The Galatian kingdom.For that reason the success of the Romans was theirs also, and the victory gave to them for a time a leading position in the affairs of Asia Minor. The old tetrarchate was done away, apparently by Pompeius. One of the new cantonal princes, who had approved himself most in the Mithradatic wars, Deiotarus, attached to himself, besides his own territory, Lesser Armenia and other portions of the former Mithradatic empire, and became an inconvenient neighbour to the other Galatian princes, and the most powerful among the dynasts of Asia Minor (iv. 149)iv. 143.. After the victory of Caesar, to whom he occupied an attitude of hostility, and whose favour he was unable to gain even by help rendered against Pharnaces, the possessions gained by him with or without consent of the Roman government were for the most part again withdrawn; the Caesarian Mithradates of Pergamus, who on the mother’s side was sprung from the Galatian royal house, obtained the most of what Deiotarus lost, and was even placed by his side in Galatia itself. But, after the latter had shortly afterwards met his end in the Tauric Chersonese ([p. 313]), and Caesar himself had not long afterwards been murdered, Deiotarus reinstated himself unbidden in possession of what he had lost, and, as he knew how to submit to the Roman party predominant on each occasion in the East as well as how to change it at the right time, he died at an advanced age in the year 71440. as lord of all Galatia. His descendants were portioned off with a small lordship in Paphlagonia; his kingdom, further enlarged towards the south by Lycaonia and all the country down to the coast of Pamphylia, was transferred, as was already said, in the year 71836. by Antonius to Amyntas, who seems to have conducted the government already in the last years of Deiotarus as his secretary and general, and, as such, had before the battle of Philippi effected the transition from the republican generals to the triumvirs. His further fortunes have been already told. Equal to his predecessor in sagacity and bravery, he served first Antonius, and then Augustus as chief instrument for the pacification of the territory not yet subject in Asia Minor, till he there met his death in the year 72925.. With him ended the Galatian kingdom, and it was converted into the Roman province of Galatia.
The inhabitants.Its inhabitants were called Gallograeci among the Romans even in the last age of the republic; they were, adds Livy, a mixed people, as they were called, and degenerate. A good portion of them must have descended from the older Phrygian inhabitants of these regions. Of still more weight is the fact, that the zealous worship of the gods in Galatia and the priesthood there have nothing in common with the ritual institutions of the European Celts; not merely was the Great Mother, whose sacred symbol the Romans of Hannibal’s time asked and received from the Tolistobogi, of a Phrygian type, but her priests belonged in part at least to the Galatian nobility. Nevertheless, even in the Roman province of Galatia the internal organisation was predominantly Celtic. The fact that even under Pius the strict paternal power foreign to Hellenic law subsisted in Galatia, is a proof of this from the sphere of private law. In public relations there were in this country still only the three old communities of the Tectosages, the Tolistobogi, the Trocmi, who perhaps appended to their names those of the three chief places, Ancyra, Pessinus, and Tavium, but were essentially nothing but the well–known Gallic cantons, which also indeed were not without their chief place. If among the Celts of Asia the conception of the community as town gains the predominance earlier than among the European,[233] and the name Ancyra more quickly dispossesses that of the Tectosages than in Europe the name Burdigala dispossesses that of the Bituriges, and there Ancyra even as foremost place of the whole country calls itself the “mother–city” μητρόπολις, this certainly shows—what could not in fact be otherwise—the influence of Greek neighbourhood and the incipient process of assimilation, the several phases of which the superficial information that survives to us does not allow us to follow out. The Celtic names keep their hold down to the time of Tiberius; afterwards they appear only isolated in the houses of rank.
