Thrace becomes a Roman province

From about 20 BC Thrace was a Roman client kingdom, ruled in the 1st century AD by the Sapaean dynasty, while the Greek cities of the Black Sea coast were Rome’s allies. After the death of King Rhoemetalces III — murdered, by one account, by his own wife — and a failed anti-Roman revolt, Claudius annexed the kingdom in 46. Together with Noricum, Lycia and Judea it was one of the territories annexed or put under direct rule under Claudius, in the empire’s first major expansion since Augustus.

The new province also took in the north-eastern part of Macedonia and the islands of Thasos, Samothrace and Imbros. It was governed from Perinthus (later Heraclea), at first by a procurator and from about 107–109 by an imperial legate. The old Thracian districts (strategiai), about fifty in the mid-1st century, were kept as units of administration and only gradually gave way to the territories of cities.