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J.L. Lightfoot

Classical literary texts are mainly very blinkered sources for the religions of the Hellenistic and Roman Near East. They tend to notice the gods of the cities and religious centers which had long fallen within the purview of Greek culture, especially the commercial cities of the Phoenician coast. Sidon and Tyre were put on the map by Homer and Herodotus, respectively; Herodotus had visited the temple of “Heracles” in the course of his chronological researches (2.44), and he also gave an interesting account of the temple complex of “Zeus Belos” in Babylon (1.181–3), “Belos” being an eponym and genealogical construct endlessly recycled in classical sources on Phoenicia, Arabia, and Babylonia since his first appearance in the Catalog of Women (Hes. fr. 137.2 M.-W.). But problems are immediately apparent. Authors use established equations for non-classical deities which ipso facto import a bias; so, too, the literary genres in which the religions of the Near East find mention also tend to impose their own way of looking. Of course, an indigenous source might confirm only the extent to which classical culture had indeed penetrated a given cult or locale; nevertheless, the paucity of material from Hellenistic and Roman Syria means that alternative perspectives are in very short supply.