sport of the well-to-do, with bears, antelopes, gazelles and wild boars as the quarry. The combination of gymnasium and hot bath, which emerged under the Seleucids, continued to attract patrons. Syrians soon became noted as entertainers—actors, ballet dancers, flute players, circus performers, buffoons, wrestlers and jockeys. Troupes of these entertainers toured the provinces, and were available for hire for banquets and festal occasions.
Antioch and its suburb Daphne were particularly notorious for luxurious and dissolute living and for the magnificence of their public structures and private villas, as well as for the abundant fresh water so precious in that dry land. Since Seleucid days Daphne had been the scene of the greatest celebration of games in Syria. A wealthy Antiochene senator under Augustus willed his fortune to the establishment of a thirty-day Daphnean festival comprising dances, dramatic performances, chariot races, athletic and gladiatorial contests. Women participated in some of these performances, and the festival—and Daphne itself—became proverbial for licentiousness.
Proud, turbulent and satirical, the Antiochenes were noted for their mastery of the art of ridicule. They evidently could not forget that theirs was once a royal city, and stood ready to side with any pretender whom the Syrian army put up. With the emperors who sojourned in their city they invariably quarrelled. Hadrian withdrew from the city the right of coinage, Marcus Aurelius the right of assembly; Septimius Severus transferred the primacy of Syria to Latakia. Emperors bestowed titles and rights upon a city as a reward for good behaviour; they withdrew these privileges as a punishment for disloyalty. In A.D. 115 the city suffered one of the most violent earthquakes on record, and in 260 it was captured and burned by the Persian shah Shapur I, but it recovered from both catastrophes in short order.
Other prosperous cities of Roman Syria included the
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