Note 122 — Chapter X · SYRIA AND THE LAND OF THE NABATAEANS.

We cannot exactly determine the standing quarters of the Syrian legions; yet what is here said is substantially assured. Under Nero the 10th legion lay at Raphaneae, north-west from Hamath (Josephus, Bell. Jud. vii. 1, 3); and at that same place, or at any rate nearly in this region under Tiberius the 6th (Tacitus, Ann. ii. 79); probably in or near Antioch the 12th under Nero (Josephus, Bell. Jud. ii. 18, 19). At least one legion lay on the Euphrates; for the time before the annexation of Commagene Josephus attests this (Bell. Jud. vii. 1, 3), and subsequently one of the Syrian legions had its headquarters in Samosata (Ptolemaeus, v. 15, 11; inscription from the time of Severus, C. I. L. vi. 1409; Itin. Antonini, p. 186). Probably the staffs of most of the Syrian legions had their seat in the western districts, and the ever-recurring complaint that encamping in the towns disorganised the Syrian army, applies chiefly to this arrangement. It is doubtful whether in the better times there existed headquarters proper of the legions on the edge of the desert; at the frontier-posts there detachments of the legions were employed, and in particular the specially disturbed district between Damascus and Bostra was strongly furnished with legionaries provided on the one hand by the command of Syria, on the other by that of Arabia after its institution by Trajan.