IISOME PAGES OF HISTORY
In this chapter we take a passing glance at the history of the Hittite lands after the Hittite power had passed, down to the establishment of the Seljûk Turks in the twelfth and thirteenth centuriesA.D.It is not a connected story, for with the disappearance of the Hittites the political horizon changed: thereafter the balance of power in the Near East was several times distributed anew. We must therefore be content to sketch an outline of the general course of eventful history in which the lands subsequently shared, and to note in what manner, but not to what extent, the local records and monuments are evidence of the parts they severally played.
We are compelled to make these limitations, for no land on earth can claim a history so momentous as the drama that was worked out in Asia Minor during the centuries that followed the Hittite domination. Here was the scene of a long struggle for supremacy both among its own peoples and between the adjoining portions of the two continents which it connects; a thousandIliadswould do scant justice to the deeds of arms alone. And the struggle of the continents was not merely for the possession of a land itself rich in minerals and for the most part highly fertile, but for a passage-way for great migrations, civilisations, and religions. To this story we have nothing to contribute,no new evidence to bring forward, no new opinions to maintain; the history of Asia Minor has been written by pens more able and more competent to deal with it.[77]In introducing these few pages our object is to subserve our main inquiry: to enable us to distinguish between the works of the various phases of history that we meet with in our wanderings, and especially to appreciate by contrast the peculiarities of the Hittite monuments which we shall next consider.
Though we defer writing the story of the Hittites until we have seen what their own works can tell us, we find ourselves obliged to trace its outline[78]in order to decide at what point that story ends. The Hittites first appear in history about 2000B.C., when it would appear that they were already powerful enough to overturn the first dynasty of Babylon and sack that city, and that they had settlements in southern Syria on the frontiers of Egypt. Certain Hittite tablets from Central Asia Minor are said to belong to the same age. Nothing is known, however, of the constitution of the Hittites in these early times; but it may be inferred that they subsequently retired from the south or were there submerged. It is not until the fifteenth centuryB.C.that the name of the Hittites definitely reappears, when successive expeditions of the Pharaohs encountered them in the north of Syria. Then in the fourteenth century their capital is found at Boghaz-Keui, in the ruins of which their archives of this period have been recently unearthed. These, supplemented by the Tell-el-Amarna letters, tell how the King of the‘Hatti’—the local and at that time dominant element—became Great King of the Hittite confederated peoples and vassal states, whose chief towns included most of the sites identified with Hittite remains, like Hamath, Aleppo, Carchemish, Marash, Malatia, and many city-states as yet unidentified. This was the period of their greatest empire, and it is probable that the regions of Cilicia, Lycaonia, Phrygia, and even Lydia at this time acknowledged the suzerainty of the all-powerful soldier-king. For five or six generations of the Hatti rulers the position of the Hittites as a dominant power in Western Asia was recognised by the Pharaohs and the Kings of Babylon, both in their letters and treaties and by the exchange of ambassadors. During the great migrations of the twelfth centuryB.C., however, it would seem that the Hatti dynasty was overthrown and the Hittite empire dismembered. This may be inferred from the cessation of their own archives and from the appearance of the Muski, identified in later times with the Phrygians,[79]upon the north-west frontier of Assyria,[80]having thus fought their way across the heart of Asia Minor. These were repulsed,[81]but this incursion was contemporaneous with a shifting of the chief Hittite power to Carchemish, while Hamath on the Orontes and other southern centres come into increased prominence.
In trying to work out the story of the decline and fall of the Hittite power, we are faced with the same difficulty that enshrouded the whole problem of the Hittites until recent discoveries shed the light ofinternal documentary evidence upon the period of their empire—namely, that for the most part only the events connected with certain of their frontier lands came at all within the horizon of the Assyrian and the Greek historians, and these are seen by us with relative disproportion. To take a single illustration, we fail to find in the Egyptian and Assyrian records any suggestion as to the position of the Hittite capital of the fourteenth century at Boghaz-Keui; and for more than seven hundred years we are without any direct evidence as to its fortunes, until a chance reference by Herodotus in describing the affairs of Lydia tells us of its final overthrow.
