ASIA
784
ASIA
Pontic region and elsewhere the apple, pear, phim,
and cherrj' grow wild; indeed, Asia Minor is said to
be the native home of these fruit-trees, usually
looked on as of Western origin. Oriental plane
and cypress, quasi-sacred sjanbols of domestic com-
fort and of human sorrow, are found everjT\here.
In the sheltered southern valleys the vine, fig, orange,
lemon, and citron grow amid the rich aromatic shrub-
ben,-, and lend to the landscape the aspect of Sicily
or "the more favoured districts of southern France.
Several animal species, once indigenous to Asia
Minor, have disappeared with the destruction of the
inland forests. It is thought that like our domestic
varieties of fruit trees, the sheep and the goat are
also a gift of Asia Minor. The Angora goat, famous
for its silky hair of which the mohair or so-called
"cashmere" shawls are woven, is a Turkish impor-
tation of the eleventh or twelfth centurj- (Tchihat-
cheff) and seems to have been unknown to the an-
cients It is limited to the district of that name in
Galatia, and the flocks, 400,000 to 500,000 head,
are very difficult to acclimatize elsewhere than on
these high plateaux; at any other place the quality
of the fleece quickly deteriorates. The horses for
which Asia Minor, particularly Cappadocia, was once
famous have either disappeared or given way to
another race, graceful, active, and hardy, but in-
ferior to the present stock of SjT-ia or Arabia; there
are no longer any large cattle of fine breed. The
one-humped camel is the chief means of transporta-
tion, especially on the uplands and in the remote
eastern districts. Here he associates peaceably
with the horse, and can bear with ease and security
a pack of 2,50 pounds over the passes and rocky
terraces. The introduction of the camel probably
dates from the twelfth century and symbolizes
the thorough substitution of Oriental life for the
civilization of the West. A small debased breed
of asses abounds, quite inferior to the fine donkeys
of Syria or Egypt. Mules are also numerous, as
pack-animals and means of transportation; accord-
ing to an Homeric tradition the peninsula is the
original home of the mule. [For a fuller account
of the geography of Asia Minor see the classic work
of Vivien de Saint Martin, quoted below, and Reclus-
Keane, The Earth and its Inhabitants (New York,
1S95), Asia Minor (Anatolia), IV, 241-343.]
III. History. — From time immemorial Asia Mi- nor has been the highway of nations crossing from east to west, and occasionally reversing their course. At the dawn of history, dimly seen Chalybes are working the iron ores of the Caucasus on the Black Sea, and close by are Iberians, Colchians and other tribes. At the other extremity Thracian tribes are flowing backward to their original haunts in Phrygia and Bithynia, while Semitic peoples begin the his- torical life of Cappadocia. From 1500 to 1000 B. c. the Hittites overran the land as far as the Halys and even as far as Smyrna and Ephesus; sculptures and rock-sanctuaries (Hoghaz-Keui in Cappadocia) still attest their presence. Before them Turanian peoples may have been long settled on the land. Inscribed and sculptured rock-surfaces and tombs in Lycia still puzzle the archaeologist, historian, and pliilologist. From all such data it is imprac- ticable to reconstnict, except in the broadest outline, " the periods of formation through which Asia Minor must have passed before it stands out in the full light of history with its division int<i numerous more or less independent states, its mixed population, its compHcated combination of religions and cultures as different as the races which originated thein" (Itagozin). The fable of the Amazon state in the Thermodon valley seems to have originated in the female priesthood of the Hittito nature-godde-ss. Mil, that the Greeks of the western coast eventually chaJiged into Artemis (Diana of Ephesus). The
modern discoveries of Schliemann and Dorpfeld at
Hissarlik, on the site of ancient Troy, go far to con-
firm the reality of the main incidents in Homer
and the traditional date (1200-1100 B. c.) of the
siege and capture of the city of Priam. But it was
not the Argives of Agamemnon who were destined
to conquer Asia Minor for the ideas of Hellas. About
the year 1000 b. r. , numerous Greeks, fleeing before
the Dorian invasion from the uplands of Epirus and
Thessaly, began to move southward. Driven by
these rude warlike invaders, they soon took to the
open sea, and so eventually settled in the islands of
the Archipelago and along the southern coast of
Asia Minor wherever the river-mouths or the plains
offered tempting sites for trade and enterprise.
They found before them the kingdoms of Lydia
and Caria with whose history Herodotus (I, 7-14)
begins his account of the wars of the Greeks and
Persians; for Asia, he says, with all the barbarian
triljes that inhabit it, is regarded by the Persians as
their own (ibid., I, 4). Thenceforth, from the ninth
to the sixth century b. c, it is a long procession of
Greeks (lonians, ^olians, Dorians) who descend
regularly on the shores of Asia Minor as traders,
colonists, adventurers; above all, men of Ionian race.
They build their city and sanctuarj' of Miletus near
the shrine of the Lydian sun-god; they adopt other
local deities, intermarry with the natives and estab-
lish soon an over-sea Greece whose development is
the first great chapter in the history of the Western
mind. (Sayce, The Ancient Empires of the East,
London, 1884; Grote, History of Greece.) The
earliest known coins (square-punched, electron)
are of Lydian origin, belong to the seventh century
b. c, and are perhaps a result of the mercantile
intercourse of Greeks and natives. The oracle of
Delphi now attracted the Lydian kings, "the first of
the barbarians", says Herodotus, "to send presents
to that Greek temple", and so along the lines of a
common religion there sprang up an ever closer
intercourse of both races.
About the middle of the sixth century B. c, a certain hegemony over most of the peninsula was established by Cra?sus, King of Lydia, but this petted child of antique fortune was soon overthrown (548-546 B. c.) by the Persian Cjtus, after which for two centuries the entire land was an outlying province of Persia. In those days the exactions of the "Great King" fitted in with the ambition and patriotism of the Greeks of the mainland to bring about sympathetic wars in defence of the Asiatic Greeks and then in defence of the Hellenic father- land (500-449 B. c). These immortal efforts of the Greeks arrested forever the reiieated overflow of Oriental arrogance and oppression, and made ready the way for the career of Alexander the Great who was destined to revenge on the Orient all the wrongs, supposed or real, of the Greeks of Asia Minor, and to open the career of European grandeur and prog- ress. An uneasy and disturbed period followed, during which the Seleucid successors of Alexander pretended to dominate from Antioch the rich and easy prey of .-Xsia Minor that had fallen to Alexander after tlio'buttU-s of llic Gnuiicu.-J and of Issus (334-333 B. c), fouglit respectively at either end of the penin- sula. In this time arose the new kingdoms of Pon- tus, Bithynia, Cappadocia, Pergamus, and Cilicia partly Greek and partly native, also the interesting Celtic kingdom of Galatia founded (280 B. c.) by warlike adventurers from Gaul, and so organized by (hem that for the next six or seven centuries it bore the stamp of many peculiar Celtic institutions of their distant fatherland. Greek art, that had already flourished admirably in the Ionian islands and niainland centres of the south and south-west, now took on a fresh development, forever connected with the little mountainous kingdom of Perg:!mus
