complete success, till some time between 610 and 590 Phrygia
then fell under the Lydian power, and by the treaty of 585 the
Halys was definitely fixed as the boundary between Lydia and
Media (see Lydia and Persia). The period from 675 to 585
must therefore be considered as one of great disturbance and
probably of complete paralysis in Phrygia. After 585 the
country was ruled again by its own princes under subjection
to Lydian supremacy. To judge from the monuments, it appears
to have recovered some of its old prosperity; but the art of
this later period has to a great extent lost the strongly marked
individuality of its earlier bloom. The later sepulchral monuments
belong to a class which is widely spread over Asia Minor
from Lycia to Pontus. The graves are made inside a chamber
excavated in the rock, and the front of the chamber imitates a
house or temple. No attempt is made to conceal the entrance
or to render it inaccessible. The architectural details are in some
cases unmistakably copied, without intentional modification,
from the architecture of Greek temples; others point perhaps
to Persian influence, while several—which are perhaps among
the early works of this period—show the old freedom and power
of employing in new and original ways details partly learned
from abroad. This style continued in use under the Persians,
under whose rule the Phrygians passed when Cyrus defeated
Croesus in 546, and lasted till the Roman period. One monument
appears to presuppose a development of Greek plastic art
later than the time of Alexander[1] and is almost certainly of
the Roman time. It would, however, be wrong to suppose
that the influence of truly Hellenic art on Phrygia began
with the conquest of Alexander. Under the later Mermnad
kings the Lydian empire was penetrated with Greek influence,
and Xanthus, the early Lydian historian, wrote his history in
Greek. Under the Persian rule perhaps it was more difficult
for Greek manners to spread far east; but we need not think
that European influence was absolutely unfelt even in Phrygia.
The probability is that Alexander found in all the large cities
a party favourable to Greek manners and trade. Very little
is to be learned from the ancient writers with regard to the
state of Phrygia from 585 to 300. The slave-trade flourished:
Phrygian slaves were common in the Greek market, and the
Phrygian names Midas and Manes were stock-names for slaves.
Herodotus (i 14) records that a king Midas of Phrygia dedicated
his own chair at Delphi; the chair stood in the treasury of
Cypselus, and cannot have been deposited there before 680 to
660 B.C. It is not improbable that the event belongs to the
time of Alyattes or Croesus, when Greek influence was favoured
throughout the Lydian empire; and it is easy to understand
how the offering of a king Midas should be considered, in the
time of Herodotus, as the earliest made by a foreign prince to
a Greek god. The Phrygian troops in the army of Xerxes were
armed like the Armenians and led by the same commander.
It is to be presumed that the cities of the Sangarius valley gradually lost importance in the Persian period. The final catastrophe was the invasion of the Gauls about 270 to 250, and, though the circumstances of this invasion are almost unknown, yet we may safely reckon among them the complete devastation of northern Phrygia. At last Attalus I. settled the Gauls permanently in eastern Phrygia, and a large part of the country was henceforth known as Galatia. Strabo mentions that the great cities of ancient Phrygia were in his time either deserted or marked by mere villages. The great city over the tomb of Midas has remained uninhabited down to the present day. About 5 m. west of it, near the modern Kumbet, stood Metropolis, a bishopric in the Byzantine time, but never mentioned under the Roman empire.
Alexander the Great placed Phrygia under the command of Antigonus, who retained it when the empire was broken up. When Antigonus was defeated and slain, at the decisive battle of Ipsus, Phrygia came under the sway of Seleucus. As the Pergamenian kings grew powerful, and at last confined the Gauls in eastern Phrygia, the western half of the country was incorporated in the kingdom of Pergamum. Under the Roman empire Phrygia had no political existence under a separate government, but formed part of the vast province of Asia. In autumn 85 B.C. the pacification of the province was completed by Sulla, and throughout the imperial time it was common for the Phrygians to date from this era. The imperial rule was highly favourable to the spread of Hellenistic civilization, which under the Greek kings had affected only a few of the great cities, leaving the mass of the country purely Phrygian. A good deal of local self-government was permitted; the cities struck their own bronze coins, inscribed on them the names of their own magistrates,[2] and probably administered their own laws in matters purely local. The western part of the country was pervaded by Graeco-Roman civilization very much sooner than the central, and in the country districts the Phrygian language[3] continued in common use at least as late as the third century after Christ.
When the Roman empire was reorganized by Diocletian at the end of the 3rd century Phrygia was divided into two provinces, distinguished at first as Prima and Secunda, or Great and Little, for which the names Pacatiana and Salutaris soon came into general use. Pacatiana comprised the western half, which had long been completely pervaded by Graeco-Roman manners, and Salutaris the eastern, in which the native manners and language were still not extinct. Each province was governed by a praeses or ἡγεμών about A.D. 412, but shortly after this date an officer of consular rank was sent to each province (Hierocles, Synecd.). About 535 Justinian made some changes in the provincial administration: the governor of Pacatiana was henceforth a comes, while Salutaris was still ruled by a consularis. When the provinces of the Eastern empire were reorganized and divided into themata the two Phrygias were broken up between the Anatolic, Opsician and Thracesian themes, and the name Phrygia finally disappeared. Almost the whole of Byzantine Phrygia is now included in the vilayet of Brusa, with the exception of a small part of Parorius and the district about Themisonium (Karayuk Bazar) and Ceretapa (Kayadibi), which belong to the vilayet of Konia, and the district of Laodicea and Hierapolis, which belongs to Aidin. The principal modern cities are Kutaiah (Cotyaeum), Eski Shehir (Dorylaeum), Afiom Kara Hissar (near Prymnessus), and Ushak (Trajanopolis).
It is impossible to say anything definite about the boundaries of Phrygia before the 5th century. Under the Persians Great Phrygia extended on the east to the Halys and the Salt Desert; Xenophon (Anab. i. 2, 19) includes Iconium on the south-east within the province, whereas Strabo makes Tyriaeum the boundary in this direction. The southern frontier is unknown: the language of Livy (xxxviii. 15) implies that the southern Metropolis (in the Tchul Ova) belonged to Pisidia; but Strabo (p. 629) includes it in Phrygia. Celaenae, beside the later city of Apamea (Dineir), and the entire valley of the Lycus, were Phrygian. The Maeander above its junction with the Lycus formed for a little way the boundary between Phrygia and Lydia. The great plateau now called the Banaz Ova was entirely or in great part Phrygian. Mt Dindymus (Murad Dagh) marked the frontier of Mysia, and the entire valley of the Tembrogius or Tembris (Porsuk Su) was certainly included in Phrygia. The boundaries of the two Byzantine Phrygias were not always the same.
Taking Hierocles as authority, the extent of the two provinces at the beginning of the 6th century will be readily gathered from the accompanying list, in which those towns which coined money under the Roman empire are italicized and the name of the nearest modern village is appended.
I. Pacatina —(1) Laodicea (Eski Hissar); (2) Hierapolis (Pambuk Kalessi); (3) Mosyna (Geveze); [(4) Motellopolis, only in Notitiae
- ↑ A gorgoneum of Roman period, on a tomb engraved in Journ. Hell. Stud. (Pl. xxvi).
- ↑ This liberty was not granted to the cities of any other province in Anatolia.
- ↑ A number of inscriptions in a language presumably Phrygian have been discovered in the centre and east of the country; they belong generally to the end of the 2nd and to the 3rd century.
