Part II: Organizing Space and Time

3 Political Entities

Space and time can be viewed as socially constructed dimensions, which all states and empires exploit to their advantage by imposing new institutions and altering old ones. Whether the disunited collection of independent political entities encountered in Syria immediately prior to the Roman annexation had any identity as ‘Syria’ is debatable, but the empire transcended their differences by providing an overarching system of governance, imposing an institution called Syria on the entire region. It was to a governor of Syria that the inhabitants looked to settle local disputes and to whose office their communities paid taxes. A communal institution called Syria was the entity around which the cities of the region organized worship of the emperor. To ensure regular reckoning and payment of taxes time itself had to be rationalized and organized in new ways, as did space in the form of land to be measured and recorded. The movement of goods as taxes in kind stimulated the production of commodities and integrated diverse regions of Europe and the Mediterranean. The communications infrastructure of empire shrank space and the time needed to cover distance. Empire and province had a profound effect on the way in which people in the region lived their lives.
The rapid expansion of Roman power in the first century BC was followed by a period of consolidation as the empire’s rulers struggled to impose various forms of unity over an enormous geographical area. The ‘universal’ censuses of Augustus, such as the one conducted in Syria in AD 6 and recalled rather inaccurately in the Gospel of St Luke, attempted to create an inventory of people and their land. It became important not only to list different subject peoples, but also to describe the regions, provinces and spaces they inhabited. This interest in peoples and places had a practical purpose, because Rome found local knowledge crucial to the organization and domination of her empire. Military strength alone would not ensure continued Roman hegemony in the provinces. Compromise between the centralizing and universalizing tendencies of that empire (achieved, among other things, through a hierarchical system of power and coercion centred on Rome and the emperors, a network of long-distance trade and a common system of symbols) and the particularizing tendencies of the subject communities (generated through local knowledge) was inevitable. In the final analysis, the structure of Roman power owed a great deal to the geography of human societies. The self-organizing capacities of subject peoples (the kingdoms, tribes and city states) provided the practical framework for Roman rule. The Romans did not in general dismantle existing power structures when they annexed a region, and where possible preferred to exercise control through the social institutions that they found already in place. They favoured centralized, strongly hierarchical organizations, and rewarded such societies, with the consequence that the Roman empire was an environment friendly to their growth and multiplication. In Syria a network of cities and kingdoms predated Roman rule and provided a ready-made power structure, which was manipulated and augmented over time. It was these political entities which gave form to the province of Syria, and it is to these that we now turn.

Provinces and Principalities
Roman rule has justifiably been characterised as ‘government without bureaucracy’. The empire can be seen as a project in which the local elites conspired. They drew honours and privileges by conniving with the centre of power, employing its symbols to their own ends, and reciprocating by giving Rome their support. Occasionally the strategy did not work. The Jewish revolt has been seen as the result of a conflict between the desires of Rome and the local elites which it backed (in this case the priestly families) and those of a broad mass of lower classes. In this case the strategy failed because the elites did not command the respect of the people. In general, however, the project seems to have functioned well. It enabled Rome to rule by deploying the minimal number of officials - perhaps no more than 350 senior officers for the entire empire c. AD 200. It was an extreme economy of government.
	Roman Syria was therefore a collection of self-regulating political entities of various sizes and types, usually ruled by local elites, all of which were loosely managed by a small number of officials appointed by the emperors. From the second century, during their Parthian and Persian campaigns, the emperors themselves were intermittently present in the region, and Antioch’s role as a temporary imperial capital became increasingly less temporary in the third and fourth centuries. Normally, however, the highest representative of Roman authority was the governor. Under the republic the governors had been of senatorial rank, appointed on a yearly basis (with exceptions for certain individuals like Gabinius or Crassus), and chosen by lot in the senate. From the time of Augustus Syria was considered an ‘imperial’ province, meaning, essentially, that its governors were appointed and dismissed by the emperor without any length of tenure being specified. The governor, who was a senator and former consul, was assisted by a tiny group of officers of lower rank: the senatorial legates, each of whom commanded a legion, and a financial officer (procurator) appointed by the emperor. The representatives of Rome were therefore few, and their ability to control the provincials rested on good relations with provincial elites or, if that failed, military coercion. These two options were the true limits of empire, where Rome’s imperial opportunism succeeded or broke down. The two great Jewish rebellions illustrate how difficult it was for Rome to rule without the consent of the population, and yet the overall stability of the empire for so many centuries, even in times of crisis, suggests that the system was remarkably successful. Bringing the provincial elites into the hierarchy of power was therefore an essential tool of Roman government. Strongly class-divided societies were rewarded and reinforced by giving the provincial elites honours and gifts like autonomy in local affairs, property rights, or (in the early empire) Roman citizenship. Under Hadrian the class differences were enshrined in law, with the upper classes receiving much more favourable treatment than their social inferiors. In the late empire class differences became even more pronounced, and the wealthiest grandees were able to exercise considerable influence over their communities (p. 000). A regulated hierarchy of social relations and opportunities, from lower classes through the mediating institutions of the elites to the governor, was what gave the province its conceptual shape and integrity.
One might expect the governors to have been men of initiative, considering the distance from Rome (and, later, Constantinople) and the difficulties of communicating over such long distances, but it is remarkable how often we see the emperors intervening or arbitrating in affairs of the province. It is also remarkable how often we observe governors writing to emperors and expecting them to make decisions on matters which we might suppose them to have solved by themselves. However, it is clear that some did take important decisions without consultation, although they might run the risk of imperial displeasure if their actions contradicted the emperor’s desires. They were effectively the emperor’s proxies, functioning as on-the-spot observers and advisors and, in the early empire, commanding part of his imperial army. They were expected by the emperor to implement imperial decisions made on the basis of their reports. To the modern mind this seems a remarkably inefficient way to run an empire, given the time and distances involved, but if nothing else it shows us how concepts of time and space are constituted differently in different societies. Sending a report to Rome and waiting for a reply before acting was a normal way of exercising power. That power could be exercised at a distance in this way may be the reason why Tiberius did not object to the fact that one of his governors of Syria, appointed for eleven years, never set foot in the province, and left direct management in the hands of a deputy. 
Aside from reporting to the emperor, the governors were expected to safeguard the province (which could mean making immediate decisions to prevent crisis), to authorize civic embassies to Rome or the emperors, to supervise the cities and to keep an eye on ‘client’ rulers. They exercised a judicial function, travelling around the province via a regular route and sequence of cities, judging cases among the provincials (although some of these might be referred to the emperor). Senators were not professional bureaucrats or civil servants, and remained essentially amateurs. They were not expected to formulate new provincial policies or initiate new forms of administration, but to deal with matters through accepted channels according to time-honoured methods. As aristocrats the emperors had to treat them with the respect due to their rank. When, as occasionally happened, emperors appointed relatives and trusted assistants to extraordinary commands, such as proconsular imperium (which gave them the same legal rights as emperors to interfere in provinces on the state’s behalf), the hierarchy of power might be disrupted. Though on the two occasions when Augustus’ trusted colleague Agrippa was present with imperium in the east, or when Augustus’ grandson Gaius Caesar held the same powers there, no serious conflicts between the holders of imperium and the provincial governors ensued, the appointment by Tiberius of his nephew Germanicus in AD 17 was less fortunate. The hierarchy of power in this case was perhaps unclear; as governor Piso was supposed to implement Germanicus’ decisions, but Tiberius also seems to have appointed Piso to his post in order to restrain the headstrong Germanicus. The two quarrelled publicly, and their disagreement over the treatment of the Parthian hostage Vonones ended with the captive’s attempt to take matters into his own hands and his subsequent violent death. When Germanicus died at Antioch in AD 19, the blame fell on the unfortunate governor. Piso, who had left Syria, now returned to try to reclaim the province, an action for which he was accused of trying to foment a civil war. He was conducted to Italy to stand trial and, presuming his case to be hopeless, committed suicide.
As the province of Syria was subdivided, new governorships were created. A number of these new posts were for individuals of lesser rank than ex-consuls, and included equestrians (the rank below senator). The details of these developments will be outlined in the following section.

The Provinces of Syria
Provincia meant both a sphere of command and a territory where command was exercised. The status of the governor was normally determined by the importance of his command, although emperors seem to have been able to make exceptions in their appointments. For an imperial governor of the early empire, the bigger the army under his control, the higher his rank had to be. Provinces with legions required governors of senatorial status, and provinces with more than one legion required ex-consuls. The early Roman governors of Syria were therefore extremely distinguished and high-ranking men with large armies at their disposal, and consequently they represented a potential threat to the power of the emperors. Under Tiberius, Piso was accused of rebellion; Nerva reputedly considered choosing the governor of Syria as his successor, fearing that he might usurp the empire; Avidius Cassius, even if he held some greater command over the east (p. 00), still seems to have retained his post as governor when he rebelled (or that is what inscriptions suggest); and Pescennius Niger had stood a good chance of gaining supreme control in the civil wars of AD 193-4. Septimius Severus’ decision to divide the province of Syria in two (fig. 23) is seen as a response to this. He limited the power of the Syrian governor by creating two commands, Syria Coele (the northern half) and Syria Phoenice, reducing the number of legions available to the governor of Syria to two by placing the third in Syria Phoenice. For the rulers of the early empire, the need to rely on deputies in the provinces and the dangers constituted by a concentration of power in the hands of these deputies presented an insoluble problem. Aside from the military threat, the fact that governors could arbitrate in the affairs of local elites meant that they became a potential focus of regional political power as well.
Fig. 22. The provinces of Syria during the early empire. Approximate boundaries. 22.1 Under Augustus. 22.2 Under Hadrian.
The early province of Syria under Augustus was not tidy (fig. 22.1). To a rationalizing mind it looks difficult to control, and indeed it is unlikely to have been the product of a strictly rational strategy. It was simply a contingent expression of what the Romans’ imperial opportunism was able to acquire at the time without stretching resources beyond their limits. The province extended from the broad plain of ‘Flat’ Cilicia in the north to Judaea in the south, but much of the region was not directly controlled by the governor, being subject to ‘client’ rulers ‘friendly’ to Rome (see below). The most heavily urbanized areas tended to be the ones under direct control. Client states isolated Syria from other provinces: those in mountainous ‘Rough’ Cilicia, the Amanus, and Commagene separated Syria from the rest of Asia Minor, while Judaea and the Nabataean realm divided Syria from Egypt in the south. Within the areas controlled by client rulers there were pockets subject to direct control, for example, the city state of Gaza or the cities of the Decapolis. In the more remote regions it may have been difficult for Rome to exercise any control at all. The Romans clearly favoured the Greek-style city state as a political institution, but they were forced to deal with other sorts of political entity: client states large and small; autonomous, non-civic communities; small tribal federations; temple-estates and perhaps areas of small village communities which were not subordinate to any city. Many of these are only just visible in the documentary sources. Another category, also only just visible, comprised the imperial estates, owned by the emperor and overseen by imperial officials. These lands could be used by the emperors to raise revenues, either by exacting cash rents from tenants or, perhaps more importantly, by producing foodstuffs to meet the state’s obligations to the army and other employees. There was one such estate in the lava-flows of Trachonitis, the saltus Bataneos; another in the Euphrates region called Eragizenon; and in the north the Bab el-Hawa estate (first mentioned in the fourth century, but probably earlier in origin). The Babatha archive, a collection of private documents from the region of the Dead Sea, mentions an imperial estate in Zoar, at the southern end of the Dead Sea. The Euphrates archive (see chapter 5) contains documents referring to a village called Beth Phrouria as a village ‘of the lord’ (emperor). Imperial estates would seem to have been numerous and varied considerably in scale. One must also envisage large private estates with tenant farmers, often owned by wealthy city-dwellers, even though there is very little certain evidence for them. These are perhaps difficult to spot because they could have been divided up into many different parcels of land in different locations.
During the first century AD the number of client states was reduced, most being annexed to Syria. In AD 6 Judaea was made a kind of subsidiary province, garrisoned with auxiliaries and governed by a military prefect of equestrian rank (a similar arrangement may have operated in the Decapolis). His duties were similar to those of the Syrian governor, but on a much reduced scale, and he did not command regular legionary troops; hence he could be of lower status than his senatorial counterpart. It is noteworthy that among the Judaean prefect’s responsibilities was the appointment of the Jewish high priests, a function which the kings of Judaea had previously performed. The prefects seem to have relied heavily on the governor of Syria in the frequent moments of social and political crisis encountered there during the first century. After a period of reversion to royal rule under Claudius, Judaea was again restored as a subsidiary province, governed by a civilian procurator, until the Jewish revolt of AD 66-74. From 70, as a direct consequence of this war, Judaea had a permanent legionary garrison. A single legion required that the governor be of higher, senatorial rank, a former praetor who could function in a double role as commander of both the province and the legion. The creation of a fully fledged province called Judaea was a response to the crisis of Roman rule engendered by the revolt, aimed at greater control of the subject population.
The Nabataean kingdom was annexed to Syria only briefly, before being constituted as a separate province called Arabia (AD 106). It is not clear why it was felt necessary to create a separate province, but Nabataea’s remoteness from the centre of power in Syria may have been an important factor. If Rome believed that the solution to the problem of policing Judaea was to elevate it to the rank of a province separate from the Syrian command, similar considerations may have prevailed in the state’s treatment of Arabia. In any case keeping the region as single province when there were so many legions in it would have given the Syrian governor far too much military power. The new province’s governor was an ex-praetor who also acted as commander of the single legion placed there, as was the case in Judaea. Initially the Romans appear to have occupied the whole of the former Nabataean kingdom, as evidenced by the graffiti left by Roman auxiliary soldiers at Medain Salih in the Hijaz, and the military presence in this southern region, even if intermittent rather than permanent, seems to have continued into the third century. The Arabian province also extended west into the Negev and Sinai. In remote desert regions there may not have been a clearly defined frontier. But further north a distinction between Arabia and its neighbours Syria and Judaea had to be properly delineated. This resulted in the break-up of some former political entities. The Decapolis cities of Philadelphia and Gerasa were attached to the new province, as was (probably) Adraa. Bostra lay in the very north of the province; the border with Syria was about 15 kilometres (9½ miles) further. What the initial arrangements were further west are unclear; Gadara, Pella and Capitolias may have been given to Judaea, but it is uncertain whether some of the other cities belonged to Syria, Judaea or Arabia. 
Under Trajan or Hadrian Judaea received a second legion, and its status was raised to that of a province governed by a former consul, with the same arrangement as Syria (the governor having legionary legates serving under him). It was renamed Syria Palaestina by 139, four years after the end of the Bar-Kokhba war (fig. 22.2). As we saw in chapter 2, this measure was probably a direct response to that conflict, but in general these arrangements look like attempts to strengthen direct control over the south, concomitant with the gradual extension of Roman military power in the region.
Fig. 23. The provinces of Syria under Septimius Severus. Approximate boundaries.
The next important development in the extension of Roman provincial power was the division of Syria into two provinces under Septimius Severus: Syria Coele and Syria Phoenice (fig. 23). The former contained two legions and continued to be governed by former consuls, the latter had but one, the legio III Gallica, and was governed by lower-status officials of ex-praetor rank. From the evidence available it would appear that the boundary between the two new Syrian provinces ran from the coast near the ports of Paltus and Balanea-Leucas, inland north of the headquarters of the legio III Gallica at Raphanea, and south of Arethusa on the Orontes. Palmyra lay in the province of Syria Phoenice, but further inland, Dura Europus on the right bank of the Euphrates was in Syria Coele. Adjustments were also made in the south between Syria Phoenice and Arabia. Arabia was extended northwards to include northern Batanaea, Auranitis and Trachonitis (on these names, see p. 000). Namara, a site in the steppe east of the Hauran, seems to have been in Arabia rather than Syria Phoenice. After Severus’ conquests in Mesopotamia and the creation of new provinces there, the role of the Syrian governors was less crucial for the defence of the east against the Parthians (although invasions up the Euphrates valley would remain a problem). The Mesopotamian province of Osrhoene, created in 194 or 195, was a small entity governed by a procurator of equestrian rank, but its neighbour Mesopotamia, created in or shortly after 197, had two legions. However, instead of being governed by a former consul, it had an equestrian prefect, like Egypt. During the third century more and more posts in government traditionally reserved for senators came to be usurped by equestrians; among them, the governorship of Arabia, which shifted from a senatorial to an equestrian appointment in the second half of the third century. The governors of Syria Coele and Syria Phoenice appear to have been senators down to the reforms of Diocletian, and then these posts too were filled by equestrians (although Constantine later restored some governorships to senatorial consulares).
At the end of the third century Diocletian, deciding that the empire’s problems were too complex to be solved by a single ruler, created the tetrarchic system where two senior emperors (Augusti) ruled with two junior Caesars. These four were assisted by equestrian civil administrators in the persons of the Praetorian Prefects. In the third and early fourth centuries Praetorian Prefects were administrative and military deputies or ‘grand viziers’ and travelled with the emperors, but by the reign of Constantine command of the armies had been transferred to other officials, the magistri militum. By the sole reign of Constantius II (AD 350-361) the Prefects each administered a portion of the empire called a prefecture, in which they were responsible for estimating and collecting taxes, acting as supreme judges, recruiting troops, and providing supplies and salaries for state employees. By the end of the fourth century there were four of these regional prefectures in the empire; the provinces of Syria, Arabia and Palaestina lay in the eastern one, which was administered from Constantinople. Another of Diocletian’s initiatives was to divide up the old provinces into smaller ones. The adjustments made in Syria and the Near East are clear enough, although the date of the changes is not always certain, and most of the new provinces there were probably created after Diocletian. At some point probably towards the end of the third century the old province of Arabia was broken up. The northern part retained the name Arabia, but the southern part was added to Syria Palaestina. Syria Palaestina itself was subsequently divided into three provinces, probably after the middle of the fourth century: Palaestina Prima, Secunda and Tertia. In the late fourth century Syria Phoenice was divided into coastal and inland provinces, which occur in the sources under various names: Phoenice Prima/Paralia and Phoenice Libani/Augusta Libanensis. Syria Coele was also divided at some point: first the regions along the Euphrates became a province called Euphratensis, and by c. 400 the remainder had been divided into Syria Prima, with its capital at Antioch, and Syria Secunda (or Syria Salutaris), with its capital at Apamea. Under Justinian yet another province, called Theodorias, was created on the coast, incorporating the cities of Laodicea, Gabala, Paltus and Balanea (fig. 24.1-2).
Fig. 24. The provinces of Syria in the late empire. Approximate boundaries. 24.1 Under Constantius II.  24.2 Under Justinian.
In many of these provinces the governors no longer had control over the armies as they had done in the past. Instead military power was in the hands of a dux and the magister militum (see chapter 10). The governors of Diocletian’s new provinces of Syria, Arabia and Palaestina were now of equestrian rather than senatorial class and their functions were primarily administrative and judicial (but, as noted above, some offices were later returned to men of senatorial status). In Diocletian’s scheme governors were subordinate to an intermediate rank of imperial official called a vicar. Vicars were appointed by the emperors and acted as deputies to the Praetorian Prefects, supervising groups of provinces within each prefecture known as dioceses. The diocese in which the Syrian and Near Eastern provinces were located was called Oriens, which initially included the whole of the east from Cilicia and Isauria to Egypt and Libya (although the latter two regions were detached from Oriens under Valens). During the fourth century we find that the supervisor of Oriens had a special title, comes Orientis, rather than vicarius. His position seems to have declined in the fifth and sixth centuries, so that by the time of Justinian the comes Orientis was merely the governor of Syria Prima. The evolution of the late Roman system of civil administration is extremely complex, but it seems to have been fairly flexible, leaving emperors free to reduce, distribute, abolish or restore offices and alter hierarchies as they saw fit.

