Chapter VIII: Asia Minor (2)

A practical importance, increased in Asia Minor by the high estimation in which this institution was held, may have attached to the provincial chief-priesthood for the worship of the emperors through the religious superintendence associated with it. After the diet had once resolved on the worship of the emperors, and the government had given its consent, action on the part of the towns followed as a matter of course; in Asia already under Augustus at least all the chief places of judicial circuit had their Caesareum and their emperors' festival.[244] It was the right and duty of the chief priest to watch over the execution of these provincial and municipal decrees and the practice of the cultus in his district; what this might mean, is elucidated by the fact, that the autonomy of the free city of Cyzicus in Asia was set aside under Tiberius for this among other reasons, that it had allowed the decree for building the temple of the god Augustus to remain unfulfilled--perhaps just because it as a free town was not under the diet. It is probable that this superintendence, although it primarily concerned the emperor-worship, extended to the affairs of religion in general.[245] Then, when the old and the new faith began to contend in the empire for the mastery, it was probably, in the first instance, through the provincial chief priesthood that the contrast between them was converted into conflict. These priests, appointed from the provincials of mark by the diet of the province, were by their traditions and by their official duties far more called and inclined than were the imperial magistrates to animadvert on neglect of the recognised worship, and, where dissuasion did not avail, as they had not themselves a power of punishment, to bring the act punishable by civil law to the notice of the local or imperial authorities and to invoke the aid of the secular arm--above all, to force the Christians to comply with the demands of the imperial cultus. In the later period the regents adhering to the old faith even expressly enjoin these chief priests personally, and through the priests of the towns placed under them, to punish contraventions of the existing religious arrangements, and assign to them exactly the part which under the emperors of the new faith is taken by the metropolitan and his urban bishops.[246] Probably here it was not the heathen organisation that copied the Christian institutions; but, conversely, the conquering Christian church that took its hierarchic weapons from the arsenal of the enemy. All this applied, as we have already observed, to the whole empire; but the very practical consequences of the provincial regulation of the imperial cultus--the exercise of religious superintendence and the persecution of persons of another faith--were drawn pre-eminently in Asia Minor.

[Sidenote: System of religion.]

Alongside of the cultus of the emperors the worship of the gods proper found its favoured abode in Asia Minor, and all its extravagances in particular there found a refuge. The mischief of asylums and of miraculous cures had here its seat in a quite special sense. Under Tiberius the limitation of the former was enjoined by the Roman senate; the god of healing, Asklepios, nowhere performed more and greater wonders than in his much-loved city of Pergamus, which worshipped him as Zeus Asklepios, and owed to him a good part of its prosperity in the imperial period. The most active wonder-workers of the time of the empire--the subsequently canonised Cappadocian Apollonius of Tyana and the Paphlagonian serpent-man Alexander of Abonuteichos--belonged to Asia Minor. If the general prohibition of associations was carried out, as we shall see, with special strictness in Asia Minor, the reason must doubtless be sought mainly in the religious conditions which gave special occasion to the abuse of such unions there.

[Sidenote: Public safety.]

[Sidenote: Eirenarchs.]

The public safety was left to depend in the main on the land itself. In the earlier imperial period, apart from the Syrian command which included eastern Cilicia, there was stationed in all Asia Minor simply a detachment of 5000 auxiliary troops, which served as a garrison in the province of Galatia,[247] along with a fleet of 40 ships; this command was destined partly to keep in check the restless Pisidians, partly to cover the north-eastern frontier of the empire, and to watch over the coast of the Black Sea as far as the Crimea. Vespasian raised this troop to the status of an army corps of two legions and placed their staffs in the province of Cappadocia on the upper Euphrates. Besides these forces destined to guard the frontier there were not then any garrisons of note in anterior Asia; in the imperial province of Lycia and Pamphylia, _e.g._ there lay a single cohort of 500 men, in the senatorial provinces, at the most, individual soldiers told off from the imperial guard or from the neighbouring imperial provinces for special purposes.[248] If this testifies, on the one hand, most emphatically to the internal peace of these provinces, and clearly brings before our eyes the enormous contrast of the citizens of Asia Minor with the constantly unsettled capitals of Syria and Egypt, it explains, on the other hand, the subsistence, already noticed in another connection, of brigandage in a country mountainous throughout and in the interior partly desolate, particularly on the Myso-Bithynian frontier and in the mountain valleys of Pisidia and Isauria. There was no civic militia proper in Asia Minor. In spite of the flourishing of gymnastic institutes for boys, youths, and men, the Hellenes of this period in Asia remained as unwarlike as in Europe.[249] They restricted themselves to creating for the maintenance of public safety civic peace-masters (Eirenarchs), and placing at their disposal a number of civic _gens d'armes_, partly mounted mercenaries of small repute, but which must yet have been useful, since the emperor Marcus did not disdain, in the sorely felt want of tried soldiers during the Marcomanian war, to incorporate these town-soldiers of Asia Minor among the imperial troops.[250]

[Sidenote: Administration of justice.]

The administration of justice on the part as well of the civic authorities as of the governors left at this epoch much to be desired; yet the emergence of the imperial rule marks a turn in it for the better. The interference of the supreme power had under the republic confined itself to the penal control of the public officials, and exercised this, especially in later times, feebly and factiously, or rather not at all. Now not merely were the reins drawn tighter in Rome, inasmuch as the strict superintendence of its own officers was inseparable from the unity of military government, and even the imperial senate was induced to watch more sharply over the administration of its mandatories; but it became now possible to set aside the miscarriages of the provincial courts by way of the newly introduced appeal, or else, where an impartial trial could not be expected in the province, to carry the process to Rome before the bar of the emperor.[251] Both of these steps applied also to the senatorial provinces, and were to all appearance predominantly felt as a benefit.

