Four languages are appropriately used in the world. And these are: Greek for song. Latin for war. Syriac (Aramaic) for mourning. Hebrew for speaking.Footnote 1
Rabbi Jonathan of Eleutheropolis (third century) is the author of this famous statement regarding the respective qualities of the four languages: Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Hebrew. According to his view, Greek is most suitable for ‘zemer’, which in this instance means song in the broader sense of the word – poetry.Footnote 2 The other qualifications do not require comment.
In the Roman Near East, various languages were used for written and oral communication. The relative importance of these languages is a topic frequently studied and discussed. Two of the languages were imported by conquerors from the West. Of these, it is clear that Latin, unlike Greek, was never used widely, but it is also obvious that the first language of the Empire played a role in communications. In the present chaper I shall attempt to consider the question of the extent to which Latin may have been more than the language of government and military organization in the cities of the Near East from Pompey to the third century. This is only one aspect – but an important one – of the impact of Western, Roman influence on the cities of the Near East.Footnote 3
The region to be considered for present purposes is more narrowly that of Syria, Judaea/Palaestina, and Arabia, excluding the numerous cities of Asia Minor. This is appropriate because the cultural and linguistic differences between these regions are such that a comparison might well result in misleading conclusions. Any attempt to lump them together would ignore essential aspects of linguistic culture and I therefore follow the precedent of major recent works of synthesis which exclude Anatolia in their treatment of the Roman Near East.Footnote 4 For the present study, this is appropriate all the more because the process of Hellenization is so markedly different between the various regions. Ephesus on the coast of the Aegean was an important Greek polis from the archaic period onwards. Its language always was Greek and the introduction of Latin as the language of government under the Principate was due to its status as a conventus centre, seat of the governor and chief centre for the Roman ruler cult. Perge in Pamphylia may have had its origins as a Hittite city, but its claims to Hellenic status go back centuries before the arrival of Roman rule. The latter is true also for a city like Side. Greek was the norm in those cities. Latin could never achieve predominance, except in communities of Latin-speaking settlers such those in southern Asia Minor.Footnote 5 The situation in the area of the Eastern Levant, here to be considered, was different. The city populations and those of the surrounding territories were always linguistically mixed. The local languages were Semitic, and Greek arrived only with the establishment of Seleucid and Ptolemaic rule. While some cities, such as Apamea, Gadara, and Ascalon, produced highly respectable Greek intellectuals at some stage and while others certainly wished to be regarded in the Greek heartland as genuinely Greek, there is good evidence to show that this was a vain hope.Footnote 6 The degree of Hellenization varied and is today often difficult to trace. Whatever the relationship between the local Semitic languages and Greek, Greek was the second language introduced by imperial rulers in this region and Latin was the third. It seems therefore questionable whether the use of Latin can be profitably compared in these two different regions and I will restrict myself to Syria, Judaea-Palaestina, and Arabia.Footnote 7
The ancient literature is not very informative on the use of Latin in non-Latin-speaking provinces. In this respect, the situation resembles a related and even larger topic, which is popularly called ‘Romanization’, an only apparently transparent term for political, economic, and cultural acculturation or the assimilation of subject peoples to Roman imperial society. For the present, far more modest subject, the obvious material to study is the epigraphic record and this immediately raises the question of the extent to which this is reliable evidence for social and cultural issues beyond that of epigraphic practices themselves. Can we take language use in epigraphic contexts as representative of issues of non-epigraphic language use or cultural identity, for instance?
Language use is determined by many factors, as will be obvious if we think of more recent parallels. In India, Hindi was declared the official language after independence alongside some eighteen officially recognized languages. English, however, in many ways a remnant of British colonial rule, continued to be a widely used lingua franca, especially by educated Indians in business, government, and academic life, and even more than half a century after independence, the English press remains influential. At another level, English serves as the means of communication between central government and the non-Hindi-speaking states. Yet it remains the first language of only a small percentage of the population. By comparison, in Indonesia, formerly a Dutch colony, Bahasa Indonesia, originally a Malay dialect, was declared the official language and functions as such, though a multitude of other languages are in common use; Dutch has disappeared altogether, apart from a few loanwords. Again, in Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia, formerly French Indochina, the French language did not penetrate deeply. In countries under German occupation during the Second World War, German was the language of communication between the occupying powers and the local authorities, but the language did not otherwise penetrate the society of the occupied. It is clear that these differences have been caused by combinations of factors, to be sought in the policies and practices of the rulers, in the social and linguistic situation of the ruled, in the length of time during which the foreign language was officially dominant, and, not least, in the circumstances surrounding the ousting of the occupying power. Whatever the reasons, their complexity and the variety of post-occupation linguistic reactions show how cautious we must be in drawing conclusions regarding language use in societies for which the extant evidence is scarce, or in drawing, consciously or unconsciously, on modern parallels in considering the ancient situation.Footnote 8
