CHAPTER IX IN HISTORIC CILICIA CAMPESTRIS _Domes, minarets, their spiry heads that rear,_ _Mocking with gaudy hues the ruins near;_ _Dim crumbling colonnades and marble walls,_ _Rich columns, broken statutes, roofless halls;_ _Beauty, deformity, together thrown,_ _A maze of ruins, date, design unknown--_ _Such is the scene, the conquest Time hath won._ NICOLAS MICHEL. It is doubtful whether, in any part of the world, more history has been condensed in less area than in the picturesque region formerly called Cilicia. Roughly speaking, it comprised the triangle bordered by the Mediterranean and the lofty ranges of the Taurus and Amanus Mountains. Its rich alluvial plains, watered by the celebrated Cydnus and Pyramus, Sarus, and Pinarus, early attracted a large population, who found there not only a mild and serene climate but also a soil that yielded in rare abundance the plants and fruits most useful to their sustenance and comfort. But, although the economical value of the Cilician Plain--called by Strabo _Cilicia Campestris_--was great, it was rather the political and military importance of this country that made it the prize of contending nations from the earliest dawn of history. In the days when Hittite and Assyrian fiercely contended for universal empire--long _Ere Rome was built or smiled fair Athen’s charms_ it was the highway between Asia Minor and Mesopotamia. It was the royal road between Persia and Greece on which was heard the martial tread of the armies of Xerxes, Cyrus, and Alexander. Rameses II--the Napoleon of Egypt--and Asurbanipal--the Napoleon of Assyria--led their victorious hosts along this road and, like the warriors who had preceded them, found subsistence for their men in the fertile valleys of the Pyramus and the Cydnus. It was also a field of frequent sanguinary conflicts during the days of Pompey and Cicero, of Mark Anthony and Zenobia, the rarely gifted but ill-fated “Queen of the East.” It was a continued arena of strife during protracted wars between the Byzantine Emperors and the Sassanian Kings, between the Osmanlis and Timur and Jenghiz Khan, and, in recent times, between the Sultan of Constantinople and his ambitious and rebellious viceroy, Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt.