16 ASIAGO ASIA MINOR ASIAGO, a town of N. E. Italy, in the province and 17 m. N. of Vicenza; pop. 5,140. It has manufactories of straw hats. Asiago is the foremost among the " seven German commu- nities " of Venetia. ASIA MINOR, a peninsula at the western ex- tremity of Asia, forming a large part of Asiatic Turkey, between lat. 36 and 42 N. and Ion. 26 and 41 E., and bounded N. W. by the Dardanelles (the Hellespont of the ancients), N. by the sea of Marmora (Propontis), the Bos- porus, and the Black sea (Pontus Euxinus), E. by the Armenian mountains and their S. W. prolongations to the gulf of Iskanderun (of Issus), S. by the Mediterranean, and W. by the Archipelago (vEgean sea) ; area, about 212,000 sq. m. The eastern portion of the district consists of an elevated plateau from which rise mountain ranges of considerable height, among them the Taurus and Antitaurus (see TAURUS), culminating in the extinct volcano of Arjish Dagh (Argteus), about 13,000 ft. above the sea, and more than 9,000 above the plain. Between the abrupt edges of the high table land and the sea N. and S. of the penin- sula intervenes only a narrow strip of low, level coast land. But on the west this strip is wider, forming an extensive and very fertile plain that portion of the country to which the name of the Levant was several centuries ago first and properly applied, though the term has since been indefinitely used, often of the whole peninsula. The rivers are small; the chief are the Sakaria (Sangarius), Kizil Irmak (Ilalys), and Yeshil Irmak (Iris), which flow into the Black sea, and the Sarabat (Hermus) and Meinder (Maaander), which empty into the Archipelago. On the bar- ANCIENT ASIA MINOE ren plateau the climate is dry and very hot in summer, but in winter cold ; the N. and S. coasts are less subject to extremes of tem- perature ; while the coast plain has one of the pleasantest climates in the world. The fruits of the fertile strip of land along the coast were celebrated in ancient times, and are still the most important productions of the country. During the earliest period of its history Asia Minor appears to have been inhabited by a number of different tribes, and even by entirely different races. The names of these tribes gave rise to. most of the designations afterward given to the divisions of the peninsula. The boundaries of these were not well denned until, under the successors of Alexander, they be- came separate states, generally under the rule of Macedonians and Greeks. The divisions on the N. coast were as follows : Bithynia, with the towns of Prusa (now Brusa), Nico- media (Ismid), and Nicsa (Isnik), a country first inhabited by the Bebryces, a Mysian or Phrygian tribe, and afterward conquered by the Bithyni, who, according to Herodotus, came from Thrace ; Paphlagonia, with its chief city Sinope (founded by a Greek colony), named from the Paphlagonians, from whom it was conquered by the Lydians, after which it was ruled successively by Persians, Mace- donians, and Greeks ; and finally Pontus, with Trapezus (Trebizond), first occupied by savage tribes of which little is known, then colonized liy the Greeks, and afterward the kingdom of the famous Mithridates. On the W. coast
