W. S. W. Vaux

“ In the neighbourhood of Miletus stood, at Branchidæ or Didyma, the famous temple of Apollo Didymæus, the site, we feel pleased to say, of one of Mr. Newton’s most valuable researches. It was known in Greek history from the remotest times, as the site of a shrine and of an oracle second only in sanctity and importance to that of Delphi; as the spot where Pharaoh Necho dedicated the armour he had worn when he took the city of Cadytis (Herod, ii. 159) , and as a place which received from Crœsus, before his war with Cyrus, golden offerings equal in weight to those he gave to Delphi. ”

“ The Lydian Magnesia—usually called “Ad Sipylum,” to distinguish it from the Magnesia of Ionia—was the scene of the great victory gained by the two Scipios in B.C. 190, over Antiochus the Great though aided by the Gauls, which handed over Western Asia to the Romans. Hence, in the Mithradatic war, the Magnesians stood firmly by Rome. A coin of this place has on it the head of Cicero, and is interesting as the only portrait (good or bad) we have of that great orator. In legendary history, Mount Sipylus, which overhangs Magnesia on the S., was famous as the residence of Tantalus and Niobe ”

“ Under the reign of Crœsus, Sardes was unquestionably a great and flourishing city, the resort of men of learning and ability, who were, Herodotus tells us, attracted thither by the fame and hospitality of the king (i. 29) : on the success of Cyrus, it was simply transferred from the native dynasty of rulers to the conquering Persians, becoming thus, not only the capital of Persian Asia Minor, but the occasional residence of the monarch himself. Thus Xerxes spent the winter there when preparing his unwise invasion of Greece (Herod. vii. 32-37) ”

“ Immediately around me were the ruins, extending for miles, undisturbed by any living creature except the goats and kids. On every side lay columns, triglyphs and friezes, of beautiful sculpture, every object speaking of the grandeur of this ancient city. In one place I saw thirty Doric capitals placed up in a line for a fence.” Sir Charles Fellows gives a drawing of one of the friezes now in Paris, and adds, “I then entered the Via Sacra, or Street of Tombs, extending for miles. ”

“ 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. ”

“ While my workmen were eating and resting I cut out the treasure with a great knife, not without the greatest effort and the most terrible risk of my life, for the great wall of the fortress which I had to undermine, threatened every moment to fall upon me. ”

“ Over the towns in the remaining provinces of Asia Minor, Cappadocia, Pontus, Paphlagonia, and Bithynia, it will not be necessary for us to linger at any length; not because there are not abundant objects of interest in each of them, but that the remains, purely Greek, are comparatively few, while the space we can give for an adequate description of them is exceedingly limited. We shall, however, notice some of the chief places, either of Greek origin, or directly connected with the Greeks, referring to the journals of the travellers we have so often quoted ”

“ The artistic remains of this people are inferior to those below them; yet they made coarse pottery, battle-axes, knives, nails, &c., with a slight use of copper or bronze, but with plenty of stone implements. This place, having been destroyed in its turn, another set of people occupied the mound, a race inferior in civilization to all who had preceded them. These people, it has been suspected, were Cimmerians, perhaps, portions of the Nomad tribes, who, we know from Herodotus and Strabo, constantly made eruptions into Asia Minor. ”

“ We have, too, the statement of Diodorus, that Theodorus of Samos and his brother Telecles of Ephesus, the sons of Rhoecus, derived the canon of their sculptures from Egypt. The general character, however, of the ornamentation, the mæander-pattern, and the lotos and borders on the garments of the seated figures, agreeing, as these do, with the same patterns on early Greek vases, tend to show that their actual artists were Greeks. Thus, too, the archaic statue of Athene in the Acropolis at Athens is essentially Greek, and not Egyptian. ”

“ Newton has embraced everything in his remark that “the conception of the human form as an organic whole, a conception we meet with in the very dawn of Greek art, nowhere appears” in Dr. Schliemann’s collections, the probability being that these objects are of an antiquity long antecedent to anything Greek, and the work of a people in no way connected with the Greeks. In Greek art, the usual adjunct to most representations of Athene on coins is the owl, while in Homer (Odyss. iii. 372) Athene leaves Nestor, under the form of an osprey. ”

“ It ought to be added that the ancient name of Apamea, when the capital of Phrygia, was Celænæ, and that, in Roman times, though Laodicea Combusta was the residence of the proconsul, it was considered, commercially, inferior only to Ephesus. Laodicea was one of the towns privileged to strike those curious silver coins known by the name of Cistophori. Though we do not accept the Ark story as the origin of this name “Kibotus,” we cannot say that we attach much, if any, weight to many other derivations that have been proposed. ”

