¹ The idea behind this paper received its initial inspiration from the discussions I enjoyed as a committee member with Anne-Rose Hošek during the defence of her excellent Ph.D. thesis at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris in December 2012. I am grateful to Eivind Heldaas Seland for inviting me to a workshop held in September 2013 in the picturesque small-town of Voss, where I had the opportunity to try out my argument in front of a small audience of Near Eastern specialists. In Durham, during a departmental work-in-progress seminar two months later, my Classics colleagues provided useful feedback, and I owe thanks in particular to Johannes Haubold, Phil Horky and Edmund Thomas for their constructive comments. Above all I am grateful to Jane Lightfoot for commenting on the final draft, and to the journal's anonymous referee for numerous helpful suggestions. It is superfluous to add that none of the above should be held responsible for my interpretation and its execution. All quotations and translations of the text follow J.L. Lightfoot, Lucian, On the Syrian Goddess. Edited with Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Oxford, 2003).

² Y. Hajjar, La triade d'Héliopolis-Baalbek. Son culte et sa diffusion à travers les textes littéraires et les documents iconographiques et épigraphiques I-II (ÉPRO 59) (Leiden, 1977), no. 330. Note that J. Elsner, ‘Describing self in the language of the other: pseudo (?) Lucian at the temple of Hierapolis’, in S. Goldhill (ed.), Being Greek under Rome. Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic and the Development of Empire (Cambridge, 2001), 123–53, at 130–1 incorrectly assumes that the mention of this temple in Syr. D. 5 concerns a second temple in Sidon, put in contrast by the author of the treatise with the ‘Astarte/Selene/Europa temple’ with its ‘Greek connections’: ‘In Sidon, the competition for the cultural origins of sanctuaries is divided into two temples, one connected with Greece and the other with Egypt (of which our Greek-speaking writer did not see the non-Greek sanctuary, 5).’

³ E.g. Dirven, L., ‘The author of De Dea Syria and his cultural heritage’, Numen 44 (1997), 153–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ Lightfoot (n. 1), 184–208. Cf. C.P. Jones, Culture and Society in Lucian (Cambridge, MA and London, 1986), 41 with n. 37.

⁵ Lucian, Hist. Conscr. 24: … τὴν ἐμὴν πατρίδα τὰ Σαμόσατα …. Cf. most recently the commentary by R. Porod, Lukians Schrift „Wie man Geschichte schreiben soll”. Kommentar und Interpretation (Phoibos Humanities Series 1) (Vienna, 2013), 426–32, esp. 431.

⁶ Cf. now N.J. Andrade, Syrian Identity in the Greco-Roman World (Cambridge, 2013), 288–313. Cf. ibid., 289 for important considerations on how the treatise ‘marks the shiftiness of cultural positioning and the incoherence of binary cultural categories’.

⁷ Syr. D. 1: γράφω δὲ Ἀσσύριος ἐών. Cf. now M. Facella, ‘Languages, cultural identities and elites in the land of Mara bar Sarapion’, in A. Merz and T. Tieleman (edd.), The Letter of Mara bar Sarapion in Context. Proceedings of the Symposium Held at Utrecht University, 10–12 December 2009 (CHANE 58) (Leiden and Boston, 2012), 67–94, at 85–6, who rightly points out that all of Lucian's references to himself as a barbarian ought to be interpreted in their own individual textual context. See also the very final lines of the treatise, where the author describes the custom that young men offer the shavings of their first beards in the temple at Hierapolis and children locks of their hair that was grown from birth; Syr. D. 60: ‘I myself did this when I was young, and still to this day in the temple are the lock and my name’ (τοῦτο καὶ ἐγὼ νέος ἔτι ὢν ἐπετέλεσα, καὶ ἔτι μευ ἐν τῷ ἱρῷ καὶ ὁ πλόκαμος καὶ τὸ οὔνομα). Cf. Lightfoot (n. 1), 531–6, esp. 536. It may be noted—with M.J. Versluys, ‘Cultural responses from kingdom to province: the Romanisation of Commagene, local identities and the Mara bar Sarapion letter’, in Merz and Tieleman (n. 7), 43–66, at 57—that Lucian ‘shows no reminiscences to a Commagenean identity’ as such (my italics).

