Cappadocia (Roman province)

• 1. Introduction

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  Cappadocia, the rugged highland plateau of central-eastern Anatolia, spent centuries as a prize fought over by empires before becoming one of Rome's most strategically vital eastern provinces. In 17 AD, Emperor Tiberius summoned the aging Cappadocian king Archelaus to Rome, accused him of harboring revolutionary schemes, and imprisoned him. Archelaus died in custody. With its last king gone, Cappadocia ceased to be a client kingdom and became a direct Roman province, governed from its capital at Caesarea.

  But the story of how Rome came to rule Cappadocia runs far deeper than a single imperial act of revenge. It stretches back more than three centuries, through the ambitions of the Ariarathid dynasty, the machinations of the Pontic king Mithridates VI, and the turbulence of Rome's own civil wars. How did a mountain kingdom on the edge of the known world become so entangled with the destiny of Rome? And once it was a province, what did it become?

• 2. The Ariarathid Dynasty

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  The Ariarathid dynasty ruled Cappadocia from 331 BC, making it one of the successor kingdoms of Alexander the Great's empire. Cappadocia's first contact with Rome was as an enemy. Under Ariarathes IV, the kingdom allied with the Seleucid king Antiochus the Great during the Roman-Seleucid War, which ran from 192 to 188 BC.

  Rome won that war, and Ariarathes IV moved swiftly to repair relations. He sealed the rapprochement by betrothing his daughter to the king of Pergamum, a Roman ally. From that point the Ariarathids became useful partners to the Republic. Cappadocia backed Rome against Perseus of Macedon in the Third Macedonian War, which ran from 171 to 166 BC.

  When King Attalus III of Pergamum died without an heir in 133 BC, he bequeathed his kingdom directly to Rome. In the struggle that followed over that inheritance, Cappadocian king Ariarathes V fought alongside the Roman consul Publius Licinius Crassus Dives Mucianus. Both men fell in battle against the claimant Eumenes III. Ariarathes V's death left a minor son, Ariarathes VI, on the throne, and that vulnerability would invite the attention of a far more dangerous neighbor to the north.

• 3. The Pontic Stranglehold

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  Mithridates V of Pontus understood that a child king on Cappadocia's throne was an opportunity. He betrothed his daughter Laodice to Ariarathes VI, then launched a military invasion that turned Cappadocia into a Pontic protectorate. His son, Mithridates VI, continued that grip with even less subtlety.

  In 116 BC, the Cappadocian king Ariarathes VI was murdered on the orders of Mithridates VI by a Cappadocian noble named Gordius. Mithridates VI then installed his sister Laodice as regent for the infant Ariarathes VII, tightening Pontic control over the kingdom. When the king of neighboring Bithynia, Nicomedes III, married Laodice and tried to annex Cappadocia, Mithridates swept in, expelled him, and returned the kingdom to Pontic influence.

  Mithridates VI then had Ariarathes VII murdered in 101 BC and placed his own eight-year-old son, Ariarathes IX, on the Cappadocian throne as a puppet. The Cappadocian nobles rebelled in 97 BC, naming a rival claimant as king. Mithridates crushed the rebellion, exiled the rival, and restored his son. Cappadocia was, in practice, an extension of Pontic power.

• 4. Rome Takes the Reins

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  In 95 BC, both Nicomedes III of Bithynia and Mithridates VI of Pontus sent embassies to Rome, each seeking Roman approval of their claim over Cappadocia. The Roman Senate rejected both. It ordered the withdrawal of Pontic and Bithynian forces and demanded that Ariarathes IX be deposed. With military backing from the Roman governor of Cilicia, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, a new king named Ariobarzanes I was installed, and Cappadocia became a Roman client kingdom.

  The arrangement did not hold long. In 93 BC, troops from Armenia under Tigranes the Great, who was Mithridates VI's son-in-law, invaded and dethroned Ariobarzanes I, who fled to Rome. After Rome's attentions were diverted by the Social War in Italy, Roman diplomacy still managed to restore Ariobarzanes I to the throne. Mithridates VI invaded again in 89 BC, reigniting the cycle.

  That second invasion sparked the First Mithridatic War, which ran from 89 to 85 BC. Sulla assumed command of the Roman effort in 87 BC and defeated Mithridates VI by 85 BC. The peace terms Sulla imposed required Mithridates to relinquish control of both Cappadocia and Bithynia, reinstating their respective Roman client kings. Mithridates was allowed to keep Pontus itself, a concession that would prove costly for Rome when Nicomedes IV of Bithynia died in 74 BC and bequeathed his kingdom to Rome, triggering the Third Mithridatic War.

