The Provinces of the Roman Empire 14

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 14

The Roman throne was then occupied by Severus Alexander, a ruler in

whom nothing was warlike but the name, and for whom in reality his

mother Mamaea conducted the government. Urgent, almost humble proposals

of peace on the part of the Roman government remained without effect;

nothing was left but the employment of arms. The masses of the Roman

army gathered together from all the empire were divided; the left wing

took the direction of Armenia and Media, the right that of Mesene at

the mouth of the Euphrates and Tigris, perhaps in the calculation that

they might in the former as in the latter quarter have the support

of the adherents of the Arsacids; the main army went to Mesopotamia.

The troops were numerous enough, but without discipline and tone; a

Roman officer of high position at this time himself testifies that

they were pampered and insubordinate, refused to fight, killed their

officers, and deserted in crowds. The main force did not get beyond

the Euphrates,[79] for his mother represented to the emperor that it

was not his business to fight for his subjects, but theirs to fight

for him. The right wing, assailed in the level country by the Persian

main force and abandoned by the emperor, was cut up. Thereupon, when

the emperor issued orders to the wing which had pushed forward towards

Media to draw back, the latter also suffered severely in the winter

retreat through Armenia. If the matter went no further than this sorry

return of the great Oriental army to Antioch, if no complete disaster

occurred, and even Mesopotamia remained in Roman power, this appears

due, not to the merit of the Roman troops or their leaders but to the

fact that the Persian levy was weary of the conflict and went home.[80]

But they went not for long, the more especially as soon after, upon

the murder of the last offshoot of the dynasty of Severus, the several

army-commanders and the government in Rome began to fight about the

occupation of the Roman throne, and consequently were at one in their

concern for the affairs of external foes. Under Maximinus (235-238) the

Roman Mesopotamia fell into the power of Ardashir, and the Persians

once more prepared to cross the Euphrates.[81]

 

[Sidenote: The Persian war of Gordian.]

 

After the internal troubles were in some measure pacified, and Gordian

III., almost still a boy, under the protection of the commandant of

Rome and soon of his father-in-law Furius Timesitheus, bore undisputed

sway in the whole empire, war was solemnly declared against the

Persians, and in the year 242 a great Roman army advanced under the

personal conduct of the emperor, or rather of his father-in-law, into

Mesopotamia. It had complete success; Carrhae was recovered, at Resaina

between Carrhae and Nisibis the army of the Persian king Shahpuhr or

Sapor (reigning 241-272), who shortly before had followed his father

Ardashir, was routed, and in consequence of this victory Nisibis was

occupied. All Mesopotamia was reconquered; it was resolved to march

back to the Euphrates, and thence down the stream against the enemy’s

capital Ctesiphon. Unhappily Timesitheus died, and his successor,

Marcus Julius Philippus, a native of Arabia from the Trachonitis,

used the opportunity to set aside the young ruler. When the army had

accomplished the difficult march through the valley of the Chaboras

towards the Euphrates, the soldiers in Circesium, at the confluence of

the Chaboras with the Euphrates, did not find--in consequence, it is

alleged, of arrangements made by Philippus--the provisions and stores

which they had expected, and laid the blame of this on the emperor.

Nevertheless the march in the direction of Ctesiphon was begun, but at

the very first station, near Zaitha (somewhat below Mejadîn), a number

of insurgent guards killed the emperor (in the spring or summer of

244), and proclaimed their commandant, Philippus, as Augustus in his

stead. The new ruler did what the soldiers or at least the guardsmen

desired, and not merely gave up the intended expedition against

Ctesiphon, but led the troops at once back to Italy. He purchased

the permission to do so from the conquered enemy by the cession of

Mesopotamia and Armenia, and so of the Euphrates frontier. But this

conclusion of peace excited such indignation that the emperor did not

venture to put it in execution, and allowed the garrisons to remain

in the ceded provinces.[82] The fact that the Persians, at least

provisionally, acquiesced in this, gives the measure of what they

were then able to do. It was not the Orientals, but the Goths, the

pestilence that raged for fifteen years, and the dissensions of the

corps-leaders quarrelling with one another for the crown, that broke

the last strength of the empire.

 

[Sidenote: Palmyra.]

 

At this point, when the Roman East in its struggle with the Persian

is left to its own resources, it will be appropriate to make mention

of a remarkable state, which, created by and for the desert-traffic,

now for a short time takes up a leading part in political history.

The oasis of Palmyra, in the native language Tadmor, lies half-way

between Damascus and the Euphrates. It is of importance solely as

intermediate station between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean;

this significance it was late in acquiring, and early lost again, so

that the flourishing time of Palmyra coincides nearly with the period

which we are here describing. As to the rise of the town there is an

utter absence of tradition.[83] It is mentioned first on occasion

of the abode of Antonius in Syria in the year 713 {41 B.C.}, when he

made a vain attempt to possess himself of its riches; the documents

found there--the oldest dated Palmyrene inscription is of the year 745

{9 B.C.}--hardly reach much further back. It is not improbable that

its flourishing was connected with the establishment of the Romans

in the Syrian coast-region. So long as the Nabataeans and the towns

of Osrhoene were not directly Roman, the Romans had an interest in

providing another direct communication with the Euphrates, and this

thereupon led necessarily by way of Palmyra. Palmyra was not a Roman

foundation; Antonius took as the occasion for that predatory expedition

the neutrality of the merchants who were the medium of traffic between

the two great states, and the Roman horsemen turned back, without

having performed their work, before the chain of archers which the

Palmyrenes opposed to the attack. But already in the first imperial

period the city must have been reckoned as belonging to the empire,

because the tax-ordinances of Germanicus and of Corbulo issued for

Syria applied also for Palmyra; in an inscription of the year 80 we

meet with a Claudian _phyle_ there; from Hadrian’s time the city calls

itself Hadriana Palmyra, and in the third century it even designates

itself a colony.

