Urban rivalries.Syria, and still more, Egypt, became merged in their capitals; the province of Asia and Asia Minor generally had no single town to show like Antioch and Alexandria, but their prosperity rested on the numerous middle–sized towns. The division of the towns into three classes, which are distinguished as to the right of voting at the diet, as to the apportionment of the contributions to be furnished by the whole province, even as to the number of town–physicians and town–teachers to be appointed,[227] is eminently peculiar to these regions. The urban rivalries, which appear in Asia Minor so emphatic and in part so childish, occasionally even so odious—as, for example, the war between Severus and Niger in Bithynia was properly a war of the two rival capitals Nicomedia and Nicaea—belong to the character of Hellenic politics in general, but especially of those in Asia Minor. We shall mention further on the emulation as to temples of the emperors; in a similar way the ranking of the urban deputations at the common festivals in Asia Minor was a vital question—Magnesia on the Maeander calls itself on the coins the “seventh city of Asia” —and above all the first place was one so much desired, that the government ultimately agreed to admit several first cities. It fared similarly with the designation of “metropolis.” The proper metropolis of the province was Pergamus, the residence of the Attalids and the seat of the diet. But Ephesus, the de facto capital of the province, where the governor was obliged to enter on his office, and which boasts of this “right of reception at landing” on its coins; Smyrna, in constant rivalship with its Ephesian neighbour, and, in defiance of the legitimate right of the Ephesians to primacy, naming itself on coins “the first in greatness and beauty;” the very ancient Sardis, Cyzicus, and several others strove after the same honorary right. With these their wranglings, on account of which the senate and the emperor were regularly appealed to—the “Greek follies,” as men were wont to say in Rome—the people of Asia Minor were the standing annoyance and the standing laughing–stock of the Romans of mark.[228]
Bithynia.Bithynia did not stand on a like level with the Attalid kingdom. The older Greek colonising had here confined itself merely to the coast. In the Hellenistic epoch at first the Macedonian rulers, and later the native dynasty which walked entirely in their steps, had—along with a regulation of the places on the coast, which perhaps on the whole amounted to a changing of their names—also opened up in some measure the interior, in particular by the two successful foundations of Nicaea (Isnik) and Prusa on Olympia (Broussa); of the former it is stated that the first settlers were of good Macedonian and Hellenic descent. But in the intensity of the Hellenising the kingdom of Nicomedes was far behind that of the citizen prince of Pergamus; in particular the eastern interior can have been but little settled before Augustus. This was otherwise in the time of the empire. In the Augustan age a successful robber–chief, who became a convert to order, reconstructed on the Galatian frontier the utterly decayed township Gordiou Kome, under the name of Juliopolis; in the same region the towns Bithynion–Claudiopolis and Crateia–Flaviopolis probably attained Greek civic rights in the course of the first century. Generally in Bithynia Hellenism took a mighty upward impulse under the imperial period, and the tough Thracian stamp of the natives gave a good foundation for it. The fact that, among the inscribed stones of this province known in great number, not more than four belong to the pre–Roman epoch, cannot well be explained solely from the circumstance that urban ambition was only fostered under the emperors. In the literature of the imperial period a number of the best authors and the least carried away by exuberant rhetoric, such as the philosopher Dio of Prusa, the historian Memnon of Heraclea, Arrianus of Nicomedia, Cassius Dio of Nicaea, belong to Bithynia.
