Phrygia

Phrygia (Greek Φρυγία ) is the ancient name of a region in the western central Asia Minor in modern Turkey. Which bordered on the east by Cappadocia, on the south by Lycaonia and Pisidia, on the west by Lydia, in the northwest and north by Bithynia and Paphlagonia. The most important city of Phrygia was Gordion, which is located at the present-day Sakarya, the ancient Sangarius. Located in the south of Phrygia Kelainai served the Persian kings as royal residence and was in Roman times to the sites of the most important market town of Asia Minor. In late antiquity, was the capital of Colossae, at the Christian church, the apostle Paul wrote a letter mentioning.

Named this landscape is by the Phrygians, under which Phrygia was the heartland of a great empire in Anatolia, the BC under King Midas reached the height of its power in the 8th century. The Phrygians settled from the 12th century BC, from Troas and Thrace coming, in this landscape to. Previously, this region was part of the Hittite empire. Beginning of the 7th century BC were the Cimmerians in Phrygia and conquered Gordion. The Phrygian culture was still long on. End of the 7th century BC Phrygia came to depend increasingly on the Lydians, from 546 BC to 334 BC it was part of the Persian Empire. In the winter of 334 BC to 333 BC Alexander the Great came to Phrygia. During his stay he should have smashed the legendary Gordian knot.

To 274 BC Celtic Galatians were settled by the Diadochenherrscher Antiochus I Soter in the eastern part of Phrygia. According to them, the area soon became known as Galatia. Towards the middle of the 1st century BC Roman Phrygia was and then became part of the province of Asia. Galatia was a Roman client state, and was annexed to the Roman Empire only under the Principate of Augustus.

In Phrygia was the cult of the Great Mother Cybele and the god of wine Sabazios, which is related to the already occupied in Mycenaean period Dionysus, of importance. Cybele was later worshiped by the Romans, where it was called Magna Mater deorum idaea.

Ruler

According to Herodotus, Histories 1,14,35; 41-45 and Strabo, Geographica 1,3,21.