Severus – of Roman Law. Under Nero the son of a Roman colonist, Marcus Valerius Probus (born in Berytus around CE 25), was known in all the empire as a Latin grammarian and literature master philologist. Roman emperors promoted the development of high-level culture in the fully Romanized city (even in Greek language as with Hermippus of Berytus). The Law School of Berytus The Berytian law school was widely known in the Roman Empire;: it was famous the Latin motto Berytus Nutrix Legum ("Beirut, Mother of Laws"). Indeed, two of Rome's most famous jurists, Papinian and Ulpian, both natives of Phoenicia, taught there under the Severan emperors. When Justinian assembled his Pandects in the sixth century, a large part of the "Corpus of Laws" -all in Latin- was derived from these two jurists, and in 533 CE Justinian recognized the school as one of the three official law schools of the empire. The law school of Beirut supplied the Roman Empire, especially its eastern provinces, with lawyers and magistrates for three centuries until the school's destruction in a powerful earthquake. After the 551 Beirut earthquake the students were transferred to Sidon. Early Byzantine rule 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 (actual Baalbek) and destroyed the city of Berytus, leveling its famous law school and killing nearly 30,000 inhabitants (according to Anonymous pilgrim of Piacenza). Furthermore, the ecumenical Christian councils of the fifth and sixth centuries CE were unsuccessful in settling religious disagreements within the surviving community. This turbulent Byzantine period weakened the already Hellenised (and fully Christian) population and made it easy prey to the newly converted Muslim Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula. Eastern Roman Berytus -reduced to the size of a village- fell to the Arabs in 635 CE. Recent discoveries Recently at the Garden of Forgiveness the two main streets of Roman Berytus, the cardo and decumanus, were discovered in the Beirut Central District. Their shaded colonnades became busy markets on festival days. At other times, these streets would have been frequented by Law School students and citizens passing to the Forum or visiting temples and churches. In 1968 were discovered