North of Syria was the client kingdom—later the province—of Commagene, with a populous capital at Samosata, Lucian’s childhood home. Across the Euphrates stood the little realm of Osrhoene; Rome fortified its capital, Edessa (Urfa), as a base against Parthia; we shall hear more of it in Christian days. Westward from Syria one passed into Cilicia (as now into Turkey) at Alexandria Issi (Alexandretta). This, Cicero’s province, was highly civilized along the southern Asia Minor coast, but still barbarous in the Taurus hills. Tarsus (Tersous), the capital, was “no mean city,” said its son Saint Paul, but was renowned for its schools and philosophers.
Over against Cilicia, in the Mediterranean, the island of Cyprus pursued its immemorial life of mining copper, cutting cypress, building ships, and bearing patiently a succession of conquerors. The lucrative mines were owned by Rome and worked by slaves. Galen describes how in his time a mine there collapsed and crushed hundreds of workers—a periodical incident in the geological basis of human comforts and powers.
North of Cilicia lay arid and mountainous Cappadocia, mining precious metals, and raising wheat, cattle, and slaves for export. West of it, Lycaonia would enter into history with the visits of Saint Paul to Derbe, Lystra, and Iconium. Again north was Galatia, settled and named by the Gauls in the third century B.C.; its most famous product was the Black Stone of Pessinus, sent to Rome as a symbol of Cybele; its chief city was Ancyra, capital of the Hittites 3500 years ago, and of Turkey today. West of Cilicia, the province of Pisidia counted fine cities within its borders, like Xanthus, now recovering from its mass suicide before Brutus, and Aspendus, whose theater is so well preserved that one easily imagines it filling again to hear Menander or Euripides.
West and north of Pisidia was the province of “Asia,” divided into Phrygia, Caria, Lydia, and Mysia. Here, where the civilization of Ionia still flourished after a thousand years, Philostratus counted 500 towns, with a total population far greater than the region supports today. The countryside was fertile, the crafts had grown in skill from age to age, and the ports profited from the development of rich markets in Italy, Africa, Spain, and Gaul. Phrygia was mountainous, but it boasted large cities like Apamea Celaenae—ranked by Strabo as second only to Ephesus in “Asia”—and Laodicea, fortunate in its philanthropic philosophers and millionaires. Cnidus was yet important enough to make an alliance with Rome; but Halicarnassus had declined from Herodotus to Dionysius—an excellent literary critic, an uncritical historian. Miletus was no longer in its prime, though still an active port; the oracle of Apollo in the temple at near-by Didyma continued to answer questions with puzzles; and the storytellers of the region were weaving those amorous picaresque “Milesian tales” that would soon develop into the Greek novel. Priene was a minor town, but its citizens vied honorably in making it fair with fine buildings. Here, in the first century B.C., a woman, Phile, was elected to the highest municipal office; the influence of wealth and Rome was raising the status of woman in Hellenic lands. Magnesia on the Maeander had what many rated as the most nearly perfect temple in Asia—dedicated to Artemis (129 B.C.), and designed by Hermogenes, the supreme architect of the age. At Mycale the koinon, or Commons, still met annually as a general council and religious union for Ionia.
Of the islands lying off the Carian coast Cos prospered with its silk industry and its medical school, rich with traditions of Hippocrates, and Rhodes (i.e., the Rose) was even in her decline the most beautiful city of the Greek world. When, after the Civil War, Augustus sought to relieve the distress of the eastern cities by allowing the cancellation of all debts, Rhodes refused to avail herself of the expedient and met all her obligations faithfully. As a result she rapidly regained her place as banker to the Aegean trade and became again a halfway port for vessels plying between Asia and Egypt. The city was celebrated for its fallen Colossus, its handsome buildings, its famous statuary, its clean and orderly streets, its competent aristocratic government, its celebrated schools of rhetoric and philosophy. Here Apollonius Molo taught Caesar and Cicero those arts of style which through them influenced all later Latin prose.
The most famous Rhodian of this period was Poseidonius, the last great synthetic mind of antiquity. Born at Syrian Apamea (135 B.C.), he first earned fame as a long-distance runner. After studying under Panaetius in Athens he made Rhodes his home, served her as magistrate and ambassador, traveled into many provinces, returned to Rhodes, and drew such men as Pompey and Cicero to his lectures on the Stoic philosophy. At 83 he went to live in Rome and died there a year later. His lost Universal History—covering Rome and its possessions from 144 to 82 B.C.—was ranked by ancient scholars as equal to the work of Polybius. His report of his travels in Gaul and his treatise On the Ocean were basic sources for Strabo. His calculation of the sun’s distance from the earth—52,000,000 miles—was closer than that of any other ancient student to our modern reckoning. He went to Cádiz to study the tides, and explained them by the joint action of the sun and the moon. He underestimated the distance across the Atlantic and predicted that one sailing from Spain would come to India after 8000 miles. Despite his wide acquaintance with natural science, he accepted many of the spiritualistic ideas of his time—daimones, divination, astrology, telepathy, and the power of the soul to rise to a mystic union with God, whom he defined as the Life-Force of the world. Cicero too generously ranked him as the greatest of the Stoics; we might also consider him a forerunner of the Neo-Platonists, a bridge from Zeno to Plotinus.
