Hadrian brought under control the turbulent/riotous populations.

In 132 he put down a Jewish rebellion

in a cruel and prolonged campaign.A roman historian claims that half a million Jews died in the battles
and adds that”It can’t be determined how many Jews died of starvation,disease or fire”.The survivers
were enslaved or deported.The name of the region was changed from Judaea into Syria-Palestina,in
order to wipe out any trace of the rebellion.

No doubt that the rumor on such violences made Rome’s enemies think twice before passing the
border.For Romans the slaughter and the genocide were essential for maintaing the security of the
Empire.”Pax Romana wasn’t established after a string of succesful battles-says Ian Haynes,archaeologist
at New Castle University.But it was rather reaffirmed repeatedly,through violent ways”.

As Hadrian’s Wall represents the strongest manifestation defending the roman borders,an abandoned
fortress on Euphrates eloquently depicts the time when the borders started to break.Dura-Europos was
a strenghtened fortress situated on the border between Rome and it’s biggest rival,namely
Persia.Today,Dura lies 40km away the Syrian border with Irak and eight hours away Damascus by bus.It
was discovered in 1920 when the English troops randomly discovered the painted wall of a roman
temple while fighting with the Arabic insurgents.A team of researchers from Yale University and the
French Academy put to work hundreds of Bedouins with shovels and hacks,who managed to shift with
the wagons tens of thousands of sand tones.”Sometimes it resemebled the film set of Indiana Jones”-
says Simon James,archaeologist at Leicester University.

After 10 years of continous diggings,a Roman city from the 3rd century that was frozen in time came to
light.Pieces of plaster were still hanging from the stone and clay brick walls and the chambers in the
palaces and temples-besides the oldest Christian church-were quite high so that the visitor should walk
thorugh them thinking how they looked like when they had a ceilling.

Build by the Greeks around 300 b.Chr.,Dura had been conquered by Romans almost 500 years later.Its
high and massive walls as well as its arrangement,above Euphrates made it the ideal border outpost.The
northern district was divided with a wall and became a green area of time,with Roman shacks,an
imposing general quarter for the garrison commander,a bath having red-brick walls,spacious enough to
wash off of dust one thousand soldiers,the most extreme-Eastern Roman amphiteatre ever build and a
palace with 60 rooms especially made for the officials who had to endure the modest conditions on the
outskirts of the Empire.

The task lists show that Dura was in charge of at least seven outposts.One of the outposts had only 3
quartered soldiers;another one was 150 km away downstream.”It wasn’t a city subjected to constant
threat”-James told me when we had visited the site,before the impairament of the political situation in
Syria took a turn for the worse and made the impossible excavations.

I was lying among the ruins and I was looking at the orange gas flares coming from the Iraki sonds as
they were lighting the sky.”Here,the soldiers were rather engaged in mentaining the order among the
citizens,than defencing the raids and attakcs”.
But the silence didn’t lasted.Persia became a major threat on the Estern border of the Empire,fifty years
later after the Roman conquering of Dura.Starting with the year 230,Mesoptomia had been marked by
the war between the two rivals.Soon it became clear that the border strategy used by Rome for more
than 100 years,couldn’t hold out against a determined and powerful enemy.

Dura was conquered in 256.Together with the archaelogists coming from France and Syria,that were
interested in the Pre-Romanic history of the site,James spent ten years discerning the last moments of
the strenghtened city.He says that the Romans must have known that the attack was looming.They had
had enough time to strengthen the massive wall in the West,laying on the ground a part of the city-
including the church and a beautifully decorated synagogue-to form some sort of mould wave.

The Persian army established its camp in the city’s graveyard,a few meters away from the main gate.As
they were throwing stones with catapults towards the Romans,the Persians build an assault ramp and
digged under the city,hoping that they would break down its defence.The garisson in Dura pushed back
by digging tunnels.

James says that,while on the land the battle was getting intese,a group of 19 soldiers entered one of the
Persians' tunnel.A poisonous gas cloud,pumped below the ground,suffocated them almost
immediately.Their remains are among the oldest archaeological proofs of the chemical war.According to
James,the corpses,that were found 1.700 years later,had been laid one over each other in a thin tunnel
in order to block its entry and then the Persian burnt it.

In the first place,Persians couldn’t bring down Dura’s wall,but they conquered it afterwards only to
abandon it in the middle of the dessert.The defenders who survived were either killed or
enslaved.Persian armies advanced in the former Roman Eastern regions,robbed douzens of town and
defeated two emperors and then,in 260 they captured a third one,a helpless man,Valerian.It is said that
Shapur,the Persian king used him as a little footstool,then he had him barked and also had his skin
spiked against a wall.

The crisis was a turning point.During Dura’s falling,the fine balance alongside the border teased among
offensive,defensive and pure intimidation.

For almost 150 years,the border let Rome to ignore a cruel reality:the world outside the walls was
catching it up,partially because of the Romans themselves.The barbarians who had fought in the Roman
army took home the knowledge,the weapons and the roman military strategy-said Michel
Meyer,archaeologist at the Free University in Berlin.

While the Romans turned a blind eye on them,the barbarian tribes became increansingly bigger,more
aggressive and better coordinated.When the troops all over the Empire were drawn off to hold off the
Persians,the weak troops in present-day Germany and Romania were almost immediately attacked.

Hadrian’s legacy was intended to the failure.”The tragic point in their strategy was that the Romans
focused their military force on the border-Meyer says.When the Germans attacked the border and got
behind the roman troops,they actually entered on the whole territory of the Empire.If we were to
compare the Empire with a cell,and the barbarian armies with a virus,once the thiny external membrane
has been pinned,the invaders could freely rob the interior.

The label on an altar with a height of 1.5 m,that was discovered in 1992 by german workers in Augsburg
is like an epitaph of Hadrian’s great idea and reduces to writing that the Roman soldiers waged war
against german barbarians across the border between 24 nd 25th of April 260 a.Chr.The Romans barely
defeted them.

Their commander built an alter in honor to godess Victoria.As we read between the lines,we discover
another scenario:the barbarians had been regularly making inroads,reaching in the last months the
center of Italy and turning back home together with thousands of Romans slaves.”This is a proof which
certifies that the border has already been compromised”-says Hussen,from the German Archaelogy
Institute.

The Empire wasn’t ever going to be safe within its borders.Eventually,the pressures made on the border
were too high.The towns across the Empire started to strengthen themselves;the emperors hardly rolled
up the frequent invasions.

The costs and the chaos caused were unbearable.The Empire that dominated long ago a territory that
was larger than the European Union collapsed in only two centuries.