Cappadocians

For to such poverty have the much-envied possessions of the Cappadocians come.

Tell me, Basil, do you live in Athens and not know it of yourself?

Libanius to Basil After a long time a young Cappadocian has come to us.

” In the same manner some nations are of such a disposition that they are more calculated to obey than to govern, which seems to have been the opinion which the Cappadocians held of themselves, who when the Romans offered them a popular government, refused to accept it, because the nation they said could not exist in safety without a king.

” When Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia had wantonly obstructed the channel of the river Melas, which discharges itself into the Euphrates, the swell of waters bursting the mounds, the Euphrates rose to such a height, as to occasion excessive damage to the Cappadocians, the Galatians, and the Phrygians.

And yet another nation, the Cappadocians, first found the so-called nabla, as the Assyrians did the two-stringed instrument.

I pass over the Cappadocians, the Syrians, and the beings who inhabit the land of India toward the ends of the earth, all of whom have had the misfortune to suffer many terrible and grievous afflictions.

And you sit before Phrygia and Lydia, and besides Caria, and other most populous nations dwell around — Cappadocians and Pamphylians and Pisidians — and to all these you furnish your own city as a market and place of assembly.

The Ligyes and Matieni and Mariandyni and Syrians were equipped like the Paphlagonians.

Dotus son of Megasidrus was commander of the Paphlagonians and Matieni, Gobryas son of Darius and Artystone of the Mariandyni and Ligyes and Syrians.

but the Babylonians, in their turn, when they heard of that, laughed much more scornfully still, at the thought of Phrygians and Lydians and Arabians and Cappadocians keeping guard against them, for they considered all these to be more friendly to them than to the Persians.