A cosmopolitan community

When Rome annexed the city, Durene society was already complex, and would now become even more so. It comprised a dominant class of families claiming Macedonian descent, ruling a diverse social mix of Aramaic-speaking artisans and traders, farmers and steppe pastoralists, drawn from surrounding regions of Mesopotamia and Syria, including Palmyra. Under Roman rule more groups settled, or frequently passed through the town, not least traders and Roman troops.

For the descendants of the people of the Parthian-era town in their homes, in the marketplace and in the temples of their gods, many patterns of life continued as before; they had already been accustomed to using Roman pots and coins brought down the Euphrates. But new people were arriving, and the northern part of the city was now generally off-limits as home to the Roman garrison.

The men of the garrison were overwhelmingly Syrian-born themselves--relatively 'local boys', but to be a soldier (miles) of the emperor was a privileged status; Roman milites were proud and touchy, potentially dangerous neighbours. On the other hand, archaeology suggests that the military authorities went to considerable lengths to foster good civic relations: the biggest baths were built by the soldiers for civilian use, while the amphitheatre was probably a shared amenity.

Also under Rome, a community of Jews settled and constructed a synagogue which, in its later rich form, had stunning wall-paintings of Biblical scenes. And then there were the Christians. Their evidently open and tolerated presence in the middle of a major Roman garrison town reveals that the history of the early church was not simply a story of pagan persecution. Some of the Roman garrison may well have been Christians.

Roman Dura was, then, a remarkably cosmopolitan place, and the radical social changes of the era gave new opportunities for social mobility--although everyone was living under an autocratic imperial regime much more heavy handed than Arsacid rule.