page_title: Syria (region)
section_title: Roman Syria
hierarchical_section_title: Syria (region) / History / Roman Syria
caption_attribution_description: English: Tadmor, Syria: the scene of the theater of Palmyra.
context_page_description: The region of Syria, known in modern literature as "Greater Syria", "Syria-Palestine", or the Levant, is an area east of the Mediterranean Sea. Throughout history, the region has been controlled by numerous different peoples, including ancient Egyptians, Canaanites, Israelites, Assyria, Babylonia, the Achaemenid Empire, the ancient Macedonians, the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Rashidun Caliphate, the Umayyad Caliphate, the Abbasid Caliphate, the Fatimid Caliphate, the Crusaders, the Ayyubid dynasty, the Mamluk Sultanate, the Ottoman Empire, the United Kingdom and the French Third Republic.
context_section_description: In the Roman era, the term Syria is used to comprise the entire northern Levant and has an uncertain border to the northeast that Pliny the Elder describes as including, from west to east, the Kingdom of Commagene, Sophene, and Adiabene, "formerly known as Assyria".
  Various writers used the term to describe the entire Levant region during this period; the New Testament used the name in this sense on numerous occasions.
  In 64 BC, Syria became a province of the Roman Empire, following the conquest by Pompey. Roman Syria bordered Judea to the south, Anatolian Greek domains to the north, Phoenicia to the West, and was in constant struggle with Parthians to the East.
  In 135 AD, Syria-Palaestina became to incorporate the entire Levant and Western Mesopotamia. In 193, the province was divided into Syria proper (Coele-Syria) and Phoenice. Sometime between 330 and 350 (likely c. 341), the province of Euphratensis was created out of the territory of Syria Coele and the former realm of Commagene, with Hierapolis as its capital.
  After c. 415 Syria Coele was further subdivided into Syria I, with the capital remaining at Antioch, and Syria II or Salutaris, with capital at Apamea on the Orontes River. In 528, Justinian I carved out the small coastal province Theodorias out of territory from both provinces.
caption: Palmyra, one of ancient Syria's wealthiest cities
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