Hellenistic and Roman Phoenicia

Abstract

Phoenicia is the coastal plain between the Mediterranean and Mount Lebanon. Hellenism knocked at Phoenicia's door with brute force. The Phoenician cities had provided the bulk of the Achaemenid Empire's naval forces. Tyre, soon to be repopulated with Greeks and Phoenicians from the other cities, was subject to Macedonian rule after all. In the Achaemenid Empire, Phoenicia, along with Syria and Judaea, had been part of the satrapy of Ebir-Nari or Transeuphratene. In the decades following the abolition of the monarchic regime, bronze coins in Tyre were issued with the image of the Seleucid kings, with Greek and Phoenician legends and with a dating in the Seleucid era, all clear indications that Tyre was now a tributary city of the empire. Pompey the Great had the two rivaling Seleucid pretenders deposed, liquidating the empire and turning it into the Roman province of Syria.