents of Niger. Thus is explained what is clear from the extract
given by Xiphilinus from Dio, lxxv. 2, that the left bank of the
Euphrates was for Severus an enemy’s land, but not Nisibis; therefore
the town need not have been Roman at that time; on the contrary,
according to all indications, it was only made Roman by Severus.
[67] As the wars against the Arabians and the Adiabenians were in
fact directed against the Parthians, it was natural that the titles
_Parthicus_, _Arabicus_, and _Parthicus Adiabenicus_, should on that
account be conferred on the emperor; they are also so found, but
usually Parthicus is omitted, evidently because, as the biographer
of Severus says (c. 9), _excusavit Parthicum nomen, ne Parthos
lacesseret_. With this agrees the notice certainly belonging to the
year 195 in Dio, lxxv. 9, 6, as to the peaceful agreement with the
Parthians and the cession of a portion of Armenia to them.
[68] That Armenia also fell into their power is indicated by Herodian,
v. 9, 2; no doubt his representation is warped and defective.
[69] When at the peace in 218 the old relation between Rome and Armenia
was renewed, the king of Armenia gave himself the prospect of a renewal
of the Roman annual moneys (Dio, lxxviii. 27: τοῦ Τιριδάτου τὸ ἀργύριον
ὃ κατ’ ἔτος παρὰ τῶν Ῥωμαίων εὑρίσκετο ἐλπίσαντος λήψεσθαι). Payment
of tribute proper by the Romans to the Armenians is excluded for the
period of Severus and the time before Severus, and by no means agrees
with the words of Dio; the connection must be what we have indicated.
In the fourth and fifth centuries the fortress of Biriparach in the
Caucasus, which barred the Dariel pass, was maintained by the Persians,
who played the part of masters here after the peace of 364, with a
Roman contribution, and this was likewise conceived as payment of
tribute (Lydus, _de Mag._ iii. 52, 53; Priscus, _fr._ 31, Mull.).
[70] Artaxares names his father Papacus in the inscription, quoted
at p. 83, note 1, king; how it is to be reconciled with this, that
not merely does the native legend (in Agathias ii. 27) make Pabek a
shoemaker, but also the contemporary Dio (if in reality Zonaras, xii.
15, has borrowed these words from him) names Artaxares ἐξ ἀφανῶν καὶ
ἀδόξων, we do not know. Naturally the Roman authors take the side of
the weak legitimate Arsacid against the dangerous usurper.
[71] Strabo (under Tiberius) xv. 3, 24: νῦν δ’ ἤδη καθ’ αὐτοὺς
συνεστῶτες οἱ Πἐρσαι βασιλέας ἔχουσιν ὑπηκόους ἑτέροις βασιλεῦσι,
πρότερον μὲν Μακεδόσι, νῦν δὲ Παρθυαίοις.
[72] When Nöldeke says (_Tabari_, p. 449), “The subjection of the
chief lands of the monarchy directly to the crown formed the chief
distinction of the Sassanid kingdom from the Arsacid, which had real
kings in its various provinces,” the power of the great-kingdom beyond
doubt is thoroughly dependent on the personality of the possessor,
and under the first Sassanids must have been much stronger than
under the last decayed Arsacids. But a contrast in principle is not
discoverable. From Mithradates I., the proper founder of the dynasty,
onward the Arsacid ruler names himself “king of kings,” just as did
subsequently the Sassanid, while Alexander the Great and the Seleucids
never bore this title. Even under them individual vassal-kings ruled,
_e.g._ in Persis (p. 81, note 2); but the vassal-kingdom was not then
the regular form of imperial administration, and the Greek rulers
did not name themselves according to it, any more than the Caesars
assumed the title of great-king on account of Cappadocia or Numidia.
The satraps of the Arsacid state were essentially the Marzbans of the
Sassanids. Perhaps rather the great imperial offices, which in the
Sassanid polity correspond to the supreme administrative posts of the
Diocletiano-Constantinian constitution, and probably were the model for
the latter, were wanting to the Arsacid state; then certainly the two
would be related to each other much as the imperial organisation of
Augustus to that of Constantine. But we know too little of the Arsacid
organisation to affirm this with certainty.
[73] According to the Persian records of the last Sassanid period
preserved in the Arabic chronicle of Tabari Ardashir, after he has cut
off with his own hand the head of Ardawan and has assumed the title
Shahan-shah, king of kings, conquers first Hamadhan (Ecbatana) in Great
Media, then Aderbijan (Atropatene), Armenia, Mosul (Adiabene); and
further Suristan or Sawad (Babylonia). Thence he returns to Istachr
unto his Persian home, and then starting afresh conquers Sagistan,
Gurgan (Hyrcania), Abrashahr (Nisapur in the Parthian land), Merv
(Margiane), Balkh (Bactra), and Charizm (Khiva) up to the extreme
limits of Chorasan. “After he had killed many people and had sent their
heads to the fire-temple of Anahedh (in Istachr), he returned from Merv
to Pars and settled in Gor” (Feruzabad). How much of this is legend, we
do not know (comp. Nöldeke, _Tabari_, p. 17, 116).
[74] The title runs in Greek (_C. I. Gr._ 4675), Μάσδασνος
(Mazda-servant, treated as a proper name) θεὸς Ἀρταξάρης βασιλεὺς
βασιλέων Ἀριανῶν ἐκ γένους θεῶν; with which closely agrees the title
of his son Sapor I. (_ib._ 4676), only that after Ἀριανῶν there is
inserted καὶ Ἀναριανῶν, and so the extension of the rule to foreign
lands is brought into prominence. In the title of the Arsacids, so
far as it is clear from the Greek and Persian legends of coins, θεός,
βασιλεὺς βασιλέων, θεοπάτωρ (= ἐκ γένους θεῶν) recur, whereas there
is no prominence given to the Arians and, significantly, to the
“Mazda-servant”; by their side appear numerous other titles borrowed
from the Syrian kings, such as ἐπιφάνης, δίκαιος, νικάτωρ, also the
Roman αὐτοκράτωρ.
[75] Frawardin, Ardhbehesht, etc. (Ideler, _Chronologie_, ii. 515).
It is remarkable that essentially the same names of the months have
maintained themselves in the provincial calendar of the Roman province
Cappadocia (Ideler, i. 443); they must proceed from the time when it
was a Persian satrapy.
[76] Such is the account of the trustworthy Dio, lxxviii. 1; the
version of Herodian, iv. 11, that Artabanus promised his daughter, and
at the celebration of the betrothal allowed Antoninus to cut down the
Parthians present, is unauthenticated.
[77] If there is any truth in the mention of the Cadusians in the
biography, c. 6, the Romans induced this wild tribe, not subject to the
government in the south-west of the Caspian Sea, to fall at the same
time upon the Parthians.
[78] The subsequently received chronology puts the beginning of the
Sassanid dynasty in the Seleucid year 538 = 1st Oct. A.D. 226-7, or
the fourth (full) year of Severus Alexander, reigning since spring 222
(Agathias, iv. 24). According to other data king Ardashir numbered
the year from the autumn A.D. 223-4 as his first, and so doubtless
assumed in this the title of great-king (Nöldeke, _Tabari_, p. 410).
The last dated coin as yet known of the older system is of the year
539. When Dio wrote between 230 and 234, Artabanus was dead and his
adherents were overpowered, and the advance of Artaxares into Armenia
and Mesopotamia was expected.
[79] The emperor remained probably in Palmyra; at least a Palmyrene
inscription, _C. I. Gr._ 4483, mentions the ἐπιδημία θεοῦ Ἀλεξάνδρου.
[80] The incomparably wretched accounts of this war (relatively the
best is that drawn from a common source in Herodian, Zonaras, and
Syncellus, p. 674) do not even decide the question who remained victor
in these conflicts. While Herodian speaks of an unexampled defeat of
the Romans, the Latin authorities, the Biography as well as Victor,
Eutropius, and Rufius Festus, celebrate Alexander as the conqueror
of Artaxerxes or Xerxes, and according to these latter the further
course of things was favourable. Herodian vi. 6, 5, offers the means of
adjustment. According to the Armenian accounts (Gutschmid, _Zeitschr.
der deutschen morgenländ. Gesellschaft_, xxxi. 47) the Arsacids with
the support of the tribes of the Caucasus held their ground in Armenia
down to the year 237 against Ardashir; this diversion may be correct
and may have tended to the advantage of the Romans.
[81] The best account is furnished by Syncellus, p. 683 and Zonaras,
xii. 18, drawing from the same source. With this accord the individual
statements of Ammianus, xxiii. 5, 7, 17, and nearly so the forged
letter of Gordian to the Senate in the Biography, c. 27, from which the
narrative, c. 26, is ignorantly prepared; Antioch was in danger, but
not in the hands of the Persians.
[82] So Zonaras, xii. 19, represents the course of affairs; with this
Zosimus, iii. 33, agrees, and the later course of things shows that
Armenia was not quite in Persian possession. If, according to Euagrius,
v. 7, at that time merely Lesser Armenia remained Roman, this may not
be incorrect, in so far as the dependence of the vassal-king of Great
Armenia after the peace was doubtless merely nominal.
[83] The Biblical account (1 Kings, ix. 18) as to the building of the
town Thamar in Idumaea by king Solomon has only been transferred to
Tadmor by a misunderstanding doubtless old; at all events the erroneous
reference of it to this town among the later Jews (2 Chron. viii.
4, and the Greek translation of 1 Kings, ix. 18) form the oldest
testimony for its existence (Hitzig, _Zeitschr. der deutschen morgenl.
Gesellschaft_, viii. 222).
[84] This is nowhere expressly stated; but all the circumstances tell
in favour of it. That the Romano-Parthian frontier, before the Romans
established themselves on the left bank of the Euphrates, was on the
right a little below Sura, is most distinctly said by Pliny (_H. N._ v.
26, 89: _a Sura proxime est Philiscum_--comp. p. 95, note 1--_oppidum
Parthorum ad Euphratem; ab eo Seleuciam dierum decem navigatio_), and
there it remained till the erection of the province of Mesopotamia
under Severus. The Palmyrene of Ptolemy (v. 15, 24, 25) is a district
of Coele-Syria, which seems to embrace a good part of the territory to
the south of Palmyra, but certainly reaches as far as the Euphrates
and includes Sura; other urban centres besides Palmyra seem not to be
mentioned, and there is nothing to stand in the way of our taking this
large district as civic territory. So long in particular as Mesopotamia
was Parthian, but subsequently also with reference to the adjoining
desert, a permanent protection of the frontier could not here be
dispensed with; as indeed in the fourth century, according to the tenor
of the Notitia, Palmyrene was strongly occupied, the northern portion
by the troops of the Dux of Syria, Palmyra itself and the southern half
by those of the Dux of Phoenice. That in the earlier imperial period
no Roman troops were stationed here, is vouched for by the silence of
authors and the absence of inscriptions, which in Palmyra itself are
numerous. If in the Tabula Peutingeriana it is remarked under Sura:
_fines exercitus Syriatici et commercium barbarorum_, that is, “here
end the Roman garrisons and here is the place of exchange for the
traffic of the barbarians,” this is only saying, what at a later time
is repeated by Ammianus (xxiii. 3, 7: _Callinicum munimentum robustum
et commercandi opimitate gratissimum_) and further by the emperor
Honorius (_Cod. Just._ iv. 63, 4), that Callinicon was one of the few
entrepôts devoted to the Romano-barbarian frontier-traffic; but it
does not at all follow from this as regards the time when the Tabula
originated, that these imperial troops were stationed there, since in
fact the Palmyrenes in general belonged to the Syrian army and might
be thought of in using the expression _exercitus Syriaticus_. The
city must have furnished a force of its own in a way similar to that
of the princes of Numidia and of Panticapaeum. By this means alone we
come to understand as well the rejection of the troops of Antonius as
the attitude of the Palmyrenes in the troubles of the third century,
and not less the emergence of the _numeri Palmyrenorum_ among the
military novelties of this epoch.
[85] Ammianus, xxiii. 5, 2: _Cercusium ... Diocletianus exiguum
ante hoc et suspectum muris turribusque circumdedit celsis, ... ne
vagarentur per Syriam Persae ita ut paucis ante annis cum magnis
provinciarum contigerat damnis_. Comp. Procopius _de aed._ ii. 6.
