Mysia
- a country of Asia Minor, divided into Lesser Mysia, on the Hellespont, and Greater Mysia, on the Aegean Sea, Mel. 1, 18, 1; Plin. 5, 32, 40, § 143; Cic. Or. 8, 25; Luc. 3, 203; Inscr. Orell. 2274; 3664.—
- II Derivv.
- A Mȳ-sĭcus, a, um, adj., for Mysius, Mysian (post-Aug.): scammonium, Plin. 26, 8, 38, § 60.—
- B Mȳsĭus, a, um, adj., of or belonging to Mysia, Mysian (class.): homo, Cic. Q. Fr. 1, 1, 6.—
- C Mȳsus, a, um, adj., = Μυσός, of or belonging to Mysia, Mysian: Mysus juvenis, i. e. Telephus, king of Mysia, Prop. 2, 1, 65: dux, the same, Ov. P. 2, 2, 26: Căīcus, id. M. 15, 277.—Subst.: Mysus aut Phryx, Cic. Or. 8, 27; id. Q. Fr. 1, 1, 6, § 19.—In plur.: Mȳsi, ōrum, m., the inhabitants of Mysia, the Mysians: si quis despicatui ducitur, ut Mysorum ultimus esse dicatur, Cic. Fl. 27, 65; Liv. 37, 40, 8; Plin. 5, 30, 33, § 125.
MY´SIA(μύσια), a festival celebrated by the inhabitants of Pellene in Achaia, in honour of Demeter Mysia. The worship of this goddess was introduced at Pellene from a place called Mysia in the neighbourhood of Argos. (Paus. 2.18.3.) The festival of the Mysia near Pellene lasted for seven days, and the religious solemnities took place in a temple, called τὸ μύσαιον, surrounded by a grove. The first two days men and women took part in the celebration together; on the third day the men left the sanctuary, and the women remaining in it performed during the night certain mysterious rites, during which not even male dogs were allowed to remain within the sacred precincts. On the fourth day the men returned to the temple, and men and women now received each other with shouts of laughter and assailed each other with various railleries. (Paus. 7.27.9; Cornutus, de Nat. Deor. 28.)
[L.S]MY´SIA(Μυσία: Eth. Μυσός, Mysus), the name of a province in the north-west of Asia Minor, which according to Strabo (12. p. 572) was derived from the many beech-trees which grew about Mount Olympus, and were called by the Lydians μυσοί.Others more plausibly connect the name with the Celtic moese,a marsh or swamp, according to which Mysia would signify a marshy country. This supposition is supported by the notion prevalent among the ancients that the Mysians had immigrated into Asia Minor from the marshy countries about the Lower Danube, called Moesia, whence Mysia and Moesia would be only dialectic varieties of the same name. Hence, also, the Mysians are sometimes mentioned with the distinctive attribute of the Asiatic,to distinguish them from the European Mysians, or Moesians. (Eustath. ad Dion. Per.809; Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. 1.1115.)
The Asiatic province of Mysia was bounded in the north by the Propontis and the Hellespont, in the west by the Aegean, and in the south by Mount Temnus and Lydia. In the east the limits are not accurately defined by the ancients, though it was bounded by Bithynia and Phrygia, and we may assume the river Rhyndacus and Mount Olympus to have, on the whole, formed the boundary line. (Strab. xii. pp. 564, &c., 571.) The whole extent of country bearing the name of Mysia, was divided into five parts :--1. MYSIA MINOR(Μυσία ἡ μικρ, that is, the northern coast-district on the Hellespont and Propontis, as far as Mount Olympus; it also bore the name of Mysia Hellespontiaca, or simply Hellespontus, and its inhabitants were called Hellespontii (Ptol. 5.2. §§ 2, 3, 14; Xenoph. Ages. 1.14) ; or, from Mount Olympus, Mysia Olympene (Μυσία ἡ Ὀλυμπηνή (Strab. 12. p. 571). This Lesser Mysia embraced the districts of MORENE, ABRETTENEand the Apian plain (Ἀπίας πεδίον;Strab. xii. pp. 574, 576.) 2. MYSIA MAJOR(Μυσία η μεγάλη), forming the southern part of the interior of the country, including a tract of country extending between Troas and Aeolis as far as the bay of Adramyttium. The principal city of this part was Pergamum, from which the country is also called Mysia Pergamene (Μυσία ἡ Περγαμηνή;Strab. l. c.;Ptol. 5.2. §§ 5, 14.) 3. TROAS(ἡ Τρωάς), the territory of ancient Troy, that is, the northern part of the western coast, from Sigeium to the bay of Adramyttium. 4. AEOLISthe southern part of the coast, especially that between the rivers Caicus and Hermus. 5. TEUTHRANIA(ἡ Τευθρανία), or the district on the southern frontier, where in ancient times Teuthras is said to have formed a Mysian kingdom. (Strab. 12. p. 551.)
