PESSINUS (IIeaatvoi3r, lleacvoiis)

This article appears in Volume V21, Page 284 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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PESSINUS (IIeaatvoi3r, lleacvoiis) , an ancient city of Galatia in Asia

Minor

, situated on the lowest southern slope of Mt Dindymus, on the left bank of the river Sangarius, not far from its source. The ruins, discovered by Texier, lie round the

village

VILLAGE

Bala

BALA

-Hissar, 8 or 9 m. S.E. of Sivri-Hissar. They include a theatre in partial preservation, but they have been mostly carried off to Sivri-Hissar, which is largely built out of them. Originally a Phrygian city, probably on the Persian " Royal Road," it became the

capital

CAPITAL (i.e. capital stock or fund)
CAPITAL (Lat. caput, head)

of the Gallic tribe Tolistobogii and the

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

commercial city of the

district

DISTRICT

. It contained the most famous sanctuary of the mother of the gods (Cybele), who here went by the name of Agdistis, and was associated with the god Attis, as elsewhere with Sabazius, &c. Her priests were also princes, who bore

rule

RULE

not only in the city (the coinage of which, beginning about too B.C., was for long issued by them) but also in the country round, deriving a large revenue from the temple estates; but in the time of Strabo (A.D. 1920) their privileges were much diminished. The high-priest always bore the god's name Attis. In the crisis of the second Punic War (205 B.c.), when the Romans lost faith in the efficacy of their own religion to save the state, the Senate, in compliance with an oracle in the Sibylline books to the effect that the foreign'foe could be driven from Italy if the Idaean Mother (Cybele) were brought from

Pessinus

PESSINUS (IIeaatvoi3r, lleacvoiis)

to Rome, sent ambassadors to the town, who obtained the sacred stone which was the symbol of the goddess and brought it to Rome, where the

worship

WORSHIP (i.e. " worth-ship," O. Eng. weor8scipe)

of Cybele was established. But the goddess continued to be worshipped in her old home; her priests, the Galli, went out to welcome Manlius on his march in 189 B.C., which shows that the town was not yet in the hands of the Tolistobogii. Soon after this a splendid new temple of the goddess was built by the Pergamenian kings. Some time before 164 B.C.

Pessinus

PESSINUS (IIeaatvoi3r, lleacvoiis)

fell into the power of the Gauls, and the membership of the priestly college was then equally divided between the Gauls and the old priestly families. Like Ancyra and Tavium, Pessinus was Romanized first and Hellenized afterwards. Only about A. D. 165 did Hellenic ways and modes of thought begin to be assumed; before that we find a deep substratum of Celtic feeling and ways, on which Roman elements had been superimposed without filtering through a Hellenic medium. Christianity was introduced

late

LATE

; it cannot be traced before the 4th century. When Galatia was divided into two provinces (A.D. 386395) Pessinus was made the

capital

CAPITAL (i.e. capital stock or fund)
CAPITAL (Lat. caput, head)

of Galatia Secunda or Salutaris, and it became a metropolitan bishopric. After the 16th century it disappears from history, being supplanted, from the beginning of the period of Saracen invasion, by the impregnable fortress Justinianopolis (Sivri-Hissar), which became the capital and the residence of the bishop, thenceforward called " arch-bishop of Pessinus or of Justinianopolis." (J. G. C. A.)

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