Perhaps this place is not different from the Φάλγα or Φάλιγα of
Isidorus of Charax (_mans. Parth._ 1; Stephanus Byz. _s. v._) and the
_Philiscum_ of Pliny (p. 94, note).
[86] Of the seven dedications, hitherto found outside of Palmyra, to
the Palmyrene Malach Belos the three brought to light in Rome (_C. I.
L._ vi. 51, 710; _C. I. Gr._ 6015) have along with a Greek or Latin
also a Palmyrene text, two African (_C. I. L._ viii. 2497, 8795 add.)
and two Dacian (_Arch. epig. Mitth. aus Oesterreich_, vi. 109, 111)
merely Latin. One of the latter was set up by P. Aelius Theimes, a
_duoviralis_ of Sarmizegetusa, evidently a native of Palmyra, _diis
patriis Malagbel et Bebellahamon et Benefal et Manavat_.
[87] Whence these names of the months come, is not clear; they first
appear in the Assyrian cuneiform writing, but are not of Assyrian
origin. In consequence of the Assyrian rule they then remained in use
within the sphere of the Syrian language. Variations are found; the
second month, the Dios of the Greek-speaking Syrians, our November,
is called among the Jews Markeshvan, among the Palmyrenes Kanun
(Waddington, n. 2574_b_). We may add that these names of the months,
so far as they came to be applied within the Roman empire, are
adapted, like the Macedonian, to the Julian calendar, so that only the
designation of the month differs; the year-beginning (1 Oct.) of the
Syro-Roman year finds uniformly application to the Greek as to the
Aramaean appellations.
[88] _E.g._ Archon, Grammateus, Proedros, Syndikos, Dekaprotoi.
[89] This is shown by the inscription of Palmyra (_C. I. Gr._ 4491,
4492 = Waddington 2600 = Vogué, _Insc. sém. Palm._ 22) set up to
this Hairanes in the year 251 by a soldier of the legion stationed
in Arabia. His title is in Greek ὁ λαμπρότατος συγκλητικός, ἔξα[ρχος
(= _princeps_) Παλμυ]ρηνῶν, in Palmyrene “illustrious senator, head
of Tadmor.” The epitaph (_C. I. Gr._ 4507 = Waddington 2621 = Vogué,
21) of the father of Hairanes, Septimios Odaenathos, son of Hairanes,
grandson of Vaballathos, great-grandson of Nassoros, gives to him also
senatorial rank.
[90] Certainly the father of this Odaenathus is nowhere named; but it
is as good as certain that he was the son of the Hairanes just named,
and bore the name of his grandfather. Zosimus, too, i. 39, terms him
a Palmyrene distinguished from the days of his forefathers by the
government (ἄνδρα Παλμυρηνὸν καὶ ἐκ προγόνων τῆς παρὰ τῶν βασιλέων
ἀξιωθέντα τίμης).
[91] In the inscription Waddington 2603 = Vogué 23, which the guild of
gold and silver workers of Palmyra set up in the year 257 to Odaenathus
he is called ὁ λαμπρότατος ὑπατικός, and so _vir consularis_, and in
Greek δεσπότης, in Syriac _mâran_. The former designation is not a
title of office, but a statement of the class in which he ranked; so
_vir consularis_ stands not unfrequently after the name quite like _vir
clarissimus_ (_C. I. L._ x. p. 1117 and elsewhere), and ὁ λαμπρότατος
ὑπατικός is found alongside of and before official titles of various
kinds, _e.g._ that of the proconsul of Africa (_C. I. Gr._ 2979, where
λαμπρότατος is absent), of the imperial legate of Pontus and Bithynia
(_C. I. Gr._ 3747, 3748, 3771) and of Palestine (_C. I. Gr._ 4151), of
the governor of Lycia and Pamphylia (_C. I. Gr._ 4272); it is only in
the age after Constantine that it is in combination with the name of
the province employed as an official title (_e.g._ _C. I. Gr._ 2596,
4266_e_). From this, therefore, no inference is to be drawn as to the
legal position of Odaenathus. Likewise, in the Syriac designation
of “lord,” we may not find exactly the ruler; it is also given to a
procurator (Waddington 2606 = Vogué 25).
[92] Syria in the imperial period formed an imperial customs-district
of its own, and the imperial dues were levied not merely on the coast
but also at the Euphrates-frontier, in particular at Zeugma. Hence it
necessarily follows that farther to the south, where the Euphrates
was no longer in the Roman power, similar dues were established on
the Roman eastern frontier. Now a decree of the council of Palmyra
of the year 137 informs us that the city and its territory formed a
special customs-district, and the dues were levied for the benefit of
the town upon all goods imported or exported. That this territory lay
beyond the imperial dues, is probable--first, because, if there had
existed an imperial customs-line enclosing the Palmyrene territory, the
mention of it could not well be omitted in that detailed enactment;
secondly, because a community of the empire enclosed by the imperial
customs-lines would hardly have had the right of levying dues at the
boundary of its territory to this extent. We shall thus have to discern
in the levying of dues by the community of Palmyra the same distinctive
position which must be attributed to it in a military point of view.
Perhaps, on the other hand, there was an impost laid on it for the
benefit of the imperial exchequer, possibly the delivering up of a
quota of the produce of the dues or a heightened tribute. Arrangements
similar to those for Palmyra may have existed also for Petra and
Bostra; for goods were certainly not admitted here free of dues, and
according to Pliny, _H. N._ xii. 14, 65, imperial dues from the Arabic
frankincense exported by way of Gaza seem only to have been levied at
Gaza on the coast. The indolence of Roman administration was stronger
than its fiscal zeal; it may frequently have devolved the inconvenient
tolls of the land-frontier away from itself on the communities.
[93] These caravans (συνοδίαι) appear on the Palmyrene inscriptions
as fixed companies, which undertake the same journeys beyond doubt
at definite intervals under their foreman (συνοδιάρχης, Waddington,
2589, 2590, 2596); thus a statue is erected to such a one by “the
merchants who went down with him to Vologasias” (οἱ σὺν αὐτῷ
κατελθόντες εἰς Ὀλογεσιάδα ἔνποροι, Waddington 2599 of the year 247),
or “up from Forath (comp. Pliny, _H. N._ vi. 28, 145) and Vologasias”
(οἱ συναναβάντες μετ’ αὐτοῦ ἔμποροι ἀπὸ Φοράθου κὲ Ὀλογασιάδος,
Waddington, 2589 of the year 142), or “up from Spasinu Charax” (οἱ
σὺν αὐτῷ ἀναβάντες ἀπὸ Σπασίνου Χάρακος, Waddington, 2596 of the year
193; similarly 2590 of the year 155). All these conductors are men of
standing furnished with lists of ancestors; their honorary monuments
stand in the great colonnade beside those of queen Zenobia and her
family. Specially remarkable is one of them, Septimius Vorodes, of
whom there exists a series of honorary monuments of the years 262-267
(Waddington, 2606-2610); he, too, was a caravan-head (ἀνακομίσαντα τὰς
συνοδίας ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων καὶ μαρτυρηθέντα ὑπὸ τῶν ἀρχεμπόρων, Waddington,
n. 2606 _a_; consequently he defrayed the costs of the journey back
for the whole company, and was on account of this liberality publicly
praised by the wholesale traders). But he filled not merely the
civic offices of _strategos_ and _agoranomos_, he was even imperial
procurator of the second class (_ducenarius_) and _argapetes_ (p. 104,
note 1).
[94] According to the Greek account (Zonaras, xii. 21) king Tiridates
takes refuge with the Romans, but his sons take the side of the
Persians; according to the Armenian, king Chosro is murdered by his
brethren, and Chosro’s son, Tiridates, fled to the Romans (Gutschmid,
_Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenl. Gesellsch._ xxxi. 48). Perhaps the
latter is to be preferred.
[95] The only fixed chronological basis is furnished by the Alexandrian
coins, according to which Valerian was captured between 29th August 259
and 28th August 260. That after his capture he was no longer regarded
as emperor, is easily explained, seeing that the Persians compelled him
in their interest to issue orders to his former subjects (continuation
of Dio, _fr._ 3).
[96] The better accounts simply know the fact that Valerian died in
Persian captivity. That Sapor used him as a footstool in mounting his
horse (Lactantius, _de Mort. persec._ 5; Orosius, vii. 22, 4; Victor,
_Ep._ 33), and finally caused him to be flayed (Lactantius, _l. c._;
Agathias, iv. 23; Cedrenus, p. 454) is a Christian invention--a
requital for the persecution of the Christians ordered by Valerian.
[97] The tradition according to which Mareades (so Ammianus, xxiii.
5, 3; Mariades in Malalas, 12, p. 295; Mariadnes in contin. of Dio,
_fr._ 1), or, as he is here called, Cyriades, had himself proclaimed
as Augustus (_Vit. trig. tyr._ 1) is weakly attested; otherwise there
might doubtless be found in it the occasion why Sapor caused him to be
put to death.
[98] He is called Callistus in the one tradition, doubtless traceable
to Dexippus, in Syncellus, p. 716, and Zonaras, xii. 23, on the other
hand, Ballista in the biographies of the emperors and in Zonaras, xii.
24.
[99] He was, according to the most trustworthy account, _procurator
summarum_ (ἐπὶ τῶν καθόλου λόγων βασιλέως: Dionysius in Eusebius, _H.
E._ vii. 10, 5), and so finance-minister with equestrian rank; the
continuator of Dio (_fr._ 3 Müll.) expresses this in the language of
the later age by κόμης τῶν θησαυρῶν καὶ ἐφεστὼς τῇ ἀγορᾷ τοῦ σίτου.
[100] At least according to the report, which forms the basis of the
imperial biographies (_vita Gallieni_, 3, and elsewhere). According
to Zonaras, xii. 24, the only author who mentions besides the end of
Callistus, Odaenathus caused him to be put to death.
[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 ἐῴας, 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 βασιλισσης 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 suspicious.
[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. = A.D. 297/8 (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.
[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).
[149] Perhaps through Gabinius (Appian, _Syr._ 51).
[150] Strabo, xvi. 4, 21, p. 779. The coins of these kings, however,
do not show the emperor’s head. But that in the Nabataean kingdom
dates might run by the Roman imperial years is shown by the Nabataean
inscription of Hebrân (Vogué, _Syrie Centrale_, _insc._ n. 1), dated from
the seventh year of Claudius, and so from the year 47. Hebrân, a little
to the north of Bostra, appears to have been reckoned also at a later
time to Arabia (Lebas-Waddington, 2287); and Nabataean inscriptions of
a public tenor are not met with outside of the Nabataean state; the few
of the kind from Trachonitis are of a private nature.
[151] “Leuke Kome in the land of the Nabataeans,” says Strabo under
Tiberius, xvi. 4, 23, p. 780, “is a great place of trade, whither and
whence the caravan-traders (καμηλέμποροι) go safely and easily from and
to Petra with so large numbers of men and camels that they differ in
nothing from encampments.” The Egyptian merchant also, writing under
Vespasian, in his description of the coasts of the Red Sea (c. 19),
mentions “the port and the fortress (φρούριον) of Leuce Come, whence
the route leads towards Petra to the king of the Nabataeans Malichas.
It may be regarded as the emporium for the goods conveyed thither from
Arabia in not very large vessels. Therefore there is sent thither
(ἀποστέλλεται) a receiver of the import-dues of a fourth of the value,
and for the sake of security a centurion (ἑκατοντάρχης) with men.” As
one belonging to the Roman empire here mentions officials and soldiers,
these can only be Roman; the centurion does not suit the army of the
Nabataean king, and the form of tax is quite the Roman. The bringing a
client-state within the sphere of imperial taxation occurs elsewhere,
_e.g._ in the regions of the Alps. The road from Petra to Gaza is
mentioned by Plin. _H. N._ vi. 28, 144.
[152] Waddington, 2196; Ἀδριανοῦ τοῦ καὶ Σοαίδου Μαλέχου ἐθνάρχου
στρατηγοῦ νομάδων τὸ μνημεῖον.