In the tenth century, however, during the temporary decline of Assyria and the withdrawal of the Phrygians, the Hittite states may be inferred to have largely recovered their power and independence. But though there were frequent alliances between neighbouring states, there does not seem to have been any over-lord, as of old, powerful enough to unite them all under his leadership and to maintain a consistent policy. Malatia and Marash appear as the chief cities of kingdoms in Taurus, while in the Anti-Taurus the kingdom of Tabal (or Tubal) probably included the districts of Komana, Ekrek, Mazaca, and Fraktin. On the plateau the kingdom of the Khilakku, which we may call Greater Cilicia (embracing the region from Tyana to the Kara Dagh, and from Karaburna to Bulghar-Madên), replaced the original state of Hatti within the Halys as chief representative of Hittite power and tradition. But it was not for long: if the Muski had retreated it was only to gather strength; while in the east a new rival, of force and character similar to the Hittites, had appeared in the region of Lake Van, pressingdown to the Euphrates and even into Syria, where also the steady infiltration of Aramæan peoples was already challenging the dominance of the old Hittite stock.
From the middle of the ninth century also the struggles of the weakening Hittite tribes against the reviving power of Assyria were renewed; and this time they were doomed. Their lands of Syria and in the Taurus were thereafter the objective of many punitive expeditions on the part of successive Assyrian kings, who claim always to have conquered and exacted tribute. For over a century, however, though many times defeated and severely punished, these states as often found opportunity for casting off the yoke. But Sargon, late in the eighth century, adopted with stern determination the policy which his predecessors had initiated, of transporting large numbers of the rebellious population and replacing them by Assyrian colonists. One by one the greater Hittite centres on his frontiers were absorbed, and when the Assyrian forces passed into Asia Minor to challenge the supremacy of the Phrygian Midas, about 718B.C., it is clear that these two powers had divided the Hittite territory between them. The appearance, too, in the north, of the Cimmerians, in wellnigh irresistible strength, had changed the political horizon.[82]
From one point of view, however, it would be natural to point to the destruction of Pteria by Crœsus, in the middle of the sixth centuryB.C., as the last event of Hittite history, and so begin our post-Hittite story from that time. The conquest by Cyrus and the reunification of all the Hittite lands under Persian rule a few years later, in 546, would provide a suitable starting-point;yet, in fact, from the age of Sargon, a century and a half before, there can be traced no real semblance of surviving Hittite power nor any of the old Hittite individuality in the local arts. Their very name then almost disappeared from Oriental history, and was retained but as a memory; while in Asia Minor the power of the Phrygian kings was then at its zenith, and in the presence of Phrygian inscriptions at Eyuk,[83]near the old Hittite capital, and at Tyana,[84]which seems to have replaced Pteria in importance in the revival of the tenth century, there is indication that the Hittite day was already ended. But though the Hittite power was broken and disintegrated, their civilisation faded only gradually from view. Long after the sun had set upon its pride it lingered on, felt rather than seen, in the twilight that obscures our vision of the tableland in the early part of the first millenniumB.C., surviving long enough here and there, as we shall see, in the form of institutions and religious customs, to have left a trace in the pages of Greek history. Thereafter we have several clear phases to review, interrupted by others of considerable disturbance and obscurity. Following the overthrow of Assyria on the one hand, and the decline of Phrygia on the other, two new powers appeared in the sixth century in the Medes and the Lydians, who similarly divided Asia Minor, with the Halys as their mutual boundary. By 546, however, Cyrus had annexed the whole country to the Persian Empire, in the continuous history of which it shared until the advent, inB.C.324, of Alexander, who once more established the supremacy of the West. Withhis death the tribal struggles of antiquity reappear in new guise, and history is occupied chiefly with the varying fortunes of the kingdoms of Pergamum, of Pontus, and of the Seleucids, until in the first centuryB.C.Roman organisation gathered together the loose threads of independence and retied the knot in a manner that remained firm, in fine, for several hundred years. The next great landmark is not till 668A.D., when, forty-six years after the flight of Mohammed, the Saracen army laid siege to Constantinople. In 1067 the Seljûks appeared from the east, followed two centuries later by the Osmanli-Turks, though these were not finally re-established in power, after the Mongol invasions, until 1413A.D.
