Читать книгу Around the Black Sea. Asia Minor, Armenia, Caucasus, Circassia, Daghestan, the Crimea, Roumania онлайн

30 страница из 123

There is much to see in all these little towns in the way of ruins, but the difficulty is that nobody can tell you anything about them. They are not esteemed by the people and no archæologist has ever undertaken to investigate them. They represent successive civilizations, first Greek, then Roman, then Persian and Venetian, and, finally, the Byzantine periods of occupation and culture, each of which was founded upon the fragments of those which preceded it. No country has had so much history, but it is impossible to fix dates or circumstances. Asia Minor and that coast have been in the midst of the current of events from the beginning of things. Every great conqueror has occupied that country in turn, down to the final invasion of the Turks, whose supremacy was established in the fifteenth century and has been maintained ever since.

It was difficult to adjust ourselves to the realization that the little towns where we went ashore as the steamer stopped are the same that were occupied by Alexander the Great, by Cyrus, Darius and Timour the Tartar, and it is asserted that there are traces of every one of them there. But those communities have seen many changes since. That coast has been a thoroughfare for conquerors, because of its geographical position—a battle field for many, but the abiding place of none.