For anyone wishing to understand the religious world of ancient Amaseia, the best guide is once again the city's own son, the geographer Strabo. Born in Amaseia around 64 BC, Strabo describes his homeland and the surrounding lands of Pontus in the seventeen books of his Geographika with both the composure of a scholar and the pride of a fellow townsman. His pages speak not only of walls clinging to the rock, royal tombs and fertile plains, but also of temples, priests, temple servants, oath ceremonies and festivals. Strabo, moreover, was hardly an outsider observing this world from a distance; certain members of his mother's family had risen in the service of the Pontic kings as far as the highest priestly offices. The temples of Komana, Zela and Ameria that he describes were therefore institutions his family knew at first hand.

The Kingdom of Pontus was a Hellenistic state that joined the southern coast of the Black Sea with the inland regions of northern Anatolia. Coastal cities such as Sinope and Amisos were Greek-speaking communities that looked to the sea, while the interior was home to an Iranian aristocracy surviving from the Persian period, to great temple estates and to the old peasant population of Anatolia. The religious life of the kingdom mirrors this mixture. Greek gods, gods of Persian origin and the native gods of Anatolia often shared the same altar and borrowed one another's names and symbols. Amaseia was the first capital of this world and afterwards remained the sacred and symbolic centre of the dynasty. Because the city's fabric, the political history of the capital, the ruler cult and the moon god Men are treated in detail in separate articles on this site, the emphasis here falls on the region's temples, its gods and the people who served them.

A Fortress-City Hanging from the Rock

Strabo describes his homeland with admiration: Amaseia, in his view, is a skilfully laid-out city that offers at once all the advantages of a city and of a fortress. The city is built at the foot of a high, sheer rock that drops steeply towards the river. On one side run the walls along the riverbank where the town is settled; on the other, the fortress walls climb to the summit in two arms. As the Iris, today's Yeşilırmak, flows along the floor of the valley, the cliffs above it rise to a height of some 250 metres. Its natural defences were so strong that Amaseia was considered all but impregnable.

At the foot of the rock a terrace supported by massive blocks of Hellenistic masonry marks the place where the royal palace once stood. Steps cut into the rock led both to the fortress above and to the five monumental tombs of the early Pontic kings. The city thus had a three-tiered arrangement: below, the living quarters stretching along the river; in the middle, the palace terrace and the royal tombs; and at the top, the fortress commanding the entire valley. These tombs are significant in religious terms as well. Archaeologists define them as free-standing "heroa", carved out of the living rock and detached from it on all sides, that is, monuments built for the deified or heroised dead. Inside the fortress two monumental stairways descend through tunnels into the depths of the rock, and somewhat lower down there is a third stairway that Strabo apparently did not know. Monuments of this kind are found from Phrygia to Commagene and are thought to have been intended originally for religious ceremonies; whatever their purpose, they are known to have been used in Late Hellenistic times to secure water during sieges.

Amaseia's bridges over the Yeşilırmak linked the city to its suburbs on the eastern bank, and the road connecting the port of Amisos with inland Anatolia passed through this valley. The fertility of the plains and the trade route brought the city both wealth and the beliefs of many different peoples. The cultures of East and West, of steppe and sea, met in this valley. With its temples, public buildings and the coins it struck in its own name in the Roman age, Amaseia was a cosmopolitan centre equipped like the great cities of its day.

A Religious World Fed by Three Sources

Modern scholars who study Pontic religion, Sergej Saprykin in particular, see in the kingdom's religious life three layers laid one upon another. The first consisted of Greek gods and heroes, chief among them Zeus, Apollo, Perseus, Herakles, Ares and Dionysos. The second was of Phrygian and Anatolian origin; Kybele, Mother of the Gods, her young companion Attis and the moon god Men belong to this group. The third was a legacy of Persian rule, and Ahura Mazda, Mithra, Anaitis, Omanos and Anadatos are the names of this inheritance. In the coastal cities the Greek layer predominated, while in the villages of the interior the old gods of Anatolia remained more vigorous.

These layers were not divided from one another by sharp lines. A god might be invoked by his Greek name in one place and by a local epithet in another; the name of a Persian god could turn, in an inscription, into an epithet of Zeus. Saprykin points to a striking detail: although the kings of the dynasty mostly bore the name Mithridates, meaning "given by Mithra", almost no trace of a cult of Mithra has been found in Pontus. In his view the kings put the Greek gods to the fore in official religion and kept the Iranian heritage alive chiefly in the form of their ceremonies. Other scholars place greater emphasis on the dynasty's devotion to sun gods, to Apollo and to Mithra. The sources diverge here, and it is difficult to reach a firm verdict.

