When the long struggle of Mithridates VI Eupator, the last great king of Pontus, against Rome ended in 63 BC, Amaseia ceased to be the capital of a defeated dynasty and became a provincial town of a rising empire. The city had fallen to the armies of Lucullus during the Third Mithridatic War (73-63 BC). Pompey then left it with free status and made it one of the administrative centres of the newly formed province of Bithynia and Pontus. A walled city of palaces and tombs in the age of the kings, Amaseia went on to live as one of the most important settlements of the region within the imperial order of Rome. The traces of this new identity are read most clearly today in two kinds of evidence: the bronze coins the city struck over three centuries, and the inscriptions its people had cut on their tombstones. The coins of the Pontic kings themselves are the subject of a separate article.

The Years After the Conquest

Rome's arrival began for Amaseia with destruction. Strabo writes that in his homeland there were several strongholds demolished in the war and much land left deserted. He also relates that Pompey ordered the garrisons of the region's fortresses to be disbanded and the works made unusable; the choking of the water reservoir of the stronghold of Sagylium, above the country of the Amaseians, with huge rocks was the result of that order. How much the city's own citadel suffered in this period is not clear from the sources. Quoting the view of Charles Texier, Hüsameddin writes that the inner citadel was built by the kings of Pontus, that Pompey had it pulled down when he took the city, and that it was afterwards repaired by the Roman administration.

Hüsameddin's account of the conquest differs in its details from modern sources. According to him the Roman commander Lucullus entered the city through the northern gorge with a great procession, his army camped on the meadow of Gülüs north of the gardens now known as Bahçeler İçi, and the town was not destroyed but was heavily plundered. Hüsameddin relates that Pompey later besieged Amaseia once more, and that in the city, surrendered after Mithridates withdrew to Niksar, he had the walls of the lower citadel, that is, the walls of present-day İçerişehir, and the upper citadel torn down, laid waste the palace quarter and put a large part of the population to the sword. Modern sources content themselves with saying that the city was taken by the armies of Lucullus; Hüsameddin does not name the ancient source behind the siege and massacre he attributes to Pompey.

Strabo briefly records that Amaseia had for a time been given to kings, but that in his own day it was a province. In Hüsameddin's book this interval between the conquest and direct Roman rule is filled with local rulers. The author relates that after defeating Pharnaces, Caesar divided the lands of Pontus among three governors and gave Amaseia to Dizutar İlis, formerly the commander of the city's citadel; that this ruler was denounced to Rome by his grandson Kastor; that when tried he engaged the famous orator Cicero as his advocate; and that he was acquitted and reigned for thirty-one years. The man Cicero defended appears to be Deiotarus, the Galatian king whom Cicero defended in 45 BC; this is an inference, and the sources read for this article contain no evidence that Deiotarus resided at Amaseia. Hüsameddin adds that Dizutar was followed by his son Amentas, made king of Pontus by Augustus, and that the kingdom was abolished on his childless death. A good part of these names and reign lengths rests on the author's own interpretations and cannot be confirmed by modern research.

Amaseia in the Provincial System

Amaseia's attachment changed several times under Roman administration. The Amaseia Strabo knew was part of the province of Bithynia and Pontus. Around 3 or 2 BC, under Augustus, the city was attached to the province of Galatia and, within it, to the district known as Pontus Galaticus. The cities of this district formed a league, a koinon, headed by Amaseia. When Pontus Polemoniacus was later incorporated into the provincial system, a second koinon centred on Neocaesarea arose there; in time the two leagues merged into a single body, and the coins of the Pontic koinon were struck at Neocaesarea. Around AD 112 the emperor Trajan placed Amaseia within the borders of the province of Cappadocia. In the late Roman period the city once again became a provincial capital and was counted the centre of Helenopontus.

