[96]. The Seljuks had first been at Nicæa; but, when the Crusaders took that town, in A.D. 1099, they fell back on Iconium, which they held, with the exception of the brief interval of its capture by Barbarossa in 1189, till the irruption of the Mongols, under Jinghis Khán, and of his grandson, Huláku, who broke down their power completely. Konieh has been an integral part of the Turkish empire ever since the days of Bayazíd.
[97]. There has been much doubt in which “Cilician torrent” Barbarossa was drowned. The name in the record is the “Saleph,” which maybe a corruption of Selefkeh (Seleucia), a name sometimes given to the Calycadnus, as a chief town on it. There seems no reason for drowning him in the Cydnus, or modern Kara-su.
The position of Lystra and Derbe are still uncertain. Of Derbe, we know that it was the residence of a robber chief of Lycaonia, named Antipater,[[98]] who was ultimately subdued by Amyntas (Strabo, xii. p. 569), while Strabo and Stephanus Byzantinus placed it on the borders of Isauria towards Cappadocia. St. Luke, however, and Hierocles placed it as clearly in Lycaonia. If Lystra and Derbe stood in St. Luke’s order, Lystra would be the nearest to Iconium; but, though mentioned in Pliny and Ptolemy, we have no further hint as to its actual position. One of its bishops was present at the Council of Chalcedon. The interesting account in the Acts xiv. 6-21, of the behaviour of the people of Lystra, when St. Paul proved his Divine mission by the cure of the cripple, must be fresh in the mind of every one. With regard to the speculative identifications of the sites of Lystra and Derbe, it is, perhaps, worth stating that S.E. of Konieh is a remarkable isolated hill, the Karadagh or Black mountain. Not far from this mountain, Leake and Hamilton placed these two towns, the former twenty miles S.E. of Iconium, the latter at some remarkable ruins around its base, called by the Turks Bin-bir-kalis-seh, or the 1,001 churches. Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Edward Falkener have both examined this remarkable group of ruined churches, recording, as they clearly do, some site peculiarly revered in early Christian times. Mr. Falkener’s remarks on these curious monuments are much to the point. “The principal group,” says he, “of the Bin-bir-Kalisseh, lies at the foot of Karadagh.... Perceiving ruins on the slope of the mountain, I began to ascend, and, on reaching them, perceived that they were churches, and, looking upwards, descried others yet above me, and climbing from one to the other, I at length gained the summit, where I found two churches. On looking down, I perceived churches on all sides of the mountain scattered about in various positions.... There are about two dozen in tolerable preservation, and the remains of perhaps forty may be traced altogether.... The mountain must have been considered sacred; all the ruins are of the Christian epoch, and, with the exception of a huge palace, every building is a church.” It appears from the Acts that, besides the Greek, there was still extant a local Lycaonian dialect, and this is what we should expect from what we know in the cases of Caria, Lycia, and Phrygia, respectively. There are, however, no certain means, now, of determining what was its character, and whether it was of Semitic or of Indo-European descent.
[98]. Cicero (ad Fam. xiii. 73) says he was treated with much civility by the Lycaonian Antipater—a view of things not agreeable to his correspondent Q. Philippus, who had been previously proconsul of Asia Minor. Stephanus Byzantinus states that Derbe was sometimes called “Delbia,” a word in the Lycaonian dialect said to mean “juniper.” It is possible that two words of much similarity have been confounded in the MSS., viz. λιμὴν, a harbour or port, and λίμνη, a lake or marsh; and that the town was really on the shores of one of the many internal lakes of that part of Asia Minor. The position of Derbe near the lake of Ak Ghieul, and its resemblance to Delbia, with the modern name of Divleh, as suggested by Hamilton, tends to its identification with Divleh.
Having dealt pretty fully with the provinces and towns of Asia Minor to the west and south, with some notice of those in Lycaonia, we propose now to notice the chief ones in Phrygia and Galatia, though we have not space to weigh nicely the limits of each of these districts, which were, indeed, till Roman times, in a state of constant change. Rome, as we know, thought fit to include under the name of Asia more than one piece arbitrarily cut out of the older provinces; Roman Asia being to the rest of Asia Minor much what Portugal on maps was to Spain.
The Phrygians themselves were, like the Mysians, probably of Thracian origin, as the name Bryges, or Briges, is found in Macedonia, and is, probably, connected with the Celtic word “briga,” as in Artobriga. We find also in the neighbouring province of Bithynia a tribe called Bebryces. The Phrygians have also been supposed to have some connection with Armenia—a theory, however, mainly resting on their legend of a primeval flood, and of the resting of an ark on the mountains near Celænæ.
It is certain that the people of this part of Asia Minor were very much intermixed. Thus, the Trojans and Mysians were almost certainly members of the great Phrygian race; for Hecuba was a Phrygian princess, and Hector a common Phrygian name. One stream of immigrators may, therefore, have come from Armenia into Europe, and have, thence, returned somewhat later to Phrygia, the Phrygians, like the Macedonians, being said to be unable to pronounce the φ (ph), and saying Bilippus and Berenice, for Philippus and Pherenice: in the army, too, of Xerxes, the Armenians and Phrygians wear similar armour. Recent researches by Baron Texier and Mr. Hamilton have shown that the Phrygians had a peculiar style of architecture, the former having discovered an entire town carved out of the solid rock. Tombs, too, occur, in construction resembling the lion gate of Mycenæ; while there is also a legend of a Phrygian Pelops in Argolis. Phrygian religious rites were widely accepted by remote districts of the ancient world, the goddess Cybele being strictly a Phrygian deity, and the wild “orgies” of her worship essentially Asiatic.
Of the towns of Phrygia we take first Apamea, as unquestionably one of the most important for its varied history and for the many persons of note who are linked with it. Its foundation is due to Antiochus Soter, who named it after his mother Apama. According to Strabo, it stood at the source of the river Marsyas, which burst forth in the middle of the city, and flowed thence into the Mæander; and, though this description is not quite borne out by recent observations, the identity of its size with the modern village of Deenare or Denair, has been satisfactorily shown by an inscription found by Mr. Arundell, reading—QUI. APAMEAE. NEGOCIANTVR. H. C. (hoc. curaverunt). “The merchants frequenting Apamea have taken care (to erect this monument).”[[99]] Cicero, who was appointed proconsul of Cilicia in B.C. 51, has left us many interesting particulars about it in his letters to his friends, as he was much there. At this place, too, he deposited one of the three copies of his quæstor’s accounts, at the same time refusing to accept for himself or to permit his soldiers to appropriate, any of the booty taken from the enemy. In a letter to Can. Sallustius, proquæstor, he adds: “I shall leave the money at Laodicea ... in order to avoid the hazard, both to self and the commonwealth, of conveying it in specie.” While governing his province, one of his friends requested him to procure some panthers for him. This he did, and at his own expense, remarking at the same time “that the beasts made sad complaints against him, and resolved to quit the country, since no snares were laid in his province for any other creatures but themselves.”[[100]]
[99]. Arundell (i. p. 192). He remarks further: “Apamea may now be asserted to have been at Deenare with as much confidence as that Ephesus or Sardis stood on the sites which still preserve their names. Apamea stood, we should add, nearly, though not quite, on the site of the ancient Celænæ. It suffered so severely from earthquakes, that the Roman tribute due from it was remitted, A.D. 53, for five years (Tacit. Ann. xii. 58).”
[100]. Mr. Arundell remarks the panthers are still (1834) occasionally found in the neighbourhood of Smyrna.