In assessing the impact of Latin in the Roman Near East, we must keep in mind that there are several mechanisms at work.Footnote 9 First, there are the Roman authorities who used Latin for themselves and sometimes, but not always, Greek in their communications with the locals. Second, there is the Roman army, which functioned mostly in Latin and continued doing so for centuries even when recruitment was overwhelmingly local. Third, there was the settlement of speakers of Latin in a few parts of the region. Such settlers were in part drawn from retired soldiers. Finally, it is conceivable that in centres with a substantial Latin-speaking population this language was adopted to some extent by people with Greek or a Semitic language in order to interact with the speakers of Latin. This leads us to another large and related topic, that of bilingualism. In the Near East and in many or most of the provinces of the Roman Empire, bilingualism was a widespread phenomenon. Adams’ recent study of the role of Latin and bilingualism in Egypt has demonstrated the need to reassess the available source material for all provinces.Footnote 10 In this chapter I am concerned with the role of Latin in cities, notably the Roman citizen colonies.Footnote 11 However, my discussion here is heavily dependent on our understanding of the role of Latin in the army and among the authorities. Concerning language use in the army, Adams concludes:
A persistent misconception is that Latin was the ‘official’ language of the army … While it is true that service in the army gave recruits, if they were not Latin speakers, the opportunity to acquire the language and although there might have been pressure on them to do so, in that training in the skills of Latin literacy seems to have been provided, some excessively sweeping generalisations have been made about the role of Latin as the official language of the army.Footnote 12
Adams cites military documents from Egypt with the aim of showing that Greek was acceptable for official purposes.Footnote 13 Latin, however, was, as formulated by Adams, ‘a sort of supreme or super-high language in the army, which was bound to be used in certain circumstances, e.g. correspondence with the Emperor’.Footnote 14 Or, as formulated by Valerius Maximus in a frequently cited passage:
How carefully the magistrates of old regulated their conduct to keep intact the majesty of the Roman people and their own can be seen from the fact that among other indications of their duty to preserve dignity they steadfastly kept to the rule never to make replies to Greeks except in Latin. Indeed they obliged the Greeks themselves to discard the volubility, which is their greatest asset, and speak through an interpreter, not only in Rome but in Greece and Asia also, intending no doubt that the dignity of Latin speech be the more widely venerated throughout all nations … (Thinking) it unmeet that the weight and authority of empire be sacrificed to the seductive charm of letters.Footnote 15
All this may have been true for the ‘old magistrates’ but it follows that it was no longer the reality of the first century ad when Valerius Maximus wrote these lines.Footnote 16 The same is true for a rather similar pronouncement by John the Lydian.Footnote 17
Since the cities of the East have not produced the abundance of papyri available for Egypt, we must have recourse to the inscriptions on stone of which many have been found.Footnote 18 Clearly, however, the usual type of public inscriptions encountered in the inscriptions of the Roman East do not require any serious knowledge of the language and are not evidence of the language commonly spoken or written by those who set them up. Nevertheless, the languages used for public declarations of political, cultural, and social identity in the various cities of the Roman East are important in themselves.
In the present chapter, therefore, I shall consider the various categories of inscriptions in Latin that are found in a number of cities of the Roman East and attempt to formulate conclusions about the use of this language in documents meant to be read by or displayed to the public. The analysis depends very much on the availability of published material. Preservation and publication are very uneven for the various cities of the region, and this, of course, raises methodological issues when considering the relative incidence of Latin inscriptions at the various sites. In spite of the paucity of evidence, one category excluded from the analysis is inscribed milestones. Since these were formal texts set up by the army on instructions from the provincial authorities, they were obviously in Latin. By the end of the second century, in the reign of Severus, we find the first milestones which use Greek, in particular for distances.Footnote 19 The reason for this is that the responsibility for the maintenance of the road-system and, with it, the erection of milestones, fell increasingly upon the local authorities and has more to do with the development of provincial administration than with the topic at hand. In the remaining categories of Latin inscriptions from the Eastern cities and their territories, my analysis attempts to determine whether their erection and the choice of language in the inscriptions were the responsibility of the Roman authorities, such as the governor and procurator and their staffs; the Roman army, either active-duty soldiers or officers; veterans, either of local origin or settled after service in the area; local civilian speakers of Latin who may have been descendants of veterans settled in Roman citizen colonies or local citizens who served in the army and their relatives; or other civilians.
The use of Latin is more expected if army personnel and provincial authorities are involved, and it is thus of particular interest to attempt to assess the use of the language outside those circles. We know that Latin was used to some extent in Eastern cities with colonial status, as is clear from their coin inscriptions as well as from the fairly numerous inscriptions on stone so far published. The point of interest is whether and why local civilians from these cities set up inscriptions in Latin, and whether we can establish any kind of social context for those epigraphic Latinists.