The practical counterpart of this mixed world in everyday life was that temples were far more than places of prayer and sacrifice. The great sanctuaries, with their own lands, revenues, thousands of servants and priests whose rank stood close to the king's, functioned like small states. These "temple states" are among the subjects on which Strabo gives the most detail when describing Pontus.

Zeus Stratios and the Mountain-Top Sanctuary

The chief god of Amaseia was Zeus Stratios, whose epithet means "leader of armies". The great sanctuary dedicated to this god lay outside the city, to its east, on a high plateau beyond a mountain near the present-day village of Yassıçal. Here, on top of a hill, the remains of an enclosure wall, potsherds and three inscriptions mentioning Zeus Stratios have been found. One of the inscriptions records a dedication made by the king to the god, another belongs to a priest appointed for life who made a donation from the temple's revenues, and the third was set up by the city's magistrates on behalf of the people of Amaseia. In a dedication found at Çatalkaya, a man with the Persian name Kyros and a man with the Greek name Philetairos made an offering together to the same god; this small stone is a fine example of two separate worlds meeting before a single altar.

The sacrifice the kings offered to this god is described by the Roman historian Appian. According to the custom of the country, on a high hill the kings themselves first carry wood and build a great pile, around which a smaller pile is laid. On the higher pile milk, honey, wine, olive oil and various kinds of incense are poured, while on the lower a banquet of bread and meat is spread for those present; then the wood is set alight. According to Appian the flame is so high that it can be seen from the sea at a distance of a thousand stadia, and for days no one can approach it because of the heat. Mithridates VI offered such a sacrifice in 82-81 BC after driving the Roman commander Murena out of Cappadocia; in 73 BC, before marching into Paphlagonia, he performed the same ceremony again and this time had a pair of white horses thrown into the sea for Poseidon. Appian compares this banquet to the sacrifices of the Persian kings at Pasargadae. Whether the hill at Yassıçal is the place Appian describes is a matter of debate; Franz Cumont in 1901 identified the remains there as the monumental altar of Zeus Stratios, but calculations of distance and visibility from the sea have led some scholars to think that the sacrifice in question may have taken place on a hill closer to the coast, where the army was assembled.

For the Pontic kings Zeus Stratios also had a Persian face. According to an older view, this god was identified with Ahura Mazda, protector of the Achaemenid kings, so that the dynasty's Hellenic and Persian heritage were united at a single altar. What Strabo writes about the Iranians seems to support this view: the Persians erect neither statues nor altars, offer sacrifice on a high place and regard the heavens as Zeus. Saprykin, however, argues that the sacrifice was offered not to Ahura Mazda but, in keeping with Greek tradition, to Zeus with the epithet Stratios, and that the Iranian trace survived mainly in the fire and in the king carrying the wood with his own hands.

Devotion to Zeus Stratios continued after the age of the kings. Coins struck by Amaseia in the Roman imperial period frequently show a monumental altar: a rectangular structure rendered with lines suggesting ashlar masonry, a tree to its left, an eagle with outspread wings above it and a four-horse chariot in the upper field. On some coins a fire burns on the altar, on others a sacrificial bull lies in the flames with its legs in the air. The earliest of these coins date from the reign of Trajan, but most were struck at the end of the second century and the beginning of the third, under the Severans. On a large bronze struck in AD 231/232 under Severus Alexander, an eagle stands on the altar while above it the sun god Helios appears in his four-horse chariot. Under the same emperor a series of coins was also struck showing on the reverse the twin-peaked crag of Amaseia, its walls and gates, and a temple at upper left. The identity of this temple is disputed. Christina Williamson stresses the importance of the altar and the coins for the city's identity, while Barbara Burrell argues that there is insufficient evidence for associating the building on the coins with Zeus Stratios and that it might equally be a temple of the imperial cult.

Reverence for the god has left traces in the countryside as well. An altar found at Çalıca is dated to AD 239/240, and a sanctuary of this god has also been identified near Gökçebağ. Even Amaseians living far away did not forget their god: a dedication to Zeus Stratios by a group of Amaseian citizens is known from Athens. The god's place within the royal cult and the political meaning of the ceremonies are discussed in more detail in the site's article on the royal cult of Pontus.