“ In Lycaonia there were few towns of importance, except Iconium, Laodicea, Derbe, and Lystra, the geological features of the country being unfavourable to the existence of a large population. Travellers who have seen both compare Lycaonia with the interior of Australia. Both were, by nature, extensive sheep-walks (thus, Amyntas had as many as 300 flocks of sheep) ; while both, alike, had much of arid and salt desert, fitted only for camels. The central plain of Lycaonia, from Kiepert’s map, seems the largest in Asia Minor, and resembles the steppes of Central Asia and of southern Russia. ”

“ The temple we now know was about 1,400 yards from the city, a fact, apparently, not anticipated by the first modern investigators of its site.
The inhabitants of Ephesus, as a rule, were time-servers, and ready to court the support of whosoever for the time being were their most powerful neighbours. Thus, at first, they joined the Ionian revolt; then, on the overthrow of Xerxes, were for a while tributary to Athens; and then, again, after the victories of Lysander, permitted their city to be the head-quarters of the Spartan operations against Asia Minor ”

“ Our knowledge of the ancient geography of Pisidia is mostly derived from Arrian’s notice of Alexander’s march, from Livy’s account of the expedition of C. Manlius Vulso, and from the details in Polybius of the hostilities carried on by Garsyeris, the general of Achæus, against the people of Termessus, one of its chief cities. At the time Manlius was approaching this town the Termessians were in open war with the people of Isionda or Isinda, and, having captured this city, were besieging the citadel. The Roman general was not sorry to have so good a pretext for interfering ”

“ Having now spoken of some of the principal places in the west and south of Asia Minor, it will, we think, be convenient to take next those towards its centre, in Cappadocia, Phrygia, and Galatia. We must, however, notice, first, the two small districts of Lycaonia and Isauria, which are really portions cut out of the larger adjoining provinces. Isauria will not detain us long, as there is little in it that can be called Greek. It was, as it has ever been, a wild mountain district, with a population unsubdued till about the time of Constantine ”

“ It was evidently a city of note when Xenophon came there, in B.C. 400, with the remains of the Ten Thousand, as its citizens hospitably entertained the Greek host under his command. We find it, also, in much prosperity when Arrian was governor of Pontus, under Hadrian. In later days, Trapezus was the capital of a petty empire under a branch of the princely house of the Comneni, its rulers assuming the pompous title of Emperors of Trebizonde, and claiming, though not always securing, independence of the Greek Empire. It is still a place of commercial importance. ”

“ Laodicea “ad Lycum” was, in the time of Strabo, one of the principal places in this province, and the centre of the Roman power in this part of Asia. Many men of great wealth, it is said, contributed to its early magnificence; Strabo noticing Hiero, who, besides greatly embellishing it during his lifetime, left to it by will the sum of 2,000 talents, together with the orator Zeno, and his son Polemo, who was made by Augustus king of part of Pontus. ”

“ Paul stands out alone—“none but himself can be his parallel.”
St. Paul’s missionary labours commenced from the period when the Holy Ghost said, “Separate me Barnabas and Paul for the work whereunto I have called them” (Acts xiii. 2) ; an order, doubtless, given at Antioch in Syria, as they soon after started from Seleucia, the port of Antioch, for Cyprus, the native home of Barnabas. Antioch was then the capital of Northern Syria, and as much, if not more than Jerusalem, the centre of Christian evangelization. Hence, the natural reason why at Antioch men were “first called Christians.” ”

“ In the various wars of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., we find the Cnidians sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other. Thus, they submitted to Harpagus, the general of Cyrus; [41] then supported Athens, then deserted her after her losses in Sicily, [42] and then, again, in Roman times, were, generally, on the side of Rome. [43] The Cnidians derived much fame from their patronage of art. Thus, the famous painting of Polygnotus in the Lesche at Delphi was their gift; [44] as were also a statue of Jupiter at Olympia, and one at Delphi, of their founder, Triopas ”

“ Like the people of the adjacent Laodicea, the Colossians were great growers of wool. It was nearly destroyed in the days of Nero, but it survived, at all events, as the name of a Christian bishopric, till the time of Hierocles’s Synecdemus. Somewhat later, a new town named Chonas was built there, the certain identification of its ruins being mainly due to the fact that Nicetas the Annalist was born there. St. Paul, as we know, wrote an epistle to the Colossians, but his words, “Since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus,” seem to imply that he was never there himself. ”

“ But of the cities of W. Asia, no one took a higher place than Ephesus; though not one of the most ancient, or noticed by Homer. Pliny ascribes its origin to the Amazons; and Strabo gives an excellent account of its site, the chief feature of which was a celebrated port called Panormus, with the temple of Diana, one of the Seven Wonders of the world, at a little distance without the city walls. ”

