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BEROEA (Aleppo) Syria.

A leading city of N Syria, on the caravan route between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean, Beroea was made a Macedonian city by Seleucus Nicator between 301 and 281 B.C. It was sacked by Chosroes in A.D. 540.

The plan of the Macedonian colony survives in the modern city. Traces of the original grid plan can be seen on the 25 ha area E of the tell: a series of streets, parallel or at right angles to each other, are oriented to the cardinal points and laid out with uniform space between them. An avenue 20-25 m wide, now occupied by souks, cut across the city from W to E, from the W gate to the foot of the citadel, and a monumental three-bay arch ornamented with military emblems marked the W exit. Colonnaded porticos were added to the arch probably in the 2d or 3d c. A.D. The agora was precisely in the center of the city, where the great mosque stands today, at the end of the aqueduct that pipes water from a spring 13 km to the N.

The wall that ringed the ancient city forms a more or less regular rectangle, 1000 by 950 m. On the W the rampart, flanked by wide rectangular towers, ran parallel to the streets; its E face took advantage of the hill of the citadel, which bears no traces of either the Hellenistic or the Roman periods. The mediaeval gates are probably where the ancient gates stood.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. Sauvaget, Alep (1941)PI.

J.-P. REY-COQUAIS

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