Rome and the East
the Forum Boarium in Rome.^38 The inscription naming this goddess (CILIII
) comes from a place called Der el-Kala in the hills behind Berytus where
there was a temple of Zeus Baalmarcod, of which more in a moment.^39 The
Latin inscription records that an altar was dedicated to Mater Matuta by a
lady named Flavia Nicolais(quae et?) Saddane,ex responso Deae Iunonis.How
a Graeco-Syrian woman, evidently a new citizen, came to subscribe to the
cult of Mater Matuta we can only guess. But for the name of such a deity to
have been familiar at all implies a profound ‘‘Roman’’ consciousness among
at least some of the population. The inscriptions of Berytus and its hinter-
land are sufficient at least to raise the question (which is a pure speculation)
as to whether theeikonesimitating ancient models which Agrippa II installed
might have been intended as a compliment to thecolonia, and have been bor-
rowed from Rome rather than classical Greece.
The inscriptions also serve to put into an intelligible context the early
experience of the famous Latin grammarian Valerius Probus, from Berytus:
‘‘In the province he had read with agrammatistescertain ancientlibelli, for the
memory of theantiquistill survived there, and had not yet been erased as it
had in Rome.’’ The period concerned is the first half of the first century..;
it remains equally noteworthy that Probus turned finally to his grammati-
cal studies only after long seeking a centurionate and giving up in despair.^40
Had he been successful, he would have been another in the series of centuri-
ons andprimipili, with the tribe Fabia, from Berytus/Heliopolis, as well as
common soldiers, attested on Latin inscriptions both locally and abroad.^41
It was this very distinctive character of Berytus as a place of Roman culture
which was to give it its slowly developing role as the site of a major school
of Roman law. To put it in those terms, however, is to go beyond what our
evidence for the period up to the fourth century actually says. Nothing at all
indeed attests this role until we come to the address of thanks which Gre-
gorius, the later bishop and ‘‘wonder-worker’’ (Thaumatourgos), from Neo-
caesarea in Pontus, addressed to his teacher Origen, probably in the s. In
. See F. Coarelli,Il Foro Boario dalle origini alla fine della Repubblica(), chap. .
. For the site and the temple, see D. Krencker and W. Zschietzschmann,RömischeTem-
pel in SyrienI (), –, with vol. II, . (map) and .
. Suetonius,de gram..
. From Heliopolis and its vicinity, e.g.,IGLSVI (L. Antonius Naso, career be-
ginning with centurionate);IGLSVI / (L. Gerellanus Fronto,primuspilus);IGLSVI
(C. Velius Rufus). Common soldiers:ILS (Coptos);AE, ; , (both
Carnuntum); , (Rome). Another is attested in the military documents from Masada,
published by H. M. Cotton and J. Geiger,MasadaII:The Latin and Greek Documents(),
no. , to whose commentary I owe these references.