[153] Epiphanius, _Haeres._ li. p. 483, Dind., sets forth that the 25th
December, the birthday of Christ, had already been festally observed
after an analogous manner at Rome in the festival of the Saturnalia, at
Alexandria in the festival (mentioned also in the decree of Canopus)
of the Kikellia, and in other heathen worships. “This takes place in
Alexandria at the so-called Virgin’s shrine (Κόριον) ... and if we ask
people what this mystery means, they answer and say that to-day at
this hour the Virgin has given birth to the Eternal (τὸν αἰῶνα). This
takes place in like manner at Petra, the capital of Arabia, in the
temple there, and in the Arabic language they sing the praise of the
Virgin, whom they call in Arabic Chaamu, that is the maiden, and Him
born of her Dusares, that is the Only-begotten of the Lord.” The name
Chaamu is perhaps akin to the Aumu or Aumos of the Greek inscriptions
of this region, who is compared with Ζεὺς ἀνίκητος Ἥλιος (Waddington,
2392-2395, 2441, 2445, 2456).
[154] This is said apart from the remarkable Arabo-Greek inscription
(see below) found in Harrân, not far from Zorava, of the year A.D. 568,
set up by the phylarch Asaraelos, son of Talemos (Waddington, 2464).
This Christian is a precursor of Mohammed.
[155] Αὐσονίων μούσης ὑψινόου πρύτανις, Kaibel, _Epigr._ 440.
[156] According to the Arabian accounts the Benu Sâlih migrated from
the region of Mecca (about A.D. 190, according to the conjectures of
Caussin de Perceval, _Hist. des Arabes_, i. 212) to Syria, and settled
there alongside of the Benu-Samaida, in whom Waddington finds anew the
φυλὴ Σομαιθηνῶν of an inscription of Suwêda (n. 2308). The Ghassanids,
who (according to Caussin, about 205) migrated from Batn-Marr likewise
to Syria and to the same region, were compelled by the Salihites, at
the suggestion of the Romans, to pay tribute, and paid it for a time,
until they (according to the same, about the year 292) overcame the
Salihites, and their leader Thalaba, son of Amos, was recognised by the
Romans as phylarch. This narrative may contain correct elements; but
our standard authority remains always the account of Procopius, _de
bello Pers._ i. 17, reproduced in the text. The phylarchs of individual
provinces of Arabia (_i.e._ the province Bostra; _Nov._ 102 c.) and of
Palestine (_i.e._ province of Petra; Procop. _de bello Pers._ i. 19),
are older, but doubtless not much. Had a sheikh-in-chief of this sort
been recognised by the Romans in the times before Justinian, the Roman
authors and the inscriptions would doubtless show traces of it; but
there are no such traces from the period before Justinian.
[157] [This statement and several others of a kindred tenor in
this chapter appear to rest on an unhesitating acceptance of views
entertained by a recent school of Old Testament criticism, as to which
it may at least be said: _Adhuc sub iudice lis est._--TR.]
[158] Whether the legal position of the Jews in Alexandria is
warrantably traced back by Josephus (_contra Ap._ ii. 4) to Alexander
is so far doubtful, as, to the best of our knowledge, not he, but the
first Ptolemy, settled Jews in masses there (Josephus, _Arch._ xii. 1.;
Appian, _Syr._ 50). The remarkable similarity of form assumed by the
bodies of Jews in the different states of the Diadochi must, if it is
not based on Alexander’s ordinances, be traced to rivalry and imitation
in the founding of towns. The fact that Palestine was now Egyptian, now
Syrian, doubtless exercised an essential influence in the case of these
settlements.
[159] The community of Jews in Smyrna is mentioned in an inscription
recently found there (Reinach, _Revue des études juives_, 1883, p.
161): Ῥουφεῖνα Ἰουδαί(α) ἀρχισυναγωγὸς κατεσκεύασεν τὸ ἐνσόριον τοῖς
ἀπελευθέροις καὶ θρέμ(μ)ασιν μηδένος ἄλ(λ)ου ἐξουσίαν ἔχοντος θάψαι
τινά· εἰ δέ τις τολμήσει, δώσει τῷ ἱερωτάτῳ ταμείῳ (δηναρίους) ͵αφ, καὶ
τῷ ἔθνει τῶν Ἰουδαίων (δηναρίους) ͵α. Ταύτης τῆς ἐπιγραφῆς τὸ ἀντίγραφον
ἀποκεῖται εἰς τὸ ἀρχεῖον. Simple _collegia_ are, in penal threats of
this sort, not readily put on a level with the state or the community.
[160] If the Alexandrian Jews subsequently maintained that they
were legally on an equal footing with the Alexandrian Macedonians
(Josephus, _contra Ap._ ii. 4; _Bell. Jud._ ii. 18, 7) this was a
misrepresentation of the true state of the case. They were clients
in the first instance of the Phyle of the Macedonians, probably the
most eminent of all, and therefore named after Dionysos (Theophilus,
_ad Autolycum_, ii. 7), and, because the Jewish quarter was a part
of this Phyle, Josephus in his way makes themselves Macedonians. The
legal position of the population of the Greek towns of this category
is most clearly apparent from the account of Strabo (in Josephus,
_Arch._ xiv. 7, 2) as to the four categories of that of Cyrene:
city-burgesses, husbandmen (γεωργοί), strangers, and Jews. If we lay
aside the _metoeci_, who have their legal home elsewhere, there remain
as Cyrenaeans having rights in their home the burgesses of full rights,
that is, the Hellenes and what were allowed to pass as such, and the
two categories of those excluded from active burgess-rights--the Jews,
who form a community of their own, and the subjects, the Libyans,
without autonomy. This might easily be so shifted, that the two
privileged categories should appear as having equal rights.
[161] Pseudo-Longinus, περὶ ὕψους, 9: “Far better than the war of
the gods in Homer is the description of the gods in their perfection
and genuine greatness and purity, like that of Poseidon (_Ilias_,
xiii. 18 ff.). Just so writes the legislator of the Jews, no mean man
(οὐχ ὁ τυχὼν ἀνήρ), after he has worthily apprehended and brought
to expression the Divine power, at the very beginning of the Laws
(_Genesis_, i. 3): ‘God said’--what? ‘Let there be light, and there was
light; let the earth be, and the earth was.’”
[162] The Jew Philo sets down the treatment of the Jews in Italy to the
account of Sejanus (_Leg._ 24; _in Flacc._ 1), that of the Jews in the
East to the account of the emperor himself. But Josephus rather traces
back what happened in Italy to a scandal in the capital, which had been
occasioned by three Jewish pious swindlers and a lady of rank converted
to Judaism; and Philo himself states that Tiberius, after the fall of
Sejanus, allowed to the governors only certain modifications in the
procedure against the Jews. The policy of the emperor and that of his
ministers towards the Jews was essentially the same.
[163] Agrippa II., who enumerates the Jewish settlements abroad (in
Philo, _Leg. ad Gaium_, 36), names no country westward of Greece, and
among the strangers sojourning in Jerusalem, whom the Book of Acts, ii.
5 f., records, only Romans are named from the West.
[164] Antipater began his career as governor (στρατηγός) of Idumaea
(Josephus, _Arch._ xiv. 1, 3), and is there called administrator of
the Jewish kingdom (ὁ τῶν Ἰουδαίων ἐπιμελητής Joseph. _Arch._ xiv.
8, 1), that is, nearly first minister. More is not implied in the
narrative of Josephus coloured with flattery towards Rome as towards
Herod (_Arch._ xiv. 8, 5; _Bell. Jud._ i. 10, 3), that Caesar had
left to Antipater the option of himself determining his position of
power (δυναστεία), and, when the latter left the decision with him,
had appointed him administrator (ἐπίτροπος) of Judaea. This is not,
as Marquardt, _Staatsalth._ v. 1, 408, would have it, the (at that
time not yet existing) Roman procuratorship of the imperial period,
but an office formally conferred by the Jewish ethnarch, an
ἐπιτροπή, like that mentioned by Josephus, _Bell. Jud._ ii. 18, 6. In
the official documents of Caesar’s time the high priest and ethnarch
Hyrcanus alone represents the Jews; Caesar gave to Antipater what could
be granted to the subjects of a dependent state, Roman burgess-rights
and personal immunity (Josephus, _Arch._ xiv. 8, 3; _Bell. Jud._ i. 9,
5), but he did not make him an official of Rome. That Herod, driven out
of Judaea, obtained from the Romans a Roman officer’s post possibly in
Samaria, is credible; but the designations στρατηγὸς τῆς Κοίλης Συρίας
(Josephus, _Arch._ xiv. 9, 5, c. 11, 4), or στρατηγὸς Κοίλης Συρίας καὶ
Σαμαρείας (_Bell. Jud._ i. 10, 8) are at least misleading, and with as
much incorrectness the same author names Herod subsequently, for the
reason that he is to serve as counsellor τοῖς ἐπιτροπεύουσι τῆς Συρίας
(_Arch._ xv. 10, 3), even Συρίας ὅλης ἐπίτροπον (_Bell. Jud._ i. 20,
4), where Marquardt’s change, _Staatsalth._ v. i. 408, Κοίλης destroys
the sense.
[165] In the decree of Caesar in Josephus, _Arch._ xiv. 10, 5, 6,
the reading which results from Epiphanius is the only possible
one; according to this the land is freed from the tribute (imposed
by Pompeius; Josephus, _Arch._ xiv. 4, 4) from the second year of
the current lease onward, and it is further ordained that the town
of Joppa, which at that time passed over from Roman into Jewish
possession, should continue indeed to deliver the fourth part of
field-fruits at Sidon to the Romans, but for that there should be
granted to Hyrcanus, likewise at Sidon, as an equivalent annually
20,675 bushels of grain, besides which the people of Joppa paid also
the tenth to Hyrcanus. The whole narrative otherwise shows that
the Jewish state was thenceforth free from payment of tribute; the
circumstance that Herod pays φόροι from the districts assigned to
Cleopatra which he leases from her (_Arch._ xv. 4, 2, 4, c. 5, 3) only
confirms the rule. If Appian, _B. C._ v. 75, adduces among the kings
on whom Antonius laid tribute Herod for Idumaea and Samaria, Judaea is
not absent here without good reason; and even for these accessory lands
the tribute may have been remitted to him by Augustus. The detailed and
trustworthy account as to the census enjoined by Quirinius shows with
entire clearness that the land was hitherto free from Roman tribute.
[166] In the same decree it is said: καὶ ὅπως μηδεὶς μήτε ἄρχων μήτε
στρατηγὸς ἢ πρεσβευτὴς ἐν τοῖς ὅροις τῶν Ἰουδαίων ἀνιστᾷ (“perhaps
συνιστᾷ” Wilamowitz) συμμαχίαν καὶ στρατιώτας ἐξιῇ (so
Wilamowitz, for ἐξείη) ἢ τὰ χρήματα τούτων εἰσπράττεσθαι ἢ εἰς
παραχειμασίαν ἢ ἄλλῳ τινὶ ὀνόματι, ἀλλ’ εἶναι πανταχόθεν ἀνεπηρεάστους
(comp. _Arch._ xiv. 10, 2: παραχειμασίαν δὲ καὶ χρήματα πράττεσθαι
οὐ δοκιμάζω). This corresponds in the main to the formula of the
charter, a little older, for Termessus (_C. I. L._ i. n. 204): _nei
quis magistratu prove magistratu legatus ne[ive] quis alius meilites
in oppidum Thermesum ... agrumve ... hiemandi caussa introducito ...
nisei senatus nominatim utei Thermesum ... in hibernacula meilites
deducantur decreverit_. The marching through is accordingly allowed.
In the Privilegium for Judaea the levy seems, moreover, to have been
prohibited.
[167] This title, which primarily denotes the collegiate tetrarchate,
such as was usual among the Galatians, was then more generally
employed for the rule of all together, nay, even for the rule of one,
but always as in rank inferior to that of king. In this way, besides
Galatia, it appears also in Syria, perhaps from the time of Pompeius,
certainly from that of Augustus. The juxtaposition of an ethnarch and
two tetrarchs, as it was arranged in the year 713 {41 B.C.} for
Judaea, according to Josephus (_Arch._ xiv. 13, 1; _Bell. Jud._ i. 12,
5), is not again met with elsewhere; Pherores tetrarch of Peraea under
his brother Herodes (_Bell. Jud._ i. 24, 5) is analogous.
