TARSUS (mod. Tersous), an ancient city in the fertile plain of Cilicia. The small river Cydnus flowed through the centre of the town, and its cool swift waters were the boast of the city.
The city is first mentioned on the Black Obelisk, as captured by the Assyrians c. 85o B.C. It was probably an old Ionian colony, settled (like Manus) under the direction of Clarian Apollo. Its importance was due (r) to its excellent and safe harbour, (2) to its possession of a fertile territory, and (3) to its command of the first waggon-road made across Mount Taurus, which was cut through the Cilician Gates, a narrow gorge roo yards in length, originally only wide enough to carry the waters of a small affluent of the Cydnus. The greatness of Tarsus rested therefore mainly on the two great engineering works, the harbour and the road.
Tarsus is most accessible from the sea or from the east. Even after the "Cilician Gates" were cut, the crossing of Taurus was a difficult operation for an invading army (as Xenophon and Arrian show). Hence Tarsian history (where not determined by Greek maritime relations) has been strongly affected by Semitic influence, and Dion Chrysostom, about A.D. 112, says it was more like a Phoenician than a Hellenic city (which it claimed to be). After the Assyrian power decayed, princes, several of whom bore the name or title Syennesis, ruled Tarsus before and under Persian power. Persian satraps governed it in the 4th century B.C. ; and struck coins with Aramaic legends there. The Seleucid kings of Syria for a time kept it in a state of servitude ; but it was made an autonomous city with addi tional citizens (probably Argive Greeks and Jews) by Antiochus IV. Epiphanes in 171 B.C. ; and then it began to strike its own coins. It became one of the richest and greatest cities of the East under the Romans after 104 B.C., and was favoured by both Antony and Augustus : the reception there by the former of Cleopatra, who sailed up to the city in a magnificent vessel, was a striking historic event. In spite of its oriental character, it maintained a university where Greek philosophy was taught by a series of famous Tarsians, who influenced Roman history.
Chief among them was Athenodorus Cananites (q.v.), teacher and fr;end of Augustus.
St. Paul, a native of Tarsus, proudly describes himself as "a citizen of no mean city." Tarsus depended for its greatness on commerce, peace and orderly government. It was not a strong fortress, and could not be defended during the decay of the empire against bar barian invasion. The Arabs captured the whole of Cilicia shortly after A.D. 66o; and Tarsus seems to have been a ruin for more than a century after the conquest. But Harun al Rashid rebuilt its walls in 787, and made it the north-western capital of the Arab power in the long wars against the Byzantine empire. All the raids, which were made in Asia Minor regularly, year by year, sometimes twice in one year, through the Cilician Gates and past the fortress Loulon, issued through the north gate of Tarsus, which was called the "Gate of the Holy War." The western gate is still standing, and is misnamed "St. Paul's Gate." The caliph Mamun died on such a foray in A.D. 833, having caught a chill at a great spring north of the Cilician Gates beside Ak-Keupreu. He was brought to Tarsus where (like the emperor Tacitus) he died, and (like the emperor Julian) was buried. His illness recalls the fever which Alexander the Great contracted from bathing in the Cydnus. Nicephorus Phocas reconquered Tarsus and all Cilicia for the empire in A.D. 965. In the First Crusade Baldwin and Tancred captured Tarsus A.D. 1099, and there the two leaders had a serious quarrel. It formed part of the kingdom of Lesser Armenia for great part of the three centuries after A.D. I 18o, and it was fortified by Leo II. and Hethoum I. But Turkoman and Egyptian invaders disputed its possession with the Greek emperors and Armenian kings and with one another. Finally it passed into Ottoman hands about the beginning of the 16th century.