Introduction 7

The detailed nature of the documentary and archaeological evidence

from Syria and Mesopotamia provides a unique opportunity to investi-

gate these views of the nature of Roman imperialism and the role of the

army in it. This evidence suggests that separation of soldiers and civilians

is a recurring theme in Syria and Mesopotamia. While soldiers lived close

to civilians in large numbers and often were drawn from the civilian

population, they were separated politically, socially, and economically by

official duties; by an institutional outlook on social relationships, reli-

gion, and similar matters; and by their position within an exploitative

economic system. Of course, "integrated" and "separate" models of the

army's involvement in provincial civilian life are polar extremes. Reality

lies between them, and we will see evidence for integration too.

The third theme of this study is investigation of some issues of identity

in the Roman Near East and hence in the Roman empire in general. The

layers of political, social, and legal identity within the Roman empire

have long been the subject of scholarship. Similarly there has been much

recent discussion of ethnicity and ethnic identity in the eastern Roman

empire.11 This is an important theme in Fergus Millar's recent book, for

example. Millar approaches the issue with due caution, noting the com-

plexity of identity in the Greco-Roman world and avoiding the simple

equation of ethnicity with language and the inclination to draw simple

dichotomies between "Greek" and "Syrian," "Aramaic," or broadly

"Oriental." He also demonstrates the cultural impact of the political

expansion of Rome into the region, paradoxically leading not to pro-

found "romanization" but rather to an intensification of a broadly

"Greek" city-based culture. He notes this cultural change, observes the

scale of the army presence in the region, and concludes that "the Roman

army must represent by far the most substantial of all nonlocal influences

on the Near East."'2 On a more local level, he stresses the integration of

soldiers and civilians in the city of Dura-Europos.13

The present book stresses the importance of another form of identity,

namely, institutional identity, which, it is argued, can supercede ethnic

identity and raise even more ambiguities and complexities than those

presented in other recent studies of provincial identities. Detailed analy-

sis of the evidence, not the least of which is from Dura-Europos itself,

11. Notable is the work of Fergus Millar, including his important study The Roman

Near East, 31 BC-AD 337 (1993).

12. Millar, Roman Near East, 527.

13. Ibid., 130-31, 133.