PLATE XXIVMONUMENTS OF PHRYGIABEY-KEUI: THE ROYAL ROAD TRACED BY RUTS IN THE SURFACE ROCK (See pp.24,38.)DIMERLI: A FALLEN LION (Seep. 60.)
PLATE XXIV
MONUMENTS OF PHRYGIA
BEY-KEUI: THE ROYAL ROAD TRACED BY RUTS IN THE SURFACE ROCK (See pp.24,38.)
DIMERLI: A FALLEN LION (Seep. 60.)
Of the monarchies that arose as the Hittite power declined, and in their turn passed away, that of the Phrygians first attracts our attention by its proximity in time and place. When the Muski first appeared in the twelfth centuryB.C.upon the north-west frontier of Assyria,[85]they gave warning of a tide of Aryan immigration setting in from the north-west. This first wave, after beating vainly against the ramparts of the Assyrian Empire, seems to have retreated; but it left its traces behind in a group of people, whether colonists or prisoners settled on the soil in the Assyrian manner, who by the same name reappear some centuries later[86]as a small state on the east of the Euphrates opposite Malatia. We know nothing of the early history of this movement, but, so far as can be seen, the rolling of this wave across Asia Minor was coeval with the submergence of the Hatti seated at Boghaz-Keui asthe dominant power among the Hittite states. Nor is it clear to what cause we must attribute the retiring of this vanguard. Probably, as in Syria with the Hittites,[87]and in Asia Minor with the Cimmerians, the migratory movement was intermittent; and historically we may see in the repulse by the Assyrians on the one hand, and in the development of the rival state of Lydia and the Greek colonies on the other, coupled with a certain recuperative vitality latent in the Hittite states of the centre, various active causes tending to the consolidation of the Phrygians at the focus of least resistance, in the fertile tracts to which they gave their name. However that may be, at the dawn of Greek history we find them already a fading power, but one which had left an indelible impression in Greek tradition and romance, obscuring entirely the old-time Hatti power of which no memory remained.
Though the settlement of the Phrygians is just beyond historical vision, the leading features of the movement can be inferred from Greek literature, and a certain amount of detail gathered from the monuments which they have left behind.[88]The chief migration of the Phrygians—the ninth wave of our simile—may be judged, from certain facts which Professor Ramsay has pointed out, to have taken place about the beginning of the ninth centuryB.C.They came in irresistible bands of mail-clad warriors from Macedonia and Thrace, crossing into Asia Minor by the Hellespont, and eventually establishing their monarchyand state on the sources of the Sangarius.[89]Being all men and conquerors, their coming introduced new ideas of the dominance of the male element in religion and in society.[90]The pre-existing central ideal of the people of Asia Minor had been based on the importance of motherhood, reflected in religion by the worship of the Mother-goddess, and in society by a matriarchal system and absence of true marriage. Now the Phrygians introduced a new Father-god and a god of thunder, and a reminiscence of the struggle between the old and new ideals may be traced in the pages of Homer; but ultimately they were amalgamated in various ways in different parts of the country.[91]
Profound as were the changes in religious and social ideals which the Phrygians introduced, these influences could hardly stir the popular imagination so deeply or so rapidly as their deeds of arms. Defended from all harm by their impenetrable armour, they carried all before them, so that they appeared in Greek tradition as a race of heroes, whose kings were the associates of the gods, whose language was before all,[92]and the speech of the goddess herself.[93]‘Their country was the land of great fortified cities.’[94]In this popular acclaim we suspect that the Phrygians received credit for works and to some extent for the prestige of the Hatti whose realm they had inherited.[95]Their kingdomwithout doubt held chief sway over the north-west and centre of Asia Minor during the ninth and eighth centuriesB.C.In the west, indeed, it was only at the end of that period challenged by the independence and growing strength of Lydia; and on the other hand it must have embraced, as we have shown, the regions both of Pteria[96]and of Tyana, where it touched the Assyrian frontier in the age of Sargon; but on the whole we fail to find any wide range of Phrygian works, of walled cities or of vast monuments, that could entitle the Phrygians to the whole credit of these memories.
