Rome and the East
None the less, the evidence available shows that in the decades between
the grant of colonial status and the reconquest by Aurelian, the previously
‘‘Semitic,’’ Greek, or ‘‘Arab-Greek’’ city took on many ‘‘Roman’’ features. As
regards the widespread adoption of Roman names, largely in the anomalous
form ‘‘Iulius Aurelius...,’’wecannot clearly distinguish between the effects
of becoming acolonia, and the more general effects of theconstitutio Antoni-
niana. But it is quite evident that the city adopted or received a new ‘‘colo-
nial’’ constitution, withduumviriandaediles, under the Greek designation of
stratēgoiandagoranomoi.
Something similar can be traced in the case of the only place in the Near
East which has left a significant body of non-Jewish literary evidence in
a Semitic language, namely Edessa.^172 When the new Roman provinces of
Mesopotamia and Osrhoene were formed in the s, the small kingdom of
King Abgar (IX?), with Edessa as its capital, remained as an enclave within
Osrhoene (AE, ,.., and ,..). From Abgar’s reign
we have the one remaining substantial fragment of the sixth-century Syriac
Chronicle of Edessa, a vivid description of a flood in... This narrative
is far from revealing the entire structure of city self-government; but it does
show that the city, though dominated by a king, had its own communal offi-
cials, SPR’ D’WRHY (‘‘scribes of Orhai,’’ i.e., Edessa), and ‘‘superintendents
of the city’’ (ŠRYR’ DMDYNT’).^173
Under Caracalla (..–) there came a sudden transformation. King
Abgar IX (?)—or possibly his son, Abgar X (?)—was summoned by the Em-
peror and deposed, and the area became part of the Roman province of
Osrhoene. It seems clear that the exact date of this change was../.
For this is implied by the famous Syriac contract of sale, found at Dura-
Europos, but written in Edessa in.., and first published in .^174 This
document is dated in a way which clearly points to a previous transforma-
. For a brief sketch, see F. Millar (n. ), –.
. Text and translation by R. Hallier, ‘‘Untersuchungen über die edessenische Chro-
nik,’’Texte und UntersuchungenIX (), – (trans.), – (text). The text is also re-
printed in F. Rosenthal, ed.,An Aramaic HandbookII. (), –. English translation by
J. Segal,Edessa: ‘‘The Blessed City’’(), –.
. P. Dura ; revised text by J. Goldstein, ‘‘The Syriac Bill of Sale from Dura-
Europos,’’JNES (): , text also in Rosenthal (n. ), – (Syriac only), and in
H. J. W. Drijvers,Old-Syriac (Edessean) Inscriptions(), –. Now reprinted, along with
the two new Syriac parchments of the same period from the Euphrates archive (see n.
below),asPinH.J.W.DrijversandJ.F.Healey,The Old-Syriac Inscriptions of Edessa and
Osrhoene(), app. I.