ABSTRACT
Rome’s preoccupation with the security of its Armenian client kingdom and the integrity of the Euphrates frontier may have given the rulers of Edessa hope that they could continue to conciliate both of the major powers between which they found themselves. If so, the situation changed dramatically in the second century ce, with the beginning of serious and sustained Roman involvement beyond the Euphrates under the Emperor Trajan (97-117). This emperor had already shown his willingness to push beyond earlier limits, both in his Dacian wars and in the Middle East, with the acquisition of the Nabataean Kingdom and its transformation into the Province of Arabia.1 In Mesopotamia, he departed from earlier practice by attempting to retain conquered territory in the form of new provinces, although his successor Hadrian (117-138) thought better of the attempt. Fifty years after Trajan, the pattern of aggressive campaigning in the north and expansion in the east reappeared under the co-emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus (161-169). The effects of Verus’s eastern campaign, however, were longer-lasting, both in Edessa and elsewhere in northern Mesopotamia. By the end of the century between Trajan and Septimius Severus, the king of Edessa was squarely within Roman clientela, and the groundwork was laid for the even firmer incorporation of his realm into the empire.
