dottorato in scienze storiche, archeologiche e storico-artistiche

239 Pages·2017·4.31 MB·English

DOTTORATO IN
SCIENZE STORICHE, ARCHEOLOGICHE
E STORICO-ARTISTICHE

Coordinatore prof. Francesco Caglioti

XXIX ciclo

Dottorando: Paolo Cimadomo

Tutor: prof.ssa Raffaella Pierobon; cotutor: prof. Mauro de Nardis

Tesi di dottorato:

Conflicts and Cohabitations in the Southern Levant during the first
Centuries of the Roman Rule
(64 BCE – 135 CE)

2017
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CONTENTS
FOREWORD 6
CHAPTER 1: GLOBALISING ATTITUDES
1.1 THE ROMANISATION DEBATE 9
1.2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEW APPROACHES 12
1.3 GLOBALISATION AND THE ROMAN WORLD 14
1.4 IDENTITY AND ETHNICITY 16
1.5 ARCHAEOLOGICAL APPROACHES TOWARD ETHNICITY 18
1.6 ROMAN ETHNICITIES 20
1.7 INTEGRATION AND PREJUDICES 23
1.8 COMMON ANCESTORS 25
1.9 CONCLUSIONS 28
CHAPTER 2: THE GALILEANS
2.1 GEOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND 29
2.2 GALILEE BEFORE THE HASMONAEANS 29
2.3 FROM THE HASMONAEANS TO THE BAR KOKHBA REVOLT 32
2.4 EPIGRAPHIC SOURCES 38
2.5 THE COINAGE 39
2.6 ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS 40
2.7 CONCLUSIONS: GALILEE BETWEEN AUTONOMY AND INTEGRATION 46
CHAPTER 3: THE ARABS IN SOUTHERN SYRIA
3.1 WHO WERE THE «ARABS»? 48
3.2 ITURAEANS
3.2.1 LITERARY SOURCES 54
3.3.2 EPIGRAPHIC SOURCES 56
3.3.3 THE ORIGINS AND DISTRIBUTION 57
3.3.4 THE COINAGE 58
3.3.5 ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS 60
3.3.6 CONCLUSIONS 64
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3.4 THE NABATAEANS IN NORTHERN TRANSJORDAN AREA
3.4.1 LITERARY SOURCES 65
3.4.2 EPIGRAPHIC AND PAPYROLOGICAL SOURCES 73
3.4.3 THE COINAGE 77
3.4.4 ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS 79
3.4.5 CONCLUSIONS 88
CHAPTER 4: THE GREEKS (?) OF THE DECAPOLIS AREA
4.1 INTRODUCTION 91
4.2 GEOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND 93
4.3 LITERARY SOURCES 95
4.4 THE CITIES 98
4.5 CANATHA/QANAWAT 100
4.5.1 HISTORY OF THE RESEARCH 101
4.5.2 URBAN LANDSCAPE 103
4.6 ADRAHA/DERAA 106
4.6.1 HISTORY OF THE RESEARCH 106
4.6.2 URBAN LANDSCAPE 107
4.7 DION 109
4.7.1 HISTORY OF THE RESEARCH 110
4.8 RAPHANA 112
4.9 HIPPOS/SUSSITA 113
4.9.1 HISTORY OF THE RESEARCH 115
4.9.2 URBAN LANDSCAPE 115
4.10 GADARA/UMM QAIS 120
4.10.1 HISTORY OF THE RESEARCH 123
4.10.2 URBAN LANDSCAPE 126
4.11 CAPITOLIAS/BEIT RAS 127
4.11.1 HISTORY OF THE RESEARCH 128
4.11.2 URBAN LANDSCAPE 129
4.12 ABILA/QUWAILIBAH 132
4.12.1 HISTORY OF THE RESEARCH 133
4.12.2URBAN LANDSCAPE 134
4.13 SCYTHOPOLIS/BETH SHEAN 137
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4.13.1 HISTORY OF THE RESEARCH 140
4.13.2 URBAN LANDSCAPE 141
4.14 PELLA/TABAQAT FAHL 145
4.14.1 HISTORY OF THE RESEARCH 147
4.14.2 URBAN LANDSCAPE 148
4.15 GERASA/JERASH 152
4.15.1 HISTORY OF THE RESEARCH 155
4.15.2 URBAN LANDSCAPE 156
4.16 PHILADELPHIA/AMMAN 161
4.16.1 HISTORY OF THE RESEARCH 164
4.16.2 URBAN LANDSCAPE 165
4.17 CONCLUSIONS
4.17.1 URBAN DEVELOPMENT 168
4.17.2 THE NATURE OF THE DECAPOLIS CITIES 170
4.17.3 THE SPREAD OF SPECTACLE BUILDINGS 175
CONCLUSIONS
5.1 BLOOD MATTERS 181
5.2 TOWARD HOMOGENISATION? 184
ABBREVIATIONS 186
ABBREVIATIONS OF ANCIENT SOURCES 188
BIBLIOGRAPHY 190

