CS Knowledge Base

Augusti Pagus was a Roman settlement in Roman Phoenicia. It was created in the 110s AD and lasted nearly seven centuries until the Arab invasion of the Levant. The settlement was named in honor of Roman Emperor Augustus, who ordered the development of this pagus in the central-northern hills of the Beqaa Valley.

In the 1st century AD, after the Roman conquest of Phoenicia, the Roman Emperor Augustus settled some veterans of his legions in what is now central Lebanon.

Most of the Roman veterans settled in Berytus (The veterans of two Roman legions were established in the city of Berytus by emperor Augustus: the fifth Macedonian and the third Gallic), but a few moved to colonize the fertile Beqaa valley.

These few hundreds^[1] created the so-called "Augustus pagus" or "Augusti pagus".

The pagus was made of a group of farm-houses (owned by retired legionaries) in a relatively close and interconnected area where latin was spoken for some centuries.

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  Roman temple of Hosn Niha, Lebanon
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  Roman temple of Hosn Niha, Lebanon
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  Roman temple of Hosn Niha, Lebanon
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  Roman temple at Niha, Lebanon
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  Statue at the Roman temple at Niha, Lebanon
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  Small lower temple at Niha, Lebanon

• Mann, J.C. The settlement of veterans in the Roman Empire London University. London, 1956
• Millar, Fergus (1993). The Roman Near East, 31 B.C.-A.D. 337. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674778863.

• Roman Phoenicia
• Berytus
• Hosn Niha