t success
--the political separation of the European from the Asiatic continent
--direct its further efforts towards the weakening of the two great
states on the mainland, and consequently towards the protection of the
several minor states; whereas Macedonia and Asia, while regarding each
other as rivals, recognized above all their common adversary in Egypt,
and combined, or at any rate ought to have combined, against it.

The Kingdoms of Asia Minor

Among the states of the second rank, merely an indirect importance,
so far as concerned the contact of the east with the west, attached
in the first instance to that series of states which, stretching from
the southern end of the Caspian Sea to the Hellespont, occupied the
interior and the north coast of Asia Minor: Atropatene (in the modern
Aderbijan, south-west of the Caspian), next to it Armenia, Cappadocia
in the interior of Asia Minor, Pontus on the south-east, and Bithynia
on the south-west, shore of the Black Sea. All of these were
fragments of the great Persian Empire, and were ruled by Oriental,
mostly old Persian, dynasties--the remote mountain-land of Atropatene
in particular was the true asylum of the ancient Persian system, over
which even the expedition of Alexander had swept without leaving a
trace--and all were in the same relation of temporary and superficial
dependence on the Greek dynasty, which had taken or wished to take
the place of the great-kings in Asia.

The Celts of Asia Minor

Of greater importance for the general relations was the Celtic
state in the interior of Asia Minor. There, intermediate between
Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Cappadocia, and Phrygia, three Celtic tribes
--the Tolistoagii, the Tectosages, and Trocmi--had settled, without
abandoning either their native language and manners or their
constitution and their trade as freebooters. The twelve tetrarchs,
one of whom was appointed to preside over each of the four cantons in
each of the three tribes, formed, with their council of 300 men, the
supreme authority of the nation, and assembled at the "holy place"
(-Drunemetum-), especially for the pronouncing of capital sentences.
Singular as this cantonal constitution of the Celts appeared to the
Asiatics, equally strange seemed to them the adventurous and marauding
habits of the northern intruders, who on the one hand furnished their
unwarlike neighbours with mercenaries for every war, and on the other
plundered on their own account