Phrygia

PHRYGIA frij´i-a: A region of fluctuating boundaries occupying the central portion of Asia Minor. At the beginning of the Christian era the name had merely an ethnological and no geographical significance. There was no Roman province of the name Phrygia until the fourth century. In the northern part were the cities of Ancyra, Gordician, Doryleum; in the southern, Colossæ, Hierapolis, Laodicea. The region is of great importance for the history of religion after about 200 B.C., the cults of the West imported from the East receiving a profound impress from the primitive usages still current in Phrygia. Especially is this the case with the mysteries so strongly renascent in the century before the Christian era. See Asia Minor.