Roman Syria

Annexed by Pompey the Great in 64 BCE, the act that formally extinguished the last remnant of the Seleucid Empire. A vital buffer against Parthia and later Sassanid Persia, and home to Antioch, the third-largest city in the Roman world. Divided between the eastern and western halves of the empire in 395 CE, it remained Byzantine territory until the Arab conquest of 637. Pompey's annexation ended decades of Seleucid dynastic civil war that had left the once-mighty Hellenistic kingdom too weak to survive, and Rome inherited a province whose strategic position facing Parthia made it one of the most heavily garrisoned in the empire -- legions based there fought some of Rome's longest and least conclusive wars, including the catastrophic defeat of Crassus at Carrhae in 53 BCE. Antioch rivalled Alexandria and Rome itself in size and sophistication, its position on the Orontes River and proximity to major trade routes from Mesopotamia and Arabia making it one of the greatest commercial hubs of the ancient Mediterranean. The province became a crucial early center of Christianity -- the very word "Christian" was reportedly first used in Antioch, according to the Book of Acts -- and later a hub of Greek philosophical and theological scholarship that shaped centuries of Byzantine intellectual life. Syria's wealth and strategic exposure also made it a frequent target and occasional kingmaker in Roman civil wars, with its legions backing multiple imperial claimants over the centuries before it eventually passed to Byzantine, and then in 637 CE, Arab Muslim rule.

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