[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.