This chapter sketches the social and economic features of the Roman province which have a bearing upon some of the key issues in the history of the later empire. The province of Egypt played a central role in the military and political struggles in the east during the 260s and 270s. The reforms under Diocletian and his immediate successors amount to a radical overhaul of the Egyptian administration, brought about by stages over more than two decades. The changes and developments in Egypt between Septimius Severus and Constantine are exceptionally important, not least because of the implications for the history of the empire in the third and early fourth centuries as a whole. Recent studies of fundamental aspects of the agricultural economy in the Fayum and the Oxyrhynchite Nome reveal management strategies which are both sophisticated in the case of day-to-day organization and relatively stable in the case of landholding and tenancy.

Africa's land and food continued to excite Roman interest. It is hard to believe that the war between Tacfarinas and Rome, which eventually developed in AD 17 and lasted until AD 24 was a serious threat to Roman power in Africa. The emperor Gaius has been credited with two important changes in north Africa: the separation of the army under its legatus from the province of Africa; and the ending of the independent status of Mauretania. Cruel execution of Africans was a reputation gained by Nero's last legionary legate in AD 68. Colonies, communities and corn were the informing principles of Roman imperialism in Africa. The social and political benefits of the Augustan system for the elite had already become apparent in the Julio-Claudian period. Under Tiberius a citizen of Musti, L. Iulius Crassus, reached equestrian status and under Vespasian the first known African consuls, Q. Aurelius Pactumeius Fronto of Cirta and his brother Clemens, were created.

This chapter talks about the history of Syria, which in the two and half centuries after Pompey's settlement is dominated by three major themes. The first is the establishment and development of a Roman province, and the influence and consequences of its role as the major military province of the East. Second, the character and role of the client states, their evolution, then disappearance. Third, the gradual emergence and flowering under the influence of the pax romana of a prosperous, more unified culture, essentially Semitic in character but with a Greco-Roman influence clear to some extent in each of its many facets. Trade had recovered and shrewd Syrian merchants could fully exploit their safe access to Mediterranean markets. The contrast with the last generation of Seleucid rule and of the last days of the Republic was only too clear.