[111]. Æschylus, Pers., v. 715, speaks of οἱ σιδηροτέκτονες Χάλυβες.
Paphlagonia is chiefly famous for the vast forests that clothed the southern and more hilly portions of its territory, and for its vast herds of horses, mules, &c. (the former of which are noticed so early as Homer (Il. ii. 281 and 852)). Its only two towns of any note were Amastris, in the days of Pliny the Younger a handsome place, with squares and many public buildings,—and Sinope; both towns, certainly, of remote antiquity, the latter, indeed, attributed by some to the Argonauts, and by others to the Amazons. In the days of Xenophon, Sinope was a rich and flourishing city; and then, and for a long time, subsequently, the navy of Sinope was highly distinguished among those of the other maritime cities of Greece. Sinope was also famous, like Byzantium, for the fishery of the pelamys or tunny-fish; deriving, also, much of its subsequent wealth from the fact, that it was selected by the kings of Pontus as their royal residence. Lucullus first, and Cæsar, subsequently, in the wars with Mithradates and Pharnaces, respectively, treated the people with much kindness, and left to them most of the works of sculpture with which their town had been embellished by the Pontic monarchs. Sinope is mentioned as a flourishing place in the times of Strabo, Trajan, and Arrian, nor did it decay, till every other place, in like manner and for the same reasons, decayed on the advent of the barbarians from Central Asia, under the hoofs of whose horses, as the proverb says, no grass ever grows again.
Bithynia, the last province of Asia Minor to which we shall have to call attention, was, as we have remarked before in the case of Mysia, in its population, largely of Thracian origin. Subsequently to Cyrus the younger, it was ruled by a series of native kings, the last of whom, Nicomedes II., bequeathed his country to the Romans. Many of these rulers were men of tried valour; thus one defeated a general of Alexander the Great; and another crushed the invading Gauls. Pliny the Younger, in his letters, gives an interesting account of the spread of Christianity in this province, at the same time showing that his stern and hardy master, Trajan, was less inclined to act severely against them than his literary and philosophic lieutenant. The towns of Bithynia to which we propose to call attention, are Prusa, Nicæa, and Nicomedia.
Prusa, generally distinguished by the epithet ad Olympum, more clearly to mark its site, is said to have been built by Hannibal (Plin. v. 2), but was, probably, much older, though Chrysostom, a native of the town, does not claim for it any high antiquity (Orat. xliii. p. 585). It continued to flourish under the Roman Empire (Plin. Epist. x. 35), and was, also, for a while, a leading place under the Greek Empire; indeed, it is still, under the modified name of Broussa, one of the chief cities of Turkish Anatolia. Its name will, doubtless, be fresh in the memory of many of our readers as the long home of the gallant Abd-el-Kader, and of more than one of the Hungarian leaders whom the treachery of Georgey compelled to abandon their native country. The grand Olympus which overhangs Broussa was generally termed the Mysian, to distinguish it from the Olympus of Thessaly. Near it was the town of Hadriani (now Edrenos), the coins of which bear the inscription ΑΔΡΙΑΝΕΩΝ ΠΡΟC ΟΛΥΜΠΙΟΝ.
Nicæa, so named after his wife by Lysimachus, was the real capital of Bithynia, and, for a long time, one of the most important towns of Western Asia. Pliny the Younger, as governor of the province, undertook to restore it, and, during the later Byzantine period it was constantly taken and retaken by the Greeks and Turks, respectively. Leake and other travellers show that there are abundant remains of this famous old town, now called Isnik; not that, under the Turks, it is, or ever could have become, a great city. In Ecclesiastical story, Nicæa will ever be memorable as the site where assembled, in A.D. 325, the grand body of bishops, so well known as the Council of Nice, to condemn the Arian heresy. Our own Church is believed to owe to it its most valuable “Nicene” Creed. Coins of Nicæa abound even as late as the time of Gallienus.
Nicomedeia, as the name implies, the chief residence of the Bithynian kings of the name of Nicomedes, was a large and flourishing city, and, as may be gathered from the letters of Pliny to Trajan, long continued so; indeed, in later times, when occupied with the Parthian or other Eastern wars, it was a convenient and constant residence for the Roman emperors (Niceph. Callist. vii.). We have a curious account of the ruin done to this city by an earthquake in one of the strange orations of Julian’s friend, the orator Libanius, entitled μονωδία ἐπὶ Νικομηδείᾳ, in which he mourns the loss of its public baths, temples, gymnasia, &c.: some of these were, however, subsequently restored by Justinian (Procop. Ædif. v. 1). The historian Arrian was born here, and Constantine the Great died at his villa Ancyron, hard by.