⁸ Facella (n. 7), 85. She also draws attention to a passage in My Native Land, where Lucian gives as one of the main reasons for showing gratitude to one's patria the fact that ‘each of us began to speak there, learning first to talk the language of the country [rather than translating τὰ ἐπιχώρια as ‘native dialect’] and there came to know the gods’ (Patr. Enc. 6: καὶ φωνῆς ἐνταῦθα ἤρξατο τὰ ἐπιχώρια πρῶτα λαλεῖν μανθάνων καὶ θεοὺς ἐγνώρισεν), according to Facella (n. 7), 88, ‘an allusion to his personal experience, to his provenance from a land with a native language other than Greek, where Greek could be learnt up to a certain level, but one which was obviously insufficient for a career in rhetoric’. In a different work Lucian uses the verb Συρίζω when referring to the spoken language of a doorman who came to Rome from the Near East: Merc. cond. 10.

⁹ I owe this point, and the references that follow, to the journal's referee. On various issues regarding Lucian's autobiographical presentation in On the Syrian Goddess, cf. S. Goldhill, Who Needs Greek? Contests in the Cultural History of Hellenism (Cambridge, 2002), 78–82, and D.S. Richter, Cosmopolis. Imagining Community in Late Classical Athens and the Early Roman Empire (Oxford, 2011), 235–42, who both drew attention to the fact that the final word of the treatise (despite its playful anonymity) is ‘name’ (οὔνομα). For valuable considerations on how Lucian in some of his other works uses the authorial name as ‘a strategy of authorial self-representation which defines the author's credentials, and shapes the reader's attitude to, and expectations of, his work’, cf. K. Ní Mheallaigh, ‘The game of the name: onymity and the contract of reading in Lucian’, in F. Mestre and P. Gómez (edd.), Lucian of Samosata. Greek Writer and Roman Citizen (Barcelona, 2010), 83–94, at 93.

¹⁰ οὐ παρὰ πολὺ τοῖς Αἰγυπτίοισιν ἰσοχρονέοντα, τῶν ἐγὼ πλεῖστα ὄπωπα.

¹¹ τό γε τοῦ Ἡρακλέος τὸ ἐν Τύρῳ, οὐ τούτου τοῦ Ἡρακλέος τὸν Ἕλληνες ἀείδουσιν, ἀλλὰ τὸν ἐγὼ λέγω πολλὸν ἀρχαιότερος καὶ Τύριος ἥρως ἐστίν. It should be noted that the Greek does not make it explicit that Lucian saw the Tyrian temple with which he starts his enumeration, although as far as I am concerned the context leaves no doubt. Lightfoot (n. 1), 249 deals with the ambiguity by adding (including) in between brackets in her translation of the passage.

¹² Cf. C. Bonnet, Melqart. Cultes et mythes de l'Héraclès tyrien en Méditerranée (Studia Phoenicia 8) (Leuven, 1988).

¹³ ἔνι δὲ καὶ ἄλλο ἱρὸν ἐν Φοινίκῃ μέγα, τὸ Σιδώνιοι ἔχουσιν.

¹⁴ Εὐρώπης ἐστὶ τῆς Κάδμου ἀδελφεῆς. As F. Millar, The Roman Near East, 31 BC - AD 337 (Cambridge, MA and London, 1993), 286 has emphasized, ‘while the fact that the legend of Kadmos and Europa formed a distinctive aspect of the public image of both Sidon and Tyre is significant, it is not possible to characterize this as a Phoenician legend rather than as a common Greek one which gave these Phoenician cities a particular mythical role’.

¹⁵ Cf. M. Dunand, Fouilles de Byblos I-II (Paris, 1937–58).

¹⁶ μέγα ἱρὸν Ἀφροδίτης Βυβλίης, ἐν τῷ καὶ τὰ ὄργια ἐς Ἄδωνιν ἐπιτελέουσιν. On the difficulties in identifying the sanctuary Lucian talks about, see Lightfoot (n. 1), 306–8. Cf. Millar (n. 14), 276–7. For later literary reflections, see Macr. Sat. 1.21.5; Nonnus, Dion. 3.107–9; 4.80–1.

¹⁷ For an interesting parallel in the myth of Andromeda, though less detailed, see the references to the colouring of water by the sea-monster's blood in Pausanias 4.35.6 (Iope) and one of the two Philostrati, Imag. 1.29.2 (Red Sea). Cf. Kaizer, T., ‘Interpretations of the myth of Andromeda at Iope’, Syria 88 (2011), 323–39Google Scholar, at 328–9. On the relationship between Byblos and Adonis, cf. B. Soyez, Byblos et la fête des Adonies (ÉPRO 60) (Leiden, 1977).

