Phoenice (Roman province)
| Provincia Syria Phoenice | |||||
| Province of the Roman Empire (after 395 of the Byzantine Empire) | |||||
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| Capital | Tyre | ||||
| Historical era | Late Antiquity | ||||
| • | Created by Septimius Severus | c. 194 | |||
| • | Muslim conquest of Syria | 630s | |||
| Today part of |
 Lebanon Syria Israel
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Phoenice was a province of the Roman Empire encompassing the historical region of Phoenicia. After c. 400 it was divided into Phoenice proper or Phoenice Paralia, and Phoenice Libanensis, a division that persisted until the region was conquered by the Muslim Arabs in the 630s.
Phoenicia came under the rule of the Roman Republic in 64 BC, when Pompey created the province of Syria. With the exception of a brief period in 36–30 BC, when Mark Antony gave the region to Ptolemaic Egypt, Phoenicia remained part of the province of Syria thereafter.
Emperor Hadrian (reigned 117–138) is said to have considered a division of the overly large Syrian province in 123/124 AD (with Berytus as administrative capital of the former Phoenician coastal area), but it was not until shortly after c. 194 AD that Septimius Severus (r. 193–211) actually undertook this, dividing the province into Syria Coele in the north and Syria Phoenice in the south Tyre became the capital of the new province, but Elagabalus (r. 218–222) raised his native Emesa to co-capital, and the two cities rivaled each other as the head of the province until its division in the 4th century.
Diocletian (r. 284–305) separated the district of Batanaea and gave it to Arabia, while sometime before 328, when it is mentioned in the Laterculus Veronensis, Constantine the Great (r. 306–337) created the new province of Augusta Libanensis out of the eastern half of the old province, encompassing the territory east of Mount Lebanon.. It lasted only a few decades.
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