Hüsameddin tells this process within a different framework. According to him, on the death of the king of Pontus the emperor Tiberius annexed the region to Roman territory, united Cappadocia and Pontus into a large province called "Armeniak", and placed his brother Germanicus at its head. Because Amaseia was the centre of this province, the city was called a "metropolis" in the works of European historians, whose names he gives as Perrot, Texier, Reinach and Le Bas. According to Hüsameddin, Silenus, who came to Amaseia as governor after the death of Germanicus, repaired the citadel and named it "Cilanus Polis"; the author says the name did not take hold among the people and survived only in the well inside the citadel, which was called "Cilanbolu". This account does not agree with the coin and inscription dates showing that the city was attached to a province under Augustus with the creation of Pontus Galaticus; yet the survival of the name Cilanbolu in the citadel is noteworthy as a trace that local memory connected with the Roman period.

These shifts on the administrative map did not diminish the city's importance, for Amaseia's value came from its geography. According to some sources, the roads coming from Galatia and Cappadocia ended at Amaseia. Strabo's description explains this position. In the narrow valley through which the Yeşilırmak passes, a high, sheer rock affords at once the advantages of a city and of a fortress. On one side of the rock was the wall along the river with the city settled at its foot, on the other the walls climbing towards the two peaks; these two summits, joined to each other by nature, were magnificently towered, and the palaces and monuments of the kings lay within this circuit. Two channels cut into the rock, one towards the river and the other towards the neck, carried water into the city and kept it from going dry even under siege. There were two bridges over the river: one joined the city to the suburbs, the other the suburbs to the outer country. Hüsameddin notes that of the bridges Strabo mentions, a bridge stood only at the site of the Alçak Köprü, and that it too had been rebuilt over the remains of the old structure.

Strabo's description extends to the city's territory as well. The level ground beginning in the valley widens gradually into the plain of Chiliocomum, meaning "a thousand villages", and then opens into the lands of Diacopene and Pimolisene, all of which were counted fertile country as far as the banks of the Halys. This northern part alone of the country of the Amaseians was some five hundred stadia in length; the rest was longer still and reached as far as Ximene, known for its deposits of rock salt, and Babanomus. From north to south it stretched beyond Zelitis into Greater Cappadocia, as far as the land of the Trocmi Galatians. The geographer writes that part of the land was suited to raising horses and feeding other animals, and that the whole of it was admirably fit for habitation, and he counts the country of Amaseia the largest and best of all the surrounding regions. The city of the Roman age was the administrative and market centre of this broad and fertile countryside.

The written information we have on the city's social life in the Roman age is limited. Two authors have come down to us from this period: Strabo, and Asterius, the bishop known for his sermons of around AD 400. The passage to Christianity was harsh at Amaseia. According to Christian sources, a Christian named Theodore set fire to the local temple of Cybele, was arrested and burned to death; he is counted one of the great saints of the Eastern Church. Hüsameddin tells the same event, stating that Theodore, a Roman officer, became a Christian through the persuasion of the priest Asterius and was killed in December of the year 307; the date the author gives and the sermons of Asterius, dated to around AD 400, are seen not to agree with each other. From the 3rd century AD the city was the seat of a metropolitan bishopric, and this church organisation continued until the population exchange of 1923.

Strabo's name deserves particular mention in this context. Born at Amaseia around 64 BC, the geographer describes in detail the state of the city between 60 BC and AD 19. The information in his work remains the most valuable testimony to Amaseia in the first half-century of Roman rule. Hüsameddin too calls Strabo "the master of geographers" and writes that he died in Rome in the reign of Augustus.

The People of Amaseia on Their Tombstones

The most direct evidence for knowing the city's ordinary people is the Roman-period tombstones that survive built into the walls of Ottoman buildings. George E. Bean re-read some of these stones at Amasya on a journey he made in 1950 with P. M. Fraser and published the results in Belleten. A funerary stele built into the parapet wall on the riverbank in the courtyard of the Bayezid Mosque, with a pediment bearing a round shield in its upper part, was set up by his father for Cornelius Mithridates, who died at the age of twenty-two. The year 172 on the stone follows the city's own calendar and corresponds to AD 169. The point Bean draws attention to is that the name Mithridates was still in use more than two hundred years after the dynasty had disappeared, and that it stands side by side with a Roman name such as Cornelius.

