Rome and the East
nified, depended on the terms of the grant in each case, which we do not
always know.
It may not be irrelevant that Ulpian from Tyre is the only jurist of this
period whom we know to have referred specifically to what moderns call
‘‘TheConstitutio Antoniniana’’:in orbe Romano qui sunt ex constitutione imperato-
ris Antonini cives Romani effecti sunt. As the form of his allusion to him shows,
Ulpian was writing under Caracalla, in whose reign he composed, as it seems,
almost the whole of his vast corpus of work.^147 Not much of the relevant
material incorporated in theDigestbelongs more than a few years after that;
and, in fact, the examples ofcoloniaegiven by Ulpian and Paulus stop with
those of the reign of Caracalla. So, for instance, Ulpian can record the grant
of colonial status andius Italicumto Emesa, by Caracalla, without (at least
in the quoted text) making clear that it was the home city of the Emperor’s
mother:SedetEmisenaecivitatiPhoenicesimperatornosteriuscoloniaededitiurisque
Italici eam fecit.^148 Until now nothing in the limited epigraphical material
from the site has reflected the new status of the city. But an inscription with
the names of Macrinus and Diadumenianus ends withRESTITUIT COL.
EMESENORUM. It comes from the south-western limits of the city terri-
tory, bordering on that of Heliopolis.^149 The coins however are ‘‘colonial,’’ al-
though they are all in Greek: we findΕΜΙΣΩΚΟΛΩΝΙΑΣorΚΟΛΩΝ(ίας)
in – and , andΜΗΤΡΟΚΟΛ(orΜΗΤΡΟΚΟΛ?)ΕΜΙΣΩΝunder
Elagabal (..–).^150 These coins may thus represent the earliest attested
appearance of the hybrid Greek-Latin termμητροκολωνεία,attestedafew
decades later also at Palmyra (see below). Whether it was intended in this case
to reflect Elagabal’s own derivation from the city is not clear. Beyond that,
our evidence fails us. The fourth-century literary evidence, which indicates
that Emesa was then in decline, gives no hint of its colonial status.^151
Ulpian does not refer to Caracalla’s grant to Antioch. But Paulus, appar-
ently writing after the Emperor’s death, does:Divus Antoninus Antiochenses
colonos fecit salvis tributis(Dig. , , , ). The grant was thus the purest of
.Dig. , , . See T. Honoré,Ulpian(), and the review article by F. Millar, ‘‘A
New Approach to the Roman Jurists,’’JRS (): – ( chapter in F. Millar,Rome,
the Greek World, and the EastII:Government, Society, and Culture in the Roman Empire).
.Dig. , , , (Ulpian); cf. , , , (Paulus):Imperator noster Antoninus civitatem
Emisenorum coloniam et iuris Italici fecit.
. SeeIGLSV:Émésène(). For the new inscription, see Ghadban (n. ), .
.BMCSyria, –. For the relevant legends under Uranius Antoninus in..,
see H. R. Baldus,Uranius Antoninus: Münzprägung und Geschichte(), –.
. See, e.g., Libanius,Ep. ; cf. H. Seyrig, ‘‘Caractères de l’histoire d’Émèse,’’Syria
(): .