themselves conveyed them thither, and, as the ship-captains in Syria formed a prominent and respected class,[136] so Syrian merchants and Syrian factories in the imperial period were to be found nearly as much everywhere as in the remote times of which Homer tells. The Tyrians had such factories in the two great import-harbours of Italy, Ostia and Puteoli, and, as these themselves in their documents describe their establishments as the greatest and most spacious of their kind, so in the description of the earth which we have often quoted, Tyre is named the first place of the East for commerce and traffic[137]; in like manner Strabo brings forward as a specialty at Tyre and at Aradus the unusually high houses, consisting of many stories. Berytus and Damascus, and certainly many other Syrian and Phoenician commercial towns, had similar factories in the Italian ports.[138] Accordingly we find, particularly in the later period of the empire, Syrian merchants, chiefly Apamean, settled not merely in all Italy but likewise in all the larger emporia of the West, at Salonae in Dalmatia, Apulum in Dacia, Malaca in Spain, but above all in Gaul and Germany, _e.g._ at Bordeaux, Lyons, Paris, Orleans, Treves, so that these Syrian Christians also, like the Jews, live according to their own customs and make use of their Greek in their meetings.[139] The state of things formerly described among the Antiochenes and the Syrian cities generally becomes intelligible only on this basis. The world of rank there consisted of rich manufacturers and merchants, the bulk of the population of the labourers and the mariners;[140] and, as later the riches acquired in the East flowed to Genoa and Venice, so then the commercial gains of the West flowed back to Tyre and Apamea. With the extensive field of traffic that lay open to these traders on a great scale, and with the on the whole moderate frontier and inland tolls, the Syrian export trade, embracing a great part of the most lucrative and most transportable articles, already brought enormous capital sums into their hands; and their business was not confined to native goods.[141] What comfort of life once prevailed here we learn, not from the scanty remains of the great cities that have perished, but from the more forsaken than desolated region on the right bank of the Orontes, from Apamea on to the point where the river turns towards the sea. In this district of about a hundred miles in length there still stand the ruins of nearly a hundred townships, with whole streets still recognisable, the buildings with the exception of the roofs executed in massive stone-work, the dwelling-houses surrounded by colonnades, embellished with galleries and balconies, windows and portals richly and often tastefully decorated with stone arabesques, with gardens and baths laid out, with farm-offices in the ground-story, stables, wine and oil presses hewn in the rocks,[142] as also large burial