IMPERIUM ROMANUM

Provinces · The later eastern provinces

LE-26 Lycia

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.

Lycia retained strong local civic histories, league traditions, harbours, and mountain communities. Its late government operated through a more localized jurisdiction than the earlier combined province. Agriculture, shipping, rural settlement, and routes through difficult terrain sustained communities with different regional orientations.

Christian institutions and saints’ cults, especially those later associated with Myra, increased the prominence of selected cities. Traditional sacred places changed function unevenly. The province remained connected to the eastern empire during broader seventh-century transformation, although coastal security and trade conditions altered. Its identity was not reducible to that of neighbouring Pamphylia.