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FOREWORD
Every man in every time felt the desire and the need to connect himself to the other. It is
easily clear for the contemporary world, but it was also true for the ancient past. We have
often heard about our world as a globalised one, with many interconnectivities and the
possibility to know what happened everywhere. The principal issue of this work is to
understand if a certain degree of «globalisation» was reached even among ancient
communities of the Near East, if there were cases of interconnectivities, cohabitations or
conflicts.
First of all, I shall attempt to explain my choices. The chronological limits are mostly
political: from the coming of Pompey in the region during 64/63 BCE until the end of the
Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE, when Rome seems to have suppressed any independence
will in the territories of the Southern Levant. The chosen period was full of interesting
political activities, which subverted the lives of local population. More than the
annexation of the former Nabataean kingdom, in fact, the defeat of rebels during the Bar
Kokhba revolt represented the start for an accelerating process of integration.
The analysis starts with a brief history of modern theories about Roman approaches on
subjected populations. The concept of Romanisation, as well as the idea of Hellenisation,
has been used for a long time by scholars for explaining the hierarchical relationship
between a supposed «superior» culture (in this cases, the Roman and the Greek ones)
with «inferior» civilisations, namely the peoples which Romans and Greeks have met
around the Mediterranean Sea.
In this sense, the accounts of Western scholars about Roman history shared often an anti-
Oriental interpretation of history, with many prejudices on African and Near Eastern
areas1. The processes of cultural integration (or, in some cases, their refusal) were the
results of long and multifaceted interactions and sometimes clashes. According to Saskia
Roselaar, many studies of the Roman empire lack to explain the causes of the changes, as
if the Roman conquest was itself sufficient to justify these profound transformations2.
Modern social and anthropologic theories have shown that the relationships between
people are far more complex, abandoning the concept of «Romanisation». In fact, the
development of a global world system over the past fifty years has shown that the
European past cannot represent the universal past, criticizing the Western perspective
of the history. Romanisation helped to create a school of thought that perceived a natural
superiority of Roman identity over local culture3: therefore, Romanisation has been
considered an early form of progress.
The case of Rome was undoubtedly sui generis: there was, in fact, a vast variety of
responses to Roman conquest, even inside the same province. How provincial subjects
reacted to Roman rule is complex, particularly in the Near East: here many ancient
cultures and religions intertwined, transforming the expressions of Greekness, which
became a new original culture, hybrid and reshaped in all its aspects. Instead of
homogenisation or Romanisation, for the Eastern provinces the term resistance was the
main concept and the attention was mostly directed at the survival of the Greek culture4.

1 HINGLEY 2005, 29.
2 ROSELAAR 2015b, 1-2.
3 HINGLEY 2005, 37.
4 LULIĆ 2015, 20.
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The aim of this study is to explore the centrality of integration processes during a period
that has often been regarded as formative for the culture of the empire: the coming of
Rome tended to increase the diversity of cultural identities. Even those activities that
were at first instance considered unambiguously Greek were absorbed into Roman
framework: however, there were many local realities which developed and were always
considered different, like the Jews and Arabs, who represented something of different in
the Empire.

FIG. 1. The Roman Empire under Trajan rule. The area investigated is in blue. From
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ARoman_Empire_Trajan_117AD.png
For these reasons, this work is focused on one area that knew a very impressive mingle
of nations and people. It has been not possible to explore the entire Near East in detail,
because the amount of material is too great and varied. For the same reason, I have
chosen to trait only marginally the religious question. There are many excellent works
about religion of these ethnicities, mostly about Judaism, and I have preferred to not
compete with them. The best part of the work has been devoted to archaeological
evidences, in particular to architectural and topographic features, albeit I have tried to
collect all the sources connected to the places under examination. In detail, literary
sources have constituted an important role in the analysis, as well as epigraphic and
numismatic ones.
The absence of defined political boundaries constituted one of the biggest problems. The
issue of exactly defining these areas is connected to the lack of one clear geographical or
cultural entity. This area has been interdependent even before the Roman rule: as we
will see, Phoenicia, Syria, Palaestina, Arabia and Mesopotamia were so strictly related
that their political boundaries were often not taken in account. The presence of nomads
entangles the already complicated situation. In particular, so many different people
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dwelt Transjordanian area that it is very difficult to reconstruct precise borders of such
nations that emerged during the 2nd century BCE, like Ituraeans, Nabataeans or Judaeans.
Another important aspect that is sometimes forgotten is that the area represented for
many centuries the periphery of Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms, and then was close
the eastern frontier zone of the Roman empire.
All these conditions have made the study of these territories very problematic but
fascinating. Ethnicity and culture are very difficult concept to examine, even because the
social identities we are able to detect were not the only ones that existed. Many ways,
based on social, religious and political institutions, might identify social individuals.
Cultures and ethnicities are constantly renegotiated and reformulated, because each
individual was part of a network of social relations and had the capacity for deciding to
accept, transform or reject incentives that had different origins.

