Along the coast line one contemplates with ever-increasing delight countless views of entrancing beauty and interest—gray moss-covered rocks which are ever of tender loveliness and reposeful silence; trembling vines and waving figs and olives and oranges; picturesque adobe cottages adorned with graceful creepers; romping children who make the air ring with their joyous shouts; men and women in the most colorful garbs quietly performing their daily tasks and all the while completely immune from the feverish haste that so distracts the toiling millions of Europe and America and converts their life into a long and troubled nightmare. The secret is that the normal Osmanli peasant is satisfied with little. Permit him to cultivate his small plot of ground in peace and to remain undisturbed in the bosom of his family and he is perfectly happy. Under such conditions he would find nothing to envy even in the lot of the denizens of the Happy Valley.
On our arrival at Ismid we were reminded that we were traveling over classic ground. For this small Turkish town was under the Roman Empire one of the largest cities in Asia Minor. It was here that Diocletian had his seat of Government; it was here that he began his sanguinary persecutions against the Christians and it was here that he abdicated the throne. It was in his imperial villa near here that death claimed Constantine the Great and it was in a neighboring castle that Hannibal committed suicide. And Nicomedia was the birthplace of Arrian, the illustrious disciple of Epictetus, who, from notes of his master’s lectures, prepared the famed Discourses of Epictetus. He also wrote the scarcely less celebrated Anabasis of Alexander the Great.
Our first stop, however, was at the little town of Lefke where we found waiting for us an araba which we had ordered the day previously to take us to Isnik—about four hours’ drive from the railroad—which is but a small village of mud houses, but which during Roman and Byzantine times was, under the name of Nicæa, the rival of Nicomedia. Even while in the possession of the Sultans of Rum it was as a center of art, poetry, and science scarcely less renowned than Cordova and Bagdad. And while Constantinople was in the possession of the Latins, after its capture by the Crusaders, Nicæa served as the temporary capital of the Byzantine Empire.
There are few places in Anatolia which make a stronger appeal to the student than the ancient city of Nicæa. Its ivy and fern-covered ruins, walls, baths, theaters, churches, mosques, towers, gates, aqueducts, sarcophagi, bas-reliefs, and inscriptions of all kinds are in the highest degree interesting and offer a mine of most precious material for the antiquary or the historian.
To us Nicæa was a
Relic of nobler days and noblest arts,
and, as we wandered among the ruin-covered streets of the once famous city, we seemed to hear the monitory words
Lightly tread, ’tis hallowed ground.
But my object in visiting this famous place was not knowledge so much as impressions. I was attracted thither by the same magnet that drew me to Troy and Chalcedon. I wished to get the local color and secure a local picture of a place which has filled an important page in history and which for centuries was the goal of contending armies—Asiatics and Europeans, Moslems and Christians. But the predominant reason for my visit to this scene of ruins was the fact that it had been a witness of two of the Church’s most noted œcumenical councils.
The first council which was held here in 325 was likewise the first General Council of the Church. It is noted for its condemnation of Arianism and for the formation of the Nicene Creed which, as subsequently amplified by the Council of Constantinople, has ever since been the symbol of faith used not only by the Catholic Church but also by those Eastern Churches which are no longer in communion with Rome and by many of the Protestant Churches as well.