The RomanColoniaeof the Near East halls (exedras), porticoes, temples and market-places (agoras) for Berytus and
Tyre, theatres for Sidon and Damascus, an aqueduct for Laodicea on the sea,
baths, sumptuous fountains and colonnades, admirable alike for their archi-
tecture and their proportions, for Ascalon.’’^20 It is interesting that Josephus,
although of course aware that Berytus was a Romancolonia,^21 does not see
Herod’s contribution to public building there as different in kind from that
which he made in the case of Greek cities.
The evidence does not in fact allow us to say more than that Berytus, in the
imperial period, acquired the normal apparatus of public buildings, adorned
with Corinthian columns, which characterised the more important provin-
cial cities. The fragmentary archaeological and architectural traces recovered
from beneath the modern city confirm this, without proving that the city
was distinctively Roman in appearance, or different from the surrounding
Greek cities.^22
The munificence of Herod was followed by that of his grandson Agrippa I.
But here perhaps we can see reflected the particular status and particular cul-
tural character of the place. For Agrippa, as well as building a theatre, pro-
vided an amphitheatre, something not unknown, but certainly not typical,
in Greek cities,^23 and then laid on there gladiatorial shows involving ,
condemned criminals.^24 The gladiatorial show was one of the most distinc-
tive Roman importations into the communal life of the Greek East, and
this report represents one of the earliest items of evidence for its intrusion
there;^25 it is perhaps not an accident that the shows took place, in a newly
built amphitheatre, in a Romancolonia.
We cannot be equally sure that there was anything distinctively Roman
about the benefactions of Agrippa’s son, Agrippa II, in the reign of Nero.
He too is recorded as having built a theatre (a new one, or rebuilding the
existing one?), and having put on lavish shows; but he also distributed both
grain and oil, the latter surely more characteristic of popular expectations
in a Greek city. Beyond that he adorned the city with statues and ‘‘eikones
. Josephus,BJ, . Loeb trans. Not repeated inAnt.
.BJ, :ἡδ ̓ἐστὶνἐντῇΦοινίκῃπόλιςῬωμαίωνἄποικος.
. For the literary and archaeological evidence for Roman Berytus, see, above all, Mou-
terde and Lauffray (n. ).
. See, e.g., F. Millar, ‘‘Introduction: The Greek World and Rome,’’ in S. Macready and
F. H. Thompson,RomanArchitectureintheGreekEast(). Hazel Dodge, however, pointed
out to me that recent discoveries had revealed more amphitheatres than previously known.
. Josephus,Ant.,–.
. See L. Robert,Les gladiateurs dans l’Orient grec(; repr. ), –.