ended himself against them as the lion of the
desert defends himself against the hunter. Still we are not entitled,
in accordance with what we know, to recognize in him more than the
resistance to be expected from so vigorous a nature. But, whatever
judgment we may form as to the individual character of the king,
his historical position remains in a high degree significant.
The Mithradatic wars formed at once the last movement of the political
opposition offered by Hellas to Rome, and the beginning of a revolt
against the Roman supremacy resting on very different and far deeper
grounds of antagonism--the national reaction of the Asiatics against
the Occidentals. The empire of Mithradates was, like himself,
Oriental; polygamy and the system of the harem prevailed at court
and generally among persons of rank; the religion of the inhabitants
of the country as well as the official religion of the court was
pre-eminently the old national worship; the Hellenism there was
little different from the Hellenism of the Armenian Tigranids and
the Arsacids of the Parthian empire. The Greeks of Asia Minor
might imagine for a brief moment that they had found in this king a
support for their political dreams; his battles were really fought
for matters very different from those which were decided on the fields
of Magnesia and Pydna. They formed--after a long truce--a new
passage in the huge duel between the west and the east, which has
been transmitted from the conflicts at Marathon to the present
generation and will perhaps reckon its future by thousands of
years as it has reckoned its past.

The Nationalities of Asia Minor

Manifest however as is the foreign and un-Hellenic character of
the whole life and action of the Cappadocian king, it is difficult
definitely to specify the national element preponderating in it,
nor will research perhaps ever succeed in getting beyondbgeneralities
or in attaining clear views on this point. In the whole circle
of ancient civilization there is no region where the stocks
subsisting side by side or crossing each other were so numerous,
so heterogeneous, so variously from the remotest times intermingled,
and where in consequence the relations of the nationalities were
less clear than in Asia Minor. The Semitic population continued in
an unbroken chain from Syria to Cyprus and Cilicia, and to it the
original stock of the population along the west coast in the regions
of Caria and Lydia seems al