Lycia et Pamphylia (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.

Diogenes of Oenoanda, an enthusiastic pupil of Epicureanism who flourishes around 200, helps to further develop the philosophy.

Diogenes has constructed a rectangular piazza surrounded by a portico, and furnished with statues.

On one of the smaller sides he has placed a portal, with perhaps his mausoleum on the opposite side.

On the two larger sides he has inscribed a lengthy account of Epicurean doctrines.

The inscription is two point thirty-seven meters high, and extends about eighty meters.

Originally about twenty-five thousand words long and filling about two hundred and sixty square meters of wall space, it was discovered in 1884, and the first sixty-four fragments were published in 1892.

Since then, more fragments have been discovered, notably in a series of excavations led by Martin Ferguson Smith.

Perhaps a quarter of the inscription has been recovered.

New parts are being discovered in the excavations of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut; among the parts discovered in 2008 was a statement on Plato's theory of cosmogony.

Nothing is known about the life of Diogenes apart from the limited information he reveals to us.

The inscription itself, which had been dated to the late second century, has now been assigned on epigraphic grounds to the Hadrianic period.

Diogenes was wealthy enough to acquire a large tract of land in the city of Oenoanda to construct (or possibly buy) a piazza to display his inscription.

As a man who had found peace by practicing the doctrines of Epicurus, he tells us that in his old age he was motivated "to help also those who come after us" and "to place therefore the remedies of salvation by means of this porch.”

Verus’ journey continues by ship through the Aegean and the southern coasts of Asia Minor, lingering in the famed pleasure resorts of Pamphylia and Cilicia, before arriving in Antioch.

It is not known how long Verus' journey east took; he might not have arrived in Antioch until after 162.

Statius Priscus, meanwhile, must have already arrived in Cappadocia; he will earn fame in 163 for successful generalship.

Lucius spends most of the campaign in Antioch, though he wintered at Laodicea and summers at Daphne, a resort just outside Antioch.

He takes up a mistress named Panthea, from Smyrna.

The biographer calls her a "lowborn girlfriend", but she is probably closer to Lucian's "woman of perfect beauty", more beautiful than any of Phidias and Praxiteles' statues.

Polite, caring, humble, she sings to the lyre perfectly and speaks clear Ionic Greek, spiced with Attic wit.

Panthea reads Lucian's first draft, and criticizes him for flattery.

He had compared her to a goddess, which frightens her—she does not want to become the next Cassiopeia.

She has power, too: she makes Lucius shave his beard for her.

Critics declaim Lucius' luxurious lifestyle.

He has taken to gambling and enjoys the company of actors.

He makes a special request for dispatches from Rome, to keep him updated on how his chariot teams are doing.

He brings a golden statue of the Greens' horse Volucer around with him, as a token of his team spirit.

Fronto defends his pupil against some of these claims: the Roman people need Lucius' bread and circuses to keep them in check.

This, at least, is how the biographer has it.

The whole section of the vita dealing with Lucius' debaucheries (HA Verus 4.4–6.6) is an insertion into a narrative otherwise entirely cribbed from an earlier source.

Some few passages seem genuine; others take and elaborate something from the original.

The rest is by the biographer himself, relying on nothing better than his own imagination.

Lucius faces a heavy task.

Fronto describes the scene in terms recalling Corbulo's arrival one hundred years before.

The Syrian soldiers, having turned soft during the east's long peace, spend more time at the city's open-air bars than in their quarters.

Under Lucius, training is stepped up.

Pontius Laelianus orders that their saddles be stripped of their padding.

Gambling and drinking are sternly policed.

Fronto writes that Lucius was on foot at the head of his army as often as on horseback.

He personally inspects soldiers in the field and at camp, including the sick bay.

Lucius sends Fronto few messages at the beginning of the war, but does send Fronto a letter apologizing for his silence.

He will not detail plans that could change within a day, he writes.

Moreover, there is little thus far to show for his work.

Lucius does not want Fronto to suffer the anxieties that have kept him up day and night.

One reason for Lucius' reticence may have been the collapse of Parthian negotiations after the Roman conquest of Armenia.

Lucius' presentation of terms is seen as cowardice.

The Parthians are not in the mood for peace.

Lucius needs to make extensive imports into Antioch, so he opens a sailing route up the Orontes.

Because the river breaks across a cliff before reaching the city, Lucius orders that a new canal be dug.

After the project is completed, the Orontes' old riverbed dries up, exposing massive bones—the bones of a giant.

Pausanias says they were from a beast "more than eleven cubits" tall; Philostratus says the it was "thirty cubits" tall.

The oracle at Claros declares that they are the bones of the river's spirit.

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.

With his challenger dead, Probus next moves against brigands who fiercely defend themselves against the siege of their mountain fortress of Cremna on the undefined border of Pisidia and Isauria, but eventually are defeated and the town inserted in the Roman province of Lycia et Pamphylia.

Bishop Nicholas of the Christian church of Myra, in Lycia, was born a Greek in Asia Minor during the third century in the city of Patara (Lycia et Pamphylia), a port on the Mediterranean Sea.

He lives in Myra (part of modern-day Demre, Turkey), at a time when the region is Greek in its heritage, culture, and outlook and politically part of the Roman diocese of Asia.

He is the only son of wealthy Christian parents named Epiphanius and Johanna according to some accounts and Theophanes and Nonna according to others.

He was very religious from an early age and according to legend, Nicholas was said to have rigorously observed the canonical fasts of Wednesdays and Fridays.

His wealthy parents died in an epidemic while Nicholas was still young and he was raised by his uncle—also named Nicholas—who was the bishop of Patara.

He tonsured the young Nicholas as a reader and later ordained him a presbyter (priest).

He is in 325 one of many bishops to answer the request of Emperor Constantine and appear at the First Council of Nicaea, where Nicolas had been a staunch anti-Arian and defender of the Orthodox Christian position, and one of the bishops who signed the Nicene Creed.

Nicholas allegedly earns a reputation for generosity and compassion through such acts as tossing, on three separate occasions, a bag of gold through the window of a poor family.

His philanthropic act provides a dowry to obtain for each of three daughters an honorable marriage and saves the girls from a life of prostitution.

Later canonized as Saint Nicholas, he will become the patron saint of Russia, of children, and of sailors.

His story provides the basis for the practice, still observed in many countries, of giving gifts on the saint's feast day of December 6.

Variants of his name eventually include Sant Nikolaas, Sante Klaas, and Santa Claus.