SECTION I.

ASIA MINOR.

Preliminary observations on the name of Asia-Principal geographical features of the peninsula commonly called Asia Minor-Inquiry into the origin of the various nations by which it was peopled-Divisions.

As EARLY as the time of Herodotus we find the name of Asia employed to designate the vast continent situated to the east of Europe, and almost entirely subject at that period to the Persian dominion. The Greeks, as we learn from that historian, pretended that it was derived from Asia, the wife of Prometheus, but the Lydians, on the other hand, affirmed that its origin was to be sought for in their country. For that Asius, from whom it was deduced, was the grandson of Manes, one of their earliest monarchs; and, to corroborate this assertion, they adduced the fact of the name of Asias having been originally attached to a Sardian tribe a. (IV. 45.) The evidence which can be brought forward in favour of the Lydian tradition, leaves little doubt respecting the issue of this question. It may be ob

a Bochart derives the name from Asi, a Phoenician word signifying a middle part, or something intermediate; according to which etymology

VOL. I.

Asia would signify the continent situated between Europe and Africa. Geogr. Sacr. IV. 33. p. 298.

B

served that Homer applied the name of Asia to a small district of Mæonia, or Lydia, situated near the river Caystrus,

̓Ασίῳ ἐν λειμῶνι, Καϋστρίου ἀμφὶ ῥέεθρα.

IL. B. 461.

a passage which Virgil has imitated in his Georgics:

quæ Asia circum

Dulcibus in stagnis rimantur prata Caystri.

I. 383.

Euripides also evidently restricts the appellation to a portion of Lydia, where he says,

̓Ασίας ἀπὸ γᾶς

ἱερὸν Τμῶλον ἀμείψασα

BACCH. 64.

(Cf. Dionys. Perieg. 836. et Eustath. Comm.) By what process this specific name came to be applied generally to the whole peninsula, and after that to the entire Asiatic continent, it is not easy to determine. But it is probable that the Ionian Greeks, on their first arrival on the banks of the Mæander and Caystrus, adopted the name which they found already attached to the country, and communicated it to their European countrymen. These gradually learned to apply it first to that maritime portion with which they were most familiar, then to the interior also, and finally to all those countries which were situated to the east of Greece. This final extension had already taken place, as I have before observed, in the time of Herodotus, who employs the division of Upper and Lower Asia. The latter of these answers in fact to what we now call Asia Minor, while the former denotes the vast

tract of country situated to the east of the Euphrates. Notwithstanding, however, this wide acceptation given to the name, it appears clearly that it always remained attached in a peculiar and restricted sense to a portion of Asia Minor, which strongly confirms the notion that the appellation originated in that district. In proof of the above assertion it is only necessary to refer to the title of Asia Propria, ἡ ἰδίως καλουμένη 'Ασία, given to the Roman proconsular province forming a part only of the Asiatic peninsula. (Strab. XIII. p. 626. II. p. 188.) It is in this sense too that we always find the word used in the New Testament, as in the Acts ii. 9. where Asia is distinguished from Cappadocia, Pontus, Phrygia, and Pamphylia; and xvi. 6. it is said, "Now when they had gone through"out Phrygia and the region of Galatia, and were "forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word "in Asia." From the book of Revelations, which is addressed to the seven churches in Asia, it is further seen that the name was strictly confined to that portion of ancient Lydia which contained Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamus, Sardis, &c. It is not exactly known when the peninsula came to be designated by the name of Asia Minor, now generally used by the European nations; but it does not, I believe, appear in any author prior to Orosius, who employs it, (I. 2.) as well as Constantine Porphyrogenetes, (de Themat. I. 8.) The term Anatolia, used by the Turks to denote this portion of the Ottoman

b See Cellarius Dissertatio de Sept. Eccles. Asiæ inter Dissert. Academ. p. 412.; also archbishop Usher's Geogr. and

Hist. disquisition touching the Asia properly so called. Oxford, 1643.

empire, is evidently of Greek origin, and answers to the Frank word Levant. Towards the decline of the Roman empire we find Asia Minor divided into two dioceses, or provinces, called Asiana and Pontica, (Notit. Imper. I.) each governed by a lieutenant termed Vicarius. (Cod. Theod. V. tit. 2.) Other divisions were afterwards adopted by the Byzantine emperors, but these do not come within the scope of a work especially intended to illustrate classical geography.

Asia Minor is bounded on the north by the Pontus Euxinus, or Black sea, which communicates with the Propontis, or sea of Marmara, by means of the Bosphorus, or straits of Constantinople; and this again with the Egæum Mare by the Hellespontus, now straits of the Dardanelles. The Egean sea, called Archipelago in modern geography, forms its western boundary, while on the south its shores are washed by that inland sea to which the name of Internum or Mediterraneum was more particularly applied. In order to define the eastern limit of the peninsula, we must follow the river sometimes called Acampsis, at others Apsarus, now Tchorok-sou, which divides Pontus from Colchis, from its termination into the Euxine, to where it meets the great chain of Armenian mountains formerly called Scydisces. This ridge, running in a south-westerly direction from the Acampsis to the Euphrates, then forms one boundary as far as the latter river, the course of which, dividing the two Armenias, traces the line of separation as far as the little district of Melitene, belonging to Cappadocia. At this point the great chain of mount Taurus, running from west to east, is intersected by the river. Our line,

therefore, leaving the Euphrates, follows Taurus to the west, till it meets mount Amanus, which, branching off from the central ridge in a south-westerly direction, closes upon the Cilician sea at the defile called the Syriæ Pylæ, and thus completes the angular line which joins the two seas, and forms the fourth side of the Asiatic peninsula.

Were we to form our notions of the shape and extent of Asia Minor from the measurements transmitted to us by the geographers of antiquity, we should be led into numerous errors, and those of no trifling kind. This will be at once evident by merely attending to those of Strabo; for being a native of the country, and, generally speaking, the best informed writer on the subject of which he treats, he may fairly be considered as affording the best criterion of the accuracy of the ancients on the point in question.

Now with respect to the northern coast of Asia Minor, Strabo's want of accuracy is rendered apparent, by his supposing the shore of the Euxine to form nearly a straight line from Byzantium to Amisus; (II. p. 74.) whereas it advances in a northerly direction nearly the whole way, from the Thracian Bosphorus to the Cape Inje, formerly Syrias, above Sinope; so that the difference of latitude between this promontory and Byzantium is more than one degree. From Sinope it bends to the south again as far as Amisus, which is nearly forty miles below the parallel of the former town. From Chalcedon to Sinope, Strabo reckons 3500 stadia, and 900 from Sinope to Amisus, in all 4400; and for the southern coast about 5000, from Rhodes to Issus in Cilicia. Thus Issus would be 600 stadia to