The Roman Near East has been a source of fascination and exasperation - an immense area, a rich archaeological heritage as well as documents in several local languages, a region with a great depth of urbanisation and development ... yet relatively neglected by modern researchers and difficult to work on and in. Local archaeologists are often under-funded and the Roman period viewed as an earlier phase of western colonialism. Happily, the immense surge in archaeological and historical research on the Roman period everywhere has included the Roman Near East and there have been significant academic developments. This collection of studies on the Roman Near East represents Professor Kennedy’s academic assessment of the region, which began with his doctoral thesis on the contribution of Syria to the Roman army. Although the thesis was never published, several articles owe their genesis to work done then or soon after and are included here (VI, VII, IX, XII). Initial visits to military sites in Syria and Jordan swiftly brought out the presence in many cases of associated civil settlements and - though often now gone, the traces of ancient field systems. Hence, the two prominent sub-themes in this collection are the Roman military and various aspects of society and settlement - settlement types, farming, logistical underpinning and communications.

Table of contents

This title was first published in 2002: This volume focuses on the Roman provinces of Syria and Arabia, above all the lands now within Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. The first articles look at questions of geography, cartography and toponymy, particularly in Strabo, Pliny and Ptolemy. The following sections are concerned with settlement patterns and urban development in the region. In the Roman and early Byzantine periods, the inland areas underwent a gradual transformation, from a semi-sedentary, lightly populated and predominantly rural region, to one of large cities and a network of prosperous, socially sophisticated villages, linked by a network of roads. That change is documented by a wealth of epigraphy from both the urban communities and their outlying settlements (the subject of several articles). By the 4th century, too, Christianity had become the dominant religion and remained such until the arrival of Islam.

Military Diasporas proposes a new research approach to analyse the role of foreign military personnel as composite and partly imagined para-ethnic groups. These groups not only buttressed a state or empire’s military might but crucially connected, policed, and administered (parts of) realms as a transcultural and transimperial class while representing the polity’s universal or at least cosmopolitan aspirations at court or on diplomatic and military missions. Case studies of foreign militaries with a focus on their diasporic elements include the Achaemenid Empire, Ptolemaic Egypt, and the Roman Empire in the ancient world. These are followed by chapters on the Sassanid and Islamic occupation of Egypt, Byzantium, the Latin Aegean (Catalan Company) to Iberian Christian noblemen serving North African Islamic rulers, Mamluks and Italian Stradiots, followed by chapters on military diasporas in Hungary, the Teutonic Order including the Sword Brethren, and the Swiss military. The volume thus covers a broad band of military diasporic experiences and highlights aspects of their role in the building of state and empire from Antiquity to the late Middle Ages and from Persia via Egypt to the Baltic. With a broad chronological and geographic range, this volume is the ideal resource for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars interested in the history of war and warfare from Antiquity to the sixteenth century.

These ten papers from two Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference (2007) sessions bring together a growing body of new archaeological evidence in an attempt to reconsider the way in which the Roman army was provisioned. Clearly, the adequate supply of food was essential to the success of the Roman military. But what was the nature of those supply networks? Did the army rely on imperial supply lines from the continent, as certainly appears to be the case for some commodities, or were provisions requisitioned from local agricultural communities? If the latter was the case, was unsustainable pressure placed on such resources and how did local communities respond? Alternatively, did the early stages of conquest include not only the development of a military infrastructure, but also an effective supply-chain network based on contracts? Beyond the initial stages of conquest, how were provisioning arrangements maintained in the longer term, did supply chains remain static or did they change over time and, if so, what precipitated those changes? Addressing such questions is critical if we are to understand the nature of Roman conquest and the extent of interaction between indigenous communities and the Roman army. Case studies come from Roman Britain (Alchester, Cheshire, Dorset), France, the Netherlands and the Rhine Delta, looking at evidence from animal products, military settlements, the size of cattle, horses, pottery and salt. The editors also provide a review of current research and suggest a future agenda for economic and environmental research.

