Chapter 28 | Table of
Contents | Chapter 30
The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia
W. M. Ramsay
1904
Chapter 29: Laodicea: The City of Compromise
Laodicea was founded by Antiochus II (261-246 BC). As a Seleucid foundation, it was
probably similar to Thyatira in respect of constitution and law; but no information has
been preserved. It was situated at a critical point in the road system of the country. The
great road from the west (from Ephesus and from Miletus) ascends the Meander Valley due
eastwards, until it enters "the Gate of Phrygia." In the Gate are a remarkable
series of hot springs, and warm mud-baths, some in the bed of the Meander, others on its
banks. "The scene before the traveller as he traverses the Gate is a suitable
introduction to that Phrygian land, which always seemed to the Greeks something strange
and unique."
Immediately above this point lies a much broader valley, in which Lydia, Phrygia, and
Caria meet. The Meander comes into this valley from the north, breaking through a ridge of
mountains by a gorge, which, though singularly beautiful in scenery, is useless as a
roadway. The road goes on to the east up the glen of the Lycus, which here joins the
Meander, and offers an easy roadway. The Lycus Glen is double, containing a lower and an
upper glen. Laodicea is the city of the lower glen, Colossae of the upper. Due north of
Laodicea, between the Lycus and the Meander, stands Hierapolis, in a very conspicuous
situation, on a shelf below the northern mountains and above the valley, with a cascade of
gleaming white cliffs below it, topped by the buildings, still wonderfully well preserved,
of the old city.
The glen of the Lycus extends up like a funnel into the flank of the main plateau of
Anatolia. Between the lower and the upper glen there is a step about 400 feet high, and
again between the upper glen and the plateau there is another step of about 850 feet; but
both can be surmounted easily by the road. The lower glen, also, slopes upwards, rising
250 feet; and the upper glen slopes much more rapidly, rising 550 feet. In this way the
rise from the Meander Valley, 550 feet above the sea, to the plateau, 2,600 feet (an
exceptionally low elevation), is achieved far more easily by this path than at any other
point. Hence the Lycus Glen was always the most frequented path of trade from the interior
to the west throughout ancient time.
Laodicea was placed as a guard and door-keeper on this road, near the foot of the Lycus
Glen, where it opens on the main valley of the Meander. The hills that bound the glen on
the south run up northwards to an apex, one side facing northwest, the other northeast;
this apex lies between the river Lycus (the Wolf), and its large tributary the Kapros (the
Boar), which comes in from the south and passes near the eastern gate: the Lycus is about
three miles to the north of the city.
Laodicea was placed on the apex; and the great road from the coast to the inner country
passed right through the middle of it, entering by the "Ephesian Gates" on the
east. The city was nearly square, with the corners towards the cardinal points. One side,
towards the southwest, was washed by the small river Asopus.
The hills rise not more than one hundred feet above the glen; but they spring sharply
from the low and level ground in front; and, when crowned by the well-built fortifications
of a Seleucid city, they must have presented a striking aspect towards the glen, and
constituted an admirably strong line of defence. Laodicea was a very strong fortress,
planted right on the line of the great road; but it had one serious weakness. It was
entirely dependent for water-supply (except in so far as wells may have existed within the
walls, of which there is now no trace) on an aqueduct conducted from springs about six
miles to the south. The aqueduct was under the surface of the ground, but could hardly
remain unknown to a besieging army or be guarded long against his attack. If the aqueduct
was cut, the city was helpless; and this weakness ruined the character of the city as a
strong fortress, and must have prevented the people from ever feeling secure when
threatened with attack.
Planted on the better of the two entrances from the west to the Phrygian land, Laodicea
might have been expected to be (like Philadelphia, which commanded the other) a missionary
city charged at first with the task of spreading Greek civilisation and speech in
barbarian Phrygia, and afterwards undertaking the duty of spreading Christianity in that
country. It had, however, made little progress in Hellenising Phrygia. As has been sated
before, Phrygia was the least Hellenised part in all the Province; as a whole, it still
spoke the native tongue, and was little affected by Greek manners, in contrast with
Eastern Lydia, which was entirely Greek-speaking and Hellenised (at least superficially).
Why it was that Laodicea had failed and Philadelphia had succeeded in diffusing the Greek
tongue in the districts immediately around, we have no means of judging. But such was the
case.
Laodicea was a knot on the road-system. Not merely the great eastern highway and
central route of the Roman Empire, as already described, but also the road from Pergamum
and the Hermus Valley to Pisidia and Pamphylia passed through its gates; while a road from
Eastern Caria, and at least one from Central and West Phrygia, met in the city. In such a
situation it only needed peace to become a great commercial and financial centre. It was,
as Strabo says, only a small city before the Roman time; but after Rome kept peace in the
land, it grew rapidly. Cicero brought with him in 51 BC orders to be cashed in Laodicea,
as the city of banking and exchange.