Following the coast of Asia northward from Caria, the traveler entered Lydia and its greatest city, Ephesus. It flourished under the Romans as never before. Though Pergamum was the formal capital of “Asia,” Ephesus became the seat of the Roman proconsul and his staff; it was also the main port of the province and the meeting place of the provincial assembly. Its polyglot population of 225,000 ranged from philanthropic sophists to a noisy and superstitious rabble. The streets were well paved and lighted and had miles of shady porticoes. There were the usual public buildings, some unearthed as late as 1894: a “museum” or scientific center, a medical school, a library with a strangely baroque façade, and a theater that seated 56,000 persons; here Demetrius the image-maker would arouse the populace against Saint Paul. The center (and chief bank) of the city was the Temple of Artemis, surrounded by 128 columns each the gift of a king. The eunuch priests were attended by virgin priestesses and a swarm of slaves; the rites were a mixture of Oriental and Greek; the barbarous statue that represented the goddess had two rows of supernumerary breasts, symbolizing fertility. The Festival of Artemis made all May a month of rejoicing, feasting, and games.
Smyrna, despite its fishermen, had a better atmosphere. Apollonius of Tyana, who traveled far and wide, called it “the most beautiful city under the sun.”59 It was proud of its long, straight streets, its double-tiered colonnades, its library, and its university. One of its most famous sons, Aelius Aristides (A.D. 117-187), described it in terms that reveal the splendor of these Roman-Hellenistic cities.
Go from east to west, and you will pass from temple to temple and from hill to hill along a street fairer than its name (the Golden Way). Stand on the acropolis: the sea flows beneath you, the suburbs lie about you, the city through three lovely views fills the goblet of your soul. . . . Everything to the very shore is a shining mass of gymnasia, markets, theaters . . . baths—so many that you hardly know where to bathe . . . fountains and public walks, and running water in every home. The abundance of her spectacles, contests, and exhibitions is beyond telling, and the variety of her handicrafts. Of all cities this is best suited for those who like to live at ease and be philosophers without guile.60
Aelius was one of many rhetors and sophists whose fame drew students to Smyrna from all Hellas. His teacher Polemo was so great (says Philostratus) “that he talked with cities as his inferiors, with emperors as not his superiors, and with the gods as his equals.”61 When he lectured in Athens Herodes Atticus, his greatest rival in opulent eloquence, attended as an admiring pupil. In payment for the privilege Herodes sent him 150,000 drachmas ($90,000); when Polemo failed to thank him a friend suggested that he felt underpaid; Herodes sent 100,000 more, which Polemo quietly accepted as his due. Polemo used his fortune to embellish his adopted city; he took part in its government, harmonized its factions, and served it as ambassador. Tradition says that finding his arthritis unbearable he shut himself up in the tomb of his ancestors at Laodicea and died of voluntary starvation at the age of fifty-six.62
Sardis, Croesus’ ancient capital, was still “a great city” in Strabo’s time. Cicero was impressed by the splendor and refinement of Mytilene, and in the third century Longus described it in terms suggestive of Venice.63 Pergamum shone with the great altar and costly buildings raised by the Attalid kings out of a treasury fattened by the labor of slaves in state forests, fields, mines, and factories. Attalus III anticipated Roman expansion and social revolution by bequeathing his realm to Rome in 133 B.C. Aristonicus, son of King Eumenes II by a concubine, denounced the bequest as forced, called the slaves and the free poor to revolt, defeated a Roman army (132), captured many cities, and planned a socialist state with the help of Blossius, teacher of the Gracchi. The neighboring kings of Bithynia and Pontus, and the business classes of the occupied cities, joined Rome in suppressing the rebellion, and Aristonicus died in a Roman dungeon. This uprising, and the Mithridatic Wars, interrupted the cultural life of Pergamum for half a century, and Antony despoiled its famous library to reimburse Alexandria for the volumes burned during Caesar’s stay. Pergamum must have recovered by Vespasian’s time, for the elder Pliny judged it the most brilliant city in Asia. It enjoyed a new flurry of building under the Antonines, and developed in its Asclepieum a medical school from which Galen went forth to cure the world.
Farther north Alexandria Troas was made a Roman colony by Augustus in memory of Rome’s supposed Trojan origin—which gave Rome a convenient claim to all these parts. On a near-by hill (Hissarlik) old Troy was rebuilt as new Ilium, and became a goal for tourists to whom guides pointed out the exact spot of every exploit in the Iliad, and the cave where Paris had judged Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena. On the Propontis Cyzicus built ships and sent out a ubiquitous merchant fleet rivaled only by that of Rhodes. Here Hadrian built a Temple of Persephone which was one of the glories of Asia. Its columns, says Dio Cassius, were six feet in diameter and seventy-five feet high, yet each was a single block of stone.64 Rising from a hill, it towered so high that Aelius counted the harbor’s lighthouse superfluous.
From the Red to the Black Sea a hundred cities flourished under the Roman peace.