Rome and the East
East, including Babylonia.^4 The actual movement to and fro of individuals
was reflected, as we have been reminded,^5 in a close interrelation of artistic
and architectural styles. Moreover, whatever qualifications have to be made
in regard to specific places, it is incontestable that Semitic languages, pri-
marily Aramaic in its various dialects, remained in active use, in a varying
relationship to Greek, from the Tigris through the Fertile Crescent to the
Phoenician coast. This region remained, we must now realize, a cultural
unity, substantially unaffected by the empires of Rome or of Parthia or Sas-
sanid Persia.^6
On the face of it, these facts might seem to give added confirmation to
what is the standard interpretation of the career of Paul of Samosata. The
bare structure of this career, which we know essentially from Eusebius,^7 is
that he succeeded Demetrianus as bishop of Antioch, was accused of heresy,
and was the subject of two synods held at Antioch in about and / (for
the dates, see below), the second of which condemned him. On his refusal to
leave the church house, his opponents made a successful petition against him
to Aurelian (–). The accepted interpretation, represented primarily by
G.Bardy’sbookonPaul,^8 and by Glanville Downey’s standard work on the
history of Antioch,^9 sets this career firmly in the context of a wide pattern of
cultural and political relationships. On this view, Paul, coming from Samo-
sata, was the champion of the ‘‘native’’ (Syriac- or Aramaic-speaking) ele-
ment in the Antiochene church. His opponents were the representatives of
Greek culture. Moreover, a remark made in the letter of the second synod
retailing Paul’s offences is held to mean that he held a government post as
ducenarius(i.e., aprocuratorwith a salary of , sesterces per annum; see
text to n. below); and later evidence is brought in to show that this will
have been in the service of Palmyra, more specifically of its queen, Zenobia.
Thus a conflict of cultures becomes intimately linked to a political conflict.
. Lucian,dea Syra, . See text to n. below.
. J. B. Ward-Perkins, ‘‘The Roman West and the Parthian East,’’Proc.Brit.Acad. ():
; ‘‘Frontiere politiche e frontiere culturali,’’La Persia e il mondo greco-romano, Acc. Naz.
dei Lincei, anno , quad. (): .
. See the remarks by P. Brown, ‘‘The Diffusion of Manichaeism in the Roman Empire,’’
JRS (): .
. Eusebius,HE, – .
. G. Bardy,PauldeSamosate:étudehistorique^2 , Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense IV ();
note, however, the more cautious view of Paul in G. Bardy,Laquestiondeslanguesdansl’église
ancienne(), .
. G. Downey,A History of Antioch in Syria from Seleucus to the Arab Conquest(), –
, –.