The Roman colonies in the East were, like those in the West, either genuine veteran colonies such as Berytus (which presumably at first included Heliopolis and vicinity), Acco-Ptolemais, and Aelia Capitolina, or titular colonies, the most important of which for our purposes are Caesarea-on-the-Sea, Bostra, and Gerasa. Veteran colonies were reorganized at the time of the foundation, and veterans from the Roman legions were settled there and received land. They formed a local elite imposed upon the existing communities. By contrast, the titular colonies were established through political reorganization and a change in status, unaccompanied by the settlement of veterans or other foreigners. There is therefore an essential difference: the establishment of a veteran colony represented a serious disruption of social and economic life in a community and the imposition of a foreign upper class.Footnote 20
Heliopolis-Baalbek
The fullest, most accessible, and therefore instructive collection is that of Heliopolis-Baalbek. The legal status of Heliopolis in the first and second centuries ad should not concern us here. It was either founded as a separate colony by Augustus or was part of the territory of Berytus, founded by Augustus no later than 14 bc. In the reign of Severus, it is on record as a separate colony.Footnote 21 Whatever the case, the city was occupied by veterans of the legions V Macedonica and VIII Augusta in the time of Augustus. In spite of this early occupation by veterans, the earliest imperial texts from the region are relatively late: two rock-cut inscriptions along the Heliopolis–Damascus road which mention Nero.Footnote 22 In the town the earliest dated inscription mentions Vespasian on a dedication.Footnote 23
There are 306 inscriptions in Greek and Latin from the town, the sanctuary, and the vicinity, of which 131 are in Latin.Footnote 24 The exceptional nature of the Latin epigraphic record becomes obvious if we compare this corpus of inscriptions with that from the major city of Emesa, which has not produced a single Latin inscription, apart from milestones and boundary stones.Footnote 25 Yet one might have expected Emesa to produce some Latin texts since its citizens served in units named after the city and at least one of those was a cohors milliaria c(ivium) R(omanorum).Footnote 26 The first group of inscriptions from Heliopolis to be mentioned is dedications to Iupiter Optimus Maximus Heliopolitanus. There are nineteen of those, two of them erected by military menFootnote 27 and two by freedmen.Footnote 28 Then there are fourteen inscriptions on statue bases for emperors; on four of these the donors are private individuals. Two inscriptions record dedications to kings: Sohaemus of Emesa and Agrippa (either I or II), who apparently had a close relationship with the colony.Footnote 29 There are also five inscriptions in honour of provincial governors. For three of these it is not clear who dedicated them. Of the inscriptions with known dedicators, one was set up by the governor’s equites singulares, the other (2779) by a centurion of the legio VII Gemina. Such dedications could have come from any urban centre which the governor regularly visited. Finally, there are forty-five inscriptions in Latin which mention people of local origin (as distinct from military personnel or officials who were not citizens of the colony, but present temporarily on duty). Two of these were members of senatorial families.Footnote 30 One remarkable equestrian career is recorded on a statue base, 2796, for C. Velius Rufus, clearly from Heliopolis, who was active in the second half of the first century. Several of his descendants were senators. There are two other equestrian careers: 2781 recording the career of L. Antonius Naso, who became a tribune of the Praetorian Guard and procurator.Footnote 31 The second is recorded on two statue bases (2793, 2794): P. Statilius Justus Sentianus, who was praefectus fabrum and tribune of the legion II Traiana as well as decurio coloniae. Nine inscriptions refer to military careers of local men below the equestrian level.Footnote 32 Five other Latin inscriptions mention locally significant men with Roman names who did not, apparently, have imperial careers outside the city.Footnote 33 Twenty-one fragmentary Latin inscriptions are too far gone to be instructive for the present topic.
No less significant is the number of Latin inscriptions from the vicinity of Heliopolis, which shows that there were Latin speakers, clearly descendants of the original colonists and locals, who were integrated with their families in the territory of the colony. I count twenty-three private individuals, twelve of them identified by their tria nomina.Footnote 34 Remarkable is a dedication on an altar for ‘Iupiter Optimus Beelseddes’ by three men, named Viveius Cand(idus?), Septimius Sator(ninus), and Adrus (2925). We may note also a boundary stone of a village from the territory.Footnote 35 Eleven additional Latin inscriptions are too fragmentary for profitable interpretation.
Of special interest is the material from Niha, in the Beqa valley, where a series of inscriptions in Latin records the existence of a sanctuary of the Syrian Goddess of Niha’, Hadaranes, or Atargatis.Footnote 36 One of those mentions the Pagus Augustus, presumably an association of Latin-speaking Roman citizens which will have been settled there at the time of the foundation of the Roman colony. At this sanctuary some evidence of social integration has been detected.Footnote 37 The sanctuary preserved its indigenous character, and the gods did not receive Graeco-Roman names. In contrast to the sanctuary at Heliopolis itself, the priests and prophetesses were peregrini, but the inscriptions also mention at least six Roman citizens and their relatives.Footnote 38 A sanctuary nearby is identified by a dedication in Latin to the god Mifsenus.Footnote 39
Finally we ought to notice a number of relevant inscriptions from other regions of the Empire.Footnote 40 They record citizens from Heliopolis as serving soldiers and officers in various regions.Footnote 41
The figures are not in themselves statistically significant but they do show that some Roman citizens of local origin in Heliopolis used Latin on public monuments. These Romans belong to various social classes, from senatorial and equestrian families to families who use a mixture of Semitic, Greek, and Roman personal names, but all preferred to use Latin for their public declarations. We encounter some military careers at lower and middle levels, again of people of proven local origin, both in Heliopolis and its vicinity, and in other parts of the Empire. Particularly in the surrounding territory, we also encounter some evidence of integration and mixed culture. All this is what one would expect of an Eastern citizen colony where a substantial group of veterans settled in close proximity with Greek- and Semitic-speaking others. The situation resulted in a tendency in individuals to use of Latin on private monuments even if they were not of the original group of veteran settlers or their direct descendants.