Friendly kings
‘Client’ or ‘friendly’ kings and rulers existed at the social and political limits of the empire. They might not occupy its geographical limits, but they ruled societies and communities which the Roman state would otherwise have found difficult to govern directly. For the most part such client states comprised tribal and village communities where the structures of social power were diffuse, being distributed among many small centres. From the point of view of the Roman government they could be considered ‘backward’ in that they had not developed the strongly centralized, class-divided societies with a system of autonomous elite governments characteristic of those areas where the city states were supreme. Nevertheless the ruler of a client state was himself an elite member of provincial society, often outranking the wealthiest elites of the cities. He might not always bear the title of king, being a ‘tetrarch’ or ‘ethnarch’ or holding some other title, but he controlled considerable resources and his assets would outstrip those of most other provincial elites. Client rulers had their own armies which would have been much larger than any forces the cities could provide. There was also a marked difference in the relations enjoyed by these rulers with the centre of power. Other provincial elites could petition the emperor or participate in embassies, but the links of client rulers with the emperors were personal. Emperors endorsed their right to rule, and sons or relatives needed imperial consent in order to succeed to the throne. When Aretas IV seized the Nabataean kingdom without Augustus’ consent in 9 BC, the emperor was furious, and only complex negotiations and fortuitous political circumstances allowed Aretas to keep his throne. A number of client rulers in the early empire would have been familiar faces in the capital, having been raised and educated there, growing up alongside their peers in the imperial house, as the Herodian Agrippa I and Antiochus IV of Commagene did with Caligula. 
	Though client states could be regarded in some ways as being outside the Roman empire (for example, they may not have paid regular tribute to Rome), they were clearly integral to Roman power in the provinces. They were allies of Rome, and expected to safeguard Roman interests, both by policing their principalities and using their armies to support Roman military action in the east. This meant that they were not independent actors on the political stage. Their titles and powers were decided by the emperors. The prudent ruler sought the counsel of the governor and emperor on all sorts of matters, and was prepared to travel to Rome to plead his case at court. But these friends of Rome seem to have been able to act independently to some degree. The movements of kings were not confined to their territories; in fact, the fragmentary nature of some kingdoms, which consisted of several discontinuous holdings, meant that movement outside their lands was necessary for them to perform their tasks. Their mobility, coupled with their high rank and personal relations with the emperor, was a potential threat to the governor’s authority. Under Claudius, the governor of Syria happened upon a meeting of kings at Tiberias: from Judaea, Chalcis, Emesa, Commagene, Armenia Minor and Pontus. Considering such a gathering of powerful men dangerous for Rome, the governor told them to disperse. Agrippa I of Judaea was affronted at this challenge to his dignity, and used his influence with Claudius to have the governor removed. Client rulers were not simple puppets of Rome, and the web of power relations was partly woven by them. Many (but not all) of them were natives of the regions that they ruled, and sought to uphold the rights of their peoples. The Herodian kings were able to champion Jewish rights in cities outside their control by appealing to the governor of Syria. Conversely the king’s subjects could circumvent the client’s authority in certain circumstances by petitioning the emperor directly. Following the death of Herod in 4 BC, the kingdom was divided between Herod’s sons; but popular appeal to the emperor saw one of these, Archelaus, deposed in AD 6. In AD 17 the kings of the Amanus and Commagene died and the citizens petitioned Augustus’ successor Tiberius for direct rule by Rome (a request which was duly granted, both regions being annexed to Syria). Nonetheless such appeals could be a dangerous move when contrary to the wishes of the client. The city of Gadara asked Augustus for independence from Herod’s rule, but when the emperor refused the request, the desperate petitioners committed suicide rather than be forced to throw themselves on Herod’s mercy.
	Relations between the client rulers were complex, forming an eastern dynastic network of peers. They were in regular communication with one another, and with states beyond the boundaries of the empire. Dynastic intermarriage led to tangled genealogies, and complicated social relations which were not always congenial. Governors and emperors were prepared to act as arbitrators when disputes arose. Sometimes hostilities broke out, but, as in the case of city states, Rome would not tolerate war between client rulers unless it happened to suit Roman interests. In 9 BC Herod was permitted to attack Nabataean territory, partly because the Nabataeans had supported bandits in Trachonitis, an area which Herod controlled, and partly as punishment meted out to the Nabataeans for refusing to agree to the settlement proposed by the Roman governor. But Herod may have interpreted Roman sanction too freely; at any rate his invasion led to a rebuke from Augustus, who had been moved by the plea of the Nabataean chief minister.
	With their great wealth the kings could afford to be great builders. The contribution of Herod to the monumentalization of Syrian cities is well known, and other rulers are likely to have done the same. Through their gifts and donations to Greek cities outside their kingdoms these rulers were promoting the ‘international’ or Hellenizing culture of the Roman world, and contributing to the emerging hierarchy of cities in the eastern empire (see below). Many of these rulers also worked hard to establish or develop city states within their own principalities, just as the Seleucids had done, giving them dynastic names or, being mindful of their positions within the Roman hierarchy of power, naming them after members of the imperial family.
	Ultimately all of the major client states of the first century AD were annexed and placed under direct rule. The process looks deliberate and purposeful: passage from indirect rule by friendly king to direct rule by provincial governors. In the absence of any ancient account detailing the motives for annexing most of these kingdoms one is forced to speculate. Friendly kings are seen as a tool of imperial policy, ruling ‘backward’ areas, ‘civilizing’ them (for instance, by encouraging the growth of cities and towns in the areas they ruled) and preparing them for full incorporation into the empire. Regarded in this way, the annexation of a kingdom was a sign of its success rather than an indication that its ruler had been incompetent. But this supposes a clear strategy on the part of emperors. There are some vague indications that certain emperors, such as Tiberius and Vespasian, preferred direct rule, but that others, such as Caligula and Claudius, favoured kings. Overall Rome seems to have preferred direct rule over cities, perhaps because city territories tended to be smaller and their resources divided among a number of great civic families, meaning that they were weaker and easier to dominate than the major client states. The process of imposing direct rule looks complete by the early second century, after the annexation of Nabataea in 106. And yet with the eastward extension of Rome into Mesopotamia in the second century, the kingdom of Osrhoene emerged as an important client state. In the late Roman empire indirect rule in Syria and the Near East (through Arab phylarchs) emerges once again. We might question whether there was any clear strategy at work here, other than the attempt, where possible, to impose greater direct control. These developments and reversions seem to chart the long-term ebb and flow of Roman power and military infrastructures on the social and political limits of its empire. Indirect rule was always an expedient, though perhaps less desirable, way of running these peripheries.
	Aside from the major client states, we also catch occasional glimpses of other, smaller or less powerful non-civic communities, particularly in northern Syria during the first centuries BC and AD. These are thought to be a product of the instability of the late Seleucid period, when nomads moved in and began to encroach upon the settled regions and weakened the authority of the cities there. An inscription from Apamea honouring a second-century-AD civic notable, Lucius Julius Agrippa, describes him as the descendant of a tetrarch called Dexandros, first high priest of the provincial imperial cult under Augustus. His tetrarchy was presumably in the vicinity of Apamea, and it is noteworthy that such non-civic communities could be found interspersed between the great Hellenistic foundations of northern Syria. Many of these communities seem to have been small tribal states - for example many of those mentioned in his description of Syria by Pliny the Elder, who ended one of his lists of Syrian peoples with a dismissive ‘plus seventeen tetrarchies divided into kingdoms and bearing barbarian names’. Some tribal centres became towns bearing the tribal name; other tribal names may be the origin of modern names for places and peoples. The Gindareni presumably gave their name to the village of Gindarus, near Antioch, the Gabeni are thought to be connected with the Ghab, the modern name for the broad marshy valley through which the Orontes flows between the Ansariyeh mountains and Apamea, and it is likely that the tribal capital of the Mariamnitai was the city of Mariamme (modern Miryamin). The Rhambei or Rabbeans inhabited the steppe east of the Orontes and north of Palmyra as far as the Euphrates and perhaps even across the river. Chalcis ad Belum was possibly their political centre, although their core territory seems to have been along the Euphrates. There is some evidence to suggest that Chalcis ad Belum was not under direct Roman rule as part of the province of Syria until AD 92, though admittedly its interpretation is open to debate: coins from Chalcis issued in AD 117 bear what may be a date, ‘year 25’. This would produce an era beginning in AD 92. The city also bore the name ‘Flavia’, indicating that it had received some sort of privilege from Vespasian or his sons (perhaps Domitian, AD 81-96). In itself this does not certainly signify the end of a dynasty of local rulers, but the clearest parallel case is the Commagenian city of Samosata, which began a new era after the dynasty of Commagene was abolished in AD 72, and was also named Flavia. 
	Because the major client states were important players on the political scene during the first centuries BC and AD, it is worth examining each one separately, before moving on to the other important element of political geography in Syria and the Near East: the city-state. Late Roman examples of powerful non-civic communities in the region have already been mentioned in chapter 2. The federate Arabs of the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries evidently commanded substantial armed forces under the command of a single tribal leader, although they did not develop significant urban capitals. Those states east of the Euphrates with which Rome had important relations will not be considered in detail here, but they deserve a mention. The Parthian vassal kingdom of Osrhoene occupied a crucial corridor in the Fertile Crescent, and with the arrival of Rome on the Euphrates, it found itself caught between the two empires. Like Armenia it became the object of fierce political rivalry, and only with the Mesopotamian conquests under Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus did Osrhoene align fully with Rome. Culturally, however, it remained relatively independent of the Graeco-Roman world (at least until its absorption into the Roman province of Osrhoene in the third century), with its capital Edessa being an important centre for Syriac literature (see chapter 8). With the weakening of the Arsacid state in the later second century other Parthian vassals deeper inside the Parthian realm, such as Hatra and Adiabene, came under Roman influence, although the Sasanians put an end to the westward gravitation of their political ambitions. 

Commagene
In the first century AD Commagene was reckoned to be among the wealthiest of the client kingdoms. It had gained independence from the Seleucids towards the middle of the second century BC, and its dynasts, who were Iranian by descent, had married into the Seleucid royal house. Antiochus I (c. 70-36 BC) had allied with Rome against Tigranes in 69 BC in order to achieve independence from the short-lived Armenian empire. The complexity of late Republican politics required some deft manoeuvring on Antiochus’ part. The Parthian king Orodes II was his son-in-law, but when the Parthians invaded in 51 following the defeat of Crassus, Antiochus dutifully informed the Romans. Nevertheless the position of his kingdom on the Euphrates bend, sandwiched between Rome and the Parthians, left him balancing on a diplomatic tightrope. Rome accused him of collaborating with Pacorus in 40-38 BC and he was besieged in his capital city, Samosata. A huge bribe seems to have convinced the besiegers of his loyalty, and Antiochus retained his kingdom, dying shortly afterwards. 
Fig. 25. The tumulus at the top Mount Nemrut, where Antiochus I is presumed to have been buried. Around it are installations for his cult, including two terraces with gigantic seated figures of Antiochus and the gods. This picture shows the east terrace, with statues of (from left to right): Apollo-Mithras-Helios-Hermes; Tyche; Zeus-Oromasdes (Ahuramazda); Antiochus; and Heracles-Artagnes-Ares.
The history of the dynasty after the battle of Actium is obscure. In AD 17 King Antiochus III died and Commagene was annexed to the province of Syria. Caligula restored the kingdom in 37 or 38 to Antiochus III’s son, Antiochus IV, who had Roman citizenship and seems to have been a personal friend of the emperor. Not long after, in circumstances not entirely clear, he was deposed, but restored a few years later by Claudius. His domain extended beyond the boundaries of Commagene proper. He acquired part of Armenia, and held several cities in Cilicia. Antiochus issued coins bearing portraits of himself and his family at several different mints in Cilicia, Lycaonia and Commagene, suggesting that he controlled a large, rambling and fragmented kingdom. In the far west of Cilicia he established the city of Iotape, named after his queen, and, in honour of the emperors under whom he ruled, he founded Germanicopolis, Claudiopolis and Neronias. In Commagene itself the ancient city of Marash was renamed Germanicia Caesarea. He was prominent among the client rulers who supported Vespasian’s rebellion against Vitellius in AD 69, but three years later he was accused of collaborating with the Parthians and deposed. His sons, after an abortive attempt to organize resistance, fled to the Parthians, but after Antiochus was allowed to go into retirement in Greece the Parthian king negotiated a safe reunion of the family. Antiochus’ descendants became prominent figures in the Roman aristocracy; the monument to his grandson Philopappus, senator and consul, still stands on the Hill of the Muses at Athens. 

