The Southern Levant During the First Centuries of Roman Rule (64 BCE–135 CE): Interweaving Local Cultures

225 Pages·2019·15.544 MB·English

by  Paolo Cimadomo

The Southern Levant during the
fi rst centuries of Roman rule
(64 BCE–135 CE)
Interweaving local cultures
Paolo Cimadomo
Oxford & Philadelphia
Published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by
OXBOW BOOKS
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© Oxbow Books and the author 2019
Hardback edition: ISBN 978-1-78925-238-5
Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-78925-239-2 (epub)
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: 2019935952
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Front cover: Photo of the oval plaza of Jerash from the north. In the background, Hadrian's Gate. Photo taken by the
author.
Contents
Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................................v
Preface .............................................................................................................................................................v
1 Romanisation(s) in global times .......................................................................................1
1.1 The Romanisation debate ..........................................................................................1
1.2 Globalisation and the Roman world.........................................................................6
1.3 Identity and ethnicity ................................................................................................9
1.4 Archaeological approaches toward ethnicity .......................................................11
1.5 Roman ethnicities .....................................................................................................12
1.6 Integration and prejudices ......................................................................................15
1.7 Common ancestors ...................................................................................................17
1.8 Globalising attitudes .................................................................................................20
2 A melting pot of different peoples .................................................................................22
2.1 The Galilee..................................................................................................................22
2.2 The history of the region since the Assyrian rule (8th century BCE) ...............24
2.3 Who were the Galileans?..........................................................................................28
2.4 A clear identity? ........................................................................................................40
2.5 Between autonomy and integration ......................................................................44
3 The Arabs in Southern Levant .........................................................................................47
3.1 The Ituraeans .............................................................................................................50
3.2 The Nabataeans .........................................................................................................60
3.3 The multiple Arab identities ...................................................................................84
4 The Decapolis: a Greek island? ........................................................................................88
4.1 Decapolis and Coele Syria ........................................................................................92
4.2 The cities ....................................................................................................................97
4.3 Canatha/Qanawat .....................................................................................................98
4.4 Adraha/Deraa ..........................................................................................................104
4.5 The ‘phantom cities’: Raphana and Dion ............................................................107
4.6 Hippos/Sussita ........................................................................................................110
4.7 Gadara/Umm Qais ...................................................................................................119
4.8 Capitolias/Beit Ras ..................................................................................................127
4.9 Abila/Quwailibah ....................................................................................................131
4.10 Scythopolis/Beth-Shean ........................................................................................134
4.11 Pella/Tabaqat Fahl ..................................................................................................144
iv Contents
4.12 Gerasa/Jerash ..........................................................................................................150
4.13 Philadelphia/Amman .............................................................................................160
4.14 Urban development ................................................................................................167
4.15 The nature of the Decapolis cities ........................................................................170
4.16 The spread of spectacles buildings.......................................................................175
5 Conclusions ......................................................................................................................181
Bibliography ............................................................................................................................187
Abbreviations ...................................................................................................................187
Abbreviations of ancient sources .................................................................................189
Secondary sources ...........................................................................................................190
Acknowledgements
The study of the ancient world has occupied me for many years. This book expands
my previous researches, in particular it is a revised and reorganised version of my
Ph.D. dissertation, completed for the University of Naples ‘Federico II’ in 2017.
I would not have been able to complete this book without help from many people. I
am very thankful to Raffaella Pierobon Benoit who has been for me more than a guide
for several years, discussing with me many matters and always being ready to listen
to me and to dispel my doubts. My deepest gratitude goes also to Mauro de Nardis,
who has always believed in this work and tries continuously to support me. I cannot
forget to thank Nicole Belayche, Hannah Cotton, Alfonso Santoriello for having agreed
to review my Ph.D. thesis. They have given me advice and many interesting ideas.
Nathanael Andrade and Joseph Patrich supplied me with a different point of view and
many suggestions, that surely have improved my study. I cannot forget Silvio la Paglia
for the time spent together. He proved himself to be an indispensable sounding board
who assisted me during my studies.
My family has offered me an immense support while I completed this book. I will
be forever indebted to my parents for their love and encouragement.
Finally, this book is dedicated to my partner Marika Griffo, who not only has
supported me and has made me happy, but has even helped me with drawings and
suggestions with her acute point of view. Thanks for waiting for me and for being able
to forecast the future.
Preface
Every man in every time has felt the desire and the need to connect himself with the
other. We experience this daily in our contemporary world, yet it was also true for
men and women throughout history. We have often heard our world referred to as
globalised, characterised by many interconnectivities and the possibility to know what
happens everywhere. The principal aim of this work is to understand if a certain degree
of ‘globalisation’ was present even among ancient communities of the Near East, that
is, if there was interconnection, and whether it led to cohabitation or conflict.
First of all, I shall attempt to explain my choices. In order to facilitate the reading,
