Introduction

This volume is a historical and archaeological examination of the relation-

ship between the Roman army, cities, and civilians in the Roman prov-

inces of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Osrhoene.1 This region was selected

because evidence from the area is unique in its quantity and nature.

Compared to western frontier provinces, there are more documents (on

stone and papyrus) produced by civilians and soldiers, official and unoffi-

cial. In contrast to other document-rich provinces, such as Egypt and

Asia, Syria and Mesopotamia included major imperial frontiers and large

concentrations of soldiers. To complement the documents, there is ar-

chaeological material ranging from old and poorly recorded urban exca-

vations to contemporary rural survey work. This archaeological evidence

cannot compete with that from Britain or the Rhine frontier in the scale

of its coverage and often in the quality of fieldwork. However, the combi-

nation of archaeology and documents from Syria and Mesopotamia

makes the region uniquely suited to a study such as this, focusing on the

local level, the detail of day-to-day interaction. Furthermore, this evi-

dence continues into the sixth century A.D., making it possible to follow

three key themes through a period of some six centuries.

This book attempts to structure this diverse evidence within the fairly

loose framework provided by three major, interrelated themes, all funda-

mental to the study of the Roman empire as a whole: the involvement of

the eastern Roman army in towns, in cities, and in urbanization in gen-

eral in the region; the cultural, social, and economic relationship between

soldiers and civilians in the Near East, viewed, as far as possible, from the

perspectives of the participants themselves, provincial and military; and

the importance of institutional identity in the Roman Near East and in

1. Armenia, Judaea/Syria Palaestina, Arabia, and Egypt have been excluded from system-

atic consideration because their inclusion would require a much longer study, particularly

since all but Armenia have been the subject of extensive specialist literature. However, these

provinces are drawn on from time to time for comparative purposes.