Bithynia
   HOME



picture info

Bithynia
Bithynia (; ) was an ancient region, kingdom and Roman province in the northwest of Asia Minor (present-day Turkey), adjoining the Sea of Marmara, the Bosporus, and the Black Sea. It bordered Mysia to the southwest, Paphlagonia to the northeast along the Pontic coast, and Phrygia to the southeast towards the interior of Asia Minor. Hellenistic Bithynia was an independent kingdom from the 4th century BC. Its capital Nicomedia was rebuilt on the site of ancient Astacus in 264 BC by Nicomedes I of Bithynia. Bithynia was bequeathed to the Roman Republic in 74 BC, and became united with the Pontus region as the province of Bithynia and Pontus. In the 7th century it was incorporated into the Byzantine Opsikion theme. It became a border region to the Seljuk Empire in the 13th century, and was eventually conquered by the Ottoman Turks between 1325 and 1333. Description Several major cities sat on the fertile shores of the Propontis (which is now known as Sea of Marmara): Nicomedia ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Kingdom Of Bithynia
The Kingdom of Bithynia () was a Hellenistic kingdom centred in the historical region of Bithynia, which seems to have been established in the fourth century BC. In the midst of the Wars of the Diadochi, Zipoites assumed the title of king (''basileus'') in 297 BC. His son and successor, Nicomedes I, founded Nicomedia, which soon rose to great prosperity. During his long reign ( BC), as well as those of his successors, Prusias I (), Prusias II () and Nicomedes II (), the Kingdom of Bithynia prospered and had a considerable standing and influence among the minor monarchies of Anatolia. But the last king, Nicomedes IV, was unable to maintain himself in power against Mithridates VI of Pontus. After being restored to his throne by the Roman Senate, he bequeathed his kingdom through his will to the Roman republic in 74 BC and it became the province of Bithynia et Pontus in 63 BC. The coinage of these kings show their regal portraits, which tend to be engraved in an extremely acco ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Bithynia And Pontus
Bithynia and Pontus (, Ancient Greek ) was the name of a province of the Roman Empire on the Black Sea coast of Anatolia (modern-day Turkey). It was formed during the late Roman Republic by the amalgamation of the former kingdoms of Bithynia (made a province by Rome 74 BC) and Pontus (annexed to Bithynia 63 BC). The amalgamation was part of a wider conquest of Anatolia and its reduction to Roman provinces. In 74 BC, Nicomedes IV of Bithynia willed his kingdom to the Romans, whom he hoped would defend it against its old enemy, Pontus. Due to the influence of Julius Caesar, then a young man and a guest-friend of Nicomedes, and an impassioned speech by the deceased king's sister Nysa before the Senate, the gift was accepted. Contemporary Rome was divided into two parties, the Populares, party of the "people," and the Optimates, party of the "best." The guest-friendship had been offered to Caesar, a popular, to save his life by keeping him from Rome during a proscription (a kin ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Nicomedes I Of Bithynia
Nicomedes I (; lived c. 300 BC – c. 255 BC, reigned 278 BC – c. 255 BC), second king of Bithynia, was the eldest son of Zipoetes I, whom he succeeded on the throne in 278 BC. Life He began his reign by killing two of his brothers, but the third, later called Zipoetes II, rebelled against him and managed to maintain independent sovereignty over a considerable part of Bithynia for some time. Meanwhile, Nicomedes was threatened with invasion by Antiochus I Soter, king of the Seleucid Empire, who had already made war on his father, Zipoetes I. To strengthen himself against this danger, he formed an alliance with Heraclea Pontica and, shortly afterwards, with Antigonus II Gonatas. The threatened attack passed with few casualties. Antiochus did in fact invade Bithynia, but withdrew without risking battle. It was against his brother rather than his foreign enemies that Nicomedes now called in more powerful auxiliaries and formed an alliance with the Celts, who had arrived ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Hellenistic Period
