the spring of 53 Crassus was betrayed by his Arab ally and was slain in battle in the Syrian Desert south of Harran ; his army was cut to pieces.
Crassus' able treasurer and successor, Cassius, realized that this crushing defeat put all Syria in jeopardy and hastened to prepare for the coming invasion, which did not materialize until the year 51. At the head of two legions the proconsul took his stand in Antioch ready to offer determined resistance. Sensing a lengthy siege, the Parthians retired along the Orontes and ultimately withdrew from all Syria. The incursion, however, left its effect in the resur- gence of several local dynasts, many of whom favoured the Parthians.
With civil war raging in Rome and the whole realm in a condition of unrest and instability, Syria rapidly reverted to the confused anarchy in which Pompey had found it as a result of the ineffectiveness of the later Seleucids. Arab chiefs in the north and east, Nabataeans and Jews in the south, robbers in Lebanon and Cilicia and pirates along the Phoenician coast disdained the power of distant Rome. Trade, already disrupted by the successive Armenian and Parthian invasions, came to a virtual standstill. A brief visit by Julius Caesar in 47 B.C. and four years under the irresponsible Mark Antony (40-36) brought no improve- ment. A major Parthian incursion dislodged the Romans from the entire province with the exception of Tyre ; they regained control only slowly and with difficulty.
During Mark Antony's tenure the Maccabean family was replaced by that of Herod, a nominal Jew of Idumaean origin who established himself as king at Jerusalem in 37 B.C. and maintained power until his death thirty-three years later. Herod promoted Roman as against national interests and succeeded, where the Seleucids had failed, in forcibly making of Judaea a passable imitation of a Hel- lenistic realm. He mercilessly crushed all opposition to his despotic rule and left a pacified kingdom to his sons, but
