From the perspective of classical Greece, Thracia included the territory north of Thessaly, with no definite boundaries,[1] sometimes to the inclusion of Macedonia and Scythia Minor.

After the death of the Thracian king Rhoemetalces III in 46 AD and an unsuccessful anti-Roman revolt, the kingdom was annexed as the Roman province of Thracia.

The area of the Thracian Chersonese (modern Gallipoli Peninsula) was excluded from its governor's purview and administered as part of the emperor's personal domains.

The old tribal-based strategiai ("generalcies"), headed by a strategos ("general"), were retained as the main administrative divisions, but some villages were grouped together into kōmarchiai ("village headships") or subordinated to neighbouring cities (the two Roman colonies of colonia Claudia Aprensis and colonia Flavia Pacis Deueltensium and several Greek cities, many of whom were founded by Trajan), which were set apart.

The city of Perinthus, which backed Severus, was granted the prestigious title of neokoros twice, alongside the permission to hold crown festivals in his honor.

[6] As it was an interior province, far from the borders of the Empire, and having a major Roman road (Via Egnatia) that passed through the region, Thrace remained peaceful and prosperous until the Crisis of the Third Century, when it was repeatedly raided by Goths from beyond the Danube.