Berytus
A city most charming that has law schools which assure the stability of all of the Roman legal system. Thence learned men come who assist judges all over the world and protect the provinces with their knowledge of the laws …Footnote 42
Although there is far less published material from Berytus than from Heliopolis, the pattern of what there is resembles that of Heliopolis. Gregorius Thaumaturgus describes Berytus as being a ‘city rather Roman in character and credited with being a school for legal studies’.Footnote 43 The planned corpus of inscriptions from the city is not yet available. Veterans were settled at Berytus at the same time as at Heliopolis, in 14 bc by Agrippa.Footnote 44 The existence of a distinguished school, or schools, of Roman law at Berytus has always been seen as an indication of the Latin character of this town from the third century until the end of the fourth century.Footnote 45 A famous inscription, originally set up at Berytus, honours an equestrian officer who, in the course of his career, was dispatched by the governor of Syria at the beginning of the first century to destroy a fortress of the Ituraeans in the mountains of the Lebanon.Footnote 46 The inscription is relevant for our topic because the officer later became quaestor, aedilis, duumvir, and pontifex of the colony.
There is evidence of at least two senators from Berytus, which shows that it produced members of the imperial upper class.Footnote 47 Four (or possibly five) equestrian officers are attested as originating from Berytus.Footnote 48 Two (or possibly three) of these refer to the only attested first-century equestrian officers from Syria. The number of attested equestrian officers of this town was surpassed only by Palmyra in the second century.Footnote 49
I am aware of twenty-three inscriptions representing private individuals, setting up dedications to gods in Latin on their own behalf.Footnote 50 We find only purely Latin personal names on thirteen of these, but on eight the names are a combination of Latin and Greek or Semitic. The former reflect a tradition of Roman nomenclature which goes back to the settlement of veterans in the city while the latter could either mean that local families received the citizenship or that descendants of the group of citizens intermarried with local families. Both must have happened regularly, but it is interesting to see it reflected in the personal names. Next there are nine epitaphs or statue dedications with inscriptions in Latin.Footnote 51 Four of these represent private persons with fully Latin names, one of them recording those of freedmen and one a soldier. One inscription has a mixture of Latin and Greek names.
There are a few relevant inscriptions from other parts of the Empire: the worshippers of Jupiter Heliopolitanus from Berytus who lived in Puteoli (CIL III 6680; ILS 300) and a dedication from Nîmes to this god and to the god Nemausus by a primipilaris from Berytus (ILS 4288).
For Berytus the limited epigraphic material confirms the impression derived from the literary sources that this was a substantial Roman veteran colony where the Latin tradition was maintained for centuries after the foundation. The city produced some members of the higher classes and some of its citizens expressed themselves in Latin on public monuments and had proper Roman names.
Ptolemais (Acco)
The next veteran colony established in the region was Ptolemais.Footnote 52 Veterans of the four Syrian legions were settled in a new colony at Ptolemais between 51/2 and 54, and a new road was constructed from Antioch in Syria to the colony.Footnote 53 Ulpian describes Ptolemais as lying between Palaestina and Syria.Footnote 54 The foundation of the colony involved the usual thorough reorganization of the territory and land grants to veterans. The land, whether bought or confiscated, was taken from its original possessors and the infusion of veterans entailed the imposition of a new local leadership. The site of the ancient town has been occupied continuously since antiquity. As in Jerusalem, there are therefore very few inscriptions, but the few that have been discovered do not contradict the pattern one might expect to see if there had been more evidence.Footnote 55 As noted above, the imposition of the veteran colony was a measure that had a drastic impact on the existing community and cannot have been welcome. There is one hint that families of distinction may have lived in the city. It produced at least one distinguished person: the consular Flavius Boethus, governor of Palestine, ad 162–6, known from the works of Galen as a scholar and philosopher with an interest in medicine.Footnote 56
Caesaraea on the Sea
The case of Caesarea is difficult as the nature of and reason for the grant of colonial status to the city are not clearly established. It became a colony in the reign of Vespasian but it is a matter of debate whether this change in status was accompanied by the settlement of legionary veterans.Footnote 57 There is good evidence for the existence of several honorary or titular colonies from the reign of Claudius at the latest, so Caesarea would definitely not have been the first case of a grant of colonial status without settlement of veterans and the literary and archaeological evidence, though capable of a different interpretation, cumulatively points to Caesarea not receiving a veteran settlement.Footnote 58 Most explicitly, Digest. L 15 8 states that Divus Vespasianus Caesarienses colonos fecit (the divine Vespasian made the people of Caesarea coloni), suggesting that the existing Caesareans became citizens of the new Roman colony. Given that this is a legal source, the phrasing may be significant, though it is possible that the source is confused, conflating generally later practice in creating ‘honorary’ colonies with generally earlier practice in establishing veteran settlements. Yet the best informed contemporary source, Josephus, explicitly denies that Vespasian founded any city of his own in Judaea: ‘For he founded there no city of his own while keeping their territory [i.e. the land of the Jews], but only to eight hundred veterans did he assign a place for settlement called Emmaus.’Footnote 59 This would seem clearly to exclude the establishment of a veteran settlement at Caesarea.
