The Parthian Stations of Isidore of Charax, written late in the first century BC, is a particularly important source for understanding the situation on the
Euphrates below Zeugma at this time.24 The Parthian Stations is claimed to be a description of the caravan route from Syria to India, but its final destination is actually thought to be modern Kandahar in Afghanistan.25 At the time Isidore wrote, the caravans crossed the Euphrates at Zeugma to Apamea on the opposite bank and travelled overland to rejoin the river at Nicephorium on its left bank, approximately 150km downstream from Zeugma. Strabo provides a description of the same route in the Geographia, and Ammianus Marcellinus also provides a description of the route as part of his account of Julian’s campaign in 363.26
One of the most important observations made by Isidore is that at a location called Nabagath, where the river Abouras (Khabur) meets the Euphrates, ‘the forces cross over to the Roman side’.27 This appears to indicate that the Khabur, or more likely its confluence with the Euphrates, acted as a boundary with some military significance between Rome and Parthia. Millar suggests that Isidore was thinking of invading Roman armies when he made this reference, but concedes that it is possible that Isidore was referring to soldiers from either Rome or Parthia.28 The Khabur runs from its confluence with the Euphrates in a northerly direction towards Nisibis in northern Mesopotamia. Nisibis and the territory to the west of the Khabur (that is, Osrhoene) were in the Parthian sphere at this time, suggesting that Isidore was probably not implying that the whole of the Khabur was a boundary. Instead, his reference may indicate that a boundary between the two powers existed in the vicinity of the confluence of the two rivers.
Further up the Euphrates from the Khabur confluence there are no indications of Roman fortifications on the right bank of the river dating to this period. Isidore unfortunately tells us nothing of settlements on the left bank of the Euphrates between Apamea and Nicephorium because the trade route ran overland between these two cities. On the route from Apamea to Nicephorium he listed Anthemusia, Batana, three otherwise unknown settlements that he called fortified places, then Ichnae and Nicephorium on the Euphrates. This section of the trade route appears to have followed the Balikh river, a small and intermittent tributary of the Euphrates.29 The sizes of the fortified places Isidore referred to are not known, but they are an indication that some fortifications existed east of the Euphrates in territory under Parthian influence and that they were probably under the control of Osrhoene. On the Euphrates itself from Nicephorium to the confluence with the Khabur, Isidore noted walled villages on the left bank of the Euphrates - but he mentioned no fortifications.
Isidore’s description of the trade route as it ran along the left bank did not make any mention of settlements on the right bank of the Euphrates between Nicephorium and the Khabur. There is archaeological evidence, however, for three fortifications on the right bank of this stretch of the river and these have been interpreted by some as Roman fortifications dating to this period. More recently it is proposed that they are Diocle-tianic, with foundations belonging to the late Seleucid period. None of the ancient names of these sites is known and they are referred to here by their modern names. The first is Siffin, located approximately 15 km east of Nicephorium (modern Raqqa), while the next, Nouhaila (Nheyla), lies approximately 15 km further downstream. Another 17km downstream from Nouhaila are the remains of a fortification known as Djazla. All are located on the edge of the ravine carved by the flow of the Euphrates and have commanding views of the irrigated flood plain. (See Map 3.1 on p. 68.)
In a recent article that focuses primarily on Djazla, Napoli concludes that its walls are Diocletianic but probably lie on foundations dating to the late Seleucid period.30 Napoli notes similarities in the establishment and construction of Djazla to Nouhaila and Siffin, and suggests a similar chronology for the other two fortifications as well.31 This conclusion rests primarily on a comparison with the walls of Dura Europos, which are now dated to the middle of the second century bc. Napoli suggests that all three fortifications were established as a result of the growing Parthian threat to Seleucid Mesopotamia and Syria, which developed in the latter half of the second century BC.32 While it is possible that Roman garrisons occupied these sites without making architectural changes, there is no archaeological
Figure 1.1 Remains of the late Roman fortification at Nouhaila.
Figure 1.2 The east wall at Djazla on the right bank of the Euphrates.