Having said so much on the subject of the leading Greek cities of Asia Minor, or rather of some of them, we shall notice, but as briefly as possible, the principal islands adjacent to its shores; and as the space at our disposal compels us to contract our narrative within the closest limits, we shall refer only to Lesbos, Samos, Chios, Rhodus, and Cyprus. Crete, as a matter of fact, is generally attached, geographically, to the continent of Greece, but, in any case, would require a volume to itself that adequate justice should be done to its ancient and modern story.
Lesbos, which lay off the coast of Mysia, indeed, about seven miles from Assos, was celebrated in ancient times for its high cultivation of poetry and music, and for the many men of literary eminence it produced. To Lesbos we owe Terpander and Arion of Methymna, Alcæus, and Sappho; and Pittacus, Theophrastus, and Cratippus were also born there. More than one passage in Homer, and especially Il. xx. 544, and Odyss. iv. 342, show that many of the towns in the island had large populations, even in remote times, and owned, also, a considerable extent of territory on the mainland opposite. Lesbos displayed a personal love for freedom, which contrasted well with their kinsmen on the continent; for, though crushed, for a while, by Polycrates of Samos, and submitting, perhaps, wisely, to Harpagus, the general of Cyrus, the Lesbians were among the most active seconders of the revolt of Aristagoras, suffering severely in the end, as did Chios and Tenedos, when the Persians won the day. So, too, at Salamis, they stoutly supported the Greek cause. Their subsequent history was that of most of the islands in the Ægæan. Sometimes they were for, perhaps more often against, Athens; paying often dearly enough for their love of freedom; and being, in the end, chiefly under Athens, which, while strenuously advocating the so-called sacred cause of freedom, took good care to divide their lands among her own citizens. In later days, they struggled against Roman aggrandisement, but, of course, in vain. The Romans, however, do not seem to have treated the island with severity, and, as late as Commodus, we have a coin reading ΚΟΙΝΟΝ Λεσβίων, which implies some amount of self-government. We may mention, incidentally, that, at Lesbos, Julius Cæsar received a civic crown for saving the life of a soldier (Livy, Epit. 87; Sueton. c. 2); that, in A.D. 802, Irene, the Byzantine empress, here ended her strange life; and, that four centuries later, John Palæologus gave Lesbos, as her dowry, to his sister, when about to marry Francis Gateluzio, in whose hands the island remained till overwhelmed by the Turks.
Samos, a name said to mean highland, and, doubtless, deserving this name for its far superior height to the islands adjacent, bore, like Lesbos, many different names in antiquity, with a population much intermixed, the result of successive colonies of Carians, Leleges, and Ionians. To the last people it chiefly owed its historic fame, having been, in very early times, an active member of the Ionian confederacy. As islanders, the Samians had much credit for their skill in boatbuilding; indeed, Thucydides (i. 13) goes so far as to say they were the first boatbuilders, a statement, evidently, to be accepted with a good deal of allowance. It seems, however, certain that a citizen of Samos, one Cælius, was the first to reach the Atlantic by passing through the Pillars of Hercules, and that Polycrates, the friend of Anacreon, did much to increase the naval fame of his island.
After having made treaties with Amasis of Egypt, and Cambyses of Persia (which alone show the eminence ascribed to Samos at this early period), we know further, that, from Samos, as his head-quarters, Datis sailed for Marathon, the inference being that Samos at that time was less Greek than perhaps, it ought to have been; hence too, perhaps, somewhat later, the severe punishment inflicted on it by Pericles and Sophocles. From the commencement of the Roman wars in the East, Samos seems, generally, to have sided with Rome, becoming, ultimately, part of the province of “Asia.” Hence, too, probably the fact that Augustus (or rather as he then was, Octavianus) spent his winter there after the battle of Actium. Samos was, in early times, greatly devoted to the worship of Juno, and Herodotus states that her temple there was the largest he had seen. It was, however, never completely finished. According to Virgil, Samos was the second in the affections of Juno, and, in Strabo’s time, in spite of the plunder it had suffered in the Mithradatic war, and, subsequently, by Verres, her temple was a complete picture-gallery. Here too, as so often elsewhere, a Sacred Way led from the temple to the city. Samos was also famous for an earthenware of a “red lustrous” character. Her art, in this respect, was copied by the Romans, their common red ware being popularly called “Samian.” Of this most Museums have abundant and excellent specimens (Marryat, “Pottery and Porcelain,” 1850).