at among them the Lydian
and Phrygian languages met, just denotes a mixed Semitic-Iranian
population that may be compared perhaps with that of Assyria. As to
the regions stretching between Cilicia and Caria, more especially
Lydia, there is still, notwithstanding the full remains of the
native language and writing that are in this particular instance
extant, a want of assured results, and it is merely probable that
these tribes ought to be reckoned among the Indo-Germans rather
than the Semites. How all this confused mass of peoples was
overlaid first with a net of Greek mercantile cities, and then
with the Hellenism called into life by the military as well
as intellectual ascendency of the Greek nation, has been set
forth in outline already.

Pontus

In these regions ruled king Mithradates, and that first of all in
Cappadocia on the Black Sea or Pontus as it was called, a district
in which, situated as it was at the northeastern extremity of Asia
Minor towards Armenia and in constant contact with the latter, the
Iranian nationality presumably preserved itself with less admixture
than anywhere else in Asia Minor. Not even Hellenism had penetrated
far into that region. With the exception of the coast where several
originally Greek settlements subsisted--especially the important
commercial marts Trapezus, Amisus, and above all Sinope, the birthplace
and residence of Mithradates and the most flourishing city of the
empire--the country was still in a very primitive condition. Not that
it had lain waste; on the contrary, as the region of Pontus is still
one of the most fertile on the face of the earth, with its fields of
grain alternating with forests of wild fruit trees, it was beyond
doubt even in the time of Mithradates well cultivated and also
comparatively populous. But there were hardly any towns properly
so called; the country possessed nothing but strongholds, which
served the peasants as places of refuge and the king as treasuries
for the custody of the revenues which accrued to him; in the Lesser
Armenia alone, in fact, there were counted seventy-five of these
little royal forts. We do not find that Mithradates materially
contributed to promote the growth of towns in his empire; and situated
as he was,--in practical, though not perhaps on his own part quite
conscious, reaction against Hellenism,--this is easily conceivable.

Acquisitions of Territory by Mithradates
Colchis
Northern Shores of the Black S