The Phoenician Cities there had still been in his lifetime the Phoenician letters on the city’s coins
to remind him otherwise, as well as the Phoenician names borne by his fel-
low citizens. Did they also still speak a language distinct both from Greek
and from Aramaic, as they certainly had when Meleager of Gadara, in about
.., composed his well-known epigram about how to greet someone
in Aramaic, Greek, and Phoenician?^46 There is no direct evidence. But it is
Ulpian who states that anobligatio(legal obligation) could undoubtedly be
created by a question in Latin and an answer in Greek or vice versa, and who
asks whether this principle could be extended ‘‘to another language, perhaps
Punic or Assyrian’’ (adalium[sermonem],PoenumfortevelAssyrium,Dig. , , ,
). ‘‘Assyrian’’ (Assyrius sermo) is certainly Aramaic; so perhaps Punic (Poenus
sermo) is not the Punic of Africa or Sardinia,^47 but the other ancient language
of his own area, Phoenician. The coupling of the two languages then reads
quite naturally.
The Phoenician cities can therefore be taken to represent a rather special
case of Hellenisation, and it is very striking how small a part they have played
in discussions of the nature of Hellenism. They were not colonised or re-
founded by Alexander or his successors (thediadochi). They did not on the
whole lose their names, in the way that Josephus described as typical. There
are no clear indications that they were given Greek constitutions by the
Ptolemies or Seleucids. On the other hand they most certainly did not remain
un-Greek. They were not temple communities based on a priesthood, like
Babylon or Jerusalem. They did in some sense become Greek cities, whose
inhabitants were at home in the Hellenistic and Graeco-Roman worlds. Yet
the available evidence, scattered and inadequate though it is, surely suffices
to show that there was much continuity with their Phoenician past—in lan-
guage and perhaps in institutions; certainly in their cults; probably in some
sort of literary tradition;perhapsin the preservation of archives; and certainly
in a continuous historical consciousness. This last was helped of course by
recognition from outside; we saw earlier how Carthage to the very end con-
tinued to send first-fruits to Tyre. How relevant was it that Punic continued
in use in the western Mediterranean long after the fall of Carthage and well
on into the Roman Empire? It is worth recalling also the dedication to Septi-
mius Severus’ son Geta, put up at Lepcis Magna by the city of Tyre, which is
there called ‘‘the Septimian colony of Tyre, mother-city of Phoenicia and of
other cities’’ (Septimia Tyros Colonia,Metropolis Phoenices et aliarum civitatium)
(IRT, no. ). That must be an allusion to the Phoenician colonisation of
.Anth.Pal. , ; A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page,TheGreekAnthology:HellenisticEpigrams
(), , no. iv.
. So F. Millar (n. ), –.