None the less, some Phrygian monuments, like the ‘tomb of Midas’ near Doghanlu, are striking, peculiar, and impressive. So, too, are others further south, of which we reproduce some illustrations,[97]because of the added interest of the influence of Hittite art and technique which can be traced in them. The ‘lion tomb,’ near Dimerli, illustrates a motive dominant in their decorative reliefs, reflected in the later sepulchres of Ayazîn. Here are seen two lions, guarding as it were the entrance to the tomb, arranged facing one another on either side of the door. In the tomb of Dimerli the lions are rampant, and a column or altar is seen between them. The symbolism of this design may be purely Phrygian, but the decorative conception of the twin guardian lions is too freely found inHittite art[98]for us to doubt that it had been borrowed from the older population. So, too, in the method of carving the reliefs, as well as in detail of treatment, as, for instance, in the outline of the shoulder muscles of the fallen lion,[99]there is abundant indication to us now of an influence not visible to the historians of antiquity.
PLATE XXVMONUMENTS OF PHRYGIADIMERLI:THE LION TOMBAYAZÎN:TOMB WITH LIONSTYANA: PHRYGIAN INSCRIPTION OF MIDAS (Seep. 56.)
PLATE XXV
MONUMENTS OF PHRYGIA
TYANA: PHRYGIAN INSCRIPTION OF MIDAS (Seep. 56.)
Though the monuments and legends together help us to reconstruct the base and framework of Phrygian history, there are very few authenticated data with which to fill in the details. There is no long list of royal names, for the rulers are supposed to have been named Midas and Gordius alternately; and a few other names preserved in Greek tradition are merely legendary. It is not until the age of Sargon[100]at the close of the eighth centuryB.C., that a few facts come to light among the Assyrian archives. Then it would appear that the Phrygian sphere of influence had penetrated far into south-eastern Cappadocia and was expanding, until challenged by the Assyrian forces in a series of campaigns beginning in 718B.C.But Midas the Phrygian was not easily restrained, and in the next year prevailed on Pisiris of Carchemish to revolt against the Assyrian supremacy, while several minor states of Cappadocia, forming part of the region called Tabal, followed this example, prompted, doubtless, from the same source of inspiration. The rebels were promptly punished, and one of these expeditions sent against them penetrated, it would seem, to Tyana, at this time an important centre for the Phrygians[101]in the conductof their wars. In 709, however, following a further expedition sent against Midas from Cilicia, the Phrygians capitulated, sending ambassadors and tribute. The reason for this sudden change of front is also made apparent. About the middle of the eighth centuryB.C.there had appeared the first wave of an overwhelming movement of peoples from Southern Europe,[102]including seemingly both Cimmerians and Scythians, coming by way of the Caucasus, spreading terror and devastation as it passed. The Vannic power of Urartu in Southern Armenia about 720B.C.received the first onslaught, and then the frontiers of Sargon, who had to call up all the resources of his armies to protect his kingdom. Recoiling, the tide set westward through Asia Minor, meeting about 710 another similar stream[103]that had crossed the Bosphorus; and the united barbarians for half a century established a reign of terror in the north of Asia Minor. The details of the story are wanting, so far as it directly affects the Phrygians during this fateful period. About 675 however, the royal Midas (presumably the grandson ofMitawho had begged Assyria through his ambassadors for help), defeated on every hand, in despair committed suicide. The Cimmerians overran his country, and the kingdom of Phrygia henceforth ceased to be. We do not follow the movements of these hordes further; for they have left no trace or handiwork upon the Hittite lands which they had overrun, although it was not until the close ofthe seventh century that they disappeared. Their inroads, however, and the violent deflections which they gave to the course of history, are probably responsible for the final disappearance of all trace and memory of the Hittite power in Greek history.
