Pythodorida of Pontus became client queen of Pontus, Cilicia, and Colchis. Pythodorida would marry then King Archelaus, the Roman client king of Cappadocia, in 8 BC, thereby joining the several eastern client kingdom under a single family. Following Archelaus' death in 14 AD and the subsequent transformation of Cappadocia into a directly governed province in 18 AD, Pythodorida lost her title as queen of Cappadocia. Pythodorida was succeeded by her stepson Polemon II of Pontus following her death in 38 AD. Polemon II ruled as a Roman client king over Pontus and Cilicia until the Roman Emperor Nero deposed him in 62 AD. Cilicia was then annexed into a directly governed Roman province and Pontus was re-incorporated in Cappadocia, then a directly governed Roman province. Principate As part of the Constitutional Reforms of Augustus, which transformed the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire, Rome's territories were divided into imperial provinces and senatorial provinces. Imperial provinces were border lands which required a permanent military presence to protect the Empire from invasion. As such, only the Emperor (as supreme commander of the army) had the right to appoint the governors of those provinces. Senatorial provinces, conversely, were centered along the Mediterranean Sea and did not possess any significant military force; the province of Bithynia and Pontus, being located along the southern Black Sea coast, was an exception although it too lacked any significant garrison. Augustus allowed the Senate to appoint the governors of these provinces as it had done with all provinces under the Republican system: a sortition was used to select a proconsul who would have imperium over the territory, and be assisted by a legatus or a lieutenant governor, and quaestor who handled financial issues. The Roman writer Pliny the Younger was governor of the province in AD 110-113. His Epistulae ("Letters") to emperor Trajan (ruled 98-117) are a major source on Roman provincial administration. The cities of Bithynia took on many features of Roman cities (e.g. councils of decuriones) in the Imperial period, to a much greater degree than the rest of Roman Asia Minor. According to Cassius Dio, around AD 134 the Senate ceded control of Bithynia and Pontus to the Emperor in return for Lycia et Pamphylia. Dominate Under the administrative reforms of emperor Diocletian, c.295, Bithynia et Pontus was divided into 3 smaller provinces: Bithynia, Paphlagonia and Diospontus (later renamed Helenopontus). These belonged to the diocese