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REVIEW ARTICLES the Near East in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods

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REVIEW ARTICLES the Near East in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods REVIEW ARTICLES The Near East in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods between Local, Regional and Supra-Regional Approaches1 Ted Kaizer Warwick Ball, Rome in the East. The Transformation o f an Empire, London and New York: Routledge, 2000. xx + 523 pp. ISBN 0 415 11376 8. Steven K. Ross, Roman Edessa. Politics and Culture on the Eastern Fringes o f the Roman Empire, 114-242 CE, London and New York: Routledge, 2001. xiii + 204 pp. ISBN 0 415 18787 7. Maurice Sartre, D ’Alexandre à Zénobie. Histoire du Levant antique, IVe siècle av. J.-C. — Ille siècle ap. J.-C., Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2001. 1194 pp. ISBN 2 213 60921 7. Monika Schuol, Die Charakene. Ein mesopotamisches Königreich in hellenistisch- parthischer Zeit, Oriens et Occidens 1, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2000. 554 pp. ISBN 3 515 07709 Χ. Recent years have witnessed an outpouring of publications covering an immense range of aspects of Near Eastern history in the period between Alexander and Constantine. The books which provide the starting point of this discussion represent different approaches to this field. Ross (R.) focuses on one particular place, providing a fresh account of the way in which Edessa, a city in North Mesopotamia that has always attracted scholarly attention due to its claim to be the world’s first Christian kingdom, developed from Parthian subject to Roman client. Schuol (Sch.), in a detailed study of evidence from and related to a wider region in the Near East, aims to investigate the political, economic and cultural-historical importance of the Gulf kingdom of Chara- cene. Ball (B.) provides a comprehensive account of the material sources from the east­ ern provinces of the Roman Empire in relation to the available historical evidence, of the continuing progress of Roman rule eastwards, and — it is argued — of the resulting transformation of the Empire itself under eastern influence. Sartre (Sa.) deals in detail not only with the political history of the Near East over more than six centuries, but also with numerous aspects of daily life, including economic, social and religious aspects. Local, regional and supra-regional approaches are necessarily dependent on each other, and any thematic division of the study of Near Eastern aspects entails all three sorts of methods. They do, however, imply different outlooks on the way the Near East ought to be conceived. Admittedly, the very imbalance in the spread of evidence always I am grateful to Fergus Millar for his comments on an earlier much longer draft, and to Hannah Cotton for her encouragement and patience. Scripta Classica Israelica vol. XXII 2003 pp. 283-295 284 REVIEW ARTICLES has the tendency to force the study of some questions in one direction, both temporal and spatial. The question is thus how to redress this imbalance. These four books deal with this problem in different ways, each of them integrating its own set of sources into the argument. In what follows, I propose to discuss some features of the study of the Near East in Hellenistic and Roman times within the framework of the interaction between local, regional and supra-regional approaches. In his book on Edessa, R. sets out to investigate why, under what circumstances, and with what effects the city became part of the Roman empire (3). Six chapters are fol­ lowed by an appendix on numismatic material mainly relating to the city’s last king (Abgar X, 239-242 CE). In chs. 1-2 R. introduces pre-Roman Edessa and discusses the process by which the city and its kingdom of Osrhoene became entangled in the web of Roman eastern policy. This is followed by an account of the close relationship of Edessa with Rome, and of its development from a notionally independent monarchy to a prov­ ince of the empire, and back to a kingdom (‘in Rome’s service’, 69), until the extinction of the Abgarid dynasty (chs. 3-4). Finally, R. examines the rich and varied cultural life of Roman Edessa, which was to become the cradle of Eastern Christianity (chs. 5-6). At the outset, he gives himself the ‘bipartite task’ of making a study of ‘political history and cultural interpretation’ (3), two projects which, naturally enough, influence each other throughout the book. Edessa was often impotent in the face of international crises involving the two world powers of its day, but the city’s ‘special genius’ (144) simulta­ neously generated a unique blend out of the variety of cultural elements which came to Edessa from both sides. R. concentrates on the period before the city became the centre of Syriac Christianity. This is, of course, a reasonable decision, but it may be said that the balance has