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In a more remote stage of preparation stood the other provinces of the empire, in which, just as hitherto in southern Gaul Narbo had been a Roman colony, the great maritime cities Emporiae, Gades, Carthage, Corinth, Heraclea in Pontus, Sinope, Berytus, Alexandria now became Italian or Helleno-Italian communities, the centres of an Italian civilization even in the Greek east, the fundamental pillars of the future national and political levelling of the empire.
Pleaders were forced to study either at Berytus, or at Rome, or at Constantinople, and, the honours and emoluments of the profession being large, the supply of students was abundant and perpetual. External misfortune, and not internal decay, at last destroyed the school, the town of Berytus being completely demolished by an earthquake in the year A.D. 551.
"The story runs that ever so many years ago there was a terrible dragon a monster, part snake, part crocodile, with sharp teeth, a forked tongue, claws, and wings. It could crawl upon the land or swim in the water. Every day it came from its lair and ate the sheep in the pastures around the old city of Berytus. When the sheep were gone it ate little children.
According to some, Tyre, during the early period of her supremacy, was under the government of shophetim, or "judges;" but the general usage of the Phoenician cities makes against this supposition. Philo in his "Origines of Phoenicia" speaks constantly of kings, but never of judges. We hear of a king, Abd-Baal, at Berytus about B.C. 1300.
They were in some small measure indeed, and in small matters, hurtful to the Romans; but the murders they committed upon their own people lasted a long while. He also gave order that all that were sent out for this expedition, should make haste to Ptolemais. The citizens of Berytus also gave him fifteen hundred auxiliaries as he passed through their city.
I saw much of him on board the vessel which took us first to the African coast, where, at Utica, it set him on shore, bringing me farther on to Berytus. He is a true citizen of the world knows all languages, and all people, and all places. He has all the shrewdness of his race -their intelligence, their enthusiasm, and, I may add, their courage.
His father, who bore the same name, was a native of Alexandria, by profession a grammarian or schoolmaster; who, passing from Berytus to the Syrian Laodicea, married and settled there, and eventually rose to the presbyterate in the Church of that city. Apollinaris, the son, had been born there in the early part of the fourth century, and was educated for the profession of rhetoric.
Now as Agrippa was a great builder in many places, he paid a peculiar regard to the people of Berytus; for he erected a theater for them, superior to many others of that sort, both in Sumptuousness and elegance, as also an amphitheater, built at vast expenses; and besides these, he built them baths and porticoes, and spared for no costs in any of his edifices, to render them both handsome and large.
If accident or monopoly sometimes raised the value even above the standard of Aurelian, the manufacturers of Tyre and Berytus were sometimes compelled, by the operation of the same causes, to content themselves with a ninth part of that extravagant rate.
For many months we were held in prison here in Caesarea; then they took my husband to Berytus, to be trained as a gladiator, and murdered him. Here I have stayed since with this beloved servant, Nehushta, who also became a Christian and shared our fate, and now, by the decree of Agrippa, it is my turn and hers to die to-day."
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