Emesa
The kingdom of Emesa was located in central Syria on the upper reaches of the Orontes river. It was a significant political force in Syria during the final years of the Seleucid kingdom and in the early years of the Roman province. Like other friendly kings, the rulers of Emesa provided military support for Roman armies. The origins of the kingdom, however, remain unclear. There are occasional references in the sources to a ‘phylarch of the Arabs’ and the ‘Emisenoi’, based at Arethusa, in the first century BC. These hint at a tribal, perhaps mainly nomadic people, with a chieftain and some sort of capital in the upper Orontes valley. A tomb inscription from Arethusa is dated using an era ‘of liberty’ which begins in 31/30 BC, suggesting that if this was the first capital of the kingdom, it was no longer so after the battle of Actium and had become a city state independent of the Emisenoi. A city called Emesa (modern Homs) is not mentioned in any early sources which refer to the kingdom. This may mean that there was no city there at the time, although recent excavation on the tell at Homs indicates a history of settlement activity going back to the Bronze Age. It is quite uncertain what Emesa was like in the first centuries BC and AD. Speculation about the origin and development of the city seems futile until the evidence from excavations there is properly assessed.
	Most of the rulers were called Samsigeramus, Iamblichus or Azizus, but reconstructing the history of the dynasty is no easy task. Unlike the dynasts of the other major client states described here, those of Emesa did not issue coins, reducing the evidence for their rule to a few inscriptions and brief mentions in the sources. A Samsigeramus, active during the early days of the province, was an influential figure in the twilight of the Seleucid dynasty and was regarded as a reliable Roman ally, but two of his successors were deposed and executed at the time of Actium (one by Antony, the second by Octavian). By the first century AD, however, the ruling family had acquired Roman citizenship. The last ruler that we know of is Sohaemus, who provided the Romans with stout military assistance during the Jewish revolt and during the Roman annexation of the kingdom of Commagene. The end of the dynasty is as obscure as its origins. No source mentions the kingdom after the invasion of Commagene in AD 72. The city of Emesa did not issue civic coins (a sign of an independent city state) until the reign of Antoninus Pius (AD 138-61). A funerary monument from Emesa, now demolished, once bore an inscription naming a Gaius Julius Samsigeramus who is presumed to have been a member of the royal house, but it makes no mention of the kingship. This inscription bears a date corresponding to AD 78/79; thus it is presumed (but by no means proved) that the dynasty no longer ruled at this date. However, other inscriptions referring to members of the same family likewise omit royal titles, making it probable that the kingdom had indeed come to an end by the end of Vespasian’s reign.
	Like the descendants of the rulers of Commagene, the royal house of Emesa may have furnished Rome with senators, but no certain links exist between the rulers of the first century and prominent figures from Emesa such as the empress Julia Domna and her sons Caracalla and Geta, the emperor Elagabalus or the usurper Uranius Antoninus. The senator called Sohaemus who was appointed by Marcus Aurelius to the throne of Armenia (p. 00) may have been a descendant, but even that is not certain. The kings may have been high priests of the chief deity of Emesa, Elagabal, but we do not know for sure that this was their traditional role. One hypothesis posits Arethusa as the original tribal capital, with Emesa and Elagabal coming to provide a religious focus for the kingdom later, perhaps only towards the end of the first century BC. The influence of Emesa saw to the kingdom’s eventual polarization around the centre of the cult, and the loss of Arethusa (as punishment for supporting Antony before Actium?) only accelerated the process.

The Ituraeans
The Ituraeans appear in the sources as unruly inhabitants of the mountains of Lebanon and the Antilebanon. With the waning of Seleucid control they became a serious threat to inland cities like Damascus and those of the coast, and by the time of Pompey’s annexation they controlled the coastal cities from Orthosia to Byblus and perhaps Berytus. They also occupied the region of Mount Hermon and parts of northern Galilee and Transjordan. The two main Ituraean principalities were Chalcis and Arca; however, there also appear to have been other Ituraean non-civic communities and tetrarchies in the mountains, independent of these two larger states. Very little is known of Arca from the written sources, but it may have been a rival of Chalcis rather than an ally. Its capital, Arca (modern Tell Arqa), was renamed Caesarea under Augustus, and was still known as ‘Caesarea of the Ituraeans’ in the third century AD, long after the dissolution of the dynasty. It may have been ceded to the Emesene dynasty in the first century AD; we know that Caligula gave some Ituraean territory to a certain Sohaemus, who is thought to have been one of the Emisenoi. In 53 it was given to the Herodian Agrippa II. The other main Ituraean principality, Chalcis, was ruled by a dynasty whose rulers perhaps functioned as high priests of Heliopolis (a cult centre later incorporated into the territory of Berytus). Its capital, Chalcis, may have been at Majdel Aanjar (the former Gerrha) in the Bekaa valley, but the location is by no means confirmed. Before 64 BC Chalcis had under its ruler Ptolemy expanded east to surround Damascus, annexing large areas to the south of the city, and coming into conflict with its neighbour, the kingdom of the Nabataeans. Ptolemy retained his domain by bribing Pompey with a large sum of money, although the Roman general trimmed some of the Ituraean ruler’s territories. Yet this slight does not appear to have been a serious setback, and Ptolemy went on to reign for more than two decades, dying during the Parthian invasion under Pacorus (c. 40 BC). The dynasty enjoyed very mixed fortunes thereafter. Ptolemy’s son Lysanias was executed by Antony and his tetrarchy was given to Cleopatra, who leased it to a certain Zenodorus (probably, but not certainly, a relative of Lysanias). After Actium Zenodorus was allowed to rule as tetrarch, striking coins with his own portrait and that of Octavian, but he seems to have lost favour with the emperor and his tetrarchy was slowly reduced in size, his lands being given to more favoured states such as the coastal cities and the kingdom of Herod of Judaea. On his death in 20 BC he ruled only the southern Bekaa, the region of Mount Hermon at the southern end of the Antilebanon range, and the Golan, and even these territories were subsequently granted to Herod. The later history of Chalcis is difficult to determine; the sources mention Herodian dynasts ruling ‘Chalcis’, but it is not always certain whether Ituraean Chalcis is meant. As we have seen above, Chalcis ad Belum in northern Syria could have been under the control of dynasts as late as AD 92. The brother of Agrippa I, Herod ‘of Chalcis’, who ruled from 41 to 48, struck coins, but if he ruled the Bekaa valley his coins have so far not been recorded there. His son Aristobulus was made king of the Roman client state Armenia Minor by Nero, yet the historian Josephus mentions an Aristobulus ‘of Chalcis’ who helped the Romans annex Commagene in AD 72. The last days of Ituraean Chalcis languish in almost total obscurity.
A smaller tetrarchy called Abilene, based in the Antilebanon mountains, was ruled by a certain Lysanias under Tiberius; he may have been a descendant of the dynasts of Chalcis. In AD 37 Abilene was given to the Herodian king Agrippa I, but thereafter the tetrarchy disappears from history.
The Ituraeans seem to have resisted foreign domination and appear in the sources as aggressive conquerors of their weaker neighbours or, more negatively, as ‘robbers’. Both the neighbouring client states and the Romans seem in general to have been hostile and heavily biased towards them. Their remote villages and strongholds in the high mountains may have made it difficult for Rome to impose control, and in the initial years of the first century AD the Ituraean communities of Mount Lebanon were still sufficiently independent and threatening for Roman military activity to be directed against them. 

Judaea and the Herodian dynasty
The rise of the Judaean kingdom coincided with the decline of the Seleucids, particularly following the Seleucid loss of Iran and Babylonia to the Parthians. In 129 BC the Hasmonaean family under John Hyrcanus established a dynasty independent of Seleucid rule, but adhering closely to the model of Seleucid kingship. Earlier rulers had achieved a degree of independence yet generally maintained close relations with the Seleucid court. Hyrcanus’ son and successor Alexander Jannaeus (103-76 BC) had expanded the kingdom east of the Jordan, capturing several of the Decapolis cities. He conquered Galilee and extended his rule to all of the coastal cities as far south as Raphia. Only Ascalon remained independent. Thus the kingdom of Judaea had incorporated most of the cities of the south. Pompey removed these conquests from the kingdom, re-establishing the settlements as independent cities and reducing the kingdom to the districts of Judaea, Samaria, Galilee and Peraea. He deprived Alexander’s son Hyrcanus II (63-40 BC) of the kingship but allowed him to rule as high priest. Disputes over Hasmonaean succession clouded the early years of the Roman province, and eventually led to the Romans searching for an alternative. The governor of Idumaea, Antipater, was very successful at furthering his own career as the Hasmonaean dynasty declined, and managed to convince the Romans of his fidelity and utility. Roman influence saw Antipater (died 43 BC) and his sons Herod and Phasael being promoted to powerful positions. Herod’s advancement appeared to have been crippled by the Parthian invasion in 40 BC, in which Phasael committed suicide and the Parthians captured Hyrcanus II, replacing him with another member of the Hasmonaean dynasty, Antigonus. But the Roman response was to appoint Herod as king. During the Parthian withdrawal Herod successfully reduced Antigonus and, with Roman assistance, overthrew him. After Actium he persuaded Octavian that he would prove a faithful ally, and was confirmed as king. Over the years he managed to serve his own and Roman interests with considerable skill, and acquired many of the cities that had been freed from the Hasmonaeans by Pompey.
Fig. 26. The Herodian kingdom. The stippled border shows the kingdom of Herod the Great; the diagonal shading the approximate extent of the principality of Chalcis. The southern part of Chalcis (the Golan and Hauran) was given to Herod, and the diagonal shading within the boundaries of Herod the Great’s kingdom shows the territories inherited by his son Philip. Horizontal shading shows the territories inherited by Antipas; vertical shading those inherited by Archelaus. Ascalon was a free city, independent of Herod’s kingdom; other cities, such as Gaza, Gaba and Gadara were annexed to the province after Herod’s death. Azotus, Iamnia and Phasaelis were inherited by Herod’s sister Salome.
	The dynasty of Herod figured prominently in the royal politics of Syria during the first century AD, and, thanks to the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus, we know far more about this dynasty than any other. The Romans gave Herod and his descendants considerable responsibilities, and in general these rulers demonstrated their competence and loyalty. Herod himself was an excellent administrator and an exemplary friendly king. Although a Jew, he was also an enthusiastic supporter of Hellenism and a dutiful king to his pagan subjects. He was surrounded by Greek speakers at court, and made Jerusalem the centre for his isolympic games in 27 BC. His gifts of buildings to the cities of Syria, and not least the foundation of his own Greek city of Caesarea on the coast of his kingdom, confirms his support for the Hellenized elite culture of the empire. Nevertheless he and his successors actively supported the cause of Judaism. Herod built the great Second Temple in Jerusalem, and his descendants Agrippa I and Herod of Chalcis petitioned the emperor to confirm the rights of Jews in the eastern cities. However, Roman support for Herod may not have been matched by popular support: his fortress-palaces, Masada and Machaerus on opposite sides of the Dead Sea; Kypros near Jericho; and Herodium, where he was buried, were away from the main concentrations of the population, and were designed to be command centres in the event of a popular uprising as much as ‘pleasure-domes’ in the country.
	Only three Herodian dynasts ruled Judaea itself: Herod, his son Archelaus and grandson Agrippa I. Herod divided his kingdom in his will between three sons, and Augustus refused all of them the title of king. Archelaus, appointed as ethnarch of Judaea, proved unable to handle delicate religious and political situations diplomatically. Augustus deposed him in AD 6 and annexed Judaea to the province of Syria. A second son, Antipas, ruled the tetrarchy of Galilee and Peraea, two regions physically separated from one another by the Decapolis cities. He too had an extremely difficult time. The countryside of Galilee was rife with millenarian activists. He arrested and executed the prophet John the Baptist, and it was quite by chance that another potential troublemaker from Galilee, Jesus of Nazareth, was arrested and executed in Judaea under the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate, rather than in his homeland. Antipas appears to have been capable and dedicated, but his private life provoked a scandal, and unhappily led to conflicts with the Nabataeans when he disowned his Nabataean wife in favour of his niece Herodias. He was accused of being a Parthian sympathizer, fell out with the influential governor of Syria, Lucius Vitellius, and was deposed by Caligula. The third son, Philip, ruled Batanaea, Trachonitis, Auranitis and the southern Hauran. He was sufficiently far removed from the troubles in Judaea and Galilee to keep his throne to the end of his life (AD 33/34).
	A grandson of Herod, Agrippa I, was remarkably successful. Educated at Rome, he was a personal friend of Caligula and Claudius. His career up to the death of Tiberius was distinctly chequered, but he was saved from obscurity by Caligula, who appointed him Philip’s successor and in addition gave him Ituraean Abilene. He was also granted the title of king. In 39 he received Antipas’ former tetrarchies, and in 41 Claudius entrusted him with the kingship of Judaea, which since the fall of Archelaus had been under direct Roman rule. Like Herod he was a benefactor of Greek cities and a champion of Jewish rights, although his reign was relatively short; when he died in 44 his large kingdom was annexed. Agrippa’s brother Herod was made king of ‘Chalcis’, which may mean that he inherited the remnants of the Ituraean kingdom. Herod also acquired the right to appoint Jewish high priests, a right inherited by his successor, his nephew Agrippa II. This second Agrippa’s kingdom was disparate and rambling, and large portions of it seem to have consisted of former Ituraean territory. He later exchanged Chalcis for territories in Lebanon and the Antilebanon, and also gained Philip’s kingdom, Caesarea/Arca ‘of the Ituraeans’, and parts of Galilee and Peraea. He negotiated with the Jews at the outbreak of the rebellion in AD 66, but proved his loyalty to Rome by providing assistance in the conflicts that followed. The latter part of his long reign is less well known (mainly because Josephus’ narrative ends with the collapse of the Jewish revolt), and he died during the reign of Domitian, c. AD 94.

Nabataea
The Nabataeans were sufficiently remote to have retained a fair degree of independence from the Hellenistic powers that controlled the region after Alexander the Great, though in theory at least they may have been vassals of the Ptolemies and Seleucids. Like the Hasmonaeans and other dynasts, they profited from the weakening of the Seleucid kingdom in the later second century BC. The Nabataean heartlands were the southern part of Transjordan, the Negev and Hijaz, but by the early first century BC they ruled a broad swathe of land east of the Jordan, and the kingdom stretched from the Sinai to Damascus, incorporating the rich farmland of the Hauran. Their history during the Hellenistic period is difficult to reconstruct from the scattered references, but like the Palmyrenes they seem to have profited from long-distance trade. Much of the kingdom consisted of dry steppe and desert where nomadism was the normal way of life, but careful water management, and the annexation of regions where dry farming was possible, enabled some of the population to settle, and the Nabataeans appear to have become increasingly sedentary during the Roman period. Their capital was Petra, but apart from Bostra in the north, and some towns in Transjordan, the Negev, and a few settlements in the southern part of the kingdom, Nabataea was not urbanized. The kingdom initially remained independent after 64 BC, but it rapidly became an ally of Rome, partly in opposition to its enemy to the west, the Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt. Yet the Nabataeans continued to be remote from the centre of power, and survived the political turmoil of the Roman republic in spite of conflicts with Judaea and the political machinations of Herod.
	The wealth of the Nabataean kingdom is thought to have derived initially from the so-called ‘caravan’ trade with India via the Red Sea and the ‘incense routes’ from south Arabia, in which the Nabataeans acted as escorts and middlemen for exotic goods bound for the Mediterranean ports (although evidence for Nabataean merchants in south Arabia remains elusive). Petra was the main city on trade routes from southern Arabia to the Mediterranean, and through Transjordan. The presence of Indian pottery in excavations at Petra confirms the existence of trade with the east, but not its intensity. Nabataean involvement in this trade is thought to have waned with the development of alternative trade routes via Egypt or through Palmyra to the Persian Gulf, and Rome may have encouraged the use of these alternative routes after the disastrous military expedition to south Arabia led by Aelius Gallus, prefect of Egypt, in 25 BC, in which the empire tried to appropriate the Arabian overland network, without success. The failure was blamed on the Nabataean guides. Other sources of income than the ‘caravan’ trade are believed to account for the prosperity of the kingdom in the first century AD. One suggestion is that the increasingly sedentary lifestyle of the Nabataean population and its exploitation of hydraulic techniques for irrigation led to a boom in agriculture.
The Nabataean kingdom evolved a distinct cultural identity, writing in its own script, issuing royal coinages in both silver and bronze (other major Roman client states in the region issued only bronze), developing its own architectural styles (see chapter 8) and producing a distinctive fine ware pottery (‘eggshell ware’, the distribution and use of which seems to have been confined almost exclusively to the kingdom). The geographer Strabo portrays the Nabataeans as a prosperous and civilized society with minimal class divisions. His account may be romanticized, but archaeology attests to his claim that Nabataea could boast a highly developed culture. The site which became the Nabataean capital, Petra, advanced considerably under King Obodas III (c. 30-9 BC) and his successor Aretas IV (9 BC – c. AD 40). It was remote, being located on the edge of the high southern part of the Transjordan plateau, but the surrounding lands were sufficiently fertile to support the city. Although springs provided water for Petra, this supply had to be augmented by reservoirs and cisterns. The city is most famous for its huge funerary monuments, cut from the rocky cliff faces around its urban centre. The grandest of these appear to have served the cults of deceased Nabataean kings, prompting scholars to suggest that the city developed from a site sacred to the ruling dynasty. By the end of the first century AD it had acquired the accoutrements of a ‘Graeco-Roman’ city: a theatre, monumental temples and other public buildings, and a paved main street. From the positions of the few private houses so far uncovered, there appears to have been little in the way of formal planning outside the city centre - perhaps further evidence of the light social control exercised by the rulers. 
Fig. 27. General plan of the centre of Petra.
The reign of Aretas IV was the heyday of the Nabataean kingdom. Whether the Nabataeans reoccupied Damascus during his reign, as some have suggested, is uncertain. The evidence includes mention in the New Testament (II Corinthians 11.32) of the ‘ethnarch of Aretas the king’ in Damascus. Such a reoccupation could have occurred in the troubled times following the death of the Herodian Philip and the clashes between his brother Antipas and Aretas IV. Occupation of a city without Roman consent may be one of the reasons why Tiberius instructed the Syrian governor Lucius Vitellius to attack Aretas in 37. Vitellius was prevented from doing so by the emperor’s death in the same year, and Aretas survived a few more years before being succeeded by his son Malichus II (c. 40-70). We know little about Malichus, who makes his final appearance sending military assistance, like other client rulers, to the Romans during the Jewish war. Rabbel II, the last Nabataean king, succeeded in the same year (AD 70). Epigraphic evidence suggests he may have favoured the northern city of Bostra over Petra. If this is so, his choice may have had something to do with the waning of southern trade routes and the increasing emphasis on agricultural wealth - Bostra lay on the southern edge of the rich agricultural plain of the Hauran, and during the course of the first century AD is thought to have developed as a major centre for the northern part of the kingdom. But Bostra was not simply an agricultural town. It too was a centre for long-distance trade, located as it was at the head of an inland route from central Arabia up the Wadi Sirhan, running through the oasis of Azraq (situated some 80 kilometres (50 miles) south-east of Bostra).
	In AD 106 the kingdom was annexed. The collection of documents from the western side of the Dead Sea known as the Babatha archive spans the period of the annexation and shows how rapidly Roman institutions penetrated daily life (see chapters 5 and 8). That Nabataean distinctiveness declined after the Roman take-over suggests that the ruling dynasty played a large part to play in generating and organizing Nabataean identity over such a wide area.

