ROMAN ARMY IN DURA EUROPOS AND THE SEVERAN PARTHIAN CAMPAIGNS

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of Roman military presence in Dura Europos in the context of the Parthian campaigns of the Severan dynasty and Roman foreign policy in the East. Due to its geographical position, the town of Dura Europos was quite an important military site in the Seleucid, Parthian and Roman periods. Dura was held briefly by the Romans under Trajan and was later captured by Lucius Verus. Dura was relativaly easy to defend, and that value of the city justified the effort to hold it. In the Roman period, after the campaign of Lucius Verus, the city became a garrison on Rome’s eastern frontier. Very little is known about the first decades of Roman presence in Palmyra. The garrison appears to have been not very large. In the Age of the Severan dynasty, the garrison consisted of the vexillations of the legions that were regularly settled in the province of Syria Coelae. That included Legio IV Scythica and Legio XVI Flavia Firma. The presence of the Legio III Gallica and Legio III Cyrenaica in the city during the years 216 – 220 CE can be strongly connected with the Parthian campaigns of Caracalla. The main attachments in the city were cohors XX Palmynerorum and the vexillations of the legions settled in the province of Syria Coelae. The papyri documents left by the soldiers and officers of the Cohors help us to reconstruct not only the daily life and the economy of the Roman Army in the East, but they also provide us with information about the military activity of its soldiers including the wars against Parthia. The author analyzes chronology of the possible appearance of the institute of dux ripae and states, that the only information about the office of the military command of the region before the 240 CE comes from an assumption that was made by M. Rostovtzeff, who believed that the dipinto from the palace of the dux could be used as a source to date the appearance of that office. Nerveless, the papyrological material finds the earliest mentions about this command only in the 240-s CE. The existing evidence can be used to date this office as by the time of military expeditions of Caracalla and Macrin against Parthia or the other possible variant are the late Severan wars with the Sasanian Persia. The author concludes that the military garrison was increased at the beginning of the third century CE – the fact that was recorded with a number of epigraphical and papyrological sources. The archaeological sources help us to verify this information for we can see how the military camp expanded in that period that was also followed with an amount of building activity in the area. The soldiers that served in the garrison took an important part in Rome’s policy in the East.