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Listed 2 sub titles with search on: Information about the place for destination: "FRYGIA Ancient country TURKEY".


Information about the place (2)

Perseus Project index

Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities

Phrygia

   (Phrugia). A country of Asia Minor, which was of different extent at different periods. Under the Roman Empire Phrygia was bounded on the west by Mysia, Lydia, and Caria; on the south by Lycia and Pisidia; on the east by Lycaonia (which is often reckoned as a part of Phrygia) and Galatia (which formerly belonged to Phrygia), and on the north by Bithynia. The Phrygians are mentioned by Homer as settled on the banks of the Sangarius, where later writers tell us of the powerful Phrygian kingdom of Gordius and Midas. It would seem that they were a branch of the great Thracian family, originally settled in the northwest of Asia Minor as far as the shores of the Hellespont and Propontis, and that the successive migrations of other Thracian peoples, as the Thyni, Bithyni, Mysians, and Teucrians, drove them farther inland. They were not, however, entirely displaced by the Mysians and Teucrians from the country between the shores of the Hellespont and Propontis and Mounts Ida and Olympus, where they continued side by side with the Greek colonies, and where their name was preserved in that of the district under all subsequent changes--namely, Phrygia Minor or Phrygia Hellespontus. The kingdom of Phrygia was conquered by Croesus, and formed part of the Persian, Macedonian, and Syro-Grecian Empires; but, under the last, the northeastern part, adjacent to Paphlagonia and the Halys, was conquered by the Gauls, and formed the western part of Galatia; and under the Romans was included in the province of Asia. In connection with the early intellectual culture of Greece, Phrygia is highly important. The earliest Greek music, especially that of the flute, was borrowed in part, through the Asiatic colonies, from Phrygia. With this country also were closely associated the orgies of Dionysus and of Cybele, the Mother of the Gods, the Phrygia Mater of the Roman poets. After the Persian conquest, however, the Phrygians seem to have lost all intellectual activity, and they became proverbial among the Greeks and Romans for submissiveness and stupidity. The Roman poets constantly use the epithet Phrygian as equivalent to Trojan.
    But scanty remains of the Phrygian language survive, chiefly in the shape of brief inscriptions. It was probably an Indo-European dialect closely related to the Armenian, and some such relation is implied in the notices of Herodotus and Strabo.

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