Language under the Romans.That the Romans after the erection of the province—as in Gaul they allowed only the Latin language—allowed in Galatia alongside of this only the Greek in business–dealings, was a matter of course. What course was taken earlier we know not, as we do not meet with pre–Roman written monuments in this country at all. As the language of conversation the Celtic maintained its ground with tenacity also in Asia;[234] yet the Greek gradually gained the upper hand. In the fourth century Ancyra was one of the chief centres of Greek culture; “the small towns in Greek Galatia,” says the man of letters, Themistius, who had grown gray in addressing the cultivated public, “cannot indeed cope with Antioch; but the people appropriate to themselves culture more zealously than the genuine Hellenes, and, wherever the philosopher’s cloak appears, they cling to it like the iron to the magnet.” Yet the national language may have preserved itself in the lower circles down even to this period, particularly beyond the Halys among the Trocmi evidently much later Hellenised.[235] It has already been mentioned ([p. 101]) that, according to the testimony of the far–travelled church–father Jerome, still at the end of the fourth century the Asiatic Galatian spoke the same language, although corrupt, which was then spoken in Treves. That as soldiers the Galatians, though sustaining no comparison with the Occidentals, were yet far more useful than the Greek Asiatics, is attested as well by the legion which king Deiotarus raised from his subjects after the Roman model, and which Augustus took over with the kingdom and incorporated with the Roman army under its previous name, as by the fact, that in the Oriental recruiting of the imperial period the Galatians were drawn upon by preference just as the Batavians were in the West.[236]
The Greek islands.To the extra–European Hellenes belong further the two great islands of the eastern Mediterranean, Crete and Cyprus, as well as the numerous islets of the sea between Greece and Asia Minor; the Cyrenaic Pentapolis also on the opposite African coast is so separated by the surrounding desert from the interior that it may be in some measure ranked along with those Greek islands. These constituent elements, however, of the enormous mass of lands united under the sceptre of the emperors do not add essentially new features to the general historical conception. The minor islands, Hellenised earlier and more completely than the continent, belong as regards their essential character more to European Greece than to the colonial field of Asia Minor; as indeed we have already several times mentioned the Hellenic model–state, Rhodes, in connection with the former. The islands are chiefly noticed at this epoch, inasmuch as it was usual in the imperial period to banish men of the better classes to them by way of punishment. They chose, where the case was specially severe, rocks like Gyarus and Donussa; but Andros, Cythnus, Amorgos, once flourishing centres of Greek culture, were now places of punishment, while in Lesbos and Samos not seldom Romans of rank and even members of the imperial house voluntarily took up a somewhat lengthened abode. Crete and Cyprus, whose old Hellenism had under the Persian rule or in complete isolation lost contact with home, organised themselves—Cyprus as a dependency of Egypt, the Cretan towns as autonomous—in the Hellenistic and later in the Roman epochs according to the general forms of Greek polity. In the Cyrenaic towns the system of the Lagids prevailed; we find in them not merely, as in the strictly Greek towns, Hellenic burgesses and metoeci, but alongside of them, as with the Egyptians in Alexandria, the “peasants,” that is the native Africans, and among the metoeci the Jews form, as they do likewise in Alexandria, a numerous and privileged class.
Leagues of the Hellenes in Asia Minor.To the Greeks in common the Roman imperial government never granted a constitution. The Augustan Amphictiony was restricted, as we saw ([p. 254]), to the Hellenes in Achaia, Epirus, and Macedonia. If the Hadrianic Panhellenes in Athens acted as though they were representative of all the Hellenes, they yet encroached on the other Greek provinces only in so far as they decreed, so to speak, honorary Hellenism to individual towns in Asia ([p. 267]); and the fact that they did so, just shows that the extraneous communities of Greeks were by no means included among those Panhellenes. If in Asia Minor there is mention of representation or representatives of the Hellenes, what is meant by this in the provinces of Asia and Bithynia organised completely after the Hellenic manner, is the diet and the president of the diet of these provinces, in so far as these proceed from the deputies of the towns belonging to each of them, and all of these towns are Greek polities;[237] while in the non–Greek province of Galatia the representatives of the Greeks sojourning there, placed alongside of the Galatian diet, are designated as “presidents of the Greeks.”[238]
Land–diets and land festivals.To the confederation of towns the Roman government in Asia Minor had no occasion to oppose special obstacles. In Roman as in pre–Roman times nine towns of the Troad performed in common religious functions and celebrated common festivals.[239] The diets of the different provinces of Asia Minor, which were here as in the whole empire called into existence as a fixed institution by Augustus, were not different in themselves from those of the other provinces. Yet this institution developed itself, or rather changed its nature, here in a peculiar fashion. With the immediate purpose of these annual assemblies of the civic deputies of each province[240]—to bring its wishes to the knowledge of the governor or the government, and generally to serve as organ of the province—was here first combined the celebration of the annual festival for the governing emperor and the imperial system generally. Augustus in the year 72529. allowed the diets of Asia and Bithynia to erect temples and show divine honour to him at their places of assembly, Pergamus and Nicomedia. This new arrangement soon extended to the whole empire, and the blending of the ritual institution with the administrative became a leading idea of the provincial organisation of the imperial period. But as regards pomp of priests and festivals and civic rivalries, this institution nowhere developed itself so much as in the province of Asia and, analogously, in the other provinces of Asia Minor; and nowhere, consequently, has there subsisted alongside of, and above, municipal ambition a provincial ambition of the towns still more than of the individuals, such as in Asia Minor dominates the whole public life.
