A Tale of Two Tyrians

Roger M. Batty


Keio University

Most people only admit geometry, which is in fact the noblest part of philosophy, as a low-grade activity aimed at low-grade ends. They restrict it to practical necessity, for example for measuring out land or setting up walls. In short, they approve of all its contributions to the manual crafts, but they see no further.[i]

In the second century A.D. when this little complaint was written, its author, the philosopher Maximus of Tyre, doubtless felt himself to be on safe ground. Grumbles about the intellectual myopia of one?s fellow citizens were frequently made both by philosophers and also by geographers in antiquity. Philosophers had long made such comments: Plato, whose teachings Maximus strove to disseminate, was the first to reproach his compatriots for concentrating only on the applied sciences, and underestimating the intrinsic value of theoretical work.[ii]  Geographers, who mostly regarded themselves as the best kind of philosophers, followed suit: from Strabo to Ptolemy, practitioners of geography berated people for their narrow-minded approach to the world.

Such complaints were also in keeping with the general spirit of the age. During the second century, when Maximus seems to have composed his Orations, such emphasis on the rewards of speculative thinking might have been especially fashionable. Peace reigned. Such conflicts as erupted were fought more out of Roman desire to put an end to disturbance than to promote it; steady consolidation of the Empire?s infrastructure characterized the era. Rome?s dominance was assured, and at the height of her imperial power, even the emperor himself, Marcus Aurelius, was engaged in writing philosophical tracts about the nature of human life.[iii]

Furthermore, given his own background and circumstances, Maximus? complaint was entirely appropriate.  His native city, Tyre, was the ancient capital of Phoenicia, whose enduring influence on the Mediterranean world was not without recognition.  From centuries past, Tyre?s trading network had spread further than that of any city in the Middle East.  During its early expansion, almost a millennium earlier, its caravans and its merchant fleet (along with those of its colony, Carthage) had penetrated lands from the Atlantic to East Africa.[iv]  With such a rich heritage and experience of the world, it was surely remiss of his fellow citizens to use their knowledge of geometry for purely local purposes.

However, we might also see in this rebuke something more than just the spirit of the age, or a peculiarly Tyrian critique of Roman society. Maximus? oeuvre, both by what it includes and what it omits, sheds light on Roman attitudes to geography to the world at large. Indeed, it is an indirect, but interesting confirmation of the intellectual obscurity of one of antiquity?s least known but most influential authors Maximus? fellow citizen, Marinus of Tyre.  Amongst the other geographers of the age, Marinus commanded no little respect. His works were innovative and widely utilized and in the history of ancient geography, they proved to be quite decisive. Yet, as we shall see, his interests in geography as a science of the globe placed him at odds with the parochial concerns which Maximus the philosopher identified above.

Though fellow-citizens, neither author seems to have attested the other, nor did their spheres of interest directly overlap. Yet between them, these two little-known Tyrian authors provide a neat illustration of how slowly geographical knowledge was disseminated in the Roman world, and how the interests of Rome might allow its better thinkers to languish in obscurity.  At first glance there might be little in common between philosopher and geographer; yet the diversity of their experiences is in itself instructive.

1. Two Tyrians

Both Maximus and Marinus remain enigmatic figures. Of the latter?s writings only a few fragments remain, preserved by Ptolemy in the Geography. And whilst the former might have left us a considerable body of text in his Orations, there is little within it to indicate the circumstances of the author. Thus, in both cases we must piece together their stories with the help of later sources.[v]

About Maximus? life and circumstances we are almost wholly ignorant. His name reveals nothing; only his avowed Platonist philosophy is clear, and even this seems belied by his constant sophistry. However, we may at least be reasonably sure about the date at which he lived. Eusebius (and various later sources which seem to rely on his testimony) noted that together with Arrian of Nicomedia he was a praeceptor of Marcus Aurelius.[vi] Furthermore, the Suda notes that Maximus was at Rome during the reign of Commodus.[vii] His most recent editor, Trapp, seems unduly negative about these attestations, believing them to be mutually incompatible.[viii] However, it is not inconceivable that Maximus could have lectured at Rome as an elderly man of 65 or so, during the early years of Commodus? reign (i.e. A.D. 180-185). That would not be inconsistent with  activities up to A.D. 152 when Eusebius attests him: at that stage he would have been about 37 years old. We might thus postulate a date of birth circa A.D. 115-120, with the bulk of his 41 Orations being composed during the period A.D. 150-185.

