The Last of the Luwians

In 474AD, a new emperor named Flavius Zeno ascended to the throne of the Eastern Roman Empire. Zeno was a military officer and a member of the Constantinopolitan elite, Greco-Roman from external appearances. However, Flavius Zeno was not his real name. His throne name was meant to conceal his true origins. Despite his adoption of Greek customs and language, Zeno, whose real name was Tarasikodissa Rousoumbladiotes, was a member of a people with deep Bronze Age Anatolian roots, the Isaurians. These fiercely independent mountaineers, despite the labels of brigands and barbarians, were the last torch-bearers of the Anatolian language family and the final remnant of the Hittite world, which had been virtually extinguished from Anatolia almost 2000 years earlier.

The Bronze Age Background

Before expounding on Isauria’s uniqueness, it is necessary to provide some context on its Bronze Age connections. During the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1600-1200BC), most of Anatolia, including the region of Isauria, fell under the nominal authority of the Hittite Empire, whose inhabitants spoke the Anatolian Luwian language while the ruling class also used the closely-related Hittite language. Following the collapse of the Hittite Empire around 1200BC, other Anatolian languages such as Carian, Lydian, Pisidian, and Lycian entered the written record, while Hittite and Luwian mostly disappeared from Anatolia (Luwian survived in Syria until ca. 700BC). Following the arrival of Greeks on the Aegean coast of Anatolia and the conquests of Alexander the Great in 334BC, Greek gradually replaced these Anatolian languages and one by one, the Anatolian languages gradually went extinct.

Isauria: The Final Holdout

The Anatolian language family holds the distinction of being the first branch of Indo-European to go extinct, a process that was mostly complete by the 5th century AD. Greek was Anatolia’s lingua franca in all but one region, the rugged and mountainous Roman province of Isauria. This ill-defined region generally was used to refer to the area tucked between the historical regions of Pamphylia to the south and Lykaonia to the north. Unlike its neighbors, such as Pisidia and Pamphylia, Isauria was not receptive to Greco-Roman cultural and linguistic influences. Instead, scholars have suggested that the Isaurians, from the nobility to commoners, clung steadfastly to their Anatolian heritage as part of their resistance to Roman rule..

Evidence for the survival of the Luwian branch of the Anatolian languages in Isauria comes from two fonts. The first can be ascertained from the attitudes of Greco-Roman historians of the Late Roman Empire toward Isauria. Ammianus Marcellinus in his Rerum Gestarum (4th century AD), our primary source for them, repeatedly calls attention to their difficult upbringing on the steep crags of the Taurus Mountains, whence they attacked the lowlands with lightning raids. A much earlier source, Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita, groups the Isaurians with the infamous Cilician pirates, who preyed upon Eastern Mediterranean shipping in the first century BC. In fact, almost every reference to the Isaurians in Greco-Roman sources concerns itself with their raids against Roman territory, which must have caused enough economic damage to merit mentions in these histories, making the region synonymous with banditry. The descriptions of Isauria suggest that not only did the Isaurian locals not adhere to conceptions of law and civility as seen in the Greco-Roman world, but actively resisted them, suggesting that their ethnic-linguistic background was distinct from the dominant Greco-Roman cultural koine.

Having firmly established the Isaurians as outsiders in the midst of a Greek-speaking sea, we can now consider who they were. Unfortunately, we know very little about them. According to the Romans, they referred themselves as “Cietae” or “Clitae,” which appears in Tacitus’ Annales, suggesting some sort of common non-Greek identification among the various tribes. Pliny the Elder describes three major cities (apart from those built by Roman colonists), namely Isaura, Clibanus, and Lalassis. Ammianus Marcellinus stressed their supposed proclivity to brigandage, a stereotype which echoes through the scholarly literature to this day. However, not one single Greco-Roman historian noted anything about their language, other than that it was not Greek. Fortunately for us, although there are no known surviving texts in Isaurian, Christian gravestones have preserved the names of the local inhabitants and suggest that the language of Isauria, was, incredibly, a descendant of the long-extinct Luwian language of the Hittite Empire.

Isaurian Onomastics

The names in Isauria provide the biggest clue for the region’s ethno-linguistic identity. Emperor Zeno’s birth name, while clearly not Greek, does not have any immediately visible Anatolian elements, although Tarasi may contain the name of the Hittite storm god Tarhuntas, while Rousoumbladitotes may contain the Luwian element Runzas/Runtiyas, the Hittite stag god. However, other names have much more obvious elements that can be traced to Luwian, Hittite and other Anatolian languages as far back as the Bronze Age. The most obvious example is the name Trokondas, which appears late in Isauria and the neighboring areas, a direct cognate of Tarhuntas. Another category of names contain the element –moas. This has been identified as a cognate of the Hittite-Luwian –muwa, meaning “powerful.” In Hittite, the most notable example is Muwatalli, the name of the Hittite Empire who fought at Qadesh against Ramses II. This element occurs in names such as the Isaurian Christian Susamoas (Luw. Susamuwas?) and Kidamoasis, which in Luwian would perhaps have been something like Kidamuwa or Kilamuwa. Other names of clear Anatolian origin include Zeno’s parents Kodissa and Lallis. The city of Lalassis, meanwhile, contains the Luwian genitival adjective ending “-asi.” Although it is impossible to draw definite conclusions from this information alone, we can make some hypotheses on the language of Isauria and the identity of the inhabitants at in the 5th-6th century BC.

Conclusions

The preponderance of Luwian names in Isauria suggests that as late as the 5th century BC, the inhabitants of Isauria maintained an Anatolian identity rooted in the Hittite-Luwian tradition. Their names, which were recorded in Greek, suggests that a descendant of Luwian or some other related Anatolian language had survived in Isauria as late as the 5th century AD, that even an Eastern Roman emperor may have spoken it as one of his native languages. Ironically, the elevation of Zeno to the imperial throne and the distribution of positions of power to his Isaurian soldiers contributed to the Hellenization of Isauria as the region’s nobles and people were suddenly thrust into the corridors of power in Constantinople. However, Hellenization was not limited to those who left Isauria. As Christianity spread through the Taurus Mountains, local converts adopted Greek names over Anatolian ones, casting aside their pagan Anatolian identities in favor of a Hellenic Christian one. With the death of Isaurian, the Anatolian language family and the last remaining holdout of the old Hittite Empire finally capitulated to Hellenization. Before the inevitable end, Isaurian achieved one final victory. Tarasikodissa Rousoumbladitotes, an Isaurian who probably spoke Greek as a second language, become emperor, a truly fitting end for the last of the Luwians.

Sources and Further Reading

I have only given a small sampling of names from Isauria The best source is The Luwian Population Groups of Lycia and Cilicia Aspera during the Hellenistic Period by Houwink ten Cate. Other articles discuss various inscriptions from around Anatolia and the history of Isauria, such as ”Bandit Highlands and Lowland Peace: The Mountains of Isauria-Cilicia” by Brent D. Shaw and ”Some Isaurian and Lycaonian Inscriptions in the Museum of Karaman” by Mehmet Alkan. These are publicly available and include references for those interested. Classical sources are all available on Perseus Digital Library.