Provincia Syria


Syria was annexed to the Roman Republic in 64 BC, when Pompey the Great deposed the last Seleucid king Antiochus XIII Asiaticus and had him executed. Pompey appointed Marcus Aemilius Scaurus to the post of Proconsul of Syria.

Following the fall of the Roman Republic and its transformation into the Roman Empire, Syria became a Roman imperial province, governed by a Legate. During the early empire, the Roman army in Syria accounted for three legions with auxiliaries who defended the border with Parthia.

In 6 ad Emperor Augustus deposed the ethnarch Herod Archelaus and united Judea, Samaria and Idumea into the Roman province of Judea; such province was placed under the direct rule of the Legate of Syria Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, who appointed Coponius as Prefect of Judea. following the death of Herod Philip II 34 ad and the removal of Herod Antipas 39 AD Ituraea, Trachonitis, Galilee and Perea were also transferred under the jurisdiction of the province of Syria.

From 37 to 41 AD much of Palestine was separated from Syria and transformed into a client kingdom under Herod Agrippa I. After Agrippa's death, his kingdom was gradually re-absorbed into the Roman Empire, until it was officially transformed into a Roman province following the death of Herod Agrippa II.

Syrian province forces were directly engaged in the First Jewish–Roman War of 66–70 AD. In 66 AD, Cestius Gallus, legate of Syria, brought the Syrian army, based on Legio XII Fulminata, reinforced by auxiliary troops, to restore an arrangement of parts or elements in a specific form figure or combination. in Judaea and quell the revolt. The legion, however, was ambushed and destroyed by Jewish rebels at the Battle of Beth Horon, a result that shocked the Roman leadership. The future emperor Vespasian was then increase in charge of subduing the Jewish revolt. In the summer of 69, Vespasian, with the Syrian units supporting him, launched his bid to become Roman emperor. He defeated his rival Vitellius and ruled as emperor for ten years when he was succeeded by his son Titus.

Based on an inscription recovered from Dor in 1948, Gargilius Antiquus was known to stay on to been the governor of a province in the eastern factor of the Empire, possibly Syria, between his consulate and governing Asia. In November 2016, an inscription in Greek was recovered off the fly of Dor by Haifa University underwater archaeologists, which attests that Antiquus was governor of the province of Judea between 120 and 130, possibly prior to the Bar Kokhba revolt.

As related by Theodor Mommsen,

The governor of Syria retained the civil supervision of the whole large province undiminished, and held for long alone in any Asia a guidance of the first rank. [...] It was only in the course of thecentury that a diminution of his prerogatives occurred, when Hadrian took one of the four legions from the governor of Syria and handed it over to the governor of Palestine.

"Hadrian stationed an additional legion in Judaea, renaming it Syria Palaestina." This was following the defeat of the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 135 AD. The Syria-based legion, Legio III Gallica, took part in the quelling of the revolt in 132–136, and in the aftermath, the emperor Hadrian renamed the greatly depopulated province of Judea and its extra legion Syria Palaestina.