As for Marinus, we are equally at a loss. We might assume from what Ptolemy tells us in the first book of his Geography that Marinus was quite a famous figure in his day, at least amongst the literate elite: he made several versions of a well-researched map whose details Ptolemy was in the main content to follow.[ix] Yet there is no other record of him in classical literature apart from this; subsequently he is first attested by an Arabic source.[x] We are again left to speculate on dates. He has sometimes been considered a contemporary of Ptolemy (circa A.D. 170).[xi] However, Ptolemy?s language in the Geography is most inconclusive: he merely indicates that Marinus was ?the last of those among us?.[xii] The phrase might equally refer to the latest of Ptolemy?s sources, or the last of colleagues who shared Ptolemy?s discipline.[xiii] Indeed, what evidence we may adduce seems to indicate that Marinus had been working around A.D. 100. We have a terminus ante quem in Marinus? knowledge of the division of Moesia, which occurred in A.D. 86.[xiv] And certainly time seems to have passed in order for Ptolemy to state that some of Marinus? findings were no longer true for conditions in his own day.[xv] Taken together, this testimony seems to point to the period A.D. 86-130 as the most likely period for Marinus? work.

So far, then, we do not have much. But even at this early stage, we can see that both men shared a cosmopolitan outlook. Maximus, via his work in Rome, and his connection with the imperial authorities, Marinus via his charting of the provincial boundaries. Like many of the noted intellectuals of the day, men such as Dio Chrysostom or Aelius Aristides, their world was the wider Graeco-Roman world. It involved travel, and research about places far beyond their native land. Cosmopolitan, then, but still Tyrians, as their appellations suggest. So we must suppose, for lack of any other evidence, that it was in this city that each spent the first, and perhaps the more considerable, portion of his life. Thus it is to Tyre that we must first turn, to establish the background shared by our protagonists to investigate the potential for any shared intellectual vision.

2. The Tyrian Legacy: Philosophy and Shellfish?

What was it like to be a Tyrian in the second century A.D.? Questions such as this come laden with difficulties. Our evidence sends very mixed signals. On the one hand, Tyre was a Phoenician city; yet the evidence for any Phoenician culture from the region during Roman times is relatively scarce, and has led to sceptical verdicts about whether it meant anything at all to be ?Phoenician? during Roman times.[xvi] On the other hand, Tyre was as ?Greek? a city as any in the Empire; its coins proclaimed typical Greek themes, and it, like many a city in other provinces in the East, vied to be the ?metropolis? of its region.[xvii] Yet it was also, relative to its region, quite a ?Roman? (i.e. Latin) place; it was in Phoenicia, perhaps more than in any of the neighbouring regions, where Rome made its greatest impact.[xviii] The Phoenician cities, Tyre amongst them, eventually became a string of Roman colonies. From them came some of the regions most notable exponents of Roman law, amongst them probably the most famous Tyrian in antiquity, Ulpian of Tyre.

That a fusion of cultures and ideas existed at Tyre is exactly what we might expect, given Tyre?s extensive dealings with the Mediterranean world over the previous millennium. As a society, the Phoenicians were proud of their heritage and previous glories; Maximus himself speaks on occasion of  ?harbours of Phoenicia?, conjuring up more, no doubt, than simple geographical features.[xix] Doubtless many aspects of Tyrian society continued to reinforce a substrate of Phoenician culture. We hear of typical Tyrian (Phoenician) house styles, of Tyrian fashions, and, despite various complexities, we have continuing evidence for the worship of the ancestral Phoenician gods.[xx] Silver coinage continued to be minted at Tyre until A.D. 58/59, and Tyrian coinage stamped with a Semitic (Phoenician?) language continued to be minted well into the second century.[xxi]  We cannot tell if ?Phoenician? was widely spoken as a common tongue, but what evidence of a Semitic language does emerge from the region need not be dismissed too lightly; doubtless in the rural hinterland behind Tyre itself, versions of a language approximating to that used by the Phoenicians of the colonization period continued to be used.[xxii]