The cities of Syria and the Near East
The distinction between Roman rule through indirect control of client rulers and direct control of the cities is to some degree misleading. Both forms of rule were indirect, because Rome was unable to dominate her empire through intensive direct government. There were simply too few state representatives to perform such a task, so she resorted to a form of control using local political entities, great and small. Local governments were expected to maintain order in the areas under their jurisdiction, arrange for the collection of taxes, and oversee the production and distribution of foodstuffs in their territories. Of all forms of local government, the Romans had a marked preference for the city state, and in the eastern Mediterranean the model for this was the Greek polis. Effectively the polis was the definition of a city. By declaring the cities of Syria ‘free’, Pompey linked the notion of the Greek-style city state with Roman rule in the new province from the very beginning. Cities in particular were fundamental to the structure of Roman power and the fabric of provincial space.
A city was a settlement that was recognized by the government as having civic status. It was an institutional concept, not a physical distinction, and therefore civic status did not necessarily have anything to do with settlement size or monumentality. Cities were both large and small. Some were wealthy, and others were comparatively poor. Some villages were as large, and therefore probably as rich, as some cities, and some villages had monuments of the sort one might expect to find in a city. So villages or towns might resemble cities, even if they did not have the same status. This means that a settlement could be city-like (for example, the late Roman fortress of Zenobia on the Euphrates, with its massive defences, bath building, two basilicas and other monumental structures, including colonnaded streets) without officially being one (Zenobia was a dependency of Sergiopolis, a settlement of similar size and monumentality to Zenobia). Villages might have elaborate systems of self-government and magistracies that resembled those of the cities (though admittedly the evidence for this is debated - see chapter 5). Some small cities had village-sized territories, and some were nothing more than villages that had been raised to civic status. Smaller cities, although constitutionally independent, might depend economically on larger ones. This means that the resources on which a larger city could draw might include the territories of any smaller and economically weaker neighbours. Consequently a city might be easy to define in constitutional and legal terms, but more difficult to distinguish in other ways. A certain degree of monumentality, and a particular set of buildings might be expected (see chapter 7), and these no doubt helped persuade inhabitants and visitors alike that a place deserved its civic status, but that status did not depend on them. Certain acts, such as the issue of civic coins, were confined to settlements that had the status of a polis. The right to celebrate Greek festivals was also restricted to cities. Documentary evidence (inscriptions, civic coins and so on) allows us to determine which settlements were cities, but generally these tell us little about what sort of places they were. As we shall see below, size clearly did matter: it helped determine a city’s position within a hierarchy, and that position brought benefits.

A Macedonian New World?
Beroea; Chalcis; Pella; Axius; Pieria: Cities, rivers, regions. With such names Hellenistic rulers and colonists appropriated features of the Syrian landscape. The names were not arbitrary signifiers, devoid of any ideological content. They were those of places in Macedonia or Greece, the homelands of the conquerors. In renaming it, the conquerors took over the Syrian landscape and its history. 
A sceptic might ask whether this renaming had any impact on the original inhabitants of the land. The question underestimates the power of names, and the ability of new names to subvert and suppress indigenous knowledge. Renaming is a colonial act of ‘symbolic violence’ aimed at the landscape, ‘the moment when the [cultural] space is shaped and reorientated by the gaze of the foreigner’. If new names become the ‘official’ nomenclature, this forces indigenous names to persist through subversion and, potentially, the creation of an alternative landscape.
The names were Greek or Macedonian, but they did not attempt to distinguish the new from the original. Syrian Beroea was not distinguished from the Macedonian city of the same name by being named ‘New Beroea’ or such like. The two cities were, perhaps, parallel places, both equally cities which were inhabited by Beroeans, without the need for a distinction. There were sometimes broad similarities in the physical situations of the ‘parallel’ cities and places. When a group of Thessalian cavalry was settled on the strategic site next to the Orontes river in the late fourth century BC, did naming their settlement Larissa derive from nostalgic sentiment for the Larissa next to the River Peneios in their homeland, or was the landscape itself imagined as a kind of parallel Thessaly? Questions like this may be impossible to answer, and it is in any case unclear whether the colonists or the kings were responsible for the new names. The impact of the Macedonian renaming was predominantly psychological, having little or no effect on the physical environment, but there is no reason to suppose that it was superficial.
Macedonian colonialism was strongest in the north of Syria, where it was greatly reinforced by Seleucus I, who promoted and maintained a city-based culture there; as yet there is limited evidence for settlements in the south at the beginning of the Hellenistic period. It is likely that the renaming of cities using Macedonian place names belongs to the generation before Seleucus I, when Antigonus the One-Eyed controlled northern Syria. The Seleucid foundations broke with this earlier tradition by being given dynastic names, providing a clear identity with the empire (chapter 1). Unlike the ‘parallel’ cities of the earlier period, these dynastic cities did have qualifying epithets - Apamea on the Axius (Orontes), or Laodicea by the Sea. When the Seleucids drove the Ptolemies out of Phoenicia and the south, they acquired the coastal and inland settlements of the Lebanon range and Palestine, giving dynastic names to some of these. The Ptolemies had also given dynastic names to cities there, but the character of these settlements in the third century for the most part eludes us. Not all settlements with Seleucid or Ptolemaic dynastic names had civic status, and some may have been nothing more than forts. But the renaming, whether Macedonian, Ptolemaic or Seleucid, was a consequence of violence and conquest.
Once suitably transformed, the conquerors’ history and myths could be applied to the landscape. The springs west of Antioch became Daphne, named after the daughter of the Arcadian river-god Ladon, who was the unwilling target of Apollo’s advances, and, on praying for help, was transformed into a bay tree. In such ways a Greek past could be created for a place, and Syria made a part of Greece (see chapter 8).
	Many of these names and ‘histories’ persisted throughout the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and were abandoned only after the Muslim conquest. This implies that they were intimately bound up with the Greek culture of the region, and shows us how Rome drew on that Greek culture during the seven centuries of her rule in Syria and the Near East. The fact that these names and legends were often abandoned under the caliphs is no indication of the hollowness of the Greek tradition in the region during the Roman period, but rather of an important cultural discontinuity at its end, when the old traditions no longer served as a source of legitimacy (see pp. 000-000).

Pecking-orders
Urban development in the Hellenistic period provided the framework for civic evolution in the Roman era. Some cities were clearly more favoured within the Roman imperial system than others, such that by the heyday of the monumental city in the second century AD the network of Syrian cities comprised a fairly well-defined hierarchy, with certain centres often receiving benefits at the expense of their neighbours. This hierarchy emerged after the fragmented patchwork of Syrian states was incorporated into the empire in the first century BC. No doubt a hierarchy of cities had existed under the Seleucids, particularly in the north of Syria, but the decline of Seleucid control had led to the division of political power among many different centres. With the Roman annexation the cities became part of a single imperial system in which rewards and advancements were centrally regulated, and there was no opportunity for a city to aggrandize itself through conquest (though it might do so through trade). Competition was accepted, but only through the mediating influence of Roman authority. Titles and honours were sought from the emperors. The honours were not necessarily empty gestures, for favoured cities could also gain greater economic advantages than their less-favoured neighbours. Imperial indulgences included the right to hold celebrations of the imperial cult or Greek cultural festivals, and gifts which might range from buildings to regular donations of corn (fig. 74), or tax concessions. Famous cities attracted wealthy patrons, eager to be seen as conspicuous benefactors donating buildings or endowing cultural events. Small cities, on the other hand, were vulnerable. In physical appearance they might be difficult to distinguish from large villages, and were in danger of reverting to village status if they were unable to perform the civic tasks Rome expected of them.
While one may question whether Rome regarded its provinces as having capitals (because governors did not reside continuously in any one city and were expected to undertake regular tours of their province during their period of office), certain provincial cities tended to come out on top, and remained there for the entire period of Roman rule. So even if one should avoid calling Antioch the capital of the Roman province of Syria, there can be little doubt that it was from the very beginning the most favoured city of that province. As the province of Syria was subdivided, so other cities emerged in first place in their respective provinces: Tyre in Syria Phoenice, Caesarea in Syria Palaestina, Damascus in Libanensis, Apamea in Syria Secunda. But Antioch managed to remain in the lead by adopting a new role, that of imperial capital. As we have seen in chapter 2, from the second century onwards emperors used the city as a base when campaigning in the east, and during the late third and fourth centuries the rulers were often in prolonged residence there.
From the very beginning of Roman rule Antioch had held the title metropolis, ‘mother city’. The term was originally used to describe a city which had sent out colonists, and had therefore mothered new cities. Tyre, as the founder of Phoenician colonies like Carthage, could regard itself as metropolis in this respect. Under Roman rule metropolis became a title bestowed by the emperor, and to be one was to be a member of a highly exclusive club of cities. But if the title had an administrative meaning in the early years of the province, it is difficult to discern one. Coins show that in the late first century Tyre also became an official metropolis, then, by the reign of Hadrian, Samosata and Damascus had acquired the title. There seems to be some connection between the use of metropolis and a city’s role as a centre for the imperial cult (on which, see chapter 9). Consequently the use of the title metropolis in the second century seems to provide an indication of which cities were pre-eminent in the region. Even so, the absence of the title is not always a reliable guide to the unimportance of a city. In Arabia, Petra used the title from or not long after the annexation of Arabia in 106, but Bostra, which was equally important in the province, did not acquire it until the third century. Likewise the major city of Caesarea Maritima did not acquire the title until the reign of Severus Alexander (AD 222-35).
These ‘front-line’ positions might be disputed. The most successful challenger to Antioch’s position was its rival Laodicea ad Mare, which after the civil war and Septimius Severus’ defeat of Pescennius Niger in AD 194 was rewarded for its support of the victor by being promoted to metropolis. As was mentioned in chapter 2, Antioch was demoted to village status and placed in the territory of Laodicea. Its dignity was restored shortly afterwards, but Laodicea managed to retain its new title. A similar situation occurred in the new province of Syria Phoenice, where Berytus disputed Tyre’s pre-eminent position. However, Berytus backed the wrong contender (Niger), and after Severus’ victory Tyre’s position was strengthened. But a couple of decades later, under Elagabalus (218-22), Tyre supported a rebellion and (if the evidence of the coins is to be believed) lost its title to its other major rival, Sidon, which had evidently remained loyal. As with Antioch, Tyre’s disgrace did not last long, and it was soon returned to its former status. 
The presence of the title metropolis would seem to be a useful index of a city’s position in the provincial hierarchy, but this is not always so. Elagabalus gave the title to his native city of Emesa, but coins issued there by the usurper Uranius Antoninus (c. AD 253-4) suggest that the title was subsequently lost, and Seleucia Pieria was also a metropolis by the reign of Severus Alexander. It is hard to see how these cities fitted into any official hierarchy, although they may be evidence of attempts to challenge that hierarchy by appeals to particular emperors. In the fourth century the title came to be used to describe the chief city of the province, whose bishop had jurisdiction over all the other bishops in his province. This new definition is well illustrated by an episode in the fifth century. Once again, it was the product of rivalries between cities. Following the ‘Robber Council’ of Ephesus in 449 (on which, see chapter 9), the emperor Theodosius II was petitioned by Bishop Eustathius of Berytus for the right to consecrate bishops in the coastal cities of the province which lay to the north of his see. Theodosius granted Berytus ‘metropolitan dignity’ equal to that of Tyre, explaining: ‘Let [Tyre] be “mother of the province” by the kindness of our ancestors, and let [Berytus] (be) by ours, and let each enjoy similar rank.’ A little while later Photius, bishop of Tyre, complained to Theodosius’ successor Marcian. The emperor ruled that Berytus’ promotion was irregular and had effectively divided the province in two. But he could not overturn the rescript of Theodosius so easily. The problem was resolved by allowing Berytus to retain the title metropolis but stripping it of any administrative meaning, and restoring to Tyre its full rights as the ‘true metropolis’. 
This episode illustrates how a city of the first rank could have its position challenged by a contender. The position of Tyre could be disputed by Berytus or Sidon, and that of Antioch by Laodicea. In these cases the differences in size and wealth between contenders were perhaps not all that great, except that the honours given to the first-rank cities brought greater benefits. But in general it seems that once a city had achieved pre-eminence, it was very difficult for a contender to wrest it away successfully and permanently. The imperial system achieved stability through ancestral privileges rather than other mechanisms such as economic impetus.
Titles provide us with one means of reconstructing the hierarchy of Syrian and Near Eastern cities. But they depend very heavily on accidents of survival: issues of civic coins or inscriptions which bear the titles, or the occasional mention of a city in a papyrus. It is also instructive to look at the extent of the physical remains at the various sites, to see how well they correlate with other sorts of evidence. One approach to city ranking is to examine the sizes of the areas enclosed by the cities’ walls (fig. 28). The largest, Antioch, was gigantic compared to most other cities. However, Antioch was not alone among the ‘super-cities’ of the province. The defended areas of Antioch’s sister cities of the Tetrapolis, Laodicea, Seleucia and Apamea, were almost as impressive. These four foundations all enclosed areas substantially larger than the other cities, and this is perhaps why only a city like Laodicea could seriously challenge Antioch’s position in the hierarchy of honours. It also illustrates the absurdity of the Severan demotion of Antioch to a village of Laodicea, and why that position could not be maintained for more than a couple of years at the most. The other cities shown in fig. 28 are all ‘monumentalized’, having an array of public buildings and colonnades, and may represent a middle-range type, albeit significantly smaller than the Tetrapolis centres. Palmyra’s early walls enclosed an area much larger than the others (see fig. 97), but its inhabited area was on a scale comparable to the others and its later walls enclosed an area similar in size to the middle-range cities (colour plate 12). The defended areas of cities like Berytus, Sidon and Tyre are likely to have been of similar proportions, although at present their circuits cannot be traced with any confidence. Each one of these was a potential competitor of the other. However, there were certainly cities much smaller than these, such as Laodicea ad Libanum in the Orontes valley (fig. 29), which were no bigger than some of the larger villages known. 
Fig. 28. The defended areas of Syrian and Near Eastern cities, to the same scale (1 cm = 500 m). 28.1. Antioch. 28.2. Apamea. 28.3. Damascus. 28.4. Palmyra. 28.5. Philippopolis. 28.6. Heliopolis. 28.7. Bostra. 28.9. Gerasa. 28.10. Caesarea. 28.11. Sebaste.
Fig. 29. The city of Laodicea ad Libanum (Tell Nebi Mend), with its acropolis and lower city wall, compared to some late Roman sites: from left to right, the village of Kapropera (el-Bara), the city of Sergiopolis (Resafa), and the village of Umm al-Jimal (ancient name uncertain).  Scale: 1 cm = 500 m.
One problem with this type of analysis is that not all of the areas enclosed by the city walls were necessarily built up, and therefore the defended area does not give any indication of the populousness of a city. Fortifications sometimes had to incorporate strategically weak points, or provide a link between an acropolis and the settlement, leaving large empty areas in between. Antioch’s walls enclosed the high ridge of Mount Silpius which overlooked the city, and it is unlikely that the steep western slope which lay within the city fortifications was much settled. Nor does this sort of analysis give any impression of the extent of extra-mural settlement, or changes in the extent of intra-mural settlement over time. By the fifth and sixth centuries Caesarea was enlarged to about twice the size shown on the plan. At Palmyra the defended area was reduced in size between the first and fourth centuries, although much of the area encompassed by the early walls was probably open rather than heavily built up.
Another, complementary approach is to examine expenditure on public monuments. The fragmentary nature of our knowledge precludes any detailed analysis of this sort, but a measure of monumentalization could perhaps be determined by the length of a city’s main colonnaded street, where it is known or can be estimated. This of course does not take into account the fact that most of the cities listed had more than one colonnaded street, or that the coastal cities, which are not represented in this list, had colonnades of expensive imported stone. Nor does it allow for the fact that certain cities, such as Dura Europus (fig. 112b), had no colonnaded streets at all. Nevertheless it does give some impression of relative wealth, and the ranking is not unexpected (fig. 30). The distribution does not form a steep curve, which we might expect from a very strongly differentiated hierarchy. Once again the Tetrapolis cities emerge as the clear leaders, with Antioch having the longest monumental street (though Apamea’s was wider). The middle-range cities all have colonnades of roughly similar lengths, although Petra’s is perhaps rather shorter than might be expected. The very smallest cities may not have had colonnaded thoroughfares.
Fig. 30. The length (in metres) of the main colonnaded streets in some cities of Syria and the Near East.
	The large number of middle-range cities suggests that many Syrian cities of the early empire, most of which had been established long before Roman rule, were successful. The smaller ones, which might be termed the ‘losers’ in the struggle, are for the most part very imperfectly known. Laodicea ad Libanum maintained its civic status throughout the period of Roman rule, but it remained small (fig. 29). Many of the settlements which achieved independent city status under Rome were probably villages which had been dependent on the larger cities during the Hellenistic period, and few of these new cities were as successful as their older neighbours. The Hellenistic kings would perhaps have been reluctant to promote small settlements with restricted hinterlands to the status of city, whereas the Romans were content to do so, suggesting that the Roman interest in urban development differed somewhat from that of the Seleucids or Ptolemies. 
Access to resources was a key factor in sustaining the urban hierarchy. The large and middle-range cities are spaced widely apart, and are confined to agriculturally rich areas (Palmyra being the notable exception). Few were less than a day’s travel from their neighbours (see fig. 43). Their hinterlands were extensive and the cities could support large populations, using the foodstuffs and materials produced there either for their own consumption or for exchange with other cities. Unless they were deprived of their lands for some political misdemeanour, this greater access to resources ensured that they remained ahead of their smaller neighbours. Small cities are found either in the drier steppe, where agricultural resources were much poorer, or on more fertile lands but in close proximity to other cities. By the late Roman period there were concentrations of small cities in fertile regions of the northern Hauran, along the Orontes valley and the coast, and in Palestine. Many of these are unlikely to have possessed large territories, and consequently the reserves on which they could draw were much more restricted.
	All attempts to estimate the populations of the cities are little more than guesswork, based on general measurements of scale such as those outlined above. Compared to modern cities, however, they were small. The largest, Antioch, perhaps had as many as 250,000 inhabitants. Other Tetrapolis cities could have contained around 50,000-100,000 (the Augustan census in Syria recorded 125,000 citizens in Apamea and its territory in AD 6). The middle-range cities may have had populations of 20,000 or less, and the smaller ones may not have contained more than 5000. The larger villages could boast population figures comparable to those of the minor cities. The village of Umm al-Jimal at its height in the sixth century is thought to have housed between 6000 and 8000 people.

