Stephen Mitchell, Anatolia. Land, Men and Gods in Asia Minor, vol. I, Oxford, 1993, ISBN 0198140800.

These are notes I took on reading this book about the provinces in the Roman East. I was especially attentive to information regarding Bithynia.

• Graeco-Roman cities earned the name polis because of public buildings and structures and all the activities or prestige associated with them : gymnasium, theatre, agora, running water at fountains, fortifications (wall, gates, towers) temples, sanctuaries, altars, bouleuteria, basilicae, libraries, nymphaea, bath-houses, arches, statues, heroes’ tombs. A city is also an entity that can occasionally distribute corn and oil freely to all residents.
• Pompey creates the province of Bithynia-Pontus in 63 B.C. and the lex Pompeia outlines its mode of government. Marc Antony returns the Pontus to a client king ; after Actium, Augustus confirms the donation.
• Roman censors were responsible for enforcing the lex Pompeia.
• The chief magistrates of each city in the province were the archontes, a college of 3 to 5 officers elected annually ; they were headed by the protos (first) archon. There was also the grammateus (secretary), an agoranomos who exercised control over market prices, and tamiai (treasurers) to oversee the collection and spending of public revenues. Cities in Bithynia also had a politographos - that is, someone in charge of the roster of citizens. Then there was the boulè or city council, an elected decision-making body. Members had to meet certain criteria of wealth and landownership ; the office tended to become hereditary. Meetings of a city council or of any public body were precisely that : public. Any free-born male citizen could attend, sitting in the background or leaning against columns or walls. Cities rarely exceeding 30,000 inhabitants, secrecy was scarcely possible ; public bodies were answerable to public opinion.
• Most of the cities of Bithynia (and Pontus) were divided into tribes. Each tribe had its own magistrates, called phylarchs (phylarkes) ; phylarchs never rose to become archons, presumably because of the wealth criteria.
• In 29 B.C. Augustus allows the provinces of Asia and Bithynia to establish cult centres for himself at Pergamum and Nicomedia respectively.
• With rare exceptions, religious activity in the cities was explicit and public, often involving the whole community in unified celebration of the gods. The festivals and rituals for the cult of the Augustus often outnumbered and outweighed those of the other gods.
• It was commonly held that the overriding object of the imperial cult was to capture and channel the loyalty of the emperor’s subjects. This reductionist and functional view, with its fatally restrictive conceptual limitations, does not do justice to the far-reaching and intricate symbolic significance of the cult. Temples to Rome and emperors made the difference between urban and village life. Where corn and oil was distributed, where there were public banquets and feasts that accompanied public sacrifices, games, festivals and gladiatorial shows, there was urban “civilisation.”
• The priesthoods of the imperial cult were occasions for gaining social and political prestige as a result of service to the emperor.
• New roads brought little benefit to private traders ; surplus crops and other low-cost bulky goods were rarely transported more than a short distance between the countryside and the nearest market. Highways between cities even hindered pack animals, for these prefered to walk on the grass verges.
• Provincial cities and their dependent villages had the obligation of parapompe or prosecutio (escort duty) - that is, to feed, clothe, house, provide armour and equipment for Roman armies who traveled down the roads. Thus the road system was an improvement for the Roman legions, but brought hardship and sparked resentment among the provincial inhabitants.
• Landowners could choose how to best administer their properties ; usually, if the land lay near his city, the owner and his family took care of it ; he could always hire an agent (oikonomos) to do it for him ; some landlords, when they lived a good distance from their properties, seldom visited them if their oikonomos appeared to have things in hand.
• Bithynia was one of the rare provinces where the rural population had an official lower social standing than other free-born inhabitants ; they were egkekrimenoi or pagani and enjoyed less rights than city citizens.
• Nicomedia lay in one of the most agriculturally productive regions of Bithynia ; there was an annual festival for the goddess and the people funded by the local magistrates ; at the centre of this festival was a wine festival (oinoposion) famous throughout the province.
• Though the cities were subject to the emperor, and their freedom of action was constrained by his agents in situ, the Roman Empire depended almost entirely on the cities for its stability and coherence. Except in frontier and mountainous areas where there was a large permanent military presence, Rome wasn’t able to impose direct control over her subjects for more than very short periods. Emperors relied on a pre-existing administrative framework.
• Associations (syntechnai) were often based in rows of shops offering the same wares or services. In Bithynia, the associations were particularly wont to stir up public disturbances, leading Trajan to dissolve them around the year 110.