Phalanx
The phalanx was a rectangular mass military formation composed of heavy infantry armed with spears, sarissas, or similar pole weapons. The term is used to describe the use of this formation in Ancient Greek warfare, although the ancient Greek writers used it to describe any massed infantry formation, regardless of its equipment. Arrian uses the term in his Array against the Alans. In Greek texts, the phalanx may be deployed for battle, on the march, or camped, thus describing the mass of infantry or cavalry that would deploy in line during battle, they marched forward as one entity. The term itself, as used today, does not refer to a distinctive military unit or division, but to the type of formation of an army's troops. Therefore, this term does not indicate a standard combat strength or composition but includes the total number of infantry, deployed in a single formation known as a "phalanx". Many spear-armed troops fought in what might be termed phalanx-like formations; this article focuses on the use of the military phalanx formation in Ancient Greece, the Hellenistic world, other ancient states influenced by Greek civilization.
The earliest known depiction of a phalanx-like formation occurs in a Sumerian stele from the 25th century BC. Here the troops seem to have been equipped with spears and large shields covering the whole body. Ancient Egyptian infantry were known to have employed similar formations; the first usage of the term phalanx comes from Homer's "", used to describe hoplites fighting in an organized battle line. Homer used the term to differentiate the formation-based combat from the individual duels so found in his poems. Historians have not arrived at a consensus about the relationship between the Greek formation and these predecessors of the hoplites; the principles of shield wall and spear hedge were universally known among the armies of major civilizations throughout history, so the similarities may be related to convergent evolution instead of diffusion. Traditionally, historians date the origin of the hoplite phalanx of ancient Greece to the 8th century BC in Sparta, but this is under revision, it is more that the formation was devised in the 7th century BC after the introduction of the aspis by the city of Argos, which would have made the formation possible.
This is further evidenced by the Chigi vase, dated to 650 BC, identifying hoplites armed with aspis and panoply. Another possible theory as to the birth of Greek phalanx warfare stems from the idea that some of the basic aspects of the phalanx were present in earlier times yet were not developed due to the lack of appropriate technology. Two of the basic strategies seen in earlier warfare include the principle of cohesion and the use of large groups of soldiers; this would suggest that the Greek phalanx was rather the culmination and perfection of a developed idea that originated many years earlier. As weaponry and armour advanced through the years in different city-states, the phalanx became complex and effective; the hoplite phalanx of the Archaic and Classical periods in Greece was the formation in which the hoplites would line up in ranks in close order. The hoplites would lock their shields together, the first few ranks of soldiers would project their spears out over the first rank of shields.
The phalanx therefore presented a shield wall and a mass of spear points to the enemy, making frontal assaults against it difficult. It allowed a higher proportion of the soldiers to be engaged in combat at a given time. Battles between two phalanxes took place in open, flat plains where it was easier to advance and stay in formation. Rough terrain or hilly regions would have made it difficult to maintain a steady line and would have defeated the purpose of a phalanx; as a result, battles between Greek city-states would not take place in just any location, nor would they be limited to sometimes obvious strategic points. Rather, many times, the two opposing sides would find the most suitable piece of land where the conflict could be settled; the battle ended with one of the two fighting forces fleeing to safety. The phalanx advanced at a walking pace, although it is possible that they picked up speed during the last several yards. One of the main reasons for this slow approach was to maintain formation.
The formation would be rendered useless if the phalanx was lost as the unit approached the enemy and could become detrimental to the advancing unit, resulting in a weaker formation, easier for an enemy force to break through. If the hoplites of the phalanx were to pick up speed toward the latter part of the advance, it would have been for the purpose of gaining momentum against the enemy in the initial collision. Herodotus states of the Greeks at the Battle of Marathon, that "They were the first Greeks we know of to charge their enemy at a run". Many historians believe that this innovation was precipitated by their desire to minimize their losses from Persian archery; the opposing sides would collide severing many of the spears of the row in front and killing the front part of the enemy army due to the bone-breaking collision. The "physical pushing match" theory is one where the battle would rely on the valour of the men in the front line, whilst those in the rear maintained forward pressure on the front ranks with their shields, the whole formation would press forward trying to break the enemy formation.
