Neocaesarea

Neokaisareia, earlier (according to a disputed but probable interpretation) Cabeira; then Diospolis and Sebaste (now Niksar)

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A town in the interior of eastern Pontus (northeastern Asia Minor), in the valley of one of the several rivers called Lycus (Kelkit Çayı), commanded by a citadel on a spur of the Paryadres range (Kanık Daǧları). It was a stronghold, treasury and hunting lodge of King Mithridates VI Eupator of Pontus (120–63 BC), under whom it issued local coinage.

Mithridates made Cabeira his headquarters in his Third War against the Romans under Lucius Licinius Lucullus, who after an initial reverse captured the fortress in 72. In 64 the place was reorganized by Pompey the Great as a city with the name of Diospolis. In 37/36 Antony presented it, with the rest of Pontus, to King Polemo I (son of the rhetorician Zeno of Laodicea in Phrygia), after whose death it became the royal residence of Polemo's widow and successor Pythodoris (8 BC–cAD 22), assuming the new name of Sebaste (i.e. Augusta). When Nero annexed the kingdom of Pontus Polemoniacus in AD 63/4 and attached it to Galatia (united with Cappadocia from c 72), he refounded Cabeira-Diospolis-Sebaste as Neocaesarea, under which designation it coined, on its own behalf and for the Assembly of Pontus (Koinon Pontou) of which it was the metropolis, from Trajan (98–117) to Gallienus (253–68). Under Hadrian (117–38) it assumed yet another name, Hadriane.

The city's local monetary issues, under the family of Septimius Severus (193–211), display a temple depicted with a unique diversity of detail. This sanctuary was apparently dedicated to the supreme Pontic goddess Ma (seeComana), associated with the worship of Zeus and the imperial cult; the temple serfs were segregated in a separate quarter (Ameria), adjoining the principal seat of worship of a male deity, Men Pharmakou. The shrines of Ma and Men have not survived, because severe earthquakes in 344 and 499 destroyed most of the city. But parts of the walls may be Pontic or Roman, and a rock-cut tunnel is of pre-Roman date.

During the later empire Neocaesarea was capital of the province of Pontus Polemoniacus.