IX. Asia Minor comprised a great number of provinces, of which several became, after the dismemberment of the empire of Alexander, independent states. Of these, the principal formed into four groups, composing so many kingdoms, namely, Pontus, Bithynia, Cappadocia, and Pergamus. We must except from them some Greek cities on the coast, which kept their autonomy or were placed under the sovereignty of Rhodes. Their extent and limits varied often until the time of the Roman conquest, and several of them passed from one domination to another. All these kingdoms participated in different degrees in the prosperity of Macedonia.
“Asia,” says Cicero, “is so rich and fertile, that the fecundity of its plains, the variety of its products, the extent of its pastures, the multiplicity of the objects of commerce exported from it, give it an incontestible superiority over all other countries of the earth.[341]”
The wealth of Asia Minor appears from the amount of impositions paid by it to the different Roman generals. Without speaking of the spoils carried away by Scipio, in his campaign against Antiochus, and by Manlius Volso in 565, Sylla, and afterwards Lucullus and Pompey, each drew from this country about 20,000 talents,[342] besides an equal sum distributed by them to their soldiers: which gives the enormous total of nearly seven hundred millions of francs [or twenty-eight millions sterling], received in a period of twenty-five years.
X. The most northern of the four groups named above formed a great part of the kingdom of Pontus. This province, the ancient Cappadocia Pontica, formerly a Persian satrapy, reduced to subjection by Alexander and his successor, recovered itself after the battle of Ipsus (453). Mithridates III. enlarged his territory by adding to it Paphlagonia, and afterwards Sinope and Galatia. Pontus soon extended from Colchis on the north-east to Lesser Armenia on the south-east, and had Bithynia for its boundary on the west. Thus, touching upon the Caucasus, and master of the Pontus Euxinus, this kingdom, composed of divers peoples, presented, under varied climates, a variety of different productions. It received wines and oils from the Ægean Sea, and wheat from the Bosphorus; it exported salt fish in great quantity,[343] dolphin oil,[344] and, as produce of the interior, the wools of the Gadilonitis,[345] the fleeces of Ancyra, the horses of Armenia, Media, and Paphlagonia,[346] the iron of the Chalybes, a population of miners to the south of Trapezus, already celebrated in the time of Homer, and mentioned by Xenophon.[347] There also were found mines of silver, abandoned in the time of Strabo,[348] but which have been re-opened in modern times. Important ports on the Black Sea facilitated the exportation of these products. It was at Sinope that Lucullus found a part of the treasures which he displayed at his triumph, and which gives us a lofty idea of the kingdom of Mithridates.[349] An object of admiration at Sinope was the statue of Autolycus, one of the protecting heroes of the town, the work of the statuary Sthenis.[350]
