Roman officials and the wealthier Macedonian Antiochenes lived on an
island, formed by a curve of the River Orontes at the northern end
within the city wall. The never-neglected problem of administration was
to keep a clear route along which troops could move from citadel to
island when the rioting began.

On the island was the palace, glittering with gilt and marble, gay with
colored awnings, where kings had lived magnificently until Romans saved
the city from them, substituting a proconsular paternal kind of tyranny
originating in the Roman patria potestas. There was not much sentiment
about it. Rome became the foster-parent, the possessor of authority.
There was duty, principally exacted from the governed in the form of
taxes and obedience; and there were privileges, mostly reserved for the
rulers and their parasites, who were much more numerous than anybody
liked. Competition made the parasites as discontented as their prey.

But there were definite advantages of Roman rule, which no Antiochene
denied, although their comic actors and the slaves who sang at private
entertainments mocked the Romans and invented accusations of injustice
and extortion that were even more outrageous than the truth. Not since
the days when Antioch inherited the luxury and vices of the Greeks and
Syrians, had pleasure been so organized or its commercial pursuit so
profitable. Taxes were collected rigorously. The demands of Rome,
increased by the extravagance of Commodus, were merciless. But trade was
good. Obedience and flattery were well rewarded. Citizens who yielded
to extortion and refrained from criticism within hearing of informers
lived in reasonable expectation of surviving the coming night.

But the informers were ubiquitous and unknown, which was another reason
why the Romans and Antiochenes refrained from mixing socially more than