Provincial priests and Asiarchs.The high priest (ἀρχιερεύς) of the new temple appointed from year to year in the province is not merely the most eminent dignitary of the province, but throughout its bounds the year is designated after him.[241] The system of festivals and games after the model of the Olympic festival, which spread more and more as we saw among all the Hellenes, was associated in Asia Minor predominantly with the festivals and games of the provincial worship of the emperor. The conduct of these fell to the president of the diet, in Asia to the Asiarch, in Bithynia to the Bithyniarch, and so on; and not less he had chiefly to bear the costs of the annual festival, although a portion of these, like the remaining expenses of this equally brilliant and loyal worship, was covered by voluntary gifts and endowments, or was apportioned among the several towns. Hence these presidentships were only accessible to rich people; the prosperity of the town Tralles is indicated by the fact, that it never wanted Asiarchs—the title remained even after the expiry of the official year—and the repute of the Apostle Paul in Ephesus is indicated by his connection with different Asiarchs there. In spite of the expense this was an honorary position much sought after, not on account of the privileges attached to it, e.g. of exemption from trusteeship, but on account of its outward splendour; the festal entrance into the town, in purple dress and with chaplet on the head, preceded by a procession of boys swinging their vessels of incense, was in the horizon of the Greeks of Asia Minor what the olive–branch of Olympia was among the Hellenes. On several occasions this or that Asiatic of quality boasts of having been not merely himself Asiarch but descended also from Asiarchs. If this cultus was at the outset confined to the provincial capitals, the municipal ambition, which in the province of Asia in particular assumed incredible proportions, very soon broke through those limits. Here already in the year 23 a second temple was decreed by the province to the then reigning emperor Tiberius as well as to his mother and to the senate, and after long quarrelling of the towns was, by decree of the senate, erected at Smyrna. The other larger towns followed the example on later occasions.[242] If hitherto the province had had only one president and one chief priest, as only one temple, now not merely had as many chief priests to be appointed as there were provincial temples, but also, seeing that the conduct of the temple–festival and the execution of the games pertained not to the chief priest but to the land–president, and the rival great towns were chiefly concerned about the festivals and games, there was given to all the chief priests at the same time the title and the right of presidency, so that at least in Asia the Asiarchy and the chief priesthood of the provincial temples coincided.[243] Therewith the diet and the civil functions, from which the institution had its origin, fell into the background; the Asiarch was soon nothing more than the provider of a popular festival annexed to the divine worship of the former and present emperors, on which account indeed his wife—the Asiarchess—might and zealously did take part in the celebration.
