PONTUS, a district in the north-east of Asia Minor border ing on the Euxine (Black Sea). About 301 B.c. Mithradates I., Ktistes, founded a kingdom beyond the Halys ruled by a succes sion of kings, mostly bearing the same name, till 64 B.C. As the greater part of this kingdom lay within Cappadocia, which ex tended from the borders of Cilicia to the Euxine, the kingdom was at first called "Cappadocia towards the Pontos" (rpos II6vrcp), but afterwards simply "Pontus." Under the last king, Mithradates the Great, the realm of Pontus included not only Pontic Cappadocia but also the seaboard from the Bithynian frontier to Colchis, part of inland Paphlagonia, and Lesser Ar menia (see MITHRADATES). After Pompey's conquest part of the kingdom was annexed to the Roman empire, being united with Bithynia in a double province called "Pontus and Bithynia"; this part included the seaboard between Heracleia (Eregli) and Amisus (Samsun), the Ora pontica. Hereafter the simple name Pontus was employed to denote the half of this dual province.
Its native population was of the same stock as that of Cappa docia, an oriental race called by the Greeks Leucosyri or White Syrians, but their precise ethnological relations are uncertain. It is a table-land, forming the north-east corner of the great plateau of Asia Minor, edged on the north by a lofty mountain rim, along the foot of which runs a fringe of coast-land. The table-land consists of a series of fertile plains, drained almost entirely by the river Iris (Yeshil Irmak) and its tributaries. Between the Halys and the Iris the mountain rim is compara tively low and broken, but east of the Iris it is a continuous lofty ridge, the rugged northern slopes of which are furrowed by torrent beds. These inaccessible slopes were inhabited in Strabo's
time by wild, half-barbarous tribes, of whose ethnical relations we are ignorant—the Chalybes, Tibareni, Mosynoeci, and Macrones, on whose manners and condition some light is thrown by Xenophon (Ahab. V.). But the fringe of coast-land from Trebizond westward is one of the most beautiful parts of Asia Minor.
The seacoast was studded with Greek colonies founded from the 6th century onwards : Amisus, a colony of Miletus, Cotyora. Cerasus, and Trapezus (Trebizond), a famous city from Xeno phon's time until the end of the middle ages. The last three were colonies of Sinope, itself a Milesian colony. The chief towns in the interior were Amasia, on the Iris, the birthplace of Strabo, the capital of Mithradates the Great, and the burial place of the earlier kings, whose tombs still exist ; Comana, higher up the river, a fa mous centre of the worship of the goddess Ma (Cybele, q.v.) ; and Zela, a religious centre, refounded by Pompey, now Zileh.
Christianity was introduced into the province Pontus (the Ora pontica) by way of the sea in the ist century of ter Christ and was deeply rooted when Pliny governed the province (A.D. I I I– I13). But the Christianization of the inland Pontic districts began only about the middle of the 3rd century and was largely due to the zeal of Gregory Thaumaturgus, bishop of Neocaesarea.
See Ramsay, Histor. Geogr. of Asia Minor (189o) ; Anderson and Cumont, Studia pontica (1903 et seq.) ; Babelon and Reinach, Recueil des monnaies d'Asie min., t.i. (1904) ; Cambridge Ancient History, vol. iii. ch. xxv. (bibliography).