Bithynia

“ Perhaps he was glad to hear that at least one pupil, likely to do good work in the world, was remembering him gratefully in Bithynia. Possibly he thought another such pupil stood before him. I had never seen him close, face to face. Now I felt strongly drawn towards him, but not quite as pupil to master. From the moment of leaving the lecture-room that day, I had been repeating, “Alas, Cithaeron, why didst thou receive and preserve me?” Poor Œdipus! He seemed to sum up the cry of myriads of mortals predestined to misery. And what gospel had my Master for them? ”

“ Nothing effective was done to put down piracy for nearly twenty years, and meanwhile the question of the government of Bithynia, whose last sovereign Nicomedes on his death (B.C. 79) left the Romans his heirs, gave rise to another war with Mithradates (B.C. 74–63) , which, however, did not much affect Hellenic Asia, except the cities on the Propontis and Euxine, and especially Cyzicus, which had to stand a long siege. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Bithynia, Phrygia, and Colchis, must however be excepted from sharing in this general propriety of the female character; for, as these nations are chiefly connected with Cancer and the Moon, their male population is, generally speaking, slavish in its habits, timid and superstitious, while the greater part of the women, owing to the matutine and masculine position of the Moon, are of masculine manners, ambitious of command, and warlike. ”

“ Nicæa,1225 the capital of Bithynia, is situated on the Ascanian lake. It is surrounded by a very large and very fertile plain, which in the summer is not very healthy. Its first founder was Antigonus, the son of Philip, who called it Antigonia. It was then rebuilt by Lysimachus, who changed its name to that of his wife Nicæa. She was the daughter of Antipater. The city is situated in a plain. Its shape is quadrangular, eleven stadia in circuit. ”

“ That monarch left his dominions by will to the Roman people, and Bithynia was accordingly declared a Roman province; but Mithridates asserted that the late king had left a legitimate son by his wife Nysa, whose pretensions he immediately prepared to support by his arms.
The forces with which Mithridates was now prepared to take the field were such as might inspire him with no unreasonable confidence of victory. He had assembled an army of 120,000 foot-soldiers, armed and disciplined in the Roman manner, and 16,000 horse, besides a hundred scythed chariots. ”

“ When the Odrysians themselves returned, they fell to burying their own dead, quaffing copious draughts of wine in their honour and holding horse-races; but for the future they deemed it advisable to camp along with the Hellenes. Thus they harried and burned Bithynia the winter through.
6With the commencement of spring Dercylidas turned his back upon the Bithynians and came to Lampsacus. Whilst at this place envoys reached him from the home authorities. These were Aracus, Naubates, and Antisthenes. ”

“ This letter did not satisfy me at all. “Honest men,” I repeated, “may be deceived.” True, and Scaurus, though honest as the day, is no exception. To think that Epictetus, our Epictetus—for so Arrian and I used to call him—had been even for a time under the spell of such a superstition as this! I had always assumed—and my conversation with Arrian about what seemed exceptional experiences in Bithynia had done little to shake my assumption—that the Christians were a vile Jewish sect, morose, debased, given up to monstrous secret vices, hostile to the Empire, and hateful to Gods and men. ”

“ In return for his assistance against the Scythians, the Greeks of the Cimmerian Bosporus and the Tauric Chersonese recognized his suzerainty. He occupied Colchis, Paphlagonia and part of Galatia, set his son Ariarathes on the throne of Cappadocia and drove out Nicomedes III., the young king of Bithynia. ”

“ After this portion of Bithynia, the next provinces are Pontus and Paphlagonia, in which are the noble cities of Heraclea, and Sinope, and Polemonium, and Amisus, and Tios, and Amastris, all originally founded by the energy of the Greeks; and Cerasus, from which Lucullus brought the cherry, and two lofty islands which contain the famous cities of Trapezus and Pityus.
17. Beyond these places is the Acherusian cave, which the natives call Μυχοπόντιον ”

“ That Bithynia was a colony of the Mysians, first Scylax of Caryanda will testify, who says that Phrygians and Mysians dwell around the Ascanian lake. The next witness is Dionysius, who composed a work on “the foundation of cities.” He says that the straits at Chalcedon, and Byzantium, which are now called the Thracian, were formerly called the Mysian Bosporus. Some person might allege this as a proof that the Mysians were Thracians; and Euphorio says ”

“ Summoned in an evil hour by Nicomedes to aid him and the Greek states of Asia Minor in their struggle against the Seleucidæ, they soon established him on the throne of Bithynia. But they now turned their victorious arms against the nations of that unhappy country. Their armies, increased by reinforcements drawn from Thrace, had divided themselves into three hordes: the Tectosages, the Tolistoboies, and the Trocmes. To avoid dispute, they distributed the whole of Asia Minor into three parts: of these the Trocmes possessed the Hellespont and Troas; the Tolistoboies, Æolida and Ionia ”

“ The minor dynasties of non-Greek origin, the native Bithynian and the two Persian dynasties in Pontus and Cappadocia, were Hellenized before the Romans drove the Seleucid out of the country. In Bithynia the upper classes seem to Native dynasties. have followed the fashion of the court (Beloch iii. [i.] , 278) ; the dynasty of Pontus was phil-hellenic by ancestral tradition; the dynasty of Cappadocia, the most conservative, dated its conversion to Hellenism from the time when a Seleucid princess came to reign there early in the 2nd century B.C. as the wife of Ariarathes V. (Diod. xxxi. 19. 8) . ”

