monarch, are described as sovereign. The island was important as a base for commercial ventures into the Orontes valley. Arwad inaugurated a new civic era in 259 BC, when its traditional royalty disappeared, and it became a free independent city within the Seleucid kingdom, during the reign of Antiochus II. Roman Period In Roman times, Arwad fiercely resisted Mark Antony when he came to Syria to find money there. When the city refused to co-operate, it was besieged in 38 BC, then eventually surrendered, which marked the end of its independence in 34–35 BC. Bishopric The city of Aradus, as it was then called, became a Christian bishopric. Athanasius reports that, under Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, Cymatius, the Chalcedonian bishop of Aradus and also of Antaradus (whose names indicate that they were neighbouring towns facing each other) was driven out by the Arians. At the First Council of Constantinople in 381, Mocimus appears as bishop of Aradus. At the time of the Council of Ephesus (431), some sources speak of a Musaeus as bishop of Aradus and Antaradus, while others mention only Aradus or only Antaradus. Alexander was at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 as bishop of Antaradus, Paulus as bishop of Aradus, while, at a synod held at Antioch shortly before, Paulus took part as bishop of both Aradus and Antaradus. In 458, Atticus signed, as bishop of Aradus, the letter of the bishops of the province of Phoenicia Prima to Byzantine Emperor Leo I the Thracian protesting about the murder of Proterius of Alexandria. Theodorus or Theodosius, who died in 518, is mentioned as bishop of Antaradus in a letter from the bishops of the province regarding Severus of Antioch that was read at a synod held by Patriarch Mennas of Constantinople. The acts of the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 were signed by Asyncretius as bishop of Aradus. At the time of the Crusades, Antaradus, by then called Tartus or Tortosa, was a Latin Church diocese, whose bishop also held the titles of Aradus and Maraclea (perhaps Rachlea). It was united to the see of Famagusta in Cyprus in 1295. No longer a residential bishopric, Aradus is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see. Medieval history During the later part of the 13th century, in the time of the Crusades, the island of Ruad was used as a bridgehead or staging