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RomanHeritage

is a non-profit cultural website about Ancient Rome, with Republican & Imperial Roman sites, roman ruins, Museums, books & movies, re-enactment groups, statues, Mosaics, frescoes, bronzes, etc.

Roman Heritage / Legado Romano

web sin ánimo de lucro sobre el Imperio romano, los yacimientos, ruinas romanas, museos, libros y películas, reconstrucción histórica, estatuas, mosaicos, frescos, etc.

Roman Heritage /Heredité Romaine

c'est une website sur l'empire Romain avec de Ruines romaines, museés, livres et films, groupes de reconstrucion historique, statues, mosaics et frescos.




Syria Siria

Syria

The Roman province of Syria (Syria) corresponds roughly with the current country of the same name but it extended into what is called Greater Syria that also included Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Cyprus with the cities of Antioch, Palmyra, Jerusalem and Petra as major commercial and cultural spots.


Inhabited in antiquity by Semitic peoples, Syria is soon immersed in the Phoenician civilization, from which it takes the alphabet, advances in naval engineering and the importance of a sales network across the Mediterranean. Invaded by the Assyrians around 750 BC and later by the forces of Nebuchadnezzar's Babylonian Empire, Syria fell under Persian rule in the sixth century BC.

As usual in the Persian conquest, the Syrians maintain a high degree of autonomy and for the next three centuries, the area is stabilized and has a great prosperity with trade between Europe and the Middle East.


Alexander the Great invaded in 333 BC and incorporated into the Macedonian Empire. When he died in 323 BC, the empire was divided among his generals, Seleucus Syria belongs. This founded the city of Antioch and established the dynasty of the Seleucids, during three hundred years, entrenched way of life and the Hellenistic culture. The Seleucid Empire extends its domain to fill the entire eastern part of the lands conquered by Alexander the Great, reaching the Indus.


The republic of Rome, meanwhile, had begun its expansion. After defeating the Carthaginians in the Second Punic War faced Antiochus of Syria. In 191 BC., in Sparta, there is the famous battle of Thermopylae, in which the Seleucid army is massacred by the consul Acilius Glabrio Manio. The following year, Scipio "African" and his brother Lucio ("Asia") due in Magnesia to the new forces recruited by Antiochus and definitely hamper the Seleucid Empire.

In the next century the growing power of the Parthians, the Nabataeans and the Armenians to the detriment of Syria began the conquests of King Mithridates VI of Pontus. Piracy is so strong on the coasts of Cilicia, Lycia and Pamphylia (southern Turkey) that Rome decided to intervene. At 66 BC, Pompey the Great developed a campaign that put the whole region, Syria included, under Rome. Two years later, Pompey deposed the last king of Syria and annexed Syria, making it a Roman province.

As a Roman province, Syria returned to achieve a strong economic growth based largely on its ports on the Mediterranean trade routes to the Far East. In addition to agricultural products, glass and ceramics export, wool and linen and purple dye which was highly valued. At the same time I continued to remain a constant threat of war with 4 legions to its side to stop the birth of invasions or quell the uprisings in Judea.

In 135 AD. when Rome ends the rebellion of the Jews of Ben Kochba, it changed the name of the province of Judea to Syria-Palaestina.
In the division between the Western Empire and the East, Syria is part of the Byzantine Empire. And in 638 AD., with the invasions of Muslim Arabs, becomes an Islamic cultural center, despite his previous Orthodox Christian culture.

_Aleppo
_Apamea
_Bosra (100 kms south of Damascus), capital of the Roman province of Arabia Petraea, theater, market, Nymphaeum bathrooms
_Damasco, Designed by Apollodorus planimetry Roman temple of Jupiter, Byzantine basilicas and monasteries
_Palmira, Capital of the Nabataean Kingdom, colonnaded street, Tetrapylon, temples
_Quanawat (Canatha) at 100 kms southeast of Damascus, several temples, one with a colonnade, of the II and III, theater, spa, water tank, a cemetery near the road from Suweida

LA DECAPOLIS


As its name in Greek (deka, ten, and polis, city) are ten cities in the current Syria, Jordan and Israel, on the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire. They are not a political or economic union but they are all first Hellenistic cultural centers and Romanized then implanted in an area of ​​Semitic culture.

Except for Damascus, located further north and is often identified as belonging only as "honorary" to Decapolis, all these cities were founded in the Hellenistic period between Alexander the Great and the Roman conquest. However, the name of Decapolis was beginning to be given to the region when it was part of Roman territory from 64 BC.  Constructed based on a model by the Greek city-state it also differed from their Semitic environment for the purpose of the practice of their religion (even adopted some indigenous gods) and the forms of Greek life.
Rome encouraged the autonomy of the cities of the Decapolis and authority over the territory around them and allows them to coin money. Build public buildings and temples, promotes them emperor worship and serves its business with a new network of roads.
In the second century AD, the Emperor Trajan's conquest and annexation of Arabia and the Decapolis Stony longer the Greco-Roman outpost in the East. In addition, the new administrative organization, its cities are divided between the provinces of Syria, and Saudi Palaestina Secunda. The term "Decapolis" begins to lose use but cities remain a distinct cultural focus in the middle Semitic. In fact, continue to use the calendar counts the years Pompeian from 63 BC. when Pompey, who received as a liberator against the pressure of the Jews, conquered the region.
The Decapolis cities are:

In Jordan
_Jerash (Jerash)
_Umm Quays (Gadara)
_Pella, West of Irbid
_Amman (Philadelphia)
_Dion
_Raphana


In Syria
_Quanawath (Canatha)
_Damasco

In Israel
_Beth Shean (Scythopolis)
_Hippus Or Sussita (Hippos)