[Sidenote: The constitution of towns in Asia Minor.]

[Sidenote: Logistae.]

[Sidenote: Gerusia, Neoi.]

As in the case of the Hellenes of Europe, so in Asia Minor the Roman province was essentially an aggregate of urban communities. Here, as in Hellas, the traditional received forms of democratic polity were in general retained, _e.g._ the magistrates continued to be chosen by the burgesses, but everywhere the determining influence was placed in the hands of the wealthy, and no free play was allowed to the pleasure of the multitude any more than to serious political ambition. Among the limitations of municipal autonomy it was peculiar to the towns of Asia Minor, that the already mentioned Eirenarch, the police-master of the city, was subsequently nominated by the governor from a list of ten names proposed by the council of the city. The government-trusteeship of civic finance-administration--the imperial appointment of one not belonging to the city itself as a guardian of property (_curator rei publicae_, λογιστής), whose consent the civic authorities had to procure in the more important dealings with property--was never generally ordained, but only for this or that city according to need; in Asia Minor, however, in keeping with the importance of its urban development, it was introduced specially early, _i.e._ from the beginning of the second century, and on a specially comprehensive scale. At least in the third century here, as elsewhere, other important decrees of the communal administration had to be laid before the governor to be confirmed. The Roman government did not insist anywhere, and least of all in the Hellenic lands, on uniformity of municipal constitution; in Asia Minor there prevailed great variety, according, it may be conjectured, in many cases with the pleasure of the individual burgess-bodies, although for the communities belonging to the same province the law organising each province prescribed general rules. Whatever institutions of this sort may be looked upon as diffused in Asia Minor, and predominantly peculiar to the land, bear no political character, but are merely significant as regards social relations, such as the unions spread over all Asia Minor, partly of the older, partly of the younger citizens, the Gerusia and the Neoi, clubs for the two classes of age with corresponding places of gymnastic exercise and festivals.[252] Of autonomous communities there were from the outset far fewer in Asia Minor than in Hellas proper; and, in particular, the most important towns of Asia Minor never had this doubtful distinction, or at any rate early lost it, such as Cyzicus under Tiberius (p. 348), Samos through Vespasian. Asia Minor was just old subject-territory and, under its Persian as under its Hellenic rulers, accustomed to monarchic organisation; here less than in Hellas did useless recollections and vague hopes carry men away beyond the limited municipal horizon of the present, and there was not much of this sort to disturb the peaceful enjoyment of such happiness in life as was possible under the existing circumstances.

[Sidenote: Urban life.]

Of this happiness of life there was abundance in Asia Minor under the Roman imperial government. "No province of them all," says an author living in Smyrna under the Antonines, "has so many towns to show as ours, and none such towns as our largest. It has the advantage of a charming country, a favourable climate, varied products, a position in the centre of the empire, a girdle of peaceful people all round, good order, rarity of crime, gentle treatment of slaves, consideration and goodwill from the rulers." Asia was called, as we have already said, the province of the five hundred towns; and, if the arid interior, in part fitted only for pasture, of Phrygia, Lycaonia, Galatia, and Cappadocia was even at that time but thinly peopled, the rest of the coast was not far behind Asia. The enduring prosperity of the regions capable of cultivation in Asia Minor did not extend merely to the cities of illustrious name, such as Ephesus, Smyrna, Laodicea, Apamea; wherever a corner of the country, neglected under the desolation of the fifteen hundred years which separate us from that time, is opened up to investigation, there the first and the most powerful feeling is that of astonishment, one might almost say of shame, at the contrast of the wretched and pitiful present with the happiness and splendour of the past Roman age.

[Sidenote: Cragus, Sidyma.]

On a secluded mountain-top not far from the Lycian coast, where according to the Greek fable dwelt the Chimaera, lay the ancient Cragus, probably built only of beams and clay tiles, and having for that reason no trace of it left excepting the Cyclopian fortress-walls at the foot of the hill. Below the summit spreads a pleasant fertile valley with fresh Alpine air and southern vegetation, surrounded by mountains rich in woods and game. When under the emperor Claudius Lycia became a province, the Roman government transferred the mountain-town--the "green Cragus" of Horace--to this plain; in the market-place of the new town, Sidyma, the remains still stand of the tetrastyle temple then dedicated to the emperor, and of a stately colonnade, which a native of the place who had acquired means as a physician built in his early home. Statues of the emperors and of deserving fellow-citizens adorned the market; there were in the town a temple to its protecting gods, Artemis and Apollo, baths, gymnastic institutions (γυμνάσια) for the older as for the younger citizens; from the gates along the main road, which led steeply down the mountain side to the harbour Calabatia, there stretched on both sides rows of stone sepulchral monuments, more stately and more costly than those of Pompeii, and for the most part still erect, while the houses presumably built, like those of the ancient city, from perishable materials, have disappeared. We may draw an inference as to the position and habits of the former inhabitants from a municipal decree recently found there, probably drawn up under Commodus, as to constituting the club for the elder citizens; it was composed of a hundred members, taken one half from the town-council and the other from the rest of the citizens, including not more than three freedmen and one person of illegitimate birth, all the rest begotten in lawful wedlock and belonging in part to demonstrably old and wealthy burgess-houses. Some of these families attained to Roman citizenship, one even to the senate of the empire. But even abroad this senatorial house, as well as different physicians of Sidyma employed in other lands and even at the imperial court, remained mindful of their home, and several of them closed their lives there; one of these distinguished denizens has put together the legends of the town and the prophecies concerning it in a compilation not exactly excellent, but very learned and very patriotic, and caused these memorabilia to be publicly exhibited. This Cragus-Sidyma did not vote among towns of the first class at the diet of the small Lycian province, was without a theatre, without honorary titles, and without those general festivals which in the world, as it then was, marked a great town; was even, according to the conception of the ancients, a small provincial town and thoroughly a creation of the Roman imperial period. But in the whole Vilajet Aïdin there is at the present day no inland place which can be even remotely placed by the side of this little mountain-town, such as it was, as regards civilised existence. What still stands vividly to-day before our eyes in this secluded village has disappeared, with the exception of slight remains, or even without a trace, in an untold number of other towns under the devastating hand of man. The coinage of the imperial period, freely given to the towns in copper, allows us a certain glance at this abundance; no province can even remotely vie with Asia in the number of mints and the variety of the representations.

