To understand Amaseia, the most important inland city of the Kingdom of Pontus, one has to begin with the map. The city lay behind the mountain belt of the Black Sea coast, in a narrow, deep valley cut by the Iris River (the Yeşilırmak). It stood about eighty-two kilometres from the sea as the crow flies, but because of the high mountains in between, the road down to the coast ran for roughly one hundred and thirty-six kilometres. That distance shielded the city from raids from the sea while leaving it at the centre of the routes that tied the harbour towns to inner Anatolia. Why the Pontic kings valued both this valley and the network of cities, residences and sanctuaries around it becomes clear only when the detailed geography of the region is examined.

The Two Faces of Pontus: Coast and Interior

Pontus was by nature a country of two distinct regions. A narrow coastal strip along the Black Sea was separated from the interior by the Pontic Mountains, which rise parallel to the shore. These ranges made communication between the two zones difficult, so the Greek colonies on the coast and the valley towns inland developed separately for a long time. On the coast, Milesian foundations such as Sinope carried on maritime trade and won renown for their fisheries and for timber suited to shipbuilding. Inland, along the river valleys, lay herds of cattle and horses, plains sown with millet, and groves of grape, pear, apple and walnut.

Strabo, a native of Amaseia, describes the interior of his homeland in detail. In his account the territory of the Amaseians is the largest and best part of the Pontic province. In the north it reaches the Halys (the Kızılırmak), and this northern portion measures about five hundred stadia in length. A stadion is roughly one hundred and eighty-five metres, so the distance exceeds ninety kilometres. To the south the land extends to the district of Zela (Zile) and to the Trocmi country on the border of Greater Cappadocia. The rock-salt beds of Ximene are said to have given the Halys its name. Strabo also notes that, because of the Mithridatic wars, demolished strongholds and deserted villages were left in these lands. Even so, the whole country is well wooded, part of it suits the raising of horses and other animals, and all of it is well adapted to settlement.

The Iris Valley and the Site of the City

The course of the Iris shows the geography of the region at a glance. According to Strabo, the river flows through the middle of Pontic Comana, runs westward across the plain of Dazimonitis, and then turns north past Gaziura, an ancient royal residence. It then bends back toward the east, receives the Scylax and other rivers, and flows past the very wall of Amaseia to reach the plain of Phanaroea. There it joins the Lycus (the Kelkit Çayı), which comes down from Armenia, and passes through the plain of Themiscyra to the sea. The modern map largely confirms this description. The Yeşilırmak runs west from the Tokat area, turns north near Turhal, enters a narrow gorge at Amasya, and then crosses the plains of Erbaa and Çarşamba to reach the sea near Samsun. Amaseia lies at the midpoint of this long course, at the narrowest and best protected point of the valley.

Strabo describes the city itself with the same care. In his words it lies in a large, deep valley and is admirably equipped both by human foresight and by nature, since it serves at once as a city and as a fortress. A high, precipitous rock descends sharply toward the river. On one side is the wall along the riverbank where the city is settled; on the other are the walls that climb to the peaks of the rock. The two peaks are joined to each other by nature and are furnished with towers, and within this circuit stand the palaces and monuments of the kings. The neck that links the summits is extremely narrow. From the riverbank and the suburbs one climbs five or six stadia to the neck, and from the neck to the peaks there remains one more stadion of steep ascent that no force could overcome.

The city's water could not be cut off, for the rock held reservoirs within it. Two tube-like channels had also been hewn into it, one leading to the river and the other to the neck. Two bridges crossed the river, one linking the city to the suburbs and the other linking the suburbs to the outlying territory. The valley begins at the riverbank narrow at first, then widens into the plain called Chiliocomum. After it come the districts of Diacopene and Pimolisene, all of it fertile and extending to the Halys. Because water, defence and arable land were gathered in one place, the choice of Amaseia as a royal city appears entirely natural.

The immediate surroundings of Amaseia also offered healthful and defensible places. Strabo mentions, above the territory of the Amaseians, the hot springs of the people of Phazemonitis, which are extremely good for the health. In the same region stood Sagylium, a stronghold on a steep mountain that ends in a sharp peak. It had a large reservoir of water cut in the rock and had been useful to the kings in many ways. Arsaces, one of the sons of King Pharnaces, attempted a revolt without the leave of any of the prefects and fled to this fortress; he was besieged there by the forces of Polemon and Lycomedes, and since he had gone up without provisions, he was taken by starvation. The wells of the reservoir had been choked with huge rocks on Pompey's orders, because Pompey did not want such strongholds to serve as refuges for brigands. After this reorganisation Phazemonitis was renamed Neapolis. The village of Phazemon that Strabo mentions lies, according to some scholars, around present-day Havza.

