PAGUS AUGUSTUS IN ROMAN PHOENICIA

PAGUS AUGUSTUS 

Pagus Augustus was a settlement of  legio veterans in Roman Phoenicia (actual Lebanon). It was created by emperor Augustus in the central-northern hills over the Beqaa valley.

History

In the first century, after the Roman conquest of Phoenicia, the emperor Augustus settled some veterans of his legions in what is now central Lebanon. Most of the veterans settled in Berytus, but a few moved to colonize the fertile Beqaa valley. These few hundred created the so-called "Augustus Pagus" or "Pagus Augusti".

Indeed 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 (today the valley makes up to 40 percent of Lebanon's arable land): Roman colonists created there even a "country district" with Pagus Augustus, where are located the famous Roman Niha temples with latin inscriptions. This district reached the Kadisha valley in the north Lebanon ( in the Aassi Hauqqa cave -near Hawqa and the "Cedar Forest" of UNESCO- have been found vestiges of Roman presence), where the Maronites took refuge in the eight century (https://twitter.com/TSerhal/status/1170217708039888896/photo/1  Kadisha valley map).

''Of special interest is the material from Niha, in the Beqa valley, where a series of inscriptions in Latin records the existence of a sanctuary of the Syrian Goddess of Niha’, Hadaranes, or Atargatis. One of those mentions the "Pagus Augustus", presumably an association of Latin-speaking Roman citizens which will have been settled there at the time of the foundation of the Roman colony. At this sanctuary some evidence of social integration has been detected. The sanctuary preserved its indigenous character, and the gods did not receive Graeco-Roman names. In contrast to the sanctuary at Heliopolis itself, the priests and prophetesses were peregrini, but the inscriptions also mention at least six Roman citizens and their relatives. A sanctuary nearby is identified by a dedication in Latin to the god Mifsenus.''  Benjamin Isaac (Benjamin Isaac."Latin in cities of the Roman Near East". Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, 2017).

The language -according to historians like Fergus Millar- was Latin: in the area of the Augustus Pagus (around Hosn Niha) there it is an inscription in Latin on behalf of the emperor to the "Dea Suria Nihatena". (https://books.google.com/books?id=IA-YlZqHv90C&pg=PA282&lpg=PA282&dq=pagus+augustus+in+lebanon&source=bl&ots=-Oq3C7So5a&sig=ACfU3U2T9oq140U7bKZx6cL6RRV0RRzJ-A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjp2bzq-un2AhVGmeAKHf4fBB84FBDoAXoECCcQAw#v=onepage&q=pagus%20augustus%20in%20lebanon&f=false F. Millar."The Roman Near East, 31 B.C.-A.D. 337". Pagus Augustus; p. 282)

When the spread of Christianity hit pagan Heliopolis (actual Baalbeck) with its huge temples, all the pagan Roman colonists from there took refuge in the area of Pagus Augusti.

This Pagus lasted some centuries until the Arab conquest of the region in the seventh century. Actually some villages exist in the area: the most important is Niha, where can be seen the remains of roman temples.

Image of how was the Upper Great Temple of Hosn Niha

Bibliography

*J.-P. Rey-Coquais, ‘Des montagnes au désert: Baetocécé, le Pagus Augustus de Niha, la Ghouta à l’Est de Damas’, in E. Frézouls (ed.), Sociétés urbaines, sociétés rurales dans l’Asie Mineure et la Syrie hellénistiques et romaines, Actes du colloque organisé à Strasbourg (novembre 1985) (Strasbourg, 1987), 191–216, esp. 198–207, pls. II–IV, 1

*Mann, J.C. ''[http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1348920/1/336598.pdf The settlement of veterans in the Roman Empire]'' London University. London, 1956

*Millar F. ''The Roman Near East: 31 BC-AD 337'' (Carl Newell Jackson Lectures). Harvard University Press. Harvard, 1995

*Mommsen, Theodore. ''The Provinces of the Roman Empire from Caesar to Diocletian''. Press Holdings International. New York, 2004. {{ISBN|9781410211675}}