[Sidenote: Defects of municipal administration.]

No doubt this merging of all interests in the petty town of one's birth was not without its reverse side in Asia Minor, any more than among the European Greeks. What was said of their communal administration holds good in the main also here. The urban finance-system, which knows itself to be without right control, lacks steadiness and frugality and often even honesty; as to buildings--sometimes the resources of the town are exceeded, sometimes even what is most needful is left undone; the humbler citizens become accustomed to the largesses of the town-chest, or of men of wealth, to free oil in the baths, to public banquets and popular recreations out of others' pockets; the good houses become used to the clientage of the multitude, with its abject demonstrations of homage, its begging intrigues, its divisions; rivalries exist, as between town and town (p. 329), so in every town between the several circles and the several houses; the government in Asia Minor dares not to introduce the formation of poor-clubs and of voluntary fire-brigades, such as everywhere existed in the west, because the spirit of faction here at once takes possession of every association. The calm sea easily becomes a swamp, and the lack of the great pulsation of general interest is clearly discernible also in Asia Minor.

[Sidenote: Prosperity.]

Asia Minor, especially in its anterior portion, was one of the richest domains of the great Roman state. It is true that the misgovernment of the republic, the disasters of the Mithradatic time thereby produced, thereafter the evil of piracy, and lastly the many years of civil war which had financially affected few provinces so severely as these, had doubtless so utterly disorganised the means of the communities and of individuals there, that Augustus resorted to the extreme expedient of striking off all claims of debt; all the Asiatics, with the exception of the Rhodians, made use of this dangerous remedy. But the peaceful government which again set in made up for much. Not everywhere--the islands of the Aegean Sea, for example, never thereafter revived--but in most places, already when Augustus died, the wounds as well as the remedies were forgotten; and in this state the land remained for three centuries down to the epoch of the Gothic wars. The sums at which the towns of Asia Minor were assessed, and which they themselves, certainly under control of the governor, had to allocate and raise, formed one of the most considerable sources of income for the imperial exchequer. How the burden of taxation stood related to the ability of the taxed to pay, we are unable to ascertain; but permanent overburdening in the strict sense is not compatible with the circumstances in which we find the land down to the middle of the third century. The remissness of the government, still more perhaps than its intentional forbearance, may have kept within bounds the fiscal restriction of traffic and the application of a tax-screw which was inconvenient not merely for the taxed. In great calamities, particularly on occasion of the earthquakes which under Tiberius fearfully devastated twelve flourishing cities of Asia, especially Sardis, and under Pius a number of Carian and Lycian towns and the islands of Cos and Rhodes, private and above all imperial help was rendered with great liberality, and bestowed upon the natives of Asia Minor the full blessing of a great state--the collective guarantee of all for all. The construction of roads, which the Romans had taken in hand on the first erection of the province of Asia by Manius Aquillius (iii. 59) {iii. 56.}, was seriously prosecuted during the imperial period in Asia Minor only where larger garrisons were stationed, particularly in Cappadocia and the neighbouring Galatia, after Vespasian had instituted a legionary camp on the middle Euphrates.[253] In the other provinces not much was done for it, partly, doubtless, in consequence of the laxity of the senatorial government; wherever roads were here constructed on the part of the state, it was done on imperial ordinance.[254]

This prosperity of Asia Minor was not the work of a government of superior insight and energetic activity. The political institutions, the incitements of trade and commerce, the initiative in literature and art belong throughout Asia Minor to the old free towns or to the Attalids. What the Roman government gave to the land, was essentially the permanence of a state of peace, the toleration of inward prosperity, the absence of that governing wisdom which regards every sound pair of arms and every saved piece of money as rightfully subservient to its immediate aims--negative virtues of personages far from prominent, but often more conducive to the common weal than the great deeds of the self-constituted guardians of mankind.

[Sidenote: Trade and commerce.]

The prosperity of Asia Minor was in beautiful equipoise, dependent as much on agriculture as on industry and commerce. The favours of nature were bestowed in richest measure, especially on the regions of the coast; and there are many evidences with how laborious diligence, even under more difficult circumstances, every at all useable piece of ground was turned to account, _e.g._ in the rocky valley of the Eurymedon in Pamphylia by the citizens of Selga. The products of the industry of Asia Minor are too numerous and too manifold to be dwelt upon in detail;[255] we may mention that the immense pastures of the interior, with their flocks of sheep and goats, made Asia Minor the headquarters of woollen manufactures and of weaving generally--it suffices to recall the Milesian and the Galatian, that is, the Angora, wool, the Attalic gold-embroideries, the cloths prepared in the workshops of Phrygian Laodicea after the Nervian, that is the Flemish, style. It is well-known that an insurrection had almost broken out in Ephesus because the goldsmiths dreaded injury to their sale of sacred images from the new Christian faith. In Philadelphia, a considerable town of Lydia, we know the names of two out of the seven districts: they are those of the wool-weavers and the shoemakers. Probably there is here brought to light what in the case of the other towns is hidden under older and more genteel names, that the more considerable towns of Asia included throughout not merely a multitude of labourers, but also a numerous manufacturing population.