The other stones reflect the same mixed world. On a stone built into the pier of the first bridge after the one beside the Government House, partly hidden by the bridge's beams, there is an epitaph written in metrical lines. In it the dead woman says that she died before her time while her husband was still alive, that the god heard her prayer, and she wishes that a common tomb may hold them both; beneath it is written that Iulius Basileus buried his most honoured wife Avidia Theodote. Bean finds it strange that the wife's dying before her husband should be told with such great contentment, and he notes that the lines are faulty in their metre. On a stele in a wall of the Yörgüç Paşa Mosque, bearing a relief of a bunch of grapes, a mother named Glykera commemorates her son Aurelius Agricolaus, twenty-six years old, very hard-working and respectful to his parents and friends. On a stone built into a fountain near the Halifet Gazi Mosque, Iulius Heraklas and Iulius Statilius had a tomb made for their foster father Iulius Zosimos; the space for the year, however, was never cut into the stone.

These names combine family names such as Iulius, Cornelius and Aurelius, which show the spread of Roman citizenship among the townspeople, with Greek personal names; this interpretation is drawn from the structure of the names in the inscriptions. Bean's notes on the Aynalı Mağara (Mirror Cave) are also of interest. Of the two inscriptions above the rock tomb, the lower one has been carefully erased. The editors of Studia Pontica had supposed that the tomb belonged to a high priest of a Mithridates or a Pharnaces and that the king's name had been chiselled out by order of the victorious Romans. Bean does not accept this explanation: none of the royal names can be read in the erasure, and the letter forms differ from those of the upper inscription. In his view the lower lines are a second epitaph connected with a later reuse of the tomb, most probably erased because it had been cut without permission. Hüsameddin, too, reports an inscription said to belong to the Roman period, cut into a rock on the riverbank at the head of Kuşköprü, south-east of the Şamlar quarter, which speaks of a tomb that a family head named Rufis had made for his son Kleobrat and in which his own bones were also laid; the author relates it in the form in which it was reported to him.

The Titles of Metropolis and First City

In the Roman provinces there was a never-ending contest for prestige between cities. A city's pride took concrete form in official or semi-official titles; these were proclaimed on coins and inscriptions and were also reflected in an order of precedence that determined who would walk first in ceremonies. Two phrases often seen on the coins of Amaseia are "metropolis of Pontus" and "first of Pontus". Metropolis means 'mother city' and declared that a city was the leading centre of its region. It is generally accepted that the city acquired the titles of metropolis and first city in the 2nd century. Some sources state that the title of metropolis passed onto the coins in the reign of Hadrian; the use in this period of an abbreviation meaning Hadriana also points to the bond formed with the emperor's name.

The coin catalogues make it possible to follow this development year by year. On bronzes dated to year 115 of the city's calendar under Trajan, that is AD 112-113, the legend is simply ΑΜΑΣΕΩΝ, meaning "of the Amaseians". Under Antoninus Pius, coins of year 157 (AD 154-155) carry the phrase "of Amaseia, the metropolis". On the large bronzes of year 164 (AD 161-162), the years when Marcus Aurelius came to the throne, the sequence of titles is complete: the city presents itself as Hadriana, neokoros, metropolis and first of Pontus. Under Septimius Severus the names Severiana and Antoniniana are added to this sequence; the reverse legend of a coin of Geta of year 208 (AD 205-206), with its abbreviations expanded, reads "of Hadrianic, Severan, Antonine Amaseia, the metropolis, the neokoros, the first of Pontus, year 208".

