ay was celebrated
every spring on the coast near Ostia as well as in the Orient.

Besides these half Hellenized religions, others of a more purely Semitic
nature came from the interior of the country, because the merchants
frequently were natives of the cities of the _Hinterland_, as for instance
Apamea or Epiphanea in Coele-Syria, or even of villages in that flat
country. As Rome incorporated the small kingdoms beyond the Lebanon and the
Orontes that had preserved a precarious independence, the current of
emigration increased. In 71 Commagene, which lies between the Taurus and
the Euphrates, was annexed by Vespasian, a little later the dynasties of
Chalcis and Emesa were also deprived of their power. Nero, it appears, took
possession of Damascus; half a century later Trajan established the new
province of Arabia in the south (106 A. D.), and the oasis of Palmyra, a
great mercantile center, lost its autonomy at the same time. In this manner
Rome extended her direct authority as far as the desert, over countries
that were only superficially Hellenized, and where the native devotions had
preserved all their {111} savage fervor. From that time constant
communication was established between Italy and those regions which had
heretofore been almost inaccessible. As roads were built commerce
developed, and together with the interests of trade the needs of
administration created an incessant exchange of men, of products and of
beliefs between those out-of-the-way countries and the Latin provinces.

These annexations, therefore, were followed by a renewed influx of Syrian
divinities into the Occident. At Pozzuoli, the last port of call of the
Levantine vessels, there was a temple to the Baal of Damascus (_Jupiter
Damascenus_) in which leading citizens officiated, and there were altars on
which two golden camels[17] were offered to Dusares, a divinity who had
come from the interior of Arabia. They kept company with a divinity of more
ancient repute, the Hadad of Baabek-Heliopolis (_Jupiter Heliopolitanus_),
whose immense temple, considered one of the world's wonders,[18] had been
restored by Antoninus Pius, and may still be seen facing Lebanon in
majestic elegance. Heliopolis and Beirut had been the most ancient colonies
founded by Augustus in Syria. The god of Heliopolis participated in the
privileged position granted to the inhabitants of those two cities, who
worshiped in a common devotion,[19] and he was naturalized as a Roman