Berytus
𐤁𐤉𐤓𐤅𐤕𐤀 ( Phoenician, Roman |
Berytus (
History
Early history
In 140 BCE the Phoenician village called "Biruta" was destroyed by
During the late decades of the Roman Republic the city was conquered by the Romans of Pompey in 64 BCE. It renamed "Berytus", as a reference to the name of the old original Phoenician port-village. The city was assimilated into the Roman Empire, many veteran soldiers were sent there, and large building projects were undertaken.[6][7][8]
Roman colonia
In 14 BCE, during the reign of
...(Berytus) was made a Roman colony about 14 B.C. Herod the Great, Agrippa I and II, and Queen Berenice built exedras, porticos, temples, a forum, a theater, amphitheater, and baths here. In the 3d c. A.D. the city became the seat of a famous school of law and continued to flourish until the earthquake of A.D. 551 ravaged the city....Its streets, laid out on a grid plan, are spaced at roughly the same intervals as those of Damascus and Laodicea. The new Roman city spread farther S and W (of the port), with its Forum near the (actual) Place de l'Etoile. On its N side was a civic basilica 99 m long with a Corinthian portico of polychrome materials..., dating from the 1st c. A.D. Some large baths have been uncovered on the E slope of the (actual) Colline du Sérail, and the hippodrome lay on the NW side of the same hill. Some villas in a S suburb facing the sea had mosaic floors (now in the Beirut Museum).Some 12 km upstream on the Beirut river are the ruined arches of an aqueduct.[11]
Berytus was considered the most Roman city in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire.[12] It was one of four Roman colonies in the Syria-Phoenicia region and the only one with full Ius Italicum (meaning: exemption from imperial taxation).
Its territory/district under
Agrippa greatly favoured the city of Berytus, and adorned it with a splendid theatre and amphitheatre, beside baths and porticoes, inaugurating them with games and spectacles of every kind, including shows of gladiators. Now only minor ruins remain, in front of the Catholic Cathedral of Beirut. Four large bath complexes as well as numerous private baths increased the city's water consumption: the Romans constructed an aqueduct fed by the Beirut River whose main source was 10 km from the city. The aqueduct crossed the river at Qanater Zbaydeh and the water finally reached Riad Al Solh Square; there, at the foot of the Serail Hill, it was stored in large cisterns. An intricate network of lead or clay pipes and channels distributed the water to the various pools of the Roman Baths.
Roman Berytus was a city of nearly 50,000 inhabitants during the reign of Trajan and had a huge forum and necropolis.[14] The Hippodrome of Berytus was the largest known in the Levant, while literary sources indicate there was a theatre.[15][13] Scholars like Linda Hall write that the hippodrome was still working in the fifth century.[16]
Berytus had a monumental "Roman Gate" with huge walls (recently discovered
Roman emperors promoted the development of high-level culture in the fully Romanized city (even in Greek language as with Hermippus of Berytus).
The Law School of Berytus
The
When Justinian assembled his Pandects in the sixth century, a large part of the "Corpus of Laws" -all in Latin- was derived from these two jurists, and in 533 CE Justinian recognized the school as one of the three official law schools of the empire.
The law school of Beirut supplied the Roman Empire, especially its eastern provinces, with lawyers and magistrates for three centuries until the school's destruction in a powerful earthquake. After the 551 Beirut earthquake[20] the students were transferred to Sidon.[21]
Since the third century, the city had an important law college. It was here that the great codification of Roman Law, which was to be propagated by emperors like Theodosius II and Justinian, was prepared.[22]
Early Byzantine rule
Under the Eastern Roman Empire, some intellectual and economic activities in Berytus continued to flourish for more than a century, even if the
However, in the sixth century a series of earthquakes demolished most of the temples of Heliopolis (actual Baalbek) and destroyed the city of Berytus, leveling its famous law school and killing nearly 30,000 inhabitants (according to Anonymous pilgrim of Piacenza[23][unreliable source?]). Furthermore, the ecumenical Christian councils of the fifth and sixth centuries CE were unsuccessful in settling religious disagreements within the surviving community.