Evidence of Roman occupation at any of them until the reign of Diocletian.33 As a consequence, Napoli concludes that Roman control on the Euphrates did not extend any further than Zeugma at the end of the first century BC. He suggests that it was only after the Roman victories over the Parthians in 163-165 that Rome extended its control of the Euphrates beyond Sura, and that these fortifications did not play a role in Roman strategy until the early fourth century ad.34
The Yale excavation team to Dura Europos in the 1920s and 1930s appears to have used Isidore’s observations as evidence for a Roman frontier established on the Khabur river resulting from the peace agreement with Parthia in 20/19bc. Their conclusions were strongly influenced by a desire to explain what they thought were Parthian changes to the walls at Dura in the last half of the first century BC. In the preliminary reports dealing with the fortifications, it was concluded that the walls at Dura underwent considerable work in the early Parthian period of control of the city.35 This was held to be a response to growing tension between Rome and Parthia, c.65-20bc. The suggestion that the frontiers were fixed at the Khabur in the agreement between Augustus and Phraates IV resulted in the conclusion that Dura was the closest major Parthian fortification facing the Romans on the Euphrates on the southern side of the Khabur confluence.36 It is now thought that the defences at Dura were constructed in the late Seleucid period and that the Parthians did little to the walls during the period in which they controlled the city.37 As noted earlier, the smaller fortifications of Djazla, Nouhaila and Siffin, on the right bank of the Euphrates, are thought to have been constructed by the Seleucids in the last half of the second century BC, at a similar time to the wall circuit at Dura, when the Parthian threat to Seleucid possessions in Mesopotamia and eastern Syria became significant. They are not indicative of a Roman attempt to fortify the right bank of the Euphrates north-west of the
Khabur as a result of an agreement to make the Khabur the boundary between the two empires.
At the time Isidore wrote, the Euphrates flowed between Osrhoene on its left bank and territory that the Palmyrenes may have had the most significant influence over on its right bank. It is possible to argue that the Parthians exercised control of the left bank through their influence in Osrhoene and that the Romans exercised control of the right bank through their influence over Palmyra; however, the extent of Palmyrene or Osrhoenian territorial control to the banks of the Euphrates during this period is difficult to establish. It is argued in Chapter 2 that the nature of Roman control of Palmyra itself is difficult to define clearly at this time. It is unlikely that the Palmyrenes were in clear control of the right bank of the Euphrates between Sura and the Khabur confluence, and the situation was probably similar for Osrhoene on the left bank, but, just as the upper and middle Euphrates acted a symbolic boundary, Palmyra and Osrhoene may have exercised nominal control to this section of the Euphrates.38 In the loose expression of territorial control along this section of the Euphrates it is likely that Rome’s influence was stronger on the right bank and Parthia’s on the left, as a result of the influence that each wielded in Palmyra and Osrhoene respectively.
On the basis of Isidore’s observations regarding the confluence of the Khabur and Euphrates rivers, it is possible that the Euphrates ceased to be recognized as a boundary between Roman and Parthian interests beyond the Khabur confluence in the direction of southern Mesopotamia. This may indicate that the Khabur marked a boundary between Roman and Parthian influence on the right bank of the Euphrates. Control of the left bank of the Euphrates above the Khabur was notionally with Parthia through its influence in Osrhoene. Both the left and right banks of the Euphrates below the Khabur confluence were in the territory of Para-potamia controlled by Dura Europos, which was under some form of Parthian control at this stage; but the extent of Parthian power below the Khabur confluence is debatable.39
If the Khabur was a boundary at this stage, there is no evidence that the Romans sought to fortify or defend it at this time. The Parthians controlled the fortified city of Dura Europos approximately 60km south-east of the Khabur confluence, but the evidence indicates that they neglected the city’s defences.40 The evidence from the whole of the Parthian period at Dura is reflective of economic connections with Roman Syria and the Near East, indicating that Dura’s growth during the Parthian period was due more to the Roman presence in Syria than that of the Parthians, suggesting that if there was a boundary at the Khabur it was easily negotiated.41
Roman control on the right bank of the Euphrates to the Khabur river reflects influence in an area that extended well beyond the boundaries of provincial Syria, the eastern boundary of which appears to have been on the Euphrates in the vicinity of Zeugma. There is evidence to indicate that from its upper reaches in Armenia and Cappadocia to its confluence with the Khabur the Euphrates acted as a symbolic boundary between Roman and Parthian interests from the middle of the first century BC to the middle of the first century AD, but the reality on the ground is that this was not a fortified boundary designed to establish a clear limit for the power of either empire. The Euphrates acted instead to promote connection and exchange through territory under Roman and Parthian influence, which the evidence from Dura Europos clearly indicates. Strabo reflects the situation late in the Augustan period in the following statement:
The Euphrates and the land beyond it constitute the boundary of the Parthian empire. But the parts this side of the river are held by the Romans and the chieftains of the Arabians as far as Babylonia, some of these chieftains preferring to give ear to the Parthians and others to the Romans, to whom they are neighbours.42
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