Page 45 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

32 EDESSA UNDER THE KINGS
The cross currents of western and eastern civilizations produced an
invigorating atmosphere at Edessa. Its royal court, at the end of the second
century, was evidently a scene of gaiety and movement and also of some
sophistication. It has been already suggested that Edessans of this period
were familiar with the luxuries of the West. In the first century the Parthian
pretender Mihrdad, who was accustomed to the frivolities of Antioch, was
not unwilling to dally at Edessa. Trajan, too, was obviously impressed by his
entertainment there (including the 'barbaric dance' performed by the son of
his royal host). The winter baths, not far north of the fish-pools,1 may well
have been built under the monarchy of Edessa; in the north-west of the city,
by the walls, was a hippodrome which, tradition averred, had been presented
to the king by Augustus himself.
The men of Edessa maintained, as a pastime, the skill as bowmen for which
the Osrhoenians were famous in war, and they were keen followers of the
chase. We have vivid representations of animals in the tableaux that have
survived—the birds, lion, and gazelle of the Phoenix and Orpheus mosaics
(dated A.D. 235-6 and 228 respectively), and the fierce boar of the border of
the now fragmentary Animal mosaic.2 Julius Africanus, a visitor to Edessa at
the end of the second century, recounts that, on a hunting expedition, a
terrible forest bear leapt out of a thicket, to the consternation of the bystan-
ders ; it was slain by Prince Ma'nu who coolly shot an arrow into each eye of
the beast. Bardaisan himself was no mean archer, as Julius relates in a vivid
passage. On one occasion he asked a handsome young man to stand opposite
him, and then outlined the youth's form upon his shield with arrows, like a
painter with a brush,—his head, 'the gleam of the eyes, the junction of the
lips, the symmetry of the chin', and finally the whole figure of the youth.
The spectators were amazed 'to see that the bow could be not a warlike
implement but a [source of] delight and a pleasant sport': the young man
gazed with astonishment at his picture.
Under the monarchy, Edessans cultivated the liberal arts with vigour.
Their architects must have attained a high degree of skill. At Sumatar
Harabesi in the Tektek mountains, the monuments, of which two towers are
round and of exactly the same circumference, another is an exact square, and
another is round and set upon a square base, are aligned with perfect pre-
cision; they are, no doubt, the work of Edessans or foreign craftsmen working
under the direction of Edessans.3 In the city itself porticoes were erected in
public places, and we have, in the two Corinthian columns on the Citadel
mount, a relic of the magnificent buildings of royal Edessa. We have alluded
to representations of the funerary banquet and the other somewhat florid

1 The remains of a hypocaust on this spot ted into the municipal water installations,
were seen briefly by the present writer in the 2 Pis. 43, 44 and 176—20.
summer of 1959, before the site was incorpora- 3 See the photograph on PL 400.

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