A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East. Группа авторов
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beyond the Euphrates was completed some twenty years later by Septimus Severus. On the pretext that several client princes had supported the governor of Syria, Pescennius Niger, his rival for the imperial throne in 193 ce, Severus undertook in 195 ce a campaign against Edessa and its neighboring principalities. Starting in 195 ce, he annexed a large part of the principality of Edessa which, together with others (Batnai, Anthemousia), formed the new province of Osrhoene. Abgar VIII kept his title and his ownership of Edessa and its surroundings. A new campaign in 198 ce led Severus to Ctesiphon (in January of 198 ce) and to Hatra, which resisted but nevertheless entered into an alliance with Rome. A Mesopotamian province was thus created to the east of Osrhoene, with Nisibis as its capital, and legions were stationed at Rhesaina and then Singara. Simultaneously, Severus cut Syria into two provinces, Coele Syria to the north and Syria Phoenice to the south, most likely in a move to diminish the power of the provincial governor.
After Edessa was annexed and promoted to the rank of Roman colony (213 ce), Caracalla campaigned (215–217 ce) in Adiabene and Babylon. Caracalla’s assassination was followed by a vigorous Parthian counter-offensive, which crushed Caracalla’s successor Macrinus at the gates of Nisibis; Macrinus agreed to pay 50 millions of deniers for the Parthians to leave the area.
The Sasanian Threat and the Near Eastern Lands in the Third Century
When the Sasanian Persians replaced the Arsacid Parthians starting in 224–225 ce, the situation in the Near East was deeply altered. Although the Parthians had ended up establishing a sort of modus vivendi with the Romans and in the end were attacked more often by Rome than they were themselves the aggressors, the Persians soon showed their aggression toward Syria. Starting in 230 ce, a first Persian invasion brought them to the gates of North Syria. The retaliation took a long time to organize, and Alexander Severus, who was advancing along the Euphrates, had to retreat toward Antioch.
Although Roman Syria had experienced great stability for two centuries, instability remained the norm in Syria during the third century, due to the conflicts with the Persians and internal crises. War with the Persians resumed under Gordian III who briefly reestablished the Abgarid dynasty in Edessa (239–242 ce) in an attempt to create a barrier against the advancing Persians. But he could not prevent the capture and destruction of Hatra (242 ce) even though in 243–244 ce he led a largely victorious campaign that allowed him to retake most of the cities in Mesopotamia and advance toward Ctesiphon. But in the beginning of the year 244 ce, the Roman army was routed at Misichē in the Euphrates valley, leaving the emperor dead and replaced by his praetorian prefect Philip, a native of the province of Arabia. Philip negotiated a costly peace with the Persians and managed to conserve a large part of the province of Mesopotamia.
The peace was broken in 252–253 ce, and the Persian Shapur I took over Dura in 252 ce. Dura was soon after this liberated and then retaken a second time and destroyed in 256 ce. Several North Syrian cities seem to have been pillaged, and fear reigned across all of Syria and into Arabia where cities began to be fortified (Bostra, Adraa). In this political climate, some local personalities, such as Uranius Antoninus in Emesa and Odaenathus in Palmyra, attempted to organize resistance to the Persians. The partial success of this resistance did not prevent a fresh Persian offensive in 259 ce, which affected all of North Syria and forced the emperor Valerian to personally lead the campaign. But Valerian was taken prisoner during a fight near Edessa (late 259 ce) and Antioch was taken.
Since Valerian’s son and co-emperor Gallienus was held up by operations in the West, Odaenathus of Palmyra showed himself to be an indispensable ally because Palmyra was the only city of the empire to have kept an armed militia to maintain peace and safety along the desert routes used by caravans. Thanks to these troops and mobilizing only a part, at least, of the Roman troops in Syria, Odaenathus of Palmyra fought against the usurpers Macrianus and Quietus (260 ce), and managed to stop the Persians by handing them a defeat in the Orontes river valley. He brought war to Mesopotamia, taking Ctesiphon twice, it seems, in 262 ce and then in 267 or 268.
