of the Amphictyony were purely religious. It ordered the sacred festivals and administered the large income of the temple of Delphi. From a political point of view, it served the same purpose as the assembly of the three Gallic provinces which met at Lyons round the altar of Augustus; it helped to maintain a feeling of unity and a sense of common nationality.
SECT. II. — ASIA MINOR, KINGDOMS ON THE EUXINE, ISLANDS
ASIA AND BITHYNIA.—From the Greeks of the motherland we pass to the Greeks of Lesser Asia. Here Rome had never to struggle for dominion as in the other parts of the empire of Alexander the Great and his successors. The provinces of “Asia” and Bithynia dropped, as it were, into her arms. Asia was the kingdom of the Attalids of Pergamum, and was bequeathed to the Roman people by Attalus III; Bithynia became Roman in the same way by the testament of King Nicomedes. Both these provinces were assigned to the senate and governed by proconsuls. Asia extended from the shores of the Propontis to the borders of Lycia; eastward it included Phrygia, and on the west took in the islands along the coast. Bithynia was no longer confined to the original kingdom of Nicomedes. It had been increased on the east side by Pontus, after the overthrow of the empire of Mithradates by Pompey; and it stretched across the Bosphorus into Europe, so as to take in Byzantium.
In the kingdom of the Attalids little was left for the Romans to do in the way of Hellenisation. In the interior of the country there were many Hellenistic cities, and the growth of city-life required no fostering from the new mistress. The colonies of Parium, and Alexandria in the Troas, founded by Augustus, were for the purpose of settling veteran soldiers. It was otherwise in the kingdom of Nicomedes. Here Greek culture had not taken root so deeply or so widely; Bithynia was far less developed than Asia. Here accordingly there was room for Rome to step in and carry on the work of Hellenisation; and she gladly undertook the task. Pontus, which was under the governor of Bithynia, was more backward still. There were no Greek centres there, like Prusa and Nicaea in Bithynia; so that, the Hellenisation of that country practically began under the Empire. The two most important towns on the coast of Pontus, were Sinope, where a Roman colony had been planted, and Trapezus, which was the station of the Pontic fleet.
In Asia Minor, as in other parts of the Empire, Augustus promoted the institution of provincial councils. The deputies of the various cities met yearly in a centre, and the assembly could make known to the Roman governor the wishes of the province. But this institution took a special shape and color by its association with the worship of the Emperor. In 29 B.C. Caesar (not yet Augustus) authorized the diets of Asia and Bithynia to build temples to himself in Pergamum and Nicomedia. Hence the custom of paying divine honors to the Emperor during his lifetime spread throughout the provinces; in Italy and Rome such worship was not yielded to him till he was deified after death. This worship involved the existence of high priests, who in the Asiatic provinces became very important persons, and gave their name to the year. Whereas in European Greece the ancient public festivals—Olympian, Pythian, Isthmian and Nemean,—still lived, and the new Actian feast was celebrated in honor of Apollo, in Asia the public feasts were connected with the cult of the Emperor. The president of the provincial diet, the Asiarch in Asia, the Bithyniarch in Bithynia, conducted the celebration of these festivals and defrayed the costs; so that those offices could only be held by rich men. There was no lack of wealthy folk in Asia, the province “of five hundred cities”. It had suffered a good deal from piracy and from the Mithradatic war; and Augustus, in order to restore prosperity, resorted to the measure of cancelling old debts. Rhodes was the only state that did not take advantage of this permission. But Asia soon recovered, and her bright cities enjoyed under the Empire tranquility and prosperity.
GALATIA AND PAMPHYLIA.—When the provinces were divided in 27 B.C.between the senate and the Emperor, Asia Minor was only in small part provincial. Besides Asia and Bithynia, only eastern Cilicia was subject to a Roman governor. The rest of the country consisted of dependent states, holding the same relation to Rome as Mauretania in the west. Chief among these “vassal” states was the kingdom of Galatia, then ruled by Amyntas. Celtic civilization held its own for a long time against Hellenism in this miniature Gaul, which was set down in a land of Hellenistic states, somewhat like Massilia, that miniature Greece, set down in a of Celtic cantons. The visitor who came from western Galatia (the Greek name of Gaul) to eastern Galatia 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