Pontus.The eastern half of the south coast of the Black Sea, the Roman province of Pontus, had as its basis that portion of the kingdom of Mithradates, of which Pompeius took direct possession immediately after the victory. The numerous smaller principalities, which Pompeius at the same time gave away in the interior of Paphlagonia and thence eastward to the Armenian frontier, were, after a shorter or longer subsistence, on their annexation partly attached to the same province, partly joined to Galatia or Cappadocia. The former kingdom of Mithradates had been far less affected than the western regions either by the older or by the younger Hellenism. When the Romans took possession directly or indirectly of this territory, there were, strictly speaking, no towns of Greek organisation there; Amasia, the old capital of the Pontic Achaemenids, and still their burial–place, was not such; the two old Greek coast–towns, Amisus and Sinope that once commanded the Black Sea, had become royal residences, and Greek polity would hardly be given to the few townships laid out by Mithradates, e.g. Eupatoria (iv. 152). But here, as was already shown in detail (iv. 151 f.)iv. 146., the Roman conquest was at the same time the Hellenising; Pompeius organised the province in such a way as to make the eleven chief townships of it into towns, and to distribute the territory among them. Certainly these artificially created towns with their immense districts—that of Sinope had along the coast an extent of 70 miles, and bordered on the Halys with that of Amisus—resembled more the Celtic cantons than the Hellenic and Italian urban communities proper. But at any rate Sinope and Amisus were then reinstated in their old positions, and other towns in the interior, such as Pompeiopolis, Nicopolis, Megalopolis, the later Sebasteia, were called into life. Sinope obtained from the dictator Caesar the rights of a Roman colony, and beyond doubt also Italian settlers (iv. 574)iv. 544.. More important for the Roman administration was Trapezus, an old colony of Sinope; the town, which in the year 63 was joined to the province of Cappadocia ([p. 324], note), was both the station of the Roman Black Sea fleet and in a certain measure the base of operations for the military corps of this province, which was the only corps in all Asia Minor.
Cappadocia.Inland Cappadocia was in the Roman power after the erection of the provinces of Pontus and Syria; of its annexation in the beginning of the reign of Tiberius, which was primarily occasioned by the attempt of Armenia to release itself from the Roman suzerainty, we shall have to give an account in the following section. The court, and those immediately connected with it, had become Hellenised (iii. 59)iii. 57., somewhat as the German courts of the eighteenth century adapted themselves to French habits. The capital, Caesarea, the ancient Mazaca, like the Phrygian Apamea, an intermediate station for the great traffic between the ports of the west coast and the lands of the Euphrates, and in the Roman period, as still at the present day, one of the most flourishing commercial cities of Asia Minor, was, at the instigation of Pompeius, not merely rebuilt after the Mithradatic war, but probably also furnished at that time with civic rights after the Greek type. Cappadocia itself was at the beginning of the imperial period hardly more Greek than Brandenburg and Pomerania under Frederick the Great were French. When the country became Roman, it was divided, according to the statements of the contemporary Strabo, not into city–districts, but into ten prefectures, of which only two had towns, the already–mentioned capital and Tyana; and this arrangement was here on the whole not more changed than in Egypt, though individual townships subsequently received Greek civic rights; e.g. the emperor Marcus made the Cappadocian village, in which his wife had died, into the town Faustinopolis. It is true that the Cappadocians now spoke Greek; but the students from Cappadocia had much to endure abroad on account of their uncouth accent, and of their defects in pronunciation and modulation; and, if they learned to speak after an Attic fashion, their countrymen found their language affected.[229] It was only in the Christian period that the comrades in study of the emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil of Caesarea, gave a better sound to the Cappadocian name.
Lycia.The Lycian cities in their secluded mountain–land did not open their coast for Greek settlement, but did not on that account debar themselves from Hellenic influence. Lycia was the only district of Asia Minor in which early civilising did not set aside the native language, and which, almost like the Romans, entered into Greek habits without becoming externally Hellenised. It is characteristic of their position, that the Lycian confederation as such joined the Attic naval league and paid its tribute to the Athenian leading power. The Lycians not merely practised their art after Hellenic models, but probably also regulated their political organisation early in the same way. The conversion of the cities–league, once subject to Rhodes, but which had become independent after the third Macedonian war (ii. 325)ii. 307. into a Roman province, which was ordained by the emperor Claudius on account of the endless quarrels among the allies, must have furthered the progress of Hellenism; in the course of the imperial period the Lycians thereupon became completely Greeks.
Pamphylia and Cilicia.The Pamphylian coast–towns, like Aspendus and Perga, Greek foundations of the oldest times, subsequently left to themselves, and attaining under favourable circumstances prosperous development, had either conserved, or moulded specially on their own part, the oldest Hellenic character in such a way that the Pamphylians might be regarded as an independent nation in language and writing not much less than the neighbouring Lycians. Then, when Asia was gained for the Hellenes, they found gradually their way back into the common Greek civilisation, and so also into the general political organisation. The rulers in this region and on the neighbouring Cilician coast were in the Hellenistic period partly the Egyptians, whose royal house gave its name to different townships in Pamphylia and Cilicia, partly the Seleucids, after whom the most considerable town of west Cilicia was named Seleucia on the Calycadnus, partly the Pergamenes, of whose rule Attalia (Adalia) in Pamphylia testifies.