The Zeus of Villages and Fields

Zeus was not only the god of the king and the army; in the villages of Pontus and Paphlagonia he was also invoked under other epithets as a god of everyday concerns. At Abonouteichos people worshipped Zeus Poarinos, protector of pastures and vegetation, and in the district of Euchaita, around present-day Çorum, the fertility god Zeus Epikarpios. In an inscription from Çorum the dedication was made by a priest of the Eleusinian triad of Demeter, Kore and Zeus, and according to the same inscription the festival of these gods was celebrated just before the day of Kybele, the Phrygian Mother Goddess. At Havza a dedication had been made to Zeus the Saviour, Zeus Soter, for the recovery of a sick person. In the immediate surroundings of Amaseia, offerings were made to Zeus Bobeomenos, whose name derives from a verb meaning "I shall live, I shall recover".

These dedications show the peasant who prayed for the protection of his fields and flocks and the commander defending his fortress turning to the same god under different epithets. Another inscription from Amaseia reveals that the name of the Persian god Omanos had been added to Zeus as an epithet, the god being invoked as "Zeus Omanes". A relief found at Zougo, in the rural territory of Amaseia, shows a divine figure carrying a thunderbolt and a round shield. The relief's inscription records an offering worth fourteen chalkoi to Gaia and Agdistis, that is, to Mother Earth and the mother goddess of Phrygia. The figure was once regarded as the forerunner of a local, double-sexed idol, but Saprykin reads it as Zeus Stratios or a Zeus-Attis merged with him; it has also been suggested that Zobe, named as the dedicator, was a woman's name rather than a goddess.

In the coastal cities the same god shows a more Greek face. At Trapezous, that is Trabzon, Zeus Soter had been invoked since the fifth century BC together with Herakles, the hero who overcame death. At Sinope a festival called the Soteria was celebrated in honour of Zeus from the third century BC onwards. The interest in northern Anatolia in gods associated with rebirth after death and with healing also nourished the legend that the statue of Serapis in Alexandria had been brought from Sinope in the time of the early Ptolemaic kings. According to Saprykin these widespread popular beliefs were mostly private in character, while the official dynastic cult was concentrated on the warrior Zeus Stratios.

Persian Gods and Fire Priests

Pontus and Cappadocia were lands where Iranian beliefs lived on even after Achaemenid rule. Strabo writes that in Cappadocia the Magi, also called Pyraithoi, "fire-kindlers", formed a large community and that the country had many temples of the Persian gods. These temples had remarkable sacred enclosures called Pyraitheia. In their midst stood an altar covered with a great quantity of ashes, where the Magi kept the fire burning without ever letting it go out. Entering daily, they chanted incantations for about an hour, standing before the fire with bundles of slender rods in their hands. On their heads they wore tall felt turbans that came down over their cheeks far enough to cover their lips. They killed the sacrificial animal without using a sword, beating it to death with a kind of log.

Strabo relates that the same ceremonies were performed in the temples of Anaitis and Omanos, that these temples too had sacred enclosures and that the people carried the wooden statue of Omanos in procession, and he expressly states that he saw this with his own eyes. In Iranian religion there were separate rules for sacrificing to fire and to water; blowing on the fire with one's breath or throwing anything dead or unclean upon it was punished by death, and the victim was slaughtered at the head of a trench so that no blood would mingle with the water. The Persians did not bathe in a river or cast into it anything considered unclean. Strabo himself says that he took these details largely from other writers and that his own testimony was limited to the ceremonies in Cappadocia.

One of the places where the Iranian heritage remained most alive was Zela, present-day Zile, to the south of Amaseia. According to the tradition Strabo records, the Sacae, a people of Scythian origin who had once advanced as far as Anatolia, were celebrating a festival here when they were wiped out in a night attack by Persian generals. The generals heaped earth over a rock in the plain to turn it into a hill, built a wall on top and founded a temple for Anaitis and for the two Persian gods who shared her altar, Omanos and Anadatos. To commemorate the victory an annual festival called the Sacaea was instituted, and the people of Zela continued to celebrate it down to Strabo's own day. Another tradition reported by Strabo links the origin of the festival to a trap set by Cyrus the Great for the Sacae. Whichever account is preferred, at the Sacaea men dressed in Scythian garb drank day and night and made merry with one another and with the women who drank with them; Strabo describes it as a kind of Bacchic festival.

