…winters at Pontus, and makes it into a Roman province.

The Anatolian provinces enjoy prosperity and security after the accession of the Roman emperor Augustus (r. 27 BCE -CE 14), and for generations thereafter.

All of Anatolia except Armenia, which is a Roman client-state, is integrated into the imperial system by CE 43.

The cities are administered by local councils and send delegates to provincial assemblies that advise the Roman governors.

Their inhabitants are citizens of a cosmopolitan world state, subject to a common legal system and sharing a common Roman identity.

Roman in allegiance and Greek in culture, the region nonetheless retains its ethnic complexity.

Gaius (or Caius) Plinius Caecilius Secundus, better known as Pliny the Younger, is a remarkable writer.

A maternal nephew of the celebrated author and naturalist Pliny the Elder, he has served the empire as consul (with Cornutus Tertullus, in 100), Propraetor of Bithynia from 103, publicly elected Augur in 103-104, Superintendent for the banks of the Tiber (curator alvei Tiberis) in 104-106, been three times a member of Trajan's judicial council from 104 to 107, and had been made the Emperor's ambassador (legatus Augusti) in Bithynia-Pontus in 110.

Pliny is over fifty in 111 when he becomes governor of Bithynia.

The only oration of Pliny’s that now survives is the Panegyricus Trajani.

Pronounced in the Senate in 100, it is a description of Trajan's figure and actions in an adulatory and emphatic form, especially contrasting him with the much-detested Emperor Domitian.

The largest body of Pliny’s surviving work is his Letters (Epistulae), a series of personal missives directed to his friends and associates.

These letters are a unique testimony of Roman administrative history and everyday life in the first century.

The style is very different from that in the Panegyricus and some commentators affirm that Pliny is the initiator of a new particular genre: the letter written for publication.

In one, not written until 112, he asks the Emperor for instructions over the policy to follow with the Christians; in another, he describes the eruption of the Vesuvius that interred his uncle and to which he attended when he was eighteen years old.

The Epistulae are usually treated as two halves: those in Books 1 to 9, which Pliny had prepared for publication between 100 and 109, and those in Book 10, all of which are written to or by the Emperor Trajan during Pliny's governorship of Bithynia-Pontus, which position he will hold until his sudden death in 113.

This final book is, significantly, not intended for publication.

Pliny, as governor of Bithynia et Pontus province to 112, corresponds with the emperor Trajan on such questions as the treatment to be given Christians within the province.

He asks the Emperor for instructions dealing with Christians and explains that he forces Christians to curse Christ under painful torturous inquisition.

Pliny then explains to the Emperor how he questioned suspected Christians by torture and eventually sentenced them to death.

In light of the fact that Christianity is recognized as a sect of Judaism and as a threat to public order, it is therefore likely that, while his knowledge of Christianity itself was largely secondhand, several Christian authors assert he must have known about Jesus's existence first hand, although he could not have been contemporary in time or place.

More important here, however, is the testimony by Pliny that non-Roman suspects be executed for their confession of being Christians.

This indicates that Jesus was worshiped, and that believers of Christ may be put to death for their beliefs, in a short period of the early second century by Roman jurisdiction.

Pliny executed members of what were considered at the time a fanatical cult.

This could lend circumstantial significance to the writings of early Christians.

Being required to “curse Christ” is evidence that Pliny reported this as a means to force reactions of the suspect Christians under torturous inquisition.

Also "a hymn to Christ as to a god" alleges that during that time Jesus had been accepted as both God and man.

Pliny’s ten books of Epistulae, a series of personal missives directed to his friends and associates, provide an informal window into the daily life of a rich and cultured Roman gentleman.

The Roman general Avidius Cassius, governor of Syria, who earlier had served under the late Emperor Lucius Verus, has by 175 virtually become a prefect of all of the eastern provinces, including control of the important province of Egypt.

In this year, Avidius Cassius takes the occasion of a rumor of Marcus Aurelius' death to proclaim himself emperor.

Marcus, very much alive, makes peace in the north with those tribes not already subjugated, and prepares to march against Avidius, who, having been accepted as Emperor by Syria, Palestine and Egypt, Cassius carries on his rebellion even after it has become obvious that Marcus is still alive.

Of the eastern provinces, only Cappadocia and Bithynia do not side with the rebels.

Cassius' fortunes decline quickly and the rebel general dies at the hands of one his own centurions after only one hundred days of power and before the campaign against him can begin.

The emperor, who apparently arrives in Antioch after the fact, uses the opportunity to make a tour of pacification and inspection in the East, first visiting Antioch, then crossing to Egypt.