However, as a city, Tyre prided itself on its integration within the Graeco-Roman world, indeed on its early development as a place in the Greek milieu. In this respect it is wrong to think of the place as just another Greek or Graeco-Roman city; quite probably, in the eyes of its most famous sons and daughters it was more than a Greek city more educated, and in some peculiar way more ?Greek?. After all, it was widely accepted in the Graeco-Roman world that Phoenicia had given the Greeks their alphabet; Tyrians had competed at the Olympic games, on occasion with distinction.[xxiii] Throughout antiquity Tyre had a lasting reputation for producing academics, philosophers in particular.[xxiv] Indeed, apart from our two main characters, several more are known to us, even if by name only. From earlier antiquity we hear of a distinguished group of Tyrian Pythagoreans, and the atomist philosopher Mochus.[xxv] We also hear of a Tyrian Clitomachus, who became the head of the Academy at Athens.[xxvi] Nor did this stream of individuals dry up in the Roman period. In the first century A.D. we hear of a certain ?Euphrates?, a contemporary of Apollonius of Tyana, and a rhetor called Paul; and in the subsequent century we have Hadrian of Tyre, the noted sophist and pupil of Herodes Atticus.[xxvii] In civic terms, Tyre was a formidable polis, whose interactions in the Mediterranean sphere put it, in the eyes of many, in a privileged position. Both Greek and Latin authors during the early Empire are quite willing to acknowledge this. Pomponius Mela, the first-century geographer of the Phoenician world, exemplified the trend; reviewing, from remote Spain, the role that Tyre had played in Mediterranean history.[xxviii]  Nevertheless, we can clearly see that this duality of Phoenician/Greek tradition was viewed uncomfortably by many others. Despite interest in the Phoenician religion, for example, its reputation for involving human sacrifice made it the subject of some revulsion at Rome.[xxix] Furthermore, some Romans evinced distaste at the luxuries created by Tyrian industry.[xxx] Either that, or they cheapened its value.  In the words of Pliny, ?All that Tyre is now famous for is a shellfish and purple dye?.[xxxi] Even for an admirer such as Strabo, the town was actually made unpleasant due to activities of the dying industry.[xxxii] Finally, Tyrians were often subsumed into the more general repugnance shown by our Greek and Latin sources towards ?Phoenicians? as a racial group. Like many ancient authors, our philospher Maximus was able to speak about Phoenicians as a distinct race, alongside the Greeks, Egyptians, Persians, Lydians, and Scyths.[xxxiii] Few second-century Greeks, however, would have unhesitatingly wished themselves in that list; their attitudes would no doubt have better been expressed by Dio Chrysostom, when he rebuked the Athenians for honouring ?some Phoenician creature, not even from Tyre or Sidon?.[xxxiv]

In sum, being a Tyrian especially an educated Tyrian presumably meant having a sense of pride in a community, its achievements, and its notable intellectuals. But it might equally have led to some diffidence about the more Phoenician traditions of one?s mother city not just religion, but even trade and maritime expansion. Thus Tyre remained the official capital of a curiously unofficial Phoenician world a world which provoked mixed reactions, depending on one?s origins and education. Ultimately, both the reality and the idea of Phoenician Tyre could still evoke something in the Graeco-Roman mind. True, its trading network seems not to have been what it once was.[xxxv]  But Tyrian products, especially the Tyrian murex purple dye continued to be much sought after; the lanae Tyriae (Tyrian wool), Tyrii cultus, urbica Tyrianthina (Tyrian dress, a double-dyed city suit) were prized at Rome, especially those items which had been double-dyed (iterata).[xxxvi]  And despite any negative feelings, there seems to have been a minor tourism industry also: visitors came to admire a spring said to have been instrumental in Alexander the Great?s conquest of the city.[xxxvii] Then again, whilst as a commercial crossroads Tyre was never of such vital strategic interest to Rome as an Antioch or Palmyra, it played an active part in Roman affairs in the East. Soldiers were sometimes stationed there, and were certainly recruited from its environs.[xxxviii] Tyre?s hinterland, even after the Romans had thoroughly re-organized the Eastern provinces, continued to be described as a part of Phoenicia.[xxxix]