Odaenathus of Palmyra, thanks to his success against the Persians, had gained the upper hand over all of Syria and had accumulated some very special titles (exarch of the Palmyrenes, “King of Kings”) with Gallienus’s permission. This did not prevent Palmyra from remaining fully a city of the empire, a Roman colony under the classic administration of the duumvirate. For unknown reasons, Odaenathus was assassinated along with his eldest son Hairan/Herodes in 268 ce. Odaenathus’s widow Zenobia refused to recognize Quintillus when Claudius II died in the summer of 270 ce and declared her son Vaballathus imperator while recognizing Aurelian as Augustus. Nevertheless, troops placed under Palmyrene authority immediately endeavored to take control of the Roman provinces of the Near East. Then fell, one after the other, Coele Syria, Syria Phoenice, Arabia (not without a fight, since the temple of Jupiter Hammon in Bostra was destroyed by the Palmyrenes), Egypt, and probably Syria-Palaestina. The coins issued by Vaballathus in Alexandria still bore the effigy of Aurelian with the name of Vaballathus. But by the summer or fall of 271 ce, Vaballathus finally became Augustus and Zenobia Augusta. Troops marched toward Asia Minor with the goal of firmly asserting Vaballathus’s power over the entire empire or at least the largest possible part of it. Did they go as far as Ancyra as Zosimus states? No one knows.
Aurelian, proclaimed emperor by his troops in Moesia in September of 270 ce, refused to share his power as Zenobia had proposed and endeavored to hold and then drive back the Palmyrene troops. The Palmyrenes were forced out of Egypt (May–June of 272 ce), and then suffered defeats at Tyana (southern Cappadocia) and near Antioch, and finally near Emesa, which forced Zenobia’s troops to retreat to Palmyra which fell in August of 272 ce. Zenobia tried to flee but was caught near the Euphrates and taken as a captive to Rome. An uprising in Palmyra over the following months brought a new Roman intervention and the city was pillaged. A garrison was installed, reinforced by Diocletian, and the city lost its essential role in trading with the Persian Gulf, due in particular to clauses in the peace treaty of 298 ce that established Nisibis as the center of trade.
One can overlook the expedition launched against the Persians by Carus, accompanied by his son Numerian, in the spring or early summer of 283 ce, in spite of its success (the taking of Ctesiphon in August of 283 ce), because when Carus died at Ctesiphon, the conquests were abandoned and the army withdrew. Carus had probably wanted to take advantage of the Persian dynastic difficulties, since the sons of Shapur I were fighting each other for the throne. In March of 284 ce, Numerian returned to Emesa.
When Diocletian ascended to power, Rome governed a total of six provinces in the Near East: the three Syrias (Coele, Phoenice, and Palaestina), Arabia, and the two provinces beyond the Euphrates, Osrhoene and Mesopotamia. All of these provinces had suffered greatly from the wars with the Persians, as well as the internal struggles between competitors for the empire, especially the most northern provinces. The ascension of Diocletian marked a change in these two domains. Firstly, despite the difficulties in the early part of his reign, the unity of the empire was reestablished, which put an end to the civil wars. Secondly, an attack against the empire (296 ce) by the Persian Narses I sparked a vigorous retaliation from Caesar Galerius in Mesopotamia, who captured Narses’s wives, children, and treasure (297 ce). Diocletian forced the Sasanian sovereign to accept the Peace of Nisibis (298 ce), in which Narses ceded five districts, establishing the Tigris river as the border between the two empires; inaugurating a long period of peace for Roman Syria, the peace treaty lasted until 337 ce.
FURTHER READING
No handbook provides a full overview of the political history during these six centuries. Following Will 1979–1982, which remains the preferred choice for the whole of the Hellenistic age, only Sartre 2003 studies this period in detail. Capdetrey 2007, which is dedicated to the administrative and political organization, adds new and essential insights. The discovery of the inscription from Maresha has made known elements indispensable for our understanding of the origins of the Jewish conflict in the years 178–152 ce, and the conclusions drawn by Honigman 2014 from the new document and her precise analysis of the books of the Maccabees imposes a complete revision of this crisis. The primary documentation has been perfectly brought together in the new edition of the old book by Schürer 1973–1987,