Rome and the East
something more definite than that).^181 But they may serve to remind us of
just how little we really understand. We can define some of the elements in
the endlessly complex culture of the Fertile Crescent in the Roman period,
and accept the impossibility of making simple deductions from culture to
political attitudes; we can confidently dismiss from the history books the
monstrous figure of ‘‘Paul of Samosata, theducenariusof Zenobia’’; we can
see that we do not necessarily need to look to the expansion of Palmyrene
power in order to explain why the orthodox party in Antioch could appeal to
a pagan emperor. But we still are a long way from understanding the nature
of the wider Aramaic-Greek culture of Syria and Mesopotamia, and how it
affected the attitudes and beliefs of those who grew up in it.
. See J. Daniélou and H. Marrou (n. ), : ‘‘Il est typiquement oriental. On trouve
chez lui les usages de la Syrie de l’est.’’