Pessinus (Greek: Πεσσινούς or Πισσινούς) was a city in Anatolia, the Asian part of Turkey on the upper course of the river Sakarya River (Sangarios), from which the mythological King Midas is said to have ruled a greater Phrygian realm. The city has been proven to have been in existence as far back as 700 BC.
Pessinus, the present village Ballıhisar is situated at 13 km from Sivrihisar a small town on the road Ankara- Eskişehir at the junction with the road to Afyon-İzmir, at 120 km SW of Ankara.
Pessinus was the mythological capital of King Midas, the ruler who wished for everything that he touched be turned into gold, and who was, in the myth, the founder of the temple of Cybele, Midas’s mother. Cybele is the mother of the Gods in the Phrygian tradition and her importance is the reason for the existence of Pessinus.
Following the conquests of Alexander the Great and the settlement of the Tolistobogii, a Celtic tribe, around Pessinus and Gordium in the 270s BC, the city became a major Hellenistic center in the region of Galatia. The Seleucids defeated the Celts, but the region was eventually lost by Antiochus Hierax to the Attalid Kingdom of Pergamon. In 133 BC, Attalus III bequeathed his kingdom, and Pessinus with it, to Rome.
Roman involvement in Pessinus however had earlier roots. In 205 BC, alarmed by a number of meteor showers during the ongoing Second Punic War, the Romans, after consulting the Sibylline Books, decided to introduce the cult of the Great Mother of Ida (Magna Mater Idaea, also known as Cybele) to the city. They sought the aid of their ally Attalus I, and following his instructions, they went to Pessinus and removed the goddess' most important image, a large black stone that was said to have fallen from the sky, to Rome.
The stone was first placed in the Temple of Victory on the Palatine Hill, but in 191 BC a new sanctuary was built for the goddess on the summit of the Palatine Hill, one of the most sacred places in Rome. Along with the black stone, a throne was brought to Rome. The throne was destroyed twice by fire in 111 BC and 3 AD, both times being restored, in the latter case by the emperor Augustus.
Roman culture emerged in Pessinus again around 45 AD, when the Emperor Claudius sold the temple-state to the Galatian tetrarch Brogitarus. This was a fundraising tactic used by the Roman emperors, starting with Julius Caesar around 45 BC.
Christianity reached the area in the 3rd century, and gradually, the temple was abandoned, although the emperor Julian the Apostate made a pilgrimage there.[1] In ca. 398, Pessinus was established as the capital of the newly-established province of Galatia Salutaris, and became the seat of the a metropolitan bishop. Under Justinian I, it was renamed to Ioustinianoupolis, a name which continued to be occasionally used for a long time.[2] The region later became part of the Byzantine Anatolic Theme. In late 715 AD, the city of Pessinus was destroyed by an Arab raid, along with the neighboring city Orkistos. The area remained under Byzantine control until lost to the Seljuk Turks in the latter 11th century, after which Pessinus became an inconspicuous mountain village at 900m height, gradually getting depopulated since it was fully protected.
The last constructions from Antiquity were pulled down in the 19th century, but archeologists from the Ghent University, Belgium, have been digging there since 1967, and have unearthed the ancient temple of Cybele and many other buildings, such as a theatre and bath houses.
The Kybele Archaeological Culture Center, located in Ballihisar Village of Eskişehir's Sivrihisar district, has on display artifacts dating to the Phrygian and Roman eras from the ancient city of Pessinus.