The money-dealing and traffic were in Asia Minor dependent chiefly on its own products. The great foreign import and export trade of Syria and Egypt was in the main excluded, though from the eastern lands various articles were introduced into Asia Minor, _e.g._ a considerable number of slaves through the Galatian traders.[256] But, if the Roman merchants were to be found here apparently in every large and small town, even at places like Ilium and Assus in Mysia, Prymnessus and Traianopolis in Phrygia, in such numbers that their associations were in the habit of taking part along with the town's burgesses in public acts; if in Hierapolis, in the interior of Phrygia, a manufacturer (ἐργαστής) caused it to be inscribed on his tomb that he had in his lifetime sailed seventy-two times round Cape Malea to Italy, and a Roman poet describes the merchant of the capital who hastens to the port, in order not to let his business-friend from Cibyra, not far distant from Hierapolis, fall into the hands of rivals, there is thus opened up a glimpse into a stirring manufacturing and mercantile life not merely at the seaports. Language also testifies to the constant intercourse with Italy; among the Latin words that became current in Asia Minor not a few proceed from such intercourse, as indeed in Ephesus even the guild of the wool-weavers gives itself a Latin name.[257] Teachers of all sorts and physicians came especially from this quarter to Italy and the other lands of the Latin tongue, and not merely gained often considerable wealth, but also brought it back to their native place; among those to whom the towns of Asia Minor owe buildings or endowments, the physicians who had become rich,[258] and literati, occupy a prominent position. Lastly, the emigration of the great families to Italy affected Asia Minor less and later than the West; it was easier for people from Vienna and Narbo to transplant themselves to the capital of the empire than from the Greek towns; nor was the government in the earlier period quite inclined to bring the municipals of mark from Asia Minor to the court, and to introduce them into the Roman aristocracy.

[Sidenote: Literary activity.]

If we leave out of view the marvellous period of early bloom, in which the Ionic epos and the Aeolic lyric poetry, the beginnings of historical composition and of philosophy, of plastic art and of painting, had their rise on these shores, in science as in the practice of art the great age of Asia Minor was that of the Attalids, which faithfully cherished the memory of that still greater epoch. If Smyrna showed divine honours to its citizen Homer, struck coins for him and named them after him, there was thus expressed the feeling, which dominated all Ionia and all Asia Minor, that divine art had come down to earth in Hellas generally, and in Ionia in particular.

[Sidenote: Instruction.]

How early and to what extent elementary instruction was an object of public care in these regions is clearly shown by a decree of the town Teos in Lydia[259] concerning it. According to this, after the gift of capital by a rich citizen had provided the town with means, there was to be instituted in future, alongside of the inspector of gymnastics (γυμνασιάρχης), also the honorary office of a school-inspector (παιδονόμος). Further, there were to be appointed three paid teachers of writing with salaries, according to the three classes respectively, of 600, 550, and 500 drachmae, in order that all the free boys and girls might be instructed in writing; likewise two gymnastic masters, each with a salary of 500 drachmae; a teacher of music with a salary of 700 drachmae, who should instruct the boys of the last two years at school and the youths that had left school in playing the lute and the cithara; a boxing master with 300 drachmae, and a teacher for archery and throwing of the spear with a pay of 250 drachmae. The teachers of writing and music are to hold a public examination of the scholars annually in the town-hall. Such was the Asia Minor of the time of the Attalids; but the Roman republic did not continue their work. It did not cause its victories over the Galatians to be immortalised by the chisel, and the Pergamene library went shortly before the battle of Actium to Alexandria; many of the best germs perished in the devastation of the Mithradatic and the civil wars. It was only in the time of the empire that the care of art, and above all of literature, revived at least outwardly with the prosperity of Asia Minor. To a primacy proper, such as was possessed by Athens as a university-town, by Alexandria in the sphere of scientific research, and by the frivolous capital of Syria for the drama and the _ballet_, none of the numerous cities of Asia Minor could lay claim in any direction whatever; but general culture was probably nowhere more widely diffused and more influential. It must have been very early the custom in Asia to grant to teachers and physicians exemption from the civic offices and functions that involved expense; to this province was directed the edict of the emperor Pius (p. 329), which, in order to set limits to an exemption that was evidently very burdensome for the city finances, prescribes maximal numbers for it: _e.g._ allows towns of the first class to grant this immunity to the extent of ten physicians, five instructors in rhetoric, and five in grammar.

[Sidenote: Addresses of the sophists.]

The position of Asia Minor as occupying the first rank in the literary world of the imperial period was based on the system of the rhetors, or, according to the expression later in use, the sophists of this epoch--a system which we moderns cannot easily realise. The place of written works, which pretty nearly ceased to have any significance, was taken by the public discourse, somewhat of the nature of our modern university and academic addresses, eternally producing itself anew and preserved only by way of exception, once heard and applauded, and then for ever forgotten. The contents were furnished frequently by the occasion of the birthday of the emperor, the arrival of the governor, or any analogous event, public or private; still more frequently without any occasion they talked at large on everything, which was not practical and not instructive. The political address had no existence for this age at all, not even in the Roman senate. The forensic speech was no longer for the Greeks the goal of oratory, but stood alongside of the speech for speaking's sake as a neglected and plebeian sister, to which a master of that art might occasionally condescend. From poetry, philosophy, history, there was borrowed whatever admitted of being dealt with by way of common-place, while these all themselves, little cultivated in general, least of all in Asia Minor, and still less esteemed, languish by the side of the pure art of words and beneath its infection. The great past of the nation is regarded by these orators, so to speak, as their special property; they reverence and treat Homer in some measure as the Rabbins do the books of Moses, and even in religion they study the most zealous orthodoxy. These discourses are sustained by all the allowed and unallowed resources of the theatre, by the art of gesticulation and of modulation of the voice, by the magnificence of the orator's costume, by the artifices of the virtuoso and the methods of partisanship, by competition, by the _claque_. To the boundless self-conceit of these word-artists corresponds the lively sympathetic interest of the public--which is but little inferior to that felt for race-horses--and the expression given to this sympathy quite after the fashion of the theatre; and the frequency with which such exhibitions were brought before the cultured in the larger places entitles them, just like the theatre, to rank everywhere among the customary doings of urban life. If perhaps our understanding of this extinct phenomenon may be somewhat helped by connecting it with the impression called forth in our most susceptible great cities by the discourses of their learned bodies, as they fall due, there is yet wholly wanting in the modern state of things what was by far the main matter in the ancient world--the didactic element, and the connection of the aimless public discourse with the higher instruction of youth. If the latter at present, as we say, educates the boy of the cultured class to be a professor of philology, it educated him then to be a professor of eloquence, and, in fact, of this sort of eloquence. For the school-training conduced more and more to equip the boy for holding just such discourses, as we have now described, on his own part, if possible, in two languages; and, whoever had finished the course with profit, applauded in similar performances the recollection of his own time at school.

