The RomanColoniaeof the Near East ment in military activity there, does serve in one way to explain, or at least
to provide a framework for, some of the grants of colonial status. A glance at
any map which specifies the formal status of cities in this region would show
alineofcoloniaestretching along the desert frontier from Arabia to the Tigris:
Petra; Bostra; Philippopolis; Damascus; Palmyra, Dura-Europos(?); Carrhae;
Reshaina; Nisibis; Singara.^143 But of course any notion that that status ex-
pressed any actual Roman military character, any role of these towns as for-
tresses in themselves, would be quite misleading. Furthermore, there were
other cities which also received this status, such as Sidon, Flavia Neapolis, or
Gaza, which can have been of no significance in external military terms; it
is just possible that the threat of disorder posed by the Samaritans was rele-
vant in the case of Neapolis. By contrast, the title ofcoloniawas not granted
to Seleucia in Pieria, which had served at least since the later first century
as the main Roman port for this region;^144 explicit inscriptional evidence
from Cilicia shows supplies being delivered from there for the Roman armies
in Syria in the first half of the third century,^145 surely through Seleucia. It
may seem equally surprising that the status ofcolonia, though granted, as we
would expect, to Antioch (see below), was not conferred on Apamea. For it
was not only a major city in its own right but was repeatedly the quarters
of the Legion II Parthica, on campaign with emperors far away from its base
at Albanum south of Rome.^146 If military relevance had been the criterion,
we might also have expected that Zeugma on the Euphrates would also have
become acolonia.
We have to conclude that though these grants do indeed reflect the close
involvement of emperors with this region in the third century, they have
to be seen in each case as the expression of the vagaries of imperial favour.
Those made in the reign of Caracalla and after also have the further charac-
teristic that they accompany, or follow, that Emperor’s grant of citizenship to
all the inhabitants of the Empire. With that, one fundamental distinction be-
tweencoloniaeand the Greek, or semi-Greek, cities which surrounded them
had been removed. In terms of citizenship there was now nothing to gain
from being acolonia. What other rights followed, and what exactly they sig-
. One modern map which does show this impact, though not completely, is map
in N. G. L. Hammond,Atlas of the Greek and Roman World in Antiquity().
. See the remarkable article by D. van Berchem, ‘‘Le port de Séleucie de Piérie et
l’infrastructure logistique des guerres parthiques,’’Bonner Jahrb. (): .
.AE, –. See H. Halfmann,Itinera Principum(), .
. See J.-C. Balty,Apamée(); ‘‘Nouvelles données sur l’armée romaine d’Orient
et les raides sassanides du milieu du IIIesiècle,’’CRAI(): , and ‘‘Apamea in Syria in
the Second and Third Centuries..,’’JRS (): .