Hellenism in Asia Minor

BY DR. KARL DIETERICH
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY CARROLL N. BROWN, Ph.D. The College of the City of New York
With an introductory preface by Theodore P. Ion, D.C.L., and a brief article on Hellenic Pontus by D. H. Oeconomides, Ph.D.
This publication is due to the generosity of EURIPIDES KEHAYA of New York
PUBLISHED FOR THE AMERICAN-HELLENIC SOCIETY 105 WEST 40th STREET, NEW YORK, N. Y. BY OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS AMERICAN BRANCH 35 WEST 32nd STREET, NEW YORK 1918
COPYRIGHT 1918 BY THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS American Branch
THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS RAHWAY, N. J.

Asia Minor is the country which, more than all others, recalls the highest development of Hellenic civilization. Its deeply indented coast formed a chaplet of Hellenic democracies which reached out into the interior and actually attacked the Persian civilization, upon which they imposed their own stamp. These democracies constituted the first rampart of the civilized world of that time, holding back Persian barbarism. Their history is one of continual struggle between these two civilizations, a struggle that was terminated at Salamis and at Platæa, where the Persian ambitions were definitively buried and Greek civilization saved.
The wise men, the thinkers, the philosophers, that these democracies produced, were numerous, and the influence of their teachings was very great. These even today are radiant with a sublimity that has never been excelled.
It was in this Greek element and among the populations Hellenized by them that Christianity first germinated. It was the Greeks of Asia Minor who first offered their blood for the triumph of the new faith. The foremost Church Fathers, John Chrysostom, Saint Basil and very many others, were born there or taught there.
Throughout the Middle Ages the Byzantine-Greek civilization flourished in these lands. It formed the most powerful barrier against the wave of barbarism which threatened to inundate the civilized world. The desperate resistance offered by Hellenism permitted the West, by its contact with Byzantine Hellenism, to acquire those requisite elements which have formed the basis of Western civilization.