John D. Grainger - Roman Conquests: Egypt and Judaea

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First published in Great Britain in 2013 by
P E N & S W O R D M I L I T A R Y
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS

Copyright John D. Grainger

ISBN: 978-1-84884-823-8
PDF ISBN: 978-1-47382-952-7
EPUB ISBN: 978-1-47382-663-2
PRC ISBN: 978-1-47382-663-2

The right of John D. Grainger to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted
by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in
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Contents

List of Illustrations

Maps

Roman Empire at its greatest extent
I.	The Roman Near East
II.	Syria
III.	Judaea 7663 BC
IV.	Herods Kingdom
V.	Upper Egypt
VI.	Jerusalem
VII.	Alexandria

Genealogy of the Family of Herod

(Much simplified; dates are those of rulerships)

Introduction

The lands of the eastern and south-eastern corner of the Mediterranean, Syria and Egypt had been the centres of power of two of the Great Powers of the ancient world since the days of Alexander the Great. But by 64 BC these lands had fallen on evil days, with no viable kingdom of Syria left, and misgovernment rife in Egypt. Syria had broken into a confusing medley of cities, kingdoms, tyrants, bandits, and rebels. And Rome, greedy for money and territory as always, was poised in the north to grab.

They may be geographical neighbours, but to link Judaea and Egypt into an account of their conquest by Rome is rather like yoking an ass and an ox in a ploughing contest. Egypt was conquered in a brief campaign of no more than a year; Judaea fought repeatedly to avoid such a fate, in wars lasting over a century. (This is an exaggeration, of course, and the conquest of Egypt took longer, though it was less violent than that of Judaea, and the Judaean wars were intermittent, but the contrast does exist.) Further, the two peoples did not particularly like each other, and their main rulers, Kleopatra and Herod, scarcely got on.

Nevertheless the link exists. Besides being neighbours, they were deeply involved in the final paroxysms of the Roman civil wars which destroyed the republic, as participants, exploiters, and eventually victims. The responses of the two were, however, different, the Egyptians submitting with scarcely a murmur, the Jews of Judaea fiercely and repeatedly resisting.

So, despite the obvious power of the Roman state, the elimination of the local rulers who occupied the land from the Taurus Mountains to the deserts of Egypt did not happen easily. It was already clear in 64 BC that Rome was capable of conquering all these places, probably in a single campaign, but instead it took 170 years to complete the task.

There are many reasons for this lethargy, partly Roman, partly local. Rome itself, of course, collapsed into a series of civil wars, which, at least in the east, delayed conquest. In the region itself there were unexpectedly stubborn resistances to conquest from a variety of groups, above all, but not only, from the Jews of Judaea. It did not help that a major and unconquerable power Parthia loomed nearby, equally willing to snap up bits of territory. Then there was Roman over-confidence, producing distant expeditions far beyond the empires capabilities.

For the warfare in this corner of the Mediterranean extended over a much wider area than the two countries in the title. Roman aggression extended itself deep into Asia, Africa, and Arabia, and had done so even before the conquest of Syria had been completed. The continued existence of the Judaean state in a condition of semi-independence helped to maintain other Syrian kingdoms in the same condition, so that the destruction of Judaea was eventually accompanied by the final annexations of several of these other kingdoms.

It is thus a complicated tale, very different from the conquests achieved elsewhere, though the bit-by-bit acquisitions of Asia Minor and North Africa show similarities. The two countries which are here singled out for special treatment, Judaea and Egypt, merit it because their sources of information are rather better than other parts of the region, and this makes it possible to discuss what happened in those two countries in some detail. And yet, the geographical range cannot be confined to these two places. To understand the events it is also necessary to consider the rest of Syria, Arabia and Egypts southern neighbour.

In the end, after much conflict, Rome ruled all Syria and Egypt, but in the process the imperial government discovered that there were areas which it was not able to reach. By 20 BC this had become clear and the expansion of Rome in the east effectively ended, except for mopping up several client states which Rome already dominated. Thirty years later, the same realization struck home in Germany, with the destruction of three legions by the Germans in the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9. Again, in Britain in the AD 80s, the same happened when Agricola failed to conquer Scotland. One might liken the Roman Empire to a caged bull, butting in all directions in frantic attempts to escape its imprisonment. It was in the East that the first check to this took place. It seems likely that by 20 BC Augustus had begun to formulate the policy which he eventually passed on as advice to his successor Tiberius: not to expand the empire further.

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