Bithynia and Pontus

Coordinates: 41°30′00″N 33°15′36″E / 41.5000°N 33.2600°E / 41.5000; 33.2600
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Provincia Bithynia et Pontus
Επαρχία Βιθυνίας και Πόντου
Diocletian Reforms
c. 300 AD
Preceded by		 Succeeded by
Kingdom of Bithynia
Kingdom of Pontus
Bithynia (late Roman province)
Honorias
Paphlagonia (late Roman province)
Today part ofTurkey

Bithynia and Pontus (

romanized: Eparkhía Bithynías kai Póntou) was the name of a province of the Roman Empire on the Black Sea coast of Anatolia (modern-day Turkey). It was formed during the late Roman Republic by the amalgamation of the former kingdoms of Bithynia (made a province by Rome 74 BC) and Pontus
(annexed to Bithynia 63 BC). The amalgamation was part of a wider conquest of Anatolia and its reduction to Roman provinces.

In 74 BC,

Optimates, party of the "best." The guest-friendship had been offered to Caesar, a popular, to save his life by keeping him from Rome during a proscription (a kind of witch-hunt) by Sulla
, an optimate in power. Forever after Caesar had to endure scurrilous optimate slander about his relationship to Nicomedes, but Bithynia became a favored project of the populares.

The Populares held both consulships at Rome.

Mithridates VI of Pontus, seeing a prospective addition to his kingdom about to escape, attacked Bithynia even before the consul arrived. Cotta sent for his co-consul, Lucius Licinius Lucullus. The Third Mithridatic War ensued and dragged on. At the end of their consulships the two commanders stayed on as proconsuls. Mithridates was able to mobilize almost all the rest of Anatolia against them. The two populares were insufficiently skilled to take on Mithridates. Cotta was removed finally by the Senate on a charge of corruption. Lucullus' men mutinied. In the confusion he lost nearly all Anatolia and was out of it. Their patience at an end, the Senate chose the best commander they had. In 66 BC Rome passed the Lex Manilia appointing Pompey, a popular, as Summus Imperator
, a term that would find more use after the Civil War. He had the full support of Caesar, then coming into his own. He was to have a totally free hand in Asia. By 64 BC all of Mithridates' allies had been defeated or forced to change sides. Driven from Pontus, hunted through Anatolia, he was assassinated at last by former friends hoping to win Roman favor.

The wealth of Anatolia was now at Rome's command. It was Pompey's task to

Roman Civil War. The last popular standing, Octavian Caesar, assumed the title imperator on a permanent basis and was granted another by the Senate, Augustus
. Bithynia and Pontus went on from that date, 27 BC, as an imperial province, a name which it kept.

Geography

The

Bosphorus to approximately the city of Trabzon. Just to the south of the coastal strip was an east-west striking range, the Pontic Mountains, isolating the coast from the Central Anatolia Region
, a temperate plateau of grasslands and low forests. The province extended up the slopes to the ridge. On its reverse side were valleys and plateaus in which were situated cities that were on the edge of the coastal province but were not part of it.

History

The

officially annexed Bithynia and the western half of Pontus (including the Greek cities along the Black Sea) into the Republic as the directly governed province of "Bithynia et Pontus". As for the eastern half of Pontus ("Lesser Armenia"), Pompey added its territory to that of the Kingdom of Galatia under the Roman client king Deiotarus
as a reward for his loyalty to Rome.

Republican civil wars

Bithynia and Pontus became an important player during the

Ptolemaic Egypt
.

With the Caesar in Egypt,

Colchis and Lesser Armenia. The rulers of Cappadocia and Galatia, Ariobarzanes III and Deiotarus respectively, appealed to Calvinus for protection and soon the Roman forces sought battle with Pharnaces II. They met at the Battle of Nicopolis in eastern Anatolia
in 48 BC, where Pharnaces II soundly defeated the Roman army and overran much of Cappadocia, Pontus, and Bithynia.

After defeating the Ptolemaic forces at the

Cappadocia
to serve as a buffer between Rome's interests in Asia Minor against future aggression from Eastern kingdoms.

