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._