¹⁸ Lightfoot (n. 1), 303 (which is of course not counting the sanctuary in the hinterland of Byblos referred to in Syr. D. 9).

¹⁹ A.-R. Hošek, ‘Territoires et religions en contacts: la colonie romaine de Berytus, de sa fondation au IIIe siècle de notre ère’ (Diss., ÉPHÉ Paris, 2012), 170: ‘Aux yeux de l'observateur contemporain qu'est Lucien, le sanctuaire héliopolitain n'est pas seulement un sanctuaire territorial de la colonie, il est devenu le grand sanctuaire de Berytus susceptible de représenter ou de symboliser la cité.’ Cf. ibid., 169, where she stated that as such the passage ‘confirme, même indirectement, la complète réorientation du paysage religieux bérytain qui fait suite à la fondation coloniale’. Cf. ibid.: ‘malgré sa brièveté le passage … est plus éloquent qu'il n'y paraît.’ Cf. ead., ‘Contrôler un territoire, contrôler un sanctuaire: aspects religieux de la fondation de Berytus’, Cahiers «Mondes anciens» 2 (2011), 1–14 Google Scholar.

²⁰ Millar (n. 14), 279. Cf. Edwards, M.J., ‘Philo or Sanchuniathon? A Phoenicean cosmogony’, CQ 41 (1991), 213–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the text and commentary, see A. Kaldellis and C. López Ruiz, ‘Philon (790)’, in I. Worthington (ed.), Brill's New Jacoby (Brill Online), F1 (Euseb. Praep. evang. 1.9.21, mentioning a king of the Bèrutioi) and F2 (1.10.35, where the city of Bèrutos is given by Kronos to Poseidon). Cf. A.I. Baumgarten, The Phoenician History of Philo of Byblos. A Commentary (ÉPRO 99) (Leiden, 1981), 57, 208–9 and 224.

²¹ L.J. Hall, Roman Berytus. Beirut in Late Antiquity (London and New York, 2004), 45–6.

²² Thus Hošek (n. 19), 45–65, with full discussion of the issue.

²³ A.H.M. Jones, The Cities of the Eastern Roman Provinces (Oxford, 1971²), 270. Cf. F. Millar, ‘The Roman coloniae of the Near East: a study of cultural relations’, in H. Solin and F.M. Kajava (edd.), Roman Policy in the East and Other Studies in Roman History (Helsinki, 1990), 7–58, at 18 = id., in H.M. Cotton and G.M. Rogers (edd.), The Greek World, the Jews and the East. Rome, the Greek World and the East III (Chapel Hill, 2006), 164–222, at 177. Even if the precise moment of Baalbek's integration into Berytus’ territory remains disputed, the site had certainly come to be part of it by the time of Lucian (before it became a separate colonia under Septimius Severus).

²⁴ Thus Millar (n. 14), 245.

²⁵ Andrade (n. 6), 288.

²⁶ Ibid.: 294, with references to True Histories, where Herodotus is amongst the false historians being parodied, and How to Write History and Lovers of Lies, where his honesty is being rejected.

²⁷ Lightfoot (n. 1), 221.

²⁸ In fact, one could argue the opposite. Cf. T. Kaizer, ‘Introduction’, in id. (ed.), The Variety of Local Religious Life in the Near East in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods (RGRW 164) (Leiden and Boston, 2008), 1–36, at 28–9. Contra J. North, review of Lightfoot (n. 1), Scripta Classica Israelica 23 (2004), 298–301. A comparison might be drawn here with one of Lucian's other works, Alexander, the False Prophet. Even if that latter treatise ‘gar kein objektives Bild im modernen Sinn geben will’, there is sufficient non-textual evidence available to allow its information a certain degree of authority. Cf. U. Victor, Lukian von Samosata, Alexandros oder der Lügenprophet. Eingeleitet, Herausgegeben, Übersetzt und Erklärt (RGRW 132) (Leiden, New York and Cologne, 1997), 1–26, at 3. Lucian can still provide his readers with trustworthy data despite the presence of fictitious tiers in his literary creations.

²⁹ S. Swain, Hellenism and Empire. Language, Classicism, and Power in the Greek World AD 50–250 (Oxford, 1996), 312.

³⁰ Elsner (n. 2).

