Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/217

 199 trade, gradually acquired settled habits, and learned civilization and the use of writing from the Aramaeans, whose language was in current official and commercial use in the Persian empire west of the Euphrates. The Nabatseans of Petra naturally appear in Western literature before the remote Palmyrenes, who are not even mentioned by Strabo. But we learn from Appian (Bell. Civ., v. 9) that in 42-41 B.C. the city was rich enough to excite the cupidity of Mark Antony, and that the population was still small and mobile enough to evade that cupidity by timely flight. The series of Semitic inscriptions of Palmyra begins a few years later. The oldest (De Vogii6, 30) bears the date 304 of the Seleucid era (9 B.C.), and was placed upon one of the characteristic tower-shaped tombs which overlooked the city from the surrounding hill sides. The dialect and the writing (a form of the &quot; square &quot; character) are western Aramaic ; the era, as we have just seen, is Greek, 1 the calendar Macedonian ; and these influences, to which that of Rome was soon added, were the determining factors in Palmy rene civilization. The proper names and the names of deities are also partly Syriac, but in part they are unmistakably Arabic. The Arabic element appears in the names of members of the chief families, and these retain some distinctive grammati cal forms which sliggest that, though Aramaic was the written language, Arabic may have not been quite obsolete in common life. That the town was originally an Arabic settlement is further rendered probable by the use of a purely Arabic term (iCID &quot; fahdh &quot;) for the septs into which the townsmen were divided. And thus we can best explain how, when the oasis was occupied by a settlement of Arabs, it gradually rose from a mere halting-place for caravans to a city of the first rank. The true Arab despises agriculture ; but the pursuit of commerce, the organization and conduct of trading caravans, is an honourable business which gives full scope to all the personal qualities which the Bedouin values, and cannot be successfully conducted without widespread connexions of blood and hospitality between the merchant and the leading sheikhs on the caravan route. An Arabian merchant city is thus neces sarily aristocratic, and its chiefs can hardly be other than pure Arabs of good blood. The position of Palmyra in this respect may be best illustrated by the analogy of Mecca. In both cities the aristocracy was commercial, and the ruling motive of all policy lay in the maintenance of the caravan trade, which involved a constant exercise of tact and personal influence, since a blood feud or petty tribal war might close the trade routes at any moment. To keep the interests of commerce free from these embar rassments, it was further indispensable to place them under the sanctions of religion, and, though we cannot prove that this policy was carried out at Palmyra with the same consistency and success as at Mecca, we can trace significant analogies which point in this direction. Mecca became the religious centre of Arabia in virtue of the cosmopolitan worship of the Ka ba, in which all tribes could join without surrendering their own local gods. So at Palmyra, side by side with the worship of minor deities, we find a central cultus of Baal (Bel or Malachbel) identified with &quot;the most holy sun.&quot; To him belonged the great temple in the south-east of the city with its vast fortress-like courtyard 256 yards square, lined with colonnades in the style of Herod s temple ; and the presidence of the banquets of his priests, an office coveted by the first citizens of Palmyra (W., 2606, a), may be compared with the Meccan rifdda, or right of entertaining 1 The ollest Greek inscription (bilingual) is of 10 A.D., for a statue erected jointly by the Palmyrenes and the Greeks of Seleucia, Jour. As., ser. 8, i. 243. the pilgrims. 2 And, just as in Mecca the central worship ultimately became the worship of the supreme and name less god (Allah), so in Palmyra a large proportion of the numerous votive altars are simply dedicated to &quot; the good and merciful one, blessed be his name for ever.&quot; In Palmyra as at Mecca the name Rahman, (merciful) may be due to the influence of the Jewish colony, which settled in the town after the destruction of Jerusalem ; but the tendency to a universal religion, of which the dropping of the local proper name of God is so decided a mark, and which nevertheless is accompanied by no such rejection of polytheism as made Jehovah and Elohim synonymous in the religion of the Hebrew prophets, appears too early to be due to Jewish teaching (Mordtmann, 1), and seems as at Mecca to be rather connected with the cosmopolitanism of a merchant city. A secondary parallelism with Mecca is found in the sacred fountain of Ephka. Its tepid and sulphureous waters perhaps acquired their reputation from their medicinal use to cure the rheumatism which has always prevailed in Palmyra. 3 This spring, like Zemzem at Mecca, had a guardian, appointed by the &quot; moon-lord &quot; Yarhibol (W., 2571, c ; De V., 30), whose oracle is alluded to in another inscription, and who may therefore be com pared with the Meccan Hobal. The wars between Rome and Parthia favoured the growth of Palmyra, which astutely used its secluded posi tion midway between the two powers, and by a trimming policy secured a great measure of practical independence and continuous commercial relations with both (Appian, ut sup.; Pliny, v. 89). These wars, too, must have given it a share in the trade with north Syria, which in more peace ful times would not have chosen the desert route. To some extent, however, the oasis soon came under Roman control, for decrees regulating the custom-dues were issued for it by Germanicus and Corbulo. The splendid period of Palmyra, to which the greater part of the inscribed monuments belong, began with the overthrow of the Nabatsean kingdom of Petra (105 A.D.), which left it without a commercial rival. Hadrian took Palmyra into his special favour, and gave it on the occasion of his visit to the town (circa 130 A.D.) the name of Adrianopolis. 4 Under the same emperor (8th April 137) the customs and dues of Palmyra were regulated by a law which has recently been copied from the stone on which it was engraved, and gives the fullest picture of the life and commerce of the city. At this time the supreme legislative authority lay iu the hands of a senate (/3ovA.^), with a president, a scribe, two archons, and a fiscal council of ten. At a later date, probably under Septimius Severus or Caracalla, Palmyra received the jus italicum and became a Roman colony, 5 and according to usage the legislative power came into the hands of the senate and people under the administration of officers called strategi. The Romans had soon other 2 The sacrifices were partly maintained by endowments given by rich citizens (De V., 3; W. 2588). The dates of the inscriptions show that much the commonest time for the erection of honorific statues often in a connexion partly religious was in spring (Adar, or more often Nisan), and this seems to point to a great spring festival, corre sponding to the Arabic sanctity of Rajab. Palmyra had an important trade with the Bedouins in skins and grease (fiscal inscr., xvi. sq., xxx.); the herds of the desert are in condition for slaughter in spring, and this also points to a spring feast and fair. A trace of the hospi tality so necessary to keep the Bedouins in humour may perhaps be found in De V., 16; W., 2585. 3 See Mordtmann, 18, and his notes ; the oasis lies 1300 feet above the sea, is constantly swept by cutting winds, and is liable to sudden and extreme variations of temperature. 4 See Uranius, apud Steph. Byz. , now confirmed by the great fiscal inscription. 5 See Ulpian, Dig., 1. 15, 1, and Waddington, p. 596. Palmyrenes who became Roman citizens took Roman names in addition to their native ones, and these in almost ever}&quot; case are either Septimius or Julius Aurelius.