The contest for titles was not peculiar to Amaseia. On a coin of the age of Trajan the title of metropolis appears for Amastris; Neocaesarea, after the merging of the two koina, became the mint of the Pontic league and proclaimed on its own coins that it was the metropolis of the Pontic koinon and, later, twice neokoros. For this reason Amaseia's calling itself "metropolis of Pontus" reflects a claim put forward among rivals rather than an undisputed and unchanging status. Here too lies the value of the legend on the coin: each time it changed hands, the city told everyone who passed by the rank at which it saw itself.

The bond Amaseia formed with the emperors can also be traced in the surnames on its coins. The epithets added as Hadriana under Hadrian, Severiana under Septimius Severus, Antoniniana under Caracalla and Alexandriana under Severus Alexander show the city renewing its loyalty by adding the name of each new ruler to its own.

The Meaning of the Title Neokoros

The word neokoros means 'temple warden'. In Asia Minor the title arose when a city obtained the emperor's permission to house a provincial temple dedicated to the imperial cult. The first example is the temple that the province of Asia founded for Augustus at Pergamon in 29 BC. When a new temple was requested in the name of Tiberius, Livia and the Senate, eleven cities sent envoys to Rome in AD 26 to win this honour, and the Senate awarded the temple to Smyrna. About seventy years later, when Ephesus obtained its own temple, it put this on its inscriptions and coins, turned a common way of speaking into an official title, and the other cities followed the example. With the provincial temple came a high priest for the city and at times the hosting of the koinon's assemblies. Festivals, games and an influx of visitors were the economic side of this privilege.

The picture drawn for the province of Asia cannot be carried over unchanged to Pontus. The legend neokoros is found on the coins of Amaseia, and according to the examples in the catalogues the title was in use at the latest in the first years of Marcus Aurelius, but the sources do not explain which temple it rested on. The attitude of the Roman emperors also changed over time. Tiberius and Trajan had approached requests for temples to themselves with caution. Hadrian, however, since he toured the provinces in person, granted permission to cities that applied to him directly. Septimius Severus, on coming to the throne, distributed the title of neokoros as a political reward to the cities that had supported him and took it back from those that had opposed him. In the end many cities began to boast of being neokoros twice, even three times; and cities content with a single neokorate became able to use the title without housing a provincial temple. Burrell describes this process as the "cheapening" of the title.

The Bronze City Coins

Even after Roman rule was established in Anatolia, the cities went on striking their own money. City coinage rested on a privilege granted by the emperor; for this reason the obverse bore the emperor's portrait, name and titles. The reverse was reserved for the name of the people of the issuing city and a design particular to the town. Since Rome did not permit gold or silver city coinage, the city mints produced chiefly bronze. The imperial-period coins of Amaseia run from Domitian to Severus Alexander. The legend takes the form ΑΜΑΣΙΑΣ or ΑΜΑΣΕΙΑΣ, usually with surnames, titles and dates added. The city's own era begins in 3/2 BC, that is, with the formation of Pontus Galaticus; Bean gives this beginning as 3 BC, some sources say 2 BC. For this reason year 234 on a coin of the age of Severus Alexander corresponds to AD 231-232. In Anatolia the striking of city coins generally declined from the beginning of the 3rd century AD and ceased in most places after the middle of the century. Amaseia's series, ending with Severus Alexander, fits this pattern.

City coins must be distinguished from the Roman state's own money. The state's silver coin was the denarius, its gold the aureus, and its bronze units, from smallest to largest, the as, the dupondius and the sestertius. In 215 the emperor Caracalla put into circulation a new silver coin called the antoninianus; its silver content was lowered over time until the coin turned almost entirely to copper. Roman state coins first began to enter Anatolia with the creation of the province of Asia in 129 BC, but very few examples from the 2nd and 1st centuries BC turn up in excavations; the number rises from the 2nd century AD and in the 3rd and 4th centuries grows beyond comparison with earlier ages. The cities' striking of their own bronzes alongside this state money served small daily transactions and the spread of the emperor's image in the provinces. The last known city coin in Anatolia was struck at Perge in the name of Tacitus in AD 275.