³¹ Swain (n. 29), 329.

³² Ibid., 416.

³³ Ibid., citing Donald Russell.

³⁴ Ibid., 329.

³⁵ Cf. the discussion by Clarke, K., ‘In search of the author of Strabo's Geography ’, JRS 87 (1997), 92–110 Google Scholar, on the double identity of Strabo, whose habit of ‘oblique self-reference’ (ibid., 102) is most notable when mentioning the intellectuals of his day in the Greek East.

³⁶ I hasten to add that I am not viewing ‘Roman and Greek … [as] ontological categories, which are distinct and inherently in conflict with each other’, and that I thus yield to the important warning given by C. Ando, review of Goldhill (n. 2), Phoenix 57 (2003), 355–60, at 356.

³⁷ Swain (n. 29), 308. Cf. Lightfoot (n. 1), 207: ‘Religion was a major, if not the main, area in which patriotic localism could coexist with allegiance to the centre, whether that centre is understood politically (Rome) or in terms of language, education, and literary culture (Greece). And not only coexist with it, but also gain ground against it.’ Cf. G.W. Bowersock, Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Ann Arbor, 1990).

³⁸ E. Thomas, Monumentality and the Roman Empire. Architecture in the Antonine Age (Oxford, 2007), 37. Cf. ibid., 46: Malalas' statement ‘can be explained by attributing the undertaking of the great inner court around the temple to his reign with the propylaea with its “Syrian” gable finally completed under Severus and Caracalla’. The passage is Mal. Chron. 11.22, ed. L. Dindorf (Bonn, 1831), 280, and now ed. H. Thurn (CFHB 35) (Berlin, 2000), 212.

³⁹ The evidence is conveniently collected by Hajjar (n. 2).

⁴⁰ K. Butcher, Roman Syria and the Near East (London, 2003), 342. Cf. Hošek (n. 19 [2011]), 7 with n. 70. The most outspoken proponent of the triad of Heliopolis is of course Hajjar (n. 2) and id., La triade d'Héliopolis-Baalbek. Iconographie, théologie, culte et sanctuaires (Montreal, 1985). However, as has been pointed out by J.C. Greenfield, review of Hajjar (n. 40 [1985]), Numen 37 (1990), 280–3.; by Millar (n. 14), 281–2; and more recently and in more detail by Kropp, A.J.M., ‘Jupiter, Venus and Mercury of Heliopolis (Baalbek). The images of the “triad” and its alleged syncretisms’, Syria 87 (2010), 229–64Google Scholar, not only is there no evidence to support the identification of the Roman deities with the alleged Semitic counterparts, there is also nothing that really backs up the idea that they formed an actual ‘triad’ together. Cf. J. Aliquot, La vie religieuse au Liban sous l'empire romain (BAH 189) (Beirut, 2009), 212–16.

⁴¹ Kropp, A.J.M., ‘The cults of Ituraean Heliopolis (Baalbek)’, JRA 22 (2009), 365–80Google Scholar, and id., ‘Tetrarches kai archiereus. Gods and cults of the tetrarchs of Chalkis and their role in Ituraean Heliopolis (Baalbek)’, in R. Raja (ed.), Contextualising the Sacred in the Hellenistic and Roman Near East: Religious Identities in Local, Regional and Imperial Settings (Berlin and New York, in press).

⁴² As was argued by K.S. Freyberger, Die frühkaiserzeitlichen Heiligtümer der Karawanenstationen im hellenisierten Osten. Zeugnisse eines kulturellen Konflikts im Spannungsfeld zweier politischer Formationen (Damaszener Forschungen 6) (Mainz, 1998), 66, and met with approval by T. Kaizer, ‘Reflections on the dedication of the temple of Bel at Palmyra in AD 32’, in L. de Blois, P. Funke and J. Hahn (edd.), The Impact of Imperial Rome on Religion: Ritual and Religious Life in the Roman Empire. Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop of the International Network Impact of Empire (Leiden and Boston, 2006), 95–105, at 99.

⁴³ As is suggested by S. Paturel, ‘Landscapes of conversion: Baalbek-Heliopolis from 100 BC to 400 AD’ (Diss., Newcastle University, 2014), 154, on the building history of the temple complex: ‘at its origin the temple of Jupiter Heliopolitanus was Near Eastern in character. It seems unlikely the first-ever temple ever reached completion and the temple was swiftly re-designed, perhaps in a manner more suitable for the centrepiece of the new Roman colonia.’ In this context it is worth taking into account the suggestion by M. Beard, J. North and S. Price, Religions of Rome I, A History (Cambridge, 1998), 334 that the red granite that was imported from Egypt and used in the portico indicates that the major building project had to be financed by the imperial treasury. Cf. Thomas (n. 38), 46.