This is the most acce
Cilicia
In antiquity, Cilicia was the south coastal region of Asia Minor and existed as a political entity from Hittite times into the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia during the late Byzantine Empire. Extending inland from the southeastern coast of modern Turkey, Cilicia is due north and northeast of the island of Cyprus and corresponds to the modern region of Çukurova in Turkey. Cilicia extended along the Mediterranean coast east from Pamphylia, to the Nur Mountains, which separated it from Syria. North and east of Cilicia lie the rugged Taurus Mountains that separate it from the high central plateau of Anatolia, which are pierced by a narrow gorge, called in antiquity the Cilician Gates. Ancient Cilicia was divided into Cilicia Trachaea and Cilicia Pedias by the Limonlu River. Salamis, the city on the east coast of Cyprus, was included in its administrative jurisdiction; the Greeks invented for Cilicia an eponymous Hellene founder in the purely mythical Cilix, but the historic founder of the dynasty that ruled Cilicia Pedias was Mopsus, identifiable in Phoenician sources as Mpš, the founder of Mopsuestia who gave his name to an oracle nearby.
Homer mentions the people of Mopsus, identified as Cilices, as from the Troad in the northernwesternmost part of Anatolia. The English spelling Cilicia is the same as the Latin, as it was transliterated directly from the Greek form Κιλικία; the palatalization of c occurring in the west in Vulgar Latin accounts for its modern pronunciation in English. Cilicia Trachea is a rugged mountain district formed by the spurs of Taurus, which terminate in rocky headlands with small sheltered harbors, a feature which, in classical times, made the coast a string of havens for pirates and, in the Middle Ages, outposts for Genoese and Venetian traders; the district is watered by the Calycadnus and was covered in ancient times by forests that supplied timber to Phoenicia and Egypt. Cilicia lacked large cities. Cilicia Pedias, to the east, included the rugged spurs of Taurus and a large coastal plain, with rich loamy soil, known to the Greeks such as Xenophon, who passed through with his mercenary group of the Ten Thousand, for its abundance, filled with sesame and millet and olives and pasturage for the horses imported by Solomon.
Many of its high places were fortified. The plain is watered by the three great rivers, the Cydnus, the Sarus and the Pyramus, each of which brings down much silt from the deforested interior and which fed extensive wetlands; the Sarus now enters the sea due south of Tarsus, but there are clear indications that at one period it joined the Pyramus, that the united rivers ran to the sea west of Kara-tash. Through the rich plain of Issus ran the great highway that linked east and west, on which stood the cities of Tarsus on the Cydnus, Adana on the Sarus, Mopsuestia on the Pyramus. Cilicia was settled from the Neolithic period onwards. Dating of the ancient settlements of the region from Neolithic to Bronze Age is as follows: Aceramic/Neolithic: 8th and 7th millennia BC. 5400–4500 BC. 3400 BC. The area had been known as Kizzuwatna in the earlier Hittite era; the region was divided into two parts, Uru Adaniya, a well-watered plain, "rough" Cilicia, in the mountainous west. The Cilicians appear as Hilikku in Assyrian inscriptions, in the early part of the first millennium BC were one of the four chief powers of Western Asia.
Homer mentions the plain as the "Aleian plain" in which Bellerophon wandered, but he transferred the Cilicians far to the west and north and made them allies of Troy. The Cilician cities unknown to Homer bore their pre-Greek names: Tarzu, Danuna-Adana, which retains its ancient name, Pahri and Azatiwataya. There exists evidence that circa 1650 BC both Hittite kings Hattusili I and Mursili I enjoyed freedom of movement along the Pyramus River, proving they exerted strong control over Cilicia in their battles with Syria. After the death of Murshili around 1595 BC, Hurrians wrested control from the Hitties, Cilicia was free for two centuries; the first king of free Cilicia, Išputahšu, son of Pariyawatri, was recorded as a "great king" in both cuneiform and Hittite hieroglyphs. Another record of Hittite origins, a treaty between Išputahšu and Telipinu, king of the Hittites, is recorded in both Hittite and Akkadian. In the next century, Cilician king Pilliya finalized treaties with both King Zidanta II of the Hittites and Idrimi of Alalakh, in which Idrimi mentions that he had assaulted several military targets throughout Eastern Cilicia.
