Ethnic Identity By and large, neither a ‘‘Roman’’ ethnicity nor the Latin language, so far
as can be seen, played any significant part in determining personal or group
identity in the Near East in this period, either in society in general or within
the Christian church. The most specific allusion to the communal use of
Latin is provided by the report from the western pilgrim Egeria or Aetheria
in the s, of the presence of Latin-speakers, some of whom are at one point
calledGraecolatini(speakers of both Greek and Latin), in the Christian con-
gregation in Aelia Capitolina. But, if anything, the account indicates how
rapidly Aelia Capitolina had become a predominantly Greek-speaking place.
This report, discussed in more detail below, in any case, gives much more
prominence to the presence of speakers of Syriac or Aramaic.^10
Given that the formal status of those of the cities of the region which
were Roman colonies is hardly expressed any longer in the evidence from
this period,^11 it ought all the more to be stressed that the entire area of all
the provinces concerned was divided between Greek cities and their terri-
tories. With the literally marginal exception of Arab or Saracen allies (foede-
rati) under their tribal leaders (phylarchoi), to which we will come later, there
were in the late Roman Near East no local territorial political formations of
any kind other than Greek cities. This fundamental fact has to be stressed
also as regards Palestine; the Jewish and Samaritan populations living there
represented very important and distinctive ethnic, religious, and to some ex-
tent linguistic communities, in some sub-regions apparently constituting a
majority of the population. But the political and governmental structures
within which they lived were those of Greek cities with their surrounding
territories.
As for what meaning one should attach to the expression ‘‘Greek city,’’
as represented in this region in the fourth century and the first part of the
fifth, there has in fact been remarkably little research. Apart from the excel-
lent work of Liebeschuetz on Antioch,^12 based on the speeches and letters
. Texttonn.–andtexttonn.–below.
. Note, however, the isolated reference in theActaof the Council of Chalcedon to
Tyre as akolōnia(Millar [n. ], on ), and the striking allusions in the Petra Papyri to the
city as an ‘‘Augustokoloneia’’ and as ‘‘mother of colonies’’ (P. Petra, lines –, cited above
in chapter of the present volume in text to n. ).
. J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz,Antioch: City and Imperial Administration in the Late Ro-
man Empire(). But see, for instance, C. Lepelley, ed.,La fin de la cité antique();
A. Walmsley, ‘‘Byzantine Palestine and Arabia: Urban Prosperity in Late Antiquity,’’ in
N. Christie and S. T. Loseby, eds.,Towns in Transition: Urban Revolution in Late Antiquity and
the Early Middle Ages(), .