Mysia
(Μυσία). A district of Asia Minor, called also the Asiatic Mysia (Μυσία ἡ Ἀσιανή), in contradistinction to Moesia on the banks of the Danube. Originally, it meant the territory of the Mysi; but in the usual division of Asia Minor, as settled under Augustus, it occupied the whole of the northwestern corner of the peninsula between the Hellespont on the northwest, the Propontis on the north, the river Rhyndacus and Mount Olympus on the east, which divided it from Bithynia and Phrygia, Mount Temnus and an imaginary line drawn from Temnus to the southern side of the Elatic Gulf on the south, where it bordered upon Lydia, and the Aegean Sea on the west. It was subdivided into five parts: (1) Mysia Minor (ἡ μικρά), along the northern coast;
(2) Mysia Maior (ἡ μεγάλη), the southeastern inland region, with a small portion of the coast between the Troad and the Aeolic settlements about the Elatic Gulf;
(3) Troas (ἡ Τρωάς), the northwestern angle, between the Aegean and Hellespont and the southern coast along the foot of Ida;
(4) Aelis or Aeolia (ἡ Αἰολίς or Αἰολία), the southern part of the western coast around the Elatic Gulf, where the chief cities of the Aeolian confederacy were planted; but applied in a wider sense to the western coast in general; and
(5) Teuthrania (ἡ Τευθρανία), the southwestern angle, between Temnus and the borders of Lydia, where, in very early times, Teuthras was said to have established a Mysian kingdom, which was early subdued by the kings of Lydia; this part was also called Pergamen, from the celebrated [p. 1071] city of Pergamus, which stood in it. This account applies to the time of the early Roman Empire; the extent of Mysia and its subdivisions varied greatly at other times.
In the Heroic Age we find the great Teucrian monarchy of Troy in the northwest of the country and the Phrygians along the Hellespont; as to the Mysians, who appear as allies of the Trojans, it is not clear whether they were Europeans or Asiatics. The Mysia of the legends respecting Telephus is the Teuthranian kingdom in the south, only with a wider extent than the later Teuthrania. Under the Persian Empire, the northwestern portion, which was still occupied in part by Phrygians, but chiefly by Aeolian settlements, was called Phrygia Minor, and by the Greeks Hellespontus. Mysia was the region south of the chain of Ida; and both formed, with Lydia, the second satrapy. In the division of the Empire of Alexander the Great, Mysia fell, with Thrace, to the share of Lysimachus, B.C. 311, after whose defeat and death, in 281, it became a part of the Graeco-Syrian kingdom, with the exception of the southwestern portion, where Philetaerus founded the kingdom of Pergamus (280), to which kingdom the whole of Mysia was assigned, together with Lydia, Phrygia, Caria, Lycia, Pisidia, and Pamphylia, after the defeat of Antiochus the Great by the Romans in 190. With the rest of the kingdom of Pergamus, Mysia fell to the Romans in 133 by the bequest of Attalus III., and formed part of the province of Asia. Under the later Empire, Mysia formed a separate proconsular province under the name of Hellespontus.
The country was, for the most part, mountainous, its chief chains being those of Ida, Olympus, and Temnus, which are terminal branches of the northwestern part of the Taurus chain, and the union of which forms the elevated land of southeastern Mysia. Their prolongations into the sea form several important bays and capesnamely, among the former, the great Gulf of Adramyttium (Adramytti), which cuts off Lesbos from the continent, and the Sinus Elaticus (Gulf of Chandeli); and, among the latter, Sigeum (Cape Yenicheri) and Lectum (Gulf of Baba), at the northwestern and southwestern extremities of the Troad, and Cane (Cape Coloni) and Hydria (Fokia), the northern and southern headlands of the Elatic Gulf. Its rivers are numerous; some of them considerable, in proportion to the size of the country; and some of first-rate importance in history and poetry; the chief of them, beginning on the east, were Rhyndacus and Macestus, Tarsius, Aesepus, Granicus, Rhodius, Simos and Scamander, Satnos, Evenus, and Cacus. The peoples of the country, besides the general appellations mentioned above, were known by the following distinctive names: the Olympieni or Olympeni (Ὀλυμπιηνοί, Ὀλυμπηνοί), in the district of Olympen at the foot of Mount Olympus; next to them, on the south and west, and occupying the greater part of Mysia proper, the Abretteni, who had a native divinity called by the Greeks Ζεὺς Ἀβρεττηνός; the Trimenthuritae, the Pentademitae, and the Mysomacedones, all in the region of Mount Temnus.