Urbanization: Instrument of Empire?
The fact that a polis could not make itself enabled Rome to manipulate the political geography of Syria, by confirming some centres as cities but denying this power to other settlements. It is clear from documentary sources that emperors saw the growth and multiplication cities as a measure of success. Even so, there is not much evidence for direct imperial involvement in urbanization in Syria and the Near East during the early empire. In any case it is not always easy to discern whose initiative led to the foundation, refoundation or elevation of smaller settlements to city status. The number of cities increased under Roman rule as villages were raised to cities, or old city settlements which had fallen on hard times were resettled and developed, yet when it comes to deciding whether emperors were proactive in pursuing a policy of urbanization by creating new urban centres, or merely reactive, supporting their autonomous multiplication by responding to petitions from the inhabitants, the evidence is often ambiguous. There were very few new foundations that can be directly attributed to imperial initiative. The clearest example is Philippopolis, founded in the Hauran c. 244, presumably on the orders of the emperor Philip (244-9), at a site which is thought to have been his birthplace. Late Roman fortresses in the regions most likely to be attacked by the Sasanians were sometimes granted city status, which might reflect imperial interests. But for some scholars, the claim that the emperors had a long-term policy or strategy of urbanization in Syria is pushing the evidence further than it will allow. At the very least, the proliferation of cities under Rome can be attributed to the imperial preference for this form of local government. In that sense the growth of urbanism was regulated and supported by Rome, and the emperors were proponents of urbanism.
	Some modern claims concerning Roman urbanization strategies are even harder to substantiate. For example, there is little to suggest that the Roman colonies in Syria had any special strategic purpose (on these, see chapter 7). With the notable exception of Berytus, all other colonies in the region seem to have lost any Latin character that they possessed as the descendants of the legionary veterans became assimilated into the local population. While in other less urbanized parts of the Roman world colonies could be regarded as instruments of urbanization, this is clearly not the case for Syria and the Near East. 
	Nor was the Roman record entirely one of successes. Some Syrian cities declined. Dura Europus was completely abandoned in the mid-third century, and Zeugma, which also suffered destruction during the same invasion by the Sasanians, was clearly a different sort of urban centre in AD 350 from the one it had been in 250. If some of the sources are to be believed, Emesa went into decline in the late Roman period, although this decline (if it occurred at all) was probably shortlived (see p. 000). But these failures were to some degree compensated for by the creation of new cities. However, the new cities of the later empire were for the most part small and may have contributed to increasing political fragmentation in the region rather than cohesion (though such fragmentation could have suited the Roman authorities, if they found a divide-and-rule strategy useful). Again, the ambitions of locals, desirous of seeing their village elevated to city status, and a government willing to acquiesce to their demands, may have been the driving force behind the spread of some of these later cities.

