Roman Asia & Anatolia

Formed in 133 BCE when the dying King Attalus III of Pergamon bequeathed his entire kingdom to the Roman people in his will. It became one of the richest eastern provinces -- tax-farming contracts here built fortunes for Rome's equestrian order -- and a showcase of Hellenistic Greek culture under Roman rule. Passed into the Eastern Roman Empire at the 395 CE division of the empire. Attalus's bequest triggered a brutal war before Rome could actually take possession, as the pretender Aristonicus rallied local resistance and even freed slaves to fight for an independent kingdom, delaying Roman annexation by several years. Once established, the province's exploitation by rapacious Roman tax farmers (publicani) became so notorious that it was cited as a direct cause of local support for Mithridates VI of Pontus's uprising against Rome in 88 BCE, during which tens of thousands of resident Romans and Italians were massacred across the province in a single coordinated night of violence. Ephesus grew into one of the largest cities of the Roman world, its Temple of Artemis ranked among the Seven Wonders of the ancient world and its harbor among the busiest in the eastern Mediterranean. The province's cities -- Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamon, Sardis -- remained centers of Greek learning, rhetoric, and early Christian activity (several appear among the Seven Churches addressed in the Book of Revelation), preserving a continuous Hellenistic urban culture that outlasted the Western Roman Empire by a millennium under Byzantine rule.

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