Pisidia and Isauria.On the other hand the tribes in the mountains of Pisidia, Isauria and western Cilicia substantially maintained their independence down to the beginning of the imperial period. Here hostilities never ceased. Not merely by land had the civilised governments continued troubles with the Pisidians and their comrades, but these pursued still more zealously than robbery by land the trade of piracy, particularly from western Cilicia, where the mountains immediately approach the sea. When, on the decline of the Egyptian naval power, the south coast of Asia Minor became entirely an asylum of the pirates, the Romans interfered and erected the province of Cilicia, which embraced also, or was at any rate intended to embrace, the Pamphylian coast, for the sake of suppressing piracy. But what they did showed more what ought to have been done than that anything was really accomplished; the intervention took place too late and too fitfully. Though a blow was once struck against the corsairs, and Roman troops penetrated even into the Isaurian mountains, and broke up the pirates’ strongholds far into the interior (iv. 47)iv. 44., the Roman republic did not attain true permanent establishment in these districts reluctantly annexed by it. Here everything was left for the empire to do. Antonius, when he took in hand the East, entrusted an able Galatian officer, Amyntas, with the subjugation of the refractory Pisidian region,[230] and, when the latter proved his quality,[231] he made him king of Galatia,—the region of Asia Minor which was best organised in a military point of view, and most ready for action—and at the same time extended his government from thence as far as the south coast, and so as to include Lycaonia, Pisidia, Isauria, Pamphylia, and western Cilicia, while the civilised east half of Cilicia was left with Syria. Even when Augustus, after the battle of Actium, entered upon rule in the East, he left the Celtic prince in his position. The latter made essential progress as well in the suppression of the bad corsairs harbouring in the lurking places of western Cilicia, as also in the extirpation of the brigands, killed one of the worst of these robber–chiefs, Antipater, the ruler of Derbe and Laranda in southern Lycaonia, built for himself a residence in Isauria, and not merely drove the Pisidians out from the adjoining Phrygian territories, but invaded their own land, and took Cremna in the heart of it. But some years after (729 U.C.)25. he lost his life on an expedition against one of the west Cicilian tribes, the Homonadenses; after he had taken most of the townships and their prince had fallen, he perished through a plot directed against him by the wife of the latter. After this disaster Augustus himself undertook the difficult business of pacifying the interior of Asia Minor. If in doing so he, as was already observed ([p. 324]), assigned the small Pamphylian coast–district to a governor of its own and separated it from Galatia, this was evidently done because the mountain–land lying between the coast and the Galato–Lycaonian steppe was so little under control that the administration of the coast region could not well be conducted from Galatia. Roman troops were not stationed in Galatia; yet the levy of the warlike Galatians must have meant more than in the case of most provincials. Moreover, as western Cilicia was then placed under Cappadocia, the troops of this dependent prince had to take part in the work. The Syrian army carried out the chastisement in the first place of the Homonadenses; the governor, Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, advanced some years later into their territory, cut off their supplies, and compelled them to submit en masse, whereupon they were distributed to the surrounding townships and their former territory was laid waste. The Clitae, another stock settled in western Cilicia nearer to the coast, met with similar chastisements in the years 36 and 52; as they refused obedience to the vassal–prince placed over them by Rome, and pillaged land and sea, and as the so–called rulers of the land could not dispose of them, the imperial troops were on both occasions brought in from Syria to subdue them. These accounts have been accidentally preserved; numerous similar incidents have certainly been lost to remembrance.
