Page:PhilipK.Hitti-SyriaAShortHistory.djvu/113

Rh defying all dangers. They had flourishing settlements at Rome, Naples and Venice in Italy, Marseilles, Bordeaux and Paris in France, Carthage and the Spanish and Sicilian ports. They imported wines from Ascalon and Gaza, purple from Caesarea, woven fabrics from Tyre and Beirut, pistachio nuts and sword blades from Damascus and embroidered stuffs from several towns. Embroidery was especially in demand for ecclesiastical use. An old commodity which now assumed new importance was silk, the entire trade being in Syrian hands. Imported from China through Arabia, the silk was dyed and rewoven in Phoenicia. Both dyeing and silk-trading soon became monopolies of the Byzantine state. From Arabia and India, Syria continued to import spices and other tropical products. In exchange Syria exported to these lands — as well as to China — glass, enamels and fine textiles.

As it was in the Roman period, Beirut remained the only city of the Phoenician coast famous for intellectual rather than commercial and industrial activity. It still housed the academy of law, a science more assiduously cultivated than any other in the Byzantine era. This institution reached its greatest development in the fifth century, when it attracted some of the finest young minds in the Byzantine empire. The curriculum included science, geometry, rhetoric, Greek and Latin. It covered four years, but Justinian added a fifth year. Some students diverted themselves at horse races and theatres or by drinking and gambling, while others were passionately addicted to theological disputation, asceticism and occultism. Earthquakes between 551 and 555 and a disastrous fire in 560 brought the university to a tragic end.

Throughout the Byzantine period, the aggressive Sasanid dynasty of Persia posed a constant threat to the Syrian pro- vince. One incursion between 527 and 532 was checked by Justinian's able general Belisarius. Procopius of Caesarea, the historian of this war, accompanied Belisarius as an adviser. In 540 the Persians appeared again under Chosroes I. At Rh