Niqmepa, who succeeded Idrimi as king of Alalakh, went so far as to ask for help from a Hurrian rival, Shaushtatar of Mitanni, to try and reduce Cilicia's power in the region. It was soon apparent, that increased Hittite power would soon prove Niqmepa's efforts to be futile, as the city of Kizzuwatna soon fell to the Hittites, threatening all of Cilicia. Soon after, King Sunassura II was forced to accept vassalization under the Hittites, becoming the last king of ancient Cilicia. In the 13th century BC a major population shift occurred as the Sea Peoples overran Cilicia; the Hurrians that resided there deserted the area and moved northeast towards the Taurus Mountains, where
Sardis
Sardis or Sardes was an ancient city at the location of modern Sart, near the Salihli in Turkey's Manisa Province. Sardis was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia, one of the important cities of the Persian Empire, the seat of a proconsul under the Roman Empire, the metropolis of the province Lydia in Roman and Byzantine times; as one of the seven churches of Asia, it was addressed by John, the author of the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, in terms which seem to imply that its church members did not finish what they started, that they were about image and not substance. Its importance was due first to its military strength, secondly to its situation on an important highway leading from the interior to the Aegean coast, thirdly to its commanding the wide and fertile plain of the Hermus. Sardis was situated in the middle of Hermus valley, at the foot of Mount Tmolus, a steep and lofty spur which formed the citadel, it was about 4 kilometres south of the Hermus. Today, the site is located by the present day village of Sart, near Salihli in the Manisa province of Turkey, close to the Ankara - İzmir highway.
The part of remains including the bath-gymnasium complex and Byzantine shops is open to visitors year-round. The Greek historian and father of history, notes that the city was founded by the sons of Hercules, the Heraclides. According to Herodotus, the Heraclides ruled for five hundred and five years beginning with Agron, 1220 BCE, ending with Candaules, 716 BCE, they were followed by the Mermnades, which began with Gyges, 716 BCE, ended with Croesus, 546 BCE. The earliest reference to Sardis is in The Persians of Aeschylus, it is, more probable that Sardis was not the original capital of the Maeonians, but that it became so amid the changes which produced the powerful Lydian empire of the 8th century BCE. The city was captured by the Cimmerians in the 7th century BCE, by the Persians in the 6th, by the Athenians in the 5th, by Antiochus III the Great at the end of the 3rd century BCE. In the Persian era, Sardis was conquered by Cyrus the Great and formed the end station for the Persian Royal Road which began in Persepolis, capital of Persia.
Sardis was the site of the most important Persian satrapy. During the Ionian Revolt, the Athenians burnt down the city. Sardis remained under Persian domination until it surrendered to Alexander the Great in 334 BCE; the early Lydian kingdom was advanced in the industrial arts and Sardis was the chief seat of its manufactures. The most important of these trades was the manufacture and dyeing of delicate woolen stuffs and carpets; the stream Pactolus which flowed through the market-place "carried golden sands" in early antiquity, in reality gold dust out of Mount Tmolus. It was during the reign of King Croesus that the metallurgists of Sardis discovered the secret of separating gold from silver, thereby producing both metals of a purity never known before; this was an economic revolution, for while gold nuggets panned or mined were used as currency, their purity was always suspect and a hindrance to trade. Such nuggets or coinage were occurring alloys of gold and silver known as electrum and one could never know how much of it was gold and how much was silver.