Pisidian colonies.But Augustus attempted the pacification of this region also by way of settlement. The Hellenistic governments had, so to speak, isolated it; not merely retained or seized a footing everywhere on the coast, but also founded in the north–west a series of towns—on the Phrygian frontier Apollonia, alleged to have been founded by Alexander himself, Seleucia Siderus and Antiochia, both from the time of the Seleucids, further in Lycaonia, Laodicea Katakekaumene, and the capital of this district which doubtless originated at the same time, Iconium. But in the mountain–land proper no trace of Hellenistic settlement is found, and still less did the Roman senate apply itself to this difficult task. Augustus did so; and only here in the whole Greek coast we meet a series of colonies of Roman veterans evidently intended to acquire this district for peaceful settlement. Of the older settlements just mentioned, Antiochia was supplied with veterans and reorganised in Roman fashion, while there were newly laid out in southern Lycaonia Parlais, in Pisidia itself the already–mentioned Cremna, as well as further to the south Olbasa and Comama. The later governments did not continue with equal energy the work so begun; yet under Claudius the “iron Seleucia” of Pisidia was made the “Claudian;” while in the interior of western Cilicia Claudiopolis, and not far from it, perhaps at the same time, Germanicopolis were called into life, and Iconium, in the time of Augustus a small place, was brought to considerable development. The newly–founded towns remained indeed unimportant, but still notably restricted the field of the free inhabitants of the mountains, and general peace must at length have made its triumphal entrance also here. As well the plains and mountain–terraces of Pamphylia as the mountain–towns of Pisidia itself, e.g. Selga and Sagalassus, were during the imperial period well peopled and the territory carefully cultivated; the remains of mighty aqueducts and singularly large theatres, all of them structures of the Roman imperial period, show, it is true, only mechanical skill, but bear traces of a peaceful prosperity richly developed.
Isaurians.The government, it is true, never quite mastered brigandage in these regions, and if in the earlier period of the empire its ravages were kept in moderate bounds, the bands once more emerge as a warlike power in the troubles of the third century. They now pass under the name of Isaurians, and have their chief seat in the mountains of Cilicia, from whence they plunder land and sea. They are mentioned first under Severus Alexander. That under Gallienus they proclaimed their robber–chief emperor, is probably a fable; but certainly under the emperor Probus such an one, by name Lydius, who for long had pillaged Lycia and Pamphylia, was subdued in the Roman colony Cremna, which he had occupied, after a long and obstinate siege by a Roman army. In later times we find a military cordon drawn round their territory, and a special commanding general appointed for the Isaurians. Their savage valour even procured for those of them, who chose to take service at the Byzantine court, for a time a position there such as the Macedonians had possessed at the court of the Ptolemies; in fact one from their ranks, Zeno, died as emperor of Byzantium.[232]
Galatia.Lastly, the region of Galatia, at a remote period the chief seat of the Oriental rule over anterior Asia, and preserving in the famed rock–sculptures of the modern Boghazköi, formerly the royal town of Pteria, reminiscences of an almost forgotten glory, had in the course of centuries become in language and manners a Celtic island amidst the waves of eastern peoples, and remained so in internal organisation even under the empire. The three Celtic tribes, which, on the great migration of the nation about the time of the war between Pyrrhus and the Romans, had arrived in the heart of Asia Minor, and there, like the Franks in the East during the middle ages, had consolidated themselves into a firmly knit soldier–state, and after prolonged roving had taken up their definitive abode on either side of the Halys, had long since left behind the times when they issued forth thence to pillage Asia Minor, and were in conflict with the kings of Asia and Pergamus, provided that they did not serve them as mercenaries. They too were shattered before the superior power of the Romans (ii. 290)ii. 273., and became not less subject to them in Asia than their countrymen in the valley of the Po and on the Rhone and Seine. But in spite of their sojourn of several hundred years in Asia Minor, a deep gulf still separated these Occidentals from the Asiatics. It was not merely that they retained their native language and their nationality, that still each of the three cantons was governed by its four hereditary princes, and the federal assembly, to which deputies were sent by all in common, presided in the sacred oak–grove as supreme authority over the Galatian land (ii. 232)ii. 219.; nor was it that continued rudeness as well as warlike valour distinguished them to advantage as well as to disadvantage from their neighbours; such contrasts between culture and barbarism existed elsewhere in Asia Minor, and the superficial and external Hellenising—such as neighbourhood, commercial relations, the Phrygian cultus adopted by the immigrants, and mercenary service brought in their train—must have set in not much later in Galatia than e.g. in the neighbouring Cappadocia. The contrast was of a different kind; the Celtic and the Hellenic invasion came into competition in Asia Minor, and to the distinction of nationality was added the spur of rival conquest. This was brought clearly to light in the Mithradatic crisis; by the side of the command of Mithradates to murder the Italians went the massacre of the whole Galatian nobility (iii. 322)iii. 306., and, in keeping therewith, the Romans in the wars against the Oriental liberator of the Hellenes had no more faithful ally than the Galatians of Asia Minor (iv. 56, 149)iv. 53, 143..