These names and divisions, however, were not the same at all times. Under the Persian dominion, when Mysia formed a part of the second satrapy (Hdt. 3.90), the name Mysia was applied only to the north-eastern part of the country, that is, to Mysia Minor; while the western part of the coast of the Hellespont bore the name of Lesser Phrygia, and the district to the south of the latter that of Troas. (Scylax, p. 35.) In the latest times of the Roman Empire, that is, under the Christian emperors, the greater part of Mysia was contained in the province bearing the name of Hellespontus, while the southern districts as far as Troas belonged to the province of Asia. (Hierocl. p. 658.)
The greater part of Mysia is a mountainous country, being traversed by the north-western branches of Mount Taurus, which gradually slope down towards the Aegean, the main branches being Mount IDAand Mount TEMNUSThe country is also rich in rivers, though most of them are small, and not navigable; but, notwithstanding its abundant supply of water in rivers and lakes, the country was in ancient times less productive than other provinces of Asia Minor, and many parts of it were covered with marshes and forests. Besides the ordinary products of Asia Minor, and the excellent wheat of Assus (Strab. 15. p. 725), Mysia was celebrated for a kind of stone called lapis assius (σαρκοφάγος), which had the power of quickly consuming the human body, whence it was used for coffins (sarcophagi), and partly powdered and strewed over dead bodies. (Dioscorid. 5.141 ; Plin. Nat. 2.98, 36.27; Steph. B. s. v. Ἄσσος.) Near the coasts of the Hellespont there were excellent oyster beds. (Plin. Nat. 32.21; Catull. 18.4; Verg. G. 1.207; Lucan (Luc. 9.959; comp. Theophrast. Hist. Plant. 1.6. 13.)
The country of Mysia was inhabited by several tribes, as Phrygians, Trojans, Aeolians, and Mysians;. but we must here confine ourselves to the Mysians, from whom the country derived its name. Mysians are mentioned in the Iliad (2.858, 10.430, 13.5), and seem to be conceived by the poet as dwelling on the Hellespont in that part afterwards called Mysia Minor. Thence they seem, during the period subsequent to the Trojan, War, to have extended themselves both westward and southward. (Strab. 12. p. 665.) Herodotus (Hdt. 7.74) describes them as belonging to the same stock as the Lydians, with whom they were always stationed together in the Persian armies (Hdt. 1.171), and who probably spoke a language akin to theirs. Strabo (vii. pp. 295, 303, xii. pp. 542, 564, &c.) regards them as a tribe that had immigrated into Asia from Europe. It is difficult to see how these two statements are to be reconciled, or to decide which of them is more entitled to belief. As no traces of the Mysian language have come down to us, we cannot pronounce a positive opinion, though the evidence, so far as it can be gathered, seems to be in favour of Strabo's view, especially if we bear in mind the alleged identity of Moesians and Mysians. It is, moreover, not quite certain as to whether the Mysians in Homer are to be conceived as Asiatics or as Europeans. If this view be correct, the Mysians must have crossed over into Asia either before, or soon after the Trojan War. Being afterwards pressed by other immigrants, they advanced farther into the country, extending in the south-west as far as Pergamum, and in the east as far as Catacecaumene. About the time of the Aeolian migration, they founded, under Teuthras, the kingdom of Teuthrania, which was soon destroyed, but gave the district in which it had existed its permanent name. The people which most pressed upon them in the north and east seem to have been the Bithynians.
In regard to their history, the Mysians shared the fate of all the nations in the west of Asia Minor. In B.C. 190, when Antiochus was driven from Western Asia, they became incorporated with the kingdom of Pergamus; and when this was made over to Rome, they formed a part of the province of Asia. Respecting their national character and institutions we possess scarcely any information; but if we may apply to them that which Posidonius ( in Strab. 7. p. 296) states of the European Moesians, they were a pious and peaceable nomadic people, who lived in a very simple manner on the produce of their flocks, and had not made great advances in civilisation. Their language was, according to Strabo (12. p. 572), a mixture of Lydian and Phrygian, that is, perhaps, a dialect akin to both of them. Their comparatively low state of civilisation seems also to be indicated by the armour attributed to them by Herodotus (Hdt. 7.74), which consisted of a common helmet, a small shield, and a javelin, the point of which was hardened by fire. At a later time, the influence of the Greeks by whom they were surrounded seems to have done away with everything that was peculiar to them as a nation, and to have draw n them into the sphere of Greek civilisation. (Comp. Forbiger, Handbuch der alten Geographie, vol. 2. p. 110, &c.; Cramer, Asia Minor, 1. p. 30, &c.; Niebuhr, Lect. on Anc. Hist. vol. 1. p. 83, &c.)
[L.S](τὰ Μύσια). A festival held in honour of Demeter Mysia at Pellené in Arcadia (Pausan. vii. 27, 9). It lasted for seven days.