Sardis now could mint nearly pure silver and gold coins, the value of which could be – and was – trusted throughout the known world. This revolution made Croesus' name synonymous with wealth itself. For this reason, Sardis is famed in history as the place. Disaster came to the great city under the reign of the emperor Tiberius, when in 17 CE, Sardis was destroyed by an earthquake, but it was rebuilt with the help of ten million sesterces from the Emperor and exempted from paying taxes for five years, it was one of the great cities of western Asia Minor until the Byzantine period. Trade and the organization of commerce continued to be sources of great wealth. After Constantinople became the capital of the East, a new road system grew up connecting the provinces with the capital. Sardis lay rather apart from the great lines of communication and lost some of its importance, it still, retained its titular supremacy and continued to be the seat of the metropolitan bishop of the province of Lydia, formed in 295 CE.
It was enumerated as third, after Ephesus and Smyrna, in the list of cities of the Thracesion thema given by Constantine Porphyrogenitus in the 10th century. However, over the next four centuries it was in the shadow of the provinces of Magnesia-upon-Sipylum and Philadelphia, which retained their importance in the region. After 1071, the Hermus valley began to suffer from the inroads of the Seljuk Turks but the Byzantine general John Doukas reconquered the city in 1097; the successes of the general Philokales in 1118 relieved the district from Turkish pressure and the ability of the Comneni dynasty together with the gradual decay of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum meant that it remained under Byzantine dominion. When Constantinople was taken by the Venetians and Franks in 1204 Sardis came under the rule of the Byzantine Empire of Nicea; however once the Byzantines retook Constantinople in 1261, Sardis with the entire Asia Minor was neglected and the region fell under the control of Ghazi emirs.
The Cayster valleys and a fort on the citadel of Sardis was handed over to them by treaty in 1306. The city
Battle of Zama
The Battle of Zama—fought in 202 BC near Zama —marked the end of the Second Punic War. A Roman army led by Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, with crucial support from Numidian leader Masinissa, defeated the Carthaginian army led by Hannibal. After defeating Carthaginian and Numidian armies at the battles of Utica and the Great Plains, Scipio imposed peace terms on the Carthaginians, who had no choice but to accept them. At the same time they recalled their general Hannibal's army from Italy. Confident in Hannibal's forces, the Carthaginians broke the armistice with Rome. Scipio and Hannibal confronted each other near Zama Regia. Hannibal had 36,000 infantry to Scipio's 29,000. One-third of Hannibal's army were citizen levies and the Romans had 6,100 cavalry to Carthage's 4,000, as most of the Numidian cavalry that Hannibal had employed with great success in Italy had defected to the Romans. Hannibal employed 80 war elephants; the elephants opened the battle by charging the main Roman army. Scipio's soldiers avoided the elephants by opening their ranks and drove them off with missiles.
The Roman and Numidian cavalry subsequently defeated the Carthaginian cavalry and chased them from the battlefield. Hannibal's first line of mercenaries attacked Scipio's infantry and were defeated; the second line of citizen levies and the mercenaries' remnants assaulted and inflicted heavy losses on the Roman first line. The Roman second line joined the struggle and pushed back the Carthaginian assault. Hannibal's third line of veterans, reinforced by the citizen levies and mercenaries, faced off against the Roman army, redeployed into a single line; the combat was fierce and evenly matched. Scipio's cavalry returned to the battle and attacked Hannibal's army in the rear and destroying it; the Carthaginians lost 20,000–25,000 killed and 8,500–20,000 captured. Scipio lost 4,000–5,000 men, 1,500–2,500 Romans and 2,500 Numidians, killed. Defeated on their home ground, the Carthaginian ruling elite sued for peace and accepted humiliating terms, ending the 17-year war. Crossing the Alps, Hannibal reached the Italian peninsula in 218 BC and won several major victories against the Roman armies.
