accumulations of the old Phoenician navigators, besides availing himself of the observations of Hipparchus, and of the accounts given of their travels by various Greek and Roman authors.  Contemporary with Marinus was Paulus, a native of Tyre, who was noted as a rhetorician, and deputed by his city to go as their representative to Rome and plead the cause of the Tyrians before Hadrian.[14495] A little later we hear of Maximus, who flourished under Marcus Aurelius and Commodus (ab.  A.D. 160-190), a Tyrian, like Paulus, and a rhetorician and Platonic philosopher.[14496] The literary glories of Tyre culminated and terminated with Porphyry, of whose works we have already given an account.

Towards the middle of the third century after Christ a school of law and jurisprudence arose at Berytus, which attained high distinction, and is said by Gibbon[14497] to have furnished the eastern provinces of the empire with pleaders and magistrates for the space of three centuries (A.D. 250-550).  The course of education at Berytus lasted five years, and included Roman Law in all its various forms, the works of Papinian being especially studied in the earlier times, and the same together with the edicts of Justinian in the later.[14498] Pleaders were forced to study either at Berytus, or at Rome, or at Constantinople,[14499] and, the honours and emoluments of the profession being large, the supply of students was abundant and perpetual.  External misfortune, and not internal decay, at last destroyed the school, the town of Berytus being completely demolished by an earthquake in the year A.D. 551.  The school was then transferred to Sidon, but appears to have languished on its transplantation to a new soil and never to have recovered its pristine vigour or vitality.

It is difficult to decide how far these literary glories of the Phoenician cities reflect any credit on the Phoenician race.  Such a number of Greeks settled in Syria and Phoenicia under the Seleucidae that to be a Tyrian or a Sidonian in the Graeco-Roman period furnished no evidence at all of a man having any Phoenician blood in his veins.  It will have been observed that the names of the Tyrian, Sidonian, and Berytian learned men and authors of the time—­Antipater, Apollonius, Boethus, Diodotus, Philo, Hermippus, Marinus, Paulus, Maximus, Porphyrius—­are without exception either Latin or Greek.  The language in which the books were written was universally Greek, and in only one or two cases is there reason to suppose that the authors had any knowledge of the Phoenician tongue.  The students at Berytus between A.D. 250 and 550 were probably, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, Greeks or Romans.  Phoenician nationality had, in fact, almost wholly disappeared in the Seleucid period.  The old language ceased to be spoken, and though for some time retained upon the coins together with a Greek legend,[14500] became less frequent as time went on, and soon after the Christian era disappeared altogether.  It is probable that, as a spoken language, Phoenician had gone out of use even earlier.[14501]