Phoenicia was a narrow strip of coast stretching from Palestine in the south to the edge of Asia minor in the north, and including the ports of Tyre, Sidon and Byblos. It was from this homeland that sailors, explorers, and traders set out and colonized major areas of the Mediterranean, laying the foundations of the Carthaginian Empire. The Phoenicians were among the most skilled seafarers and traders of the ancient world, and were credited with creating the alphabet which became the basis for written Greek and Latin. In the hinterland to the east of Phoenicia and to the south and west of the Euphrates River was Syria, whose leading city in ancient times was Damascus.
Phoenicia and Syria ceased to exist as independent states in the seventh century B.C., when they were conquered by the Assyrian Empire. In the sixth century, the region came under the rule of the Babylonian Empire and then of the Persian Empire. In the fourth century B.C., it was conquered by Alexander the Great. After Alexander's death, his dominions were divided by his generals into several successor states, one of which, the Seleucid Empire, ruled an area that included most of Persia, northwestern India, Mesopotamia, Armenia, parts of Asia minor, and northern Syria and Phoenicia, with its capital in the city of Antiochus, in Syria.
In the succeeding centuries, the Seleucid Empire fought numerous wars with its neighbors, the Lysimachian Kingdom to the west, the Ptolemaic Empire to the south, and with Parthian and Mesopotamian rebels to the east. In 215 B.C., in 200 B.C., and again in 192 B.C. Syria went to war with Rome, each time frustrated in its efforts to strengthen its position in the eastern Mediterranean. By the time of the Third Mithridatic War, the Seleucids had lost all of their territories west of the Taurus Mountains to Rome and her allies, had lost most of their territories to the east of the Euphrates River to the Parthians and Armenians, and had lost control of Judaea, wrested in an earlier war from the Ptolemies, to Macabbean rebels. During the Third Mithridatic War, Syria was invaded by King Tigranes of Armenia. In the settlement imposed by Pompey at the end of the war, in 64 B.C., Syria was established as a Roman province.
Syria was part of the Eastern Empire after the split between Rome and Constantinople, and remained a part of it until it was conquered by the Arabs in the seventh century A.D.