The History of Rome: Rise and Fall of the Empire. John Bagnell Bury
might hear spoken in the streets of Pessinus and Ancyra the language with which he was familiar in the streets of Lugudunum. Here, too, in the new Gaul were the same double names of towns as in the old Gaul, the name of the place and the name of the tribe. As Gallic Mediolanum is Santones (Saintes), as Lutetia is Parisii, so Ancyra is called by the name of the Tectosages, Pessinus by that of the Tolistobogii. But in Asia the Celts did not long maintain the purity of their race; Gallic and Greek blood were mingled, and the people were called Gallo-Greeks, just as in Gaul there came to be Gallo-Romans. The princes of Galatia were ambitious of empire and were rivals of Mithradates. In the Mithradatic war they stood fast by Rome, King Deiotarus, who had played a prominent part then, died in 40 B.C., and his kingdom passed to one of his officers, Amyntas, in 36 B.C., through the favor of Marcus Antonius, who charged the new sovran with the subjugation of Pisidia. The dominion of Amyntas extended over those mountainous countries, south of Galatia, which have always been so hard to civilise—Pisidia, Lycaonia, Isauria and western Cilicia. The fall of his patron Antonius made no difference in the position of Amyntas; Caesar allowed him to remain where he was. But when he died, in 25 B.C., Galatia was transformed into a Roman province, and (like all new provinces after 27 B.C.) was administered by an imperial governor
Pamphylia, over which the authority of Amyntas stretched, was now separated from Galatia, and made a distinct province; but Pisidia and Lycaonia still went with Galatia. In the mountainous regions of these districts the Hellenistic kings had done little for civilization, and there was a great field for the plantation of new cities. Antioch, Seleucia, Apollonia in northern Pisidia, Iconium and Laodicea Catacecaumene in Lycaonia, were indeed something; but they were only a beginning. Augustus founded the Roman colonies of Lystra and Parlais in Lycaonia, and Cremna in Pisidia; and his successors carried on the work. Many remains of theatres and aqueducts in these lands tell of prosperity under the early Empire; but even at the best times Mount Taurus was the home of wild mountaineers, always ready, under a weak government, to pursue the trade of brigandage.
THE DEPENDENT STATES IN ASIA MINOR AND ON THE EUXINE.—The rest of Asia Minor did not become provincial until after the death of Augustus. During his reign the Lycian confederacy, once subject to Rhodes but independent after the Third Macedonian War, was permitted to retain its autonomy. The kingdom of Cappadocia was ruled by King Archelaus. Polemon ruled over a Pontic kingdom, consisting of the territory between Cerasus and Trapezus, and also the land of Colchis. There were three distinct vassal states in Cilicia. In Paphlagonia there were some small principalities held by descendants of King Deiotarus, but these came to an end in 7 B.C. and were joined to Galatia. East of Galatia, north of Cappadocia, was the kingdom of Little Armenia, of which more will be said in the next chapter, where the position of Great Armenia will also be described, a kingdom dependent by turns on the Roman and the Parthian empires.
One state, or rather two states, which up to very late times continued Roman dependencies, not incorporated in the provincial system, still call for notice. These are two cities of the Tauric peninsula; Bosporus or Panticapaeum, on the eastern promontory at the entrance to the Palus Maeotis, and Chersonesus or Heraclea at the opposite, western side. (Bosporus and Chersonesus (shortened into Cherson) correspond to the modem Kerstch and Sebastopol). Bosporus was governed by kings, (the original title was archon), who also ruled over Phanagoria, on the opposite mainland, and Theudosia, a town on the peninsula. Chersonesus was a republic. Both states had been conquered by Mithradates and formed into a Bosporan realm. When he was overthrown, Bosporus, after some struggles, came finally into the hands of Asandros, who held it until his death (c. 16 B.C.) and left the kingdom to his wife Dynamis. By marriage with her and the permission of Augustus, Polemon, king of Pontus, then obtained the kingdom, and was succeeded by his children. But the republic of the western city was no longer subject to its eastern neighbor, though it might regard the Basileus of Bosporus as a protector in time of need. These cities on the distant border of Scythia played an important part in commerce. The Greek colonies on the northern shore of the Euxine, Tyras at the mouth of the river of like name, Olbia near the mouth of the Hypanis, although they sometimes received Roman protection, never took a permanent place in the Empire; lonely and remote, they were left to hold their own, as best they could, in the midst of barbarous peoples.