⁴⁴ Lightfoot (n. 1), 303–4.

⁴⁵ As is now argued by Paturel (n. 43).

⁴⁶ Hošek (n. 19), 109–14.

⁴⁷ R. Gordon, ‘Franz Cumont and the doctrines of Mithraism’, in J.R. Hinnells (ed.), Mithraic Studies. Proceedings of the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies (Manchester, 1975), 1.215–48.

⁴⁸ On which cf. Hošek (n. 19), 111, who formulates it as Rome's choice ‘de récupérer l'héritage religieux ituréen’. Cf. ibid., 110: ‘un lieu de culte dont le prestige ou les qualités religieuses était susceptible d'attirer l'attention des autorités romaines’.

⁴⁹ Kropp (n. 40) has shown that the actual cult image of IOMH is a relatively late creation.

⁵⁰ Lucian does not actually make an identification with Heliopolis-Baalbek explicit in the passage. But as Lightfoot (n. 1), 303 has pointed out, ‘the name has to be inferred from its alleged origin in Egyptian Heliopolis’. To what degree there is an additional play on the apparent ‘solarization’ of local cults throughout the Near East is a different matter. On this issue, cf. Seyrig, H., ‘Le culte du soleil en Syrie à l’époque romaine’, Syria 48 (1971), 337–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar (= id., Antiquités syriennes VII, Syria Supplément 1 [Beirut, 2013], 102–38), at 345–8, and 347 on the place-name: ‘sur les raisons de ce choix, nous sommes réduits aux conjectures’.

⁵¹ P.W. Haider, ‘Götter und Glaubensvorstellungen in Heliopolis-Baalbek’, in E.M. Ruprechtsberger (ed.), Vom Steinbruch zum Jupitertempel von Heliopolis/Baalbek (Libanon) (Linz, 1999), 101–37, and id., ‘Glaubensvorstellungen in Heliopolis/Baalbek in neuer Sicht’, in M. Schuol, U. Hartmann and A. Luther (edd.), Grenzüberschreitungen. Formen des Kontakts zwischen Orient und Okzident im Altertum (Oriens et Occidens 3) (Stuttgart, 2002), 83–122.

⁵² Kropp (n. 40), 239.

⁵³ Lightfoot (n. 1), 303.

⁵⁴ Lucian's failure to recognize anything Roman in Heliopolis may be contrasted with the fact that he explicitly refers to coins from Sidon minted by the city in his own time, i.e. the Roman period: ‘the coinage the Sidonians use shows Europa astride Zeus in the form of a bull’ (Syr. D. 4). Cf. Millar (n. 14), 286, and for examples of such coins cf. RPC 4609 (Augustus), BMC 224 & AUB 232–233 (Hadrian), AUB 281 (Julia Maesa).

⁵⁵ Lightfoot (n. 1), 303.

⁵⁶ Ibid.

⁵⁷ S. Saïd, ‘Lucien ethnographe’, in A. Billault (ed.), Lucien de Samosate. Actes du colloque international de Lyon (Centre ďÉtudes Romaines et Galloromaines 13) (Lyon and Paris, 1994), 149–70, at 154 stated how ‘dans la Déesse syrienne, le “j'ai vu” revient aussi comme un refrain’, adding multiple references to three various ways to express this (though without noting that the opposite is going on in Syr. D. 5). Cf. ibid., 155: ‘Ces “j'ai vu” entraînent d'autant plus la conviction qu'ils sont mis dans la bouche d'un narrateur “honnête” qui n'hésite pas à afficher ses doutes et à reconnaître les limites de son avoir.’

⁵⁸ Thus J.L. Lightfoot, ‘Pilgrims and ethnographers: in search of the Syrian goddess’, in J. Elsner and I. Rutherford (edd.), Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman & Early Christian Antiquity. Seeing the Gods (Oxford, 2005), 333–52, at 338, showing how the treatise ‘itself is riddled with notions of pilgrimage to Atargatis’ Holy City. It describes it; it enacts it; it even offers its readers a vicarious experience of it’. She refers to attendance of ritual activities and to contributions to the sanctuary from far away in Syr. D. 10, 13, 32, 49.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 346.