3. Marinus, Maximus and the Transmission of Geographical Wisdom

How did this background a shared birthplace in a city with large commercial contacts affect the world-views held by these two intellectuals? From what we have seen, they shared, at least, a quite cosmopolitan outlook one working at Rome, and with a Roman emperor, the other detailing the vast extents of Rome?s conquests, and its provincial structures. But by sifting the meagre evidence, can we discern any further significance in their respective geographical wisdom? Given the paucity of the evidence, this might seem to be an unanswerable question. Yet, even the brief notices we can find in Maximus? Orations and the Geography of Ptolemy are sufficient to illustrate that common threads must have been rare indeed. A huge gulf in geographical thinking seems to have separated the Tyrian geographer from the Tyrian philosopher. Whilst the philosopher?s wisdom was designed to be transmitted to a wider audience, geographical knowledge was, as Cicero?s once said, ?a thing hard to explain?.

To begin with, we can see that Marinus, the earlier of the two, and the professional geographer, retained an interest, of sorts, in the commercial world of which Tyre was so proud. Our knowledge of Marinus? work is uncertain, since we cannot tell which pieces of information Ptolemy took directly from him, and which were fresh material. Even so, it is evident that Marinus? map covered remote areas of the world known only by the accounts of traders. By carefully studying Ptolemy?s critique of Marinus? account in the first book of the Geography, we can see that he evidently used the accounts of sailors who had journeyed down the East African coast, and to India.[xl] Moreover, he had access to the accounts of those who had travelled to the remote East, such as Maes, the Macedonian who claimed to have contacted China.[xli] And from Ptolemy?s testimony it seems that he had personal contacts with merchants, even if he placed little trust in their sayings:

Marinus himself apparently did not trust merchants? reports: at least, he did not give assent to the account of Philemon in which he has reported the longitudinal extent of the island of Hibernia from east to west as a twenty-days journey, because Philemon said that he heard it from merchants. For, says Marinus, these merchants do not concern themselves with finding out the truth, being intent only on their business; instead, they often magnify distances because they love to boast.[xlii]

Whatever Marinus may or may not have believed about the dimensions of Ireland (Hibernia), and however sceptical his attitude to the commercial traveller, it is clear that he did have contact with merchants. He may have had little faith in these travellers, but he did not ignore them entirely. His work was built around assiduous research and a sceptical attitude. Presumably, in all of this the extensive trading network of Tyre must have played some part.

Thus, in Marinus, the city found a geographer worthy of its heritage. Ptolemy is careful in his critique of the former?s works careful enough to indicate that it was of a very high standard. Indeed, Ptolemy expressly informs us that the data provided on Marinus? map are not his principle concern; rather the projection. It is an admission that his predecessor had, at the very least, made a fairly complete catalogue of places known to the Romans of his day.

Nevertheless, it is surprising today to realize that even in his native city, Marinus? efforts may have passed largely unnoticed.  To take the example closest to hand: the historian will search in vain for traces of the work and teachings of Marinus in his younger compatriot, Maximus. Indeed, the snippets of geographical knowledge displayed by Maximus are quite revealing: not about how the great Phoenician city continued to be a hive of activity for geographical knowledge, but about how little the inhabitant of a famous seaport in antiquity might know or care to know about the world at large, and how isolated those who did know must have been, even though they might have grown up in the same distinguished city.

What we know about Maximus himself, and what we can glean from his texts, is enough to show us a very different picture of geographical knowledge. Whilst we have no evidence concerning the life of Marinus whether he travelled widely, or where he spent the years in which he produced his maps and commentaries Maximus clearly travelled. He seems to have worked in Rome.[xliii] Nor was this the sole venture he undertook: he claimed himself to have travelled to Arabia, and also to Phrygia.[xliv] A sea voyage is also mentioned in the Orations, though the destination is not given.[xlv] As for geographical literature, he knew enough, certainly, to be able on occasion to quote the words of Aratus? Phaenomena.[xlvi] Superficially, then, we might believe Maximus to have been relatively well-informed about the world. His own experience, combined with the atmosphere in his native city, where an illustrious geographer had recently been active, seems to urge this conclusion.