The Progress of Urbanism
Different conceptions and features of the ancient city are examined in chapter 7. Before that it is necessary to provide a brief introduction to the cities of Syria and the Near East during the period of Roman rule. Here we confine ourselves to ‘greater Syria’ in the geographical sense, even though this was not always coterminous with the Roman provinces of Syria. It should be recalled that in its early years the Syrian province included eastern Cilicia, with great cities like Tarsus, Anazarbus and Aegeae. These were removed from Syria under Vespasian, and are not included in this brief survey. 
Fig. 31. The cities of northern Syria.
The Pompeian annexation brought northern Syria, the Phoenician coast and the inland enclave of the Decapolis under direct Roman administration. It is probably no coincidence that these areas happened to be the most urbanized parts of Syria. The majority of cities in the north were Macedonian or Seleucid foundations, the most famous of these being the four cities of the Tetrapolis (Antioch, Seleucia, Apamea and Laodicea). All four had been founded by Seleucus I between 301 and 299 BC. On the coast, at the foot of the Amanus range, he dedicated the city of Seleucia in Pieria (in honour of himself); further south, a natural harbour proved a suitable site for the foundation of Laodicea (named for his mother Laodice). Inland, at points controlling the Orontes river and routes into the Syrian interior, he founded Antioch (named after his father Antiochus) and, further up river, the well-fortified Macedonian colony called Pella was refounded as Apamea (for Seleucus’ Persian wife Apama). The Tetrapolis centres were conceived as large cities from the time of their foundation, although Antioch (modern Antakya) emerged as the biggest by the mid-second century BC. As the Seleucid empire declined and other royal cities in Asia Minor and Babylonia were lost, Antioch became the focus for royal power. Its situation, at the bottle-neck of a fertile though swampy inland plain, with a mild Mediterranean climate and a navigable passage along the Orontes to the sea, made it a suitable capital. Close to Antioch was the suburb of Daphne (modern Harbiye), with its grove sacred to Apollo and Artemis, which in the Roman period was renowned for its pleasant climate, wealthy patrons and lavish villas. 
The city of Seleucia in Pieria (a now-abandoned site near the modern village of Cevlik) lay on a site where streams from the mountains above flow into the sea. The mountain behind the city was called Pieria after the mountainous region in Macedonia, and from this Seleucia derived its epithet. The coast around the mouth of the Orontes was exposed and unsuitable for anchoring large ships, so Seleucia was provided with an artificial harbour. The city itself occupied a large area spread over several natural terraces on a slope facing towards the sea. Under the Romans it became an important base for the Syrian fleet, and for emperors visiting Syria it was often the first port of call. 
The other Tetrapolis port, Laodicea (Latakia), was also provided with an artificial harbour. In the Roman period its lighthouse was probably its most famous monument, being depicted on the city’s coins together with the personification of the fortune (Tyche) of Laodicea (fig. 93.1). The city remains an important Mediterranean port to this day, and consequently its archaeology is the least known among the sister cities, being covered by the modern town. To the south of Laodicea were three small coastal ports: Gabala (Jebleh), Paltus (Arab al-Mulk) and Balanea (renamed Leucas under Claudius, the modern Banias). The fourth Tetrapolis city lay inland, beyond the Bargylus range of mountains, overlooking the marshy valley of the Ghab through which the Orontes flows. Apamea (Qalaat al-Mudiq) occupied a plateau on the eastern side of this valley, which according to Strabo earned it the nickname Cherronesos (‘Peninsula’). Under the Seleucids it was a major arsenal and military training centre, but its floruit was in the Roman period, as its extensive and monumental ruins testify. 
Fig. 32. General plan of the city of Apamea. The city’s Roman walls were constructed on the foundations of the earlier Seleucid defences, maintaining the size and form of the city through Roman times.
Most of the other settlements with city status in the Orontes valley are known by little more than name and a few references in ancient sources. Their status during the early years of the province is not always clear. The Thessalian colony of Larissa (Shaizar) issued coins in the early first century BC, by which time it had presumably achieved city status. Further upstream were Epiphanea (Hama), and then two centres associated with the tribe of the Emisenoi, Arethusa (ar-Rastan) and Emesa (Homs). As we have seen, Arethusa seems to have gained its independence from Emesa under Octavian/Augustus, but Emesa remained under the control of the local dynasty for almost another century. Above Emesa lay Laodicea ad Libanum (Tell Nebi Mend), which appears in some Roman sources as ‘Scabiosa’, an epithet meaning rough or scabby; one suggestion is that this has to do with malarial conditions prevailing there in ancient times. Mariamme (Miryamin) is listed as a city by Pliny the Elder, and features in late Roman lists, although it did not issue coins and little is known of it in Roman times. Another settlement in the Orontes valley, Seleucia ad Belum or Seleucobelus (a site not securely located, but thought to be in the vicinity of Apamea) may also have had civic status at this time; it certainly did in the late Roman period.
North and east of the Tetrapolis region was a broad arc of fertile land stretching to the Euphrates. Part of this belonged to the kingdom of Commagene at the time of Pompey, but there were also a number of settlements outside the kingdom which appear to have enjoyed the rank of city under the Seleucids and continued to do so under the Romans. Immediately north of Antioch lay Nicopolis of Seleucis (Islahiye), an obscure city in the valley of the Kara Su, which issued coins in the second and third centuries AD, but not before. Its neighbour, Gindarus (Ain Dara), never issued coins. The geographer Strabo described the latter place as a polis in the first century BC, but five centuries later Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus, describes it as a village in the territory of Antioch, although it had a bishop in the fourth century.
	The city of Cyrrhus itself was a Hellenistic foundation which occupied a now abandoned site called Nabi Huri, on a hillside overlooking the Sabun Suyu, a tributary of the River Afrin. It may have been a pre-Macedonian settlement. Chalcis (Nabi Iss, medieval Qinnesrin) and Beroea (Aleppo) certainly were, as attested by their large tells. The medieval street plan of Aleppo is thought to preserve a rectilinear grid laid out in Hellenistic times at the foot of the tell. Hierapolis (Mambij), the ‘Holy City’, was a name given by the Seleucids to an important cult centre which seems to have been called Mambog or Mabbug by Aramaic speakers. The site has scarcely been explored, but literary sources make it clear that Hierapolis remained important in the Roman period, both as a cult centre and as a mustering-place for legions preparing to invade Mesopotamia. The only other city in Roman territory of the Pompeian period this far east is Europus (Carchemish) on the Euphrates.
	Another important group of urban centres of the time of Pompey comprised the Phoenician city states of the coast. The most significant northern Phoenician city was Aradus. It occupied a low offshore island, about 10 metres (33 feet) above sea level at its highest point. Aradus had a long tradition of independence, having gained autonomy from the Seleucids as early as 259 BC, and was in the Hellenistic period a major commercial centre as well as possessing a formidable fleet. At the time of the Roman annexation it appears to have dominated the smaller coastal cities of Marathus, Balanea, Paltus and Gabala, but these regained their independence in the decades that followed. By the second century AD a mainland dependency of Aradus, called Antaradus (Tartus), had become the major centre for the region, and by the late Roman period had eclipsed Aradus itself.
Fig. 33. The cities of southern Syria, Palestine/Judaea, and Arabia.
Further south lay the little city of Orthosia (Ard Artusi), whose remains have yet to be explored, and Tripolis (modern Tripoli), a Phoenician city which the sources claim was founded under Persian rule by the three cities of Tyre, Sidon and Aradus (hence its Greek name). It was located on a broad, low promontory with a well-protected harbour on its southern side. The small city of Botrys (Batroun) was situated on the coast just south of the high cliffs of Cape Theoprosopon (modern Ras Chekka), and further along the coast was the ancient port of Byblus (Jbeil). Although an important power in the Bronze Age, Byblus appears to have been relatively unimportant by the Hellenistic period. It clearly revived under Roman rule, and acquired the regular trappings of a monumental coastal city in the second century.
Berytus was a minor Phoenician city which grew in importance under Seleucid domination. Its development was arrested in the 140s BC when it was sacked during a Seleucid civil war and little is known about the site until veterans from two Roman legions were settled there under Augustus. The Augustan arrangement gave Berytus an immense territory, which included a large part of the Lebanon range and the Massyas (Bekaa) valley. Of all the cities in Syria, Berytus was regarded as the most ‘Roman’ in character. The original legionary settlers no doubt established its Roman quality, but from the third century AD it became an important centre for the study of Roman law, which probably helped to preserve its Latin features in later centuries. 
Sidon had been one of the major cities of Phoenicia in the Achaemenid and Hellenistic periods. It was situated on a low promontory, with harbours to the north and south. Its architectural remains suggest that it remained a city of some note in the Roman period, but it seems to have been overshadowed by its neighbours Berytus and Tyre. Sidon’s territory is thought to have been large, extending over the Lebanon range as far as Mount Hermon.
The city of Tyre had once been an island offshore like Aradus. Alexander the Great had built a causeway out to the island to besiege it in 331 BC, and in the centuries that followed the shallows around the causeway had silted up, transforming Tyre into a peninsula. By the Roman period the area of the causeway was broad enough to accommodate the city’s hippodrome (fig. 113). It too had an extensive hinterland, stretching east to the Huleh valley. With Severus’ division of the province of Syria Tyre became the chief city of Syria Phoenice, and, from the fourth century, of Phoenice Paralia or Prima.
The Phoenician city of Akko had been renamed Ptolemais under the Ptolemies. In the mid- to later second century BC the city featured as a southern capital and an occasional residence for Seleucid kings. It became a Roman colony in the reign of Claudius, and like Berytus legionary veterans were settled there (see chapter 7).
Many of the cities further south had fallen under the influence of the Hasmonaeans of Judaea by the time of the Roman annexation. The only coastal port of note to maintain its independence was Ascalon. Pompey and his successors restored the ‘freedom’ of the subject cities, but not all of them managed to survive as city states after the first century BC. Those that did included Dora (Tel Dor), Gaba (Tel Shush), Samaria (refounded by Herod as Sebaste), Strato’s Tower (refounded by Herod as Caesarea), Gaza, Anthedon (Blakhiyeh), and Raphia (Tel Rafah). To commemorate their restoration they sometimes adopted the names of those governors who had honoured them, thereby advertising Roman approbation of their civic status. The inland settlement of Samaria adopted the name Gabinia after Aulus Gabinius, governor 57-55 BC, and further north Gaba became Philippia after Marcius Philippus, who was the first senatorially appointed governor of Syria in 59 BC. Their independent status was shortlived, as most of them were given to Herod (under whom a number of Pompey’s ‘free’ cities appear to been reduced to administrative dependencies, and were not revived as cities after his death). They were inherited by Herod’s successors, except for Gaza, which was attached to Syria, forming part of a tiny enclave in the south along with Raphia and the free city of Ascalon until the annexation of Judaea in AD 6.
The only other urbanized area of note under direct Roman control at the time of Pompey was the Decapolis. Though the name, ‘Ten Cities’, implies some institutional arrangement, it was never an official league or alliance of cities. The term was used to describe an enclave of highly Hellenized city states, a part of the province of Syria and therefore (in theory at least) directly administered by Rome, but which in the early years of the province was entirely surrounded by the Nabataean, Herodian and Ituraean client states. Our sources, where they bother to mention the Decapolis cities separately, do not agree which made up the ten. Pliny the Elder lists the Decapolis cities as Damascus, Canatha (Qanawat), Scythopolis (Beth Shean), Pella (Tabaqat el-Fahil: colour plate 20), Gadara (Umm Qais), Hippus (Qalaat el-Husn), Dium (al-Husn?), Philadelphia (‘Amman), Gerasa (Jerash), and an unknown city called Raphana; but he acknowledged that ‘not all persons give the same cities in their lists’. Raphana may be Capitolias (Beit Ras), a city south of Abila (Tell Abil) which issued coins in the second century using an era beginning in AD 98. To this list must be added Abila itself, not mentioned by Pliny, but using a civic dating era beginning with Pompey’s annexation (on the use of city eras, see chapter 4). An inscription of AD 133/134 calls it ‘Abila of the Decapolis’. Pompey restored a number of these cities to independence after a period of Hasmonaean domination, as is evidenced by the use of ‘Pompeian’ dating eras at Abila, Canatha, Dium, Gadara (fig. 37), Gerasa, Hippus, Scythopolis, Pella and Philadelphia. By the second century AD some of these cities were advertising their Greek origins by claiming Hellenistic kings as founders. Capitolias and Gerasa claimed Alexander the Great, while Abila avowed both Alexander and Seleucus (fig. 119). By intermittently using its old dynastic name Antiochia during the Roman period Gerasa also linked itself with the Seleucids. Other cities aligned themselves more fully with Roman rule. Though clearly very Hellenized and called by its native poet Meleager (second to first centuries BC) ‘Attica in the land of the Assyrians’ the city of Gadara, located on a high promontory overlooking the sea of Galilee and Yarmuk valley, adopted the name Pompeia. Canatha’s early history is obscure, but the city is called Gabinia on its coins minted during the second and third centuries AD, presumably after Aulus Gabinius. Pella took the additional name Philippia, probably referring to Marcius Philippus as benefactor. Not all of these Decapolis cities maintained their independence from the kingdoms around them in the decades following the Roman annexation. Gadara, Hippus and Canatha were given to Herod, and Philadelphia was possibly under Nabataean rule for part of the first century BC. Many of the cities were attached to the new province of Arabia in AD 106, but during the second and third centuries the civic coins of Abila, Dium, Gadara, Pella, Philadelphia and Scythopolis proclaim these cities to be ‘of Coele Syria’. This may not be a reference to the Roman administrative province, but to a ‘province’ of the imperial cult (see chapter 9). Following the creation of the three provinces of Palestine in the late Roman period Philadelphia, Gerasa and Canatha remained in Arabia while the rest of the Decapolis cities were given to Palaestina Secunda.
Damascus had a chequered history in the late Hellenistic and early Roman periods. The city occupied level ground east of the Antilebanon range, in what would have been dry steppe, were it not for the Chrysoroas river (Barada), which flows from the mountains to form an oasis. Like its Phoenician neighbours to the west Damascus probably had a very large territory. The city was subject to the Nabataeans in the early first century BC, but later fell to Tigranes. Coins with Cleopatra’s portrait were issued here and Damascus is therefore presumed to have been among those cities given to her by Antony. It may have returned temporarily to Nabataean rule in the first century AD (see above), but by the reign of Nero (54-68) it was back under Roman control. Coins of Hadrian indicate that it acquired the title metropolis in the first half of the second century, and that of colonia by the reign of Severus Alexander (222-35). In the fourth century it was the chief city of the province of Libanensis.
	As client kingdoms gave way to direct Roman control, other cities were brought into the province. Commagene, annexed in AD 72, occupied a prime position on routes to Melitene, Anatolia, Syria and Mesopotamia, but it was evidently not heavily urbanized under its kings and remained that way under Roman rule. Inscriptions of the reign of Septimius Severus on a bridge over the River Chabinas (fig. 11) near the Commagenian royal sanctuary at Arsameia-on-the-Nymphaeus (Eski Kahta) mention ‘four cities’ of Commagene. The identity of the four is uncertain, but it presumably included the former royal city, Samosata (Samsat). Other possible contenders are Doliche (Dülük), Germanicia (Marash), and perhaps Perrhe (Pirin), or Antioch-on-the-Euphrates, also known as Urima (site uncertain, but north of Zeugma). Samosata was located on the Euphrates between the confluence of the Nymphaeus (Kahta river) and Singas (Gksu river). Its acropolis consisted of a large tell, on the western side of which stood the lower city, surrounded by a fortified wall. Excavations revealed a large residence on the tell, which may have been a palace, with gilded column capitals, frescoes, mosaics and sculpture. The plan of the city remains uncertain, and although a legionary base existed at or near the site, its location is unknown. Zeugma, ‘the Bridge’ (modern Belkis), was probably founded by Seleucus I, and occupied the site of an important Euphrates crossing. It originally consisted of two settlements, one on each bank, called Seleucia and Apamea (fig. 3), but only Seleucia seems to have survived as a city into the Roman period. Zeugma, as it became known, may have been detached from the kingdom of Commagene in the first century BC or at the time of the kingdom’s annexation under Tiberius, and in the first century AD it is recorded as a legionary base. Rescue excavations at the end of the twentieth century (aimed at recording and salvaging before a third of the site was inundated by the Birecik Dam) revealed that the city prospered in the first two and a half centuries of our era, but never fully recovered from its sack by Shapur in the 250s. 
Fig. 34.1. Coin of Zeugma of the reign of Philip I (AD 244-9), showing a temple on a tall hill. BMC 29. 34.2. The same hill dominates the site of Zeugma.
	The city of Emesa is thought to have been annexed to the empire in the second half of the first century, along with the kingdom of the same name. Its subsequent history is very uncertain. The city first issued coins during the reign of Antoninus Pius (AD 138-61), although virtually nothing else is known of the settlement at that date. Emesa was best known for its temple of the god Elagabal, which contemporaries marvelled at, but all trace of this has completely disappeared. It may never have been a large city during Roman rule. In the fourth century the Antiochene writer Libanius noted that it had declined, and was ‘no longer a city’, although it continued to behave like one, sending ambassadors and crowns to emperors. In spite of his gloomy description Emesa quite clearly retained its city status, and it managed to gain metropolitan autonomy from its rival, the provincial metropolis Damascus, in the fifth century. The sixth century Life of St Simeon the Fool gives us a vivid glimpse into contemporary life there.
	In the Ituraean heartlands cities were few, perhaps reflecting a preference for a more diffused social structure of villages. Only the chief centres gained full civic status. Arca minted coins (a sign that it had become a polis) under Antoninus Pius (AD 138-61), presumably following the end of dynastic rule there. Its territory seems to have extended into the mountains of Lebanon above Orthosia and Tripolis. Abila was a city in the late Roman period but it is not known when it acquired this status. The only settlement in the Massyas (Bekaa) valley to achieve city status was Heliopolis; Chalcis did not. During the Roman period Heliopolis acquired several monumental public buildings, including a theatre and walls, and there can be no doubt that it was a respectable city as well as a cult centre. Yet in spite of the richness of its monumental remains, there are many things about Heliopolis that remain enigmatic, not least the question of when it acquired civic status. Strabo does not mention it, although he does state that a large part of the Massyas was given to Berytus when it became a colony. Before that Heliopolis is thought to have been a religious centre for the kingdom of Chalcis, and coins of the Ituraean ruler Lysanias call him high priest, perhaps indicating a hereditary role for the dynasts. For the next two centuries it was dependent on Berytus, as evidenced by the number of Latin inscriptions from the site (see chapter 7). The city first began issuing coins under Septimius Severus. These show that it was a colony, and that its name was Colonia Julia. This is peculiar, because cities normally adopted the family name of the emperor who granted them colonial status, and therefore, if Septimius Severus had been responsible, we would expect the city to have been Colonia Septimia. Of republican generals and emperors who had founded colonies before, the most likely candidate for a Colonia Julia is Augustus, the emperor who founded a colony at Berytus. Yet the jurist Ulpian, who came from Tyre, clearly states that Septimius Severus made Heliopolis a colony. But Ulpian says nothing about its elevation to civic status, and the coins remain the only certain date for its constitution as a city. Some of these coins have colonial designs on them, and among these are military standards inscribed with the numbers and names of two legions: V Macedonica and VIII Gallica, the legions whose veterans were settled by Augustus in Berytus. The most satisfactory solution to the matter is that Heliopolis was incorporated into the territory of Berytus at the end of the first century BC, and formed a pagus, a country district of Roman colonists, settled in the territory of Berytus rather than in the city itself (a pagus Augustus is known from inscriptions at Niha, on the western side of the Bekaa). Then at the end of the second century the town was detached from the territory of Berytus by Septimius Severus and constituted as an independent city with colonial status, but for some reason Heliopolis chose to refer to its original founder, Augustus, and not to adopt the name Septimia. The case of Heliopolis illustrates just how little we know about the progress of urbanism, even for some of the better-known sites.
The main centres of Herod’s kingdom were Jerusalem, the administrative capital of Judaea, Sepphoris, the capital of Galilee, and Shechem, the capital of Samaria. A city called Samaria was refounded by Herod as Sebaste, named in honour of Augustus (‘Sebastos’ being the Greek equivalent of ‘Augustus’). It was a pagan city, colonized by non-Jewish veterans from the royal army, and the site was (and still is) dominated by a great temple to Augustus. Herod’s other principal foundation was Strato’s Tower, refounded with the name Caesarea. To distinguish it from numerous other Caesareas in the Roman world it is commonly referred to as Caesarea Maritima. Anthedon (Blakhiyeh), a small town on the coast near Gaza, was refounded by Herod as Agrippias (after Augustus’ lieutenant Agrippa), and Antipatris, named after his father Antipater, was founded at the site of Biblical Apheq on the edge of the coastal plain east of the modern city of Tel Aviv; but whether these two places remained cities for the whole period before the third century, when they issued coins, is unclear. Herod’s sons also contributed to the urbanization of the regions which they ruled, Antipas through the foundation of Tiberias (named after Tiberius) on the western side of the Sea of Galilee, and Philip through Caesarea Philippi or Caesarea Panias (Banias) at the southern foot of Mount Hermon. 
	Exactly when Palmyra became a city is a matter that has yet to be resolved, as the extent and nature of the Hellenistic settlement is poorly known. There is also the problem of defining what is meant by the word ‘city’ in this context. Should it refer exclusively to a Greek-style settlement? By the beginning of the first century AD Palmyra could be described in Greek as a polis, and its tribes were electing officials who were termed ‘treasurers’, but it is only in the second half of the first century that the standard constitutional trappings of a Greek-style city can be more clearly observed. The process of its absorption into the Roman empire cannot be traced with confidence. Mark Antony’s cavalry raid on the city in 41 BC suggests that it was still independent at that date. It is generally supposed that incorporation occurred between the reigns of Tiberius and Claudius. The territory controlled by Palmyra was vast: its boundaries to the west with Apamea and Emesa are known through inscribed boundary stones, but to the east and south its borders are hardly defined at all. On the Euphrates the boundary of Palmyra is likely to have been coterminous with the Roman empire, and there was a Palmyrene military presence as far south along the river as the island of Anatha.
Fig. 35. General plan of the centre of Palmyra.
	The number of cities under direct rule increased in the first and second centuries. Raphanea (Rafniye), the headquarters of the legio III Gallica on the western side of the Orontes valley, issued coins under Elagabalus (AD 218-22) and had presumably grown from a fortress into a city, though very little is known about the site. Roman conquests in Mesopotamia and along the Euphrates during the later second century brought into the Roman empire cities that had formerly been under Parthian control, such as Dura Europus, and before long new cities were appearing in those regions as well. Among them was the village of Appadana, just north of Dura, which recently-discovered documents from the Euphrates region (see chapter 5) suggest became a city called Neapolis before the mid-third century.
	The lava-lands of the south remained relatively underdeveloped during the first century AD. Neither the Ptolemies nor the Seleucids had attempted to found cities in the region, and for a long time the only city in the area was Canatha (modern Qanawat), on the western side of Auranitis (Jebel al-‘Arab). The Herodian dynasts had settled colonists in the region when it was under their rule, but these settlements did not achieve full civic status, except for Caesarea Philippi in the south-west. Dionysias (Suweyda), a village near Canatha, became a city in the Antonine period. In the third century the emperor Philip (AD 244-9) founded Philippopolis (Shahba) on the north-western edge of Auranitis on a site presumed to be his birthplace; more will be said about this important site later (see chapter 7).
The founding or refounding of cities continued in the south after the dissolution of the kingdoms there. Sepphoris is encountered as Neronias Irenopolis under Nero (AD 54-68), but thereafter the city reverted to its original name. Vespasian, who had been governor of Judaea during the first Jewish War, created a new city called Neapolis (modern Nablus) at a village close to Samaritan Shechem, and this emperor or one of his sons refounded the coastal settlement of Joppa (Jaffa). Herod’s Caesarea gained colonial status from Vespasian, although in this case no veterans were settled there and the indigenous inhabitants received Roman citizenship. Jerusalem, which had been sacked under Vespasian, was refounded by Hadrian as colonia Aelia Capitolina and peopled with non-Jewish colonists. Hadrian is also thought to have been responsible for renaming Sepphoris Diocaesarea, for this latter pagan name appears on its coins issued under Hadrian’s successor Antoninus Pius (Sepphoris issued no coins under Hadrian). Sepphoris and Tiberias had been strongly Jewish settlements since Herodian times, and if the renaming of Sepphoris was an attempt to reduce Jewish influence in Galilee, there is no evidence that it did so. Galilee became the focus of Judaism after the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem, and by the fourth century Diocaesarea and Tiberias were important Jewish centres. The Severan period saw foundations of the western fringes of Judaea: Severus established the cities of Diospolis (at the site of Biblical Lod) and Eleutheropolis (Bet Guvrin), and Nicopolis was founded under Elagabalus on the site of Emmaus.
	Bostra (Bosra) and Petra were the two most important centres of the Nabataean kingdom and remained pre-eminent after the Roman annexation. Bostra became the chief city of the province of Arabia, and was the headquarters of Arabia’s only legion, the III Cyrenaica. The emperor Philip is thought to have been one of its patrons; coins issued during his reign indicate that the city had become a metropolis, and its principal Greek festival, the Actia Dusaria, appears to date from this time. Smaller settlements were also granted civic status following the Roman annexation. These included Adraa (modern Deraa, the Biblical Edrei), on the Yarmuk river west of Bostra, and a group of settlements located on the eastern side of the Dead Sea, along the main Roman north south artery, the via nova Traiana: Esbus (Heshban, the Biblical Heshbon), Medaba (Madaba), Rabbath Moba or Areopolis (Rabbah), and Charach Moba (Kerak).
Fig. 36. General plan of Bostra.
	The process of urbanization, or at least of elevation of settlements to city status and the division of the landscape into city territories, continued in the late Roman period. Before the middle of the third century AD coins are a good indicator (and sometimes the only indicator) that a place had civic status. With the extinction of civic coinage in the mid-third century (see chapter 6) examination of the process becomes more difficult. Lists of cities survive, often made for official purposes such as church councils, but these do not always agree with one another, and sometimes it is not clear whether every place listed really did have city status. Inscriptions and papyri provide proof, but they depend very heavily on chance finds. Little is known of what becoming a city in Syria and the Near East during the last three centuries of Roman rule entailed. It would seem that many of those places which gained civic status were relatively small places, villages and fortresses, and that the grant was not accompanied by any substantial rebuilding (with the exception, perhaps, of fortifications). Some of them may have served military purposes, or acted as refuges for rural populations during times of trouble. The problem of distinguishing between cities and other sorts of settlement is one to which we will return in chapter 5. Some of the villages elevated to city status already had monumental buildings, and they do not appear to have acquired any of the structures typical of the older cities, such as colonnaded streets or theatres (although some, such as Sergiopolis, gained substantial fortifications, if they did not already possess them). Otherwise change in status seems to have been the most significant transformation for these new cities.
The fragmentary nature of our record means that we cannot be certain that the first known mention of a place as a city is any indication of the date of its elevation, and therefore some cities thought to be late Roman may have acquired city status in earlier times. The use of imperial names is highly suggestive, unless the cities in question were refoundations of existing cities. Diocletian must have been responsible for approving two cities named Maximianopolis after his imperial colleague. One was located on the northern edge of Auranitis at the former village of the Sakkaioi (modern Shaqqa), and the other in Palestine at Caparcotna or Legio, the headquarters of the legio VI Ferrata. Constantine founded Constantia (Buraq) in the lava-lands on northern edge of Trachonitis. It is difficult to see any overall plan in the pattern of foundations, which look more like random imperial responses to local petitions. Those in regions contested by the Sasanians, however, are likely to have had strategic value to the state. On the Euphrates the fortress of Neocaesarea (Dibsi Faraj) became a city, probably in the fourth century. Its neighbour Sergiopolis (Resafa), a famous centre of pilgrimage on account of its patron saint Sergius, gained civic status in the fifth. In this case the renown and sanctity of the site must have been an important consideration. It is harder to discern why in the sixth century several small settlements inland acquired city status, such as Salaminias (Salemiya), east of Apamea, or Anasartha (Khanazir), renamed Theodoropolis by Justinian. Some of these little cities in the steppe were perhaps located in territories which had formerly been dependent on Palmyra and, after that city’s fall in the third century, they had gained a greater degree of independence. An increase in the settled population of this steppe zone during the late Roman period was probably also a factor (see chapter 5). Religious concerns may also have influenced grants. Constantine made Antaradus a city; and by this time Aradus itself was in serious decline. He is supposed to have done so because the inhabitants of Antaradus had adopted Christianity while those on the island remained resolutely pagan, and was therefore responding to competition between two rival sections of the same settlement, but he may also have been prompted by the relative size and importance of the mainland settlement by this period.
	Other late Roman elevations were perhaps the result of competition between villages, which again reflected a system of favoured winners and losers. In the lava-lands Neapolis (Sheikh Miskin) had become a city by the fourth century, and in late Roman civil and ecclesiastical lists we find Phaena (Mismiye) and Neve (Nawa) treated as cities as well. Together with Maximianopolis and Constantia they formed a group of civic foundations all located in the northern part of the Hauran region, and most probably had relatively small territories. There is no evidence that any were conceived as foundations on the same scale as neighbouring Philippopolis, created in the third century.
	In the provinces of Palestine there were also new cities. Some, like Jamnia and Apollonia (renamed Sozusa), were among those given city status by Pompey but which had subsequently lost it; others, such as Ono, near Diospolis, or Helenopolis (named after Constantine’s mother Helena) in Galilee, were new. Some ports gained independent status from their cities: that of Ascalon was became Diocletianopolis, and Constantine separated the port of Gaza from the city, giving it the name Constantia. Azotus, another of Pompey’s cities which had declined and later recovered, was apparently divided into two cities, with one being designated Azotus ‘by the Sea’. In the south of Palestine the town of Elusa (Halutza) had by the late Roman period acquired city status, as perhaps had nearby Mampsis (identified with the site of Kurnub). Again, most were unlikely to have acquired very extensive territories with their grants.
	Thus the number of political entities modelled on the Greek polis increased significantly under Roman rule. But many of the later foundations must have been little more than ‘glorified villages’. It is unlikely that they possessed very large agricultural hinterlands, and therefore they cannot have been expected to grow to a large size. The later phases of the urbanizing process were perhaps more quantitative than qualitative. The old cities which existed at the beginning of Roman rule had been given huge territories, and the ‘urbanization’ which followed consisted of assigning large territories to the new foundations in the more remote areas or, where this was not possible, elevating villages to civic status with little change to the size of their hinterlands.

