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,