However, it would be a mistake to use these activities as evidence of Maximus? geographical abilities. From what we find elsewhere in the Orations he seems to have been a very narrow and conservative thinker, in this as in so much else. This may be seen initially from the people and places which appear in the text. We might expect these to be rather limited: after all, Maximus was a Platonist philosopher, and as such had little interest in the shape of the world. Even so, it is surprising to see how little he recorded of the world of his own day. We do hear about the Cappadocians and about the Celts;[xlvii] also about Indians and Illyrians.[xlviii] Italy receives several mentions.[xlix] But the overwhelming majority of places and people in Maximus? works are Greek. The reader of the Orations needs little knowledge of the real Mediterranean world of the second-century A.D. only a decent knowledge of Plato?s Greece.

Such a lack of interest in the world of his own day is nowhere more characterized, however, than in the few references Maximus provides about Ethiopia.[l] Given the paucity of his comments about other, closer areas of the Empire, we are prepared for Maximus to be rather brief. However, Ethiopia seems only to find mention by Maximus in connection with the plague: it is as if this disease is the chief feature of the country as a whole. Pliny, whilst noting that epidemics seemed to move from the South, is famous for his aphorism on the African continent: ?there is always something strange originating from Africa?.[li] Maximus? version is rather different: ?from Aethiopia thus the plague?.[lii]

This would not be especially disturbing, were it not for the fact that during Marcus? reign, at the time when Maximus seems to have written the Orations, an epidemic of considerable proportions had spread throughout the Empire. This ?Antonine Plague?, the symptoms of which were described briefly by Galen, has now been identified as smallpox.[liii] According to at least one tradition it originated in Mesopotamia, whence it was brought back by the soldiers of Verus.[liv] This tradition has rarely been questioned, even though the account in which it is found is certainly hostile to Verus, and the story of the plague?s origin in a Babylonian cask is clearly fiction.[lv] Yet none of this is to be found in the Orations, which continue to stress the Ethiopian origins of the plague. It would be tempting to see Maximus? comments as fresh testimony for an African origin for the Antonine epidemic. However, here too, Maximus offers only a standard account. Since the time of the great plague in Athens and its chronicler Thucydides, epidemics were usually considered to originate in Ethiopia. This tradition (based partially on fact and partly on Greek theories about climate and sickness) was widely adopted so much so that Lucian was led to criticize such authors for their slavishness to the tradition.[lvi] Despite the terrors the Antonine epidemic held for his own times, Maximus had little interest in discovering the actual origin of the disease.

Finally, Maximus? lack of attention to geographical matters needs to be set against his apparent interest in Homer. According to the Suda, Maximus? lectures at Rome concerned Homer and his philosophy; and Homer was acknowledged as in some ways the father of geography. In this light, his poor attention to the subject seems strange. It might be, of course, that Maximus wrote other treatises, since lost to us, in which geographical matters, and their Homeric relevance, were elucidated. What we possess in the Orations might possibly support this: Maximus does mention the Ocean, probably in reference to the Homeric sea.[lvii] But his other material hardly exudes critical awareness of geographical problems.

4. Marinus and Maximus; the transmission of geographical wisdom

Thus we may finally return to the opening quotation. Maximus? criticism was aimed at people who ?only admit geometry ... as a low-grade activity aimed at low-grade ends, restricted to practical necessity, for example measuring out land or setting up walls?. These people, he asserted, ?approve of all its contributions to the manual crafts, but see no further?.[lviii] Ironically, such censure might equally have been turned upon its own author. For Maximus was no Marinus, no Ptolemy. For him, India was not a place whose ports and harbours could be enumerated, or whose products described; it was not a stopping point on the longer voyage to Cattigara and the Golden Chersonese. It was simply a land  ?far from our borders? a ?fabulous? place.[lix] Whatever impact Marinus? researches had upon ancient geography as a science, they seem to have had only a limited effect upon his fellow citizens at Tyre. Ptolemy found Marinus to have been a most excellent model: but Maximus, as far as we can tell, took little from him.