The Romans failed to defeat him in the field and he remained in Italy, but following Scipio's decisive victory at the Battle of Ilipa in Spain in 206 BC, Iberia had been secured by the Romans. In 205 BC Scipio returned to Rome, where he was elected consul by unanimous vote. Scipio, now powerful enough, proposed to end the war by directly invading the Carthaginian homeland; the Senate opposed this ambitious design of Scipio, persuaded by Quintus Fabius Maximus that the enterprise was far too hazardous. Scipio and his supporters convinced the Senate to ratify the plan, Scipio was given the requisite authority to attempt the invasion. Scipio received no levy troops, he sailed to Sicily with a group of 7,000 heterogeneous volunteers, he was authorized to employ the regular forces stationed in Sicily, which consisted of the remnants of the 5th and 6th Legion, exiled to the island as a punishment for the humiliation they suffered at the Battle of Cannae. Scipio continued to reinforce his troops with local defectors.
He landed at Utica and defeated the Carthaginian army at the Battle of the Great Plains in 203 BC. The panicked Carthaginians felt that they had no alternative but to offer peace to Scipio and him, having the authority to do so, granted peace on generous terms. Under the treaty, Carthage could keep its African territory but would lose its overseas empire, by that time a fait-accompli. Masinissa was to be allowed to expand Numidia into parts of Africa. Carthage was to reduce its fleet and pay a war indemnity; the Roman Senate ratified the treaty. The Carthaginian senate recalled Hannibal, still in Italy when Scipio landed in Africa, in 203 BC. Meanwhile, the Carthaginians breached the armistice agreement by capturing a stranded Roman fleet in the Gulf of Tunis and stripping it of supplies; the Carthaginians no longer believed a treaty advantageous, rebuffed it under much Roman protest. Hannibal led an army composed of mercenaries, local citizens and veterans and Numidian cavalry from his Italian campaigns.
Scipio led a pre-Marian Roman army quincunx, along with a body of Numidian cavalry. The battle took place at Zama Regia, near Siliana 130 km southwest of Tunis. Hannibal was first to march and reach the plains of Zama Regia, which were suitable for cavalry maneuvering; this gave an edge in turn to Scipio, who relied on his Roman heavy cavalry and Numidian light cavalry. Hannibal deployed his troops facing northwest, while Scipio deployed his troops in front of the Carthaginian army facing southeast. Hannibal's army consisted of 36,000 infantry, 4,000 cavalry and 80 war elephants, while Scipio had a total of 29,000 infantry and 6,100 cavalry. Putting his cavalry on the flanks, with the inexperienced Carthaginian cavalry on the right and the Numidians on the left, Hannibal aligned the rest of his troops in three straight lines behind his elephants; the first line consisted of mixed infantry of mercenaries from Gaul and the Balearic Islands. In his second line he placed the Carthaginian and Libyan citizen levies, while his veterans from Italy, including mercenaries from Gaul and Hispania, were placed in the third line.
Hannibal intentionally held back his third infantry line, in order to thwart Scipio's tendency to pin the Carthaginian center and envelop his opponent's lines, as he had done at the Battle of Ilipa. Livy states that Hannibal deployed 4,000 Macedonians in the second line, their presence is discounted as Roman propaganda, although T. Dorey suggests that there may be a grain of truth here if the Carthagin
Roman consul
A consul held the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic, ancient Romans considered the consulship the highest level of the cursus honorum. Each year, the citizens of Rome elected two consuls to serve jointly for a one-year term; the consuls alternated in holding imperium each month, a consul's imperium extended over Rome and the provinces. However, after the establishment of the Empire, the consuls became mere symbolic representatives of Rome's republican heritage and held little power and authority, with the Emperor acting as the supreme authority. After the legendary expulsion of the last Etruscan King, Tarquin the Proud, a harsh ruler at the end of the Roman Kingdom, most of the powers and authority of the king were ostensibly given to the newly instituted consulship; this change in leadership came about when the king's son, Sextus Tarquinius, raped the wife and daughter of powerful Roman nobles. A group of nobles led by Lucius Junius Brutus, with the support of the Roman Army, expelled Tarquinius and his family from Rome in 509 BC.
