Rome's Frontier Policies

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31333, 1 April 1967, Page 4

Rome's Frontier Policies

Rome on the Euphrates. By Freya Stark. John Murray. 481 pp. including index, map, references and bibliography.

What constitutes a safe boundary for an empire, or in modern terms a sphere of influence? An arbitrary line on the map is a sophisticated notion; the Spanish and Portuguese were frequent trespassers ever such a line when the Pope attempted to divide the New World between them, and even today certain zones and parallels are not treated with perfect respect There was always a tendency for empire to expand to some natural obstacle such as the Pacific Ocean or the Himalayas, but a real problem arises when the obstacle can be surmounted, or no obstacle exists. The former is our modern dilemma—-what represents safety when nothing is physically unassailable? The latter situation with no defensible natural frontier was faced by Rome in Asia Minor and Mesopotamia nearly 2000 years ago. And since the two positions,are in one sense the same, it may be instructive to observe what happened in the former case.

Once Roman interests touched on Greece, the Aegean Sea was no sort of barrier, for 'the Asiatic shore had a thick Hellenic fringe of colonies and , cities. Miss Stark begins her history with the battle of Magnesia in. 189 8.C., when the Roman army defeated the forces of Antiochus 111, the Sefoucid king of Syria. From that time on the Roman frontier in Asia was constantly shifting, in consequence of what Miss Stark calls the policy of weak periphery. Rome could not tolerate a strong neighbour on* the frontier, even a peaceable one; but aS the kingdoms and cities were eroded by a series of wars, 'so they collapsed and Rome, stepping into the gaps, saw the frontier recede again like a desert mirage. This supposed military necessity was the more costly betause it cut across the line of established trade. The overland routes from China and India led either south of the Caspian to the Tigris or A

north to the Black Sea kingdoms of Colchis and Pontus. The only alternative was by sea from the Indian coasts round Arabia to the Red Sea and so north through Petra, a route established in the first century A.D., and this was never an adequate substitute for the caravan trails of Asia. Trade reckoned in millions flowed through the Syrian and Mesopotamian cities such as Palmyra, and when they were sacked the temporary profit usually meant a permanent loss. Eight centuries make a long period to handle in one book and are made no shorter by the author’s faithful chronicling of each campaign. On the other hand there are passages that one would wish had been written at greater length, where her laconic style verges on the cryptic and references dangle tantalisingly. It would have been helpful, too, if more maps had been put in the body of the text instead of folded exasperatingly at the back. Miss Stark is avowedly writing to a thesis, that a frontier policy cutting across trade is futile at best and at worst self-destruc-tive, and indeed she adduces cogent arguments in favour of co-existence rather than insistence on control. The Parthians were not aggressive, yet for centuries the Romans, lured on also by the dream of Alexander’s empire, regarded them as the inevitable foe. More than once the western empire was left often to assault from other nations because the Emperor was "absent in the East,” and when the Emperor Justinian defeated the vandals the Persian king Chosroes laughingly asked for his share of the spoils on the ground that Justinian could not have triumphed had he not been at peace with Persia at the time.

It would of course be wrong to suggest that the frontier wars in Asia were a major cause of the disruption of the Roman Empire. They were symptomatic of the underlying causes, as a chronic ulcer may indicate a profound physical imbalance. The whole area from the Caspian to the Syrian coast was gradually stirred to a ferment, first by the rise o< the

Sassanians and then by the spread of Christianity with its fertile crop of early heresies provoking discord. Miss Stark knows and loves that world: her book is informed throughout with personal experience and she writes with a perception and vibrancy that bring the desert and its inhabitants, past or present, sharply into focus. Certainly no-one could write a better book on the Euphrates, the great river of a world that Is peculiarly hers.