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With an almost central position in the fertile part of
Syria, and located also on the threshold which joins the Syrian plateau
with the sea, you will reach this region very easily by means of well
tarmaced roads. Homs, an industrial city of about
500,000 inhabitants is, so to speak, at the crossroads of all roads in
Syria.
One can hardly believe that this city of a severe and
even forbidding aspect, on account of its dark basaltic stone buildings,
was under the name of Emesa, one of the most prestigious Syrian cities
of the Roman epoch. It was then famous for a black stone called
Elagabalus, a name that conjures the Emperor, Elagabal (218-222) whose
reign in Rome was short. He was a very strange Emperor indeed. Still a
child, this future Augustus, who did not live beyond adolescence, was
attached in his role of High Priest to the worship of the sun which was
veneered in Emesa precisely on the shape of this black stone. They say
it had imprints and salient that gave it feminine and virile qualities
at the same time - somewhat like the Yin and Yang of the Chinese and
seemed to have much impressed the young Sextus Varius Avitus Bassianus.
His mother was a niece of Julia Domna, the second wife of Emperor
Severus, also a native of this city. In those times of the decline of
the Roman empire, an illustrious birth, a great beauty associated with a
sobriety of behaviour, unusual things for a child of about fourteen
years of age, were judged sufficient for the legion of Emesa to proclaim
him as Augustus. His reign started under the best auspices, but he had
just barely the time to address the Roman senate, where he promised to
be worthy of the great Augustus and Marcus Aurelius.
The black stone of Emesa, deposited on the Palatine, was not an
efficient talisman: the young emperor sunk into madness and his reign
deep into the swamps of corruption, superstition, and depravity.
Praetorians killed the Emperor four years after his enthronization and
the black stone was returned to Emesa. Occupied by Islamic faith
fighters in 636, Homs became the administrative center of the area, but
played no more than a small role in political history, although its
influence on the destiny of contemporary Syria since the fifties has
increased due to its military academy. This academy where the sons of
peasants and the petite bourgeoisie, eager to take Syria out of its
political rut, registered themselves at the dawn of independence and
constituted a very fertile ground for progressive parties, and
particularly the Baath party, to rebuild Syria.
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