11 Facts About Berytus

Berytus became a Roman colonia that would be the center of Roman presence in the eastern Mediterranean shores south of Anatolia.

Berytus was considered the most Roman city in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire.

Agrippa greatly favoured the city of Berytus, and adorned it with a splendid theatre and amphitheatre, beside baths and porticoes, inaugurating them with games and spectacles of every kind, including shows of gladiators.

The Hippodrome of Berytus was the largest known in the Levant, while literary sources indicate there was a theatre.

Berytus had a monumental "Roman Gate" with huge walls and was a trade center of silk and wine production, well connected by efficient Roman roads to Heliopolis and Caesarea.

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Under the Eastern Roman Empire, some intellectual and economic activities in Berytus continued to flourish for more than a century, even if the Latin language started to be replaced by the Greek language and become Hellenised again.

However, in the sixth century a series of earthquakes demolished most of the temples of Heliopolis and destroyed the city of Berytus, leveling its famous law school and killing nearly 30, 000 inhabitants (according to Anonymous pilgrim of Piacenza).

Berytus became a "Christian See" at an early date, and was a suffragan of Tyre in "Phoenicia Prima", a province of the "Patriarchate of Antioch".

In 450 AD Berytus obtained from Theodosius II the title of metropolis, with jurisdiction over six sees taken from Tyre; but in 451 AD the "Council of Chalcedon" restored these to Tyre, leaving, however, to Berytus its rank of metropolis.

Thus, from 451 AD Berytus was an exempt metropolis depending directly on the Patriarch of Antioch.

Eastern Roman Berytus -reduced to the size of a village- fell to the Arabs in 635 AD.