Rome and the East
by any documentary evidence; but a Greek inscription contains a dedication
for the safety of Philip and his son by threebouleutai,προεδρίᾳΜαρρίνου,
ἔτους πρώτου τῆςπόλεως.^207 Coins of the reign of Philip (but not after)
have the Greek legendΦΙΛΙΠΠΟΠΟΛΙΤΩΝΚΟΛΩΝΙΑΣ.^208 It was very
likely of this new foundation that someone at Sakkaia (later Maximianopo-
lis, now Shaqqa), a few miles away, was thinking when he put up a verse
epigram ending with the wordsεὐτυχίτωἡκολωνία—‘‘Good luck to the
colonia.’’^209
Rather further afield, the author of the Thirteenth Sibylline Oracle, writ-
ten a few years later, probably in Emesa, noticed the adornment of this city
and of one other newcoloniain the vicinity, Bostra, but not specifically their
new formal status: ‘‘Now bedeck yourselves, cities of the Arabs, with temples
and stadiums, agoras and streets, glorious wealth, and statues of gold and
silverandivory...Bostra and Philippopolis.’’^210 The new foundation also
achieved a mention in Aurelius Victor’s brief account of the reign of Philip,
written over a century later:conditoque apud Arabiam Philippopoli oppido(Caes.
, ). Here too, as so often, and almost universally in the fourth century, the
specific status ofcoloniahas dropped out of sight.
With that the list ofcoloniaein the Near East is almost complete: the very
uncertain cases of Ascalon, Gadara, and Gerasa, none of which produced any
colonial coins, need not be discussed in detail.^211 There remains, firstly, Dura-
based on published material, see A. Segal, ‘‘Town Planning and Architecture in Provincia
Arabia: The Cities along the Via Traiana Nova in the st–rd Centuries..,’’BAR Int. Ser.
(): –.
. Le Bas-Waddington, no. IGRIII .
.BMC Arabia, xli–ii, –; Spijkerman (n. ), –.
.IGRIII . Note the inscription of.. recording that someone had dedi-
cated a statue of the Tyche of Sakkaia,τύχην Μεγάλην Σακκαίας τῇκυρίᾳπατρίδι(AE
, bis).
.Orac. Sib. , –. See A. T. Olmstead, ‘‘The Mid-Third Century of the Christian
Era,’’Class. Philol. (): , on –; Baldus (n. ), –.
. (a) Ascalon. The evidence consists solely of a papyrus of..,BGU, no.
L. Mitteis and U. Wilcken,Chrestomathie, no. , .:ἐνκολωνίᾳ Ἀσκ[άλωνι?]τῇπιστῇ
καὶἐλευθέρᾳ. See Schürer, Vermes, and Millar,HistoryI, –. (b) Gadara. The sole evi-
dence isCILIII (Byblos):col. Valen. Gadara. SeeZDPV (): –, and
Schürer, Vermes, and Millar,HistoryII, –. (c) Gerasa. There are two inscriptions from
the city which refer, or may refer, to colonial status, but not certainly that of Gerasa itself.
C. H. Kraeling,GerasaCityoftheDecapolis(), , no. :ColoniaAur.Antoniniana; ,