Because of the strong appeal made by its legendary and historic lore we lingered longer in Tarsus than in any other spot in the Cilician plain. Like many other places we visited during our journey, Tarsus is as rich in myth and legend as it is in literary and historical associations. According to one myth, Tarsus was founded by Perseus, the son of Jupiter and Danæ, while on his fabled expedition against the Gorgons. Another has it that the city was so named because Pegasus, the winged horse of Olympus, dropped there one of his pinions.[204] Josephus, however, identifies it with the Tarshish of the Old Testament, whence the ships of Hiram and Solomon brought their treasures of tin, silver, and gold.[205] From an inscription on the Black Obelisk of Salmanasar II, we learn that Tarsus was captured by the Assyrians under Salmanasar about the middle of the ninth century, B. C. It was thus in existence several centuries before the mythical Romulus and Remus erected on the Capitoline their sanctuary for homicides and runaway slaves, and its foundation was probably laid before the legendary introduction into Greece of the Phœnician alphabet by Cadmus when he went in quest of Europa. Centuries passed by and Tarsus became a great and flourishing center of commerce and literary activity. While Paris--_La Ville Lumière_--was as yet only a collection of mud huts on a little island in the Seine, inhabited by the Gallic Parisii, and London was but “a thick wood fortified with a ditch and rampart”[206] and occupied by half-savage, woad-stained Britons, Tarsus ranked as a center of Greek thought and knowledge with the world-famed cities, Athens and Alexandria.[207] Its schools and lecture rooms were frequented by vast numbers of students from far and near, while its agora and gymnasium, as in Athens in the days of Socrates, drew large concourses of people, young and old, who assembled to discuss not only the current news of the day, but also questions of literature, science, and philosophy. Although famed throughout the Roman Empire as a _civitas libera et mimunis_--a capital and a free city--and as a great emporium of eastern trade, its proudest boast was that it was a city of schools and scholars. Here were found poets and orators of marked eminence. Here were philosophers of many schools, Stoics and Peripatetics, Platonists and Epicureans--all with their enthusiastic followers and all seriously discussing the same problems which have engaged the attention of thoughtful men from their time to our own.