It was also a manufacturing centre. There was produced in the valley a valuable sort of
wool, soft in texture and glossy black in colour, which was widely esteemed. This wool was
woven into garments of several kinds for home use and export trade. Small and cheap upper
garments, called himatia, two kinds of birros (another sort of upper
garment), one of native style and one in imitation of the manufactures of the Nervii, a
tribe in French Flanders, and also tunics of several kinds, were made in Laodicea; and one
species of the tunics, called trimita, was so famous that the city is styled Trimitaria
in the lists of the Council of Chalcedon, AD 451, and in some other late documents.
It is pointed out elsewhere that this kind of glossy black wool, as well as the glossy
violet-dark wool produced at Colossae, was probably attained by some system of breeding
and crossing. The glossy black fleeces have now entirely disappeared; but they were known
in comparatively recent times. Pococke in the eighteenth century saw a great many black
sheep; but Chandler in the early part of the nineteenth saw only a few black and glossy
fleeces. The present writer has seen some black-fleeced sheep, but the wool was not
distinguished by the gloss which the ancients praised and prized so much. Certain systems
of breeding animals, and improving them by careful selection and crossing with different
stocks, were known to the native Anatolian population in early times: the rules were a
matter of religious prescription, and guarded by religious awe, like almost every useful
art in that primitive period. But the system has now been lost.
Between Laodicea and the "Gate of Phrygia" lay a famous temple, the home of
the Phrygian god Men Karou, the Carian Men. This was the original god of the valley. His
temple was the centre of society and administration, intercourse and trade, as well as of
religion,--or, rather, that primitive religion was a system of performing those duties and
purposes in the orderly way that the god approved and taught--for the valley in which the
Lycus and the Meander meet. A market was held under the protection of his sacred name,
beside or in his own precinct, at which the people of the valley met and traded with
strangers from a distance; and this market continued to meet weekly in the same place
until about fifty years ago, when it was moved two or three miles north to the new village
called Serai-Keui.
In connection with this temple there grew up a famous school of medicine. The school
seems to have had its seat at Laodicea, and not at the temple (which was about thirteen
miles west of Laodicea and in the territory of the city Attoudda); and the names of the
leading physicians of the school in the time of Augustus are mentioned on Laodicean coins.
These coins bear as type either the serpent-encircled staff of Asklepios (Figure 10, chapter 14) or the figure
of Zeus (Figure 35). The Zeus who was worshipped at Laodicea was the Hellenised form of
the old native god. Men had been the king and father of his people. When the new seat of
Hellenic civilisation and speech was founded in the valley, the people continued to
worship the god whose power was known to be supreme in the district, but they imparted to
him something of their own character and identified him with their own god Zeus. Thus in
Sardis and elsewhere the native god became Zeus Lydios, "the Zeus whom the Lydians
worship"; and the same impersonation in outward appearance was worshipped at Laodicea
(Figure 35), though with a different name in place of Lydios. The Laodicean god was
sometimes called Aseis, perhaps a Semitic word meaning "powerful." If that be
so, it would imply that a body of settlers from Syria were brought into the new city at
its foundation, and that they had imparted an element of their own character to the god
who was worshipped in common by the citizens generally.
Figure 35: The God of Laodicea
This Laodicean school of physicians followed the teaching "of Herophilos (330-250
BC), who, on the principle that compound diseases require compound medicines, began that
strange system of heterogeneous mixtures, some of which have only lately been expelled
from our own Pharmacopoeia."
The only medicine which is expressly quoted as Laodicean seems to be an ointment for
strengthening the ears made from the spice nard; Galen mentions it as having been
originally prepared only in Laodicea, though by the second century after Christ it was
made in other cities. But a medicine for the eyes is also described as Phrygian: Galen
describes it as having the form of a tabloid made from the Phrygian stone, while Aristotle
speaks of it as Phrygian powder; the two are probably identical, Aristotle describes the
powder to which the tabloids were reduced when they were to be applied to the eye. There
can be no doubt that this Phrygian powder came through Laodicea into general use among the
Greeks. Laodicea was the one famous medical centre in Phrygia; and to the Greeks
"Phrygian" often stood in place of "Laodicean"; thus, for example, the
famous orator of the second century, Polemon of Laodicea was called simply "the
Phrygian." The Phrygian stone was exported after a time to all parts of the Greek and
Roman world; and as the powder had now become common, and was prepared in all the medical
centres, Galen does not mention it as being made in any special place; but Laodicea was
probably the oldest home of its use, so far as the Greeks knew.
