IMPERIUM ROMANUM

Provinces · The later eastern provinces

LE-25 Insulae

The later Balkan provincial landscape. Dacia south of the Danube, the two Epiri…
The later Balkan provincial landscape. Dacia south of the Danube, the two Epiri, Thessaly, Macedonia, Achaia, and the Thracian districts illustrate the replacement of large commands by smaller jurisdictions. The river network helps relate frontier districts to the Adriatic, Aegean, and imperial straits.

The province depended upon maritime communication among islands with distinct civic histories. Harbours, agriculture, local crafts, shipping, and services to travellers linked these communities to Anatolia, Greece, and the wider Mediterranean. Rhodes’s earlier naval and educational prestige continued within a different political-administrative framework.

An island province required coordination across the sea rather than a continuous land territory. Christian bishoprics and late imperial offices developed through existing cities. Naval insecurity and changing eastern Mediterranean power later affected the islands differently. The name Insulae must be qualified by this eastern Aegean setting, since the empire contained many other island jurisdictions.