Consuls were called praetors, referring to their duties as the chief military commanders. By at least 300 BC the title of Consul became used. Ancient writers derive the title consul from the Latin verb consulere, "to take counsel", but this is most a gloss of the term, which derives—in view of the joint nature of the office—from con- and sal-, "get together" or from con- and sell-/sedl-, "sit down together with" or "next to". In Greek, the title was rendered as στρατηγὸς ὕπατος, strategos hypatos, simply as ὕπατος; the consul was believed by the Romans to date back to the traditional establishment of the Republic in 509 BC, but the succession of consuls was not continuous in the 5th century BC. During the 440s, the office was quite replaced with the establishment of the Consular Tribunes, who were elected whenever the military needs of the state were significant enough to warrant the election of more than the two usual consuls; these remained in place until the office was abolished in 367/366 BC and the consulship was reintroduced.
Consuls had extensive powers in peacetime, in wartime held the highest military command. Additional religious duties included certain rites which, as a sign of their formal importance, could only be carried out by the highest state officials. Consuls read auguries, an essential step before leading armies into the field. Two consuls were elected each year, serving together, each with veto power over the other's actions, a normal principle for magistracies, it is thought that only patricians were eligible for the consulship. Consuls were elected by the Comitia Centuriata, which had an aristocratic bias in its voting structure which only increased over the years from its foundation. However, they formally assumed powers only after the ratification of their election in the older Comitia Curiata, which granted the consuls their imperium by enacting a law, the "lex curiata de imperio". If a consul died during his term or was removed from office, another would be elected by the Comitia Centuriata to serve the remainder of the term as consul suffectus.
A consul elected to start the year - called a consul ordinarius - held more prestige than a suffect consul because the year would be named for ordinary consuls. According to tradition, the consulship was reserved for patricians and only in 367 BC did plebeians win the right to stand for this supreme office, when the Lex Licinia Sextia provided that at least one consul each year should be plebeian; the first plebeian consul, Lucius Sextius, was elected the following year. The office remained in the hands of a few families as, according to Gelzer, only fifteen novi homines - "new men" with no consular background - were elected to the consulship until the election of Cicero in 63 BC. Modern historians have questioned the traditional account of plebeian emancipation during the early Republic, noting for instance that about thirty percent of the consuls prior to Sextius had plebeian, not patrician, names, it is possible that only the chronology has been distorted, but it seems that one of the first consuls, Lucius Junius Brutus, came from a plebeian family.
Another possible explanation is that during the 5th century social struggles, the office of consul was monopolized by a patrician elite. During times of war, the primary qualification for consul was military skill and reputation, but at all times the selection was politically charged. With the passage of time, the consulship became the normal endpoint of the cursus honorum, the sequence of offices pursued by the ambitious Roman who chose to pursue political power and influence; when Lucius Cornelius Sulla regulated the cursus by law, the minimum age of election to consul became, in effect, 41 years of age. Beginning in the late Republic, after finishing a consular year, a former consul would serve a lucrative term as a proconsul, the Roman Governor of one of the provinces; the most chosen province for the proconsulship was Cisalpine Gaul. Although throughout the early years of the Principate, the consuls were still formally elected by the Comitia Centuriata, they were in fact nominated by the princeps.
As the years progressed, the distinction between the Comitia Centuriata and the Comitia Tributa appears to have disappeared, so for the purposes of the consular
Carians
The Carians were the ancient inhabitants of Caria in southwest Anatolia. It is not clear; the definition is dependent on corresponding Caria and the Carians to the "Karkiya" or "Karkisa" mentioned in the Hittite records. Bronze Age Karkisa are first mentioned as having aided the Assuwa League against the Hittite King Tudhaliya I. In 1323 BC, King Arnuwandas II was able to write to Karkiya for them to provide asylum for the deposed Manapa-Tarhunta of "the land of the Seha River", one of the principalities within the Luwian Arzawa complex in western Anatolia; this they did. In 1274 BC, Karkisa are mentioned among those who fought on the Hittite Empire side against the Egyptians in the Battle of Kadesh. Taken as a whole, Hittite records seem to point at a Luwian ancestry for the Carians and, as such, they would have lost their literacy through the Dark Age of Anatolia; the relationship between the Bronze Age "Karkiya" or "Karkisa" and the Iron Age Caria and the Carians is complicated, despite having western Anatolia as common ground, by the uncertainties regarding the exact location of the former on the map within Hittite geography.
