The roman’s period in Syria brought stability to the region. The expansion of roads and the trade routes networks fostered the flow of thoughts and ideas in both directions to a point At the end of the first century CE, the Roman poet Juvenal described "that the Orontes ends into the Tiber".
Syria provided a major economic and military support to Rome. The semi-autonomous system that Rome has granted to the Syrian cities gave birth to an advanced fusion culture that was characterized by further city expansions, the adaptation of roman judicial system and style of governance.
Syrians rose to Roman power through Julia Domna, a Syrian priestess from Homs who married Roman general Septimius Severus – he later ascended to the throne as emperor of Rome. The dynasty rose back to power by Julia’s sister Julia Maesa, who made her grandson Elagabalus emperor. It was Elagabalus to later introduce the worship of Elagabal, the Syrian sun god and made it central in Rome.
The Seleucids divided the north into four satrapies and founded many new cities and military colonies—among them Antioch, Seleucia Pieria, Apamea, and Laodicea. Republics replaced kings in the Phoenician coastal cities of Tyre (274 BCE), Sidon, Byblos, and Aradus. Further political and cultural changes followed. Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–163) stimulated the spread of Greek culture and political ideas in Syria by a policy of urbanization; increased city organization and municipal autonomy involved greater decentralization of his kingdom.
Hellenistic culture thus represents a fusion of the ancient Greek world with that of Western Asia, with both Alexandria and Antioch becoming the heart of the empire. This mixture gave rise to a common Attic-based Greek dialect, known as Koine Greek, which became the lingua franca through the Hellenistic world.
