The Greek City in the Roman Period Nothing could more accurately convey the sense of a long tradition, a period
of acute danger and disturbance, the value placed on public buildings, or (in
this case) the impact of Roman colonisation.
Equally significant, if sometimes more confused geographically, is Strabo’s
account of the Phoenician cities: their extremely varied fortunes during the
progressive break-up of the Seleucid kingdom; the rise here too, as in Syria
proper, of a generation of local tyrants, finally suppressed by the Romans;
and the imposition of the Roman peace.^19 In the case of Phoenicia Strabo
makes a direct and unmistakable connection between the disorders of the
first century..and the establishment in ..of the colony of Berytus—
Colonia Iulia Augusta Felix Berytus, which was to be perhaps the only estab-
lished ‘‘island’’ of Latin culture in the whole of the Greek world of the eastern
Mediterranean.^20
In spite of all the problems which its composition raises, theGeographyof
Strabo cannot but serve as the most important picture which we have of the
Greek world as it was when imperial rule began. Precisely two of its most
important functions are, firstly, to recall how the present situation of each
place could be seen in the context of a distant, often mythological, past; and,
secondly, to record how so many places had faced violent external threats
and internal disturbances in the first two-thirds of the first century..In
the established Empire it is in general true that cities, when they collectively
recalled the past, tended to avert their gaze from the Hellenistic and early Ro-
man periods, to focus on mythological origins and (if they could) on the clas-
sical past.^21 Strabo is closer in time to the most troubled period, and therefore
all the better evidence for how much the imposition of peace really meant.
One place of which Strabo makes only two passing mentions is Aphro-
disias in Caria.^22 It ought to have attracted his attention, however, for it too
had taken part in the military conflicts of the first century. In ..,when
the two communities of the ‘‘Plaraseans’’ and the ‘‘Aphrodisieis’’ still formed
. For the political history of the Greek cities of both Phoenicia and Syria proper, see
the very useful studies by J. G. Grainger,The Cities of Seleukid Syria(), andHellenistic
Phoenicia().
. Strabo,Geog. , , (). On Berytus as acolonia, see F. Millar, ‘‘The RomanColo-
niaeof the Near East: A Study of Cultural Relations,’’ in H. Solin and M. Kajava, eds.,Roman
Eastern Policy and Other Studies in Roman History(), – ( chapter of the present
volume).
. E. Bowie, ‘‘Greeks and Their Past in the Second Sophistic,’’PastandPresent ():
M. I. Finley, ed.,Studies in Ancient Society(), .
. Strabo,Geog.,,();,,().