Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

576 21a. asia minor and cyprus
catastrophe, and contributed to a sense that the other losses were ones
that could be made up.
That is not to say that Asia Minor was entirely at peace. There had
always been tensions between the comfortable city-dwellers and the
inhabitants of the countryside; and from the third century onwards, there
are indications that the less urbanized tribes in parts of the peninsula were
giving increasing trouble. Chief among these were the Isaurians, of
south-eastern Asia Minor, who had been pacified with some difficulty in
the first century b.c.; they revolted again in the 270s, and developed their
activities further during the fourth and more particularly the fifth century,
when they are reported as attacking settlements as far away as Cappadocia
and Pamphylia. By the fifth century, this situation was reflected in the
administrative organization of the area: the Notitia Dignitatum shows a
comes and troops stationed in Isauria at the end of the fourth century, and
by the later fifth century there were also military commands in the three
adjacent provinces of Pamphylia, Pisidia and Lycaonia, in response to the
increasing threat from this source. 10 Despite these arrangements, here as
in other parts of the empire local magnates tended increasingly to ensure
their own security and control by maintaining bodies of armed retainers;
during the sixth century there was more than one attempt by the imperial
government to restrain this development in Asia Minor (see further
below).
Like other warlike enemies of Rome, the Isaurians also produced substantial
numbers of troops for the Roman armies. In 474 this tradition
acquired political significance when Tarasicodissa, an Isaurian who had
risen to power by his military career, became emperor and took the name
Zeno. The difficulties which he then faced were characteristic of such a situation;
once Zeno had been elevated, other Isaurian chieftains felt themselves
to be no less qualified to run the empire than he was. Throughout
his reign, Zeno had to deal with revolts in which power was brokered
between himself and other Isaurian and barbarian chieftains. He defeated
the first attempts with the support of the Isaurian general Illus; but a few
years later, in 483, Illus himself revolted, relying on power and connections
in Isauria and Cilicia, and perhaps inspired by the success of Odoacer in
taking power in Italy in 476. But the Isaurians, for all their strength, and the
impregnability of their local terrain, were essentially less of a threat than
the other barbarian forces whom the empire deployed, in that they had no
kinship with powers beyond the Roman borders and no access to foreign
frontiers; Illus negotiated ineffectively with the Persians and the
Armenians, but he was defeated by Zeno in 488, and Isauria was finally
reduced and pacified under Anastasius in 498. 11
10 CJ xii.59.10.5 of 471–2. 11 See further ch. 2 (Lee), pp. 50,3 above.
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