[Sidenote: Asia Minor leads the fashion.]

This production embraced East and West, but Asia Minor stood in the van and led the fashion. When in the age of Augustus the school-rhetoric gained a footing in the Latin instruction of the youth of the capital, its chief pillars alongside of Italians and Spaniards were two natives of Asia Minor, Arellius Fuscus and Cestius Pius. At that same place, where the grave forensic address maintained its ground in the better imperial period by the side of this parasite, an ingenious advocate of the Flavian age points to the enormous gulf which separates Nicetes of Smyrna and the other rhetoricians applauded in Ephesus and Mytilene from Aeschines and Demosthenes. By far the most, and most noted, of the famous rhetors of this sort are from the coast of western Asia. We have already observed how much the supply of schoolmasters for the whole empire told upon the finances of the towns of Asia Minor. In the course of the imperial period the number and the estimation of these sophists were constantly on the increase, and they gained ground more and more in the west. The cause of this lies partly doubtless in the changed attitude of the government, which in the second century--especially after the Hadrianic epoch exhibiting not so much a Hellenising as a bad cosmopolitan type--stood less averse to Greek and Oriental habits than in the first; but chiefly in the ever increasing general diffusion of higher culture, and the rapidly enlarging number of institutes for the higher instruction of youth. The sophistic system thus belongs, at all events especially, to Asia Minor, and particularly to the Asia Minor of the second and third centuries; only there may not be found in this literary primacy any special peculiarity of these Greeks and of this epoch, or even a national characteristic. The sophistic system appears everywhere alike, in Smyrna and Athens as in Rome and Carthage; the masters of eloquence were sent out like patterns of lamps, and the manufacture was organised everywhere in the same way, Greek or Latin, according to desire, the supply being raised in accordance with the need. But no doubt those Greek districts, which took precedence in prosperity and culture, furnished this article of export of the best quality and in greatest quantity; this holds true of Asia Minor for the times of Sulla and Cicero no less than for those of Hadrian and the Antonines.

[Sidenote: Galenus.]

Here, however, all is not shadow. Those same regions possess, not indeed among the professional sophists, but yet among the _literati_ of a different type, who are still found there in comparatively large numbers, the best representatives of Hellenism which this epoch has at all to show, the teacher of philosophy, Dio of Prusa in Bithynia, under Vespasian and Trajan, and the medical man Galenus of Pergamus, imperial physician in ordinary at the courts of Marcus and Severus. What is particularly pleasing in the case of Galen is the polished manner of the man of the world and the courtier, in connection with a general and philosophical culture, such as is frequently conspicuous in the physicians of this period.[260]

[Sidenote: Dio of Prusa.]

In purity of sentiment and clear grasp of the position of things, the Bithynian Dio is nowise inferior to the scholar of Chaeronea; in plastic power, in elegance and apt vigour of speech, in earnest meaning underlying lightness of form, in practical energy, he is superior to him. The best of his writings--the fancies of the ideal Hellene before the invention of the city and of money; the appeal to the Rhodians, the only surviving representatives of genuine Hellenism; the description of the Hellenes of his time in the solitude of Olbia as in the luxury of Nicomedia and of Tarsus; the exhortations to the individual as to an earnest conduct of life, and to all as to their keeping together in unity--form the best evidence that even of the Hellenism of Asia Minor in the time of the empire the word of the poet holds good: "The sun even in setting is ever the same."

Footnotes.

[224: Had the state of Lysimachus endured it would probably have been otherwise. His foundations, Alexandria in the Troad and Lysimachia, Ephesos-Arsinoe strengthened by the transference of the inhabitants of Colophon and Lebedos, tended in the direction indicated.]

[225: Nowhere have the boundaries of the vassal states and even of the provinces changed more than in the north-east of Asia Minor. Direct imperial administration was introduced here for the districts of king Polemon, to which Zela, Neocaesarea, Trapezus belonged, in the year 63; for Lesser Armenia, we do not know exactly when, probably at the beginning of the reign of Vespasian. The last vassal king of Lesser Armenia, of whom there is mention, was the Herodian Aristobulus (Tacitus, _Ann._ xiii. 7, xiv. 26; Josephus, _Ant._ xx. 8, 4), who still possessed it in the year 60; in the year 75 the district was Roman (_C. I. L._ iii. 306), and probably one of the legions garrisoning Cappadocia from Vespasian's time was stationed from the first in the Lesser-Armenian Satala. Vespasian combined the regions mentioned, as well as Galatia and Cappadocia, into one large governorship. At the end of the reign of Domitian we find Galatia and Cappadocia separated and the north-eastern provinces attached to Galatia. Under Trajan at first the whole district is once more in one hand, subsequently (_Eph. Ep. V._ n. 1345) it is divided in such a way that the north-east coast belongs to Cappadocia. On that footing it remained, at least in so far that Trapezus and so also Lesser Armenia were thenceforth constantly under this governor. Consequently--apart from a short interruption under Domitian--the legate of Galatia had nothing to do with the defence of the frontier, and this, as was implied in the nature of the case, was always combined with the command of Cappadocia and of its legions.]