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CHAPTER 1: GLOBALISING ATTITUDES
1.1 THE ROMANISATION DEBATE
Romanisation is a modern concept, derived from national and imperial ideologies born
at the end of the 19th century, which introduced the ideas of nationhood and empire.
According to Greg Woolf, the premises of these accounts were two: first, non all the
human races were considered equally participating in civilization; second, there was a
profound Eurocentric vision of the world5. Some of these visions are still popular, albeit
they have been subjected to a continuous redefinition throughout the 20th century:
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
Haverfield6. He started from the works of Theodor Mommsen, who had already
explained cultural changes 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 itself7. In addition, Rome’s unification of Italy had to
represent a good model for German unification8. However, Mommsen considered this
model to be inappropriate for the Greek East.
Romantic interest in the ethnic identities and the emphasis on race as a natural and
immutable characteristics constituted the perfect background for the development of
these ideas. The Darwinian evolutionary theory, then, led to believe that biological
inequality existed among humans9.
Haverfield, indeed, developed Mommsen’s ideas, encouraged by the political situation of
Britain at the early 20th century10: Britannic imperialism, in fact, found an excellent
explanation of its actions with the will to «civilise» third world countries11. The words of
the British scholar are clear: «here Rome found races that were not yet civilized, yet were
racially capable of accepting her culture»12. Roman terminology and symbols were
adopted to create a moral legitimisation of colonisation: it constituted an idealised
benevolent power, which carried its superior culture to other regions13.
Romanisation was a general, progressive process which involved many, if not all, of the
areas of life, including language, art, religion, architecture and material culture, and
allowed the emergence of a common culture and the extinction of the differences
between Romans and provincials14. Like Europeans, and in particular Britannic empire,
expanded civilisation ideals among primitive countries, so Romanisation deleted pre-
Roman cultures in barbarian Europe. The concept of Romanisation, in fact, had many
parallels with the idea of acculturation, used in anthropology and sociology during the

5 WOOLF 1998, 5.
6 HAVERFIELD 1923.
7 On his idea of «Romanising», see, for example MOMMSEN 1886, 193.
8 FREEMAN 1997, 30.
9 HODOS 2010, 5.
10 For a complete review of Haverfield’s work on Romanisation in the context of British imperial discourse,
see HINGLEY 2000, 111ff.
11 WALLACE-HADRILL 2012, 111.
12 HAVERFIELD 1923, 5.
13 TERRENATO 2005, 64.
14 HAVERFIELD 1923, 18.
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first half of 20th century: both ideas developed from the same cultural framework15. For
the Mediterranean East, however, the term assumed vaguer significance. Haverfield
himself made a clear distinction between East and West, deeming the former only
partially romanised16.
This approach is clearly teleological, reflecting views of social evolution from a primitive
to a civilised state and enabling a direct connection between Western Europeans and
classical Rome17. Romanisation was considered a predictable event, because Rome
promoted values superior than the native ones. On the behalf of a supposed superiority,
colonialist views considered natural that the colonisers prevailed over colonised natives.
However, Haverfield was aware that the archaeological evidences showed a much more
complex picture, because some native aspects survived18. Starting from these unclear
aspects of Romanisation theory, that is the enduring presence of native culture and in
some cases the revival of ancient tradition during the last phases of Roman dominion in
Britain, Robin George Collingwood in the 1930s challenged Haverfield’s vision: in fact,
he affirmed that civilisation of Roman Britain was «Romano-British, a fusion of two
things into a single thing different from either»19. For him, some natives had never
embraced Roman culture and, instead, many country villages were romanised at a very
low degree20.
From the 1960s, archaeological excavations and surveys developed and spread
throughout Europe: archaeologists found a great variety of settlements which testified
many different attitudes to the arrival of Roman army. For the eastern Mediterranean, a
debate emerged, too: the term «Romanisation» was sometimes explained as an
individual choice made for a political career21, albeit other scholars were more sceptical
about its use22.
During the 1970s and 1980s the «nativist» movement emerged: for the first time the
notion of local resistance to Romanisation appeared clearly, and nativists considered the
adoption of Roman elements as a veneer, while the best part of indigenous people
preferred to not become Roman. In this period, new thoughts entered in theoretic debate
in archaeological and historical fields, causing the emergence of new historiographic
perspectives, usually labelled «post-colonial». It is not a case that even the reaction to
Romanisation found a fertile ground in Britain, which was experiencing the effects of
post-colonialism. This model, although important for having given attention to
submitted people, like Romanisation has failed because it has not explained the
emergence of new features that make every provincial experience unique. It created two
distinct poles, not going beyond the dualism that was already evident in Romanisation
thinking23. One of the better critics to colonial views was postulated by Edward Said, who
in his book Orientalism explained very well that colonial discourses represented binary
oppositions, favouring colonial cultures, depicted as civilised, dynamic, complex,
modern, and representing the others as inferior, passive, savage, lazy, simple and

15 JONES 1997, 40ff.
16 HAVERFIELD 1923, 12-13.
17 HINGLEY 2000, 124; 2005, 39.
18 HAVERFIELD 1923, 22; WEBSTER 2001, 211; HINGLEY 2005, 35.
19 COLLINGWOOD 1932, 92.
20 WEBSTER 2001, 212.
21 WELLES 1965, 44.
22 BOWERSOCK 1965, 72.
23 WEBSTER 2001, 213; CURCHIN 2004, 9-10.
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