This is, in itself, a neat illustration of one of antiquity?s great puzzles; the failure of ancient geography. It has long been noted that geographical wisdom reached a kind of apogee with Claudius Ptolemy, and then faded. It has also been noted that Ptolemy himself, like Marinus, remained something of a prophet in the wilderness. Like Marinus, he seems to have been an ?unknown?; and his work survived only in the Greek East, via Arab scholars. Instead, in the Latin-using western provinces, simpler world-views and mapping techniques seem to have predominated, leading to the conventional T-O maps of the Middle Ages.

We cannot of course know why most of the works by Tyrian authors are now lost to us, or why of our two Tyrians in question only the texts of the one who seems to have interacted with the authorities at Rome still survive. Yet we may surely speculate that Marinus? active connections to a world of Greek geography books, merchants and sea-travellers brought him little regard at a Rome where trade remained a rather grubby profession and geography an obscure science. In Marinus and Maximus, we might see the process of Roman intellectual discrimination in action. Maximus seems, by any account, to have been the more successful of the two Tyrians. He had the ear of powerful people at Rome. His ?wisdom? his sophistry suited audiences in the capital, but not the scholars at Alexandria. For Marinus, it seems otherwise; his fame as a geographer is attested by Ptolemy, but it will have been a very rarified kind of fame a fame amongst a select few. The strong bias against theoretical intellectual activity (a peculiarly ?Greek? activity) which prevailed at Rome, from the first century onwards, helped to ensure that he remained famously obscure. Maximus? Orations constantly berate the listener to pay more attention to eternal truths. He played the role of a lone voice urging decency in a time of confusion. Yet it was Marinus, not Maximus, who remained a prophet in the wilderness. The former?s works are now lost; the latter?s live on. Then, as now, direct and accessible wisdom gained wider acceptance. Marinus? work remained as enigmatic to his kinsmen as it does to many today.


[i] Maximus of Tyre, Orations, 37. 7.

[ii] Plato, Republic, 526c.

[iii] We have no secure dates for the composition on Maximus? works, although they appear to have been written circa A.D. 150-170. Marcus Aurelius? Meditations were composed circa A.D. 165.

[iv] Developments in the west are adequately traced by Aubet 1995: 218-276.

[v] For Maximus see initially Kroll 1930. The Orations have recently been edited and translated by M. B. Trapp 1994 and 1997. Marinus has been unjustly ignored in modern literature, and is a notable omission from the Oxford Classical Dictionary3. The best account remains that of Honigmann 1930. But see also RE Supplementum XII: 791-838.

[vi] Eusebius (Schoene edn., Berlin 1868: 168), whose testimony reappears in the Chronicle of Hieronymus and in Syncellus; see Trapp 1994: lvi. This evidence seems to date Maximus? activities in Rome to circa A.D. 149-152.

[vii] Suda s.v. ?Maximus?.

[viii] Trapp 1994: lviii.

[ix] Geography, 1. 6; 1. 17; Ptolemy?s criticisms of Marinus (e.g. at 1. 10; 12; 15 etc.) reveal only minor instances of factual correction. His main gripe concerned Marinus? method of projection, not the substance of his account, which Ptolemy explicitly accepted virtually in its entirety (duly noted by Berggren & Jones 2000: 23).

[x] The tenth-century Arabic historian al-Mas?udi claims to have seen ?a Geographia of Marinus? which contained maps: Kitab al-Tanbih wa?l-ishraf (ed. de Goeje), 33. Mas?udi?s claims have been doubted: see R. Wieber 1995.

[xi] E.g. by Dilke 1987; though securing dates for Claudius Ptolemy is an equally vexing issue.

[xii] Ptolemy, Geography, 1. 6. 1, hustatos te to¯n kath? humas.

[xiii] As noted by M?ik 1938: 24. M?ik translates this into German using the word ?Gewährsmanner?.

[xiv] Geography, 1. 16.

[xv] Geography, 1. 17. 2.

[xvi] Millar 1993: 290 (?a Greek city (almost) like any other?), 505, 526.

[xvii] E.g. OGIS, no. 595 (from Puteoli).

[xviii] Millar 1993: 527.

[xix] Orations, 30. 3.

