Asia Calling
She rises like the mist
From the darkness
Sometimes she is a ghost
Black hair and eyes
Moving moving toward
Me the white dress
Languid movements even
When she wears black
Beautiful mosquitoes
We can never go back
Black hair and eyes
Moving moving toward
Me the white dress
Languid movements even
When she wears black
Beautiful mosquitoes
We can never go back
In the 5th century BCE Herodotos related that Asia was named after the wife of Prometheus, though in the 2nd century BCE Apollodoros of Athens claimed she was the mother of Prometheus and Atlas. She was a daughter of Okeanos (the river that encircled the world) and his sister Tethys (daughter of Ouranus (sky) and Gaia (Earth). However, Herodotos also reported that the continent was named after Asies, the grandson of king Manes of Maeonia, whose grandson Lydus gave his name to the Lydians. In the 1st century BCE Dionusios of Halicarnassus named Manes' wife Callirhoe, another of Okeanos' 3,000 daughters, a companion of Persephone when she was abducted by Hades. To the Greeks, Asia was the eastern shore of the Aegean sea, called Assuwa by the Lydians; later Greeks expanded the term to mean all of Lydia (northwestern Turkey). In 190 BCE the Romans defeated the Seleucid emperor Antiochus III and formally annexed the province of Asia 2 years later, and it was placed under the control of a client king at Pergamum. King Attalus bequeathed Pergamum to Roma in 133 BCE, and consul Manius Aquillius formally made it a Roman province in 129 BCE. IN Byzantine times the area became known as Phrygia, and the term "Asia" was gradually extended to mean an ever-more-vague area to the east, eventually the entire continent.
ReplyDelete