The output of the Amaseia mint does not show a steady flow; it is concentrated in certain years. In Trajan's year 115, around the time the city was attached to Cappadocia, small bronzes showing an altar and a four-columned temple were struck. Year 157 of Antoninus Pius, the first years of the joint reign of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, and years 189 and 190 of the city's calendar, falling under Commodus, are other busy periods. The great production, however, comes in years 208 and 209 of Septimius Severus, that is between AD 205 and 207. The coins of these two years were struck in the names of Julia Domna, Caracalla and Geta as well as the emperor, and they are heavy bronzes more than thirty millimetres across, weighing between thirteen and twenty-two grams. Year 228 (AD 225-226) and year 234 (AD 231-232) of Severus Alexander are the last large issues of the series, and the city's largest coins, reaching thirty-five and thirty-eight millimetres, belong to these years.

The richness of these pieces comes from their symbols. The most frequent design is a large altar, usually burning. Beside the altar stands a tree; upon or above it a sacrifice, an eagle and a four-horse chariot are depicted. Scholars connect this altar with Zeus Stratios. Stratios means 'god of armies', and he was regarded as the protector of the kings of Pontus. Appian relates that after driving Murena's troops out of Cappadocia, Mithridates Eupator offered a sacrifice to this god according to the custom of his country. The kings carried the wood for the pyre with their own hands, built a second pile around it, poured milk, honey, wine, oil and incense over it and lit the fire. The height of the flames could be seen hundreds of stadia away, and for days no one could come near. The earliest examples of the altar on the coins date from the reign of Trajan, but most were struck in the second half of the 2nd century and especially in the Severan age. On some coins of Antoninus Pius a serpent is seen coiled upon the altar; in Severan examples the altar is rendered as a structure of several tiers, with a burning pyre on top or with an eagle spreading its wings and holding a wreath in its beak. On the bronzes of Severus Alexander the sun god appears in his facing four-horse chariot above the eagle on the altar.

Another group shows the city's own appearance. On coins of the reign of Domitian and on the bronzes of Severus Alexander, Amaseia is seen surrounded by walls and gates, together with its two peaks. In the upper left corner there is also a temple. An example of year 228 of Severus Alexander is described in the catalogue as a view of a city built on a mountainside, enclosed by towered walls and containing two four-columned temples. Williamson notes that if this temple represents the sanctuary of Zeus Stratios, the design gathers Amaseia's most important public monuments into a single image; in reality the sanctuary lay on a mountain in the direction opposite to the view of the citadel. Price and Trell, noting that the temple is absent from the Domitianic examples, connect its addition in the Severan age with the city's claim to be the chief city of Pontus. Burrell, by contrast, says there is no evidence that the temple belonged to Zeus Stratios and suggests it may have been a temple of the imperial cult. Which of these is right is not certain.

The scenes devoted to the imperial family are also striking. On the large bronzes of Marcus Aurelius of year 164, two emperors in togas, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, each holding a scroll, are shown clasping hands; another type of the same years depicts Lucius Verus on horseback, raising his right hand. Under Commodus the emperor is shown spearing a lion fleeing beneath his horse. In the Severan age the same handclasp scene is repeated, this time for Caracalla and Geta; these coins, proclaiming the concord of the two brothers, were struck a few years before the rivalry between them ended in the murder of Geta. Coins showing Caracalla on a galloping horse with his spear couched belong to the same years.