[226: Urban coining and setting up of inscriptions are subject to so manifold conditions that the want or the abundance of the one or the other do not _per se_ warrant inferences as to the absence or the intensity of a definite phase of civilisation. For Asia Minor in particular we must take note that it was the promised land of municipal vanity, and our memorials, including even the coins, have for by far the greatest part been called forth by the fact that the government of the Roman emperors allowed free scope to this vanity.]

[227: "The ordinance," says the jurist Modestinus, who reports it (Dig. xxvii. 1, 6, 3) "interests all provinces, although it is directed to the people of Asia." It is suitable, in fact, only where there are classes of towns, and the jurist adds an instruction how it is to be applied to provinces otherwise organised. What the biographer of Pius, c. 11, reports as to the distinctions and salaries granted by Pius to the rhetoricians, has nothing to do with this enactment.]

[228: Dio of Prusa, in his address to the citizens of Nicomedia and of Tarsus, excellently lays it down that no man of culture would have such empty distinctions for himself, and that the greedy quest of the towns for titles was altogether inconceivable; how it is the sign of the true petty-townsman to cause a display of such attestations of rank on his behalf; how the bad governor always screens himself under this quarrelling of towns, as Nicaea and Nicomedia never act together. "The Romans deal with you as with children, to whom one presents trifling toys; you put up with bad treatment in order to obtain a name; they name your town the first in order to treat it as the last. By this you have become a laughing-stock to the Romans, and they call your doings 'Greek follies'" (Ἑλληνικὰ ἁμαρτήματα).]

[229: Pausanias of Caesarea in Philostratus (_Vitae soph._ ii. 13) places before Herodes Atticus his faults: παχείᾳ τῇ γλώττῃ καὶ ὡς Καππαδόκαις ξύνηθες, ξυγκρούων μὲν τὰ σύμφωνα τῶν στοιχείων. συστέλλων δὲ τὰ μηκυνόμενα καὶ μηκύνων τὰ βραχέα. _Vita Apoll._ i. 7; ἡ γλῶττα Ἀττικῶς εἶχεν, οὐδ' ἀπήχθη τὴν φωνὴν ὑπὸ τοῦ ἔθνους.

[230: Amyntas was placed over the Pisidians as early as 715 {39.} before Antonius returned to Asia (Appian, _B. C._ v. 75), doubtless because these had once more undertaken one of their predatory expeditions. From the fact that he first ruled there is explained the circumstance that he built for himself a residence in Isaura (Strabo, xii. 6, 3, p. 569). Galatia went in the first instance to the heirs of Deiotarus (Dio, xlviii. 33). It was not till the year 718 {36.} that Amyntas obtained Galatia, Lycaonia, and Pamphylia (Dio, xlix. 32).]

[231: That this was the cause why these regions were not placed under Roman governors is expressly stated by Strabo (xiv. 5, 5, p. 671), who was near in time and place to the matters dealt with: ἐδόκει πρὸς ἅπαν τὸ τοιοῦτο (for the suppression of the robbers and pirates) βασιλεύεσθαι μᾶλλον τοὺς τόπους ἢ ὑπὸ τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις ἡγεμόσιν εἶναι τοῖς ἐπὶ τὰς κρίσεις πεμπομένοις, οἳ μήτ' ἀεὶ παρεῖναι ἔμελλον (on account of the travelling on circuit) μήτε μεθ' ὅπλων (which at all events were wanting to the later legate of Galatia).]

[232: Amidst the great unnamed ruins of Sarajik, in the upper valley of the Limyrus, in eastern Lycia (comp. Ritter, _Erdkunde_ xix. p. 1172), stands a considerable temple-shaped tomb, certainly not older than the third century after Christ, on which mutilated parts of men--heads, arms, legs--are produced in relief, as emblems we might imagine, as the coat of arms of a civilised robber-chief (communication from Benndorf).]

[233: The famous list of services rendered to the community of Ancyra of the time of Tiberius (_C. I. Gr._ 4039) designates the Galatian communities usually by ἔθνος, sometimes by πόλις. The former appellation subsequently disappears; but in the full title, _e.g._ of the inscription, _C. I. Gr._ 4011, from the second century, Ancyra always bears the name of the people: ἡ μητρόπολις τῆς Γαλατίας Σεβαστὴ Τεκτοσάγων Ἄγκυρα.]

[234: According to Pausanius, x. 36, 1, among the Γαλάται ὑπὲρ φρυγίας φωνῇ τῇ ἐπιχωρίῳ σφίσιν the scarlet berry is termed ὗς; and Lucian, _Alex._ 51, tells of the perplexities of the soothsaying Paphlagonian, when questions were proposed to him Συριστὶ ἢ Κελτιστὶ and people conversant with this language were not just at hand.]

[235: If in the list mentioned at p. 314, note, from the time of Tiberius the largesses are given but seldom to three peoples, mostly to two peoples or two cities, the latter are, as Perrot correctly remarks (_de Galatia_, p. 83), Ancyra and Pessinus, and Tavium of the Trocmi is in the matter of largesses postponed to them. Perhaps there was at that time among these no township which could be treated as a town.]

[236: Cicero (_ad Att._ vi. 5, 3) writes of his army in Cilicia: _exercitum infirmum habebam, auxilia sane bona, sed ea Galatarum, Pisidarum, Lyciorum: haec enim sunt nostra robora_.]

