Note 84 — Chapter IX · THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER AND THE PARTHIANS. (continued 2)

This is nowhere expressly stated; but all the circumstances tell in favour of it. That the Romano-Parthian frontier, before the Romans established themselves on the left bank of the Euphrates, was on the right a little below Sura, is most distinctly said by Pliny (H. N. v. 26, 89: a Sura proxime est Philiscum—comp. p. 95, note 1—oppidum Parthorum ad Euphratem; ab eo Seleuciam dierum decem navigatio), and there it remained till the erection of the province of Mesopotamia under Severus. The Palmyrene of Ptolemy (v. 15, 24, 25) is a district of Coele-Syria, which seems to embrace a good part of the territory to the south of Palmyra, but certainly reaches as far as the Euphrates and includes Sura; other urban centres besides Palmyra seem not to be mentioned, and there is nothing to stand in the way of our taking this large district as civic territory. So long in particular as Mesopotamia was Parthian, but subsequently also with reference to the adjoining desert, a permanent protection of the frontier could not here be dispensed with; as indeed in the fourth century, according to the tenor of the Notitia, Palmyrene was strongly occupied, the northern portion by the troops of the Dux of Syria, Palmyra itself and the southern half by those of the Dux of Phoenice. That in the earlier imperial period no Roman troops were stationed here, is vouched for by the silence of authors and the absence of inscriptions, which in Palmyra itself are numerous. If in the Tabula Peutingeriana it is remarked under Sura: fines exercitus Syriatici et commercium barbarorum, that is, “here end the Roman garrisons and here is the place of exchange for the traffic of the barbarians,” this is only saying, what at a later time is repeated by Ammianus (xxiii. 3, 7: Callinicum munimentum robustum et commercandi opimitate gratissimum) and further by the emperor Honorius (Cod. Just. iv. 63, 4), that Callinicon was one of the few entrepôts devoted to the Romano-barbarian frontier-traffic; but it does not at all follow from this as regards the time when the Tabula originated, that these imperial troops were stationed there, since in fact the Palmyrenes in general belonged to the Syrian army and might be thought of in using the expression exercitus Syriaticus. The city must have furnished a force of its own in a way similar to that of the princes of Numidia and of Panticapaeum. By this means alone we come to understand as well the rejection of the troops of Antonius as the attitude of the Palmyrenes in the troubles of the third century, and not less the emergence of the numeri Palmyrenorum among the military novelties of this epoch.