Cappadocia

The province Rome kept for its horses, its garrison and its position on the road to Armenia. Cappadocia is the high plateau of eastern Anatolia, cold, treeless and volcanic, and it had been a kingdom under a Persian dynasty for centuries before Tiberius annexed it in 17 after the last king died in Rome. It was initially governed by a procurator and later upgraded to an imperial province with two legions, because it faced Armenia and beyond that Parthia, and the Armenian question - whether Rome or Persia chose its king - caused repeated wars. The imperial estates here bred horses for the army and the racing factions of Constantinople. The landscape of the Goreme valley, where erosion has left tall cones of soft volcanic rock, was hollowed out into houses, churches and entire underground cities capable of sheltering thousands; it is a World Heritage site. Those refuges were cut and used over centuries against raiders. Cappadocia produced three of the most important theologians of the early church - Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus - whose work shaped the doctrine of the Trinity settled in 381. Caesarea, now Kayseri, was the capital. The province was a frontier zone against Arab raids for centuries. It remained substantially Greek-speaking and Christian until the population exchange of 1923. The province covered the high plateau around Mount Erciyes. Its two legions were stationed at Melitene and Satala. Cappadocian Greek survived in Turkey into the twentieth century. Underground cities at Derinkuyu reach several levels below the surface.

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