The Provinces of the Roman Empire 17

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 17

CHAPTER X.

 

SYRIA AND THE LAND OF THE NABATAEANS.

 

 

[Sidenote: Conquest of Syria.]

 

It was very gradually that the Romans, after acquiring the western

half of the coasts of the Mediterranean, resolved on possessing

themselves also of the eastern half. Not the resistance, which they

here encountered in comparatively slight measure, but a well-founded

fear of the denationalising consequences of such acquisitions, led to

as prolonged an effort as possible on their part merely to preserve

decisive political influence in those regions, and to the incorporation

proper at least of Syria and Egypt taking place only when the state was

already almost a monarchy. Doubtless the Roman empire became thereby

geographically compact; the Mediterranean Sea, the proper basis of Rome

after it was a great power, became on all sides a Roman inland lake;

the navigation and commerce on its waters and shores formed politically

an unity to the advantage of all that dwelt around. But by the side

of geographical compactness went national bipartition. Through Greece

and Macedonia the Roman state would never have become binational, any

more than the Greek cities of Neapolis and Massalia had Hellenised

Campania and Provence. But, while in Europe and Africa the Greek

domain vanishes in presence of the compact mass of the Latin, so much

of the third continent as was drawn, with the Nile-valley rightfully

pertaining to it, into this cycle of culture belonged exclusively to

the Greeks, and Antioch and Alexandria in particular were the true

pillars of the Hellenic development that attained its culmination in

Alexander--centres of Hellenic life and Hellenic culture, and great

cities, as was Rome. After having set forth in the preceding chapter

the conflict between the East and West in and around Armenia and

Mesopotamia, that filled the whole period of the empire, we turn to

describe the relations of the Syrian regions, as they took shape at

the same time. What we mean is the territory which is separated by

the mountain-chain of Pisidia, Isauria, and Western Cilicia from Asia

Minor; by the eastern continuation of these mountains and the Euphrates

from Armenia and Mesopotamia, by the Arabian desert from the Parthian

empire and from Egypt; only it seemed fitting to deal with the peculiar

fortunes of Judaea in a special section. In accordance with the

diversity of political development under the imperial government, we

shall speak in the first instance of Syria proper, the northern portion

of this territory, and of the Phoenician coast that stretches along

under the Libanus, and then of the country lying behind Palestine--the

territory of the Nabataeans. What was to be said about Palmyra has

already found its place in the preceding chapter.

 

[Sidenote: Provincial government.]

 

After the partition of the provinces between the emperor and the

senate, Syria was under imperial administration, and was in the East,

like Gaul in the West, the central seat of civil and military control.

This governorship was from the beginning the most esteemed of all, and

only became in course of time all the more thought of. Its holder,

like the governor of the two Germanies, wielded the command over four

legions, and while the administration of the inland Gallic districts

was taken away from the commanders of the Rhine-army and a certain

restriction was involved in the very fact of their co-ordination, the

governor of Syria retained the civil administration of the whole

large province undiminished, and held for long alone in all Asia a

command of the first rank. Under Vespasian, indeed, he obtained in

the governors of Palestine and Cappadocia two colleagues likewise

commanding legions; but, on the other hand, through the annexation of

the kingdom of Commagene, and soon afterwards of the principalities

in the Libanus, the field of his administration was increased. It was

only in the course of the second century that a diminution of his

prerogatives occurred, when Hadrian took one of the four legions from

the governor of Syria and handed it over to the governor of Palestine.

It was Severus who at length withdrew the first place in the Roman

military hierarchy from the Syrian governor. After having subdued the

province--which had wished at that time to make Niger emperor, as it

had formerly done with its governor Vespasian--amidst resistance from

the capital Antioch in particular, he ordained its partition into a

northern and a southern half, and gave to the governor of the former,

which was called Coele-Syria, two legions, to the governor of the

latter, the province of Syro-Phoenicia, one.

 

[Sidenote: Syrian troops.]

 

Syria may also be compared with Gaul, in so far as this district

of imperial administration was divided more sharply than most into

pacified regions and border-districts needing protection. While the

extensive coast of Syria and the western regions generally were not

exposed to hostile attacks, and the protection on the desert frontier

against the roving Bedouins devolved on the Arabian and Jewish princes,

and subsequently on the troops of the province of Arabia as also on the

Palmyrenes, more than on the Syrian legions, the Euphrates-frontier

required, particularly before Mesopotamia became Roman, a watch against

the Parthians similar to that on the Rhine against the Germans. But

if the Syrian legions came to be employed on the frontier, they could

not be dispensed with in western Syria as well.[122] The troops of

the Rhine were certainly there also on account of the Gauls; yet the

Romans might say with justifiable pride that for the great capital

of Gaul and the three Gallic provinces a direct garrison of 1200 men

sufficed. But for the Syrian population, and especially for the capital

of Roman Asia, it was not enough to station legions on the Euphrates.

Not merely on the edge of the desert, but also in the retreats of the

mountains there lodged daring bands of robbers, who roamed in the

neighbourhood of the rich fields and large towns--not to the same

extent as now, but constantly even then--and, often disguised as

merchants or soldiers, pillaged the country houses and the villages.