In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the Roman conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt the following year, which eliminated the last major Hellenistic kingdom. Its name stems from the Ancient Greek word ''Hellas'' (, ''Hellás''), which was gradually recognized as the name for Greece, from which the modern historiographical term ''Hellenistic'' was derived. The term "Hellenistic" is to be distinguished from "Hellenic" in that the latter refers to Greece itself, while the former encompasses all the ancient territories of the period that had come under significant Greek influence, particularly the Hellenized Middle East, after the conquests of Alexander the Great. After the Macedonian conquest of the Achaemenid Empire in ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Nicaea
Nicaea (also spelled Nicæa or Nicea, ; ), also known as Nikaia (, Attic: , Koine: ), was an ancient Greek city in the north-western Anatolian region of Bithynia. It was the site of the First and Second Councils of Nicaea (the first and seventh Ecumenical councils in the early history of the Christian Church), the Nicene Creed (which comes from the First Council). It was also the capital city of the Empire of Nicaea following the Fourth Crusade in 1204, until the recapture of Constantinople by the Byzantines in 1261. Nicaea was also the capital of the Ottomans from 1331 to 1335. The ancient city is located within the modern Turkish city of İznik (whose modern name derives from Nicaea's), and is situated in a fertile basin at the eastern end of Lake Ascanius, bounded by ranges of hills to the north and south. It is situated with its west wall rising from the lake itself, providing both protection from siege from that direction, as well as a source of supplies which would ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Astacus In Bithynia
Astacus (Greek ) is an ancient city in Bithynia; it was also called Olbia . Its site is located near the modern BaÅŸiskele. History There are contradictory accounts of its founding: * The ''Bibliotheca historica'' (1st century BCE) of Diodorus Siculus, Book XII, Chapter 34, states: "And while these events he Battle of Potidaeawere taking place, the Athenians founded in the Propontis a city which was given the name of Astacus". Siculus' annalistic narrative allows the founding to be dated to the year 435 BCE. * The '' Annals">annalistic narrative allows the founding to be dated to the year 435 BCE. * The ''Geographica">Annals">annalistic narrative allows the founding to be dated to the year 435 BCE. * The ''Megarians and the Athens">Athenians (), and afterwards of Doidalsos. On the other hand, Siculus mentions only the Athenians as founders, while Pomponius Mela (''De situ orbis libri III'') and Memnon of Heraclea (through Photios I of Constantinople) attributed the founding o ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Nicomedia
Nicomedia (; , ''Nikomedeia''; modern İzmit) was an ancient Greece, ancient Greek city located in what is now Turkey. In 286, Nicomedia became the eastern and most senior capital city of the Roman Empire (chosen by the emperor Diocletian who ruled in the east), a status which the city maintained during the Tetrarchy system (293–324). The Tetrarchy ended with the Battle of Chrysopolis (Üsküdar#Chrysopolis, Üsküdar) in 324, when Constantine the Great, Constantine defeated Licinius and became the sole emperor. In 330 Constantine chose for himself the nearby Byzantium (which was renamed Constantinople, modern Istanbul) as the new capital of the Roman Empire. The city was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire with the victory of Sultan Orhan Gazi against the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines managed to retake it in the aftermath of the Battle of Ankara, but it fell definitively to the Ottomans in 1419. History It was founded in 712–711 BC as a Megarian colony and was original ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Rise Of The Ottoman Empire
The rise of the Ottoman Empire is a period of history that started with the emergence of the Ottoman principality ( Turkish: ''Osmanlı Beyliği'') in , and ended . This period witnessed the foundation of a political entity ruled by the Ottoman Dynasty in the northwestern Anatolian region of Bithynia, and its transformation from a small principality on the Byzantine frontier into an empire spanning the Balkans, Anatolia, Middle East and North Africa. For this reason, this period in the empire's history has been described as the ''"Proto-Imperial Era"''. Throughout most of this period, the Ottomans were merely one of many competing states in the region, and relied upon the support of local warlords Ghazis and vassals (Beys) to maintain control over their realm. By the middle of the fifteenth century the Ottoman sultans were able to accumulate enough personal power and authority to establish a centralized imperial state, a process which was achieved by Sultan Mehmed II (). The con ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

