Syria, except the coastal belt, and socially it has always been related
more nearly to the south lands than to its own geographical whole, Asia
Minor. A Semitic element was predominant in the population of the plain,
and especially in its chief town, Tarsus, throughout antiquity. So
closely was Cilicia linked with Syria that the Prince of Kue (its
eastern part) joined the Princes of Hamath and of Damascus and their
south Syrian allies in that combination for common defence against
Assyrian aggression, which Shalmaneser broke at Karkar in 854: and it
was in order to neutralize an important factor in the defensive power of
Syria that the latter proceeded across Patin in 849 and fell on Kue. But
some uprising at Hamath recalled him then, and it was not till the
latter part of his reign that eastern Cilicia was systematically
subdued.

Shalmaneser devoted a surprising amount of attention to this small and
rather obscure corner of Asia Minor. He records in his twenty-fifth year
that already he had crossed Amanus seven times; and in the year
succeeding we find him again entering Cilicia and marching to Tarsus to
unseat its prince and put another more pliable in his room. Since,
apparently, he never used Cilicia as a base for further operations in
force beyond Taurus, being content with a formal acknowledgment of his
majesty by the Prince of Tabal, one is forced to conclude that he
invaded the land for its own sake. Nearly three centuries hence, out of
the mist in which Cilicia is veiled more persistently than almost any
other part of the ancient East, this small country will loom up suddenly
as one of the four chief powers of Asia, ruled by a king who, hand in
hand with Nebuchadnezzar II, negotiates a peace between the Lydians and
the Medes, each at the height of their power. Then the mist will close
over it once more, and we shall hear next to nothing of a long line of
kings who, bearing a royal title which was graecized under the form