History of The Levant - Classical Empires

Classical Empires

From 492-449 BC, the Persians made a series of unsuccessful attempts to conquer Greece. The civilisation that had developed there since the end of the Bronze Age was organised along entirely different lines than those of the Middle East, consisting of numerous small City-States fielding citizen militias. Nonetheless they banded together and proved quite capable of dealing with the massive armies of their foe.

By the 4th century BC, Persia had fallen into decline. The campaigns of Xenophon illustrated how very vulnerable it had become to attack by an army organised along Greek lines, but the Greek city-states had weakened each other irreparably through in-fighting. However, in 338 BC, the rising power of Macedon overcame Greece, and under Alexander the Great turned its attention eastward. Alexander conquered Persia in little more than a decade.

Alexander did not live long enough to consolidate his realm, and in the half-century following his death (323 BC) it was carved up by his feuding generals. The Antigonids established themselves in Macedon, the Ptolemies in Egypt, and various small principalities appeared in northern Anatolia. The greater share of the east went to the descendants of Seleucus I Nicator. This period saw great innovations in mathematics, science, architecture, and the like, and Greeks founded cities throughout the east, some of which grew to be the world's first major metropolises. Their culture did not, however, reach very far into the countryside.

The Seleucids adopted a pro-western stance that alienated both the powerful eastern satraps and the Greeks who had migrated to the east. During the 2nd century BC, Greek culture lost ground there, and the empire began to break apart. The province of Bactria revolted, and Parthia was conquered by the semi-nomadic Parni. By 141 BC, the Parthians had established themselves as an empire, after the Seleucid model, and had conquered all of Iran and Mesopotamia. The Seleucid kingdom continued to decline and its remaining provinces were annexed by the Roman Republic in 64 BC as Iudaea Province.

The Parthian nobility reacted against growing Roman influences around the start of new era. Throughout the next century, there was a strong expansion of national culture and a dissolution in central authority. In 114 AD, Trajan temporarily occupied Mesopotamia, and with the end of Hadrian's 40-year peace the two powers were at almost constant hostilities. Mesopotamia was occupied again, but the Parthians recovered and pillaged the Roman provinces. Shortly thereafter, though, the province of Persia rose up in revolt, and defeated the last Parthian emperor in 224 AD.

The new Persian dynasty, the Sassanids, restored central authority. In this period Zoroastrianism developed into an organised religion with close ties to the new state. Various sects of Christianity also spread throughout Iran, and Manichaeism developed from the two religions; these were initially tolerated but later persecuted as the Romans followed the opposite route. Conflicts with Rome, and later with the Byzantine Empire, continued intermittently.

In 391, the Byzantine era began with the permanent division of the Roman Empire into East and Western halves. The last true Roman Emperor in the West was unseated in 476, by which time it had been completely overrun by Germanic nations; however, the Eastern half, known as the Byzantine Empire, lasted much longer, persevering in one form or another until 1453. Byzantine control over the sites of Israel and Judah and other parts of the Levant lasted until 636, when it was conquered by Arabs and became a part of the Caliphate.

The Byzantines reached their lowest point under Phocas, with the Sassanids occupying the whole of the eastern Mediterranean. In 610, though, Heraclius took the throne of Constantinople and began a successful counter-attack, expelling the Persians and invading Media and Assyria. Unable to stop his advance, Khosrau II was assassinated and the Sassanid empire fell into anarchy. Weakened by their quarrels, neither empire was prepared to deal with the onslaught of the Arabs, newly unified under the banners of Islam and anxious to expand their faith. By 650, Arab forces had conquered all of Persia, Syria, and Egypt.