[168] The statement of Josephus that Judaea was attached to the
province of Syria and placed under its governor (_Arch._ xvii _fin._:
τοῦ δὲ Ἀρχελάου χώρας ὑποτελοῦς προσνεμηθείσης τῇ Σύρων; xviii. 1, 1:
εἰς τὴν Ἰουδαίων προσθήκην τῆς Συρίας γενομένην; c. 4, 6) appears to
be incorrect; on the contrary, Judaea probably formed thenceforth a
procuratorial province of itself. An exact distinction between the _de
iure_ and _de facto_ interference of the Syrian governor may not be
expected in the case of Josephus. The fact that he organised the new
province and conducted the first census does not decide the question
what arrangement was assigned to it. Where the Jews complain of their
procurator to the governor of Syria and the latter interferes against
him, the procurator is certainly dependent on the legate; but, when
L. Vitellius did this (Josephus, _Arch._ xviii. 4, 2), his power
extended in quite an extraordinary way over the province (Tacitus,
_Ann._ vi. 32; _Staatsrecht_, ii. 822), and in the other case the
words of Tacitus, _Ann._ xii. 54: _quia Claudius ius statuendi etiam
de procuratoribus dederat_, show that the governor of Syria could not
have pronounced such a judgment in virtue of his general jurisdiction.
Both the _ius gladii_ of these procurators (Josephus, _Bell. Jud._ ii.
8, 1: μέχρι τοῦ κτείνειν λαβὼν παρὰ τοῦ Καίσαρος ἐξουσίαν, _Arch._
xviii. 1, 1; ἡγησόμενος Ἰουδαίων τῇ ἐπὶ πᾶσιν ἐξουσίᾳ) and their whole
demeanour show that they did not belong to those who, placed under an
imperial legate, attended only to financial affairs, but rather, like
the procurators of Noricum and Raetia, formed the supreme authority for
the administration of law and the command of the army. Thus the legates
of Syria had there only the position which those of Pannonia had in
Noricum and the upper German legate in Raetia. This corresponds also
to the general development of matters; all the larger kingdoms were on
their annexation not attached to the neighbouring large governorships,
whose plenitude of power it was not the tendency of this epoch to
enlarge, but were made into independent governorships, mostly at first
equestrian.
[169] According to Josephus (_Arch._ xx. 8, 7, more exact than _Bell.
Jud._ ii. 13, 7) the greatest part of the Roman troops in Palestine
consisted of Caesareans and Sebastenes. The _ala Sebastenorum_ fought
in the Jewish war under Vespasian (Josephus, _Bell. Jud._ ii. 12,
5). Comp. _Eph. epigr._ v. 194. There are no _alae_ and _cohortes
Iudaeorum_.
[170] The revenues of Herod amounted, according to Josephus, _Arch._
xvii. 11, 4, to about 1200 talents, whereof about 100 fell to Batanaea
with the adjoining lands, 200 to Galilee and Peraea, the rest to the
share of Archelaus; in this doubtless the older Hebrew talent (of about
£390) is meant, not, as Hultsch (Metrol. ^2, p. 605) assumes, the
denarial talent (of about £260), as the revenues of the same territory
under Claudius are estimated in the same Josephus (_Arch._ xix. 8, 2),
at 12,000,000 denarii (about £500,000). The chief item in it was formed
by the land-tax, the amount of which we do not know; in the Syrian
time it amounted at least for a time to the third part of corn and
the half of wine and oil (1 Maccab. x. 30), in Caesar’s time for Joppa
a fourth of the fruit (p. 175, note), besides which at that time the
temple-tenth still existed. To this was added a number of other taxes
and customs, auction-charges, salt-tax, road and bridge moneys, and the
like; it is to these that the publicans of the Gospels have reference.
[171] On the marble screen (δρύφακτος), which marked off the inner
court of the temple, were placed for that reason tablets of warning
in the Latin and Greek language (Josephus, _Bell. Jud._ v. 5, 2; vi.
2, 4; _Arch._ xv. 11, 5). One of the latter, which has recently been
found (_Revue Archéologique_, xxiii. 1872, p. 220), and is now in the
public museum of Constantinople, is to this effect: μήθ’ ἕνα ἀλλογενῆ
εἰσπορεύεσθαι ἐντὸς τοῦ περὶ τὸ ἱερὸν τρυφάκτου καὶ περιβόλου. ὃς
δ’ ἂν ληφθῆ, ἑαυτῷ αἴτιος ἔσται διὰ τὸ ἐξακολουθεῖν θάνατον. The iota
in the dative is present, and the writing good and suitable for the
early imperial period. These tablets were hardly set up by the Jewish
kings, who would scarcely have added a Latin text, and had no cause to
threaten the penalty of death with this singular anonymity. If they
were set up by the Roman government, both are explained; Titus also
says (in Josephus, _Bell. Jud._ vi. 2, 4), in an appeal to the Jews:
οὐχ ἡμεῖς τοὺς ὑπερβάντας ὑμῖν ἀναιρεῖν ἐπετρέψαμεν, κἂν Ῥωμαῖός τις
ᾖ;--If the tablet really bears traces of axe-cuts, these came from the
soldiers of Titus.
[172] The special hatred of Gaius against the Jews (Philo, _Leg._ 20)
was not the cause, but the consequence, of the Alexandrian Jew-hunt.
Since therefore the understanding of the leaders of the Jew-hunt
with the governor (Philo, _in Flacc._ 4) cannot have subsisted on
the footing that the Jews imagined, because the governor could not
reasonably believe that he would recommend himself to the new emperor
by abandoning the Jews, the question certainly arises, why the leaders
of those hostile to the Jews chose this very moment for the Jew-hunt,
and above all, why the governor, whose excellence Philo so emphatically
acknowledges, allowed it, and, at least in its further course, took
personal part in it. Probably things occurred as they are narrated
above: hatred and envy towards the Jews had long been fermenting in
Alexandria (Josephus, _Bell. Jud._ ii. 18, 9; Philo, _Leg._ 18); the
abeyance of the old stern government, and the evident disfavour in
which the prefect stood with Gaius, gave room for the tumult; the
arrival of Agrippa furnished the occasion; the adroit conversion of the
synagogues into temples of Gaius stamped the Jews as enemies of the
emperor, and, after this was done, Flaccus must certainly have seized
on the persecution to rehabilitate himself thereby with the emperor.
[173] When Strabo was in Egypt in the earlier Augustan period the Jews
in Alexandria were under an Ethnarch (_Geogr._ xvii. 1, 13, p. 798,
and in Josephus, _Arch._ xiv. 7, 2). Thereupon, when under Augustus
the Ethnarchos or Genarchos, as he was called, died, a council of the
elders took his place (Philo, _Leg._ 10); yet Augustus, as Claudius
states (Josephus, _Arch._ xix. 5, 2), “did not prohibit the Jews from
appointing an Ethnarch,” which probably is meant to signify that the
choice of a single president was only omitted for this time, not
abolished once for all. Under Gaius there were evidently only elders of
the Jewish body; and also under Vespasian these are met with (Josephus,
_Bell._ vii. 10, 1). An archon of the Jews in Antioch is named in
Josephus, _Bell._ vii. 3, 3.
[174] Apion spoke and wrote on all and sundry matters, upon the
metals and the Roman letters, on magic and concerning the Hetaerae,
on the early history of Egypt and the cookery receipts of Apicius;
but above all he made his fortune by his discourses upon Homer, which
acquired for him honorary citizenship in numerous Greek cities. He had
discovered that Homer had begun his Iliad with the unsuitable word
μῆνις for the reason that the first two letters, as numerals, exhibit
the number of the books of the two epics which he was to write; he
named the guest-friend in Ithaca, with whom he had made inquiries as
to the draught-board of the suitors; indeed he affirmed that he had
conjured up Homer himself from the nether world to question him about
his native country, and that Homer had come and had told it to him, but
had bound him not to betray it to others.
[175] The writings of Philo, which bring before us this whole
catastrophe with incomparable reality, nowhere strike this chord; but,
apart even from the fact that this rich and aged man had in him more of
the good man than of the good hater, it is obvious of itself that these
consequences of the occurrences on the Jewish side were not publicly
set forth. What the Jews thought and felt may not be judged of by what
they found it convenient to say, particularly in their works written
in Greek. If the Book of Wisdom and the third book of Maccabees are
in reality directed against the Alexandrian persecution of the Jews
(Hausrath, _Neutestam. Zeitgesch._ ii. 259 ff.)--which we may add is
anything but certain--they are, if possible, couched in a still tamer
tone than the writings of Philo.
[176] This is perhaps the right way of apprehending the Jewish
conceptions, in which the positive facts regularly run away into
generalities. In the accounts of the Anti-Messias and of the Antichrist
no positive elements are found to suit the emperor Gaius; the view
that would explain the name Armillus, which the Talmud assigns to
the former, by the circumstance that the emperor Gaius sometimes
wore women’s bracelets (_armillae_, Suetonius, _Gai._ 52), cannot
be seriously maintained. In the Apocalypse of John--the classical
revelation of Jewish self-esteem and of hatred towards the Romans--the
picture of the Anti-Messias is associated rather with Nero, who did not
cause his image to be set up in the Holy of Holies. This composition
belongs, as is well known, to a time and a tendency, which still viewed
Christianity as essentially a Jewish sect; those elected and marked
by the angel are all Jews, 12,000 from each of the twelve tribes, and
have precedence over the “great multitude of other righteous ones,”
_i.e._ of proselytes (ch. vii.; comp. ch. xii. 1). It was written,
demonstrably, after Nero’s fall, and when his return from the East was
expected. Now it is true that a pseudo-Nero appeared immediately after
the death of the real one, and was executed at the beginning of the
following year (Tacitus, _Hist._ ii. 8, 9); but it is not of this one
that John is thinking, for the very exact account makes no mention,
as John does, of the Parthians in the matter, and for John there is
a considerable interval between the fall of Nero and his return, the
latter even still lying in the future. His Nero is the person who,
under Vespasian, found adherents in the region of the Euphrates, whom
king Artabanus acknowledged under Titus and prepared to reinstate in
Rome by military force, and whom at length the Parthians surrendered,
after prolonged negotiations, about the year 88, to Domitian. To these
events the Apocalypse corresponds quite exactly.
On the other hand, in a writing of this character no inference as to
the state of the siege at the time can possibly be drawn, from the
circumstance that, according to xi. 1, 2, only the outer court, and
not the Holy of Holies of the Temple of Jerusalem was given into the
power of the heathen; here everything in the details is imaginary, and
this trait is certainly either invented at pleasure or, if the view
be preferred, possibly based on orders given to the Roman soldiers,
who were encamped in Jerusalem after its destruction, not to set
foot in what was formerly the Holy of Holies. The foundation of the
Apocalypse is indisputably the destruction of the earthly Jerusalem,
and the prospect thereby for the first time opened up of its future
ideal restoration; in place of the razing of the city which had taken
place there cannot possibly be put the mere expectation of its capture.
If, then, it is said of the seven heads of the dragon: βασιλεῖς ἑπτά
εἰσιν· οἱ πέντε ἔπεσαν, ὁ εἷς ἔστιν, ὁ ἄλλος οὔπω ἦλθεν, καὶ ὅταν
ἔλθῃ ὀλίγον αὐτὸν δεῖ μεῖναι (xvii. 10), the five, presumably, are
Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, Nero, the sixth Vespasian, the
seventh undefined; “the beast which was, and is not, and is itself the
eighth, but of the seven,” is, of course, Nero. The undefined seventh
is incongruous, like so much in this gorgeous, but contradictory and
often tangled imagery; and it is added, not because the number seven
was employed, which was easily to be got at by including Caesar, but
because the writer hesitated to predicate immediately of the reigning
emperor the short government of the last ruler and his overthrow by
the returning Nero. But one cannot possibly--as is done after others
by Renan--by including Caesar in the reckoning, recognise in the sixth
emperor, “who is,” Nero, who immediately afterward is designated as he
who “was and is not,” and in the seventh, who “has not yet come and
will not rule long,” even the aged Galba, who, according to Renan’s
view, was ruling at the time. It is clear that the latter does not
belong at all to such a series, any more than Otho and Vitellius.