Berytus became a "Christian See"[definition needed] at an early date, and was a suffragan of Tyre in "Phoenicia Prima", a province of the "Patriarchate of Antioch". In antiquity its most famous bishop was Eusebius, afterwards Bishop of Nicomedia, the courtier-prelate and strong supporter of Arianism in the fourth century....In 450 CE Berytus obtained from Theodosius II the title of metropolis, with jurisdiction over six sees taken from Tyre; but in 451 CE the "Council of Chalcedon" restored these to Tyre, leaving, however, to Berytus its rank of metropolis (Mansi, VII, 85–98). Thus, from 451 CE Berytus was an exempt metropolis depending directly on the Patriarch of Antioch.[24]
This turbulent Byzantine period weakened the already Hellenised (and fully Christian) population and made it easy prey to the newly converted
Recent discoveries
Recently at the
In 1968 were discovered the "Roman Baths" Gardens, a landscaped public space that lies on the eastern slope of the
At the turn of the 20th century, the area where existed the famous
Notable people
- Hermippus of Berytus (fl. 2nd century CE)
- Marcus Valerius Probus (c. 20/30 – 105 CE)
- Vindonius Anatolius
- Eudokia of Heliopolis
See also
Notes
- Worcester, Joseph E.(1861) An Elementary Dictionary of the English Language, Boston: Swan, Brewer & Tileston, page 326
- Iron Age III and Persianperiods
- ^ Theodore Mommsen."The Provinces of the Roman Empire" Chapter: Phoenicia
- ISBN 9780404110321.
- ^ Paturel 2019, p. 72.
- ^ About Beirut and Downtown Beirut Archived 2009-04-23 at the Wayback Machine, DownTownBeirut.com.
- ^ Beirut Travel Information, Lonely Planet
- ^ Czech excavations in Beirut, Martyrs' Square, Institute for Classical Archaeology, Archived July 23, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Hall 2004, p. 45.
- ^ About Beirut and Downtown Beirut Archived 2009-04-23 at the Wayback Machine, DownTownBeirut.com. Retrieved November 17, 2007.
- ^ Princeton E.: Berytus
- ^ Morgan, James F. The Prodigal Empire: The Fall of the Western Roman Empire, page 87
- ^ a b c Butcher 2003, p. 230.
- ^ "Data with map of Roman Berytus (in Spanish)". Archived from the original on 2009-09-16. Retrieved 2015-08-19.
- ^ "Roman wall removed from Beirut Hippodrome site". Beirut Report. October 25, 2013.
- ^ Hall 2004, p. 68.
- ^ "CNG: The Coin Shop. PHOENICIA, Berytus. Claudius. CE 41-54. Æ 20mm (8.92 g, 12h). Legionary issue". www.cngcoins.com.
- ^ "Possible Roman gate and road found in Beirut dig". Beirut Report. May 17, 2013.
- ^ Beirut Archived 2012-05-24 at archive.today, Britannica.com
- ^ Archive, Full Text. "History of Phoenicia" – via www.fulltextarchive.com.
- ^ History of Berytus Archived 2009-06-28 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Livius: Berytus". Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2020-03-26.
- ^ Holy places visited by Antoninus martyr
- ^ Catholic E.:Berytus ([1])
- S2CID 165376375. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2020-07-27.
- ISBN 978-0-06-492674-4.
- ISBN 0-691-05327-8
- ^ "Beirut Shakes Off Rubble, Dons Slick New Architecture". Co.Design. 2010-08-11.
- ^ Collinet 1925, p. 73.
- ^ Collinet 1925, pp. 61–73.
- ^ Skaf & Assaf 2005, pp. 224–229.
- ^ Collinet 1925, pp. 63–73.
Bibliography
- Butcher, Kevin (2003). Roman Syria and the Near East. Los Angeles: Getty Publications. ISBN 978-0-89236-715-3.
- Collinet, Paul (1925). Histoire de l'école de droit de Beyrouth (in French). Paris: Société Anonyme du Recueil Sirey.
- ISBN 0-521-59984-9.
- Hall, Linda J. (2004). Roman Berytus: Beirut in Late Antiquity. London: Psychology Press. ISBN 978-1-134-44013-9.
- Lauffray,Jean. Beyrouth, Archéologie et Histoire I : période hellénistique et Haut-Empire romain, in "Aufstieg und Niedergang des römischen Welt", vol. II, 8, New York-Berlin, 1977, p. 135-163.
- Mann, J.C. The settlement of veterans in the Roman Empire London University. London, 1956
- Mommsen, Theodore. The Provinces of the Roman Empire from Caesar to Diocletian. Press Holdings International. New York, 2004. ISBN 9781410211675
- Mouterde, René et Lauffray, Jean (1952) Beyrouth ville romaine. Publications de la Direction des Antiquités du Liban, Beyrouth.
- Paturel, Simone (2019). Baalbek-Heliopolis, the Bekaa, and Berytus from 100 BCE to 400 CE: A Landscape Transformed. Brill. ISBN 9789004400733.
- Skaf, Isabelle; Assaf, Yasmine Makaroun Bou (November 29 – December 3, 2005). Aïcha Ben Abed Ben Khader; Martha Demas; Thomas Roby (eds.). Une nouvelle approche pour la préservation in situ des mosaïques et vestiges archéologiques au Liban: La crypte de l'église Saint-Georges à Beyrouth. Lessons Learned: Reflecting on the Theory and Practice of Mosaic Conservation (9th ICCM Conference, Hammamet, Tunisia) (in French). Getty Publications. ISBN 9780892369201.