From Augustus to Constantine, the Roman Empire in the Near East expanded step by step, southward to the Red Sea and eastward across the Euphrates to the Tigris. In a remarkable work of interpretive history, Fergus Millar shows us this world as it was forged into the Roman provinces of Syria, Judaea, Arabia, and Mesopotamia. His book conveys the magnificent sweep of history as well as the rich diversity of peoples, religions, and languages that intermingle in the Roman Near East. Against this complex backdrop, Millar explores questions of cultural and religious identity and ethnicity--as aspects of daily life in the classical world and as part of the larger issues they raise. As Millar traces the advance of Roman control, he gives a lucid picture of Rome's policies and governance over its far-flung empire. He introduces us to major regions of the area and their contrasting communities, bringing out the different strands of culture, communal identity, language, and religious belief in each. The Roman Near East makes it possible to see rabbinic Judaism, early Christianity, and eventually the origins of Islam against the matrix of societies in which they were formed. Millar's evidence permits us to assess whether the Near East is best seen as a regional variant of Graeco-Roman culture or as in some true sense oriental. A masterful treatment of a complex period and world, distilling a vast amount of literary, documentary, artistic, and archaeological evidence--always reflecting new findings--this book is sure to become the standard source for anyone interested in the Roman Empire or the history of the Near East.

Rome: Republic into Empire looks at the political and social reasons why Rome repeatedly descended into civil war in the early 1st century BCE and why these conflicts continued for most of the century; it describes and examines the protagonists, their military skills, their political aims and the battles they fought and lost; it discusses the consequences of each battle and how the final conflict led to a seismic change in the Roman political system with the establishment of an autocratic empire. This is not just another arid chronological list of battles, their winners and their losers. Using a wide range of literary and archaeological evidence, Paul Chrystal offers a rare insight into the wars, battles and politics of this most turbulent and consequential of ancient world centuries; in so doing, it gives us an eloquent and exciting political, military and social history of ancient Rome during one of its most cataclysmic and crucial periods, explaining why and how the civil wars led to the establishment of one of the greatest empires the world has known.

Owing to the threat posed by the Parthian state, and later the Sasanid state, defence of the eastern border of the Roman Empire demanded the presence of considerable military forces. In this respect, Anatolia, Mesopotamia and the Near East were particularly significant in Rome's defensive policy. Numerous military camps were situated in this region, from which the Romans undertook military expeditions against their eastern neighbour. The outcomes of the long-term presence of a large number of Roman army units there included settlement of veterans in both the colonies and the cities of the region. The volume contains a selection of studies by Edward Dabrowa published over several decades concerning certain aspects of the presence of the Roman army in the East. These concern issues related to Roman military camps and campaigns as well as military colonisation in the post-Hadrian period in Mesopotamia, Syria and Judaea. The existence of this colonisation has long been questioned by many scholars. The studies in this book present arguments showing that such colonisation did take place, albeit on a limited scale. It was used on a larger scale mostly by emperors from the Severan dynasty, but also later ones, at least until the mid-third century CE, as a means of urbanisation of these areas.

This is an updated and revised second edition of a handbook originally prepared for the XVIIIth International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies in Amman, Jordan in 2000 - a reflection of the growing importance of Roman studies in Jordan in recent years. In Part A, there are chapters on Roman Jordan, geography and environment, the Romans in Jordan and the Roman army there. In Part B there are 15 chapters surveying, region by region, the evidence of forts, towers, roads, literary texts, inscriptions and excavation, around the entire country and ending with a chapter on the immediately adjacent parts of Roman Arabia that now lie in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel. The book is profusely illustrated throughout and has many aerial views including 20 full-page photographs in colour.

Discover a comprehensive and cross-disciplinary handbook exploring several sub-regions and key themes perfect for a new generation of students A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East delivers the first complete handbook in the area of Hellenistic and Roman Near Eastern history. The book is divided into sections dealing with interdisciplinary source material, each with a great deal of regional variety and engaging with several key themes. It integrates discussions of the classical Near East with the typical undergraduate teaching syllabus in the Anglo-Saxon world. All contributors in this edited volume are leading scholars in their field, with a combination of established researchers and academics, and emerging voices. Contributors hail from countries across several continents, and work in various disciplines, including Ancient History, Archaeology, Art History, Epigraphy, Numismatics, and Oriental Studies. In addition to furthering the integration of the Levantine lands in the classical periods into the teaching canon, the book offers readers: The first comprehensively structured Companion and edited handbook on the Hellenistic and Roman Near East Extensive regional and sub-regional variety in the cross-disciplinary source material A way to compensate for the recent destruction of monuments in the region and the new generation of researchers’ inability to examine these historical stages in person An integration of the study of the Hellenistic and Roman Near East with traditional undergraduate teaching syllabi in the Anglo-Saxon world Perfect for undergraduate history and classics students studying the Near East, A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East will also earn a place in the libraries of graduate students and scholars working within Near Eastern studies, as well as interested members of the public with a passion for history.