Severus’s rearguard in the northwest is now protected by his offer of the rank of Caesar to Clodius Albinus, the powerful governor of Britannia who had probably supported Didius Julianus against him.

The imperial contender advances with his legions east into the empire against Pescennius Niger, the Roman governor of Syria who had been acclaimed Emperor by his troops, like Severus, following the death of Pertinax.

Severus wins victories over his Syrian rival Niger at the battles of Cyzicus and …

…Nicaea in 193, whereupon Niger's army successfully withdraws to the Taurus mountains, where it fiercely defends the Cilician pass.

At this time the commander of the Severan troops, Tiberius Claudius Candidus, is replaced by Publius Cornelius Anullinus, perhaps due to the failure of the former to prevent the withdrawal of the rival army.

Elagabalus and his entourage spend the winter of 218 in Bithynia at Nicomedia, where the emperor's religious beliefs first manifest themselves as a problem.

The contemporary historian Cassius Dio suggests that Gannys was in fact killed by the new emperor because he was forcing Elagabalus to live "temperately and prudently."

To help Romans adjust to the idea of having an oriental priest as emperor, Julia Maesa has a painting of Elagabalus in priestly robes sent to Rome and hung over a statue of the goddess Victoria in the Senate House.

This places senators in the awkward position of having to make offerings to Elagabalus whenever they make offerings to Victoria.

The legions, dismayed at his behavior, quickly come to regret their decision to have him supported as emperor.

While Elagabalus is still on his way to Rome, brief revolts break out by the Fourth Legion, at the instigation of Gellius Maximus, and by the Third Legion, which itself had been responsible for the accession of Elagabalus as emperor, under command of Senator Verus.

The rebellion is quickly struck down, and the Third Legion disbanded.

Gregory of Neocaesarea holds a very prominent place among those bishops of Asia Minor in high positions who build up the Christian Church, extend its influence, and strengthen its institutions.

Gregory Thaumaturgus was born at Neo-Caesarea (the capital of Pontus in Asia Minor) around 213.

Little is known of his pastoral work, and his surviving theological writings are in an incomplete state.

This lack of knowledge partially obscures his personality, despite his historical importance, and his immemorial title Thaumaturgus, "the wonder-worker" in Latinized Greek, casts an air of legend about him.

Nevertheless, the lives of few bishops of the third century are so well authenticated; the historical references to him permit a fairly detailed reconstruction of his work.

Originally he was known as Theodore ("gift of God"), not an exclusively Christian name.

His family had not converted to Christianity, and he was introduced to the Christian religion only at the age of fourteen, after the death of his father.

He had a brother Athenodorus, and on the advice of one of their tutors, the young men were eager to study law at the law-school of Berytus (Beirut), at this time one of the four or five famous schools in the Hellenic world.

Their brother-in-law had recently been appointed assessor (legal counsel) to the Roman Governor of Palestine; the youths had therefore an occasion to act as an escort to their sister as far as Caesarea in Palestine.

On arrival in that town, they had learned that the celebrated scholar Origen, head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria, resided there.

Soon both youths had forgotten all about Beirut and Roman law, and had given themselves up to the great Christian teacher, who gradually won them over to Christianity.

It may be supposed that despite the original abandonment of Beirut and the study of Roman law, Gregory had not entirely given up the original purpose of his journey to the East; as a matter of fact, he returns to Pontus seven or eight years later with the intention of practicing law.

His plan, however, is again laid aside, for he is soon consecrated bishop of his native Caesarea by Phoedimus, Bishop of Amasea and metropolitan of Pontus.

This fact illustrates in an interesting way the growth of the hierarchy in the primitive Church; the Christian community at Caesarea is very small, being only seventeen souls, and yet it is given a bishop.

Ancient canonical documents indicate that it was possible for a community of even ten Christians to have their own bishop.

When Gregory was consecrated he was forty years old, and he will rule his diocese for thirteen years.

The Goths, according to Jordanes's Getica, had entered Oium, part of Scythia, under their fifth king, Filimer, where they subdued the Spali (Sarmatians), conquered the Kingdom of the Bosporus and partially destroyed two or three cities on the Euxinean coast, including Olbia and Tyras, where they become divided into the Visigoths ruled by the Balthi family and the Ostrogoths ruled by the Amali family.

Jordanes parses Ostrogoths as "eastern Goths", and Visigoths as "Goths of the western country."

At times, rival kings of some other tribes arise and probably produce some disorganization.

At one of these periods (255), the Goths are able to seize Bosporan shipping and raid the shores of Anatolia.