Overview

The first Roman colony in the province of Syria was established on the site of the Phoenician city of Berytus (Beirut) at the beginning of Augustus principate. Popu-lated by veterans of two legions, it was endowed with a very vast territory, which was extended in 15 BC in the Bekaa plain up to the sanctuary of Heliopolis (Baalbek) and the sources of the Orontes. Volume VIII/1 of the Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie (IGLS) provides irreplaceable information on the history of the city between this founding moment and the reign of Emperor Justinian (527-565). It brings together 464 inscriptions from the capital of present-day Lebanon and some twenty rural sites spread along the Mediterranean coast and on the maritime side of Mount Lebanon, including Dayr al-Qalaa. The documentation of the first three centuries of the Christian era characterises the colonia Iulia Augusta Felix Berytus as a little Rome in Phoenicia. The documentation of the following four centuries corresponds to a new golden age in which the city, now converted to Christianity, asserted itself as the true home of Roman law and the seat of a famous law school, whose prosperity was brutally compromised by the devastating earthquake of 551 AD.

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9782351597927

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