swung a bit too much away from the most interesting evidence. The application of numismatic evidence is praiseworthy, but art comes off rather poorly and the new archive of Greek and Syriac papyri and parchments from the Middle Euphrates region, a potential gold mine for the social history of the area under Edessan control, is applied only to throw light on the chronology of certain administrative details. On the other hand, the author’s decision to start his investigation proper with Trajan’s cam­ paigns across the Euphrates has led him to leave unnoticed some important develop­ ments in our understanding of the earlier chronology of Edessa’s sovereigns. Whereas the city’s history so far had been based on the Syriac chronicle of Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahre (referred to by R. as the ‘Chronicle of Zuqnin’), a fragment of a slightly divergent list of kings has now been noticed in the works of Elias of Nisibis, supplying two new royal names.2 On the basis of this new evidence a reconstruction has been attempted of the sequence of the earliest rulers over Osrhoene, arguing that they bore the title ‘lord’ before assuming royal dignity, an evolution also attested at Hatra in a slightly later period.3 Sch.’s detailed work on Characene is presented as ‘eine Regionalstudie zum Partherreich’ (14). The author wants her analysis of the political structures of the region, Α. Luther, ‘Elias von Nisibis und die Chronologie der edessenischen Könige’, Klio 81 (1999), 180-98. Id., ‘Die ersten Könige von Osrhoene’, Klio 81 (1999), 437-54. On the situation in Hatra, see S.R. Hauser, ‘Hatra und das Königreich der Araber’, in J. Wiesehöfer (ed.), Das Partherreich und seine Zeugnisse (Stuttgart, 1998), esp. 501-3. REVIEW ARTICLES 285 and in particular of the relationship of its rulers with the Great Kings of the Arsacid dynasty, to contribute to an understanding of the way in which the Parthians exercised their influence and authority in the various parts of their empire and other dependent regions. The introductory chapter and a brief overview of the history of the study of Characene are followed by a more than two hundred page long detailed presentation of the literary and epigraphic sources from outside the Gulf kingdom, of the archaeological remains in the region itself and of the coins issued by its kings. Sch. then presents a chronological overview of the political history of Characene from pre-Hellenistic times onwards, dealing individually with all the kings and interregna, and discusses the Gulf kingdom in relation to the important centres of long-distance trade. The changing politi­ cal status and fortune of Characene are ‘Auswirkungen jeweils veränderter innen- oder aussenpolitischer Konstellationen’ (460) and this combination of facets had an impact also on its functioning in the long-distance trade of the late Hellenistic and Roman peri­ ods. Even if the nature of the evidence does not allow the same detailed analysis of the Arsacids as is now possible for the Roman empire, the realm of the Parthians was of course not a “static entity”. Furthermore, the activities on their “western frontier” formed only one of many troublesome pursuits, and it is not unlikely that they were a good deal less interested than Rome in expanding their territory to the Near Eastern lands.4 The structure of the Arsacid state may have placed disproportionate power in the hands of regional nobility who were able to gain various degrees of temporary inde­ pendence, but it is difficult to distinguish between regional leaders within the Parthian domain who enjoyed proper independence and those whose political decisions were still subject to their overlord: ‘the fact that such local dynasts mint coins bearing their por­ traits ... seems frequently to be the only indicator of the supposed independence’.5 What this all means in terms of culture is a separate problem. Not only is the “Parthian” cul­ tural layer in cities which later came to form part of the Roman empire often overgrown with Graeco-Roman remains, but also the regions in the Parthian realm will have become assimilated with the Hellenism of the time in which the Seleucid kingdom had started to decay.6 Studying any Near Eastern region from one empire’s point of view will therefore necessarily have limitations, as political borders do not rigidly divide dif­ ferent cultures. The book by B„ formerly Director of Excavations at the British School of Archae­ ology in Iraq, is a densely illustrated volume, written in a popular style. The author presents a provocative synthesis of the Roman Near East that owes much to a close examination of the material remains and architectural structures of the wider region. In what is arguably the most valuable part of the book, and in any case by far the longest chapter (ch. 7), he aims to show how the ‘flowering of architecture’ under the high On the Parthian empire see J.
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