The Eastern Provinces of the Byzantine Empire

The most prosperous provinces in the Roman Empire were always the Eastern ones. The East had been home to civilization long before the Romans conquered the Western Mediterranean. Across the Bosphorus from Constantinople stood Anatolia, or Asia Minor, modern Turkey. Asiana contained the populous fertile lowlands of the west. Pontica was over the mountains, covering the rest of the peninsula including the large barren plateau in the middle. For centuries of Roman rule, many different peoples with their own languages had lived across Anatolia. These Greek-speaking communities dominated the shoreline running north along the Black Sea and south along the Mediterranean.