its inhabitants are god-possessed, or temple slaves. They are all of Cataonian stock and are subject generally to the authority of the king, but are under the immediate control of the priest. He is lord at once of the temple and of the temple slaves, of whom there were more than six thousand, including men and women, at the time of my visit. Attached to the temple is much land, of which the priest enjoys the revenues, and there is no one in Cappadocia of higher dignity than he except the king." Similar to this was the temple of Zeus at Venasa with its three thousand temple slaves and its land which yielded to its priest an annual income of twenty thousand dollars (fifteen talents); the temple of Zeus Asbamæus near Tyana, of Apollo in Cataonia, Mater Zizimene near Iconium, and Artemis Perasia in Castabala. Similar, too, was the temple of Ma in Pontic Comana with its swarming mart, its wide acres, and its six thousand temple slaves, of whom the young women, here as elsewhere, were sacred prostitutes; the temple of Anaitis in Zela, of Men in Cabira, of Selene in Iberia, of the Great Mother at Pessinus, of Zeus at Olba, and of other gods in other places scattered through Phrygia, Pisidia, and Lydia, as well as Palestine, Syria, and Babylonia. The Seleucids must have found the body of their empire thickly studded with religious communities, each subject to its own code of divine law, each dominated by a masterful and long-petted theocracy. Under this baleful rule the whole country had settled gradually down during the Persian time in progressive political and economic stagnation. Apart from the mountains and the deserts, where tribal and nomadic liberty reigned,--a constant menace to central government,--the peoples of Asia lived in villages when the Macedonians came. Many of these villages, villagers and all, were owned by princelings and noblemen, who, if natives, had been undisturbed by the Persians, if Iranians, had come into their possessions by reason of royal grants. All through Syria and Asia Minor may be seen to-day the ruins of "square towers" (_tetrapyrgiæ_) and manorial castles such as these grandees built and fortified for defense against their neighbors and, if need be, against the royal authority itself.[110] Those who built them had apparently had little loyalty to the Persian king, but also little inclination to obey his successor. They were, accordingly, ejected right and left. Of the estates thus obtained, the Macedonian kings could dispose at their pleasure. They formed again part of the royal domain, which stretched in all directions at the edges of the deserts and the mountains, among the temple lands, the feudal fiefs, and administrative cities--a veritable archipelago of landed property, tilled for the crown by myriads of royal serfs. Here was the ὑλη the material, of which the Seleucids founded many of their city-states.