The Lydian state in the west, that fought the final struggle for civilisation against these restless and untiring foes, next claims our notice from the way in which certain of its institutions and ancient customs reflect the influence of the Hittite civilisation, from which, indeed, they may have been inherited.[104]Unlike the rulers and customs of Phrygia, the leading elements of the Lydian society had been matured on the soil from dim antiquity. Tradition speaks of a dynasty of Heraclidae who ruled from the twelfth century for five hundred years,[105]and whose ancestor, Agron,[106]was descended from Hercules himself. Even before that date there is memory of a royal family of Atyadae, whose rule, if there be anything in this memory, must have passed back to the days of direct Hittite domination that saw the carving of the warrior-gods of Kara-Bel and maybe the Mother-goddess of Sipylus.
However that may be, we see the Lydians already an organised state, even while the Phrygian power was still at its height, before the Cimmerian storm had burst. As with the Hittites in past time, their constitution was partly that of confederate or vassal states governed by hereditary chiefs owning allegiance to theruling power at Sardis, and partly feudal,[107]the chieftains owing their military service and their tribal forces to the king, while the common people appear as serfs. In this society the king was both head of the priesthood and chief commander of the vassal chiefs in war.[108]The emblem of sovereignty was a double axe, which the Greeks said was derived from Hercules himself.[109]From among the mass of legend which characterise the earliest efforts of Greek history, it might be possible to trace many suggestions of the influence of the Hittite civilisation; but the lack of local monuments (a fact due doubtless to physical conditions), to reveal to us the dominant features of Lydian art, restrains us from this aspect of inquiry. One point at any rate is established, that not merely was the district of Lydia at one time embraced within the Hittite empire,[110]but that it became imbued then with many features of social organisation which it carried down from the old world to the new. Our main inquiry being based on the monuments of the Hittite lands, we cannot dwell upon the stories of the Lydian kings, of their desperate struggles with the Cimmerians following the downfall of Phrygia, nor of their warfare with the Medes, with whom, after the fall of Nineveh in 607B.C., they ultimately divided Asia Minor, with the Halys as the boundary between them. The names of two kings are worthy of mention as historical landmarks;the one is Gyges, first of the Mermnad dynasty in the middle of the seventh centuryB.C., contemporary of Assurbanipal, the Assyrian, and of Psamtek, Pharaoh of Egypt, with both of whom he held relations of diplomatic character. The other is Crœsus, the last and greatest of them all, who, having established his power eastward to the Halys, turned his attention to those rich Greek cities which had sprung up in the West.
PLATE XXVIVIEW NEAR SARDIS, THE ANCIENT CAPITAL OF LYDIAThe valley of the Pactolus, a tributary of the Hermus, which rising on Mt. Tmolus flowed past the temple of Kybele at Sardis.
PLATE XXVI
VIEW NEAR SARDIS, THE ANCIENT CAPITAL OF LYDIA
The valley of the Pactolus, a tributary of the Hermus, which rising on Mt. Tmolus flowed past the temple of Kybele at Sardis.