[237: Decrees of the ἐπὶ τῆς Ἀσίας Ἕλληνες, _C. I. A._ 3487, 3957; a Lycian honoured ὑπὸ τοῦ κο[ινο]ῦ τῶν ἐπὶ τῆς Ἀσίας Ἑλλήνων καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν ἐ[ν Πα]μφυλίᾳ πόλεων, Benndorf, _Lyk. Reise_, i. 122; letters to the Hellenes in Asia, _C. I. Gr._ 3832, 3833; ὦ ἄνδρες Ἕλληνες in the address to the diet of Pergamus, Aristides, p. 517.--An ἄρξας τοῦ κοινοῦ τῶν ἐν Βιθυνίᾳ Ἑλλήνων, Perrot, _Expl. de la Galatie_, p. 32; letter of the emperor Alexander to the same, _Dig._ xlix. 1, 25.--Dio, li. 20: τοῖς ξένοις, Ἕλληνας σφᾶς ἐπικαλέσας, ἑαυτῷ τινα, τοῖς μὲν Ἀσιανοῖς ἐν Περγάμῳ, τοῖς δὲ Βιθυνοῖς ἐν Νικομηδείᾳ τεμενίσαι ἐπέτρεψε.]

[238: Besides the Galatarchs (Marquardt, _Staatsverw._ i. 515) we meet in Galatia even under Hadrian Helladarchae (_Bull. de corr. Hell._ vii. 18), who can only be taken here like the Hellenarchs in Tanais (p. 315, note 2).]

[239: The συνέδριον τῶν ἐννέα δήμων (Schliemann, _Troia_, 1884, p. 256) calls itself elsewhere Ἰλιεῖς καὶ πόλεις αἱ κοινωνοῦσαι τῆς θυσίας καὶ τοῦ ἀγῶνος καὶ τῆς πανηγύρεως (_ib._ p. 254). Another document of the same league from the time of Antigonus is given in Droysen, _Hellenismus_, ii. 2, 382 ff. So too other κοινά are to be taken, which refer to a narrower circle than the province, such as the old one of the thirteen Ionic cities, that of the Lesbians (Marquardt, _Staatsverw._ i. p. 516), that of the Phrygians on the coins of Apamea. These have also had their magisterial presidents, as indeed there has recently been found a Lesbiarch (Marquardt, _l.c._), and likewise the Moesian Hellenes were under a Pontarch (p. 308). Yet it is not improbable that, where the archonship is named, the league is more than a mere festal association; the Lesbians as well as the Moesian Pentapolis may have had a special diet, over which these officers presided. On the other hand the κοινὸν τοῦ Ὑργαλέου πεδίου (Ramsay, _Cities and bishoprics of Phrygia_, p. 10), which stands alongside of several δῆμοι, is a quasi-community destitute of civic rights.]

[240: The composition of the diets of Asia Minor is most clearly apparent in Strabo's account of the Lyciarchy (xiv. 3, 3, p. 664) and in the narrative of Aristides (_Or._ 26, p. 344) as to his election to one of the Asiatic provincial priesthoods.]

[241: See examples for Asia, _C. I. Gr._ 3487; for Lycia, Benndorf, _Lyk. Reise_, i. p. 71. But the Lycian federal assembly designates the years not by the Archiereus but by the Lyciarch.]

[242: Tacitus, _Ann._ iv. 15, 55. The town which possesses a temple dedicated by the diet of the province (the κοινὸν τῆς Ἀσίας κ. τ. λ.) bears on that account the honorary predicate of the "(imperial) temple-keeper" (νεωκόρος); and, if one of them has several to show, the number is appended. In this institution one may clearly discern how the imperial worship obtained its full elaboration in Asia Minor. In reality the _neocorate_ is general, applicable to any deity and any town; titularly, as an honorary surname of the town, it meets us with vanishing exceptions only in the imperial cultus of Asia Minor--only some Greek towns of the neighbouring provinces, such as Tripolis in Syria, Thessalonica in Macedonia, participated in it.]

[243: However little the original diversity of the presidency of the diet and the provincial chief-priesthood for the cultus of the emperor can be called in question, yet not merely in the case of the former does the magisterial character of the president, still clearly recognisable in Hellas, whence the organisation of the κοινά generally proceeds, fall completely into the shade in Asia Minor, but here in fact, where the κοινόν has several ritual centres, the Ἀσιάρχης and the ἀρχιερεὺς τῆς Ἀσίας seem to have amalgamated. The president of the κοινόν never bears in Asia Minor the title of στρατηγός, which sharply emphasises the civil office, and ἄρξας τοῦ κοινοῦ (p. 344, note) or τοῦ ἔθνους (_C. I. Gr._ 4380_ᵏ_⁴, p. 1168) is rare; the compounds Ἀσιάρχης, Λυκιάρχης, analogous to the Ἑλλαδάρχης of Achaia, are already in Strabo's time the usual designation. That in the minor provinces, like Galatia and Lycia, the Archon and the Archiereus of the province remained separate, is certain. But in Asia the existence of Asiarchs for Ephesus and Smyrna is established by inscriptions (Marquardt, _Staatsverw._ i. 514), while yet according to the nature of the institution there could only be one Asiarch for the whole province. Here, too, the Agonothesia of the Archiereus is attested (Galen on Hippocrates _de part._ 18, 2, p. 567, Kühn: παρ' ἡμῖν ἐν Περγάμῳ τῶν ἀρχιερέων τὰς καλουμένας μονομαχίας ἐπιτελούντων), while it is the very essence of the Asiarchate. To all appearance the rivalries of the towns have here led to the result, that, after there were several temples of the emperor dedicated by the province in different towns, the Agonothesia was taken from the real president of the diet, and, instead, the titular Asiarchate and the Agonothesia were committed to the chief priest of each temple. In that case the Ἀσιάρχης καὶ ἀρχιερεὺς ιγʹ πόλεων is explained on the coins of the thirteen Ionic towns (Mionnet, iii. 61, 1), and on Ephesian inscriptions the same Ti. Julius Reginus may be named sometimes Ἀσιάρχης βʹ ναῶν τῶν ἐν Ἐφέσῳ (Wood, _Inscr. from the great theatre_, p. 18), sometimes ἀρχιερεὺς βʹ ναῶν τῶν ἐν Ἐφέσῳ (_ib._ n. 8. 14, similarly 9).--Only in this way, too, are the institutions of the fourth century to be comprehended. Here a chief priest appears in every province, in Asia with the title of Asiarch, in Syria with that of Syriarch, and so forth. If the amalgamation of the Archon and the Archiereus had already begun earlier in the province of Asia, nothing was more natural than now, on the diminution of the provinces, to combine them everywhere in this way.]

