East Of Asia Minor

The north-eastern frontier of the Roman Empire - one of the great gaps in modern knowledge of the ancient world - has long eluded research. It has defied systematic exploration and been insulated against all but passing survey by wars, instability, political sensitivities, language, and the region's wild, remote mountains, mostly accessible only on horseback or on foot. Its path lay across eastern Turkey, following the Euphrates valley northwards from Syria, through gorges and across great ranges, and passing over the Pontic Alps to reach the further shores of the Black Sea. Vespasian established Rome's frontier against Armenia half a century before Hadrian's Wall. Five times as long, and climbing seven times as high, it was garrisoned ultimately by four legions and a large auxiliary army, stationed in intermediate forts linked by military roads. The two volumes of East of Asia Minor: Rome's Hidden Frontier - based on research, field work conducted largely on foot, and new discoveries - document the topography, monuments, inscriptions, and sighted coins of the frontier, looking in detail at strategic roads, bridges, forts, watch and signalling systems, and navigation of the Euphrates itself. Study of the terrain provides a foundation for interpreting the literary and epigraphic evidence for the frontier and its garrisons. Military activity, which extended to the Caucasus and the Caspian, is placed in the context of climate, geography, and inter-regional trade routes. 28 colour maps and over 350 photographs, plans, and travellers' sketches not only document the history of eastern Turkey as a frontier region of the Roman empire, but also reveal an ancient way of life, still preserved during the 1960s and 1970s, but now almost obliterated by the developments of the modern world.

This monumental book provides the first comprehensive history of Asia Minor from prehistory to the Roman imperial period. In this English-language edition of the critically acclaimed German book, Christian Marek masterfully employs ancient sources to illuminate civic institutions, urban and rural society, agriculture, trade and money, the influential Greek writers of the Second Sophistic, the notoriously bloody exhibitions of the gladiatorial arena, and more.

The north-eastern frontier of the Roman Empire - one of the great gaps in modern knowledge of the ancient world - has long eluded research. It has defied systematic exploration and been insulated against all but passing survey by wars, instability, political sensitivities, language, and the region's wild, remote mountains, mostly accessible only on horseback or on foot. Its path lay across eastern Turkey, following the Euphrates valley northwards from Syria, through gorges and across great ranges, and passing over the Pontic Alps to reach the further shores of the Black Sea. Vespasian established Rome's frontier against Armenia half a century before Hadrian's Wall. Five times as long, and climbing seven times as high, it was garrisoned ultimately by four legions and a large auxiliary army, stationed in intermediate forts linked by military roads. The two volumes of 'East of Asia Minor: Rome's Hidden Frontier' - based on research, field work conducted largely on foot, and new discoveries - document the topography, monuments, inscriptions, and sighted coins of the frontier, looking in detail at strategic roads, bridges, forts, watch and signalling systems, and navigation of the Euphrates itself. Study of the terrain provides a foundation for interpreting the literary and epigraphic evidence for the frontier and its garrisons. Military activity, which extended to the Caucasus and the Caspian, is placed in the context of climate, geography, and inter-regional trade routes.

Explores the growth of Christianity in inland Roman Asia, as cities and rural communities moved away from polytheistic Greco-Roman religion.

The story of 19th-century Asia Minor Greeks illustrates the interplay of European and non-Western cultures. Although grounded historically in the latter culture, Greeks in Asia Minor interacted economically and culturally with Europeans. They were an integral part of Ottoman society, yet considered an ethnoreligious minority. Gerasimos Augustinos, in his comprehensive social and cultural survey, traces their progress during a critical era of modern history and discusses how their development ultimately affected the entire Hellenic world. Augustinos emphasizes the period from 1840 to 1880, a time of transition from traditional agrarian society and the primacy of religious identity in multinational authoritarian states in Eastern Europe to the dynamic and more complex era of industrialization, nationalist ideology, mass politics, and centralizing states. The role and structure of the Greek Orthodox church was challenged, commerce and education developed, and culture became politicized with the emergence of a Greek nation-state which transmitted its influence from Athens to Asia Minor. Within the Greek communal institutions the sense of ethnic self-identity was reshaped. These forces, however, did not result in an allegiance to one political path. Differences between the urban and provincial Greek communities developed, as did tensions between higher clergy and community leaders, the Patriarchate and the representatives of the Greek government, and Greeks native to Asia Minor and those from Greece. Augustinos addresses these problems of social accommodation among a communally organized people in a multinational state and further defines the interrelation of folk and formal culture and thedynamics of ethnicity and faith. Using unpublished materials from a number of important archival collections and contemporary publications, he draws on the work of Ottomanists as well as neo-Hellenists. His is the first extensive treatment of the subject and a significant contribution to the social and institutional history of the nationalities in the Ottoman Empire. The Greeks of Asia Minor will interest historians of the Middle East, the Near East, and Southeastern Europe, particularly Ottoman specialists, in addition to historians of modern Greece. It will also prove indispensable to specialists in nationalism, ethnicity, and nation- and state-building and valuable to Asia Minor Greeks and their descendants in the English-speaking world and Greece who want to better understand their heritage.