IMPERIUM ROMANUM

Provinces · The later eastern provinces

LE-46 Palaestina Prima

The later Balkan provincial landscape. Dacia south of the Danube, the two Epiri…
The later Balkan provincial landscape. Dacia south of the Danube, the two Epiri, Thessaly, Macedonia, Achaia, and the Thracian districts illustrate the replacement of large commands by smaller jurisdictions. The river network helps relate frontier districts to the Adriatic, Aegean, and imperial straits.

The province included a complex society of cities, villages, productive land, religious centres, and routes. Jerusalem’s rising Christian and ecclesiastical importance differed from Caesarea’s civil precedence. Jewish, Samaritan, Christian, and other communities occupied a landscape whose institutions and identities cannot be reduced to one provincial label.

Pilgrimage, agriculture, estates, urban markets, and religious patronage all contributed to economic life. Conflicts and imperial intervention accompanied Christianization. Persian conquest in 614 and the Arab conquest after brief Roman recovery ended the earlier civil order, while many local communities and sacred institutions persisted.