time to Armenian (Tigranes, 88-86 B.C.). Then, at the time of the expeditions of Lucullus, Pompey and Crassus, Edessa was an ally of Rome, though Abgar II. Ariamnes (68-53) played an ambiguous part. In A.D. 114 Abgar VII. entertained Trajan on his way back to Syria (Dio Cass. xviii. 21); but in 116, in consequence of a general rising, his consul L. Quietus sacked the city, Abgar perhaps dying in the flames, and made the state tributary. Hadrian, however, abandoning Trajan's forward policy in favour of a Euphrates boundary, restored it as a dependency of Rome. When L. Verus (163-165) recovered Mesopotamia from Parthia, it was not Edessa but Harran that was chosen as the site of a Roman colony, and made the metropolis by Marcus Aurelius (172). To one of the native kings doubtless is to be ascribed the Syriac inscription[15] on one of the pair of pillars, 50 ft. high, which stood, no doubt, in front of a temple connected with some local cult. Trustworthy data for determining its nature are lacking. One or both of the pools below the citadel containing sacred fish may have been sacred to Atargatis (q.v.), an Ishtar-Venus deity; and according to the _Doctrine of Addai_, alongside of Venus were worshipped the sun and the moon.[16] Nergal and Sin were known as "twins," and connected with the sign Gemini, under the name _ellamme_, "the youths" (cf. Zimmern, _K.A.T._ 363). This makes more plausible than it otherwise would be the suggestion of J. Rendel Harris that the great twin pillars were connected with the cult of the Dioscuri, and that in the Acts of Thomas is to be seen a later attempt to substitute other "twins," viz. Jesus and Judas-Thomas (Addai), whom legend buried "in Britio Edessenorum" (explained by Harnack as the Edessan citadel: Aram. _birtha_).[17]