Zela: Sanctuary of the Persian Gods

In Strabo's words Zela was a place fortified on an artificial mound called the "mound of Semiramis", and here stood the temple of Anaitis, who was also revered by the Armenians. Anaitis is the Greek form of Anahita, the Iranian goddess of water and fertility; Saprykin describes her at Zela as a goddess of nature and love, like Aphrodite. Strabo writes that the sacred rites performed here carried greater sanctity than elsewhere and that all the people of Pontus took their oaths on matters of the greatest importance here. In the time of the kings Zela was governed as a sacred precinct belonging to the Persian gods, without the status of a city, and the priest was master of everything. Its inhabitants consisted of the multitude of temple servants and of the priest, who possessed abundant wealth, together with his retinue; both the sacred land and the priest's own land were under his command.

Roman rule changed this order. After defeating Mithridates VI, Pompey added extensive territory around Zela, settled the inhabitants within the walls and made the place one of the cities he founded. Strabo records that in his own time the temple servants and temple revenues had been diminished through the abuses of many people, that the surrounding territory had been divided into several administrative units and that everything was in the hands of Pythodoris, queen of Pontus. The name of Zela survives in Roman history through another event as well: in 47 BC Julius Caesar defeated Pharnakes II, son of Mithridates VI, here within five hours and wrote to the Senate, "I came, I saw, I conquered." On the Roman-period coins of Zela, Zeus appears as a figure holding Nike, the goddess of victory, with the legend "Zeus Epikarpios of the Zelans"; the city also had an altar of Zeus.

Komana: Temple State of the Warrior Goddess Ma

The greatest sanctuary of Pontus was Komana, on the upper course of the Yeşilırmak, a few kilometres north-east of present-day Tokat, near the village of Gümenek. The goddess worshipped here was Ma. Ma, whose name means "mother", was conceived both as a mother goddess and as a goddess of war bearing the epithets "invincible" and "bringer of victory". The Greeks likened her to the war goddess Enyo and the Romans to Bellona; in Pontus she was also invoked as Thea Nikephoros, the victory-bringing goddess, or as Athena. According to Strabo, Pontic Komana was dedicated to the same goddess as its namesake in Cappadocia and modelled on it, and in their sacrifices, their rites of divine ecstasy and the reverence shown to their priests the two cities followed almost the same course.

The information Strabo gives about the mother temple in Cappadocia also helps in understanding Pontic Komana. The population of that city, set in a deep valley beyond the Taurus, consisted mostly of people seized by divine inspiration and of temple servants. When Strabo was there, the servants, men and women together, numbered more than six thousand. The priest was master of the temple, of the servants and of the extensive lands belonging to the temple, enjoyed their revenues and ranked second in Cappadocia after the king. The priests were generally chosen from the royal family. According to a local legend, these rites had been introduced by Orestes and his sister Iphigeneia, who brought the cult of Tauric Artemis from Scythia and cut their hair here in mourning; the name of the city was said to come from the Greek word kome, meaning hair.

A similar order prevailed at Pontic Komana. In the time of the kings, twice a year, during the processions known as the "exoduses" of the goddess, the priest wore a diadem and ranked second in honour after the king. Strabo's own family history shows the political weight of this office. Dorylaos, nephew of his mother's grandfather, had received the greatest honours from Mithridates VI and in particular the priesthood of Komana, but he was caught trying to bring the kingdom over to the Romans, and with his fall the whole family fell into disgrace. After the Mithridatic Wars, Pompey appointed Archelaos priest of Komana. In addition to the sacred land he added to his domain a territory of two schoeni, that is sixty stadia, in circuit and ordered the inhabitants to obey him. Archelaos was governor of this territory and master of the servants living in the city, though he had no authority to sell them; Strabo notes that here too the servants numbered no fewer than six thousand.

The priestly office soon became entangled in Rome's eastern politics. When a husband was being sought for the princess who held the throne of Egypt, Archelaos presented himself as the son of Mithridates VI and was accepted, but he reigned for only six months and was killed in battle by the Roman commander Gabinius. The priesthood passed first to his son and then to Lykomedes; later Augustus gave the office to Dyteutos, son of Adiatorix, of a Galatian dynastic family. Strabo also tells the story behind this appointment. After leading Adiatorix in his triumph together with his wife and children, Augustus had resolved to put him to death along with his eldest son. When the younger brother told the soldiers that he was the eldest, a long contest began between the two brothers; in the end the parents persuaded Dyteutos to give way, since he was old enough to look after his mother and the remaining brother. The younger brother was put to death with his father, and Augustus, grieved when he learned what had happened, honoured the survivors with this priesthood.

