Altogether, Tarsus is not so much fallen as many of the anciently great towns of the same quarter. The population is estimated at thirty thousand. The river is here about two hundred feet wide, and its cold clearrolling waters must have been a great comfort to the inhabitants of this populous city, in so hot a country, amid so many barren and burning rocks. It no longer flows through the heart of the town, as in the days of Cyrus, but finds its channel now half a mile to the east of it. Not one inscription, or any monument of beauty or of art, or any trace of its former magnificence now remains. The houses are of one story only, and terraced on the roof, and seem to be built of the hewn stone of the ancient edifices. The modern city, called Tarsoos, is about a fourth part of the size of the ancient one. It contains some fine buildings, but it is filthy within and without with the carcases of dead camels, horses, cats, and dogs. We felt the heat to be insufferable, and the inhabitants are subjected to fevers more virulent and fatal even than those of Scanderoon.

Tarsus was said to have been built in one day by Sardanapalus; but when the Greeks established themselves after the conquest of Alexander the Great, the inhabitants. of Tarsus rejected this legend of the origin of their city, and adopted the more poetical one, founded on the old fable, that Bellerophon had been conveyed in the course of his wanderings by the winged horse Pegasus to the country of Cilicia. They engrafted their tradition on this, that Pegasus had stumbled here, and left a deep impression of his hoof; and hence, in their language, the word Tarsus signified a hoof or heel. According to another account, Pegasus lost a hoof in this quarter. Strabo, however, states that Tarsus was founded by Triptolemus, and his Argive followers, who, when in search of the wandering Io, the beautiful mistress of Jupiter, changed by him into a heifer, found here the traces of her hoof under the Persian supremacy. Tarsus was the residence of the

dependent kings of Cilicia, who had here a noble palace. Tarsus of old was the great thoroughfare of all who were going to Upper Asia, or returning from it. The Greeks found this city in a flourishing condition, and under the Seleucidæ its inhabitants were chiefly of that nation. It was the capital of the whole province, and "no mean city" (Acts xxi. 39) in the history of the ancient world. Its coins reveal its history to us through a long series of years-alike in the period which intervened between Xerxes and Alexander, and under the Roman sway, when it exulted in the name of Metropolis, and long after Hadrian had rebuilt it, and issued his new coinage with the old mythological types. Anazarbus on the Pyramus was a rival city, and from the time of Caracalla is found assuming the title of Metropolis; but it was only an empty honour. Strabo says that in all that relates to philosophy and general education, Tarsus was even more illustrious than Athens or Alexandria. From this description, it is evident that its main character was that of a Greek city, where the Greek language was spoken, and Greek literature was studiously cultivated. But we should be wrong in supposing that the general population of the province was of Greek origin, or spoke the Greek language. When Cyrus came with his army from the western coast, and still later, when Alexander penetrated into Cilicia, they found the inhabitants barbarians. Nor is it likely that the old race would be destroyed, or the language obliterated, especially in the mountain districts, during the reign of the Seleucida kings. We must rather conceive of Tarsus (says Conybeare and Howson) as like Brest in Brittany, or like Toulon in Provence, a city where the language of refinement is spoken and written in the midst of a rude population, who use a different language, and possess no literature of their own.

Cyrus once remained at Tarsus for twenty days, and Julius Cæsar spent much of his time there, and was so fond

of it that he named it Juliopolis. Augustus Cæsar also favoured this city much in his day. The frail and flexible Antony completed his ruin in this place, when his love for Cleopatra awakened every dormant vice, inflamed every guilty passion, and totally extinguished the gleams of remaining virtue. Plutarch says it began in this manner. When he set out on his expedition against the Parthians, he sent orders to Cleopatra to meet him in Cilicia, that she might answer some accusations which had been laid against her of assisting Cassius in the war. Delius, who was sent on this message, no sooner observed the beauty and address of Cleopatra than he concluded that such a woman, far from having anything to apprehend from the resentment of Antony, would certainly have great influence over him. He therefore paid his court to the amiable Egyptian, and solicited her to go, as Homer says, in "her best attire," into Cilicia, assuring her that she had nothing to fear from Antony, who was the most courtly general in the world. Induced by his invitations, and in the confidence of that beauty which had before touched the hearts of Cæsar and of young Pompey, she entertained no doubt of the conquest of Antony. When Cæsar and Pompey had her favours, she was young and inexperienced; but she was to meet Antony at an age when beauty, in its full perfection, called in the maturity of understanding to its aid. Prepared, therefore, with such treasures, ornaments, and presents, as were suitable to the dignity and affluence of her kingdom, but chiefly relying on her personal charms, she set out for Cilicia.

She sailed up the river Cydnus to Tarsus in a most magnificent galley. The stern was covered with gold, the sails were of purple, and the oars were silver: these in their motion kept time to the music of flutes, and pipes, and harps. The queen, in the dress and character of Venus, lay under a canopy embroidered with gold, of the most exquisite workmanship; while boys, like painted