⁶⁰ Andrade (n. 6), 289 drew attention to a passage in the Babylonian Talmud (Avod. Zar. 11b) which names the sanctuary of Atargatis at Hierapolis (‘Tar'ata which is in Mapug’) as one of ‘five appointed temples of idol-worship’, alongside ‘the temple of Bel in Babel, the temple of Nebo in Kursi, …, Zerifa which is in Askelon, and Nishtra which is in Arabia’. Inclusion in this list meant that the temples were considered to have been ‘appointed permanently; regularly all the year round worship is taking place in them’.

⁶¹ ἀνέβην δὲ καὶ ἐς τὸν Λίβανον ἐκ Βύβλου, ὁδὸν ἡμέρης, πυθόμενος αὐτόθι ἀρχαῖον ἱρὸν Ἀφροδίτης ἔμμεναι, τὸ Κινύρης εἵσατο, καὶ εἶδον τὸ ἱρόν, καὶ ἀρχαῖον ἦν.

⁶² So cautious, in fact, as to emphasize the temple's antiquity, which certainly gives the impression simultaneously of raising its status, and in this manner also serves to defend the author against potential criticism of the (intended) brush-off. These two rhetorical stances (slighting the sanctuary by stressing that he has not been there, although he knows very well that it is housing a Roman cult, while ostensibly conceding the prestige of its origin in an ancient and venerable religious culture) may appear contradictory to modern observers but are not incompatible. If anything, they add to our appreciation of Lucian's literary skills.

⁶³ A comparison could perhaps be made with Pausanias' decision to ignore some important contemporary monuments in the context of his guide to the Greek world, especially the nymphaeum that Herodes Atticus built at Olympia (though he does acknowledge the same man's stadium in Athens, 1.19.6). Cf. C. Habicht, Pausanias' Guide to Ancient Greece (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1985), 135 n. 74: ‘The omission can hardly be anything but deliberate’ (though he opts for a different explanation than I propose for the passage in Lucian). The starting point for all considerations of the Greeks' view of their past in this period is, of course, Bowie, E., ‘The Greeks and their past in the Second Sophistic’, Past & Present 46 (1970), 3–41 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with a revised version in M. Finley (ed.), Studies in Ancient Society (London, 1974), 166–209.

⁶⁴ Hošek (n. 19), 108 on the sanctuary as ‘potentiellement fédérateur’. Cf. ibid., 114. She also suggested (ibid., 119) that this new ‘federal’ dimension of the temple at Baalbek, through the foundation of the colonia Berytus, was inspired by Marcus Agrippa's visit to the Temple at Jerusalem when touring the Herodian kingdom in 15 b.c. (Joseph. AJ 16.2.1 [14]; Philo, Leg. 294–7), and that the project was therefore ‘un echo plus direct aux réalisations religieuses d'Hérode’. On the similarities in building methods between Herod's sanctuary and the remains of an earlier building phase of the temple of Jupiter Heliopolitanus, cf. Kropp, A.J.M. and Lohmann, D., ‘“Master, look at the size of those stones! Look at the size of those buildings!” Analogies in construction techniques between the temples at Heliopolis (Baalbek) and Jerusalem’, Levant 43 (2011), 38–50 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the argument that the sanctuary at Baalbek fits in with a traditional canon of colossal construction in this part of the world, cf. E. Will, ‘Du trilithon de Baalbek et d'autres appareils colossaux’, in M.-L. Bernhard (ed.), Mélanges offerts à Kazimierz Michałowski (Warsaw, 1966), 725–9, a reference I owe to Michał Gawlikowski.

⁶⁵ The evidence is collected by M. Hörig, ‘Dea Syria-Atargatis’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 2.17.3 (Berlin and New York, 1984), 1536–81.

