Rome and the East
subject of vigorous debate. Owing to the Seleucid monarchy’s use of offi-
cial languages other than Greek (for instance, Aramaic and Akkadian), it has
recently been portrayed as a Near Eastern rather than a Greek state in a cul-
tural as well as geographical sense.^15 None the less, the dominance of Greek
forms of political organisation and of the Greek language survived the defeat
of the Hellenistic kingdoms by the Roman Republic in the second and first
centuries.., and lasted throughout the Roman imperial period, long after
, when the emperor Constantine converted to Christianity. The frontier
of the Empire lay along the middle and upper Euphrates, until it advanced
to take in all, and then (after a defeat by the Sassanid Persians in ) most,
of northern Mesopotamia.
Of course, there is evidence of the continued use of local languages in
Anatolia, and of various dialects of Aramaic in Syria, and of Hebrew and
Jewish Aramaic in Judaea. The Jewish community was the sole example, how-
ever, of a national tradition, embodied in Semitic-language texts, which
persisted throughout the Graeco-Roman period. From the third century
..onwards, the books of the Hebrew Bible were progressively translated
into Greek, making possible the extension of Christianity to gentiles and
the writing of Christian Scriptures in Greek. The spread of Christianity in
turn promoted the emergence of Christian ‘‘languages of culture’’ other than
Greek, for instance, Coptic, Syriac, and Armenian, and of non-Greek forms
of Christianity that survive to the present day.^16
During the classical period itself, with the exception of a few periods of
Jewish independence, some long, others short—the Hasmonean state, which
freed itself from Seleucid rule step by step from the s to ..and
remained independent until ..;therevoltof.. to ; and the
Bar Kochba revolt of –—few non-Greek political structures were to
be found west of the Euphrates during the millennium from Alexander to
Muhammed (the Nabataean kingdom of the first century..would be a
partial exception). In the eyes of Graeco-Roman observers, the only local
culture and religious tradition which represented anything distinctive, trou-
. For this thesis, note esp. S. Sherwin-White, ‘‘Seleucid Babylonia: A Case Study for
the Installation and Development of Greek Rule,’’ in A. Kuhrt and S. Sherwin-White, eds.,
Hellenism in the East: The Interaction of Greek and Non-Greek Civilizations from Syria to Central
Asia(), ; and, more fully, S. Sherwin-White and A. Kuhrt,From Samarkhand to Sardis:
A New Approach to the Seleucid Empire(), with a set of discussions inTopoi ().
. For a useful survey, M. Albert, ed.,Christianismes orientaux: introduction à l’étude des
langues et des littératures().