United States or Réunion ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
With his Greek force thus raised to 13,000 men, and with a native army not much short of 100,000, he proceeded on through Phrygia and Lycaonia to the borders of Cilicia, having determined on taking the shortest route to Babylon, through the Cilician and Syrian passes, and then along the course of the Euphrates.
After Sulla's generals had compelled him to quit Spain, he had led a restless life of adventure along the Spanish and African coasts, sometimes in league, sometimes at war, with the Cilician pirates who haunted these seas, and with the chieftains of the roving tribes of Libya.
"The first object of Paul was to confirm the churches he had already founded; and accordingly he began his mission by visiting the churches of Syria and Cilicia," crossing the Taurus range by the famous Cilician Gates, one of the most frightful mountain passes in the world, penetrating thus into Lycaonia, and reaching Derbe, Lystra, and Iconium.
But he had come down from the eminence. He had led his army out into the plain, and the camp was a full mile behind. The long ranks of the Pompeians were splendid with all the bravery of war. On the right wing by the river lay his Cilician and Spanish cohorts, led by Lentulus Crus, the flower of the Pompeian infantry. Scipio held the centre with two Syrian legions.
There he spent his days and nights, surrounded by troops of the vilest companions, and let the province take care of itself. Such a governor was not likely to keep his province free from the pirates who, issuing from their fastnesses on the Cilician coast and elsewhere, kept the seaboard cities of the Mediterranean in constant terror. One success, and one only, he seems to have gained over them.
After the annexation of the kingdom of Attalus, which took place contemporaneously with the outbreak of the revolution, for a whole generation there is hardly any evidence of Rome taking a serious part in Oriental affairs with the exception of the establishment of the province of Cilicia in 652, to which the Romans were driven by the boundless audacity of the Cilician pirates, and which was in reality nothing more than the institution of a permanent station for a small division of the Roman army and fleet in the eastern waters.
He held as his own all Mesopotamia up to Diarbekr, and beyond Syria not only eastern and central Cilicia, but also some districts north of Taurus, namely, the low plain of Milid or Malatia, and the southern part of Tabal; but probably his hand reached no farther over the plateau than to a line prolonged from the head of the Tokhma Su to the neighbourhood of Tyana, and returning thence to the Cilician Gates.
While he dispatched those about him to various cities to raise the money, he was left with one friend and two attendants among these Cilician pirates, who were notorious for their cruelty, yet he treated them with such contempt that whenever he was lying down to rest, he would send to them and order them to be quiet.
Such are Kas in later Lycaonia, Tabal or Tubal in south-eastern Cappadocia, Khilakku, which left its name to historical Cilicia, and Kue in the rich eastern Cilician plain and the north-eastern hills. In north Syria again we find both in early and in late times Kummukh, which left to its district the historic name, Commagene.
His fleet was steered southward, and, though forced to contend with adverse gales, made a speedy and successful voyage through the Propontis, the Hellespont, the Egean, and the Cilician Strait, to the Gulf of Issus, in the angle between Asia Minor and Syria.
Word Of The Day