But even the towns themselves, above all Antioch, required like

Alexandria garrisons of their own. Beyond doubt this was the reason why

a division into civil and military districts, like that enacted for

Gaul by Augustus, was never even so much as attempted in Syria, and

why the large self-subsistent camp-settlements, out of which _e.g._

originated Mentz on the Rhine, Leon in Spain, Chester in England, were

altogether wanting in the Roman East. But beyond doubt this was also

the reason why the Syrian army was so much inferior in discipline and

spirit to that of the Western provinces; why the stern discipline,

which was exercised in the military standing camps of the West, never

could take root in the urban cantonments of the East. When stationary

troops have, in addition to their more immediate destination, the task

of police assigned to them, this of itself has a demoralising effect;

and only too often, where they are expected to keep in check turbulent

civic masses, their own discipline in fact is thereby undermined. The

Syrian wars formerly described furnish the far from pleasant commentary

on this; none of them found an army capable of warfare in existence,

and regularly there was need to bring up Occidental troops in order to

give the turn to the struggle.

 

[Sidenote: Hellenising of Syria.]

 

Syria in the narrower sense and its adjoining lands, the Plain Cilicia

and Phoenicia, never had under the Roman emperors a history properly

so called. The inhabitants of these regions belonged to the same

stock as the inhabitants of Judaea and Arabia, and the ancestors of

the Syrians and the Phoenicians were settled in a remote age at one

spot with those of the Jews and the Arabs, and spoke one language.

But while the latter clung to their peculiar character and to their

language, the Syrians and the Phoenicians became Hellenised even before

they came under Roman rule. This Hellenising took effect throughout

in the formation of Hellenic polities. The foundation for this had

indeed been laid by the native development, particularly by the old

and great mercantile cities on the Phoenician coast. But above all the

formation of states by Alexander and the Alexandrids, just like that

of the Roman republic, had as its basis not the tribe, but the urban

community; it was not the old Macedonian hereditary principality,

but the Greek polity that Alexander carried into the East; and it

was not from tribes, but from towns that he designed, and the Romans

designed, to constitute their empire. The idea of the autonomous

burgess-body is an elastic one, and the autonomy of Athens and Thebes

was a different thing from that of the Macedonian and Syrian city, just

as in the Roman circle the autonomy of free Capua had another import

than that of the Latin colonies of the republic or even of the urban

communities of the empire; but the fundamental idea is everywhere

that of self-administering citizenship sovereign within its own

ring-wall. After the fall of the Persian empire, Syria, along with the

neighbouring Mesopotamia, was, as the military bridge of connection

between the West and the East, covered more than any other land with

Macedonian settlements. The Macedonian names of places transferred

thither to the greatest extent, and nowhere else recurring in the

whole empire of Alexander, show that here the flower of the Hellenic

conquerors of the East was settled, and that Syria was to become for

this state the New-Macedonia; as indeed, so long as the empire of

Alexander retained a central government, this had there its seat. Then

the troubles of the last Seleucid period had helped the Syrian imperial

towns to greater independence.

 

These arrangements the Romans found existing. Of non-urban districts

administered directly by the empire there were probably none at all

in Syria according to the organisation planned by Pompeius, and, if

the dependent principalities in the first epoch of the Roman rule

embraced a great portion of the southern interior of the province,

these were withal mostly mountainous and poorly inhabited districts of

subordinate importance. Taken as a whole, for the Romans in Syria not

much was left to be done as to the increase of urban development--less

than in Asia Minor. Hence there is hardly anything to be told from the

imperial period of the founding of towns in the strict sense as regards

Syria. The few colonies which were laid out here, such as Berytus under

Augustus and probably also Heliopolis, had no other object than those

conducted to Macedonia, namely, the settlement of veterans.

 

[Sidenote: Continuance of the native language and habits under

Hellenism.]

 

How the Greeks and the older population in Syria stood to one

another, may be clearly traced by the very local names. The majority

of districts and towns here bear Greek names, in great part, as we

have observed, derived from the Macedonian home, such as Pieria,

Anthemusias, Arethusa, Beroea, Chalcis, Edessa, Europus, Cyrrhus,

Larisa, Pella, others named after Alexander or the members of the

Seleucid house, such as Alexandria, Antioch, Seleucis and Seleucia,

Apamea, Laodicea, Epiphaneia. The old native names maintain themselves

doubtless side by side, as Beroea, previously in Aramaean Chalep,

is also called Chalybon, Edessa or Hierapolis, previously Mabog, is

called also Bambyce, Epiphaneia, previously Hamat, is also called

Amathe. But for the most part the older appellations give way before

the foreign ones, and only a few districts and larger places, such as

Commagene, Samosata, Hemesa, Damascus, are without newly-formed Greek

names. Eastern Cilicia has few Macedonian foundations to show; but

the capital Tarsus became early and completely Hellenised, and was

long before the Roman time one of the centres of Hellenic culture.

It was somewhat otherwise in Phoenicia; the mercantile towns of old

renown, Aradus, Byblus, Berytus, Sidon, Tyrus, did not properly lay

aside the native names; but how here too the Greek gained the upper

hand, is shown by the Hellenising transformation of these same names,

and still more clearly by the fact that New-Aradus is known to us only

under the Greek name Antaradus, and likewise the new town founded

by the Tyrians, the Sidonians, and the Aradians in common on this

coast only under the name Tripolis, and both have developed their

modern designations Tartus and Tarabulus from the Greek. Already in

the Seleucid period the coins in Syria proper bear exclusively, and

those of the Phoenician towns most predominantly, Greek legends; and

from the beginning of the imperial period the sole rule of Greek is

here an established fact.[123] The oasis of Palmyra alone, not merely

separated by wide stretches of desert, but also preserving a certain political independence, formed, as we saw (p. 95), an exception in this respect. But in intercourse the native idioms were retained.