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  The Roman Coloniae of the Near East: A Study of Cultural Relations* Introduction ‘‘The history of Roman colonisation is the history of the Roman state’’: so Ernst Kornemann, in his standard article on Roman coloniae.1 The following survey of the coloniae which the emperors created between the late first century .. and the middle of the third century .. in the Fertile Crescent —or, on a different definition, in those provinces of the Roman Empire where both Greek and various Semitic languages were spoken—cannot of course contribute directly to an understanding of the earlier phases of that history. But it does very vividly reflect the rapid progression in the nature of the ‘‘colonising’’ process itself, from the one unquestionable military colonia of the Augustan period, Berytus, with its wide territory extending over the Mount Lebanon chain into the Bekaa valley, to the three coloniae of the first and second centuries .., all in or on the borders of Judaea, to a wholly new phase in the Severan period and the following decades, when the title colonia was granted to towns all over the region, including the new province of Mesopotamia, and thus came into use almost as far east as the Tigris. *First published in H. Solin and M. Kajava, eds., Roman Eastern Policy and Other Studies in Roman History (Helsinki, ), –. This paper, a Vorarbeit for The Roman Near East ( ..–.. ) (), owed an immense amount to comments, corrections, and additions from various friends and colleagues , Sebastian Brock, Hazel Dodge, Louis H. Feldman, Martin Goodman, Christopher Howgego, Beniamin Isaac, Nikos Kokkinos, Barbara Levick, Aharon Oppenheimer, JeanPaul Rey-Coquais, and Alla Stein. I was also very grateful to Heikki Solin and his colleagues in Helsinki for the colloquium in autumn  which provided the impulse for the paper, and forcontributions on that veryenjoyable occasion, and to Mika Kajava for the care taken in the editing of this complex text. . F. Kornemann, RE IV (), s.v. ‘‘coloniae,’’ cols. –, in col. ; ‘‘Die Geschichte der römischen Kolonisation ist die Geschichte des römischen Staates.’’  The Roman Coloniae of the Near East  But the process of colonisation, or of the conferment of the title colonia, was also one of many forms of intervention by Rome in the social structures and communal identities of a region long since Hellenised, but where a variety of other ethnic identities, most of them extremely difficult for us to characterise without distortion, were still very important factors.2 Roman colonisation naturally introduced a new element into this already complex scene, and in this sense it can be perceived from a quite different angle, not as part of the history of Rome but as an element in the cultural history of the Fertile Crescent. Of all the Roman coloniae of this region, only one, Berytus, with its hinterland which was later separated off as the colonia of Heliopolis,3 represented a substantial island of Romanisation, of Latin language and culture , and of Roman law, which was to last into the late Empire. But this colonia too was established in the context of an already-existing Greek, or Graeco-Phoenician, city, and inevitably took on many of the roles and forms of public life associated with a Greek city. The same was a fortiori true of the others, all of which, with one exception, show a profound continuity with the Greek cities which preceded them. The exception is Aelia Capitolina, founded by Hadrian on the ruins of Jerusalem, destroyed as a Jewish city in the great revolt of .. , and now recreated as a pagan city after the Bar Kochba war of .. –. But even Aelia, like the other coloniae of this region , and unlike almost all those of Italy, Africa, and Europe, continued to mint coins until the mid-third century.4 For minting was a normal, if not universal, characteristic of cities in this region, and nearly every colonia, real or titular, acted likewise. The rank of colonia was to become, among other things, simply another status, like that of metropolis, to which a city might aspire. In contemporary literature or documents, depending on the context, the title colonia might deserve mention, or might not.The latter, for instance, was the case when a boxer put up an inscription at Aphrodisias in Caria in about ..  to record his world-wide victories. When he lists the places in the Syrian region where his victories had been won, his words represent a wholly Greek world, in which Roman colonisation is invisible, just...

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