Porphyry that any of them had any knowledge of any language other than Greek re-
mains to be seen. The interpretation of the thought of any one of them in
terms of the influence of a local culture, language, or intellectual tradition
is something which has to be conducted with extreme care. The three pas-
sages quoted above demonstrate with painful clarity how loosely terms de-
noting ethnicity and cultural affiliation can be used—and not only used in
passing, but deployed as the bases of interpretation. What is meant, or what
should be meant, by ‘‘l’idiome de son pays’’—‘‘the native language of his
land’’; ‘‘Syrian’’; ‘‘Phoenician’’; ‘‘Middle East’’; ‘‘Syriac’’; or ‘‘Syrian exegetes’’?
The problem is even more profound if we consider the imputed knowledge
of other cultures and languages which were native to regions outside the
Roman province of Syria (or, in Porphyry’s lifetime, two provinces, ‘‘Syria
Coele’’ and ‘‘Syria Phoenice’’). First there are areas which formed part of the
Roman Empire. As we will see, a fundamental confusion is already built into
the second and third passages, for Syriac in the third century is in fact char-
acteristic not of the Roman province(s) called ‘‘Syria,’’ but of the province
of Mesopotamia, conquered in the s by Septimius Severus. But what of
Judaea, now called ‘‘Syria Palaestina’’? Do we have any reason to think that
any pagan intellectuals could read Hebrew? Then there is Egypt: what would
count as acquaintance with ‘‘the mystery cults...ofEgypt’’?
Far greater problems attend the question of defining putative cultures in
the regions beyond the borders of the Empire (though whether ‘‘the mys-
tery cults and magical practices of the Middle East’’ is intended to embrace
areas both inside and outside the Empire is not quite clear).
All these difficulties have to be explored, for otherwise (as is all too evi-
dent) the interpretation of Porphyry’s writings, as of those of other phi-
losophers from the Syrian region, will be based on unexamined assumptions
about cultural and linguistic patterns, and therefore be quite unsound. The
brief survey of the context offered here is based on the author’sThe Roman
Near East, ..–..(), which was intended precisely to draw a
‘‘map’’ of the Roman provinces of Syria, Mesopotamia, Judaea / Syria Palae-
stina, and Arabia, first in terms of language, as attested by documentary and
literary evidence, and then of ‘‘ethnicity,’’ as claimed or imputed by contem-
poraries. Its approach was thus severely empirical, and was designed, not—as
is in any case impossible—to prove negatives (for instance, that a particular
language wasnotin use at a particular time or place), but to show the limits
of what we know now: that we have actual evidence for the use of a particu-
lar language only in particular places and at particular times. Suppositions
about wider use are themselves hypotheses, which might of course receive
support at any time from new evidence. But such suppositions, until sup-