The absence of clear archaeological or iconographic evidence of a military settlement is also persuasive. Founder’s coins with legionary vexilla and symbols are invariably found on coins of the Eastern veteran colonies. Accordingly, they are frequent on the coins of Berytus, Acco, and Aelia Capitolina, but are absent on those of Caesarea.Footnote 60 There is also no evidence in the vicinity of Caesarea of centuriation, such as is found at Acco (see below). The absence of centuriation suggests that there was no reorganization or redistribution of land in the territory of the city consonant with the arrival of new settlers.
The grant of colonial status could result from two vastly different historical scenarios. Briefly, the granting of ‘honorary’ colonial status can be seen as a reward for political loyalty while the implanting of veterans on a community, with the economic and political disruption this entailed, should be seen as a punishment. The introduction of a foreign elite over and above the existing non-Jewish population definitely would have been punishment, even if landed property from Jews had become available for distribution after the suppression of the Jewish revolt. There was indeed every reason not to punish the citizens of Caesarea, but to reward them. They had supported the Roman army, killed many Jews, and it was the place where Vespasian had been proclaimed emperor (hence the name prima Flavia). Such a reward would parallel the lesser honours granted to smaller towns in the aftermath of 70. Ma’abartha at the foot of Mt. Gerizim was founded as the city of Flavia Neapolis (Nablus).Footnote 61 Jaffa received the name of Flavia Joppa.Footnote 62 Both towns had been ravaged during the war. It is worth observing that, elsewhere in the wider region, Samosata, the old royal capital of Commagene, annexed by Vespasian, became ‘Flavia Samosata’, but did not receive colonial status.Footnote 63 Additionally, it is difficult to find advantages for Vespasian in establishing a veteran colony at Caesarea. Such colonies had no useful military function; on the contrary, in wartime they had to be protected by the regular troops.Footnote 64 A group of elderly veterans had nothing to contribute to the security of the province of Judaea. In fact, the presence of veteran colonists would have had an adverse effect: forming an irritant among people who had formed a bulwark of support for Rome among the Jewish insurgents. Furthermore, Caesarea was a prosperous urban centre that did not need reinforcement, unlike Jerusalem, sacked and not rebuilt, and seen by Hadrian, sixty years afterwards, as ripe for development.
Even the presence in fair numbers of veterans and soldiers at Caesarea cannot be taken as conclusive evidence for the planting of a veteran colony. As is stated by Josephus, Caesarea (and Sebaste) supplied numerous recruits for special units of the provincial army before ad 70 – another reason to reward the city. There is every reason to assume that the same population continued to do so after 70, when they could do so as Roman citizens. In fact, they could serve in the provincial legions and would have increasingly done so as local recruitment became the norm, at least in the second century. These recruits would have tended to use Latin like other members of the military and this can serve as sufficient explanation for any use of Latin by private persons on inscriptions in Caesarea. How little we know of linguistic usage in first-century Judaea will be clear also from the fact that we do not know what would have been the first language of such military men: did they speak Greek at home? Or Aramaic? Did they speak Greek or Latin in daily life in the army?
The literary sources, few as they are, the coins, and the historical circumstances all strongly suggest that Caesarea received colonial status as a reward and was spared the establishment of a contingent of veteran legionaries in the city. The argument in support of the claim that it was a genuine veteran colony could only be based on the Latin inscriptions discovered in the city.Footnote 65 The systematic excavations carried out in Caesarea have uncovered a large number of those, brought together in vol. II of the CIIP.Footnote 66 The inscriptions of Caesarea are numbers 1128–2079 on pp. 37–798 of CIIP, vol. II, with inscriptions from the vicinity, nos. 2080–2107, on pp. 799–820. Even with all the inscriptions published, there still is a problem of method. Caesarea was not only a Roman colony; it was also the provincial capital, the seat of both the governor and the financial procurator. Moreover, it was not far from the legionary base of the VI Ferrata at Legio. We must therefore assume that a substantial number of Latin inscriptions was to be expected there anyway from those circles, as in Bostra and Gerasa (see below), where no planting of veteran settlers occurred.
For the purposes of analysis, the inscriptions must therefore be divided into the following categories:
(1) Inscriptions related to the imperial or provincial authorities and their officials. These normally have nothing to do with the city or local society as such.
(2) Military monuments, related to the provincial garrison and military personnel attached to the governor’s office. Again, such inscriptions are frequently unconnected with the city and its permanent inhabitants.
(3) Public inscriptions, related to or set up by the city authorities. These, like the city coinage, ought to be in Latin because of the colonial status of the city. Such a use of Latin does not prove that the language had roots in the local population.