Sinope and Amisos: Gateways to the Sea

The Pontic interior opened to the sea through these two port cities. Sinope (Sinop) was founded by Milesian colonists, and Strabo counts it the most noteworthy city of that part of the world. It lies on the neck of a peninsula. Harbours and anchorages stand on either side of the isthmus, and the famous bonito fishery was carried on around it. The hollowed and spiky rocks along the shore made it hard for ships to approach, while above the peninsula lay fertile land adorned with market gardens. Sinope remained independent for a long time, was finally taken by Pharnaces I, and after that became the second capital of the kingdom. The date of the conquest is given as 183 BC in most sources and as 182 BC in some. According to Strabo, Mithridates VI Eupator was born and raised at Sinope, and under him the city was treated as the metropolis of the kingdom. Strabo gives the distance from Sinope to Amisos as about nine hundred stadia, roughly one hundred and sixty-five kilometres.

Amisos (Samsun) was founded east of Sinope, on the coast beyond the mouth of the Halys. Strabo reports that the city was first settled by Milesians, then by a leader of the Cappadocians, and later by Athenocles and the Athenians, at which time its name became Peiraeus. After the kings took the city, Eupator adorned it with temples and added a new quarter to it. Just beyond the city lay the plain of Themiscyra, about sixty stadia from the sea and watered by the Thermodon and the Iris. Strabo writes that this plain is always moist and grassy, suited to feeding cattle and horses and to sowing millet and sorghum. The abundance of water offsets drought, so the people never suffer famine. In the forests along the mountain, wild grapes, pears, apples and nuts are to be had at any time of the year, and hunting is plentiful.

Amaseia had no harbour of its own on the Black Sea. The relationship between mountain and sea was formed through these two cities: products of the interior went down to the ports of Amisos and Sinope, and the coastal towns were joined to the royal residences and sacred centres of the interior by this valley road. The details of trade are treated in a separate article.

Temple Cities: Zela, Comana and Ameria

The environs of Amaseia also held cities regarded as sacred. These centres, possessed of broad lands and large populations, functioned like small semi-independent states. To the south, just beyond the territory of Amaseia, lay Zela (Zile). According to Strabo the city was fortified on a mound attributed to the legendary Semiramis and housed the temple of the goddess Anaitis, whom the Armenians also revered. The rites performed here were held holier than elsewhere, and the people of Pontus swore their oaths on their most important affairs there. In the time of the kings Zela was not counted a city but was governed as a sacred precinct of the Persian gods. The priest, with his multitude of temple servants, was master of the whole place and enjoyed ample revenues. Pompey added further territory to it and gave Zela the status of a city. The name Zela would later be remembered also for Julius Caesar's defeat of Pharnaces there in 47 BC and his saying "veni, vidi, vici".

To the southeast, upstream on the Iris, lay Pontic Comana. The site has been identified near the village of Gümenek, about nine kilometres northeast of present-day Tokat. Modelled on Comana in Cappadocia, this city was dedicated to the same goddess, Ma. In Strabo's account the temple rites and the reverence paid to the priest were almost identical in the two cities. During the goddess's processions, held twice a year, the chief priest wore a diadem and ranked second in honour after the king. When Pompey organised Pontus, he installed Archelaus at the head of this office, added to the sacred land a territory sixty stadia in circuit, and ordered the inhabitants to obey him. About six thousand temple servants worked at the sanctuary, and the priest had no authority to sell them. Strabo describes Comana as a populous city and an important market for people from Armenia. At the goddess's processions crowds of men and women gathered from city and countryside, those fulfilling vows stayed on for long periods, and merchants and soldiers squandered their money there. For this reason Strabo likens Comana to "a lesser Corinth".

The third centre was Ameria, which Strabo calls a "village-city" and which lay in the plain of Phanaroea around Cabeira. Here stood the temple of Men Pharnakou, the moon god. The temple had many servants and a sacred territory, and the ordained priest collected the produce of that land. The kings revered the temple so greatly that they swore their gravest oath as "by the Fortune of the king and by Men of Pharnaces".