Jews were an important element in the population of this district in the Graeco-Roman
age. In 62 BC the Roman governor of Asia refused to permit the contributions, which were
regularly sent by the Asian Jews to Jerusalem, to go out of the country; and he seized the
money that had been collected, over twenty pound weight of gold at Laodicea and a hundred
pounds at Apameia of Phrygia. Such amounts prove that Laodicea was the centre of a
district in which a large, and Apameia of one in which a very large, Jewish population
dwelt. According to the calculation of M. Th. Reinach, the gold seized at Laodicea would
amount to 15,000 silver drachms; and as the annual tax was two drachms, this implies a
population of 7,500 adult Jewish freemen in the district (to which must be added women and
children).
Of the Jews in Laodicea itself no memorial is preserved in the few inscriptions that
have survived; but at Hierapolis they are several times mentioned, and the Hierapolitan
Jews may be taken as occupying a similar position to the Laodicean. There were Jews in
Laodicean, which was such an important centre for financial transactions (Josephus, Ant.,
xiv., 10, 20); but there is no evidence whether they were citizens or mere resident
strangers (see chapter 12). If they were citizens, they must have
been one element in the population planted in the city by Antiochus. Thus we can detect in
the original Laodicea the following elements, some Greek or Macedonian colonists, probably
some Syrians and also some Jews, in addition to the native Phrygian, Carian and Lydian
population of the district.
To these there were added later some new classes of citizens, introduced by Eumenes II
or by Attalus II. When Phrygia was given to Eumenes by the Romans, in 189 BC, it was soon
found to be necessary to strengthen the loyalty of the Seleucid colonies by introducing
into them bodies of new citizens devoted to the Pergamenian interests. It is known that a
Tribe Attalis was instituted in Laodicea; and we must infer that it contained some or all
of those new Pergamenian settlers, who were enrolled in one or more Tribes. These later
colonists were probably in part Thracian and other mercenaries in the service of the
Pergamenian kings. Thus Laodicea and the Lycus Valley generally had a very mixed
population. No better example could be found of the mixed Graeco-Asiatic cities described
in chapter 11.
The Jews at Hierapolis were organised in trade-guilds, the purple-dyers, the
carpet-makers, and perhaps others. These guilds were recognised by the city, so that money
could be left to them by will. "The Congregation of the Jews" was empowered to
prosecute persons who had violated the sanctity of a Jewish tomb, and to receive fines
from them on conviction; and it had its own public office, "the Archives of the
Jews," in which copies of legal documents executed by or for Jews were deposited.
These rights seem to imply that there was a body of Jewish citizens of Hierapolis.
The Jews of Hierapolis were settled there by one of the Graeco-Asiatic kings, for their
congregation is in one inscription called "the Settlement or Katoikia of the
Jews," and the term Katoikoi was appropriated specially to the colonists
planted by those kings in their new foundations.
Hierapolis seems to have preserved its pre-Hellenic character as a Lydian city, in
which there were no Tribes, but only the freer grouping by Trade-guilds. The feasts of
Unleavened Bread and of Pentecost are mentioned in inscriptions; and by a quaint and
characteristic mixture of Greek and Jewish customs, money is left to the two Jewish guilds
(naturally, by Jews), the interest of which is to be distributed annually on those feasts.
Laodicean Jews may be estimated on the analogy of the Hierapolitan Jews (chapter 12).
Laodicea was, of course, a centre of the Imperial religion, and received the
Temple-Wardenship under Commodus, AD 180-191. Its wide trading connection is attested by
many "alliance-coins," in company with Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, most of the
neighbouring cities (except Colossae, which was too humble), and some distant cities like
Nikomedia and Perinthus. As a specimen Figure 36 shows an agreement between Smyrna and
Laodicea: the latter being represented by its god Zeus, while Smyrna is represented by
Zeus Akraios who sits with sceptre in left hand, holding out on his right the goddess
Victory.
Figure 36: The alliance of Laodicea and Smyrna
There is no city whose spirit and nature are more difficult to describe than Laodicea.
There are no extremes, and hardly any very strongly marked features. But in this even
balance lies its peculiar character. Those were the qualities that contributed to make it
essentially the successful trading city, the city of bankers and finance, which could
adapt itself to the needs and wishes of others, ever pliable and accommodating, full of
the spirit of compromise.
The Lycus Valley, in a larger sense, is a deep cleft between two lofty mountain ridges.
On the south are Salbakos and Kadmos, both slightly over 8,000 feet above the sea; on the
north is a lower ridge over 5,000 feet in height. The ridges converge towards the east,
and in the apex lies the ascent to the plateau already described. Thus the valley is
triangular, the base being the opening on the Meander Valley. Low hills occupy the
southern half of this greater valley; these hills are drained by the Kapros and the
Asopus; and Laodicea stands on their northern apex, about half-way between the two
mountain-ridges. It is the only one of the Seven Cities in which no relation is
discernible between the natural features that surround it and its part and place in
history.
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