(4) Public building inscriptions.
(5) Inscriptions set up by and for private individuals.
Only texts belonging to category 5 might be taken as unambiguously reflecting Latinity among the citizens of Caesarea. From an analysis of all the available material I conclude that the discussion about the nature of the colony of Caesarea cannot be decided on the basis of the epigraphic material. What we do recognize, however, in a vivid manner, is its colonial status as such and the fact that it was the capital of a province with a substantial military presence. Even so Greek dominates at least in numbers of texts. This in itself need not surprise us, for over time the legions and auxilia in the Near East were recruited in the region among people whose mother tongue was not Latin. Caesarea was and remained a major Hellenized city in the Near East. My point is that the inscriptions known so far do not provide evidence to contradict the conclusion, based on other indications, that Vespasian gave Caesarea the rank of a colony as a reward for good behaviour without imposing a group of veteran settlers on the city.
Aelia Capitolina
The refoundation of Jerusalem as Aelia CapitolinaFootnote 67 represented the last establishment of a genuine veteran colony in the region, as opposed to the grant of colonial status to an existing community.Footnote 68 It was an exceptional foundation, first, because it replaced the city of Jerusalem and, second, in Roman terms, because it was situated side by side with a functioning legionary base. As in the case of Caesarea, but for different reasons, this means that it is not easy to interpret the epigraphic evidence, since it must be determined whether Latin inscriptions derive from the legionary base or from the colony. Unlike Caesarea, however, Jerusalem has produced very few Latin texts for the period under consideration.Footnote 69 Aelia Capitolina, at the time of its foundation as a Roman colony, was a small and rather isolated settlement. It became a major city only in the fourth century. The epigraphical evidence for this period is correspondingly meagre. It mostly reflects the presence of a legion, soldiers, and a city administration. Just to give an impression: funerary inscriptions of serving military people are small in number (three, excluding one from Abu Ghosh).Footnote 70 Of particular interest is no. 732, perhaps for an optio of the legion X Fretensis, set up by a relative. If indeed this was the case we may possibly face a case of local recruitment, one example of what must have been very common at the time. Other funerary inscriptions of the period under consideration are again not large in number. Five are in Greek,Footnote 71 eight in Latin, two of them military, and one of those antedating the foundation of Aelia Capitolina. One (no. 740) is interesting: the Latin funerary inscription for Glaucus son of Artemidorus from Zeugma. It gives no clue how the man came to Aelia.
The evidence from the two Near Eastern cities considered provides a lively impression of the significant impact of Roman administrative presence and army there. Yet this influence remains limited. Greek dominates, at least in the numbers of texts. This completes our little survey of evidence from the Roman colonies in the region. For comparison, it will now be useful briefly to discuss the Latin inscriptions from several towns in the Near East that were not veteran colonies.
Palmyra
A recent inventory of the Latin inscriptions of PalmyraFootnote 72 divides them into two main groups:
(1) Six trilingual grave inscriptions (Latin, Greek, and Palmyrene), most of which concern people occupying prominent positions in the city, dated to the first and second centuries (from ad 52 to 176). The Latin is always brief, the Greek longer, and the Palmyrene longest. The presence of Latin here is no indication that the language was spoken locally, but must be seen as a gesture or a declaration of loyalty towards the Roman Empire. Interestingly, Latin is not used locally after Palmyra received colonial rank, probably under Severus.Footnote 73
(2) Military inscriptions which are divided into three sub-groups: inscriptions linked with the imperial family, inscriptions concerning officers, and funerary inscriptions. These reflect the presence of a military garrison at Palmyra.
Bostra
The town of Bostra in Arabia served as a legionary base and seat of the provincial governor.Footnote 74 It received colonial status in the third century, a grant that had no impact on the social composition of the city. The inscriptions have been published very well in one accessible volume. Numerous inscriptions were set up by serving military men,Footnote 75 by governors,Footnote 76 or members of the governor’s entourage.Footnote 77 These need not detain us here.Footnote 78
Generally speaking, there is a separation between city and army in the sense that there are no careers of men who served both as officers in the army and as city magistrates, such as we have encountered in HeliopolisFootnote 79 and Berytus,Footnote 80 but not, so far, at Caesarea. The city made dedications in Latin to such officials but private inscriptions in Latin are rarer.Footnote 81 Nevertheless, we have some epitaphs set up by civilians for their military relatives or by military for civilians.Footnote 82 Of particular interest are inscriptions by civilians for civilians in Latin.Footnote 83 These presumably represent the relatives of military people who settled in Bostra. These cases provide evidence of some local use of Latin even though there is no question that there ever was a veteran settlement. The Latin must be ascribed to families somehow related to the provincial government or the army who preferred to use this language for public consumption.
Gerasa
This city was apparently the seat of the provincial procurator of Roman Arabia,Footnote 84 and there was a local garrison. It received colonial status in the third century. We rule out of our discussion Latin inscriptions set up by people or military units temporarily present in the city, such as the equites singulares of Hadrian who made a dedication when the emperor was in the region,Footnote 85 anonymous dedications to emperors, or inscriptions set up in the city by high provincial officials, legates, and procurators (105, 160), their subordinates, notably the procurator’s staff (165, 208) and their relatives (207), and serving soldiers and officers (171, 178).
