[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).