The decline of the Hellenistic states coincided with the rise of Rome as
a regional power.
The period of some 30 years up to 30 BC was marked by the struggle for power
in Rome. The senate had lost its authority to the generals, who strove amongst
themselves for supreme power. Julius Caesar eventually crushed his rival
Pompey and assumed the dictatorship, determined to reform the government
of the empire. His assassination in 44 BC was followed by disorder until
Octavian, Caesar`s great nephew, vanquished his opponents and ascended to
power as Emperor Augustus.
Cyprus was initially included in the province of Cilicia, but after briefly
reverting to Egyptian control, it was in 22 BC classified as a senatorial
province, and administered by a proconsul and his staff, who resided in Paphos.
Augustus implemented many of the reforms initiated by Caesar, including abolishing
the farming out of tax collection, which had led to the impoverishment of
subject and treasury alike. This reform allowed the government to spend extensively
on public works withoutoppressing the peasant purse.
In Cyprus a large scale building program was expedited. New ours were built,
roads were laid, aqueducts were constructed to annel water to the cities
which were equipped with temples, market ~es, theatres, and other public
amenities. The massive stone torum at nis is the largest Roman market place
known, and indeed that city ne prodigiously wealthy, exporting copper and
oil, wheat and wineto the markets of Rome.
In AD 46 Paul and Barnabas, a native of Salamis, travelled to Paphos where
they revealed the gospel to the Roman governor Sergius Paul us. He was convened
and thus became the worlds first Christian ruler. Barnabas later preached
in Salamis where he was eventually martyred by the Jews.
The mission of Paul and Barnabas was to have far reaching implications, enabling
the church in later years to demonstrate its apostolic origin and justifying
its claim to be autocephalous and independent of the patriarch of Antioch.
After their revolt was crushed in Jerusalem in AD 70 by the Romans, many
Jews settled in Cyprus, particularly in Salamis. Here in AD 115, they rebelled
again, and the ensuing carnage over the next two years prompted the decree
from Rome expelling all Jews from the island.
For the next 50 years Cyprus enjoyed unparalleled prosperity, but the plague
of AD 164, and the later degeneration of the Roman Empire left the country
in a sorry plight. Fortunes revived under Constantine the Great (324-337),
who tried to bind his empire together with the glue of Christianity, but
in AD 364 the empire split, the eastern half being ruled from the new capital
city of Constantinople, located on the
Bosporus.
|
North Cyprus
