Chapter XVII: Appendix: Roman Britain (3)

[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).