Yet, the supposition is suitable from a linguistic point-of-view given that the Phoenicians were calling them "KRK" in their abjad script and they were referred to as "krka" in Old Persian. The Carians next appear in records of the early centuries of the first millennium BC. In some translations of Biblical texts, the Carians are mentioned in 2 Kings 11:4, 11:19 and alluded to in 2 Samuel 8:18, 15:18, 20:23, they are named as mercenaries in inscriptions found in ancient Egypt and Nubia, dated to the reigns of Psammetichus I and II. They are sometimes referred to as the "Cari" or "Khari". Carian remnants have been found in modern Takht-e-Jamshid in Iran; the Greek historian Herodotus recorded that Carians themselves believed to be aborigines of Caria but they were by general consensus of ancient sources, a maritime people before being pushed inland. Plutarch mentions the Carians as being referred to as "cocks" by the Persians on account of their wearing crests on their helmets. According to Thucydides, it was the Carians who settled the Cyclades prior to the Minoans.
The Middle Bronze Age expansion of the Minoans into this region seems to have come at their expense. Intending to secure revenue in the Cyclades, Minos of Knossos established a navy with which he established his first colonies by taking control of the Hellenic sea and ruling over the Cyclades. In doing so, Minos expelled the Carians. During the Athenian purification of Delos, all graves were exhumed and it was found that more than half were Carians. According to Strabo, Carians, of all the "barbarians", had a particular tendency to intermingle with the Greeks, "This was the case with the Carians, although the other peoples were not yet having much intercourse with the Greeks nor trying to live in Hellenic fashion or to learn our language... yet the Carians roamed throughout the whole of Greece serving on expeditions for pay.... and when they were driven thence into Asia here they were unable to live apart from the Greeks, I mean when the Ionians and Dorians crossed over to Asia." The Carians were linked by Greek writers to the Leleges, but the exact nature of the relationship between Carians and Leleges remains mysterious.
The two groups seem to have been distinct, but intermingled with each other. Strabo wrote that they were so intermingled that they were confounded with each other. However, Athenaeus stated that the Leleges stood in relation to the Carians as the Helots stood to the Lacedaemonians; this confusion of the two peoples is found in Herodotus, who wrote that the Carians, when they were living amid the Cyclades, were known as Leleges. The Carian language belongs to the Luwic group of the Anatolian family of languages. Other Luwic languages besides Luwian proper are Milyan. Although the ancestors of Carian and Lycian must have been close to Luwian, it is incorrect to claim that they are linear descendants of Luwian, it is possible that the speakers of Proto-Carian, or the common ancestor of Carian and Lycian, supplied the elites of the Bronze Age kingdom of Arzawa, the population of which consisted of Lydians. An important evidence of the Carians' own belief in their blood ties and cultural affinity with the Lydians and Mysians is the admittance, apart from theirs of Lydians and Mysians to the temple of the "Carian Zeus" in their first capital, Mylasa.
One of the Carian ritual centers was Mylasa, where they worshipped their supreme god, called'the Carian Zeus' by Herodotus. Unlike Zeus, this was a warrior god, it is possible that the goddess Hecate, the patron of pathways and crossroads, originated amon
Cappadocia
Cappadocia is a historical region in Central Anatolia in the Nevşehir, Kayseri, Kırşehir, Niğde Provinces in Turkey. According to Herodotus, in the time of the Ionian Revolt, the Cappadocians were reported as occupying a region from Mount Taurus to the vicinity of the Euxine. Cappadocia, in this sense, was bounded in the south by the chain of the Taurus Mountains that separate it from Cilicia, to the east by the upper Euphrates, to the north by Pontus, to the west by Lycaonia and eastern Galatia; the name, traditionally used in Christian sources throughout history, continues in use as an international tourism concept to define a region of exceptional natural wonders, in particular characterized by fairy chimneys and a unique historical and cultural heritage. The earliest record of the name of Cappadocia dates from the late 6th century BC, when it appears in the trilingual inscriptions of two early Achaemenid kings, Darius I and Xerxes, as one of the countries of the Persian Empire. In these lists of countries, the Old Persian name is Haspaduya, which according to some researchers is derived from Iranian Huw-aspa-dahyu- "the land/country of beautiful horses".