“ Colossæ, the last of the three towns, has been much confused with the other two, from the haste and want of accurate observation of different travellers. Much time is, indeed, requisite for the comparison of the brief notes of ancient authors with the existing facts. It is not certain when Colossæ was founded, or to what circumstances it owes its name, but it existed some centuries before the Christian era, as it is mentioned by Herodotus as a large and flourishing town of Phrygia when Xerxes passed through it in B.C. 142481, on his way from Cappadocia to Sardes (vii. 30) ”

“ Newton found remains of no less than fourteen, may have stood between the columns or at the corners, looking out on the plain. Since their arrival in England, great skill has been shown in uniting the innumerable fragments into which some of the 70slabs and statues had been broken; and visitors to the British Museum are now able to form a good idea of the grandeur and beauty of the equestrian or Amazonian figure, whose costume resembles that of the Persians on the temple of the Wingless Victory at Athens; and of the two great statues it has been agreed to call Mausolus and Artemisia. ”

“ During the Peloponnesian war, Chios at first supported the Athenians, but was afterwards ravaged by them, though they failed to take its capital. So, in the Mithradatic war, though at first supporting the king of Pontus, Chios fell under his displeasure, in that it had allowed Roman “negotiatores” to frequent and settle in its ports, and had to pay 2,000 talents, and to suffer still rougher treatment at the hands of his general, Zenobius. In modern times, Scio has suffered more perhaps than any other Greek island. ”

“ Laodicea Combusta was about nine hours N.W. of Iconium, and under its modern names of Yorgan Ladik or Ladik-el-Tchaus, is famous throughout Asia Minor for its manufacture of carpets. It has been, popularly, supposed, that it derived its name from the existence at it of some remarkable volcanic agencies. This, however, Mr. Hamilton has clearly shown, is not the case. “There is not,” he says, “a particle of volcanic or igneous rock in the neighbourhood; the hills consist of blue marble, and of the argillaceous and micaceous schists with which that rock is usually associated.” ”

“ The people of Mylasa having made a successful resistance to the attacks of Philip, the son of Demetrius, were rewarded by being made “free” by the Romans. Modern travellers, from Pococke to Chandler, fully confirm the statements of the ancients as to the abundance of marble monuments; and Colonel Leake adds that, since they were there, the Turks have pulled down the best ruin, that of the Temple of Romulus and Augustus. ”

“ Yet, in spite of the silence of history, we have some indirect evidence from the monuments themselves; enough, at least, to determine their age within tolerably accurate 51limits. In the first place, we have the character of their art, which is, unquestionably, very archaic; secondly, on three of the chairs are inscriptions in the oldest Greek character; on the most important one written boustrophedon (i.e. backwards and forwards, as an ox ploughs) ; thirdly, a long inscription on the recumbent lion, and another, quite as old, on a detached block, the base, possibly, of a statue now lost. ”

“ It was a popular belief that the Æolians were the first great body of Greek colonists to settle in Asia Minor, but, curiously, the name of Æolians does not occur in Homer. Strabo makes 33their advent to Asia Minor four generations earlier than the Ionian migration, and this movement has been supposed to have been contemporary with the return of the Heracleidæ, and may, not improbably, have been, in some degree, caused by it. In common with the other Greek colonies, the Æolians became subject to Crœsus, and, on the success of Cyrus, were annexed to the Persian empire ”

“ Schliemann went to work much as miners do when they are “prospecting,” only on a larger scale: he took soundings of the plain till he reached the virgin rock, at a depth never greater than 16 feet, at first meeting only with walls of houses and fragments of pottery of a Greek or even later period. As he found nothing else up to the edge of 17the Pergamum, [12] he concluded that the original Ilium did not spread into the plain, and that its area was accurately defined by the great wall he afterwards found. ”

“ There are still, according to Sir Charles Fellows, remains of a considerable city; and it is also, under 56the name of Ak-Hissar, a flourishing commercial town. Close to the Lake Gygæa, not far from Sardes, was the sepulchral mound of Alyattes, considered by Herodotus one of the wonders of Lydia. This remarkable tumulus, which is about 280 yards in diameter, has been recently excavated by M. Spiegenthal, who discovered in its centre a sepulchral chamber of highly polished marble blocks, and of about the same size as that of the tomb of Cyrus. Such tumuli are common in Asia Minor ”

“ When, however, towards the end of the fifth century, the festivals of Venus were revived by Asclepiodotus of Alexandria, the ancient name was revived also.
83Sir Charles Fellows has given an excellent description (Lycia, p. 32) of the state in which he found the ruins, with a beautiful drawing of the Ionic temple. “I never,” says he, “saw in one place so many perfect remains, although by no means of a good age of the arts”: he thinks, too, that the early city must have been in great measure destroyed. ”