“ Divers of them likewise are of such jealousy over their master and whosoever of his household, that if a stranger do embrace or touch any of them, they will fall fiercely upon them, unto their extreme mischief if their fury be not prevented. Such a one was the dog of Nichomedes, king sometime of Bithynia, who seeing Consigne the queen to embrace and kiss her husband as they walked together in a garden, did tear her all to pieces, maugre his resistance and the present aid of such as attended on them. ”

“ Pompholyx is a very remarkable ultra-dextral form of Limnaea, apparently akin to the Choanomphalus of [342] L. Baikal. Bithynia, absent from the Eastern States, is represented by two species. The general indications are in favour of the Californian fauna having migrated from an Old World source after the upheaval of the Sierras; the American fauna, on the other hand, is purely indigenous, with no recent Old World influence at all.
Land Mollusca of the Nearctic Region
F. The Neotropical Region
The land Mollusca of the Neotropical Region stand in complete contrast to those of the Nearctic. ”

“ In each successive sally the same phenomena recurred, until at length all the Greeks were overpowered and slain, except fifteen of them, who charged through the Bithynians in the first sally, and marched onward to join Derkyllidas, instead of returning with their comrades to the palisade. Derkyllidas lost no time in sending a reinforcement, which, however, came too late, and found only the naked bodies of the slain. The victorious Bithynians carried away all their own captives. ”

“ The Bithynians especially, in the north-western portion of this territory, and reaching from the Euxine to the Propontis, are often spoken of as Asiatic Thracians,—while on the other hand various tribes among the Thracians of Europe, are denominated Thyni, or Thynians, [378] —so little difference was there in the population on the two sides of the Bosphorus, alike brave, predatory, and sanguinary. The Bithynians of Asia are also sometimes called Bebrykians, under which denomination they extend as far southward as the gulf of Kios in the Propontis. ”

“ The enemy waited their approach, confident in the excellence of his position; but as they drew closer the Hellene light troops, with a loud alala! without waiting for the order, dashed against the foe. The latter, on their side, came forward eagerly to meet the charge, both the cavalry and the mass of the Bithynians; and these turned the peltasts. ”

“ We can hardly think without enthusiasm of the Bithynian Achilles group, placed in later times in the Temple of Neptune, near the Circus Flaminius in Rome, which, according to Pliny, would have made the master celebrated even though he had created nothing else during his lifetime. ”

“ Of these, one may note for their later celebrity Philadelphia in Lydia and Attalia on the Pamphylian coast. The native Bithynian dynasty became Hellenized in the course of the 3rd century, and in the matter of city building Prusias (the old Cius) , Apamea (the old Myrlea) , probably Prusa, and above all Nicomedia attested its activity. While new Greek cities were rising in the interior, the older Hellenism of the western coast grew in material splendour under the munificence of Hellenistic kings. ”

“ These when they had crossed over into Asia came to be called Bithynians, but formerly they were called, as they themselves report, Strymonians, since they dwelt upon the river Strymon; and they say that they were driven out of their abode by the Teucrians and Mysians. Of the Thracians who lived in Asia the commander was Bassakes the son of Artabanos. ”

“ When, in 400 B.C., Xenophon marched with the mercenaries of Cyrus from the Tigris to the Black Sea, the authority of the king was nonexistent north of Armenia, and the tribes of the Pontic mountains, with the Greek cities on the coast, were completely independent. In Paphlagonia, the native dynasts founded a powerful though short-lived kingdom, and the chieftains of the Bithynians were absolutely their own masters. The frontier provinces of India were also lost. ”

“ Rarely had a messenger of love been awaited with such feverish suspense as the slave whom Gras had despatched to Tanis to induce the goldsmith to return home. He might come soon after nightfall, and Hermon used the interval to ask the Bithynian the questions which he had long expected. ”

“ The hostile Bithynians, however, watching their opportunity when the Odrysians were out marauding, suddenly attacked at daybreak the two hundred Grecian hoplites in the camp. Shooting at them over the palisade with darts and arrows, they killed and wounded some, while the Greeks with their spears were utterly helpless, and could only reach their enemies by pulling up the palisade and charging out upon them; but the light-armed assailants, easily evading the charge of warriors with shield and spear, turned round upon them when they began to retire, and slew several before they could get back. ”

“ But Phylarchus, in the sixth book of his History, says that the Byzantians used the Bithynians in the same manner, just as the Lacedæmonians do the Helots. But respecting those who among the Lacedæmonians are called Epeunacti, and they also are slaves, Theopompus gives a very clear account in the thirty-second book of his History, speaking as follows:—"When many of the Lacedæmonians had been slain in the war against the Messenians, those who were left being afraid lest their enemies should become aware of their desolate condition, put some of the Helots into the beds of those who were dead ”

“ There remains to be described the country within the Halys, belonging to the province of Pontus, and situated about the Olgassys,1196 and contiguous to the Sinopic district. The Olgassys is a very lofty mountain, and difficult to be passed. The Paphlagonians have erected temples in every part of this mountain. The country around, the Blaene, and the Domanītis, through which the river Amnias1197 runs, is sufficiently fertile. Here it was that Mithridates Eupator entirely destroyed1198 the army of Nicomedes the Bithynian, not in person, for he himself happened to be absent, but by his generals. ”

“ Hadrian’s love for the beautiful Bythinian youth was in itself rather Greek than Roman. Looking at the “Antinous” in the Vatican collection, and comparing it with the statue of “Nerva,” the reaction against the Roman preference for a vigorous actuality is apparent at once. The “Antinous” is not a portrait as much as the incarnation of a type. The expression of brooding melancholy, rather than the features of the man Antinous, characterizes all the statues of the Bythinian youth scattered through the galleries of Europe. This is the Greek, not the Roman method. ”