CYPRUS, CRETE, AND CYRENE.—In the western Mediterranean there were two insular provinces, Sicily and Sardinia; so likewise in the eastern parts of the same sea there were two insular provinces, Cyprus and Crete. Crete, however, was not an entire province; it had been joined by its conqueror Metellus with the Cyrenaic pentapolis. The joint province of “Crete and Cyrene” was assigned to the senate. The land of Cyrene, remarkable for its delightful, invigorating climate, was also blessed by freedom from political troubles throughout its history as a Roman province. Like Asia and Bithynia, it had been willed to the Roman republic by Ptolemy Apion, its last Macedonian king (96 B.C.). Cyprus was at first imperial, but in 22 B.C. Augustus transferred it, along with Gallia Narbonensis, to the senate. The early history of this island had turned, like that of Sicily, on the struggle between the Phoenicians and the Greeks. Under Roman rule it would have enjoyed unbroken tranquility, but for the large population of Jews who sometimes rebelled. Even the peaceful Cyrenaica was at times disturbed by the agitations of the same race. Crete, once the home of piracy was lucky enough to play no part in history as long as the Mediterranean was a wholly Roman sea.
SECT. III. — THE NEIGHBOURING DEPENDENT KINGDOMS AND SYRIA
Of the imperial provinces, Syria was the most important in the east, as Gaul in the west. The legatus of Syria, on whom it devolved to defend the frontier of the Euphrates against the Parthians, had four legions under him, the same number that was stationed on the Rhine. But it was not only for frontier service that the Syrian troops were needed; they had also to protect the cities and the villages against marauding bands who infested the hills. Hence the legions were quartered in the cities, and not, like the Rhine army, in special military stations on the frontier; and this circumstance was the source of the demoralization and lack of discipline which marked the Syrian army. But notwithstanding the existence of the hill-robbers, Syria was a most prosperous province. In the way of Hellenisation and colonization the Seleucid kings had left nothing for the Romans to do. Augustus founded Berytus in order to provide for veteran soldiers, and it remained an isolated Italian town in the midst of the Greek Asiatics—like Corinth in Greece, and Alexandria in the Troad. The Greek names of the towns in Syria recalled Macedonia, as towns in Sicily and Magna Graecia recalled old Greece, or as names of places in the United States recall the mother-country. But the older Aramaic names lived on side by side with the new Greek names, and in some cases have outlived them, as, for instance, Heliopolis, which is called Baalbec at the present day. People, too, had double names as well as places. Thomas who was called Didymus, and Tabitha also called Dorcas, in the New Testament, are familiar examples. The Aramaic tongue continued to be spoken beside Greek, like Celtic beside Latin in Gaul, especially in the remoter districts. From the mixture of Greek and Syrian life, a new mixed type of civilization arose, sometimes called Syrohellenic, and characteristically expressed in the great mausoleum erected on a hill near the Euphrates by Antiochus, king of Commagene. In his epitaph, that monarch prays, that upon his posterity may descend the blessings of the gods both of Persis and of Maketis (Persia and Macedonia).
In the busy factories of the great Syrian cities—Laodicea, Apamea, Tyre, Berytus, Byblus—were carried on the manufactures (linen, silk, &c.) for which the country was famous. But Antioch, the capital, was a town of pleasure rather than of work. It was not well situated for commerce, like Alexandria; but it was rich and magnificent. Splendidly supplied with water, brightly lit up at night, and full of superb buildings, it, with its suburb, the Gardens of Daphne, was probably the pleasantest town in the empire for the pleasure-seeker.
Southern Syria, on its eastern side, bordered on the dependent kingdom of Nabat, which extended from Damascus, encircling Palestine on the east and south, and including the northern portion of the Arabian peninsula. The regions, however, of Trachonitis, between Damascus and Bostra, which had been committed to the charge of Zenodorus, prince of Abila, were subsequently transferred by Augustus to the king of Judea because Zenodorus, instead of suppressing the robbers who infested Trachonitis, made common cause with them. Damascus itself, however, was subject to the Nabatean kings, whose capital was the great commercial city of Petra, the midway station through which