It is more important, however, to oppose the current conception,
according to which the polemic is directed against the Neronian
persecution of the Christians and the siege or the destruction
of Jerusalem, whereas it is pointed against the Roman provincial
government generally, and in particular against the worship of the
emperors. If of the seven emperors Nero alone is named (by his
numerical expression), this is so, not because he was the worst of
the seven, but because the naming of the reigning emperor, while
prophesying a speedy end of his reign in a published writing, had its
risk, and some consideration towards the one “who is” beseems even
a prophet. Nero’s name was given up, and besides, the legend of his
healing and of his return was in every one’s mouth; thereby he has
become for the Apocalypse the representative of the Roman imperial
rule, and the Antichrist. The crime of the monster of the sea, and of
his image and instrument, the monster of the land, is not the violence
to the city of Jerusalem (xi. 2)--which appears not as their misdeed,
but rather as a portion of the world-judgment (in which case also
consideration for the reigning emperor may have been at work)--but
the divine worship, which the heathen pay to the monster of the sea
(xiii. 8: προσκυνήσουσιν αὐτὸν πάντες οἱ κατοικοῦντες ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς),
and which the monster of the land--called for that reason also the
pseudo-prophet--demands and compels for that of the sea (xiii. 12:
ποιεῖ τὴν γῆν καὶ τοὺς κατοικοῦντας ἐν αὐτῇ ἵνα προσκυνήσουσιν τὸ
θηρίον τὸ πρῶτον, οὗ ἐθεραπεύθη ἡ πληγὴ τοῦ θανάτου αὐτοῦ); above all,
he is upbraided with the desire to make an image for the former (xiii.
14: λέγων τοῖς κατοικοῦσιν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, ποιῆσαι εἰκόνα τῷ θηρίῳ ὃς
ἔχει τὴν πληγὴν τῆς μαχαίρης καὶ ἔζησεν, comp. xiv. 9; xvi. 2; xix.
20). This, it is plain, is partly the imperial government beyond the
sea, partly the lieutenancy on the Asiatic continent, not of this
or that province or even of this or that person, but generally such
representation of the emperor as the provincials of Asia and Syria
knew. If trade and commerce appear associated with the use of the
χάραγμα of the monster of the sea (xiii. 16, 17), there lies clearly
at bottom an abhorrence of the image and legend of the imperial
money--certainly transformed in a fanciful way, as in fact Satan makes
the image of the emperor speak. These very governors appear afterwards
(xvii.) as the ten horns, which are assigned to the monster in its
copy, and are here called, quite correctly, the “ten kings, which have
not the royal dignity, but have authority like kings;” the number,
which is taken over from the vision of Daniel, may not, it is true, be
taken too strictly.
In the sentences of death pronounced over the righteous, John is
thinking of the regular judicial procedure on account of the refusal
to worship the emperor’s image, such as the Letters of Pliny describe
(xiii. 15: ποιήσῃ ἵνα ὅσοι ἐὰν μὴ προσκυνήσωσιν τὴν εἰκόνα τοῦ
θηρίου ἀποκτανθῶσιν, comp. vi. 9; xx. 4). When stress is laid on
these sentences of death being executed with special frequency in
Rome (xvii. 6; xvii. 24), what is thereby meant is the execution of
sentences wherein men were condemned to fight as gladiators or with
wild beasts, which often could not take place on the spot where they
were pronounced, and, as is well known, took place chiefly in Rome
itself (Modestinus, _Dig._ xlviii. 19, 31). The Neronian executions on
account of alleged incendiarism do not formally belong to the class of
religious processes at all, and it is only prepossession that can refer
the martyrs’ blood shed in Rome, of which John speaks, exclusively
or pre-eminently to these events. The current conceptions as to the
so-called persecutions of the Christians labour under a defective
apprehension of the rule of law and the practice of law subsisting
in the Roman empire; in reality the persecution of the Christians
was a standing matter as was that of robbers; only such regulations
were put into practice at times more gently or even negligently, at
other times more strictly, and were doubtless on occasion specially
enforced from high quarters. The “war against the saints” is only a
subsequent interpolation on the part of some, for whom John’s words
did not suffice (xiii. 7). The Apocalypse is a remarkable evidence of
the national and religious hatred of the Jews towards the Occidental
government; but to illustrate with these colours the Neronian tale of
horrors, as Renan does in particular, is to shift the place of the
facts and to detract from their depth of significance. The Jewish
national hatred did not wait for the conquest of Jerusalem to originate
it, and it made, as might be expected, no distinction between the good
and the bad Caesar; its Anti-Messias is named Nero, doubtless, but not
less Vespasian or Marcus.
[177] The circumstance that Suetonius (_Claud._ 25) names a certain
Chrestus as instigator of the constant troubles in Rome, that had
in the first instance called forth these measures (according to him
the expulsion from Rome; in contrast to Dio, lx. 6) has been without
sufficient reason conceived as a misunderstanding of the movement
called forth by Christ among Jews and proselytes. The Book of Acts
xviii. 2, speaks only of the expulsion of the Jews. At any rate it
is not to be doubted that, with the attitude at that time of the
Christians to Judaism, they too fell under the edict.
[178] The Jews there at least appear later to have had only the fourth
of the five wards of the city in their possession (Josephus, _Bell.
Jud._ ii. 18, 8). Probably, if the 400 houses that were razed had been
given back again to them in so striking a manner, the Jewish authors
Josephus and Philo, who lay stress on all the imperial marks of favour
shown to the Jews, would not have been silent on the subject.
[179] The question was, apparently, whether the gift of the tenth
sheaf belonged to Aaron the priest (Numb. xviii. 28), to the priest
generally, or to the high-priest (Ewald, _Jüd. Gesch._ vi.^3 635).
[180] It is nothing but an empty fancy, when the statesman Josephus,
in his preface to his History of the war, puts it as if the Jews
of Palestine had reckoned on the one hand upon a rising of the
Euphrates-lands, on the other hand, upon the troubles in Gaul and the
threatening attitude of the Germans and on the crises of the year of
four emperors. The Jewish war had long been in full course when Vindex
appeared against Nero, and the Druids really did what is here assigned
to the Rabbis; and, however great was the importance of the Jewish
Diaspora in the lands of the Euphrates, a Jewish expedition from that
quarter against the Romans of the East was almost as inconceivable as
from Egypt and Asia Minor. Doubtless some free-lances came from thence,
as _e.g._ some young princes of the zealously Jewish royal house of
Adiabene (Josephus, _Bell. Jud._ ii. 19, 2; vi. 6, 4), and suppliant
embassies went thither from the insurgents (_ib._ vi. 6, 2); but even
money hardly flowed to the Jews from this quarter in any considerable
amount. This statement is characteristic of the author more than of the
war. If it is easy to understand how the Jewish leader of insurgents
and subsequent courtier of the Flavians was fond of comparing himself
with the Parthians exiled at Rome, it is the less to be excused that
modern historical authorship should walk in similar paths, and in
endeavouring to apprehend these events as constituent parts of the
history of the Roman court and city or even of the Romano-Parthian
quarrels, should by this insipid introduction of so-called great policy
obscure the fearful necessity of this tragic development.
[181] Josephus (_Arch._ xx. 8, 9), makes him indeed secretary of Nero
for Greek correspondence, although he, where he follows Roman sources
(xx. 8, 2), designates him correctly as prefect; but certainly the same
person is meant. He is called παιδαγωγός with him as with Tacitus,
_Ann._ xiii. 2: _rector imperatoriae iuventae_.
[182] It is not quite clear what were the arrangements for the forces
occupying Syria after the Parthian war was ended in the year 63. At
its close there were seven legions stationed in the East, the four
originally Syrian, 3d Gallica, 6th Ferrata, 10th Fretensis, 12th
Fulminata, and three brought up from the West, the 4th Scythica from
Moesia (I. 213), the 5th Macedonica, probably from the same place (I.
219; for which probably an upper German legion was sent to Moesia I.
132), the 15th Apollinaris from Pannonia (I. 219). Since, excepting
Syria, no Asiatic province was at that time furnished with legions,
and the governor of Syria certainly in times of peace had never more
than four legions, the Syrian army beyond doubt had at that time been
brought back, or at least ought to have been brought back, to this
footing. The four legions which accordingly were to remain in Syria
were, as this was most natural, the four old Syrian ones; for the
3d had in the year 70 just marched from Syria to Moesia (Suetonius,
_Vesp._ 6; Tacitus, _Hist._ ii. 74), and that the 6th, 10th, 12th
belonged to the army of Cestius follows from Josephus, _Bell. Jud._
ii. 18, 9, c. 19, 7; vii. 1, 3. Then, when the Jewish war broke out,
seven legions were again destined for Asia, and of these four for Syria
(Tacitus, _Hist._ i. 10), three for Palestine; the three legions added
were just those employed for the Parthian war, the 4th, 5th, 15th,
which perhaps at that time were still in course of marching back to
their old quarters. The 4th probably went at that time definitively to
Syria, where it thenceforth remained; on the other hand, the Syrian
army gave off the 10th to Vespasian, presumably because this had
suffered least in the campaign of Cestius. In addition he received the
5th and the 15th. The 5th and the 10th legions came from Alexandria
(Josephus, _Bell. Jud._ iii. 1, 3, c. 4, 2); but that they were brought
up from Egypt cannot well be conceived, not merely because the 10th
was one of the Syrian, but especially because the march by land from
Alexandria on the Nile to Ptolemais through the middle of the insurgent
territory at the beginning of the Jewish war could not have been
so narrated by Josephus. Far more probably Titus went by ship from
Achaia to Alexandria on the Gulf of Issus, the modern Alexandretta,
and brought the two legions thence to Ptolemais. The orders to march
may have reached the 15th somewhere in Asia Minor, since Vespasian,
doubtless in order to take them over, went to Syria by land (Josephus,
_Bell. Jud._ iii. 1, 3). To these three legions, with which Vespasian
began the war, there was added under Titus a further one of the
Syrian, the 12th. Of the four legions that occupied Jerusalem the two
previously Syrian remained in the East, the 10th in Judaea, the 12th in
Cappadocia, while the 5th returned to Moesia, and the 15th to Pannonia
(Josephus, _Bell. Jud._ vii. 1, 3 c. 5, 3).
[183] To the three legions there belonged five _alae_ and eighteen
cohorts, and the army of Palestine consisting of one _ala_ and five
cohorts. These _auxilia_ numbered accordingly 3000 alarians and (since
among the twenty-three cohorts ten were 1000 strong, thirteen 720,
or probably rather only 420 strong; for instead of the startling
ἑξακοσίους we expect rather τριακοσίους ἑξάκοντα) 16,240 (or, if 720 is
retained, 19,360) cohortales. To these fell to be added 1000 horsemen
from each of the four kings, and 5000 Arabian archers, with 2000 from
each of the other three kings. This gives together--reckoning the
legion at 6000 men--52,240 men, and so towards 60,000, as Josephus
(_Bell. Jud._ iii. 4, 2) says. But as the divisions are thus all
calculated at the utmost normal strength, the effective aggregate
number can hardly be estimated at 50,000. These numbers of Josephus
appear in the main trustworthy, just as the analogous ones for the army
of Cestius (_Bell. Jud._ ii. 18, 9); whereas his figures, resting on
the census, are throughout measured after the scale of the smallest
village in Galilee numbering 15,000 inhabitants (_Bell. Jud._ iii. 3,
2), and are historically as useless as the figures of Falstaff. It is
but seldom, _e.g._ at the siege of Jotapata, that we recognise reported
numbers.
[184] This arch was erected to Titus after his death by the imperial
senate. Another, dedicated to him during his short government by the
same senate in the circus (_C. I. L._ vi. 944) specifies even with
express words as the ground of erecting the monument, “because he,
according to the precept and direction and under the superintendence
of his father, subdued the people of the Jews and destroyed the town
of Hierusolyma, which up to his time had either been besieged in
vain by all generals, kings, and peoples, or not assailed at all.”