İzmit
İzmit () is a municipality and the capital Districts of Turkey, district of Kocaeli Province, Turkey. Its area is 480 km2, and its population is 376,056 (2022). The capital of Kocaeli Province, it is located at the Gulf of İzmit in the Sea of Marmara, about east of Istanbul, on the northwestern part of Anatolia. Kocaeli Province (including rural areas) had a population of 2,079,072 inhabitants in 2022, of whom approximately 1.2 million lived in the largely urban İzmit City metro area made up of Kartepe, BaÅŸiskele, Körfez, Kocaeli, Körfez, Gölcük, Kocaeli, Gölcük, Derince and Sapanca (in Sakarya Province). Unlike other provinces in Turkey, apart from Istanbul, the whole province is included within the municipality of the metropolitan center. İzmit was known as Nicomedia () and Ólbia () in antiquity, and was the eastern and most senior capital city of the Roman Empire between 286 and 324, during the Tetrarchy introduced by Diocletian. Following Constantine the Grea ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Theme (Byzantine District)
The themes or (, , singular: , ) were the main military and administrative divisions of the middle Byzantine Empire. They were established in the mid-7th century in the aftermath of the Slavic migrations to Southeastern Europe and Muslim conquests of parts of Byzantine territory, and replaced the earlier provincial system established by Diocletian and Constantine the Great. In their origin, the first themes were created from the areas of encampment of the field armies of the East Roman army, and their names corresponded to the military units that had existed in those areas. The theme system reached its apogee in the 9th and 10th centuries, as older themes were split up and the conquest of territory resulted in the creation of new ones. The original theme system underwent significant changes in the 11th and 12th centuries, but the term remained in use as a provincial and financial circumscription until the very end of the Empire. History Background During the late 6th and ear ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Bithyni
The Bithyni (; ; ) were a Thracian tribe who lived in Bithynia. History The Bithyni originally lived in the area of the lower Strymon river, due to which the ancient Greeks claimed that they were originally called the Strymoni (; ). Around , the Paeonians displaced the Bithynians in the Strymon valley, after which they Bithyni migrated eastwards, and crossed the Thracian Bosporus and settled in northwestern Anatolia, where they assimilated the Phrygians and the Bebryces, with the region becoming known as Bithynia after them. The Dolonci tribe, who lived in the Thracian Chersonese and whom Greek mythology claimed were related to the Bithyni, might have been remnants of the Bithyni who were left behind on the European side of the Thracian Bosporus. By the mid-6th century BC, the Bithyni had come under the rule of the Lydian empire, after which it became part of the Persian Achaemenid Empire The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire, also known as the Persian Empi ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Pontus (region)
Pontus or Pontos (; ,) is a region on the southern coast of the Black Sea, located in the modern-day eastern Black Sea region of Turkey. The name was applied to the coastal region and its mountainous hinterland (rising to the Pontic Alps in the east) by the Greeks who colonized the area in the Archaic Greece, Archaic period and derived from the Greek name of the Black Sea: (), 'Hospitable Sea', or simply ''Pontos'' () as early as the Aeschylus, Aeschylean ''The Persians, Persians'' (472 BC) and Herodotus' ''Histories (Herodotus), Histories'' (). Having originally no specific name, the region east of the river Halys River, Halys was spoken of as the country ''()'', , and hence it acquired the name of Pontus, which is first found in Xenophon's ''Anabasis (Xenophon), Anabasis'' (). The extent of the region varied through the ages but generally extended from the borders of Colchis (modern western Georgia (country), Georgia) until well into Paphlagonia in the west, with varying amo ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]