Latin Epigraphy under Augustus by the foundation of thecoloniaof Berytus, with its ex-
tensive territory stretching over Mount Lebanon into the northern Bekaa
valley. Here the public use of Latin was to survive the creation by Severus
of a secondcoloniain this eastern sector, Heliopolis. But elsewhere, when
the creation of nominalcoloniaebecame more frequent from the s on-
wards, Latin, in these ‘‘colonial’’ contexts, entered into complex relations
with Greek, and in some cases with Semitic languages.^9
The other context for the relatively ‘‘pure’’ use of Latin was of course the
military one. Most notable of all are the Latin inscriptions of the stone-built
forts of the ‘‘desert frontier,’’ some still standing today, which line the edge of
the steppe from Mesopotamia to the Red Sea, accompanied by milestones,
above all those of the Via Nova in Arabia.^10 The imperialist overtones of the
milestones of Trajan’s road are matched above all by the triumphant message
of the inscriptions from the Tetrarchic period. This appears most clearly in
the inscription from the ‘‘camp of Diocletian’’ at Palmyra:^11
[Reparato]res orbi sui et propagatores generis humani dd.nn. Diocle-
tianus [et Maximianus] invictis]simi impp. et Constantius et Maxi-
mianus nobb. Caess. castra feliciter condiderunt [curam age]nte Sos-
siano Hieroclete v(ir) p(erfectissimus), praess. provinciae, d(evoto)
n(umini) m(aiestati)q(ue) eorum.But everywhere, in whatever terms military inscriptions proclaimed the
dominance of the emperors, individual soldiers lived in complex social,
economic, religious, and linguistic relations with the multi-lingual society
around them. This fact is very evident in the archive of Babatha (n. above),
as it is also in the quite remarkable bilingual inscription of a Roman veteran
from the bank of the Tigris: the veteran (οὐετρανός), ‘‘Antonios Domittia-
nos,’’ made his dedication to Zeus in Greek and Aramaic.^12
It is displayed also, even more clearly, in the archive of Greek and Syriac
documents of the third century from the middle Euphrates.^13 The region
. F. Millar, ‘‘The RomanColoniaeof the Near East: A Study of Cultural Relations,’’ in
H. Solin and M. Kajava, eds.,Roman Eastern Policy and Other Studies(Societas Scientiarum
Fennica, Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum , ), , and esp. –, –, for
the Latin ‘‘island’’ of Berytus and Heliopolis ( chapter of the present volume).
. For the ‘‘desert frontier,’’ see (if not very detailed as to inscriptions) the immensely
evocative book by Kennedy and Riley (n. ).
. J. Cantineau,Inventaire des inscriptions de PalmyreVI, no. .
. J. F. Healey and C. S. Lightfoot, ‘‘A Roman Veteran on the Tigris,’’EpigraphicaAnatolica
(): .
. See D. Feissel and J. Gascou, ‘‘Documents d’archives romains inédits du Moyen