Superintendence of worship by the provincial priests.A practical importance, increased in Asia Minor by the high estimation in which this institution was held, may have attached to the provincial chief–priesthood for the worship of the emperors through the religious superintendence associated with it. After the diet had once resolved on the worship of the emperors, and the government had given its consent, action on the part of the towns followed as a matter of course; in Asia already under Augustus at least all the chief places of judicial circuit had their Caesareum and their emperors’ festival.[244] It was the right and duty of the chief priest to watch over the execution of these provincial and municipal decrees and the practice of the cultus in his district; what this might mean, is elucidated by the fact, that the autonomy of the free city of Cyzicus in Asia was set aside under Tiberius for this among other reasons, that it had allowed the decree for building the temple of the god Augustus to remain unfulfilled—perhaps just because it as a free town was not under the diet. It is probable that this superintendence, although it primarily concerned the emperor–worship, extended to the affairs of religion in general.[245] Then, when the old and the new faith began to contend in the empire for the mastery, it was probably, in the first instance, through the provincial chief priesthood that the contrast between them was converted into conflict. These priests, appointed from the provincials of mark by the diet of the province, were by their traditions and by their official duties far more called and inclined than were the imperial magistrates to animadvert on neglect of the recognised worship, and, where dissuasion did not avail, as they had not themselves a power of punishment, to bring the act punishable by civil law to the notice of the local or imperial authorities and to invoke the aid of the secular arm—above all, to force the Christians to comply with the demands of the imperial cultus. In the later period the regents adhering to the old faith even expressly enjoin these chief priests personally, and through the priests of the towns placed under them, to punish contraventions of the existing religious arrangements, and assign to them exactly the part which under the emperors of the new faith is taken by the metropolitan and his urban bishops.[246] Probably here it was not the heathen organisation that copied the Christian institutions; but, conversely, the conquering Christian church that took its hierarchic weapons from the arsenal of the enemy. All this applied, as we have already observed, to the whole empire; but the very practical consequences of the provincial regulation of the imperial cultus—the exercise of religious superintendence and the persecution of persons of another faith—were drawn pre–eminently in Asia Minor.
System of religion.Alongside of the cultus of the emperors the worship of the gods proper found its favoured abode in Asia Minor, and all its extravagances in particular there found a refuge. The mischief of asylums and of miraculous cures had here its seat in a quite special sense. Under Tiberius the limitation of the former was enjoined by the Roman senate; the god of healing, Asklepios, nowhere performed more and greater wonders than in his much–loved city of Pergamus, which worshipped him as Zeus Asklepios, and owed to him a good part of its prosperity in the imperial period. The most active wonder–workers of the time of the empire—the subsequently canonised Cappadocian Apollonius of Tyana and the Paphlagonian serpent–man Alexander of Abonuteichos—belonged to Asia Minor. If the general prohibition of associations was carried out, as we shall see, with special strictness in Asia Minor, the reason must doubtless be sought mainly in the religious conditions which gave special occasion to the abuse of such unions there.
Public safety.The public safety was left to depend in the main on the land itself. In the earlier imperial period, apart from the Syrian command which included eastern Cilicia, there was stationed in all Asia Minor simply a detachment of 5000 auxiliary troops, which served as a garrison in the province of Galatia,[247] along with a fleet of 40 ships; this command was destined partly to keep in check the restless Pisidians, partly to cover the north–eastern frontier of the empire, and to watch over the coast of the Black Sea as far as the Crimea. Vespasian raised this troop to the status of an army corps of two legions and placed their staffs in the province of Cappadocia on the upper Euphrates. Besides these forces destined to guard the frontier there were not then any garrisons of note in anterior Asia; in the imperial province of Lycia and Pamphylia, e.g. there lay a single cohort of 500 men, in the senatorial provinces, at the most, individual soldiers told off from the imperial guard or from the neighbouring imperial provinces for special purposes.[248] If this testifies, on the one hand, most emphatically to the internal peace of these provinces, and clearly brings before our eyes the enormous contrast of the citizens of Asia Minor with the constantly unsettled capitals of Syria and Egypt, it explains, on the other hand, the subsistence, already noticed in another connection, of brigandage in a country mountainous throughout and in the interior partly desolate, particularly on the Myso–Bithynian frontier and in the mountain valleys of Pisidia and Isauria. There was no civic militia proper in Asia Minor. In spite of the flourishing of gymnastic institutes for boys, youths, and men, the Hellenes of this period in Asia remained as unwarlike as in Europe.[249]Eirenarchs. They restricted themselves to creating for the maintenance of public safety civic peace–masters (Eirenarchs), and placing at their disposal a number of civic gens d’armes, partly mounted mercenaries of small repute, but which must yet have been useful, since the emperor Marcus did not disdain, in the sorely felt want of tried soldiers during the Marcomanian war, to incorporate these town–soldiers of Asia Minor among the imperial troops.[250]