Berytus


Berytus, briefly known as Laodicea in Phoenicia or Laodicea in Canaan from the 2nd century to 64 BCE, was the ancient city of Beirut from the Hellenistic period through the Roman and Early Byzantine period/late antiquity. The city had been rebuilt by the Seleucids in the 2nd century BCE over the ruins of an older settlement centred on a Phoenician port dating back to Iron Age III and Persian periods. Berytus became a Roman colonia that would be the center of Roman presence in the eastern Mediterranean shores south of Anatolia. The veterans of two Roman legions under Augustus were established in the city, that afterward quickly became Romanized and was the only fully Latin-speaking city in the Syria-Phoenicia region until the fourth century. Although Berytus was an important city, Tyre was made the capital of the Roman province of Phoenicia. "Of the great law schools of Rome, Constantinople, and Berytus", the law school of Berytus stood "pre-eminent". The Codex Justinianeus was mostly created in this school.

History

In 140 BC the Phoenician village called "Biruta" was destroyed by Diodotus Tryphon in his contest with Antiochus VII Sidetes for the throne of the Macedonian Seleucid monarchy. Later it was rebuilt on a more conventional Hellenistic plan—the exact date is unclear but prosperous Berytian merchants were recorded in Delos by 110–109 BCE—under the name of Laodicea in Phoenicia or Laodicea in Canaan in honor of a Seleucid Laodice.
The city was conquered by the Romans of Pompey in 64 BC and renamed "Berytus", as a reference to the name of the old original Phoenician port-village. The city was assimilated into the Roman Empire, veteran soldiers were sent there, and large building projects were undertaken.
Berytus was considered the most Roman city in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. It was one of four Roman colonies in the Syria-Phoenicia region and the only one with full Ius Italicum. Its territory under Claudius reached the Bekaa valley and included Heliopolis: it was the only area mostly Latin-speaking in the Syria-Phoenicia region, because settled by Roman colonists who even promoted agriculture in the fertile lands around actual Yammoune. From the 1st century BC the Bekaa valley served as a source of grain for the Roman provinces of the Levant and even for the same Rome :Roman colonists created there even a "country district" called Pagus Augustus.
In 14 BC, during the reign of Herod the Great, Berytus became an important Roman colonia. The city was named Colonia Iulia Augusta Felix Berytus in honor of Julia, the only daughter of Augustus. Furthermore, the veterans of two Roman legions were established in the city of Berytus by emperor Augustus: the fifth Macedonian and the third Gallic. Consequently, the city quickly became fully Romanized. Large public buildings and monuments were erected and Berytus enjoyed full status as a part of the empire.
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. But now only minor ruins remains, in front of the Catholic Cathedral of Beirut.
Indeed, 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 located 10 km from the city. The aqueduct crossed the river at Qanater Zbaydeh and the water finally reached the place of actual 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 Trajan times and had a huge Forum and necropolis The Hippodrome of Roman Berytus was the largest known in the Levant, while literary sources indicate there was even a theater. Scholars like Lynda Hall pinpoint that the hippodrome was still working in the fifth century
Berytus had a monumental "Roman Gate" with huge walls and was a trade center of silk and wine production, well connected by efficient Roman roads to Heliopolis and Caesarea. According to Kevin Butcher, the Latin character of Berytus remained dominant until the fifth century: the city was a center for the study of Latin literature and -after Septimius Severus- of Roman Law. Under Nero the son of a roman colonist, Marcus Valerius Probus, was known in all the empire as a Latin grammarian and literature master philologist.
Roman emperors promoted the development of high-level culture in the fully Romanized city.
Its Law School was widely known in the Roman empire;: it was famous the Latin motto Berytus Nutrix Legum. Indeed, two of Rome's most famous jurists, Papinian and Ulpian, both natives of Phoenicia, taught there under the Severan emperors.
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 AD 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 the students were transferred to Sidon.
Under the Eastern Roman Empire, some intellectual and economic activities in Berytus continued to flourish for more than a century, even if the Latin language started to be replaced by the Greek language.
However, in the sixth century a series of earthquakes demolished most of the temples of Heliopolis and destroyed the city of Berytus, leveling its famous law school and killing nearly 30,000 inhabitants. Furthermore, the ecumenical Christian councils of the fifth and sixth centuries AD were unsuccessful in settling religious disagreements within the surviving community.
This turbulent Byzantine period weakened the Romanized population and made it easy prey to the newly converted Muslim Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula. Roman Berytus -reduced to the size of a village- fell to the Arabs in 635 AD.

Recent discoveries

Recently at the Garden of Forgiveness the two main streets of Roman Berytus, the Cardo and Decumanus Maximus, were discovered in the Beirut Central District. Their shaded colonnades became busy markets on festival days. At other times, these streets would have been frequented by Law School students and citizens passing to the Forum or visiting temples and churches.
In 1968 were discovered the "Roman Baths" Gardens, that is a landscaped public space that lies on the eastern slope of the Serail Hill. It consists of a garden and a set of uncovered ruins of the ancient Roman baths of Berytus. These ruins underwent a thorough cleaning and further excavation in 1995–1997. Designed by the British landscaping firm Gillepsies, the Garden's layout is dominated with low-slung glass walls and lookout platforms that can be turned into concert venues, thus giving a 21st-century touch without harming the area's historical fabric.
At the turn of the 20th century was identified the area were existed the famous school of Roman law at Berytus. Archaeological excavations in the area between the Saint George Greek Orthodox Cathedral and Saint George Cathedral of the Maronites unearthed a funerary stele etched with an epitaph to a man named Patricius, "whose career was consecrated for the study of law". The epitaph was identified as being dedicated to the famous 5th-century law school professor. In 1994, archaeological diggings underneath the Saint George Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Beirut Central District's Nejmeh Square identified structural elements of the Anastasis cathedral, but they were restricted to an area of and failed to unearth the interred school. In the 5th century, Zacharias Rhetor reported that the school stood next to the "Temple of God", the description of which permitted its identification with the Byzantine Anastasis cathedral.

Notable people