• 5. Caesar, Antony, and the Client Kings

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  Cappadocia's role in Rome's civil wars was more than peripheral. When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BC, Cappadocian king Ariobarzanes III initially backed Pompey, grateful for Pompey's earlier support of his father. After Pompey was defeated at the Battle of Pharsalus and then assassinated in 48 BC, Ariobarzanes III switched his allegiance to Caesar.

  Meanwhile, Pharnaces II, the Roman client king of the Bosporan Kingdom and the youngest son of Mithridates VI, seized on Roman distraction to conquer Colchis and Lesser Armenia. His forces defeated a Roman army at the Battle of Nicopolis and overran much of Cappadocia. Caesar, after finishing his campaign in Egypt, traveled through Syria, Cilicia, and Cappadocia to confront Pharnaces II. He decisively defeated the Pontic king at the Battle of Zela. He then incorporated Lesser Armenia into Cappadocia as a buffer against future eastern aggression.

  After Caesar's assassination on the 15th of March 44 BC, the killers Brutus and Cassius assumed control of the eastern client kingdoms, including Cappadocia, in 43 BC. When Ariobarzanes III objected to Roman interference in his kingdom, Cassius had him executed in 42 BC and installed his younger brother Ariarathes X in his place. Later that same year, Mark Antony defeated Brutus and Cassius at the Battle of Philippi and took control of the eastern provinces. In 36 BC, Antony executed Ariarathes X and installed Archelaus as the new Cappadocian client king. Archelaus would be Cappadocia's last.

• 6. Province, Garrison, and Frontier

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  Once Tiberius converted Cappadocia into a Roman province in 17 AD, it occupied the easternmost position in the Empire, bordering the Euphrates River. Its capital, Caesarea, which corresponds to the modern city of Kayseri, sat further back from the Parthian frontier in more central Anatolia. The province was initially governed by an official of Equestrian rank with the title Procurator, who commanded only auxiliary units and deferred to the Imperial Legate of Syria for direction.

  Following the Roman civil war of 69 AD, Emperor Vespasian upgraded Cappadocia to Senatorial rank, putting its governor on equal footing with the governor of Syria. During the middle of the second century AD, the province maintained a permanent garrison of three legions and several auxiliary units, totaling over 28,000 troops. That force served as a standing response to Parthian threats and gave Rome leverage over its client kingdom of Armenia.

  The first Cappadocian admitted to the Roman Senate was Tiberius Claudius Gordianus, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius in the middle of the second century. In 62 AD, Emperor Nero had incorporated the remnant territories of the former Kingdom of Pontus, Lesser Armenia and Colchis under Polemon II, directly into Cappadocia, enlarging the province significantly. Under the reorganization of Diocletian, those Pontic and Armenian territories were separated back out, reducing Cappadocia to its core region.

• 7. Late Rome and Christian Thinkers

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  Emperor Valens, who reigned from 363 to 378 AD, was a particularly frequent visitor to Caesarea; the city sat on the highway between Constantinople and Antioch and saw a significant number of imperial visits between 337 and 361 AD. The future emperor Julian spent his early years at a remote estate in the province called Macellum.

  Cappadocia during this late period was defined by stark class divisions between a landowning elite and the urban and rural poor, a contrast sharpened by the harsh climate of the upland plateau. The province was also home to large numbers of imperial estates, recorded in contemporary legislation.

  In 371 AD, Valens split the province in two. The southwestern region around the city of Tyana became Cappadocia Secunda under a praeses, while the remaining core became Cappadocia Prima, still governed by a consularis. A generation of Christian thinkers emerged from this divided province: Basil of Caesarea, his close friend Gregory of Nazianzos, Basil's younger brother Gregory of Nyssa, and their cousin Amphilochios of Iconium. Their influence on Christian theology would extend far beyond the Anatolian plateau.

  In the period from 535 to 553 AD, Emperor Justinian I reunited the two halves into a single province under a proconsul. Raids by the Isaurians prompted the fortification of local cities throughout late Roman times. During the war of 602-628 AD, the region was briefly captured by the Sassanid Empire. After the Muslim conquests began, repeated raids left Cappadocia a frontier zone absorbed into the Byzantine themata of Anatolikon and Armeniakon.