THE CAPPADOCIANS
The chief point of interest furnished by this people is to be found in their religious worship. Its principal centres were the two cities of Comana, the one situated on the river Iris, which flows north into the Euxine, and the other in the southern part of the country on the slopes of Anti-Taurus, near the river Sarus. The high priests were generally of royal blood and enjoyed great consideration, even wearing a royal diadem at the great religious festival, and their importance does not seem to have been diminished by the Persian conquest.
The Cappadocians had the reputation of being brave but untrustworthy, characteristics appropriate to a people who worshipped a warrior moon-goddess. For besides the moon-god Men, they adored Ma, or Mene, identified with Enio, or Bellona, as well as with Artemis. Ma was waited on by numerous priests and temple servants, who constituted the main population of the southern Comana, while hosts of maidens, clad in warlike dress and wearing the same weapons as their divine mistress, participated in her wild rites. It is thought that it was the existence of these women which gave rise to the legend of the Amazons, or nation of female warriors, whom the Greeks supposed to have had their home in the mythical town of Themiscyra on the banks of the Thermodon in Pontus.
The chief festival was that known as the “Exodus” of the goddess, and was attended by many pilgrims from far and near. The worshippers gashed their own bodies and took part in the wildest sensual excesses. These, and the personal sacrifices required from the votaries of Ma, reveal the Semitic origin of the race which practised them, and resemble those belonging to the service of the “Phrygian mother.”
The Greek name for the Cappadocians was “Leuco-Syrians,” i.e., white Syrians, and the myth traced their descent from Syros, son of Apollo. The original Semitic population received a foreign admixture in the eighth century B.C., when some of the Cimmerians, who invaded Asia Minor, settled amongst them and became entirely absorbed in the population. The Cataonians, who inhabited a district in the southeast of the country, were said to be a distinct race, but the personal observations of Strabo in the century before Christ could detect no differences between the two peoples. A further evidence of Semitic origin is found in coins of northern Cappadocia, which date from the fourth century B.C. and bear the image of the Syrian god Baal, with legends inscribed in Aramæan.
The southern part of Cappadocia covers the highest plateau of Asia Minor, and its cold climate is a reason why it can never have been very productive, though wine and oil were grown in certain districts. It furnished, however, ample pasturage for sheep and horses, but the chief wealth of the people seems to have consisted in slaves. Silver, iron, and steel were to be obtained in ancient times from the northeastern districts bordering on Armenia, where dwelt the Tibareni, the Chalybes, and other wild tribes of unknown origin. The mineral products of their territory were turned to account by the Greeks, who had established colonies all along the Cappadocian coast.
Our real knowledge of Cappadocian history goes no farther back than the Persian conquest, and the name of Cappadocians is a Persian appellation—Katapatuka. The Persians divided the country into the two provinces of Cappadocia on the Pontus (afterwards called simply Pontus) and Great Cappadocia, stretching from the Taurus range on the south and including the country on the upper reaches of the Halys. Each constituted a separate satrapy whose governors enjoyed practical independence and royal titles.
THE CILICIANS
Between the Taurus Mountains and that ridge which the ancients called Amanus, lies a fertile and isolated plain which formed the principal part of the ancient kingdom of Cilicia. Xenophon describes it as “a large and beautiful plain, well watered, and full of all sorts of trees and vines, abounding in sesame, panic, millet, wheat, and barley,” and “surrounded with a strong and high ridge of hills from sea to sea.” This plain was by no means the whole of the territory occupied by the Cilicians, which stretched far west among the wild Taurus Mountains as far as Coracesium on the borders of Pamphylia, and appears, from the statements of Herodotus, to have reached to the Euphrates and to have also included a large part of Cappadocia.
The Cilicians were a Semitic race and, like the Cappadocians, nearly related to the Syrians. They evidently worshipped the Syrian gods, for the latter are represented on Cilician coins belonging to the Persian epoch, especially the sun-god Baal, seated on a throne and holding grapes and ears of corn in his hand. But we also find representations of Hercules on these coins, and Greek as well as Aramæan inscriptions, showing that this Semitic race passed under the influence of the Hellenes, who had indeed many settlements in the west of Cilicia.