The historic knowledge of this singular document, which ignores not
merely Nebuchadnezzar and Antiochus Epiphanes, but their own Pompeius,
stands on the same level with its extravagance in the praise of a very
ordinary feat of arms.
[185] The account of Josephus, that Titus with his council of war
resolved not to destroy the temple, excites suspicion by the manifest
intention of it, and, as the use made of Tacitus in the chronicle of
Sulpicius Severus is completely proved by Bernays, it may certainly
well be a question whether his quite opposite account (_Chron._ ii.
30, 6), that the council of war had resolved to destroy the temple,
does not proceed from Tacitus, and whether the preference is not to be
given to it, although it bears traces of Christian revision. This view
further commends itself through the fact that the dedication addressed
to Vespasian of the Argonautica of the poet Valerius Flaccus celebrates
the victor of Solyma, who hurls the fiery torches.
[186] That the emperor took this land for himself (ἰδίαν αὐτῷ τὴν χώραν
φυλάττων) is stated by Josephus, _Bell. Jud._ vii. 6, 6; not in accord
with this is his command πᾶσαν γῆν ἀποδόσθαι τῶν Ἰουδαίων (_l. c._), in
which doubtless there lurks an error or a copyist’s mistake. It is in
keeping with the expropriation that land was by way of grace assigned
elsewhere to individual Jewish landowners (Josephus, _vit._ 16). We
may add that the territory was probably employed as an endowment for
the legion stationed there (_Eph. epigr._ ii. n. 696; Tacitus, _Ann._
xiii. 54).
[187] Eusebius, _H. E._ iv. 2, puts the outbreak on the 18th, and so,
according to his reckoning (in the Chronicle), the penultimate year of
Trajan; and therewith Dio, lxviii. 32, agrees.
[188] Eusebius himself (in Syncellus) says only: Ἀδριανὸς Ἰουδαίους
κατὰ Ἀλεξανδρέων στασιάζοντας ἐκόλασεν. The Armenian and Latin
translations appear to have erroneously made out of this a restoration
of Alexandria destroyed by the Jews, of which Eusebius, _H. E._ iv. 2,
and Dio, lxviii. 32, know nothing.
[189] This is shown by the expressions of Dio, lxix. 13: οἱ ἁπανταχοῦ
γῆς Ἰουδαῖοι and πάσης ὡς εἰπεῖν κινουμένης ἐπὶ τούτῳ τῆς οἰκουμένης.
[190] If, according to the contemporary Appian (_Syr._ 50), Hadrian
once more destroyed (κατέσκαψε) the town, this proves as well that it
was preceded by an at least in some measure complete formation of the
colony, as that it was captured by the insurgents. Only thereby is
explained the great loss which the Romans suffered (Fronto, _de bello
Parth._ p. 218 Nab.: _Hadriano imperium obtinente quantum militum a
Iudaesis ... caesum_; Dio, lxix. 14); and it accords at least well
with this, that the governor of Syria, Publicius Marcellus, left his
province to bring help to his colleague Tineius Rufus (Eusebius, _H.
E._ iv. 6; Borghesi, _Opp._ iii. 64), in Palestine (_C. I. Gr._ 4033,
4034).
[191] That the coins with this name belong to the Hadrianic
insurrection is now proved (v. Sallet, _Zeitschr. für Numism._ v.
110); this is consequently the Rabbi Eleazar from Modein of the Jewish
accounts (Ewald, _Gesch. Isr._ vii.^2, 418; Schürer, _Lehrbuch_, p.
357). That the Simon whom these coins name partly with Eleazar, partly
alone, is the Bar-Kokheba of Justin Martyr and Eusebius is at least
very probable.
[192] Dio (lxix. 12) calls the war protracted (οὔτ’ ὀλιγοχρόνιος);
Eusebius in his Chronicle puts its beginning in the sixteenth, its
end in the eighteenth or nineteenth year of Hadrian; the coins of the
insurgents are dated from the first or from the second year of the
deliverance of Israel. We have not trustworthy dates; the Rabbinic
tradition (Schürer, _Lehrbuch_, p. 361) is not available in this
respect.
[193] Biography of Alexander, c. 22: _Iudaeis privilegia reservavit,
Christianos esse passus est_. Clearly the privileged position of the
Jews as compared with the Christians comes here to light--a position,
which certainly rests in its turn on the fact that the former represent
a nation the latter do not.
[194] In order to make good that even in bondage the Jews were able to‘’“”
exercise a certain self-administration, Origen (about the year 226)
writes to Africanus, c. 14: “How much even now, where the Romans rule
and the Jews pay to them the tribute (τὸ δίδραχμον), has the president
of the people (ὁ ἐθνάρχης) among them in his power with permission
of the emperor (συγχωροῦντος Καίσαρος)? Even courts are secretly
held according to the law, and even on various occasions sentence of
death is pronounced. This I, who have long lived in the land of this
people, have myself experienced and ascertained.” The patriarch of
Judaea already makes his appearance in the letter forged in the name
of Hadrian in the biography of the tyrant Saturninus (c. 8), in the
ordinances first in the year 392 (_C. Th._ xvi. 8, 8). Patriarchs as
presidents of individual Jewish communities, for which the word from
its signification is better adapted, meet us already in the ordinances
of Constantine I. (_C. Th._ xvi. 8, 1, 2).
[195] The jurists of the third century lay down this rule, appealing to
an edict of Severus (_Dig._ xxvii. 1, 15, 6; l. 2, 3, 3). According to
the ordinance of the year 321 (_C. Th._ xvi. 8, 3) this appears even
as a right, not as a duty of the Jews, so that it depended on them to
undertake or decline the office.
[196] The analogous treatment of castration in the Hadrianic edict,
_Dig._ xlviii. 8, 4, 2, and of circumcision in Paulus, _Sent._ v. 22,
3, 4, and Modestinus, _Dig._ xlviii. 8, 11 pr., naturally suggests this
point of view. The statement that Severus _Judaeos fieri sub gravi
poena vetuit_ (_Vita_, 17), is doubtless nothing but the enforcement of
this prohibition.
[197] The remarkable account in Origen’s treatise _against Celsus_,
ii. 13 (written about 250), shows that the circumcision of the non-Jew
involved _de iure_ the penalty of death, although it is not clear how
far this found application to Samaritans or Sicarii.
[198] This exclusion of the joint rule of the senate as of the senators
is indicated by Tacitus (_Hist._ i. 11) with the words that Augustus
wished to have Egypt administered exclusively by his personal servants
(_domi retinere_; comp. _Staatsrecht_, ii. p. 963). In principle this
abnormal form of government was applicable for all the provinces not
administered by senators, the presidents of which were also at the
outset called chiefly _praefecti_ (_C. I. L._ v. p. 809, 902). But
at the first division of the provinces between emperor and senate
there was probably no other of these but just Egypt; and subsequently
the distinction here came into sharper prominence, in so far as all
the other provinces of this category obtained no legions. For in the
emergence of the equestrian commandants of the legion instead of the
senatorial, as was the rule in Egypt, the exclusion of the senatorial
government finds its most palpable expression.
[199] This ordinance holds only for Egypt, not for the other
territories administered by non-senators. How essential it appeared to
the government, we see from the constitutional and religious apparatus
called into requisition to secure it (_Trig. tyr._ c. 22).
[200] The current assertion that _provincia_ is only by an abuse of
language put for the districts not administered by senators is not
well founded. Egypt was private property of the emperor just as much
or just as little as Gaul and Syria--yet Augustus himself says (_Mon.
Ancyr._ 5, 24) _Aegyptum imperio populi Romani adieci_, and assigns
to the governor, since he as _eques_ could not be _pro praetore_, by
special law the same jurisdiction in processes as the Roman praetors
had (Tacitus, _Ann._ xii. 60).
[201] As a matter of course what is here meant is the land of Egypt,
not the possessions subject to the Lagids. Cyrene was similarly
organised (p. 165). But the properly Egyptian government was never
applied to southern Syria and to the other territories which were for a
longer or a shorter time under the power of Egypt.
[202] To these falls to be added Naucratis, the oldest Greek town
already founded in Egypt before the Ptolemies, and further Paraetonium,
which indeed in some measure lies beyond the bounds of Egypt.
[203] There was not wanting of course a certain joint action, similar
to that which is exercised by the _regiones_ and the _vici_ of
self-administering urban communities; to this category belongs what
we meet with of agoranomy and gymnasiarchy in the nomes, as also the
erection of honorary memorials and the like, all of which, we may add,
make their appearance only to a small extent and for the most part but
late. According to the edict of Alexander (_C. I. Gr._ 4957, l. 34) the
_strategoi_ do not seem to have been, properly speaking, nominated by
the governor, but only to have been confirmed after an examination; we
do not know who had the proposing of them.
[204] The position of matters is clearly apparent in the inscription
set up at the beginning of the reign of Pius to the well-known orator
Aristides by the Egyptian Greeks (_C. I. Gr._ 4679); as dedicants are
named ἡ πόλις τῶν Ἀλεξανδρέων καὶ Ἑρμούπολις ἡ μεγάλη καὶ ἡ βουλὴ ἡ
Ἀντινοέων νέων Ἑλλήνων καὶ οἱ ἐν τῷ Δέλτᾳ τῆς Αἰγύπτου καὶ οἱ τὸν
Θηβαϊκὸν νομὸν οἰκοῦντες Ἕλληνες. Thus only Antinoopolis, the city of
the “new Hellenes,” has a Boule; Alexandria appears without this, but
as a Greek city in the aggregate. Moreover there take part in this
dedication the Greeks living in the Delta and those living in Thebes,
but of the Egyptian towns Great-Hermopolis alone, on which probably
the immediate vicinity of Antinoopolis has exercised an influence.
To Ptolemais Strabo (xvii. 1, 42, p. 813) attributes a σύστημα
πολιτικὸν ἐν τῷ Ἑλληνικῷ τρόπῳ; but in this we may hardly think of
more than what belonged to the capital according to its constitution
more exactly known to us--and so specially of the division of the
burgesses into _phylae_. That the pre-Ptolemaic Greek city Naucratis
retained in the Ptolemaic time the Boule, which it doubtless had, is
possible, but cannot be decisive for the Ptolemaic arrangements.--Dio’s
statement (ii. 17) that Augustus left the other Egyptian towns with
their existing organisation, but took the common council from the
Alexandrians on account of their untrustworthiness, rests doubtless on
misunderstanding, the more especially as, according to it, Alexandria
appears slighted in comparison with the other Egyptian communities,
which is not at all in keeping with probability.
[205] The Egyptian coining of gold naturally ceased with the annexation
of the land, for there was in the Roman empire only imperial gold.
With the silver also Augustus dealt in like manner, and as ruler of
Egypt caused simply copper to be struck, and even this only in moderate
quantities. At first Tiberius coined, after A.D. 27-28, silver money
for Egyptian circulation, apparently as token-money, as the pieces
correspond nearly in point of weight to four, in point of silver
value to one, of the Roman denarius (Feuardent, _Numismatique, Égypte
ancienne_, ii. p. xi.). But as in legal currency the Alexandrian
drachma was estimated as obolus (consequently as a sixth, not as a
fourth; comp. _Röm. Münzwesen_, p. 43, 723) of the Roman denarius
(_Hermes_, v. p. 136), and the provincial silver always lost as
compared with the imperial silver, the Alexandrian tetradrachmon of the
silver value of a denarius has rather been estimated at the current
value of two-thirds of a denarius. Accordingly down to Commodus, from
whose time the Alexandrian tetradrachmon is essentially a copper
coin, the same has been quite as much a coin of value as the Syrian
tetradrachmon and the Cappadocian drachma; they only left to the former
the old name and the old weight.
[206] That the emperor Hadrian, among other Egyptising caprices,
gave to the nomes as well as to his Antinoopolis for once the right
of coining, which was thereupon done subsequently on a couple of
occasions, makes no alteration in the rule.
[207] This figure is given by the so-called Epitome of Victor, c.