Among the other types are Aphrodite with Ares, Tyche, Hades enthroned, and Hades with Cerberus. Tyche, the goddess of the city's fortune, becomes from the reign of Commodus one of the most frequently depicted figures, standing with rudder and cornucopia, sometimes wearing a turreted crown; on the coin of Geta of year 208 she stands beneath the arched pediment of a four-columned temple. Asclepius, Athena, Nike, Zeus enthroned holding Nike and sceptre, and, on an example of year 234 of Severus Alexander, Dionysus holding a kantharos and thyrsus with a panther at his feet are also part of the city's coin repertoire. On a coin of the reign of Septimius Severus there is a legend declaring that the founder of the city was Hermes; this shows the place the city gave to Hermes in its foundation story. Strabo reports that the name Amaseia came from Amasis, queen of the Amazons. The name appears on ancient coins in forms such as Amaseia, Amasia and Amassia, and has changed little over the ages.

Collections and Research

The coins of Amaseia are today scattered among many museums of the world, and the most comprehensive study of the city's mint is that of Julie Dalaison. Dalaison's research began as a catalogue of the coins of Amaseia preserved in the Cabinet des Médailles in Paris, grew into a doctoral thesis defended at Grenoble in December 2002, and was published in revised form at Bordeaux in 2008, in two hundred and thirty-three pages and two hundred and sixty-nine plates. The work is part of a wider programme on the city coinages of Pontus, carried out on the mints of Neocaesarea, Sebastopolis, Comana, Zela, Cerasus and Trapezus. In the Roman provincial coinage database at Oxford the types of Amaseia are now cited by Dalaison's catalogue numbers.

One of the most comprehensive publications presenting the Greek, Roman and Byzantine coins in the Amasya Museum is the work of Stanley Ireland. Ireland's catalogue covers more than four thousand five hundred coins in the museum, ranging from the 5th century BC to the 11th century AD. Since most of them are finds from the surrounding region, the products of the mints of Amaseia, Amisus, Sinope and Caesarea in Cappadocia are richly represented; but coins of more than fifty other mints of Asia Minor, and even of Alexandria in Egypt and Arles in Gaul, also have a place in the collection.

The Sanctuary of Zeus Stratios

The altar so often depicted on the coins is associated with a sanctuary in the high mountains east of the city. In 1901 Franz Cumont identified it as a monumental altar belonging to Zeus Stratios. Whether this site matches the place Appian describes is, however, disputed, because the measures Appian gives for distance from the sea and visibility do not fit it. It is also possible that Mithridates' sacrifice was offered closer to the Black Sea coast, at a place where the army was assembling. Although the altar is plentiful on the coins, caution is needed as to exactly which structure this symbol corresponds to.

The first excavation evidence for the use of the sanctuary in the Roman age came in 2006. The forty-two coins recovered in a rescue excavation carried out by specialists of the Amasya Museum were studied for their period, mint, imagery and weight in Burcu Erdem's master's thesis of 2024. Until then almost all the coins depicting the altar had been found outside the sanctuary and without excavation, and had reached museums by various routes. Among the excavation finds are coins that came from six different regions of Anatolia and from three regions outside Anatolia; this variety shows that the sanctuary enjoyed a renown reaching beyond regional borders in both the Hellenistic and the Roman periods. The chronology of the coins proves that the site was in use from the 2nd century BC to the 4th century AD. The depiction of the altar on the coins of Amaseia over two centuries accords with the sanctuary's remaining a living place of worship throughout this time.

It is considered likely that the young emperor Severus Alexander visited Amaseia around 232, at the time this series was being struck. In those years the emperor was waging a campaign against the Sasanian king Ardashir I, and the route of the campaign passed through Anatolia. The campaign proved inconclusive. In 235 the emperor was killed by his soldiers together with his mother. The imperial-period city coins of Amaseia also come to an end with this age.

The City the Coins Describe

The Roman-age coins and tombstones of Amaseia are rare documents showing how a city presented itself to the world. The emperor's portrait points to loyalty to the power in the distant capital, the altar on the reverse to the local god and the old royal tradition, the city views to a settlement known for its walls and its two peaks, and the legends of title to the rivalry carried on with neighbouring cities. The name Mithridates, living on beside Roman family names on the tombstones, suggests that the royal past was not forgotten among the people. The city carried neither its old splendour as a royal capital nor the role of a centre of conquest; on its own scale it was an orderly and prosperous provincial centre of the empire, and it preserved its identity by engraving it on these small bronze pieces.

