Asia Province

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For other uses, see Asia (disambiguation).

Roman conquest of Asia minor

The Roman province of Asia was an administrative unit added to the late Republic. It was a Senatorial province governed by a proconsul. The arrangement was unchanged in the reorganization of the Roman Empire in 211.

Antiochus III the Great had to give up Asia when the Romans crushed his army at the historic battle of Magnesia, in 190 BC. After the Treaty of Apamea (188 BC), the entire territory was surrendered to Rome and placed under the control of a client king at Pergamum.

In 133 BC, Attalus III, king of Pergamon, having no heirs to succeed him, bequeathed his kingdom to Rome. After some hesitation the Roman province of Asia Proconsularis was formed, embracing the regions of Mysia, Lydia, Caria, and Phrygia.

Asia's great cities, like Ephesus and Pergamum, were among the greatest metropolis of the Empire.

After 326, when the Emperor Constantine I moved the capital to Byzantium, which he refounded, the province of Asia was more centrally situated than ever, and remained a center of Roman and Hellenistic culture in the east for centuries. The territory remained part of the Byzantine Empire until the 15th century.

See also

• Roman province
• For usage of "Asia" in the New Testament, see Romans 16:5; 2 Timothy 1:15; Acts 1:4, etc.

External link

• [Asia Minor]

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