Others proposed that Kat-patuka came from the Luwian language, meaning "Low Country". Subsequent research suggests that the adverb katta meaning'down, below' is Hittite, while its Luwian equivalent is zanta; therefore the recent modification of this proposal operates with the Hittite katta peda- "place below" as a starting point for the development of the toponym Cappadocia. Herodotus tells us that the name of the Cappadocians was applied to them by the Persians, while they were termed by the Greeks "Syrians" or "White Syrians" Leucosyri. One of the Cappadocian tribes he mentions is the Moschoi, associated by Flavius Josephus with the biblical figure Meshech, son of Japheth: "and the Mosocheni were founded by Mosoch. AotJ I:6. Cappadocia appears in the biblical account given in the book of Acts 2:9; the Cappadocians were named as one group hearing the Gospel account from Galileans in their own language on the day of Pentecost shortly after the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Acts 2:5 seems to suggest that the Cappadocians in this account were "God-fearing Jews".
See Acts of the Apostles. The region is mentioned in the Jewish Mishnah, in Ketubot 13:11. Under the kings of the Persian Empire, the Cappadocians were divided into two satrapies, or governments, with one comprising the central and inland portion, to which the name of Cappadocia continued to be applied by Greek geographers, while the other was called Pontus; this division had come about before the time of Xenophon. As after the fall of the Persian government the two provinces continued to be separate, the distinction was perpetuated, the name Cappadocia came to be restricted to the inland province, which alone will be the focus of this article; the kingdom of Cappadocia still existed in the time of Strabo as a nominally independent state. Cilicia was the name given to the district in which Caesarea, the capital of the whole country, was situated; the only two cities of Cappadocia considered by Strabo to deserve that appellation were Caesarea and Tyana, not far from the foot of the Taurus. Cappadocia lies in the heartland of what is now Turkey.
The relief consists of a high plateau over 1000 m in altitude, pierced by volcanic peaks, with Mount Erciyes near Kayseri being the tallest at 3916 m. The boundaries of historical Cappadocia are vague towards the west. To the south, the Taurus Mountains form the boundary with Cilicia and separate Cappadocia from the Mediterranean Sea. To the west, Cappadocia is bounded by the historical regions of Lycaonia to the southwest, Galatia to the northwest. Due to its inland location and high altitude, Cappadocia has a markedly continental climate, with hot dry summers and cold snowy winters. Rainfall is sparse and the region is semi-arid. Cappadocia was known as Hatti in the late Bronze Age, was the homeland of the Hittite power centred at Hattusa. After the fall of the Hittite Empire, with the decline of the Syro-Cappadocians after their defeat by the Lydian king Croesus in the 6th century, Cappadocia was ruled by a sort of feudal aristocracy, dwelling in strong castles and keeping the peasants in a servile condition, which made them apt to foreign slavery.
It was included in the third Persian satrapy in the division established by Darius but continued to be governed by rulers of its own, none supreme over the whole country and all more or less tributaries of the Great King. After ending the Persian Empire, Alexander the Great tried to rule the area through one of his military commanders, but Ariarathes, a Persian aristocrat, somehow became king of the Cappadocians. As Ariarathes I, he was a successful ruler, he extended the borders of the Cappadocian Kingdom as far as to the Black Sea; the kingdom of Cappadocia lived in peace until the death of Alexander. The previous empire was divided into many parts, Cappadocia fell to Eumenes, his claims were made good in 322 BC by the regent Perdiccas. Persian colonists in the Cappadocian kingdom, cut off from their co-religionists in Iran proper, continued to practice Zoroastrianism. Stra