4 Time and Motion

The Measure of Time

Marking the Years
By introducing their own era, beginning in 312 BC, the Seleucids had imposed a new reckoning of time on the regions that they ruled. The Seleucid era has been seen as one of the tools used by the Seleucids to create a sense of identity for their empire, and as a system of reckoning it was remarkably successful. Its official character is suggested by a Jewish name for it, the ‘era of contracts’. When Antiochus III wrested Phoenicia and the south from the Ptolemies at the beginning of the second century BC, the cities there also adopted the Seleucid era, although one vestige of Ptolemaic rule remained: these cities tended to use a Ptolemaic symbol, shaped like the Latin letter ‘L’, to designate the word ‘year’. However, complete standardization had not been achieved under the Seleucids. Different regions of their empire employed different methods for reckoning the calendar, with the result that new year’s day fell at different times of the year in different places. Nonetheless, by the early Roman period the beginning of the Seleucid year in Syria had been fixed, falling on 1 October. In the fifth century it was shifted to 1 September to coincide with the tax year (see below), although rather confusingly Syriac and Arab writers seem to have continued reckoning from 1 October. The Seleucid era persisted into medieval times; some treaties signed between Muslims and Crusaders used it, and its religious inertness perhaps made it agreeable to both sides. Of the various attempts by ancient and modern regimes to introduce a universal era, the Seleucid was one of the more successful.
Initially all cities ruled by the Seleucids were supposed to use the era, but with the decline of Seleucid power many cities asserted their independence by declaring individual eras of ‘autonomy’. These civic eras might be revised from time to time, beginning with a new year one, and all the villages and towns in the territory of the city tended to use the era of their city (see chapter 7). The Romans made no attempt to impose any new universal system on the province of Syria, although dating by the regnal year of an emperor was common practice, and the Roman method of dating by consuls was used for government documents (and sometimes private ones). A system of reckoning from the foundation of Rome was not in general use because the age of the city was disputed (the most favoured dates were 753 or 752 BC). Consequently the cities and other states were free to employ their own civic eras or continue with the Seleucid system. Following the Roman annexation a number of Syrian cities adopted what are often referred to as ‘Pompeian’ eras, but these were all individual civic eras, not a universal Roman one. One city (perhaps Gadara) initially called hers ‘year one of Rome’ (fig. 37), but it remained an era of the Gadarenes (or of some other city), not of Syria. Honours granted to the individual cities by republican generals, governors and emperors provided the impetus to initiate new civic eras. At Antioch, for example, Pompey’s visit led to the city abandoning the Seleucid era in favour of a new system. A few years later Julius Caesar’s visit and honours encouraged the citizens to adopt a ‘Julian’ era, which remained the city’s principal dating system in the Roman period. But during the Parthian occupation of the city in 41/40 BC the Antiochenes briefly reverted to the Seleucid system (an anti-Roman comment?). After the battle of Actium (31 BC) some cities experimented with the victory of Augustus as a new year one, but during the first century AD they abandoned this ‘Actian’ era. Only in Arabia was a provincial era initiated, beginning with the creation of the province in AD 106. Such provincial eras were quite rare in the Roman world, and there is no evidence that one existed for the provinces of Syria or Palestine. The Arabian era would suggest that the Rome wanted to create a significant break with the Nabataean tradition that had preceded it, and it perhaps contributed towards a post-Nabataean identity for the new province. Indeed, so successful was the Arabian era that it survived the province, not only in those parts of the province of Arabia that were later incorporated into the provinces of Palaestina, but also after the Muslim conquest (see below).
Fig. 37. Anonymous bronze coin minted in 64-63 BC, attributed (with reservations) to Gadara. The obverse bears a bust of Heracles; the reverse, the ram of a galley. The Greek inscription above reads LA RWMHS, ‘Year one of Rome’.
The city eras persisted into late Roman times, suggesting that the sense of civic identity which they helped to generate remained strong. That of Sidon is known in the fourth century and probably continued later, and Tyre’s is attested in the late sixth. The eras of Berytus and Gerasa are found still in use in the early seventh century. Use of the era of Aradus may have declined with the city: there is epigraphic evidence to suggest that the city of Mariamme, which had once been in the territory of Aradus and had continued to use its era thereafter, had adopted the Seleucid era by the sixth century. Some systems continued even later - the provincial era of Arabia, for example, is found still operating under the Umayyads, as are the eras of Gadara and Gaza. But, as usual, our evidence depends entirely on accidents of survival.
The late Roman period witnessed the development of new more universal methods of dating. A cycle of indictions, based on the system of censuses (see chapter 6), became a common way of keeping time over short periods. From the reign of Constantine, each tax cycle lasted fifteen years. Within each cycle the individual indiction years were counted from one to fifteen, beginning with the new tax year in September, when the Praetorian Prefects announced their budgets. After that there was a new census, and a new cycle, beginning again with indiction year one. The system was useless for dating outside the fifteen-year cycle, because the cycles themselves were not numbered. Reference to some other system of dating was needed; otherwise ‘indiction ten’ was indistinguishable from all the other indiction tens that had occurred every fifteen years before it. It was common practice to use a local era alongside references to an indiction. Thus a mosaic from the floor of a church at ‘Ain as-Samakeh south of Berytus is conveniently dated year 661 (the civic era of Berytus), indiction fifteen (the last year of the tax cycle). In this case the mosaic can be dated very closely: year 661 of Berytus ran from 1 October AD 580 to 30 September 581, and indiction fifteen ran from 1 September 581 to 31 August 582, meaning that the mosaic can have been laid only in September 581. But references to other dating systems are sometimes lacking, meaning that without corroborative evidence an exact date cannot be obtained.
The indiction system became popular because it was no doubt easier to remember than the cumbersome Roman system of dating by consuls. It was more meaningful to the individual too: everyone’s affairs could be related to tax payments. In the sixth century its popularity was further ensured by Justinian, who abandoned the consular dating system and insisted that all official documents be dated by the indiction instead. People became so accustomed to using it that the indiction system continued in the region after the Muslim conquest (various late seventh-century papyri from Nessana in the Negev use it, sometimes in conjunction with the Muslim Hijra years, and an Umayyad period mosaic at Umm er-Rasas is dated to AD 718, during the second indiction). An imperial dating system had transcended the empire.
The late Roman period also saw a greater interest in universal eras. Christian teaching provided a moment of creation and a universal history for humanity. There were various attempts to generate a framework, by relating past events to a Christian scheme. They key points were the Creation, Incarnation, Nativity and Passion, but there was only a vague general agreement between experts over the precise dates of these events. (A sixth-century scholar at Rome, Dionysius Exiguus, was responsible for the system of BC and AD which is used today, by calculating that the Nativity occurred 753 years after the founding of Rome.) But while these schemes might be used by historians, they were not generally employed in everyday contexts, at least not during the time period covered by this book. 

Marking the Months
The Seleucids had adopted the Babylonian lunisolar calendar, merely substituting Macedonian month names for their Babylonian equivalents. The months followed phases of the moon, with extra months added at fixed intervals over a period of nineteen years in order to realign the lunar year with the solar one. However, it is not known whether all the cities ruled by the Seleucids adopted this calendar. What is certain is that by the first century BC many Syrian cities were using calendars that operated independent of any general Seleucid system, so that each of these cities tended to have its own method of reckoning months and the cycles of festivals and religious observances. Calendars could be based on either lunar or solar months, with extra days or months inserted at the end of a cycle to adjust the calendrical year to the solar year. Thanks to the influence of the Ptolemies and Seleucids, the Macedonian month names were popular among the cities, but they were by no means universal. 
Some of these Syrian civic calendars are preserved in medieval copies of ancient hemerologia, tables listing days of the months according to a variety of different reckonings. Where they can be tested against surviving dated inscriptions, they seem to be correct and suggest that these calendars could have existed as early as the first century AD. What they demonstrate is that the Julian reform of the calendar, initiated by Julius Caesar in 45 BC and continued by Augustus, had a strong influence over these local systems, even if it did not fully replace them. If the Julian calendar was in use in Syria during the first century AD, it was perhaps introduced under Augustus. The birthday of Augustus (23 September) was the date which some communities used to mark the beginning of their year. It is possible that 23 September was the new year for observances of the imperial cult (which was certainly introduced to Syria by Augustus - see chapter 9), and thus this date remained significant in the east long after Augustus. Some scholars have suggested that 23 September was also the beginning of the fiscal year, and that this was later ‘rationalized’ by shifting it to 1 September, which became the beginning of the indiction year as well as the late Roman and Byzantine new year’s day. It is in the organisation of the year, rather than in the marking of years, that the impact of Rome can be most fully appreciated.
Although Roman month names were not in general use until the sixth century, some cycles were evidently coterminous with Julian months, such as those at Antioch, Seleucia and Sidon (fig. 38). Other calendars had months which did not correspond to Julian ones, but in general they seem to have followed a 365-day Julian system. Tyre and Heliopolis did so by having seven months of thirty days and five of thirty-one days; Gaza, Ascalon and Arabia followed the Alexandrian system of twelve months of thirty days plus five ‘epagomenal’ days. The key point here is that Roman rule had brought about a revolution in the reckoning of time, even in those places where communities maintained traditional names for the months and even when the beginning of the year was different. Antioch’s calendar began on 1 October (until the second half of the fifth century, when it was changed to 1 September to coincide with the indiction year), Tyre’s new year was on 19 October, and Gaza and Ascalon followed Alexandria by beginning on 29 August. Sidon may have followed the Julian calendar by celebrating its new year on 1 January.
Many cities called their months by Macedonian names, but this did not mean that the calendar employed was the same in every city. At Antioch the Macedonian month of Panemos corresponded to July. At Sidon Panemos corresponded to September, and Artemisios fell in July. At Gaza Panemos lasted for thirty days, beginning on 25 June, and at Ascalon Panemos was the same length but began on 25 July. The potential confusion arising from these individual arrangements is staggering, the equivalent of having March in London corresponding to May in Manchester, but the idea of imposing a universal time on the cities does not seem to have been attempted, even where the calendars followed the Julian years. As in many other respects, when it came to managing their internal affairs the autonomy of the cities was respected.

JULIAN	ANTIOCHENE	SELEUCIAN	SIDONIAN	
JANUARY 	Audynaios	Aphy (Audynaios?)	Dios	
FEBRUARY	Peritios	(…)	Apellaios	
MARCH	Dystros	Itoinios	Audynaios	
APRIL	Xanthikos	Anthisterios	Peritios	
MAY	Artemisios	Artemisios	Dystros	
JUNE	Daisios	Herakleios	Xanthikos	
JULY	Panemos	Nenealios	Artemisios	
AUGUST	Loos	Hadoni(o)s (Adonis?)	Daisios	
SEPTEMBER	Gorpaios	Apilios (Apellaios?)	Panemos	
OCTOBER	Hyperberetaios	Koronios	Loos	
NOVEMBER	Dios	Pantheios	Gorpaios	
DECEMBER	Apellaios	Sandis (Xanthikos?)	Hyperberetaios	

Fig. 38. Names of the months at Antioch, Seleucia and Sidon, and their correspondence to the Julian calendar.

However, not all cities used the Macedonian month names, as can be seen from the practices at Seleucia and Heliopolis. The Seleucian month names were Greek in origin (although some forms given in the hemerologia seem corrupt), but Heliopolis used Semitic names (fig. 39). This does not rule out the use of Greek or Macedonian month names alongside the Semitic ones at Heliopolis, especially since the calendar employed a system of months similar to that found at Tyre, where Macedonian names were used. The epigraphic evidence from Palmyra shows Macedonian months (written in Greek) corresponding to local ones (written in Aramaic). There the local names were based on the Babylonian calendar, and are similar to those used at Heliopolis, but the exact form of the calendar used is more uncertain. The Jews are known to have maintained a calendar based on the Babylonian one, and Josephus provides a concordance between its Semitic names and the Macedonian months. As we have seen, Arabia had its own provincial calendar ‘of the Arabs’. Its year began on the spring equinox (22 March). The Macedonian names for the months were used, but Nabataean inscriptions show that these had their Nabataean equivalents. Clearly the calendars could be bilingual, even if in most cases the framework on which the months rested had a single structure, that of the Julian 365-day solar year.

HELIOPOLITAN	PALMYRENE	JEWISH	
Ag	Tishri	Tishri	
Thisrin	Kanun	Marcheswan	
Gelon	Kislul	Kislev	
Chanoun	Tebet	Tebet	
Sobath	Shebat	Shebet	
Adar	Adar	Adar	
Neisan	Nisan	Nisan	
Iar	Iyar	Ijar	
Ezer	Siwan	Siwan	
Thamiza	Quenian	Tammuz	
Ab	Ab	Ab	
Iloul	Elul	Elul	

Fig. 39. The Heliopolitan, Palmyrene and Jewish months. It is not known when the Heliopolitan new year began; the names are listed here as they appear in the Hemerologion Florentinum. The Hemerologion has the Heliopolitan month of Ab beginning on 23 September (Augustus’ birthday). This makes a plausible new year. The first month of the Palmyrene year appears to have been Tishri, which inscriptions correlate with the Macedonian month Hyperberetaios. The Jewish calendar is that given by Josephus. According to him Tishri corresponded with Hyperberetaios, which he equates with September. 

