Further Roman Activity in The Region
Hadrian's withdrawal from Assyria and its neighboring provinces in 118 did not mark the end of Roman rule in this region. A second Parthian campaign was launched from 161-165 under the command of Lucius Verus, with the Roman army once more conquering territories east of the Euphrates. Rome pursued military action against the Parthians again in 197-8 under the command of emperor Septimius Severus. Following his successful campaign, Severus instituted two new Roman provinces--Osroene and Mesopotamia—on the territories annexed by Trajan in 114-117. Severus also stationed two Roman legions in the new provinces to ensure stability and prevent against first Parthian, and later Sassanian attacks. Roman influence in the area came to an end under Jovian in 363, who abandoned the region after concluding a hasty peace agreement with the Sassanians and retreating to Constantinople to consolidate his political power.
Despite continued Roman activity in the region, no further reference is made to a Roman province of Assyria following Hadrian's evacuation in 118. When Septimus Severus created the provinces of Osroene and Mesopotamia at the end of the 2nd century, no mention is made of a Roman province of Assyria. During his travels with Jovian in the Near East, the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus says, "Within this circuit is Adiabene, which was formerly called Assyria;" ostensibly referring to Trajan's former Assyria Provincia. Ammianus Marcellinus also refers to a region called Assyria located between the Tigris and Euphrates, but makes no reference to a current Roman province bearing that name. Thus, it seems that the province of Assyria only existed during Trajan's reign, and was not reinstated during later Roman occupations of the region. The general area coincided with ancient Assyria however, and the Medes, Persians, Seleucid Greeks, Sassanids and Parthians all had similar names for the area (Athura, Assuristan).
The native Assyrian people of the region had begun to adopt Christianity by Trajan's time, and still retained eastern Aramaic as a spoken and literary tongue, as they do to this day.
Read more about this topic: Assyria (Roman Province)
Famous quotes containing the words roman, activity and/or region:
“The East knew and to the present day knows only that One is Free; the Greek and the Roman world, that some are free; the German World knows that All are free. The first political form therefore which we observe in History, is Despotism, the second Democracy and Aristocracy, the third, Monarchy.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“To play is nothing but the imitative substitution of a pleasurable, superfluous and voluntary action for a serious, necessary, imperative and difficult one. At the cradle of play as well as of artistic activity there stood leisure, tedium entailed by increased spiritual mobility, a horror vacui, the need of letting forms no longer imprisoned move freely, of filling empty time with sequences of notes, empty space with sequences of form.”
—Max J. Friedländer (1867–1958)
“It was a favor for which to be forever silent to be shown this vision. The earth beneath had become such a flitting thing of lights and shadows as the clouds had been before. It was not merely veiled to me, but it had passed away like the phantom of a shadow, skias onar, and this new platform was gained. As I had climbed above storm and cloud, so by successive days’ journeys I might reach the region of eternal day, beyond the tapering shadow of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)