mingling of the groups, whose slaves took example from their masters,
affecting in public a scorn that they did not feel but were careful to
assert. The Romans were intensely dignified and wore the toga, pallium
and tunic; the Antiochenes affected to think dignity was stupid and its
trappings (forbidden to them) hideous; so they carried the contrary
pose to extremes. Patterning herself on Alexandria, the city had become
to all intents and purposes the eastern capital of Roman empire. North,
south, east and west, the trade-routes intersected, entering the city
through the ornate gates in crenelated limestone walls. From miles away
the approaching caravans were overlooked by legionaries brought from
Gaul and Britain, quartered in the capitol on Mount Silpius at the
city's southern limit. The riches of the East, and of Egypt, flowed
through, leaving their deposit as a river drops its silt; were ever-
increasing. One quarter, walled off, hummed with foreign traders from
as far away as India, who lodged at the travelers' inns or haunted the
temples, the wine-shops and the lupanars. In that quarter, too, there
were barracks, with compounds and open-fronted booths, where slaves were
exposed for sale; and there, also, were the caravanserais within whose
walls the kneeling camels grumbled and the blossomy spring air grew
fetid with the reek of dung. There was a market-place for elephants and
other oriental beasts.

Each of Antioch's four divisions had its own wall, pierced by arched
gates. Those were necessary. No more turbulent and fickle population
lived in the known world--not even in Alexandria. Whenever an
earthquake shook down blocks of buildings--and that happened nearly as
frequently as the hysterical racial riots--the Romans rebuilt with a
view to making communications easier from the citadel, where the great
temple of Jupiter Capitolinus frowned over the gridironed streets.