In Syria and the Near East the reckoning of time shows a mix of Semitic, Greek, Macedonian and Roman elements. While the Julian system of a 365-day year seems to have affected most of the local calendars, one cannot rule out the possibility that lunisolar calendars, with intercalary months added to the year at certain intervals, remained in use in some places. The Jews certainly employed such a system. The use of Semitic calendars at Heliopolis and Palmyra do not appear to have been entirely independent of Greek or Roman influences, but presumably the retention of Semitic names represents a conscious choice, marking them as different from those using purely Macedonian ones.
From the fourth century the Antiochene civic calendar became the official calendar of the Antiochene patriarchate. This gave it greater authority than other civic calendars; once again, the chief city of Syria asserted its pre-eminence in the pecking-order of cities. Its new year coincided with the official Seleucid one (1 October), so that it too could be seen as a calendar ‘of the Greeks’.
As for the Julian calendar itself, with its elaborate system of kalends, nones and ides, this was employed by the military and for official government documents, but never ousted the local systems (which simply numbered the days of each month). In the fourth century the Julian calendar is found in a simplified form, with days counted from the first of the month, as is the practice today. This ‘Byzantine’ form was based on the Julian, except that it began with the new fiscal year on 1 September. Following the loss of Syria and Egypt in the seventh century, this system became the standard calendar in the remaining portions of the Roman empire.

Reducing Distance: Transport and Communications
In order to govern such a vast empire Rome needed a reliable communications network. The construction of roads, ports and canals by the Roman army is a guide to the development of the military structure in Syria and the Near East, and an indicator of the advance of Roman imperial power. The government’s purpose in building the roads is thought to have been primarily strategic, allowing for speedy communications and movement of troops. In the desert they connected forts, water sources and other strategically important features. But these features also made civilian travel relatively easy and unexceptional in the Roman world, for both wealthy and poorer persons, and in doing so they shrank the distances between different locations. Bandits and robbers were a problem (see chapter 10), but they did not prevent regular movement of people, goods and ideas by land or water. 
Roman roads possessed an ideological quality, in that they were highly visible reminders of empire, even in remote places. Bridges, causeways and cuttings overcame obstacles of nature, symbolizing Rome’s technological mastery of the environment. Milestones, supposedly planted to serve the useful function of recording distance, were most commonly employed to advertise the names and titles of emperors under whom construction or repair of the road was undertaken. In this sense the milestones had a propaganda value for those using the roads (even if travellers could not make sense of their terse Latin abbreviations, they were an unmistakable assertion of imperial power), and for travellers the encounters with soldiers and public servants along the way will have served as a reminder of Rome’s presence. 
Fig. 40. Roman bridge over the Sabun Suyu, a tributary of the Afrin, at Cyrrhus.
Three principal types of road were constructed in the region. The most elaborate form was that found in cities and towns, or in difficult passages such as marshy or rocky terrain (fig. 41). In these cases the surfaces were paved with large stone slabs. In the late Roman period there was a preference in some cities for a surface of rectangular cobbles, laid in rows diagonal to the kerbs, and sometimes set directly over the earlier paving. Drains, often placed centrally, were usually substantial, to cope with the torrential rains of winter. Most roads between cities were either paved with gravel, or had dirt surfaces. Gravel-paved roads were generally between 4 and 7 metres wide (13 and 23 feet) and were not dissimilar in construction to Roman roads in Italy. Their upper surfaces consisted of a layer of clayey soil mixed with gravel, which lay over a layer of small, densely-packed stones about 20 centimetres (8 inches) thick. Sometimes a bed of flat stones formed the foundation. Along both edges of this structure ran a retaining line of stones, and a third line ran along the centre of the road. Repairs were frequently necessary; if the surfaces broke up and exposed the stone bedding, the road could become almost unusable. Milestone inscriptions indicate that the second-century road across the lava-flows of Trachonitis was repaired twice in three decades. The third and simplest form of road had only a dirt surface. Dirt tracks were especially common in the steppe or desert, and included some major highways such as the so-called ‘Strata Diocletiana’ (see chapter 10). This road had forts, waystations and milestones along its length, but no specially prepared surface. Stones were cleared to the sides of the track to form low retaining walls. Because of their simple construction, such roads are often not very visible nowadays at ground level, but can be seen easily from the air. 
To deal with other problems of terrain, the Romans constructed bridges, cut through rocky spurs, or raised causeways (fig. 11; fig. 40). A causeway in the marshy Plain of Antioch was raised 2 metres (6½ feet) above the surrounding plain, and was over 6 metres (20 feet) wide with retaining walls pierced by drainage arches. The builders of the Trachonitis road maintained a fairly level surface across the uneven lava-flows by levelling or raising causeways as topography required.
The elaborate road system created by the Romans in Syria and the Near East cannot be described in detail here. The main routes included the road along the coast, running from Antioch in the north to Raphia in the south and thence to Pelusium in Egypt, and which connected the major ports. Another route ran through the Orontes valley to Emesa and from there branched to Heliopolis and Damascus, finally reaching Bostra. Other important roads connected the coast with the Euphrates via Antioch, to Samosata, Zeugma, or Hierapolis, and led across the steppe from Emesa or Damascus via Palmyra. The principal ones were those of the official network for the cursus publicus, the imperial postal system, but there were plenty of minor roads and tracks used primarily by locals. The development of this system is important in that it tells us a great deal about the evolution of the provinces in terms of their military organization, and the growth in overland communications. The slow but steady advance of Rome into the Syrian steppe and the remoter reaches of the hinterland during the second and third centuries can be detected through the construction of roads and defensive structures in these regions.
However, observing these developments is a difficult task. In general roads are not easily dated unless accompanied by inscriptions on milestones (which seem to have been confined to the official network), and the date of even some of the more famous and conspicuous stretches of Roman road still surviving in Syria can be a subject for debate (fig. 41). Those in the desert are easier to trace than those in areas which are still densely populated, where all vestiges have often disappeared, and the bias is therefore in favour of roads in remote places. Nevertheless a tolerably good plan of the overall network can be reconstructed. What is more problematic is to determine when different stretches were built, and what motives prompted their construction. Both questions are crucial to any deeper understanding of the Roman road network, yet often the answers to them rely on the slenderest support. A milestone from Arak in the steppe east of Palmyra shows that a road was being constructed there under Vespasian, which is the pivotal evidence on which turns the notion that this was when the entire stretch of road from Palmyra to Sura on the Euphrates was built, as part of a Roman strategy to extend control further south along the right bank of the Euphrates river. In other cases milestones record repairs but give us no indication of the date of the original construction. The fashion for erecting milestones alongside the roads in the name of an emperor did not follow any strict logic. Some roads were lined with many milestones, and others appear to have had none at all. Sometimes there are clusters of milestones in the same place, as if the first had started a trend and during later repair works the builders had felt the need to compete by erecting their own commemorative monument. In certain places the milestones or their inscriptions may have been made of a material which has not survived. For example, certain roads across the Negev have stone markers, but these are completely blank. Once thought to be ‘anepigraphic’ Nabataean imitations of Roman stones, it now seems clear that they are Roman and originally bore painted inscriptions. 
The history of Roman road building in Syria and the Near East therefore relies very heavily on milestone epigraphy. There are many roads which must belong to the period of Roman rule, but which by themselves cannot be dated. It would appear that the main period of construction occurred in the second and third centuries, after which much of the activity revolved around maintenance. The evidence peaks in certain reigns, particularly those of Trajan (AD 98-117), Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus (AD 161-9), Septimius Severus and Caracalla (AD 193-217), and Diocletian (AD 284-305), which would seem to indicate a correlation between road building and major campaigns (these rulers all conducted wars against the Parthians and Sasanians). But during the fourth century the practice of erecting inscribed stones along roads died out, and we know comparatively little about road building or road maintenance after this. The carefully constructed paved surfaces of some undated roads are thought to be more suitable for pack animals than wheeled vehicles. There is some evidence to suggest that the former were a much commoner form of transport than the latter in late Roman times, and this preference was perhaps dictated by a deteriorating road network. In the seventh century a western pilgrim expressed surprised at the absence of carts in the Near East, which may indicate that the old gravel-paved roads which formerly supported such traffic had fallen into disrepair. 
The fate of many roads after, or even during the late Roman period is unclear. Some roads, such as the Damascus - Bostra route through Trachonitis which bypasses completely the important settlement of Dionysias (Suweyda), can only have served Roman military interests and after the end of Roman rule fell into disuse. The stone bedding was frequently removed from other stretches of metalled roads which were still in use, not so much for building material but because if the roads were in a state of bad repair their rough stony surfaces were more harmful to animals’ feet than a dirt track. A badly maintained gravel-paved road was worse than no road at all.
Fig. 41. Roman road, of uncertain date, crossing a saddle between the Jebel Barisha and Jebel Halaqa between Antioch and Beroea. Stone-paved roads provided a solid, durable surface over rough terrain, and could prove more long lasting than their gravel-paved counterparts.
Augustus had established the imperial post system, the cursus publicus. The Achaemenid Persians and Hellenistic kings had also created such communication networks, but the system of paved roads accompanying the cursus publicus is a uniquely Roman feature. Apart from the roads themselves, the system had waystations where those on official government business could obtain food, lodging and, if necessary, fresh horses and carriages. Such inns and hostels were maintained at the expense of local communities. Officials with an imperial permit were housed for free, but private individuals had to pay for services. From the third century the system was also designed to help supply provisions to the army: taxes collected in kind could be delivered to specified depots within the system. The arrangement sounds efficient, but was not particularly so (see chapter 6). The system did, however, make journeys for both officials and ordinary people far less arduous and dangerous than they might otherwise have been. Inns in remote places provided safety from bandits and could sometimes supply welcome meals for hungry travellers, although officials on business would expect priority treatment. Maps like the Peutinger Table (fig. 42), which were probably based on information taken from military maps and itineraries, provided travellers with information about the distances covered and places ahead. The ability to plan a journey greatly reduced the contingencies of travel, even if perennial hazards like banditry remained.
Fig. 42. Drawing of the Syrian section of the Peutinger Table, simplified to omit roads and place names but showing icons for cities and road stations. The map survives in a single medieval copy of an original believed to date to the fourth century, but based on earlier maps, perhaps of the second century. It was probably designed for civilian rather than military use, since no emphasis is given to forts. The personification of Antioch, supplied with water via aqueducts arising in the famous grove of Daphne, dominates this eastern section of the map.
We have very little information about the speed of travel by land, and it is difficult to generalize from the fragments available to us. Much will have depended on the physical condition of the people travelling, the state of the roads, the weather, the time of year and hours of daylight, and the urgency of the journey. Accounts of more recent centuries, by travellers journeying under similar conditions, help to give us some idea of the time required. In the late nineteenth century Aleppo was about three days’ travelling from the Mediterranean coast. A similar pace can be observed in a papyrus archive from Egypt of an official called Theophanes, whose itinerary from Egypt to Antioch during the civil war between Constantine and Licinius (c. 317-23) has survived. Theophanes did not travel light. He took with him an assortment of clothes, cooking and dining utensils, materials for washing, plus mattresses and other gear for sleeping. All of this, as well as provisions purchased during the journey, were no doubt carried by the large number of servants who accompanied him, and by animals requisitioned from the cursus publicus. His daily accounts for the trip show that the entire coast of the Near East, from Pelusium in Egypt to Antioch, lasted eighteen days (fig. 43). The journey back took him the same length of time. The pace must have been fairly brisk, although lengthened by breaks or business in some of the cities en route. His journey also demonstrates that the major coastal cities were conveniently located about a day’s journey from each other. No doubt they provided the best facilities for travellers. There were probably many people making regular long-distance journeys of this sort, travelling between the main centres of the Near Eastern provinces and beyond. 
Fig. 43. The outward journey of Theophanes, c. 317-23, showing the places where he stopped for the night. Berytus lay more or less equidistant in travelling time from Ascalon and Antioch (six to seven days).
Wheeled transport need not have been faster than journeying on foot. The travellers described in the second-century Pseudo-Clementina Homily XIII.1.1 went by carriage from Antaradus to Laodicea. In one day they covered the distance between Balanea and Gabala, and by the second day had reached Laodicea. They took two days to cover the distance travelled by Theophanes in a single day, but perhaps haste was not one of their foremost concerns. Travel by sea might be considerably faster, weather permitting; the Acts (27.1-3) has St Paul travelling in a ship from Caesarea to Sidon on an overnight voyage. The same journey by land took Theophanes three days. 
Sea traffic increased dramatically during the Roman period, as attested by the large number of shipwrecks all around the Mediterranean. Most Syrian ports predated Roman rule, but the increasing quantities of imports and exports demanded an infrastructure capable of accommodating the ships involved in this trade, and not all of the old ports were suitable. Many parts of the Syrian coast lack natural harbours, and artificial ones had long served some of coastal cities. The sites were not always well chosen, and construction of a harbour could initiate an intermittent war with the forces of nature in order to keep the port serviceable. The great artificial basin at Seleucia Pieria, constructed under Seleucus I, required frequent dredging to prevent it from silting up. Because the city was an important base for the Roman fleet the inhabitants could expect military assistance in such operations. The Descriptio Totius Orbis attributes harbour works at Seleucia to Constantius II, presumably as part of his programme for supplying and maintaining the military infrastructure of the east rather than for the benefit of the local economy. The best-known harbour of the Roman period is that built by Herod for his new city of Caesarea, founded at the site of the Hellenistic settlement called Strato’s Tower. A local tyrant had constructed a harbour in the late second century BC, which served as the innermost of the three basins of Herod’s new harbour. This triple ‘Harbour of Sebastos’ (Augustus), as it was called, was a vast structure on which no expense was spared. The basins were protected by two immense breakwaters, the shorter, northern one being about 240 metres (262 yards) long and between 50 and 60 metres (55 and 65 yards) wide (for a simplified plan, see fig. 28.10). The southern breakwater, which curved northwards, was about 500 metres (547 yards) long and 70 metres (77 yards) wide, supporting vaulted chambers and a broad quay. The entrance channel between the breakwaters was about 100 metres (109 yards) long and 20-30 metres (22-23 yards) wide, and marked by two towers, the largest of which is thought to have functioned as a lighthouse. A nearby shipwreck contemporary with the harbour’s construction contained wooden beams and volcanic ash, and it has been argued that the ash was pozzolana from the Bay of Naples, imported to produce Roman hydraulic concrete (which sets underwater) for Herod’s breakwaters. The core of the breakwaters was constructed of huge blocks, some as large as 125 cubic metres (4414 cubic feet), composed of this hydraulic concrete mixed with rubble. The blocks were formed by pouring the concrete into submerged wooden moulds which may themselves have been made using imported materials shipped from Europe. This immense substructure was overlain with stone blocks and given additional protection from the sea in the form of a berm of rough stones. Despite the care that went into its construction, keeping Caesarea’s port in good working order proved an arduous task, as silting and seismic activity took their toll. By the third century the harbour was in bad shape, and it underwent extensive repairs during the reign of Anastasius. But by the seventh century the once magnificent haven had largely silted up and the city was in decline.
Fig. 44. Rock-cut sea wall at Botrys (Batroun), a small coastal city between Tripolis and Byblus.
Heavy goods could sometimes be moved inland by water, where navigable rivers permitted. The level of the water in a river could be artificially raised by constructing weirs or other structures which could impede the flow of the river without blocking it completely. In this way quite small rivers could carry light traffic, but movement inland from the Mediterranean by water was hampered by the fact that few rivers breach the mountain chains along the coast. The Orontes is the most obvious and the most navigable; Strabo claimed that the voyage from Seleucia Pieria up the Orontes to Antioch could be completed in a day. Improvements included cutting a canal at some point before the second century in order to bypass a shallow section of the river and to allow vessels with a deeper draft to pass up river to the Syrian metropolis, and further canal work to improve navigability (and drainage?) up river of Antioch may have been carried out by the army together with some of the Antiochenes during the Flavian period. These operations would have helped to reduce transport costs by allowing military supplies to pass by water inland as far as the northernmost bend of the river, some distance east of Antioch. Small boats could certainly travel even further up the Orontes beyond Epiphanea (Hama), perhaps as far as Emesa. A shipwright is attested from an inscription at Derkush, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) upstream from Antioch (presumably he built river-going vessels rather than sea-going ones). We know rather less about transport on other rivers. The Lycus, near Laodicea, may have been navigable sufficiently far inland to serve the Bdama pass into the Orontes valley, and the Eleutherus (Nahr al-Kabir) was probably navigable along its lower reaches. In a similar manner the Leontes (Litani) could have served the hinterland of Tyre, and was perhaps a route into the Bekaa valley. The vast Euphrates, which provided access to the Persian Gulf, was navigable up river at least as far as Zeugma, and small vessels could go further north to Samosata, perhaps as far as the mouth of the gorge in the Kurdish Taurus, where rapids would have made further travel very difficult. Palmyrene and Durene merchants brought goods up the Euphrates by boat, and the river served as an artery of supply during Roman campaigns against the Parthians and Sasanians. Strabo also mentions goods transport on the Jordan, which he claimed was undertaken ‘by Aradians especially’. The importance of riverine transport to civilians and the military has yet to be assessed, but, as on land, the Roman empire is likely to have left its prominent signature.