The land of the Hittites

by John Garstang

In B.C. 334 Alexander the Great crossed the Hellespont, and within a year, by his energy and ability to use the new army-machine which he had inherited, had conquered western Asia Minor as far as the Halys, and passed on leaving it his own. This date marks an issue more changeful to Asia Minor than the conquest of Cyrus. For though no monuments throw light on the story of the next two centuries, the system of government was now initiated which in due time was to result in the Hellenising of the interior. Cities were founded with Greek names, and the Greek speech gradually made its way, through Greek-speaking princes and governors, as the official language. The change worked very slowly, but it was profound in the issue, as we shall see. At first the states maintained their old customs and native dialects without appreciable difference, except in the vigour of the new government, but in the course of two or three centuries Greek language and Greek culture, even to some extent Greek thought and religious ideas, had permeated widely among the upper-class natives of the interior.

The struggles of Alexander’s successors, who had inherited from him the empire, are matters of common history. The Seleucids reunited, though in futile manner, the formerly Hittite regions in the north of Syria and Cilicia, and for a time gained some ascendency in Asia Minor, until defeated in 191 B.C. and driven back beyond the Taurus, where for another century they retained a sphere of influence. But of greater interest to us is the survival of local power in Cappadocia, under the dynasty of Ariarthes, which had come to the fore in the last century of Persian domination. This state, at first with incessant warfare, and then by means of tribute to the Seleucids, maintained in effect a form of local independence which survived even down to the Roman occupation and beyond. Another state that retained its freedom and local princes throughout this time was Bithynia, on the tract opposite Constantinople, but this is a region outside the boundaries of our story.

PLATE XXVII

CILICIA: ROMAN AQUEDUCTS OVER THE EASTERN PLAIN (See [p. 70].)

The Romans dallied long in following up the defeat of the Seleucids at Magnesia, when the way lay open to the annexation of Asia Minor, for which its people, torn by their internal wars, would have been even grateful. But it was not until late in the second century b.c. that the west was united as a Roman province. Even then the east remained under the direct government of the local princes, to whom the Roman Senate entrusted their frontier. At the beginning of the first century B.C. the disaffection of Mithridates, king of Pontus, a state bordering the Black Sea, and his efforts to win for himself a kingdom in Cappadocia and Bithynia, was one of the last fitful traces of the old native power, and called up more serious efforts on the part of Rome. The Cilician pirates, who from their base under the southern slopes of Taurus had become a leading naval power, were also suppressed, and during the century that followed the whole country as far as the Euphrates was gradually brought under direct control, and the provincial system was established. The province of Cilicia had been founded in B.C. 103, and after various successive modifications, during which the western district, Cilicia Trachæa, continued to be ruled by the priest-dynasts of Olba, the whole was united with Lycaonia under a consular legate about 137 A.D. Bithynia-Pontus, the scene of the late rebellions, came into the power of Rome by the will of its last king in B.C. 74, and the double province was put under the administration of a prætorian proconsul in B.C. 27. Galatia was constituted in B.C. 25, and Pontus was added to it in 63 A.D. Finally, the occupation of Cappadocia, dating from A.D. 17, completed the division of the administrative districts; for the sixth province Asia, in the west, had been the earliest founded, as we have noted, in B.C. 133.

PLATE XXVIII

KYRRHUS: ROMAN TOMB AND RUINED BRIDGE (See [p. 71].)

The system of Roman organisation at first modified and finally broke up the old tribal communities. For some time, many old-world institutions were maintained, notably the priest-dynasts of Comana, Olba, and Venasa; but gradually the native communal temple-district organisation of society gave way, to be replaced by the Greek political system, the seeds of which had been planted two or three centuries before, and had now taken root. In this system the city became the administrative centre, and the villages around were its branches. Greek became more and more the language of the people.[115] The formal records of military works, the milestones and imperial monuments, are inscribed in Latin, but the inscriptions in the old graveyards are carved in Greek letters. We cannot dwell upon the history of these times, of the reorganisation under Diocletian, at the close of the third century, marking the commencement of the Byzantine period, nor of the spread of Christianity, with the great social changes that involved. We reproduce, however, some illustrations of Roman works, such as are met with in plenty throughout the length and breadth of Hittite lands, from Malatia to Iconium and beyond, from Tarsus to the Black Sea coast. The great aqueducts like those of Tyana,[116] and those which stretch for miles across the Cilician plain,[117] are an indication of the vast scheme of development that was instituted under the new well-ordered system of government. Great cities both in Syria and in Asia Minor were the product of these times. Many of these were the foundations of places that still remain centres of administration; while some have lost their importance, and are falling gradually to ruin in silence and desolation. The remains of Kyrrhus upon the Afrîn,[118] a site now marked only by the small village of Huru-Pegamber some distance away, are among the wonderful memorials of antiquity. The imposts are falling from their pilasters, and the keystones to its arches are working loose, but it retains its silent streets of impressive stone buildings, its arches and colonnades, its amphitheatre, as though its people had quitted hardly a generation ago. Numerous Greek inscriptions may still be found amongst the ruins,[119] and just southward of the Acropolis several sarcophagi of marble, with Greek names upon them, indicate the position of the old-time burying place. In the extreme south of the site, with its sanctity still maintained in a modern Mohammedan shrine and well adjoining, there stands perfect a tomb-structure[120] in the Roman style of the second century A.D. We give a photograph of this, which is one of the best-preserved examples of its kind. Our other photographs[121] taken at Ephesus and at Ba’albec,[122] at the two ends of the Hittite lands, will sufficiently illustrate the art and civilisation of their time and place.