Gaziura, Cabeira and the Royal Residences

The Pontic dynasty had not confined its rule to a single city. Gaziura (Turhal) in the Iris valley, though deserted in Strabo's day, had once been a royal residence. South of the plain, at the foot of the Paryadres Mountains, lay Cabeira (later Neocaesarea, present-day Niksar). According to Strabo, Mithridates' palace, water-mills, zoological gardens, hunting grounds and mines were there. Cabeira lay one hundred and fifty stadia, about twenty-eight kilometres, south of Magnopolis, at the junction of the Iris and the Lycus, while Amaseia lay the same distance west of it.

The first man to subjugate the site of Magnopolis had named it Eupatoria after himself. Pompey found the work half-finished, added territory and settlers to it, and called it Magnopolis. The surrounding plain of Phanaroea is, in Strabo's judgment, the best part of Pontus. It is planted with olive trees, yields abundant wine, and has all the good qualities a country can possess. It is bounded by the Paryadres Mountain on the east and by the Lithrus and Ophlimus mountains on the west. Less than two hundred stadia from Cabeira stood Kainon Chorion, a rock sheer and impregnable by nature. Mithridates kept his most precious treasures there, and Pompey dedicated them in the Capitolium at Rome.

Mithridates had also built numerous strongholds in the mountain country above Pharnaceia and Trapezus and deposited most of his treasures in them. Strabo gives the number of these strongholds as seventy-five. When Pompey advanced, the king withdrew to the farthest parts of the kingdom, and when he was besieged there he crossed the mountains and fled to Colchis and from there to the Bosporus. Pompey founded the city of Nicopolis near the last places of the king's resistance. The royal residences and temple centres of the interior, together with the fortresses and treasure chambers in the mountains, formed a single network of defence and administration. Amaseia was the oldest royal residence of that network in the interior.

The Region Reorganised under Rome

With the defeat of Mithridates VI by the Romans, the order of Amaseia and its neighbours changed as well. Lucullus took Amaseia around 70 BC, and Pompey soon afterwards reorganised the region. Strabo writes that Amaseia was at first given to kings but in his own time was a Roman province. The cities that Pompey founded or renamed were the pillars of the new administration, among them Magnopolis, Neapolis, Pompeiupolis, Nicopolis, Diospolis (Cabeira) and Megalopolis. Zela, formerly a sacred precinct only, received city status together with its territory. This arrangement brought the semi-independent temple states under Roman control as well.

Part of the region remained in the hands of kings and dynasts allied to Rome. Strabo speaks of Pythodoris, who held Zelitis, Megalopolitis and the Cabeira district. The wife of Polemon, she took over the government after her husband's death, adorned Cabeira, renamed it Sebaste, and used it as a royal residence. The priesthood of Comana passed after Pompey first to the son of Archelaus, then to Lycomedes, and in Strabo's time to Dyteutus, son of Adiatorix. Some sources report that Amaseia was attached to the district of Pontus Galaticus in the province of Galatia around 2 or 3 BC, and to the province of Cappadocia under Trajan around AD 112. In later centuries the city became the seat of the province of Helenopontus, and Amisos, Sinope and Zela were among the suffragan sees of its metropolitan.

Roads and Continuity

The roads that linked these cities formed the real strength of the kingdom. Armies, taxes and news travelled along those lines. The road descending from Amaseia to the coast is said to have been part of the great caravan network later known as the Baghdad Road. The details of trade routes and Roman roads are treated in separate articles.

The geography of the region changed little over the centuries. The Yeşilırmak kept to the same bed, and Tokat, Turhal, Niksar and Zile remained agricultural and commercial centres of the area. Samsun and Sinop remained the principal ports of the coast. Thanks to the water, defence and road connections its valley provided, Amaseia remained a city that the Pontic kings, and later Roman, Byzantine and Turkish administrations, chose as a centre.

Chronology

302 BC: Antigonus has Mithridates II of Cius put to death; his son Mithridates (later Ktistes) flees east and, after Cimiata in Paphlagonia, takes refuge in the vicinity of Amaseia.

281 (or 280) BC: Mithridates Ktistes proclaims himself king and founds the Kingdom of Pontus.

183 BC (182 in some sources): Pharnaces I captures Sinope.

Around 70 BC: Lucullus takes Amaseia.

66-63 BC: Pompey defeats Mithridates, Pontus is organised as a Roman province, and the king dies.

47 BC: The Battle of Zela.

Sources

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Other sources

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