Isauria in the orbit of Roman influence until the mid V century

Uniwersytet w BiałymstokuThe enthronement of Zeno gave the beginning to an over ten-year period of Isaurian domination in the life of the eastern part of the Roman Empire, which was ended by the so called Isaurian Wars during the reign of Emperor Anastasius I. These events gave rise to great amount of information about Isauria and Isaurians. In sources retained to date there is much scanter information about the earlier stage of Roman influence in this region – from I BC to AD V. It is exactly the period this article is devoted to. At the beginning of that period Romans, satisfied with the indirect form of government – through client states, were only interested in the liquidation of all the phenomena threatening their trade, i.e. brigandage and piracy. It was only during Emperor Vespasian’s reign that Isuaria was incorporated in the Roman province of Cilicia, and thus the period of direct Roman rule began. This rule meant a two-hundred-year-long period of pax romana, which finished in the second half of the third century, with the weakening position of the Roman state. For the two following centuries Isaurians constituted an internal threat for the Empire, but since V c. inhabitants of Isuaria, while remaining the challenge to the Roman army, began serving in it – forming divisions under their own leadership and gaining the highest posts in the state. The issue of Christianization – which can only be traced in detail from IV century on – is also connected with the phenomenon of Romanization of Isuaria.8112