In 45 BC, Caesar, now dictator of Rome, appointed Quintus Marcius Crispus as governor of Bithynia and Pontus. Following Caesar's assassination on March 15, 44 BC, by the members of the Roman Senate, Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus fled from Italy and assumed command of the Republic's eastern provinces, including Bithynia and Pontus, in 43 BC. When Crispus refused to serve the assassin of his patron, Cassius had him removed from office and forced into retirement. Following the defeat of Brutus and Cassius by the Second Triumvirate at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, Triumvir Mark Antony assumed command of the Republic's eastern provinces.

The Second Triumvirate expired in 33 BC, ending Antony's legal right to govern the Eastern half of the Republic. With the Triumvirate lapsed, the struggle for dominance between Antony and

Roman Emperor
.

Rump State

Anatolia in the early 1st century AD with Pontus as a Roman client state

In 39 BC, Antony stripped control of Lesser Armenia (the remnants of the former Kingdom of Pontus) from the rulership of the Cappadocian king Ariarathes X of Cappadocia and made Darius of Pontus, son of Pharnaces II of Pontus, the Roman client king of Pontus. Antony also granted to Darius the rulership of the Roman client kingdom of Cilicia. His reign lasted until his death in 37 BC, after which Antony appointed Polemon I of Pontus as client king of Cilicia and Arsaces of Pontus as client king of Lesser Armenia.

Following Arsaces' untimely death the next year in 36 BC, Antony appointed Polemon I as client king of Pontus. Years later, in 16 BC, Polemon I, at the request of

Colchis
to his realm of client kingdoms he ruled on behalf of Rome.

Following Polemon I's death in 8 BC, he was succeeded by his stepson

Pythodorida of Pontus became client queen of Pontus, Cilicia, and Colchis. Pythodorida would marry then King Archelaus
, the Roman client king of Cappadocia, in 8 BC, thereby joining the several eastern client kingdom under a single family. Following Archelaus' death in 14 AD and the subsequent transformation of Cappadocia into a directly governed province in 18 AD, Pythodorida lost her title as queen of Cappadocia.

Pythodorida was succeeded by her stepson

Roman Emperor Nero
deposed him in 62 AD. Cilicia was then annexed into a directly governed Roman province and Pontus was re-incorporated in Cappadocia, then a directly governed Roman province.

Principate

The Roman provinces of Asia Minor under Trajan, including the western Asia Minor Senatorial province of "Bithynia and Pontus".

As part of the

senatorial provinces. Imperial provinces were border lands which required a permanent military presence to protect the Empire from invasion. As such, only the Emperor (as supreme commander of the army) had the right to appoint the governors of those provinces.[1]

Senatorial provinces, conversely, were centered along the Mediterranean Sea and did not possess any significant military force; the province of Bithynia and Pontus, being located along the southern Black Sea coast, was an exception although it too lacked any significant garrison. Augustus allowed the Senate to appoint the governors of these provinces as it had done with all provinces under the Republican system: a sortition was used to select a proconsul who would have imperium over the territory, and be assisted by a legatus or a lieutenant governor, and quaestor who handled financial issues.

The Roman writer Pliny the Younger was governor of the province in AD 110-113. His Epistulae ("Letters") to emperor Trajan (ruled 98-117) are a major source on Roman provincial administration.

The cities of Bithynia took on many features of Roman cities (e.g. councils of

decuriones) in the Imperial period, to a much greater degree than the rest of Roman Asia Minor.[2]

According to Cassius Dio, around AD 134 the Senate ceded control of Bithynia and Pontus to the Emperor in return for Lycia et Pamphylia.[3]

Dominate

Under the administrative reforms of emperor

Prefecture of the East
(established c. 337).

Legacy

Following the Muslim invasions of the 640s AD, the

themes. The province of Bithynia and Pontus was reorganized into the Bucellarian, Opsikion, and Optimatoi
themes.

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ Richard Talbert, The Senate of Imperial Rome (Princeton: University Press, 1984), p. 392
  2. ISBN 9782753514355
    .
  3. ^ Talbert, Senate, p. 395

Bibliography

41°30′00″N 33°15′36″E / 41.5000°N 33.2600°E / 41.5000; 33.2600

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