Phrygia

The expansion of the Phrygians into eastern Asia Minor is proved by the discovery of an inscription in the Phrygian lan guage at Tyana in Cappadocia. This text, it is true, does not appear to be of earlier date than the 8th century B.C. But the presence of Phrygians on the borders of the Euphrates may per haps be inferred from Assyrian records which relate victories by Tiglath-Pileser I. (c. 1120 B.C.) and by Sargon (717-7o9 B.c.) over a tribe named the Mushki. The fact that in one of Sargon's inscriptions the chief of the Mushki bears the name "Mita" sug gests that the Mushki were Phrygian, or at least had Phrygian rulers, for "Mita" or "Midas" was a common name among the kings of Phrygia proper.

The relation between the Phrygians and the Hittites, who were the predominant people in Asia Minor c. 15oo B.C., is not yet quite clear. The existence of a group of rock-carvings in Hittite style, extending from Ancyra to Sardes and Smyrna, suggests that Phrygia proper may at one time have been under Hittite government, but the character of Hittite influence in north western Asia Minor still remains uncertain. On the other hand there is little doubt that the decline of Hittite culture and the disappearance of Hittite power from Asia Minor after moo B.C. was in large measure due to the expansion of the Phrygians over the peninsula.

Decline of Phrygia.

About moo B.c. the Phrygians had penetrated southward in Asia Minor as far as the Hermus and the Maeander, and eastward to the Halys, if not to the Euphrates. But over the greater part of this territory they were unable to consolidate their power, or to extend their culture. East of the Halys they disappear from history about 700 B.C. Their frontage on the Black sea was taken from them by the Bithynians, who probably entered Asia Minor from Europe soon after r 000 B.C. Their access to the Aegean was shut off at some unknown date by the Greek colonists of the coastland and by the Lydians of the Hermus valley. After Boo B.C. the only districts which re mained in Phrygian occupation were the tableland between the Sangarius and the Hermus, and the borderland of the Dardanelles and the Sea of Marmora, known later as "Hellespontine Phrygia." In the 8th century B.C. Phrygia proper achieved a consider able measure of prosperity under a line of kings who had their capital at Gordium and were called alternately "Gordius" and "Midas." The last and greatest of this dynasty was a king Midas who reigned, according to Greek chronologers, from 738 to 695 B.C. This ruler cultivated close relations with the Greeks. He was the first foreign ruler to dedicate offerings to Apollo at Delphi, and he took to wife the daughter of Agamemnon, king of the Aeolic Greek city of Cyme. His name may still be read on his tomb in the "Midas city," one of the most notable remains of Phrygian art.

Soon after 700 B.C. the reign of Midas was brought to a sudden end by the incursion of a Thracian people named the Cimmerians, of which Greeks, Lydians and Assyrians felt the force, but the Phrygians took the full brunt. By the second half of the 7th

century the Cimmerians disappeared from Asia Minor without leaving a trace, but Phrygia was now so far enfeebled that it fell under the dominion of the neighbouring kingdom of Lydia.

Phrygia under Foreign Rule.

Under the Lydian rule Phrygia seems to have recovered some of its former prosperity. If the dates usually assigned to Phrygian monuments are correct, Phrygian art reached its highest development about 600 B.C. A resumption of commerce with the Greeks at this period is indi cated by finds of Corinthian pottery at Gordium. But after the conquest of Lydia by the Persians (546 B.c.) Phrygia shared in the general decline which now befell western Asia Minor; nothing more is heard of its trade with the Greeks, except that it was a favourite hunting-ground for Greek slaves. It formed one large Persian province, but about 400 B.C. it was divided into two por tions, "Great Phrygia" and Hellespontine Phrygia.

After two centuries of uneventful history under Persian rule Phrygia passed into the hands of Alexander of Macedon, who visited Gordium (333 B.C.) and there cut the "Gordian knot"; legend declared that this knot, which secured the yoke to the shaft of an archaic farm-wagon, had been tied by Gordius, the founder of the Phrygian dynasty, and that whosoever might unravel it should become lord of Asia. After Alexander's death Phrygia became a battle-ground for the contending forces of his former marshals. At first it formed the nucleus of the territory of Antigonus, who set up his capital at Celaenae ; but after the decisive action at the neighbouring site of Ipsus (3o1 B.c.) it was transferred to Seleucus as an annex to the kingdom of Syria.

About 275 B.C. all the Phrygian lands east of the Sangarius came into the possession of a horde of Celtic invaders from the Danube lands and was renamed Galatia. The western portion of Phrygia at the same time was taken from the kings of Syria by the newly-founded monarchy of Pergamum. For nearly a cen tury the Phrygian territory remained a bone of contention be tween the kings of Pergamum and Syria and the Galatian Celts, until in 189 B.C. the Romans expelled the Syrian kings from Asia Minor, confined the Celts to Galatia, and left the western half of the peninsula under the undisputed control of the Pergamene rulers. After the annexation of the Pergamene kingdom by Rome in 133 B.C., Phrygia west of the Sangarius became part of the province of Asia, and remained in this condition until c. A.D. 300, when the emperor Diocletian constituted it into two independent provinces, Phrygia Prima and Secunda. Under the Byzantine empire the name Phrygia disappeared altogether.