Peoples of the empire: The Phrygians

Geographical definition
The Phrygians were widespread through Anatolia, living in regions from the Hellespont to Cappadocia.  Phrygia proper lay in central Anatolia and centered around the Sakarya River, just west of Cappadocia, directly east of Lydia and considerably to the north of Lycia.  Their name for themselves is not known, nor is the name by which the Persians called them.

History
Herodotus believed (and some modern scholars agree) that the Phrygians were relatively recent immigrants to Anatolia descended from an offshoot of the Bryges, who lived in the Balkans.  He also further states that they were in turn ancestral to the Armenians, which is uncertain.  Greek mythology has the Phrygians fighting on the side of the Trojans during the Trojan War, and Gordium was the home of the legendary kings named Midas (of whom there were three).

The Phrygian kingdom in central Anatolia reached its peak in the eighth century BC.  Around 675 Gordium was sacked, an act the Greeks attributed to Cimmerian invaders.  The Cimmerians were driven out around 620 by the Lydians, who made Phrygia one of their provinces.  Gordium was built up with Lydian financing.  The accidental slayer of Croesus' son in Herodotus I.34-45 was Adrastus, a prince of Gordium.

As a Lydian province, Phrygia passed to Persia when the latter conquered Lydia some time after 547.  By the time of Herodotus, it was placed with the Hellespont, Paphlagonia, Syria, the Mariandynians and the Thracians of Asia in the third imperial tax district, whose yearly tribute totaled 360 talents.

The satrapy of Hellespontine Phrygia was split off around the turn of the fifth century.  Its capital was Dascylium.  Lendering notes that "[t]he architectural remains from this age are not very monumental" though a terrace wall in Dascylium shows similarity to walls at Pasargadae and Persepolis.

In the 480 invasion of Greece, Phrygians served together with the Armenians under Artochmes, one of Darius' sons-in-law.  We are not told what role they played in the fighting, but Herodotus says that some Phrygians were picked by Mardonius to remain in Greece after Xerxes left and it seems reasonable that they participated at Plataea if nowhere else.

Our history of Greater (interior) Phrygia is poor, due to its isolation from the Greek world and dearth of surviving domestic or Persian documents.  However it was still in the empire's hands by the time Alexander arrived in Gordium in 334.  In 333, he appointed the satrapy to his general Antigonus, founder of the Antigonid dynasty.

As a reward for his leadership of the surviving Persian army out of Greece, Artabazus (*Artavazdâ), Xerxes' first cousin and formerly commander of the Chorasmian and Parthian cavalry contingents, was given the satrapy of Hellespontine Phrygia in 477.  His descendants held this office until the invasion of Alexander the Great.

Artabazus' son Pharnabazus may or may not have been satrap.  His grandson Pharnaces was satrap by 430, when he tried to open talks with Sparta to involve himself in the political side of the Peloponnesian War, but this initiative went nowhere.  Pharnaces remained in office at least until 422 and possibly later.  His son Pharnabazus II succeeded him before the winter of 413-12, when he and his rival, Tissaphernes of Lydia, tried separately to ally themselves with Sparta against Athens.  Again, little was accomplished due to Athens' naval supremacy until Cyrus the Younger became involved, but this subject falls outside the scope of this article.

Pharnabazus was ruler when the survivors of the Ten Thousand passed through there in 400 on their way back to Greece, when Tissaphernes of Lydia redirected a campaign by Spartan king Thibron in 399 and by Agesilaus II in 396-95; Pharnabazus then campaigned in the Aegean with the Athenian admiral Conon during the Corinthian War.  As a result of his and the empire's gains in this conflict, he was assigned to reconquer Egypt, but failed to do so though he tried repeatedly.

In the meantime, his son Ariobarzanes (*Ariyabrdna) succeeded him as satrap.  He joined the Revolt of the Satraps in 366, receiving aid from Sparta when Caria and Lydia attacked him, and in recognition of his opposition to the great king, Athens made him an honorary citizen, but his son Mithradates betrayed him to the king in 363 or 362, leading to his crucifixion.

His brother Artabazus II succeeded him and likewise decided to rebel after the death of Artaxerxes II in 358, hiring Athenian mercenaries who defeated an imperial army sent against Artabazus in 355.  But Artaxerxes III was able to intimidate Athens into recalling its forces by threatening to send the Persian navy to support Athens' own rebellious territories in the Social War.  Artabazus was forced to flee to Macedon in 353.

Hellespontine Phrygia was given to Arsites, who led the satraps at the Battle of the Granicus in 334 and committed suicide after their defeat.  Alexander appointed his general Calas as the first Macedonian satrap.  Upon the partition of Babylon it was given to Alexander's bodyguard Leonnatus, while Greater Phrygia remained with Antigonus.

Although now part of the Hellenistic world, at least some Phrygians spoke their own language until the fifth century AD.  In the third century BC, Hellespontine Phrygia was invaded by a Celtic people whom the Greeks called Galatai, and with the spread of their language the region became known as Galatia.  Greater Phrygia also suffered from these invasions, which destroyed Gordium.  In 188 it came under rule of the Greek Attalid dynasty of western Anatolia, which Attalus III left in his will to the Roman republic.  As such, the name of Phrygia was retained for administrative purposes from 133 BC until the final end of Byzantium in AD 1453.

Language
The Phrygian language is scarcely attested from two bodies of inscriptions, one dating from the turn of the ninth century BC and after, the other from the turn of the first century AD.  It was an Indo-European language bearing some similarities to Greek and the two may form a subfamily.

The earlier group of inscriptions were written in a particular script derived from Phoenician which may or may not have come through Greek.  The latter were written in the Greek alphabet.

Religion
The Phrygians worshiped a wide variety of their own gods and Anatolian ones.  Their (apparent) supreme gods were Sabazios, the sky god and horseman whom the Greeks equated variously with Zeus or Dionysus, and the native Anatolian mother goddess Cybele (Phrygian Matar Kubileya), identified strongly with the Anatolian wilderness.  Like the Lycians, the Phrygians tended to carve shrines and idols directly into living rock.

Clothing
Phrygian clothing was similar to Medo-Persian, with snug-fitting (probably footed) trousers and long-sleeved tunics covered in bold patterns.  The Phrygian cap was similar to a tiara but lacked earflaps and had a tall, stiff peak curling forward (Phrygians also sometimes wore tiaras with earflaps).

Weapons
Herodotus' Phrygians are armed "like the Paphlagonians," with woven helmets, small shields, short spears, javelins and daggers (VII.72).  I suppose it is not impossible that the woven helmets were in fact tiaras or Phrygian caps, though it would be an unusual choice of words on Herodotus' part.  The small shields were, I suspect, most likely crescents, given that these were used both in West Asia and to the north in Thracia.