the texts quoted from classical literature have been translated into English. Greek
words are transcribed and, when necessary, supplemented by a translation. The
vi Preface
chronological limits of my study are primarily based on political events. I focus on the
period beginning with the arrival of Pompey in the region during 64/63 BCE (Fig. 1)
and ending with the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE, when Rome seemingly suppressed
any independent will in the territories of the southern Levant. The chosen period
includes numerous significant political events that were an upheaval in the lives of
the local population. Among these, the defeat of the rebels during the Bar Kokhba
revolt marked the starting point of an accelerated process of integration, rather than
the annexation of the former Nabataean kingdom.
The analysis starts with a brief overview of modern theories about Roman
approaches to subjected populations. Scholars have long used the concept of
Romanisation, as well as the idea of Hellenisation, to explain the hierarchical
relationship of a supposed ‘superior’ culture (in this case, that of the Romans and
of the Greeks) over ‘inferior’ civilisations, namely the peoples that the Greeks and
the Romans encountered around the Mediterranean Sea. In this view, romanisation
resulted from the natural superiority of the Roman identity over local cultures
(Hingley 2005, 37); it was therefore considered as an early form of progress.
In this sense, the accounts of Roman history by Western scholars often share an
anti-oriental interpretation of history, one that is tinged by many prejudices against
African and Near Eastern cultures (Hingley 2005, 29). The processes of cultural
integration (or, sometimes, their rejection) was the results of long, multifaceted
interactions and occasionally clashes. According to Saskia Roselaar, many studies
about the Roman empire fall short in explaining the causes of these changes, as if
the Roman conquest was sufficient in itself to justify these profound transformations
(Roselaar 2015b, 1–2).
Modern social and anthropologic theories have shown that the relationships
between peoples are far more complex, undermining the premise of ‘Romanisation’.
In fact, the development of a global world system over the past fifty years has
demonstrated that the European history cannot be taken as a model for the study of
history worldwide. The Western perspective, in other words, is only one among many
possible ways of interpreting history.
The case of Rome was undoubtedly sui generis. There was a vast variety of responses
to the Roman conquest, even within the same province. How provincial subjects
reacted to the Roman rule is complex, particularly in the Near East. Many ancient
cultures and religions intertwined, modifying the expressions of Greekness and
Romanness, transforming themselves into a new original culture, hybrid and original
in many ways. Instead of homogenisation or Romanisation, for the eastern provinces
the term resistance was the main concept and the attention was primarily directed at
ensuring the survival of Greek culture (Lulić 2015, 20).
The aim of my study is to explore the centrality of processes of integration during
a period that has often been regarded as formative for the culture of the empire. The
coming of Rome increased the diversity of cultural identities, and even those activities
that were at first instance considered unambiguously Greek were absorbed into the
Preface vii
Fig. 1. Map of the political division of southern Levant after the coming of Pompey (64/63 BCE).
viii Preface
Roman framework. However, some local realities, like the Jews and the Arabs, differed
from other subjected peoples throughout the Roman empire. They reinforced their
collective identity while selectively absorbing Roman culture.
For these reasons, this work is focused on a geographical area marked by a very
impressive intermingling of nations and people. Unfortunately, it was not possible to
explore the entire Near East in detail, because the amount of material is far too vast
and varied. For the same reason, I have chosen to analyse the question of religion only
marginally. There are many excellent works about the religion of these ethnicities,
mostly about Judaism. I have preferred instead not to compete with them. The best
part of the work has been devoted to the historical and archaeological evidence, in
particular to architectural and topographic features, attempting to gather all potential
sources connected to the places under examination. In particular, literary sources have
constituted an important role in the analysis, as well as epigraphic and numismatic ones.
The absence of defined political boundaries constitutes one of the most significant
obstacles for this work. The challenge of defining these areas is connected to the lack
of clear geographical or cultural entities in the area, which was interdependent and
diverse even before the Roman rule. For many centuries, the area was the periphery
of Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms and then it was close to the eastern frontier zone
of the Roman empire.
Phoenicia, Syria, Palaestina, Arabia and Mesopotamia were so closely connected
that their political boundaries were often not taken in account. The presence of
nomads further entangles this already complicated situation. So many different
peoples dwelt in the Transjordanian area that it is very difficult to reconstruct well-
delimited borders of nations, including those that emerged during the 2nd century
BCE, like the Ituraeans, the Judaeans or the Nabataeans.
All these conditions have made the study of these territories challenging, yet
fascinating. Ethnicity and culture are very difficult concepts to examine in any
context, but we must keep in mind that the social identities we find documented in
the historical record do not necessarily reflect the entire picture. Moreover, identity
itself is multifaceted and fluid. Many elements, such as those based on social, religious
and political institutions, might be part of the social identity of individuals. Cultures
and ethnicities are constantly renegotiated and reformulated, as each individual is
part of a network of social relations and has the capacity to accept, transform or reject
foreign elements.
1
Romanisation(s) in global times
1.1 The Romanisation debate
Romanisation, as well as its sister-concept of Hellenisation, is fundamentally a modern
notion. It arose out of national and imperial ideologies born at the end of the 19th
century, which first introduced the ideas of nationhood and empire. According to Greg
Woolf, this worldview was built on two premises: a belief that not all the human races
are equally civilised, and a profoundly Eurocentric vision of the world (Woolf 1998, 5).
Some of these visions are still popular, although they have evolved throughout the
20th century, during which concepts like ‘civilisation’ or ‘just war’ are in fact present
in current debates.
The first scholar who defined the concept of Romanisation or Romanising was
Francis Haverfield in 1923. He built on the works of Theodor Mommsen, who had
already explained cultural changes that had occurred across the empire using the word
‘Romanising’: for him, in fact, Roman territories showed a high degree of homogeneity,
legitimated by the levelling action of Rome itself (Mommsen 1886, 193). In addition,
Rome’s unification of Italy was a good model for German unification (Freeman 1997, 30).
However, Mommsen considered this model to be inappropriate for the Greek East.
The romantic interest in the ethnic identities and the emphasis on race as a natural and
immutable characteristic constituted the perfect background for the development of
these ideas. Further support for these was found in the Darwinian theory of evolution,
which led some to believe that biological inequality existed among humans (Hodos
2010, 5).
Haverfield developed Mommsen’s ideas, encouraged by the political situation of
Britain at the early 20th century1. In fact, the desire to ‘civilise’ third world countries
provided an excellent justification for Britannic imperialism (Wallace-Hadrill 2012, 111).
The words of the British scholar are clear: ‘Here Rome found races that were not