The New Provinces

Abstract IN an oration delivered before the people of Rome Pompeius boasted that he found the province Asia on the edge of their dominions and left it in the middle. As the titulus of his triumph proclaimed, proud enough but more modest than many of the panegyrists, he had subjugated all the lands from the Maeotis to the Red Sea. The conquests of Magnus brought in a vast expanse of territory, handsome revenues—and many vassal states, Bosporus, Colchis, Armenia, even Iberia and Albania, the lturaeans, the Jews, and the Nabataeans. In the days of Sulla Rome had only two provinces beyond the Aegaean. Now the sea-coasts were Roman all the way from Amisus in Pontus down to Gaza at the gate of Egypt. To Bithynia, the bequest of which had provoked the last war with Mithridates, Pompeius added a large tract of Pontus, to form a double province. Cilicia by the adjunction of Tracheia and Pedias he prolonged to Mount Amanus, and he annexed Syria. Furthermore, the island of Crete, conquered by Metellus, was joined under one governor with Cyrenaica (which the Romans after long hesitation had decided to take over in 74 B.C.). Only Cyprus and Egypt remained, ruled by precarious relics of the Ptolemaic Dynasty, the last heirs of Alexander’s generals.