Rome and the East
to n. above). This seems to be the only occasion on which one of them is
mentioned by name in the epigraphy of Palmyra.
We should not minimise what we can learn from these inscriptions, lim-
ited as they are in their formal character.Synodiai, ‘‘caravans,’’ were indeed a
regular feature of trade. There was a public position calledsynodiarchos(com-
mander of a caravan) and another calledarchemporos(leading merchant). These
caravans travelled across the steppe to and from Vologaesias and Spasinou
Charax. Some Palmyrene merchants ventured further, across the Indian
ocean. Protection against the dangers of the land route was necessary and
was supplied either by money or by actual fighting against thenomades.
But we learn nothing of the internal organisation of asynodia; nothing
whatsoever of the objects of trade; nothing directly about the forms of trans-
port, presumably camels or donkeys; and above all we hear nothing of how,
or in what direction, this trade was then carried westwards—that is, of how,
in Appian’s words, the Palmyrenes disposed of the goods in the empire of
the Romans (see text to n. above).
What this means is that what the inscriptions will tell us is determined
by their political and, to an extent, military preoccupations: the benefits
which theeuergetai(benefactors) who were honoured conferred related to
the no-man’s-land of the steppe between Palmyra and the Euphrates, and
between the Roman and the Parthian, and then the Persian, empires. The
routes to the west, towards the coast, will have been relatively secure. One
certainly led south-eastwards to Damascus; by the end of the third century
this route had an imperial name, the ‘‘Strata Diocletiana,’’ and was lined with
Roman forts.^50 Anything which reached the Mediterranean from there will
have been carried through the pass over Anti-Lebanon into the Beqa valley
and then over Mount Lebanon to Berytus. Much more direct was the route
westwards to Emesa (Homs), or Laodicea ad Libanum, and then through the
Homs gap to the sea. When traffic reached the sea, the obvious ports were
the old Phoenician cities of Arados to the north and Tripolis to the south.
But to say that is immediately to reveal how little impression we have of the
trading role of these very modest places under the Empire. There is no doubt
of course that cargoes could be picked up by trading ships moving along this
coast either southwards, to Egypt, or more importantly northwards and then
along southern Asia Minor to the central Mediterranean. Saint Paul, on his
last missionary journey, took a ship going from Patara southwards to Tyre,
Ptolemais, and Caesarea (Acts :–). Then, when sent to appear before
. See Millar (n. ), –; see T. Bauzou, ‘‘Epigraphie et topographie: le cas de la
Palmyrène du sud-ouest,’’Syria (): –.