These colonies, founded in selected spots along the coast several centuries before, had indeed in many cases already passed their zenith. Cities like Smyrna, Ephesus, and Colophon were in the pride of their prosperity before the fall of Phrygia and the rise of Lydia. How old they were in their origin is not determinable, but they had received, and retained in historic times, the impress of the Hittite civilisation, so much so that Mr. Hogarth, writing of Ionia, concludes that ‘this coast was long dominated by an inland, continental power, that of the Cappadocian Hatti, who imposed their own distinct civilisation, and admitted the Ægean culture only as a faint influence ascending along the trade routes.’[111]‘The Goddess of the Phrygian mountains became at Smyrna the Sipylene Mother, and at Ephesus Artemis of the Many Breasts was worshipped with rites more Oriental than Greek.’ Recently also Sir Cecil Smith, in discussing certain ivory statuettes found by Mr. Hogarth in the foundations of the temple of Artemis, has pointed out further analogies with the old cult of the goddess, as revealed by the sculptures of Boghaz-Keui.[112]However that may be, the fact that the Hittite armies of thefourteenth or thirteenth centuryB.C.had penetrated to the coast at Smyrna and Ephesus, is made clear by the sculptures of Sipylus and of Kara-Bel, to which we have alluded.[113]Now these fair cities of Ionia fell one by one to Crœsus, who seemed likely to establish an empire even over the islands, when suddenly Cyrus the Persian appeared from the East, reuniting all the sundered parts of the old empires of Assyria and of Babylon as he passed. Crœsus marched immediately out to resist his oncoming, and as a preliminary step crossed the Halys and ‘ravaged the lands of the “Syrians,” and took the city of the Pterians and enslaved the inhabitants. He also took all the adjacent places and expelled the population, who had given him no cause for blame.’[114]Possibly we may see in these acts, which appeared wanton to the historian, an effort on the part of Crœsus to delay or prevent the passing of the Persian army, which would naturally follow the old royal road in preference to the undeveloped route across the desert. However that may be, the effort was vain: about 546B.C.the Lydian capital and its king fell into the hands of Cyrus.
The old Hittite realms were now reunited under Persian rule, and continued to share in the common history of the Empire of the Great King for more than two hundred years. For the purpose of administration Asia Minor was divided into provinces, governed by Satraps, of which the old kingdom of Lydia formed one, and the regions of Konia, Angora, Pteria, and Sivas were included in another, the largest of all, which reached from Lydia to Armenia, and included the whole plateau from the Taurus northwards to the sea.The tract of Cilicia with part of the province of Aleppo formed another, while the former Hittite states in the north of Syria were similarly grouped together. But the hold of the Great King ruling in Susa over his distant provinces was weak, and the spirit of Persian civilisation did not penetrate, or could not, into these historic lands. No monument remains to tell us of this phase, during which the old local institutions were maintained and even developed unrestrained. The Greek cities of the coast retained their Greek characters under Greek governors; while the tribes of the interior restored the rule of their local princes or priest-dynasts amid a condition of security and freedom which they had not known for many generations. All that the central power demanded was tribute and tranquillity. Local feuds between the Satraps might smoulder, and the symptoms of rebellion here and there remain almost unheeded, so long as these conditions were fulfilled. Under these circumstances the western people gradually recovered the spirit of independence, while from across the sea the Greek states even aspired to empire. The march of the Ten Thousand in 402, under Cyrus the younger, made famous by Xenophon in hisAnabasis, showed how lax was the organisation and how weak the control of the central government. It also opened up incidentally the southern route by the Mæander, Ilgîn, and Iconium to the Cilician gates, in preference to the longer royal road by way of Boghaz-Keui, by which hitherto the posts from Susa had travelled west to Sardis.
InB.C.334 Alexander the Great crossed the Hellespont, and within a year, by his energy and ability to use the new army-machine which he had inherited, had conquered western Asia Minor as far as the Halys, andpassed on leaving it his own. This date marks an issue more changeful to Asia Minor than the conquest of Cyrus. For though no monuments throw light on the story of the next two centuries, the system of government was now initiated which in due time was to result in the Hellenising of the interior. Cities were founded with Greek names, and the Greek speech gradually made its way, through Greek-speaking princes and governors, as the official language. The change worked very slowly, but it was profound in the issue, as we shall see. At first the states maintained their old customs and native dialects without appreciable difference, except in the vigour of the new government, but in the course of two or three centuries Greek language and Greek culture, even to some extent Greek thought and religious ideas, had permeated widely among the upper-class natives of the interior.
