THE GEOGRAPHICAL HISTORY OF ASIA MINOR 060 



mm 



Photograph from Near East Relief 



SPINNING COTTON AT AN AMERICAN RELIEF CENTER IN ADANA 



Raw cotton is a great help to the relief worker, for it not only furnishes material for cheap 

 clothing, but also furnishes a useful job for thousands of widows and young girls. It is no 

 part of American relief to pauperize any one, however needy, and only the aged and the very 

 young receive funds for which they make no return in labor. 



Roman period. In the single province of 

 "Asia" alone, to use the Roman name for 

 the western part of the peninsula, which 

 was the richest and the most highly edu- 

 cated of the whole country, there were 

 230 cities which each struck its own spe- 

 cial coinage, under its own name and its 

 own magistrates, each proud of its own 

 individuality and character as a self-gov- 

 erning unit in the great empire. 



Many of these cities were large, some 

 were comparatively small, but all pos- 

 sessed their own municipal pride and self- 

 assertiveness. 



There was keen competition among 

 them in respect of rank. Three of them 

 claimed the title of "First City of Asia," 

 and vied with one another in boasting on 

 their coinage of the qualities which en- 

 titled them to this distinction. One is 

 satisfied with the title "Seventh of Asia," 

 which indicates some recognized order in 

 the assemblies of representatives of the 

 cities which gathered together to practice 

 the religion of the emperors, the state 

 worship forming the bond of unity and 

 of imperial patriotism for the whole 

 country. 



But even taking the less developed 



provinces, where self-government was 

 not such a marked feature, the distinc- 

 tion between a village and a city was not 

 merely one of size; it was based on the 

 development of home rule or local self- 

 government in the township. 



Whatever its size, a town ranked only 

 as a village if it had not the right of self- 

 government; but, even though small, a 

 township ranked as a city if it was or- 

 ganized after the Grseco-Asiatic fashion, 

 electing its own magistrates and adminis- 

 tering its own affairs. 



DESOLATION IN A REGION ONCE DENSELY 

 POPULATED 



In traversing the most desolate district 

 on the borders of Lycaonia and Cappa- 

 docia, where one can now drive for hours 

 without seeing a house or a hut, we have 

 been struck with the fact that we were 

 traversing a country which in Roman 

 time was highly populated and therefore 

 highly cultivated ; we were going on from 

 village to village, so close to each other as 

 to form a chain of residence and comfort- 

 able habitation at that time. 



To take one example of the former 

 wealth and present impoverishment of 