Strabo describes Komana as a populous city and an important market for people coming from Armenia. During the exoduses of the goddess everyone, men and women alike, flocked to the festival from the cities and the countryside. There were also those who, in fulfilment of a vow, lived there permanently and offered sacrifices to the goddess. The inhabitants lived in luxury and all their property was planted with vines. The city held a great number of women who made a living from their bodies, most of them dedicated to the goddess. For this reason Strabo likens Komana to Corinth, famous for its courtesans dedicated to Aphrodite; he adds that the merchants and soldiers who came here spent all their money, and that this gave rise to the proverb "Not for every man is the voyage to Corinth." In the age of Mithridates, Komana also struck coins in its own name; bronze coins bearing the head of the young Dionysos and his symbols were struck at Komana together with Sinope, Amisos, Kabeira and other cities.

In the Roman period Komana for a time also bore the name Hierokaisareia. The image of Ma appeared on the city's coins from the time of Caligula onwards, while coins of the reigns of Trajan, Septimius Severus and Caracalla show a four-columned temple façade, and these coins are our only source for the temple's appearance. It is thought that eight grey columns used in the Ali Paşa Mosque in Tokat may have been brought from this temple. The site of the city was located in 2009 by ground-penetrating radar surveys, and excavations began within the Komana Archaeological Research Project conducted by the Middle East Technical University. The hill on which the temple stood has since been damaged by irrigation channels and a new highway. Some interpretations trace the origins of the cult at Komana back to the Hittite age and link sacred prostitution there to the Hittite period, but these have not yet been confirmed by excavation.

Ameria and the Moon God Men Pharnakou

Another important cult of the region belonged to the moon god Men Pharnakou. According to Strabo the god's temple stood at the village-city called Ameria, near Kabeira, which Pompey had raised to the status of a city and named Diospolis, and which Pythodoris later adorned under the name Sebaste and made her royal residence. The temple had many servants and a sacred territory, whose produce was always gathered by the priest in office. The cult had been founded by Pharnakes I and continued to flourish in the age of Mithridates VI. Strabo also counts the place as a temple of the moon goddess Selene and compares it to similar temples among the Albanians and in Phrygia.

The kings revered this temple so highly that the "royal oath" was sworn in these words: "By the Fortune of the king and by Men of Pharnakes." The name Pharnakes is generally accepted as connected with a Persian word associated with fortune and destiny; Men Pharnakou was thus understood as the moon god who holds fortune in his hands. The moon god was like a divine witness confirming from the heavens the continuity of the dynasty and the legitimacy of its power. Some scholars believe that the sanctuary at Ameria was founded as a counterweight to the influence of Ma, the moon goddess of Komana. The origins of the cult of Men, its symbols and its place on coins are described in detail in the site's article devoted to this god.

Temple Servants and Priests

The common feature of the great sanctuaries Strabo describes is the temple servants, called hierodouloi in Greek. More than six thousand at Komana, described as "many" at Ameria and forming the real population of Zela, these people worked the temple lands, took part in the ceremonies and drew revenue from the vineyards and fields belonging to the sanctuary. At Venasa in Cappadocia the servants attached to the temple of Zeus numbered nearly three thousand, and the priest drew a yearly income of fifteen talents from these lands. The legal position of the servants lay somewhere between outright slavery and freedom; the fact that Pompey gave the priest of Komana authority to govern them but not to sell them shows that the Romans too observed this distinction.

The priesthood, for its part, was one of the highest offices in this world. The priests of the great temples served for life, held an honour close to that of the king and were often related to the dynasty. This is why the priest of Komana wore a diadem on feast days and was counted second after the king, and why the priest of Zela was master of the whole sacred precinct. The Pontic kings bound loyal nobles to themselves by granting them these offices; as the case of Dorylaos shows, the treason of a single priest could drag down an entire family. In the Roman period the priesthoods became rewards distributed by men such as Pompey and Augustus to their friends. Later Roman governors assigned some of the lands of the region to the priests of Komana, a portion to the priest of Zela, and a portion to Ateporix, a descendant of the Galatian tetrarchs.

Gods on the Coins

The most durable documents of Pontus's religious world are its coins. On the royal coins Zeus, Hera, Perseus and Dionysos appear, and on the civic coins the symbols of Ares, Athena and Perseus, regarded as the ancestor of the dynasty. Most of the bronze coins struck in the cities of the kingdom under Mithridates VI carry Zeus and his attributes. Coins of Kabeira show Zeus Stratios inside his temple and a warrior figure in a Phrygian cap holding a spear and an oval shield.

Amaseia's own coins, with their images of gods, views of altars and symbols, were like small monuments carried in the pocket. In the imperial period the city's coins show Zeus bearing Victory, Nike and Athena Polias, protector of the city, linked with the warrior identity of Zeus Stratios. These coins also tell of Amaseia's place in the Roman order. The city had been taken by Lucullus in 70 BC, received extensive territory in the province of Bithynia and Pontus organised by Pompey, and in 3-2 BC was attached to the province of Galatia, becoming the metropolis of the district of Pontus Galaticus. When this district was transferred to Cappadocia under Trajan, Amaseia retained the title of metropolis. Titles on the coins such as "metropolis" and "first of Pontus" show that the citizens bore this honour proudly, together with the altar of their god.

From the Old Gods to Christianity

The pagan cults lived on throughout the Roman imperial age, but from the late third century onwards Christianity spread rapidly in the region. According to Christian sources, Theodore, a soldier born at Euchaita, set fire to the temple of Kybele, Mother of the Gods, in Amaseia, was arrested, tortured and put to death by being burned alive. The date of his martyrdom is given as 287 in the Legenda Aurea and as 306 in later tradition. This account is one of the rare testimonies to the existence of a temple of Kybele in Amaseia.

The collapse of the temple at Komana hastened the spread of Christianity. The city's bishop Basiliscus was executed around 310, and John Chrysostom, sent into exile from Constantinople, died at Komana in 407 beside the clerical community attached to the church of Saint Basiliscus. Zela too became an episcopal see, and its bishop Herakleios attended the councils of Ancyra in 314 and Nicaea in 325. Yet the traces of the old festivals were not easily erased. Asterius, who became bishop of Amaseia in the 380s, sharply attacked the pagan customs and excesses of the Kalends festival celebrated at the New Year in a sermon delivered on 1 January 400. The fire priests, temple servants and mountain-top sacrificial fires described by Strabo thus gave way to churches, martyrs and bishops.

Amasya still carries some of these layers today. The royal rock tombs carved into the slopes of Mount Harşena, the cisterns and walls of the fortress preserve traces of the Hellenistic period, and the bridges over the Yeşilırmak show a continuity reaching from the Roman age to the present. Strabo's name has also been given to schools, streets and cultural institutions in the city. The altars of the gods, however, survive largely beneath the soil, in a handful of inscriptions and in the coins held in museums.

Chronology

302-281 BC: Mithridates I Ktistes establishes his rule in the region; Amaseia becomes the first capital of the Kingdom of Pontus, and the kingdom is proclaimed in 281.

183 BC: Pharnakes I takes Sinope; the capital moves to the coast. The cult of Men Pharnakou at Ameria is founded in his reign.

82-81 BC: Mithridates VI, having driven Murena's garrisons out of Cappadocia, offers a mountain-top fire sacrifice to Zeus Stratios.

73 BC: Before his Paphlagonian campaign Mithridates sacrifices again to Zeus Stratios and has a pair of white horses thrown into the sea for Poseidon.

70 BC: Lucullus captures Amaseia.

c. 64 BC: Strabo is born in Amaseia.

64-63 BC: Pompey reorganises Pontus; he appoints Archelaos priest of Komana and raises Zela to the status of a city.

47 BC: Julius Caesar defeats Pharnakes II at Zela.

3-2 BC: Amaseia is attached to the province of Galatia and becomes the metropolis of Pontus Galaticus.

AD 231/232: Under Severus Alexander a bronze coin showing the altar of Zeus Stratios and the four-horse chariot of Helios is struck at Amaseia.

AD 239/240: Date of the altar of Zeus Stratios at Çalıca.

AD 306 (according to tradition): Theodore burns the temple of Kybele in Amaseia and is martyred.

AD 407: John Chrysostom dies at Komana on his way into exile.

2009: The site of ancient Komana is located by ground-penetrating radar, and excavations begin.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Books

  • Appian, The Mithridatic Wars 66 and 70.
  • Christina Williamson, "Power, Politics, and Panoramas. Viewing the Sacred Landscape of Zeus Stratios near Amaseia", in T. Bekker-Nielsen (ed.), Space, Place and Identity in Northern Anatolia, Stuttgart, 2014, 175-188.
  • Franz Cumont, "Le Zeus Stratios de Mithridate", Revue de l'histoire des religions 43 (1901), 47-57.
  • "Amaseia", The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites, 1976, Perseus: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0006:entry=amaseia

Other sources

Online sources