Conclusion

Evidence from Dura Europos in the Parthian period indicates that it was a city linked more with the Roman Near East than with the Parthian Empire. Rome’s presence in Syria and Mesopotamia was extended and became more formalized towards the end of the second century AD. In the two preceding centuries Rome’s power and influence at Palmyra and on the Euphrates continued to grow, but Rome appears not to have formalized this power with provincial inclusion and a permanent military presence until the Severan period. There was no permanent Roman military presence anywhere on the Euphrates until the last half of the first century AD, yet Isidore of Charax writing approximately 80 years earlier implied that territory on the western side of the Khabur was Roman. Similarly, there was no permanent Roman military presence at Palmyra until the last half of the second century AD, yet Rome was involved in setting Palmyra’s tariff structure from the early decades of the first century AD. Influence and power were clearly exercised, but there is no evidence of an expression of this in formal organization or a permanent military presence. Rome’s interest in the regions east of the province of Syria during this period appears mostly to have been commercial through Palmyra and the Parthi-ans did not represent an ongoing military threat to the province of Syria. At Dura the evidence speaks for prosperity as a result of the flourishing trade, which Roman demand was responsible for stimulating in the whole region. Far from acting as a barrier or frontier, the Euphrates and Palmyra promoted Dura’s contact with Roman commerce. A level of independence or autonomy enjoyed by Palmyra contributed to its ability to expand its trading enterprise, and it was able to do so partly through the Parthian controlled city of Dura. The remote and distant Parthian control of the city left Dura’s government mostly to the institutions that had governed it in the Seleucid period while the government of Palmyra, under some form of Roman influence and control, took place in a similar way.

The arrival of the Romans at Dura on this section of the middle Euphrates did not herald an immediate change, but there were some early moves to establish a military presence using Palmyrene auxiliaries. By the third century, however, significant changes began to take place. Dura Europos received a garrison comprising a military cohort formed out of the Palmyrene archers, together with vexillations of the Syrian legions. Dura also supplied soldiers to numerous fortifications on the Khabur and to other locations on the Euphrates, in some cases hundreds of kilometres away. The north-west sector of the city was walled off c. 211 and functioned as the military camp in the city. The functions of the various buildings that comprised the camp and the nature of the command of the garrison are much more difficult to establish than modern scholarship suggests. Considerable reconstruction of inscriptions and other evidence undertaken in the 1930s leads to a view of superior and inferior elements of the garrison. The organization of the garrison was undoubtedly far more fluid than the suggestions put to date and this would have been appropriate for a garrison that required considerable versatility.

Conclusions about the activities of the Ripae have clearly been based on questionable evidence, and this has implications for ideas about Roman defensive priorities on the middle Euphrates. The conclusion that the Dux Ripae was a regional military commander suggests that the military presence on the middle Euphrates and Khabur rivers was primarily about providing organized defence in case of invasions. If this assumption is removed, and given the tenuous nature of the evidence there is no reason why it should not be, military organization was not necessarily as co-ordinated as is often postulated.

While the evidence from Dura of a military nature is significant, it is in some cases tantalizing as there is much we do not know at a basic level, particularly with regard to the relationship between the various elements of the garrison. The military evidence also tends to overshadow indicators of the culture of the city in the third century. The nature of the survival of the material, mostly an accident due to the siege of the city, has obviously inflated the relative importance of the military evidence. In the third century, however, we do not see the evidence of prosperity evident in the Parthian period and the first 40 years of Roman control. The existing temples continued in use, but they did not grow while the new temples of the army did.

These include the Mithraeum and the Dolicheneum in the army camp, and the development of the synagogue and Christian house in the third century is often associated with the growing military presence at Dura.

There are times when Dura can be brought into the wider sphere of political and military events in the second and third centuries. The Roman occupation of the city took place as a result of Lucius Verus’ extension of Roman power along the Euphrates c. 165. The enlargement of the garrison and the army camp was associated with Septimius Severus’ extension of Roman organization and military power at Palmyra, in Mesopotamia and on the middle Euphrates. The city was attacked in 239, possibly losing one of its senior military commanders in the conflict. This attack was part of the Sasanian Persian challenge to Roman organization and military power in Mesopotamia and eastern Syria and can be placed in the context of Persian attacks on Hatra and the capture of the province of Mesopotamia. The city also appears to have been captured as part of Shapur I’s initial advance into Syria in 252/253, while the evidence of the final siege shows that it was taken again by Shapur and thus earning its place on the SKZ.

The Roman military presence at Dura, and at many smaller sites in its vicinity, was partly designed to provide a level of security and defence at a local level. It was undoubtedly also designed to provide intelligence on enemy movements and to play a role in major conflicts when they took place; however, these functions were probably secondary in importance. During the long intervals between conflicts what were Dura’s soldiers doing? For the most part, the soldiers of the Dura garrison monitored traffic on the Euphrates, assisted in the enforcement of tax collection, intervened in times of public disorder, enforced legal decisions and contributed strongly to the establishment of Roman authority on a significant section of agricultural land on either side of the Euphrates and Khabur rivers. The fact that many of the soldiers were Palmyrenes would have served to demonstrate on the landscape the new order of Roman power in the region. Those recently recruited to the service of Rome were probably its most vocal exponents. Some soldiers settled on the banks of the rivers on their retirement from service. The region of Parapotamia, as it was still known in 220, was an area of great fertility and productivity - an area that supported vineyards and orchards for millennia before the third century AD. Dura continued to act as a central location from the Seleucid to the Roman periods for the official deposition of deeds for those who lived, married, divorced and died in the fertile lands in its vicinity. The siege that saw Dura’s capture in c. 256/257 and led to a brief Sasanian occupation soon gave way to abandonment, reflected in the lament of Clark Hopkins: ‘The mute testimony that remained was of a site desolate and forlorn, where the lonely and level sands covered the bones of the city and stretched away across the desert.’308 This is a stark image of the broader regional changes that the Sasanian invasions brought about.