1, for the time of Augustus. After this payment was transferred to
Constantinople there went thither under Justinian (_Ed._ xiii. c. 8)
annually 8,000,000 artabae (for these are to be understood, according
to c. 6, as meant), or 26-2/3 millions of Roman bushels (Hultsch,
_Metrol._ p. 628), to which falls further to be added the similar
payment to the town of Alexandria, introduced by Diocletian. To the
shipmasters for the freight to Constantinople 8000 solidi = £5000 were
annually paid from the state-chest.
[208] At least Cleopatra on a distribution of grain in Alexandria
excluded the Jews (Josephus, _contra Ap._ ii. 5), and all the more,
consequently, the Egyptians.
[209] The edict of Alexander (_C. I. Gr._ 4957), l. 33 ff., exempts the
ἐνγενεῖς Ἀλεξανδρεῖς dwelling ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ (not ἐν τῇ πόλει) on account
of their business from the λειτουργίαι χωρικαί.
[210] “There subsist,” says the Alexandrian Jew Philo (_in Flacc._ 10),
“as respects corporal chastisement (τῶν μαστίγων), distinctions in our
city according to the rank of those to be chastised; the Egyptians are
chastised with different scourges and by others, but the Alexandrians
with canes (σπάθαις; σπάθη is the stem of the palm-leaf), and by the
Alexandrian cane-bearers” (σπαθηφόροι, perhaps _bacillarius_). He
afterwards complains bitterly that the elders of his community, if they
were to be scourged at all, should not have been provided at least
with decorous burgess-lashes (ταῖς ἐλευθεριωτέραις καὶ πολιτικωτέραις
μάστιξιν).
[211] Josephus, _contra Ap._ ii. 4, μόνοις Αἰγυπτίοις οἱ κύριοι νῦν
Ῥωμαῖοι τῆς οἰκουμένης μεταλαμβάνειν ἡστινοσοῦν πολιτείας ἀπειρήκασιν.
6, _Aegyptiis neque regum quisquam videtur ius civitatis fuisse
largitus neque nunc quilibet imperatorum_ (comp. _Eph. epigr._
v. p. 13). The same upbraids his adversary (ii. 3, 4) that he, a
native Egyptian, had denied his home and given himself out as an
Alexandrian.--Individual exceptions are not thereby excluded.
[212] Alexandrian science, too, protested in the sense of the
king against this proposition (Plutarch, _de fort. Alex._ i. 6);
Eratosthenes designated civilisation as not peculiar to the Hellenes
alone, and not to be denied to all barbarians, _e.g._ not to the
Indians, the Arians, the Romans, the Carthaginians; men were rather
to be divided into “good” and “bad” (Strabo, i. _fin._ p. 66). But of
this theory no practical application was made to the Egyptian race even
under the Lagids.
[213] Admission to the equestrian positions was at least rendered
difficult: _non est ex albo iudex patre Aegyptio_ (_C. I. L._ iv. 1943;
comp. _Staatsrecht_, ii. 919, note 2; _Eph. epigr._ v. p. 13, note 2).
Yet we meet early with individual Alexandrians in equestrian offices,
like Tiberius Julius Alexander (p. 246, note).
[214] If the words of Pliny (_H. N._ v. 31, 128) are accurate, that
the island of Pharos before the harbour of Alexandria was a _colonia
Caesaris dictatoris_ (comp. iv. 574), the dictator has here too, like
Alexander, gone beyond the thought of Aristotle. But there can be no
doubt as to the point, that after the annexation of Egypt there never
was a Roman colony there.
[215] The titles of Augustus run with the Egyptian priests to the
following effect: “The beautiful boy, lovely through worthiness to
be loved, the prince of princes, elect of Ptah and Nun the father
of the gods, king of upper Egypt and king of lower Egypt, lord of
the two lands, Autokrator, son of the sun, lord of diadems, Kaisar,
ever living, beloved by Ptah and Isis;” in this case the proper
names “Autokrator, Kaisar,” are retained from the Greek. The title
of Augustus occurs first in the case of Tiberius in an Egyptian
translation (_nti χu_), and with the retention of the Greek Σεβαστός
under Domitian. The title of the fair, lovely boy, which in better
times was wont to be given only to the children proclaimed as
joint-rulers, afterwards became stereotyped, and is found employed,
as for Caesarion and Augustus, so also for Tiberius, Claudius, Titus,
Domitian. It is more important that in deviation from the older title,
as it is found, _e.g._ in Greek on the inscription of Rosetta (_C. I.
Gr._ 4697), in the case of the Caesars from Augustus onward the title
“prince of princes” is appended, by which beyond doubt it was intended
to express their position of great-king, which the earlier kings had
not.
[216] If people knew, king Seleucus was wont to say (Plutarch, _An
seni_, 11), what a burden it was to write and to read so many letters,
they would not take up the diadem if it lay at their feet.
[217] That he wore other insignia than the officers generally
(Hirschfeld, _Verw. Gesch._ p. 271), it is hardly allowable to infer
from _vita Hadr._ 4.
[218] Thus Tiberius Julius Alexander, an Alexandrian Jew, held this
governorship in the last years of Nero (p. 204); certainly he belonged
to a very rich family of rank, allied by marriage even with the
imperial house, and he had distinguished himself in the Parthian war
as chief of the staff of Corbulo--a position which he soon afterwards
took up once more in the Jewish war of Titus. He must have been
one of the ablest officers of this epoch. To him is dedicated the
pseudo-Aristotelian treatise περὶ κοσμοῦ (p. 168), evidently composed
by another Alexandrian Jew (Bernays, _Gesammelte Abhandl._ ii. 278).
[219] Unmistakably the _iuridicus Aegypti_ (_C. I. L._ x. 6976; also
_missus in Aegyptum ad iurisdictionem_, _Bull. dell’ Inst._ 1856, p.
142; _iuridicus Alexandreae_, _C._ vi. 1564, viii. 8925, 8934; _Dig._
i. 20, 2), and the _idiologus ad Aegyptum_ (_C._ x. 4862; _procurator
ducenarius Alexandriae idiulogu_, _Eph. cp._ v. p. 30, and _C. I.
Gr._ 3751; ὁ γνώμων τοῦ ἰδίου λόγου, _C. I. Gr._ 4957, v. 44, comp.
v. 39), are modelled on the assistants associated with the legates
of the imperial provinces for the administration of justice (_legati
iuridici_) and the finances (_procuratores provinciae_; _Staatsrecht_
1^2, p. 223, note 5). That they were appointed for the whole land,
and were subordinate to the _praefectus Aegypti_, is stated by Strabo
expressly (xvii. 1, 12, p. 797), and this assumption is required by
the frequent mention of Egypt in their style and title as well as by
the turn in the edict _C. I. Gr._ 4957, v. 39. But their jurisdiction
was not exclusive; “many processes,” says Strabo, “are decided by
the official administering justice” (that he assigned guardians, we
learn from _Dig._ i. 20, 2), and according to the same it devolved
on the Idiologus in particular to confiscate for the exchequer the
_bona vacantia et caduca_.--This does not exclude the view that the
Roman _iuridicus_ came in place of the older court of thirty with the
ἀρχιδικαστής at its head (Diodorus, i. 75), who was Egyptian, and may
not be confounded with the Alexandrian ἀρχιδικαστής, had moreover
perhaps been set aside already before the Roman period, and that the
Idiologus originated out of the subsistence in Egypt of a claim of the
king on heritages, such as did not occur to the same extent in the rest
of the empire, which latter view Lumbroso (_Recherches_, p. 285) has
made very probable.
[220] The ἐξηγητής, according to Strabo, xvii. 1, 12, p. 797, the
first civic official in Alexandria under the Ptolemies as under the
Romans, and entitled to wear the purple, is certainly identical
with the year-priest in the testament of Alexander appearing in
the Alexander-romance very well instructed in such matters (iii.
33, p. 149, Müller). As the Exegetes has, along with his title,
doubtless to be taken in a religious sense, the ἐπιμέλεια τῶν τῇ
πόλει χρησίμων, that priest of the romance is ἐπιμελιστὴς τῆς πόλεως.
The romance-writer will not have invented the payment with a talent
and the hereditary character any more than the purple and the golden
chaplet; the hereditary element, in reference to which Lumbroso
(_l’Egitto al tempo dei Greci e Romani_, p. 152) recalls the ἐξηγητὴς
ἔναρχος of the Alexandrian inscriptions (_C. I. Gr._ 4688, 4976 c.),
is presumably to be conceived to the effect that a certain circle of
persons was called by hereditary right, and out of these the governor
appointed the year-priest. This priest of Alexander (as well as of
the following Egyptian kings, according to the stone of Canopus and
that of Rosetta, _C. I. Gr._ 4697), was under the earlier Lagids the
eponym for Alexandrian documents, while later as under the Romans
the kings’ names come in for that purpose. Not different from him
probably was the “chief priest of Alexandria and all Egypt,” of an
inscription of the city of Rome from Hadrian’s time (_C. I. Gr._
5900: ἀρχιερεῖ Ἀλεξανδρείας καὶ Αἰγύπτου πάσης Λευκίῳ Ἰουλίῳ Οὐηστίνῳ
καὶ ἐπιστάτῃ τοῦ Μουσείου καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἐν Ῥώμῃ βιβλιοθηκῶν Ῥωμαικῶν
τε καὶ Ἑλληνικῶν καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς παιδείας Ἀδριανοῦ, ἐπιστολεῖ τοῦ αὐτοῦ
αὐτοκράτορος); the proper title, ἐξηγητής was avoided out of Egypt,
because it usually denoted the sexton. If the chief priesthood, as the
tenor of the inscription suggests, is to be assumed as having been
at that time permanent, the transition from the annual tenure to the
at least titular, and not seldom also real, tenure for life repeats
itself, as is well known, in the _sacerdotia_ of the provinces, to
which this Alexandrian one did not indeed belong, but the place of
which it represented in Egypt (p. 238). That the priesthood and the
presidency of the Museum are two distinct offices is shown by the
inscription itself. We learn the same from the inscription of a royal
chief physician of a good Lagid period, who is withal as well exegete
as president of the Museum (Χρύσερμον Ἡρακλείτου Ἀλεξανδρέα τὸν συγγενῆ
βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου καὶ ἐξηγητὴν καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἰατρῶν καὶ ἐπιστάτην τοῦ
Μουσείου). But the two monuments at the same time suggest that the post
of first official of Alexandria and the presidency of the Museum were
frequently committed to the same man, although in the Roman time the
former was conferred by the prefect, the latter by the emperor.
[221] Not to be confounded with the similar office which Philo (in
_Flacc._ 16) mentions and Lucian (_Apolog._ 12) held; this was not an
urban office, but a subaltern’s post in the praefecture of Egypt, in
Latin _a commentariis_ or _ab actis_.
[222] This is the _procurator Neaspoleos et mausolei Alexandriae_ (_C.
I. L._ viii. 8934; Henzen, 6929). Officials of a like kind and of like
rank, but whose functions are not quite clear, are the _procurator ad
Mercurium Alexandreae_ (_C. I. L._ x. 3847), and the _procurator
Alexandreae Pelusii_ (_C._ vi. 1024). The Pharos also is placed under
an imperial freedman (_C._ vi. 8582).
[223] The alliance of the Palmyrenes and the Blemyes is pointed to by
the notice of the _vita Firmi_, c. 3, and by the statement, according
to Zosimus, i. 71, that Ptolemais fell away to the Blemyes (comp.
Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._ vii. 32). Aurelian only negotiated with these
(_Vita_, 34, 41); it was Probus who first drove them again out of Egypt
(Zosimus, _l.c._; _Vita_, 17).
[224] We still possess letters of this sort, addressed by the bishop
of the city, at that time Dionysius († 265), to the members of the
church shut off in the hostile half of the town (Eusebius, _Hist.
Eccl._ vii. 21, 22, comp. 32). When it is therein said: “one gets more
easily from the West to the East than from Alexandria to Alexandria,”
and ἡ μεσαιτάτη τῆς πόλεως ὁδός, consequently the street furnished
with colonnades, running from the Lochias point right through the town
(comp. Lumbroso, _l’Egitto al tempo dei Greci e Romani_, 1882, p. 137)
is compared with the desert between Egypt and the promised land, it
appears almost as if Severus Antoninus had carried out his threat of
drawing a wall across the town and occupying it in a military fashion
(Dio, lxxvii. 23). The razing of the walls after the overthrow of the
revolt (Ammianus, xxii. 16, 15) would then have to be referred to this
very building.