[xx] Houses: Josephus, Jewish War, 2. 18. 9 (in the manner of those at Tyre Sidon, Berytus). Cults: e.g. Lucian, The Syrian Goddess, 44.3 ff. (exotics cult at Heliopolis, Sidon, Tyre, Byblos; the status of such temples and cults is the subject of much discussion, however).

[xxi] Silver: Rostovtzeff 1957: 181. Bronze coinage: Millar 1993: 289.

[xxii] Millar 1993: 264-295 is generally sceptical, but it needs stressing that Semitic language remnants persisted even in the urban zone of Phoenicia (let alone the rural hinterland) as coinage, together with occasional literary and epigraphic testimony (e.g. a Phoenician/Greek bi-lingual inscription (25/24 B.C.) = IGLS VII n. 4001; Ulpian, Digest, 45. 1. 1. 6 Poenus sermo) all attest. His assertion that only ?two famous intellectuals? came from Tyre (1993: 294) is indicative of the general thrust.

[xxiii] Alphabet: Herodotus 5. 58; Games: Austin 1981: no. 121.

[xxiv] E.g. Procopius, Anecdota, 24. 14. 16.

[xxv] Pythagoreans: Life of Pythagoras, 27. 128; 36. 267. Mochus: Strabo, 16. 2. 24.

[xxvi] Diogenes Laertius, 4. 67.

[xxvii] Euphrates of Tyre (coeval with Apollonius of Tyana): Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists, 1.7 (486-488); Hadrian of Tyre: Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists, 2. 10 (589-90). The full list would naturally include Ulpian and Porphyry the Neo-Platonist.

[xxviii] Batty 2000.

[xxix] Porphyry, On Abstinence from Living Things, 1. 56 shows a standard picture. Such sacrifices were also attributed to the Carthaginians, and to the Punic settlers at Gades.

[xxx] E.g. Virgil, Georgics, 2. 465; 3. 307.

[xxxi] Pliny, Natural History, 5. 17. 76.

[xxxii] Strabo 16. 2. 23.

[xxxiii] See e.g. Orations, 21. 6; 39. 5.

[xxxiv] Dio Chrysostom, Orations, 31. 116. See Jones 1978: 75.

[xxxv] Schürer 1973-87: iii (1) 108, 111 (Puteoli = OGIS no. 595, cited above, n. 17). Trading conditions seem to have been difficult.

[xxxvi] Dalby 2000: 171 and n. 161.

[xxxvii] Casson 1974: 235.

[xxxviii] Troops were stationed, albeit temporarily, at Tyre as early as 40 B.C. (Dio 48. 25-26); for recruitment from the area see now Pollard 2000: 32, 42, 117.

[xxxix] Millar 1993: 296 ff. fully discusses the extension of Syria Phoenice, after the time of Septimius Severus, deep into hinterland areas.

[xl] See Ptolemy, Geography, 1. 7. 6; 1. 9.

[xli] Ptolemy, Geography, 1. 11. 6.

[xlii] Ptolemy, Geography, 1. 11. 7.

[xliii] As attested by the Suda (see above, n. 7).

[xliv] Orations, 2. 7.

[xlv] Orations, 9. 7.

[xlvi] Orations, 24. 1.

[xlvii] Orations, 2. 8.

[xlviii] Orations, 29. 2.

[xlix] Orations, 8. 2; 20. 9; 27. 5.

[l] Orations, 7. 4; 13. 9; 41. 3.

[li] Pliny, Natural History, 7. 1. 170, ex Africa semper aliquid novi.

[lii] Orations, 41. 3, eks Aithiopo¯n ho¯s ho loimos.

[liii] Littman 1973: 243-55. More recently, Sallares 1991: 248, 255 with accompanying notes.

[liv] Historia Augusta, Verus, 8.

[lv] That the Historia Augusta is hostile to Verus can be seen from the preceding sections (Verus, 6-7); the story of the looted temple casket hardly inspires confidence.

[lvi] Lucian, How to write History, 15.

[lvii] Orations, 26. 3, 8; 41.1.

[lviii] Orations, 37. 7.

[lix] Orations, 23. 7; 2. 7

Works cited

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