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Strabo: The Anatolian who failed of Roman recognition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
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Josephus almost invariably calls Strabo the Cappadocian. But he belonged not to Great Cappadocia, the home of Basil and the two Gregories, but to Cappadocia Pontica, more usually called Pontus. ‘Amaseia, my fatherland, a very strong city’ was his birthplace. ‘My city is situate in a large, deep valley, through which flows the river Iris. Both by human design and by nature it is admirably laid out, affording the advantage of both a city and a fortress: for it is a high, precipitous rock which descends steeply to the river, and has on one side the wall on the river edge where is the settled city, and on the other the wall that runs up on either side to the twin peaks.’ It had a water-supply which could not be cut off, passages being cut through the rock to the springs, and two bridges, one to the suburbs and another from the suburbs to the outside country. Its territory was larger and better than that of any other Pontic town. Within its walls were the palace and tombs of the Pontic kings: he certainly means the Pontic Achaemenids, not the Polemones. He adds that it was given to kings, but is now provincial. The era is fixed by coinage to 2 B.C., when it was annexed to the province of Galatia. It was still a metropolis in Christian times with many subordinate bishoprics, and we last hear of it as wrecked by an earthquake in the reign of Justinian. It is generally agreed that Strabo did not return to his native place to spend the last years of his life: he probably had no relatives left there.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1941
References
page 79 note 1 xii. 3. 15, 39.
page 79 note 2 Polemon I, son of Zenon of Laodiceia, ? 39–8 b.c. His widow Pythodoris 8 b.c.-a.d. 39, married Archelaus of Great Cappadocia ob. a.d. 17. Polemon II, A.D. 39–62.
page 79 note 3 Imhoof-Blumer, , Griech. Münzen, p. 556.Google Scholar
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page 80 note 1 xii. 2. 13.
page 80 note 2 The priest of Comana Pontica, the seat of the cult of Enyo-Ma, occupied the same position of dignity as the priest of the (apparently older) Comana in Cataonia, xii. 3. 32. ‘The Pontic Comana, which bears the same name as the city in Great Cappadocia, having been consecrated to the same goddess and an offshoot of the other Comana’ άφιλρυθέντα έκεϊθεν. Archelaus, made king of Cappadocia by Antony, was son of the Priest of Comana.
page 80 note 3 xii. 5. 1; xiv. 5. 18; xvii. 1. 11 καθ΄ ήμᾱς; x. 2. 13; xi. 9. 1 έφ΄ ήμῶν; viii. 7. 5; xii. 3. 40; xvi. 2. 29 μικρόν πρό ήμῶν.
page 80 note 4 Unless, as Sterrett thought, the family removed to Nysa.
page 81 note 1 xiv. 1. 48.
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page 81 note 3 xii. 6. 1.
page 81 note 4 His position in the Caesarian party may be compared to the unexpected prominence of the Marquis of Breadalbane when Mr. Gladstone could find no duke to support his new Home Rule policy.
page 82 note 1 Ad Att. ii. 6, 1Google Scholar. Tyrannio of Amisus, the port of Amaseia (Samsun), had been brought to Rome by Lucullus as a captive in 66 b.c. xii. 3. 16; xiii. 1. 54.
page 82 note 2 xiv. 5. 4.
page 82 note 3 He defends Eratosthenes against Polemon's charge that he never saw Athens. Had he himself a bad conscience?
page 82 note 4 xvi. 2. 24 ᾧ συνεφιλοσοφήσαμεν ήμεϊς τά Άριστοτέλεια: ii. 3, 5.
page 82 note 5 i. 2. 34. 3.
page 82 note 6 ii. 3. 8.
page 82 note 7 xiii. 1. 34. He notes that booksellers used bad copyists and did not collate the texts.
page 82 note 8 xvi. 4. 21.
page 82 note 9 xiv. 5. 14.
page 82 note 10 vi. 2. 6.
page 83 note 1 viii. 6. 23.
page 83 note 2 ii. 5. 12. Gallus was φίλος ήμĩν καί έταĩρος, which seems to imply close intimacy.
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page 83 note 6 ii. 3. 5. πολύν χρόνον
page 84 note 1 ii. 5. 11.
page 84 note 2 xii. 2. 3–4.
page 84 note 3 xiv. 1. 23 Temple of Ephesus. ‘They showed me’.
page 84 note 4 v. 2. 6.
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page 86 note 3 x. 4. 8–9.
page 86 note 4 xvi. 4. 5–21.
page 87 note 1 xv. 1. 73.
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page 87 note 5 xv. 1. 57.
page 87 note 6 xvii. 1. 5.
page 87 note 7 xvi. 1. 19.
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page 88 note 3 iv. 5. 3–4 ‘cannibals and vegetarians’ is a less likely reading.
page 88 note 4 ii. 5. 8 ήγεμονικαί χρεĩαι.
page 88 note 5 xiii. 1. 30. Augustus gave back to the gods the statues seized by Antony and given to Cleopatra.
page 89 note 1 i. 1. 16 ή γεωγραφική πᾶσα έπί τάς πράξεις άνάγεται τάς ήγεμονικάς.
page 89 note 2 xvii. 3, 7, 9, 25.
page 89 note 3 xii. 1. 4; xii. 3. 29; xvi. 2. 3; iv. 6. 9.
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page 89 note 6 v. 3. 8.
page 90 note 1 v. 4. 7 νυνί λέ πεντετηρικός ίερός άγών συντελεῖται παρ΄ αύτοίς μονσικός τε καί γυμνικός έπί πλείους ήμέρας, ένάμιλλος τοῖς έπιφανεστάτοις τῶν κατά τήν Έλλάλα. They were the Ίταλικά ΄Ρωμαϊα Σεβαστά Ίσολύμπια.
page 90 note 2 xvii. 1. 7.