Chapter 21: Pergamum was, undoubtedly, an ancient place, whose foundation reaches

Pergamum was, undoubtedly, an ancient place, whose foundation reaches back into the beginnings of town life in Asia. The situation is marked out by nature for a great fortified town, but is too large for a mere village. If we could fix the date of its foundation, we should know also the period when society has become so far developed and organised as to seek for defence against foreign invasion, and for offensive power, by combination on a great scale and the formation of a large centre of population. Beyond all other sites in Asia Minor it gives the traveller the impression of a royal city, the home of authority: the rocky hill on which it stands is so huge, and dominates the broad plain of the Caicus so proudly and boldly. The modern town is below the hill, where the earliest village was.

It is difficult to analyse such impressions, and to define the various causes whose combination produces them; but the relation of the vast hill to the great plain is certainly the chief cause. It would be impossible for any stronghold, however large and bold, to produce such an impression, if it stood in a small valley like those of Ephesus and Smyrna, for if the valley and the city were dominated by the still greater mass of the enclosing mountains. The rock rules over and as it were plants its foot upon a great valley; and its summit looks over the southern mountains which bound the valley, until the distant lofty peaks south of the Gulf of Smyrna, and especially the beautiful twin peaks now called the Two Brothers, close in the outlook. Far beneath lies the sea, quite fifteen miles away, and beyond it the foreign soil of Lesbos: the view of other lands, the presence of hostile powers, the need of constant care and watchfulness, all the duties of kingship are forced on the attention of him who sits enthroned on that huge rock. There is here nothing to suggest evanescence, mutability, and uncertainty, as at Sardis or Ephesus; the inevitable impression is of permanence, strength, sure authority and great size. Something of the personal and subjective element must be mixed up with such impressions; but in none of the Seven Cities does the impression seem more universal and unavoidable than in Pergamum.

The history and the coinage of Pergamum can be traced back into the fifth century; but its superiority and headship in Asia began in 282, when Philetaerus threw off allegiance to King Lysimachus and founded the kingdom of Pergamum, which was transmitted through a succession of kings, named Eumenes or Attalus, until 133. During those 151 years Pergamum was the capital of a realm varying in size from the first kingdom, simply the Caicus Valley (and hardly all of it), to the range of territories summed up in the vague expression "all the land on this side of Taurus." For the first few years the Seleucid dynasty supported Philetaerus in opposition to Lysimachus; but soon the rivalry of Seleucid and Pergamenian kings became the governing political fact. The former steadily lost ground until about 222 B.C., when Antiochus the Great restored the power of his dynasty, reduced Attalus I to the original bounds of Pergamenian authority, and threatened even the existence of his kingdom. Roman aid expelled Antiochus in 190, and enlarged the Pergamenian kingdom to its widest extent.

In 133 Attalus III bequeathed the whole kingdom to the Romans, who formed it into the Province of Asia. Pergamum was the official capital of the Province for two centuries and a half: so that its history as the seat of supreme authority over a large country lasts about four centuries, and had not yet come to an end when the Seven Letters were written. The impression which the natural features of its position convey was entirely confirmed to the writer of the letters by its history. It was to him the seat where the power of this world, the enemy of the Church and its Author, exercised authority. The authority was exercised in two ways--the two horns of the monster, as we have seen in chapter 9--civil administration through the Proconsul, and the State religion directed by the Commune of Asia.

The first, and for a considerable time the only, Provincial temple of the Imperial cult in Asia was built at Pergamum in honour of Rome and Augustus (29 B.C. probably). A second temple was built there in honour of Trajan, and a third in honour of Severus. Thus Pergamum was the first city to have the distinction of Temple-Warden both once and twice in the State religion; and even its third Wardenship was also a few years earlier than that of Ephesus. The Augustan Temple (Figure 7,