Of the remaining, the most remarkable is no. 175, a Latin inscription in honour of Maecius Laetus, procurator, set up by the heirs of Allius Vestinus, advocatus fisci, ex testamento eius. This strongly suggests that the heirs were local people. The funerary inscriptions of serving soldiers are in Latin, as expected, and mark the presence of a garrison in town, but give no indication of Latinity among the permanent population (200, 201, 211), nor does the tombstone of a procurator set up by his widow and son (207). Some, however, may possibly indicate that there was at least some local Latin culture. For instance, no. 199, the epitaph of an optio of the Ala I Thracum, perhaps locally based, was set up in both languages by his brother, who is not listed as a soldier himself. Other epitaphs, in Latin only, were set up for imperial freedmen who fulfilled various functions in the procurator’s office by their spouses, children, and relatives (202, 203, 204, 210; also 215, 216). The procurator’s staff would seem to have formed a milieu in the city which preferred at least to have their tombs marked in Latin, but little can be said about the origins of those staff members.Footnote 86
Furthermore, there are a number of interesting but ambivalent cases. No. 177 is engraved upon a cylindrical stele, in honour of Marcus Aurelius Faustus, an imperial freedman, and lists various equestrian functions, all in Latin. One might suggest that the dedicants were citizens of Gerasa who wrote Latin because of their social basis in the army. No. 179 refers to Gerasa as a Roman colony and is thus of the third century. The dedicants, an Aurelius Longinianus … and his son, may have written Latin because of a military career, but this cannot be simply assumed.
The least that can be said for Gerasa is that there are sufficient inscriptions in Latin to demonstrate that there was a habit of using that language in formal texts. Mostly, these texts can be connected to people and their relatives who were associated with the army and provincial government. Yet many of the inscriptions are epitaphs and therefore should be regarded as belonging to the personal sphere, independent of a formal or administrative framework where the use of Latin was obligatory.
Petra
Whatever the status of the old Nabataean capital after the annexation of the Province of Arabia,Footnote 87 it is certain that the governors regularly visited it.Footnote 88 It received colonial status under Elagabalus, probably in 221–2.Footnote 89 The Latin inscriptions reflect the presence of the governor and of military personnel.Footnote 90
Caesarea Philippi
The excavations at the Pan sanctuary of Caesarea Philippi (Banias) have uncovered a substantial number of inscriptions (twenty-nine texts).Footnote 91 There is an obvious preponderance of Roman personal names (fifteen Roman, five Greek, five Semitic). A special case is inscription no. 5 of ad 222, which mentions eight members of a family, five of them with names that are connected with ‘Agrippa’. This presumably reflects a local tradition of more than a century of loyalty to the Herodian house. There are few regular Greek names, and only four Semitic ones, including two patronymics. Seven inscriptions are in Latin, not including boundary markers and milestones. This is remarkable for material from an essentially rural sanctuary in this region, demanding a particular explanation. There is no information about any settlement of Roman veterans in the locale and there is no reason to assume that there was one. It is very likely that the first- and second-century inscriptions in Latin should be assigned to men from the region who also served in the Roman army and had undergone a measure of Latinization.Footnote 92 It is quite likely that these were men serving in the units of Ituraeans, recruited in part from the territory of Caesarea Philippi.Footnote 93
Arados
This was the most important northern Phoenician city, located on an island off the coast. A few Latin inscriptions have been found here.Footnote 94 The city and council dedicated a statue to an equestrian officer, who may have been either commander of a local garrison or a native Aradian serving in the army.Footnote 95 The latter situation is almost certainly the case attested in the bilingual inscription of L. Septimius Marcellus for his brother M. Septimius Magnus, centurion in various legions.Footnote 96 There is some further evidence of men from Arados serving in the army.Footnote 97
Military Presence
To end this limited survey, it may be useful to note that a number of cities have produced Latin texts that are limited strictly to the military sphere and reflect the presence of a military garrison at some stage. The most remarkable case is that of Apamea in Syria.Footnote 98 Other towns to be mentioned are Neapolis (Nablus),Footnote 99 Samaria-Sebaste,Footnote 100 Emmaus-Nicopolis,Footnote 101 Tiberias,Footnote 102 and, finally, Dura Europos.Footnote 103
Conclusions
All empires are necessarily multilingual. The Roman Empire in the East had two languages of government of unequal status, Latin and Greek. Greek could be used for some official functions in the Roman army, but, as formulated by Adams, Latin ‘had super-high status which made it suitable for various symbolic purposes, whether in legalistic documents, or to highlight the Roman identity of a soldier, or to mark or acknowledge overriding authority’.Footnote 104
