ABSTRACT
The spread of Syrian gods into the Roman Empire outside Syria is one of the main religious and cultural developments in Syrian relations with the empire. A tiny example of the process of gods moving to new places is provided by the migration of the Palmyrene deities to Dacia. Palmyra city supported a triad of gods which may well have been a deliberate creation as the city developed in wealth and power in the first century BC. The evidence of the presence of Jews outside Syria is partly written, and partly epigraphic, but it also relies on the identification of the archaeological remains of synagogues. It is certain that there were considerable Jewish populations in certain, very restricted, areas of the Roman Empire: Palestine, of course, and Egypt and Cyrenaica, all of whose Jewish populations had been badly damaged by their revolts; Asia Minor; and Rome.
