This lecture will focus on Roman imperialism in Provincia Asia, which the Roman senate assigned to Consul L. Scipio after his defeat of the Seleucid king Antiochus III at Magnesia ad Spylum, and on the imperial cult, which was an indicator of the belonging of the inhabitants of the province to Rome.

The Romans, masters of state-building and statecraft, were able to transform Rome from a small political community into the center of the known world of the day. In this process, Rome first practiced a policy of sovereignty based on the principle of “divide et impera” (“divide and rule”) as it expanded in the Italian Peninsula. Therefore, “conquest” was not a priority of Roman sovereignty policy. By 265 BC, the entire Italian Peninsula had become a country of confederated states in which a unity of political space centered on Rome was established. As a result, the cities and communities that were members of the Roman-Italian confederation became Rome's “amici” (friends) and “socii” (allies), obliged to provide Rome with “auxilia” (auxiliary military units) on demand. However, after the First Carthaginian War, Rome started to expand to overseas countries outside Italy with the “provincia” (“provinces”) system, thus adding a new element to Rome's sovereignty policy with provinces. As a result of this policy, in 190 BC, the Roman army under Consul Lucius Scipio and his brother Publius Scipio Africanus, who had defeated Hannibal of Carthage, set foot in Anatolia for the first time. Rome now considered all of Anatolia north of the Taurus Mountains as its sphere of influence. With the Peace of Apameia, signed in the spring of 188 BC in Dinar, the Romans shaped the new political structure of Anatolia. In other words, with the Apameia Peace Treaty, Antiochus's