Chronology

73-63 BC: Third Mithridatic War. Amaseia falls to the armies of Lucullus, and Pompey makes the city a centre of the province of Bithynia and Pontus.

c. 3-2 BC: The city is attached to the province of Galatia, to the district of Pontus Galaticus. The era of Amaseia's coins and inscriptions begins in this year.

AD 81-96: Reign of Domitian; the imperial-period city coins of Amaseia are known from this age onwards.

c. AD 112: Trajan attaches Amaseia to the province of Cappadocia. Bronzes with altar and temple dated to year 115 of the city's calendar (112-113) are struck.

2nd century: The city carries the titles of metropolis and first city on its coins; the surname Hadriana appears on coins of the Hadrianic age.

AD 154-155: Under Antoninus Pius, the title "metropolis" on coins of year 157.

AD 161-162: On the bronzes of year 164 of Marcus Aurelius, the titles neokoros, metropolis and first of Pontus together; the handclasp scene of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus.

AD 169: In year 172 of the city's calendar the funerary stele of Cornelius Mithridates is set up.

AD 193-211: Reign of Septimius Severus; the surname Severiana and the coin naming Hermes as founder. Between 205 and 207 the city's most intensive coin production.

AD 225-226: Large bronzes of year 228 of Severus Alexander, with the view of the walled city.

AD 231-232: A large bronze coin of the age of Severus Alexander, dated to year 234 of the city's own calendar; the altar of Zeus Stratios, an eagle and a quadriga with Helios.

AD 235: Death of Severus Alexander; the imperial city coinage of Amaseia comes to an end.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

  • G. E. Bean, "Pontus Yazıtları", trans. U. Bahadır Alkım, Belleten (Turkish Historical Society), pp. 151-158. belleten.gov.tr
  • Burcu Erdem, Amasya Zeus Stratios Kutsal Alanı Kurtarma Kazısı Sikke Buluntuları, master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, 2024. amasya.bel.tr

Books

  • Barbara Burrell, Neokoroi: Greek Cities and Roman Emperors, Leiden 2004.

Other sources

  • Barclay V. Head, Historia Numorum, section "Pontus" (imperial coins of Amaseia, legends and types).
  • Julie Dalaison, L'atelier d'Amaseia du Pont: recherches historiques et numismatiques, Numismatica Antiqua 2, Ausonius, Bordeaux 2008.
  • Roman Provincial Coinage Online, vol. V.3, Amasea, type 83146 (Geta, year 208; Dalaison 542).
  • Wildwinds, Pontos, Amaseia coin catalogue (types from Trajan to Severus Alexander). wildwinds.com
  • Roma Dönemi Anadolu Kentlerinin Unvan Yarışı ve İç Pontos Kentleri: Neokaisareia ve Amaseia, Ankara University Open Course Materials.
  • Appian, Mithridatic Wars, 9.66 (the sacrifice to Zeus Stratios).
  • Christina Williamson, "Power, Politics, and Panoramas: Viewing the Sacred Landscape of Zeus Stratios near Amaseia", Space, Place and Identity in Northern Anatolia, Stuttgart 2014.
  • Franz Cumont, "Le Zeus Stratios de Mithridate", Revue de l'histoire des religions 43 (1901).
  • Stanley Ireland, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Coins in the Museum at Amasya (Ancient Amaseia), Turkey, Royal Numismatic Society, 2000.
  • David Magie, Roman Rule in Asia Minor to the End of the Third Century after Christ, Princeton 1950.
  • Bülent Arı, Anadolu'da Paranın Tarihi (Anatolian city coins in the Roman period).
  • Jona Lendering, Amasia (Livius.org); Amasya (Wikipedia). livius.org

Online sources