Location information

(Palaistine, he Palaistine Suria). The Greek and Roman form of the Hebrew word which was used to denote the country of the Philistines, and which was extended to the whole country. The Romans called it Iudaea, extending to the whole country the name of its southern part. It was regarded by the Greeks and Romans as a part of Syria. It was bounded by the Mediterranean on the west, by the mountains of Lebanon on the north, by the Jordan and its lakes on the east, and by the deserts which separated it from Egypt on the south. The Romans did not come into contact with the country till B.C. 63, when Pompey took Jerusalem. From this time the country was really subject to the Romans. At the death of Herod his kingdom was divided between his sons as tetrarchs; but the different parts of Palestine were eventually annexed to the Roman province of Syria, and were governed by a procurator. The Jews were by no means well disposed, however, to the rule of the Romans, and in the first century A.D. broke out with a general rebellion which was crushed out by Vespasian and Titus with merciless severity. The latter general took Jerusalem and destroyed it in A.D. 70. Under Constantine, Palestine was divided into three provinces--Palaestina Prima in the centre, Palaestina Secunda in the north, and Palaestina Tertia in the south.

This text is cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks

Perseus: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898)