older Oriental type, _e.g._ the frequent form, for a tomb, of the cube crowned with a pyramid, perhaps also the pigeon-towers often added to the tomb, still frequent in the present day throughout Syria; but, taken on the whole, the style is the usual Greek one of the imperial period. Only the absence of wood has here called forth a development of the stone arch and the cupola, which technically and artistically lends to these buildings an original character. In contrast to the customary repetition elsewhere usual of traditional forms there prevails here an architecture independently suiting the exigencies and the conditions, moderate in ornamentation, thoroughly sound and rational, and not destitute even of elegance. The burial-places, which are cut out in the rock-walls rising to the east and west of Petra and in their lateral valleys, with their façades of Doric or Corinthian pillars often placed in several tiers one above another, and their pyramids and propylaea reminding us of the Egyptian Thebes, are not artistically pleasing, but imposing by their size and richness. Only a stirring life and a high prosperity could display such care for its dead. In presence of these architectural monuments it is not surprising that the inscriptions make mention of a theatre in the “village” (κώμη) Sakkaea and a “theatre-shaped Odeon” in Canatha, and a local poet of Namara in Batanaea celebrates himself as a “master of the glorious art of proud Ausonian song.”[155] Thus at this eastern limit of the empire there was gained for Hellenic civilisation a frontier-domain which may be compared with the Romanised region of the Rhine; the arched and domed buildings of eastern Syria well stand comparison with the castles and tombs of the nobles and of the great merchants of Belgica. [Sidenote: The south-Arabian immigration before Mohammed.]