The Cohors XX Palmyrenorum ("20th Cohort of Palmyrenes") was an

auxilia The (, lit. "auxiliaries") were introduced as non-citizen troops attached to the citizen legions by Augustus after his reorganisation of the Imperial Roman army from 30 BC. By the 2nd century, the Auxilia contained the same number of inf ...

cohort Cohort or cohortes may refer to: * Cohort (educational group), a group of students working together through the same academic curriculum * Cohort (floating point), a set of different encodings of the same numerical value * Cohort (military unit ...

of the

Roman Imperial army The Imperial Roman army was the military land force of the Roman Empire from about 30 BC to 476 AD, and the final incarnation in the long history of the Roman army. This period is sometimes split into the Principate (30 BC – 284 AD) and the Dom ...

. It was a '' cohors equitata milliaria'', mixed infantry and cavalry regiment, originally recruited from the inhabitants of

Palmyra Palmyra (; Palmyrene: () ''Tadmor''; ar, تَدْمُر ''Tadmur'') is an ancient city in present-day Homs Governorate, Syria. Archaeological finds date back to the Neolithic period, and documents first mention the city in the early second ...

Roman Syria Roman Syria was an early Roman province annexed to the Roman Republic in 64 BC by Pompey in the Third Mithridatic War following the defeat of King of Armenia Tigranes the Great. Following the partition of the Herodian Kingdom of Judea into tetr ...

. There were also a small number (32–36) of

dromedarii Dromedarii were camel-riding auxiliary forces recruited in the desert provinces of the Late Roman Empire in Syria. They were developed to take the place of horses, where horses were not common. They were also successful against enemy horses, as ...

forces attached to the infantry. The unit was probably raised in the late 2nd century, when Palmyra became part of the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterr ...

. At first they served in the

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''Roman province, provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire ...

Dacia Dacia (, ; ) was the land inhabited by the Dacians, its core in Transylvania, stretching to the Danube in the south, the Black Sea in the east, and the Tisza in the west. The Carpathian Mountains were located in the middle of Dacia. It thus r ...

. In the early 3rd century they were stationed in

Dura-Europos Dura-Europos, ; la, Dūra Eurōpus, ( el, Δούρα Ευρωπός, Doúra Evropós, ) was a Hellenistic, Parthian, and Roman border city built on an escarpment above the southwestern bank of the Euphrates river. It is located near the vill ...

. The headquarters of the ''Cohors XX Palmyrenorum'' was the

Temple of Artemis Azzanathkona The temple of Artemis Azzanathkona is located in Dura Europos in the east of present-day Syria, and was dedicated to a syncretic belief of Artemis and Azzanathkona. In Roman times the temple became a headquarters for the Cohors XX Palmyrenorum ...

aside the

Praetorium The Latin term (also and ) originally identified the tent of a general within a Roman castrum (encampment), and derived from the title praetor, which identified a Roman magistrate.Smith, William. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 2 ed., ...

.Peter Edwell: ''Between Rome and Persia. The Middle Euphrates, Mesopotamia and Palmyra Under Roman Control.'' Routledge, 2008, , p. 124.

Notes

Bibliography

* Robert O. Fink: ''The Cohors XX Palmyrenorum, a Cohors Equitata Miliaria.'' In: ''Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association.'' Vol. 78, 1947. pp. 159–170. *Nigel Pollard: ''Soldiers, Cities, and Civilians in Roman Syria.'' University of Michigan Press, 2000, {{Dura Europos Auxiliary equitata units of ancient Rome Dura-Europos

See also

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Bibliography