The question asked in this chapter is what we can deduce from the surviving texts, invariably inscriptions on stone, about the use of Latin in cities of the Roman East. Such use of Latin may, but need not, have been a very deliberate expression of some form of identity (political, cultural, or ideological) rather than reflecting intensive and ‘everyday’ use and knowledge of Latin among the authors of the texts. We have no way of knowing whether Latin was a first, second, or third language for most of the individuals involved in the Latin dedications, but whether Latin was imposed or preferred by these users, it represents an ideological expression. The Latinity of those who used Latin on epitaphs may have been superficial, but its use implies a declaration of social and political loyalty. Latin was a minority language in the epigraphic culture of the East, and certainly in the oral culture of the cities. Its use, therefore, is necessarily a conscious attempt to differentiate its users from the surrounding Greek or Semitic populations. We can compare this to the use of Hebrew in funerary inscriptions. Traditionally, the tombstones of Jews in the diaspora are in Hebrew or in both Hebrew and the local language. This does not mean that the deceased or their relatives have any serious knowledge of Hebrew. Another example of the investment of significance in language-choice is a famous graffito, scratched in the rocks of the Wadi Mukatteb in Sinai: Cessent Syri ante Latinos Romanos (The Syrians will cease before [? yield to] the Latin Romans). The words of the traveller are not exactly Ciceronian Latin, but his meaning is more or less clear.Footnote 105
Inscriptions represent, first of all, a public declaration of political and social identity. Nevertheless, a switch of language clearly did not have the same meaning in every context. The significance ascribed to the choice of language probably depended on the particular epigraphic culture of the city. These cultures appear not to have been straightforwardly related to accepted or plausible claims of Greek origin. Thus, Dio Chrysostom in his thirty-third discourse, where he harangues the citizens of Tarsus: ‘And would any one call you colonists from Argos, as you claim to be, or more likely colonists rather of those abominable Aradians? Would he call you Greeks, or the most licentious of Phoenicians?’Footnote 106 Yet the self-perception of the citizens may have been very different. Dio himself was well aware that the Hellenic credentials of Tarsus were more impressive than those of his native Prusa. We do not know what the citizens of Tarsus thought of Dio’s harangue, but we can be quite certain that the Hellenized inhabitants of Aradus would not have been pleased if they had heard him speaking. An inscription from Trachonitis is dedicated by ‘The Hellenes in Danaba’.Footnote 107 Even the Hellenized Syrian and Palestinian cities might claim to be genuinely Hellenic, as shown by an inscription from Scythopolis-Beth Shean, which refers to the city of Nysa-Scythopolis as ‘one of the Hellenic cities in Coele-Syria’.Footnote 108 The continued Latin tradition in Roman colonies such as Berytus and Aelia Capitolina may be due in part to active involvement on the part of the inhabitants of the Eastern colonies in the Roman army. In Greek-speaking Roman colonies in the West, epitaphs of the early imperial period are found written in Greek, but influenced by Latin formulae, probably reflecting the particular cultural status of the two languages in those cities.Footnote 109
The least problematic cases we have surveyed are those of Berytus and Heliopolis, known to have been populated by veteran settlers. Heliopolis in particular has produced a good quantity of inscriptions which show that private citizens used Latin on their public monuments, as did distinguished citizens who served in senior imperial positions and as city magistrates. These types of inscriptions show that Latin was to some extent integrated into civilian life. There is some evidence that the same was the case in Aelia Capitolina where veterans certainly took root in a depopulated city. There is no such published evidence from Caesarea, which, I have argued, was a titular colony. Bostra, legionary base and seat of the governor of Arabia, has also provided copious epigraphic evidence. Significantly, there is no evidence of senior military men or imperial magistrates serving also as city magistrates, an indication of social separation. It is not surprising that we encounter epitaphs set up by civilians for their military relatives or by military for civilians in Bostra. Noteworthy, however, are a limited number of inscriptions by civilians for civilians which presumably represent the relatives of military people who settled in Bostra and, as such, are evidence of some local use of Latin even though there is no question that there ever was a planned veteran settlement at Bostra. A similar pattern is found at Gerasa, where the financial procurator had his headquarters and various units appear to have been based. Finally, we must note rare and surprising pockets of Latin culture attested in minor provincial centres such as Caesarea Philippi.
The use of Latin on inscriptions in a few, but not many, cities of the Roman East represents a variety of social situations, which, given the scarcity of sources, are not always easy to determine. It may not tell us much about the language actually spoken in daily life. It is, however, a clear indication of a direct Roman impact on the life of a city: settlement of Roman army veterans is but one such phenomenon, the presence of a garrison or provincial offices is another constituting factor, but there are more possibilities such as the settlement of retired soldiers and officers from a local or regional garrison. These might be either retired locals who had served in the army or immigrants who had served and then retired locally. Although the use of Latin on, for instance, epitaphs does not necessarily mean that Latin was the first language spoken by the dead or the dedicants, the choice of Latin was a significant decision. It broke with the linguistic practices of the surrounding communities and thus set apart those who used the language. The association with the Roman rulers means that the most obvious understanding of the choice of language is as a reflection of political loyalty and of association with the imperial power. Latin does not simply represent one of the languages spoken locally, but had a particular social and political resonance, and the study of the epigraphic material opens up these resonances to historical analysis.