The struggles of Alexander’s successors, who had inherited from him the empire, are matters of common history. The Seleucids reunited, though in futile manner, the formerly Hittite regions in the north of Syria and Cilicia, and for a time gained some ascendency in Asia Minor, until defeated in 191B.C.and driven back beyond the Taurus, where for another century they retained a sphere of influence. But of greater interest to us is the survival of local power in Cappadocia, under the dynasty of Ariarthes, which had come to the fore in the last century of Persian domination. This state, at first with incessant warfare, and then by means of tribute to the Seleucids, maintained in effect a form of local independence which survived even down to the Roman occupation and beyond. Another state that retained its freedom and local princes throughout this time was Bithynia, on the tract opposite Constantinople,but this is a region outside the boundaries of our story.
PLATE XXVIICILICIA: ROMAN AQUEDUCTS OVER THE EASTERN PLAIN (Seep. 70.)
PLATE XXVII
CILICIA: ROMAN AQUEDUCTS OVER THE EASTERN PLAIN (Seep. 70.)
The Romans dallied long in following up the defeat of the Seleucids at Magnesia, when the way lay open to the annexation of Asia Minor, for which its people, torn by their internal wars, would have been even grateful. But it was not until late in the second century b.c. that the west was united as a Roman province. Even then the east remained under the direct government of the local princes, to whom the Roman Senate entrusted their frontier. At the beginning of the first centuryB.C.the disaffection of Mithridates, king of Pontus, a state bordering the Black Sea, and his efforts to win for himself a kingdom in Cappadocia and Bithynia, was one of the last fitful traces of the old native power, and called up more serious efforts on the part of Rome. The Cilician pirates, who from their base under the southern slopes of Taurus had become a leading naval power, were also suppressed, and during the century that followed the whole country as far as the Euphrates was gradually brought under direct control, and the provincial system was established. The province ofCiliciahad been founded inB.C.103, and after various successive modifications, during which the western district, Cilicia Trachæa, continued to be ruled by the priest-dynasts of Olba, the whole was united with Lycaonia under a consular legate about 137A.D.Bithynia-Pontus, the scene of the late rebellions, came into the power of Rome by the will of its last king inB.C.74, and the double province was put under the administration of a prætorian proconsul inB.C.27.Galatiawas constituted inB.C.25, andPontuswas added to it in 63A.D.Finally, the occupation ofCappadocia, dating fromA.D.17, completed the divisionof the administrative districts; for the sixth provinceAsia, in the west, had been the earliest founded, as we have noted, inB.C.133.
PLATE XXVIIIKYRRHUS: ROMAN TOMB AND RUINED BRIDGE (Seep. 71.)
PLATE XXVIII
KYRRHUS: ROMAN TOMB AND RUINED BRIDGE (Seep. 71.)
The system of Roman organisation at first modified and finally broke up the old tribal communities. For some time, many old-world institutions were maintained, notably the priest-dynasts of Comana, Olba, and Venasa; but gradually the native communal temple-district organisation of society gave way, to be replaced by the Greek political system, the seeds of which had been planted two or three centuries before, and had now taken root. In this system the city became the administrative centre, and the villages around were its branches. Greek became more and more the language of the people.[115]The formal records of military works, the milestones and imperial monuments, are inscribed in Latin, but the inscriptions in the old graveyards are carved in Greek letters. We cannot dwell upon the history of these times, of the reorganisation under Diocletian, at the close of the third century, marking the commencement of the Byzantine period, nor of the spread of Christianity, with the great social changes that involved. We reproduce, however, some illustrations of Roman works, such as are met with in plenty throughout the length and breadth of Hittite lands, from Malatia to Iconium and beyond, from Tarsus to the Black Sea coast. The great aqueducts like those of Tyana,[116]and those which stretch for miles across the Cilician plain,[117]are an indication of the vast scheme of development that was instituted under the new well-ordered system of government. Great cities both in Syria and in Asia Minor were the product ofthese times. Many of these were the foundations of places that still remain centres of administration; while some have lost their importance, and are falling gradually to ruin in silence and desolation. The remains of Kyrrhus upon the Afrîn,[118]a site now marked only by the small village of Huru-Pegamber some distance away, are among the wonderful memorials of antiquity. The imposts are falling from their pilasters, and the keystones to its arches are working loose, but it retains its silent streets of impressive stone buildings, its arches and colonnades, its amphitheatre, as though its people had quitted hardly a generation ago. Numerous Greek inscriptions may still be found amongst the ruins,[119]and just southward of the Acropolis several sarcophagi of marble, with Greek names upon them, indicate the position of the old-time burying place. In the extreme south of the site, with its sanctity still maintained in a modern Mohammedan shrine and well adjoining, there stands perfect a tomb-structure[120]in the Roman style of the second centuryA.D.We give a photograph of this, which is one of the best-preserved examples of its kind. Our other photographs[121]taken at Ephesus and at Ba’albec,[122]at the two ends of the Hittite lands, willsufficiently illustrate the art and civilisation of their time and place.