[244: _C. I. Gr._ 3902_ᵇ_.]

[245: Dio of Prusa, _Or._ 35, p. 66 R., names the Asiarchs and the analogous archons (he designates clearly their _Agonothesia_, and to it also point the corrupt words τοὺς ἐπωνύμους τῶν δύο ἠπείρων τῆς ἑσπέρας ὅλης, for which probably we should read τῆς ἑτέρας ὅλης) τοὺς ἁπάντων ἄρχοντας τῶν ἱερέων. There is, as is well known, an almost constant absence in the designation of the provincial priests of express reference to the worship of the emperors; there was good reason for that absence, if they were expected to play in their spheres the part of the Pontifex Maximus in Rome.]

[246: Maximinus for this purpose placed military help at the disposal of the chief priest of the individual province (Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._ viii. 14, 9); and the famous letter of Julian (_Ep._ 49, comp. _Ep._ 63) to the Galatarch of the time gives a clear view of his obligations. He is to superintend the whole religious matters of the province; to preserve his independence in contradistinction to the governor, not to dance attendance upon him, not to allow him to appear in the temple with military escort, to receive him not in front of, but in, the temple, within which he is lord and the governor a private man. Of the subsidies which the government has settled on the province (30,000 bushels of corn and 60,000 sextarii of wine), he is to expend the fifth part on the poor persons who become clients of the heathen priests, and to employ the rest otherwise on charitable objects; in every town of the province, if possible, with the aid of private persons, to call into existence hospitals (ξενοδοχεῖα), not merely for heathens, but for everybody, and no longer to allow the Christians the monopoly of good works. He is to urge all the priests of the province by example and exhortation generally to maintain a religious walk, to avoid the frequenting of theatres and taverns, and in particular to frequent the temples diligently with their family and their attendants, or else, if they should not amend their ways, to depose them. It is a pastoral letter in the best form, only with the address altered, and with quotations from Homer instead of the Bible. Clearly as these arrangements bear on their face the stamp of heathenism already collapsing, and certainly as in this extent they are foreign to the earlier epoch, the foundation at any rate--the general superintendence of the chief priest of the province over matters of worship--by no means appears as a new institution.]

[247: This troop, according to its position in Josephus, _Bell. Jud._ ii. 16, 4, between the provinces of Asia and Cappadocia not provided with garrisons, can only be referred to Galatia. Of course it furnished also the detachments, which were stationed in the dependent territories on the Caucasus, at that time--under Nero--apparently also those stationed on the Bosporus itself, in which, it is true, also the Moesian corps took part (p. 318).]

[248: Praetorian _stationarius Ephesi_, _Eph. epigr._ iv. n. 70. A soldier _in statione Nicomedensi_, Plin. _ad Trai._ 74. A legionary centurion in Byzantium, _ib._ 77, 78.]

[249: In the municipal matters of Asia Minor everything occurs except what relates to arms. The Smyrnaean στρατηγὸς ἐπὶ τῶν ὅπλων is of course a reminiscence equally with the cultus of Herakles ὁπλοφύλαξ (_C. I. Gr._ 3162).]

[250: The Eirenarch of Smyrna sends out these _gens d'armes_ to arrest Polycarp: ἐξῆλθον διωγμῖται καὶ ἱππεῖς μετὰ τῶν συνήθων αὐτοῖς ὅπλων, ὡς ἐπὶ λῃστὴν τρέχοντες (_Acta mart._, ed. Ruinart, p. 39). That they had not the armour of soldiers proper, is also elsewhere remarked (_Ammian._ xxvii. 9, 6: _adhibitis semiermibus quibusdam_--against the Isaurians--_quos diogmitas appellant_). Their employment in the Marcomanian war is reported by the biographer of Marcus, c. 26: _armavit et diogmitas_, and by the inscription of Aezani in Phrygia, _C. I. Gr._ 3031 _a_ 8 = Lebas-Waddington, 992: παρασχὼν τῷ κυρίῳ Καίσαρι σύμμαχον διωγμείτην παρ' ἑαυτοῦ.]

[251: In Cnidus (_Bull. de corr. Hell._ vii. 62), in the year 741-742 U.C. {13-12.}, some apparently respectable burgesses had during three nights assailed the house of one with whom they had a personal feud; in repelling the attack one of the slaves of the besieged house had killed one of the assailants by a vessel thrown from the window. The occupants of the besieged house were thereupon accused of manslaughter, but, as they had public opinion against them, they dreaded the civic tribunal and desired the matter to be decided by the verdict of the emperor Augustus. The latter had the case investigated by a commissioner, and acquitted the accused, of which he informed the authorities in Cnidus, with the remark that they would not have handled the matter impartially, and directed them to act in accordance with his verdict. This was certainly, as Cnidus was a free town, an encroachment on its sovereign rights, as also in Athens appeal to the emperor and even to the proconsul was in Hadrian's time allowable (p. 262, note 2). But any one who considers the state of things as to justice in a Greek town of this epoch and of this position, will not doubt that, while such encroachment gave doubtless occasion to various unjust decisions, it much more frequently prevented them.]