Caravan Cities:
The Roman Near East and
Long-Distance Trade by Land
*My title, ‘‘Caravan Cities,’’ is intended to recall the evocative book by Rostov-
tzeff, published in .^1 In it he gave a vivid sketch of some of the wonderful
remains to be seen then—and to be seen even better now—in the huge area
of the Near East ruled by Rome: Petra and Gerasa ( Jerash) in Jordan; Pal-
myra in the desert and Dura-Europos on the Euphrates, both in Syria. To say
that these were ‘‘caravan cities’’ is to say something more than merely that
trade passed through them. It is to say that they owed their characterascities
to trade: not to local exchanges of products, but to long-distance trade, to
caravans. Given the overtones of the word ‘‘caravan,’’ there is a rather strong
implication that we are talking about camel trains, travelling vast distances
over the desert.
In the case of Palmyra in particular, there has been a tendency to think
of such cities, quite explicitly, as having been like ports; hence Javier Teixi-
dor’s book of called the city ‘‘un port romain du désert,’’ while Ernest
Will’s of was subtitled ‘‘La Venise des sables.’’^2 Given the keen interest
with which we await Geoffrey Rickman’s study of Roman ports, it seemed
appropriate to use the analogy expressed in these titles and to ask how far it
*First published in M. Austin, J. Harries, and C. Smith, eds.,Modus Operandi: Essays in Hon-
our of Geoffrey Rickman(BICS supp. , ), –. An earlier version of this paper was
the subject of the Fourth Annual W. Kendrick Pritchett Lecture at Berkeley, which I had
the honour to give in April .
. M. I. Rostovtzeff,Caravan Cities, trans. D. Talbot Rice and T. Talbot Rice ().
. J. Teixidor,Un port romain du désert. Palmyre et son commerce d’Auguste à Caracalla(Semi-
tica , ); E. Will,Les Palmyréniens. La Venise des Sables().