 

[Sidenote: Military independence of Palmyra.]

 

The subjection of the Palmyrenes to the empire was, however, of a

different nature to the ordinary one, and similar in some measure to

the client-relation of the dependent kingdoms. Even in Vespasian’s time

Palmyra is called an intermediate region between the two great powers,

and in every collision between the Romans and Parthians the question

was asked, what policy the Palmyrenes would pursue. We must seek the

key to its distinctive position in the relations of the frontier and

the arrangements made for frontier-protection. The Syrian troops, so

far as they were stationed on the Euphrates itself, had their chief

position at Zeugma, opposite to Biredjik, at the great passage of the

Euphrates. Further down the stream, between the immediately Roman and

the Parthian territory was interposed that of Palmyra, which reached to

the Euphrates and included the next important place of crossing at Sura

opposite to the Mesopotamian town Nicephorium (later Callinicon, now

er-Ragga). It is more than probable that the guarding of this important

border-fortress as well as the securing of the desert-road between the

Euphrates and Palmyra, and also perhaps of a portion of the road from

Palmyra to Damascus, was committed to the community of Palmyra, and

that it was thus entitled and bound to make the military arrangements

necessary for this far from slight task.[84] Subsequently doubtless

the imperial troops were brought up closer to Palmyra, and one of the

Syrian legions was moved to Danava between Palmyra and Damascus, and

the Arabian legion to Bostra; after Severus united Mesopotamia with

the empire, even here both banks of the Euphrates were in the Roman

power, and the Roman territory on the Euphrates ended no longer at

Sura but at Circesium, at the confluence of the Chaboras with the

Euphrates above Mejadîn. Then Mesopotamia also was strongly occupied

with imperial troops. But the Mesopotamian legions lay on the great

road in the north near Resaina and Nisibis, and even the Syrian and

Arabian troops did not supersede the need for the co-operation of the

Palmyrenes. Even the protection of Circesium and of this part of the

bank of the Euphrates may have been entrusted to the Palmyrenes. It was

not till after the decline of Palmyra, and perhaps in compensation for

it, that Circesium[85] was made by Diocletian a strong fortress, which

thenceforth was here the basis of frontier-defence.

 

[Sidenote: Administrative independence of Palmyra.]

 

The traces of this distinctive position of Palmyra are demonstrable

also in its institutions. The absence of the emperor’s name on the

Palmyrene coins is probably to be explained not from it, but from the

fact that the community issued almost nothing but small money. But

the treatment of the language speaks clearly. From the rule elsewhere

followed almost without exception by the Romans--of allowing in their

immediate territory only the use of the two imperial languages--Palmyra

was excepted. Here that language, which in the rest of Syria and

not less after the exile in Judaea was the usual medium of private

intercourse, but was restricted to the latter, maintained its ground in

public use, so long as the city existed at all. Essential differences

cannot be shown between the Palmyrene Syriac and that of the other

regions just named; the proper names, having not seldom an Arabic or

Jewish, or even Persian form, show the striking mixture of peoples, and

numerous words borrowed from Greek or Latin show the influence of the

Occidentals. It becomes subsequently a rule to append to the Syrian

text a Greek one, which in a decree of the Palmyrene common-council

of the year 137 is placed after the Palmyrene, but afterwards usually

precedes it; but mere Greek inscriptions of native Palmyrenes are

rare exceptions. Even in votive inscriptions which Palmyrenes set up

to their native gods in Rome,[86] and in tombs of Palmyrene soldiers

that died in Africa or Britain, the Palmyrene rendering is added. So

too in Palmyra--while the Roman year was made the basis of dating

as in the rest of the empire--the names of the months were not the

Macedonian officially received in Roman Syria, but those which were

current in it in common intercourse at least among the Jews, and were

in use, moreover, among the Aramaean tribes living under Assyrian and

subsequently Persian rule.[87]

 

[Sidenote: Palmyrene magistrates.]

 

The municipal organisation was moulded in the main after the pattern

of the Greek municipality of the Roman empire; the designations for

magistrates and council[88] and even those of the colony are in

the Palmyrene texts retained for the most part from the imperial

languages. But in administration the district retained a greater

independence than is elsewhere assigned to urban communities. Alongside

of the civic officials we find, at least in the third century, the city

of Palmyra with its territory under a separate “headman” of senatorial

rank and Roman appointment, but chosen from the family of most repute

in the place; Septimius Hairanes, son of Odaenathus, is substantially a

prince of the Palmyrenes,[89] who was doubtless not otherwise dependent

on the legate of Syria than were the client-princes on the neighbouring

imperial governors generally. A few years later we meet with his

son,[90] Septimius Odaenathus, in the like position--indeed even

raised in rank--of hereditary prince.[91] Similarly, Palmyra formed a

customs-district apart, in which the customs were leased on account, not of the state, but of the community.[92]