The very prosperity of the country during the Roman occupation was one cause of its danger, presenting it as an alluring prize to the forces gradually arising along its frontiers. The extreme centralisation of the Byzantine system weakened, if it did not altogether exterminate, the power of local resistance and administration. So long as the central government remained powerful all was well, but the danger of the system was manifested by the ease with which the Arab forces in 668 passed through the land from end to end, pausing only before the walls of Constantinople. The hold of the Saracen power, however, was not firm, and the Roman system was possessed of great latent vitality which in the end was equal to the emergency, so that in a series of campaigns extending from 920 to 965, the Saracens were driven back from point to point, until first Tarsus[123]was recovered and then Antioch, which had for more than three hundred years been in their possession.
PLATE XXIXBAALBEK: SCULPTURE AND TEMPLE RUINS OF ROMAN PERIOD
PLATE XXIX
BAALBEK: SCULPTURE AND TEMPLE RUINS OF ROMAN PERIOD
The Seljûk Turks, who next appeared on the scene, were a more formidable and resistless enemy. Having at one time been the servants of the Arab sultans, they had now become the masters, and in 1067 they entered Asia Minor, conquering Cilicia and Cappadocia. Four years later the Emperor Romanus Diogenes himself was their prisoner, and by 1081 the whole centre and east of the tableland was recognised as their realm. Adopting a policy of depopulation and devastation, in which the whole of Phrygia was laid waste, the Turks rapidly set up an almost impassable frontier between themselves and the Byzantine power which still heldsway in the West. Notwithstanding spasmodic efforts of the old rulers to regain their dominion, the country gradually relapsed into Orientalism, and with the rise of the Osmanli Turks from 1289 the Empire of the West rapidly disintegrated. Under the Seljûk rule, a new aspect of decorative art and architecture appeared in Asia Minor, a phase much neglected yet most worthy, as Professor Ramsay has pointed out, of special study. Under certain of their lines a brilliant series of monuments arose, among which the Hans[124]or roadside rest-houses are specially noteworthy, contributing also as they did to public security and pacification. In addition to these, other public works like their bridges and fortifications, as well as their mosques and colleges with cloisters and sculptures, are all evidence of one of the brightest phases of Moslem art. Some of the beautiful monuments which are shown in our illustrations, like the sculptured portal of the old school (orMidresseh) at Nigdeh, and the ‘tomb of Havanda,’ at the same place,[125]with its delicate tracery and design, belong to the best phases of this memorable period.
With the enthronement of the Seljûks the old world faded rapidly from view. No conquest in all the history of the Hittite lands had been so thorough and so enduring. Previously we had seen old institutions surviving under a new system that grew up around them; but now a new language and new forms of government, with new administrative districts, were imposed by the conquerors; while the devastation of the earlier stages of the conquest, followed by the repeated incursions of nomad peoples, profoundly modified the racial stock of the population. With them the modern Turkey-in-Asia was born.