(Μυσία). A district of Asia Minor, called also the Asiatic Mysia (Μυσία ἡ Ἀσιανή), in contradistinction to Moesia on the banks of the Danube. Originally, it meant the territory of the Mysi; but in the usual division of Asia Minor, as settled under Augustus, it occupied the whole of the northwestern corner of the peninsula between the Hellespont on the northwest, the Propontis on the north, the river Rhyndacus and Mount Olympus on the east, which divided it from Bithynia and Phrygia, Mount Temnus and an imaginary line drawn from Temnus to the southern side of the Elaïtic Gulf on the south, where it bordered upon Lydia, and the Aegean Sea on the west. It was subdivided into five parts: (1) Mysia Minor (ἡ μικρά), along the northern coast;
(2) Mysia Maior (ἡ μεγάλη), the southeastern inland region, with a small portion of the coast between the Troad and the Aeolic settlements about the Elaïtic Gulf;
(3) Troas (ἡ Τρωάς), the northwestern angle, between the Aegean and Hellespont and the southern coast along the foot of Ida;
(4) Aeolis or Aeolia (ἡ Αἰολίς or Αἰολία), the southern part of the western coast around the Elaïtic Gulf, where the chief cities of the Aeolian confederacy were planted; but applied in a wider sense to the western coast in general; and
(5) Teuthrania (ἡ Τευθρανία), the southwestern angle, between Temnus and the borders of Lydia, where, in very early times, Teuthras was said to have established a Mysian kingdom, which was early subdued by the kings of Lydia; this part was also called Pergamené, from the celebrated city of Pergamus, which stood in it. This account applies to the time of the early Roman Empire; the extent of Mysia and its subdivisions varied greatly at other times.
In the Heroic Age we find the great Teucrian monarchy of Troy in the northwest of the country and the Phrygians along the Hellespont; as to the Mysians, who appear as allies of the Trojans, it is not clear whether they were Europeans or Asiatics. The Mysia of the legends respecting Telephus is the Teuthranian kingdom in the south, only with a wider extent than the later Teuthrania. Under the Persian Empire, the northwestern portion, which was still occupied in part by Phrygians, but chiefly by Aeolian settlements, was called Phrygia Minor, and by the Greeks Hellespontus. Mysia was the region south of the chain of Ida; and both formed, with Lydia, the second satrapy. In the division of the Empire of Alexander the Great, Mysia fell, with Thrace, to the share of Lysimachus, B.C. 311, after whose defeat and death, in 281, it became a part of the Graeco-Syrian kingdom, with the exception of the southwestern portion, where Philetaerus founded the kingdom of Pergamus (280), to which kingdom the whole of Mysia was assigned, together with Lydia, Phrygia, Caria, Lycia, Pisidia, and Pamphylia, after the defeat of Antiochus the Great by the Romans in 190. With the rest of the kingdom of Pergamus, Mysia fell to the Romans in 133 by the bequest of Attalus III., and formed part of the province of Asia. Under the later Empire, Mysia formed a separate proconsular province under the name of Hellespontus.
The country was, for the most part, mountainous, its chief chains being those of Ida, Olympus, and Temnus, which are terminal branches of the northwestern part of the Taurus chain, and the union of which forms the elevated land of southeastern Mysia. Their prolongations into the sea form several important bays and capes—namely, among the former, the great Gulf of Adramyttium (Adramytti), which cuts off Lesbos from the continent, and the Sinus Elaïticus (Gulf of Chandeli); and, among the latter, Sigeum (Cape Yenicheri) and Lectum (Gulf of Baba), at the northwestern and southwestern extremities of the Troad, and Cane (Cape Coloni) and Hydria (Fokia), the northern and southern headlands of the Elaïtic Gulf. Its rivers are numerous; some of them considerable, in proportion to the size of the country; and some of first-rate importance in history and poetry; the chief of them, beginning on the east, were Rhyndacus and Macestus, Tarsius, Aesepus, Granicus, Rhodius, Simoïs and Scamander, Satnoïs, Evenus, and Caïcus. The peoples of the country, besides the general appellations mentioned above, were known by the following distinctive names: the Olympieni or Olympeni (Ὀλυμπιηνοί, Ὀλυμπηνοί), in the district of Olympené at the foot of Mount Olympus; next to them, on the south and west, and occupying the greater part of Mysia proper, the Abretteni, who had a native divinity called by the Greeks Ζεὺς Ἀβρεττηνός; the Trimenthuritae, the Pentademitae, and the Mysomacedones, all in the region of Mount Temnus.
- Paus. 3.2.1, Paus. 7.8.9
- Mysian plain mistaken by Greeks for Troy: Paus. 1.4.6
- Greeks under Agamemnon defeated in: Paus. 9.5.14
- town of Pioniae in: Paus. 9.18.4
- plagued by a wild boar: Hdt. 1.36
- Mysians "brothers" of the Carians: Hdt. 1.171
- their tribute to Persia: Hdt. 3.90
- legendary Mysian and Teucrian invasion of Europe: Hdt. 7.20
- Mysians in Xerxes' army: Hdt. 7.74
- with Mardonius at Plataea: Hdt. 9.32
- the Argonauts in: Apollod. 1.9.18
- Herakles in: Apollod. 2.5.9
- Teuthras, prince of: Apollod. 3.8.2
- Auge and Telephus in: Apollod. 3.8.2
- ravaged by the Greek army against Troy: Apollod. E.3.16
- allied with Troy: Apollod. E.3.34
- Gauls destroyed in: Paus. 1.25.2
- Paus. 2.18.3