Epirus (Province)

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Epirus in ancient times
Epirus Province in the Roman Empire
Remnants of the wall in the provincial capital Nicopolis

Epirus was a Roman province that existed from the late 1st century AD to late antiquity. It encompassed the ancient landscape of Epirus and Akarnania to the south .

After the Roman occupation of Epirus in 148 BC. The country was attached to the newly formed province of Macedonia . After 27 BC Then Epirus belonged to the province of Achaea . The Graecophile Emperor Nero declared the landscape, like the other Greek areas, free in AD 67 and abolished the provincial administration, but this only lasted three years. The imperial province of Epirus was finally established under Trajan at the latest . This lasted until late antiquity and was one of the few provinces whose borders were not redrawn during the administrative reform of Emperor Diocletian at the end of the 3rd century. To distinguish it from the province of Epirus nova ("New Epirus"), which was formed at this time , it was now called Epirus vetus ("Old Epirus"). The capital was the Nicopolis colony founded by Emperor Augustus .

In the 9th century, the province was replaced by the Byzantine theme of Nicopolis .

literature

  • Tilmann Bechert : The provinces of the Roman Empire. Introduction and overview. von Zabern, Mainz 1999, ISBN 3-8053-2399-9 , pp. 73-76.
  • William Bowden: Epirus Vetus. The archeology of a late antique province . London 2003. ISBN 0-7156-3116-0
  • Edward Gibbon: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , ed. JB Bury. New York 1906, vol. 1., chap. 6, p. 24.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gnaeus Cornelius Pulcher is named as Procurator under Trajan. See also D. Strauch: The transformation of north-west Greece under Roman rule. 1996, pp. 201-204