⁶⁶ τάδε μέν ἐστι τὰ ἐν τῇ Συρίῃ ἀρχαῖα καὶ μεγάλα ἱρά· τοσούτων δὲ ἐόντων ἐμοὶ δοκέει οὐδὲν τῶν ἐν τῇ ἱρῇ πόλει μέζον ἔμμεναι οὐδὲ νηὸς ἄλλος ἁγιώτερος οὐδὲ χώρη ἄλλη ἱερωτέρη. Cf. Lightfoot (n. 1), 207: ‘No city is holier than the Holy City, claims Lucian; and although, or perhaps because, that same claim was probably being repeated by devotees at a hundred other local sanctuaries, it is unanswerable.’ It may be noted here that the temple at Emesa of Elagabal (later solarized into Heliogabal) is, perhaps surprisingly, nowhere mentioned in the treatise. The suggestion by W. Ball, Rome in the East. The Transformation of an Empire (London and New York, 2000), 37–47 that the temple complex at Baalbek should be identified with the temple of the Sun at Emesa, briefly mentioned by Herodian (5.3.4), has been proven wrong by Young, G., ‘Emesa and Baalbek: where is the temple of Elahagabal?’, Levant 35 (2003), 159–62Google Scholar. The attempt by García, A. González, ‘¿Fue Baalbek el templo de Heliogábalo?: nuevas evidencias’, El Futuro del Pasado 4 (2013), 315–38Google Scholar to reinstate Ball's suggestion is futile.

⁶⁷ Cf. Elsner (n. 2), 137. Cf. ibid., 128: ‘an act of cultural translation in which the confrontations of its three worlds—Syria (its religious core), Greece (its linguistic discourse) and Rome (its political frame) combine in creative conflict to produce cultural identity’.

⁶⁸ Pisano, C., ‘Satira e contro-storia nel De Syria Dea di Luciano’, Mythos 5 (2011), 117–30Google Scholar, at 122: ‘Laddove Platone pensa che la molteplicità eponimica non comprometta l'identità del personaggio nominato, esprimendone tutt'al più la complessità del carattere, Luciano dimostra come la pluralità delle possibili interpretationes finisca per privare le divinità “indigene” della loro identità.’

⁶⁹ Cf. K. Ehling, D. Pohl and M.H. Sayar, Kulturbegegnung in einem Brückenland. Gottheiten und Kulte als Indikatoren von Akkulturationsprozessen im Ebenen Kilikien (Asia Minor Studien 53) (Bonn, 2004), 225, no. 5, for a bilingual dedication of a.d. 151 from the other Hierapolis (Castabala in Cilicia) of which the Greek part, in verse, conveys a feeling of doubt on behalf of the dedicant, a physician who asks the goddess to give the governor a safe journey home, as to the identity of the local goddess. The context points to Perasia, to be linked with the Hittite goddess Kubaba, but here she is called upon whether she is worshipped as Selene, Artemis, Hecate who bears the torch at the meeting of three roads, Cypris (i.e. Aphrodite) or Deo the mother of the maiden Persephone (i.e. Demeter): [εἴτε Σ]εληναίην εἴτ’ Ἄρτεμι[ν εἴτε σ]έ, δαῖμον, | πυρφόρον [ἐν τ]ριόδοις ἣν σεβόμεσθ’ Ἑκ[άτην], | εἴτε Κύπριν Θήβης λα[ὸς] θυέεσσι γεραίρει, | ἢ Δηὼ Κούρης μητέρα Φερσεφόνης, | κλύθι … … …. On the cult of Perasia, who was especially popular in the Hellenistic period, cf. ibid., 107–19, and now also Andrade, N., ‘Local authority and civic Hellenism: Tarcondimotus, Hierapolis-Castabala and the cult of Perasia’, Anatolian Studies 61 (2011), 123–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the Lucian passage, cf. T. Kaizer, ‘Creating local religious identities in the Roman Near East’, in M.R. Salzman and W. Adler (edd.), The Cambridge History of Religions in the Ancient World, vol. 2: From the Hellenistic Era to Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2013), 54–86, at 59: ‘this explicit syncretism (if the word may be used)—the invocation of other divine names in order to make a deity understandable—is a way to approach the uniquely local, indigenous deities of the Near East not only on the part of modern scholars, but also in Antiquity.’ Cf. id., ‘Identifying the divine in the Roman Near East’, in L. Bricault and C. Bonnet (edd.), Panthée. Religious Transformations in the Graeco-Roman Empire (RGRW 177) (Leiden and Boston, 2013), 113–28.

⁷⁰ A Hellenism that simultaneously served to exhibit the cult's indigenous disposition: the very fact that Atargatis lacks one single and uncontroversial classical counterpart, and is furthermore characterized as the Assyrian Hera (Syr. D. 1), shows the limits of integration into the prevailing Graeco-Roman religious current to which genuinely Oriental deities were subject.