[225] The alleged Egyptian tyrants, Aemilianus, Firmus, Saturninus, are
at least not attested as such. The so-called description of the life
of the second is nothing else than the sadly disfigured catastrophe of
Prucheion.
[226] _Chr. Pasch._ p. 514; Procopius, _Hist. arc._ 26; Gothofred. on
_Cod. Theod._ xiv. 26, 2. Stated distributions of corn had already been
instituted earlier in Alexandria, but apparently only for persons old
and decayed, and--it may be conjectured--on account of the city, not of
the state (Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._ vii. 21).
[227] In the town of Alexandria there appears to have been no landed
property to the strict sense, but only a sort of hereditary lease
(Ammianus, xxii. 11, 6; _Staatsrecht_, ii. 963, note 1); but otherwise
private property in the soil prevailed also in Egypt, in the sense in
which the provincial law knows such a thing at all. There is often
mention of domanial possession, _e.g._ Strabo, xvii. 1, 51, p. 828, says
that the best Egyptian dates grow on an island on which private persons
might not possess any land, but it was formerly royal, now imperial,
and yielded a large income. Vespasian sold a portion of the Egyptian
domains and thereby exasperated the Alexandrians (Dio, lxvi. 8)--beyond
doubt the great farmers who then gave the land in sub-lease to the
peasants proper. Whether landed property in mortmain, especially of
the priestly colleges, was in the Roman period still as extensive as
formerly, may be doubted; as also whether otherwise large estates or
small properties predominated; petty husbandry was certainly general.
We possess figures neither for the domanial quota nor for that of the
land-tax; that the fifth sheaf in Orosius, i. 8, 9, is copied including
the _usque ad nunc_ from Genesis, is rightly observed by Lumbroso,
_Recherches_, p. 94. The domanial rent cannot have amounted to less
than the half; even for the land-tax the tenth (Lumbroso, _l. c._ p.
289, 293) may have hardly sufficed. Export of grain otherwise from
Egypt needed the consent of the governor (Hirschfeld, _Annona_, p.
23), doubtless because otherwise scarcity might easily set in in the
thickly-peopled land. Yet this arrangement was certainly more by way
of control than of prohibition; in the Periplus of the Egyptian corn
is on several occasions (c. 7, 17, 24, 28, comp. 56) adduced among the
articles of export. Even the cultivation of the fields seems to have
become similarly controlled; “the Egyptians, it is said, are fonder
of cultivating rape than corn, so far as they may, on account of the
rape-seed oil” (Plinius, _H. N._ xix. 5, 79).
[228] In the edict of Diocletian among the five fine sorts of linen
the first four are Syrian or Cilician (of Tarsus) and the Egyptian
linen appears not merely in the last place, but is also designated as
Tarsian-Alexandrian, that is, prepared in Alexandria after the Tarsian
model.
[229] It was related of a rich man in Egypt that he had lined his
palace with glass instead of with marble, and that he possessed papyrus
and lime enough to provide an army with them (_Vita Firmi_, 3).
[230] That the alleged letter of Hadrian (_Vita Saturnini_, 8) is a
late fabrication, is shown _e.g._ by the fact, that the emperor in
this highly friendly letter addressed to his father-in-law, Servianus,
complains of the injuries which the Alexandrians at his first departure
had heaped on his son Verus, while on the other hand it is established
that this Servianus was executed at the age of ninety in the year 136,
because he had disapproved the adoption of Verus, which had taken place
shortly before.
[231] The ναύκληροι τοῦ πορευτικοῦ Ἀλεξανδρεινοῦ στόλου, who set up
the stone doubtless belonging to Portus, _C. I. Gr._ 5889, were the
captains of these grain-ships. From the Serapeum of Ostia we possess a
series of inscriptions (_C. I. L._ xiv. 47), according to which it was
in all parts a copy of that at Alexandria; the president is at the same
time ἐπιμελητὴς παντὸς τοῦ Ἀλεξανδρείνου στόλου (_C. I. Gr._ 5973).
Probably these transports were employed mainly with the carriage of
grain, and this consequently took place by succession, to which also
the precautions adopted by the emperor Gaius in the straits of Reggio
(Josephus, _Arch._ xix. 2, 5) point. With this well comports the fact,
that the first appearance of the Alexandrian fleet in the spring was a
festival for Puteoli (Seneca, _Ep._ 77, 1).
[232] This is shown by the remarkable Delian inscriptions, _Eph.
epigr._ i. p. 600, 602.
[233] Already in the Delian inscriptions of the last century of the
republic the Syrians predominate. The Egyptian deities had doubtless
a much revered shrine there, but among the numerous priests and
dedicators we meet only a single Alexandrian (Hauvette-Besnault, _Bull.
de corr. Hell._ vi. 316 f.). Guilds of Alexandrian merchants are known
to us at Tomi (I. 310, note) and at Perinthus (_C. I. Gr._ 2024).
[234] After Juvenal has described the wild drinking bouts of the native
Egyptians in honour of the local gods of the several nomes, he adds
that therein the natives were in no respect inferior to the Canopus,
_i.e._ the Alexandrian festival of Sarapis, notorious for its unbridled
licentiousness (Strabo, xvii. 1, 17, p. 801): _horrida sane Aegyptus,
sed luxuria quantum ipse notavi, barbara famoso non cedit turba Canopo_
(_Sat._ xv. 44).
[235] Ammianus, xxii. 16, 23: _Erubescit apud (Aegyptios), si qui non
infitiando tributa plurimas in corpore vibices ostendat_.
[236] This was according to Juvenal Tentyra, which must be a mistake,
if the well known Tentyra is meant; but the list of the Ravennate
chronicler, iii. 2, names the two places together.
[237] Seneca, _ad Helv._ 19, 6: _loquax et in contumelias praefectorum
ingeniosa provincia ... etiam periculosi sales placent_.
[238] Dio Chrysostom says in his address to the Alexandrians (_Or._
xxxii. p. 663 Reiske): “Because now (the intelligent) keep in the
background and are silent, there spring up among you endless disputes
and quarrels and disorderly clamour, and bad and unbridled speeches,
accusers, aspersions, trials, a rabble of orators.” In the Alexandrian
Jew-hunt, which Philo so drastically describes, we see these
mob-orators at work.
[239] Dio Cassius, xxxix. 58: “The Alexandrians do the utmost in all
respects as to daring, and speak out everything that occurs to them. In
war and its terrors their conduct is cowardly; but in tumults, which
with them are very frequent and very serious, they without scruple come
to mortal blows, and for the sake of the success of the moment account
their life nothing, nay, they go to their destruction as if the highest
things were at stake.”
[240] The “pious Egyptians” offered resistance, as Macrobius, _Sat._
i. 7, 14, reports, but _tyrannide Ptolemaeorum pressi hos quoque deos_
(Sarapis and Saturnus) _in cultum recipere Alexandrinorum more, apud
quos potissimum colebantur, coacti sunt_. As they thus had to present
bloody sacrifices, which was against their ritual, they did not admit
these gods, at least into the towns; _nullum Aegypti oppidum intra
muros suos aut Saturni aut Sarapis fanum recepit_.
[241] The often-quoted anonymous author of a description of the
empire from the time of Constantius, a good heathen, praises Egypt
particularly on account of its exemplary piety: “Nowhere are the
mysteries of the gods so well celebrated as there from of old and
still at present.” Indeed, he adds, some were of opinion that the
Chaldaeans--he means the Syrian cultus--worshipped the gods better;
but he held to what he had seen with his own eyes--“Here there are
shrines of all sorts and magnificently adorned temples, and there are
found numbers of sacristans and priests and prophets and believers
and excellent theologians, and all goes on in its order; you find
the altars everywhere blazing with flame and the priests with their
fillets and the incense-vessels with deliciously fragrant spices.”
Nearly from the same time (not from Hadrian), and evidently also from a
well-informed hand, proceeds another more malicious description (_vita
Saturnini_, 8): “He who in Egypt worships Sarapis is also a Christian,
and those who call themselves Christian bishops likewise adore Sarapis;
every grand Rabbi of the Jews, every Samaritan, every Christian
clergyman is there at the same time a sorcerer, a prophet, a quack
(_aliptes_). Even when the patriarch comes to Egypt some demand that
he pray to Sarapis, others that he pray to Christ.” This diatribe is
certainly connected with the circumstance that the Christians declared
the Egyptian god to be the Joseph of the Bible, the son of Sara, and
rightfully carrying the bushel. The position of the Egyptian orthodox
party is apprehended in a more earnest spirit by the author, belonging
presumably to the third century, of the Dialogue of the Gods, preserved
in a Latin translation among the writings attributed to Appuleius, in
which the thrice-greatest Hermes announces things future to Asklepios:
“Thou knowest withal, Asklepios, that Egypt is a counterpart of heaven,
or, to speak more correctly, a transmigration and descent of the whole
heavenly administration and activity; indeed, to speak still more
correctly, our fatherland is the temple of the whole universe. And yet
a time will set in, when it would appear as if Egypt had vainly with
pious mind in diligent service cherished the divine, when all sacred
worship of the gods will be without result and a failure. For the deity
will betake itself back into heaven, Egypt will be forsaken, and the
land, which was the seat of religious worships, will be deprived of the
presence of divine power and left to its own resources. Then will this
consecrated land, the abode of shrines and temples, be densely filled
with graves and corpses. O Egypt, Egypt, of thy worships only rumours
will be preserved, and even these will seem incredible to thy coming
generations, only words will be preserved on the stones to tell of thy
pious deeds, and Egypt will be inhabited by the Scythian or Indian or
other such from the neighbouring barbarian land. New rights will be
introduced, a new law, nothing holy, nothing religious, nothing worthy
of heaven and of the celestials will be heard or in spirit believed.
A painful separation of the gods from men sets in; only the bad
angels remain there, to mingle among mankind” (according to Bernays’s
translation, _Ges. Abh._ i. 330).
[242] When the Romans ask from the famous rhetor Proaeresios (end of
the third and beginning of the fourth century) one of his disciples for
a professorial chair, he sends to them Eusebius from Alexandria; “as
respects rhetoric,” it is said of the latter (Eunapius, _Proaer._ p. 92
Boiss.), “it is enough to say that he was an Egyptian; for this people,
no doubt, pursues versemaking passionately, but earnest oratory (ὁ
σπουδαῖος Ἕρμης) is not at home among them.” The remarkable resumption
of Greek poetry in Egypt, to which, _e.g._ the epic of Nonnus belongs,
lies beyond the bounds of our narrative.
[243] A “Homeric poet” ἐκ Μουσείου is ready to sing the praise of
Memnon in four Homeric verses, without adding a word of his own (_C.
I. Gr._ 4748). Hadrian makes an Alexandrian poet a member in reward
for a loyal epigram (Athenaeus, xv. p. 677 _e_). Examples of rhetors
from Hadrian’s time may be seen in Philostratus, _Vit. Soph._ i. 22, 3,
c. 25, 3. A φιλόσοφος ἀπὸ Μουσείου in Halicarnassus (_Bull. de corr.
Hell._ iv. 405). At a later period, when the circus was everything, we
find a noted pugilist figuring (so to say) as an honorary member of the
philosophical class (inscription from Rome, _C. I. Gr._ 5914: νεωκόρος
τοῦ μεγά[λου Σαράπιδ]ος καὶ τῶν ἐν τῷ Μουσείῳ [σειτου]μένων ἀτελῶν
φιλοσόφων; comp. _ib._ 4724, and Firmicus Maternus, _de errore prof.
rel._ 13, 3). Οἱ ἐν Ἐφέσῳ ἀπὸ τοῦ Μουσείου ἰατροί (Wood, _Ephesus,
inscriptions from tombs_, n. 7), a society of Ephesian physicians, have
relation doubtless to the Museum at Alexandria, but were hardly members
of it; they were rather trained in it.
[244] Ὁ ἄνω θρόνος in Philostratus, _Vit. Soph._ ii. 10, 5.