1. A city of Syria Cyrrhestica, situated on some hills about 16 miles south-west from the junction of the Euphrates and the Sajur. Besides the natural strength of its position, it was important as lying on the line of intercourse between Northern Syria and Mesopotamia, and was always a great trading city. Its early history is quite unknown. It is not mentioned during the Assyrian wars in this part of Syria (see Sayce, Academy, October 1876). Abul Farâz asserts that Josiah was defeated there by Pharaoh Necho (611 b.c. ) on his march towards Carchemish; but according to 2 Chron. xxxv. 20 the battle took place at Carchemish, which lay on the Euphrates a little further north on the site of the modern Jerablûs, or Jerabis; and probably Abul Farâz confounded the two cities. The same confusion perhaps has caused the statement of Ammianus that Hierapolis was identical with Ninus Vetus on the Euphrates. Jerablûs is clearly a corruption of Hierapolis, by which name therefore Carchemish must at some time have been styled by the Greeks; but it is surprising to find two great cities of the same name so near one another. No proof exists that Hierapolis was an important city before the time of the Seleucidae, and Professor Say ce suggests that it then succeeded to the trade and name of the older city, which had now decayed. Its original name is given in Greek as ⅛αpβνκη, which points back to a form Bambyg or Mambug, while the Syrian form is given by Pliny as Mabog, i.e., Mabbog for Mambog. The romance of trade by which this name has become naturalized in many European languages deserves a passing notice. As the city lay on the highway to the East, cotton and silk were important branches of its trade. Probably cotton plantations existed there in old time; and after the cultivation of silk was introduced to western Asia in the time of the Sassan ian kings, large groves of mulberry trees surrounded the city. The name Mambe was afterwards confounded with the Persian word pambe, silk; and the Greek form ^B>apβvκη also was similarly mixed up with the word β0pβvξ, γ which originally denoted the fly supposed to spin on trees the cotton or silk (for the two substances were confused by the Greeks and Romans) which men then gathered off the trees (Virg., Georg., ii. 121). Hence the “Bombycinae vestes” of the Roman writers; while the city itself is called “Bombycina urbs.” In Asia cotton seems to have been known as a distinct article, and was named after the city which was the chief seat of its manufacture, as muslin is from Mosul. By the crusaders the stuff and the name were carried to Europe, and the latter exists in English in the form “bombazine.” The Syrian goddess Atargatis, called by the Greeks Derceto, a personification of the nature power worshipped under different names over the whole of western Asia, had one of her most famous temples in the. city; and perhaps Mambe may have been a local name of the goddess. Hence in the 3d century b,c., when, under the Seleucid kings, Bambyce became a great Greek city and the most important station between Antioch and Seleucia, it was called Hierapolis or Hieropolis. The latter form is found on coins, the former is used in classical literature. The coinage of Hierapolis begins under the Seleucidae. The autonomous coins, probably for commercial reasons, imitate closely the coins of Antioch. The temple was plundered by Crassus on his Parthian expedition (53 B.C.). Under Diocletian or Constantine, Hierapolis became the capital of the new province of Euphratensis, a name which soon gave place to the older name Commagene. As paganism decayed, Hierapolis ceased to be the sacred city, and recovered its ancient name; at the same time its importance and population declined. In the time of Julian, who concentrated there the Roman troops for the fatal Parthian campaign, it was still one of the greatest cities of Syria; but under Justinian, who made some attempt to restore it, great part of its area was a desert, and the once strong fortifications were so decayed that the place was not defensible against the Parthian king Chosroes. At the Arab conquest it passed into the hands of the caliphs. Haroun-al-Raschid '(786-808) restored it and strengthened its walls, and it is mentioned about 1150 by Edrisi as a strong city. As the empire of the caliphs dwindled, Mambedj became a frontier post in the struggle between Christians and Mahometans, and its possession carried with it the rule in this part of Syria. The emperor Romanus Diogenes captured it in his gallant struggle against the Turks (1068). Recaptured by the Seljuk Turks, it soon afterwards fell into the power of the crusaders, until it was stormed by Saladin (1175). It was for some time the headquarters of the Mongol host under Hulagu Khan; and, as with many other Syrian cities, its desolation dates from this time. The ruins which still exist called Kara Bambuche or Buyuk Mambedj, have been described by Pococke and others, and most carefully by Chesney {Euphrates Expedition, i. 420).

Strabo (xvi. p. 748) confuses this Hierapolis with Edessa in Mesopotamia. A very full account of the city to supplement the brief outline here given may be found in Ritter, Erdkunde, x. 1041-65.

2. A city in Phrygia, at the junction of the Lycus and Meander, on the road from Apamea to Sardis. In it there were warm springs which had and still have a remarkable power of forming incrustations. Its name Hierapolis is due to the sanctity conferred on it by these hot springs, and by the Plutonium, a small cave under a projecting rock, from which there constantly emanated a dark vapour deadly to man and beast (Strabo, xiii. 629; Vitruv., viii. 3; Apuleius, De Mundo, p. 65). In reference to this we find sometimes on its coins Pluto carrying off Proserpine.

The water was also much used for dyeing. Nothing is known of the origin of the city; from the legend αρχηγέτη·: on coins, with a radiate head of the sun-god, Eckhel concludes that a Greek foundation was made under the guidance of Apollo; but a native city may have already existed there. The native name of the sun-god was Baιpβηvoς, which often occurs on coins; he was probably a Phrygian form of the Greek Zeus. The goddess of healthful drinking, Euposia, is also seen on coins. Cybele also, who is found on the coins, was one of the chief deities of the place. Little is known of the history of the city. The philosopher Epictetus was born there; and there St Paul founded a church (Coloss. iv. 13). The very considerable ruins which still exist, called Pambuk Kalessi (“Cottoh Castle λ ), have been described by Pococke, Leake, <fcc. The ancient theatre and gymnasium are in a state of remarkable preservation.

Some kind of hierarchy, both of orders and of jurisdiction, may, from the nature of the case, be looked for in every religious system that has attained any considerable degree of visibility and external organization. The ancient Jewish and Egyptian hierarchies, for example, find parallels in Parsism and Mahometanism; while in some regions Buddhism has attained a degree of complexity in its ecclesiastical government strikingly suggestive of many features of the present Roman hierarchy.

Hiero I., displacing his infant nephew, succeeded his famous brother .Gelon as tyrant of Syracuse in 478 b.c. His rule was more tyrannical than Gelon’s had. been, and his jealousy of his more popular brother Polyzelus (who was at the head of the army, and had married Gelon’s widow Demarete, daughter of Theron of Agrigentum) ended in an open quarrel, in which Theron sided with Polyzelus. The brothers, however, were reconciled, and Hiero married Theron’s sister. From the slight information extant regarding Hiero, his influence seems to have been very great. He removed the inhabitants of Naxos and Catana to Leontini, and peopled Catana, which he renamed Aetna, with Dorians. He was also an important factor in the history of Agrigentum, of Rhegium, and of Locri; and he saved the Greeks of Campania from the Etruscans, whose naval power he destroyed by his great victory at Cumae (474 b.c. ). Though despotic in his rule, he was a hearty patron of literature, and numbered among his friends such names as Aeschylus, Bacchylides, Epicharmus, Simonides, and Pindar—the last of whom celebrated his victories in the Grecian games. He died at Catana in 467 b.c. Hiero II., king of Syracuse, was the illegitimate son of a Syracusan noble, Hierocles, who claimed descent from Gelon (see Gelon). His birth must have taken place before the year 306 b.c. On the departure of Pyrrhus from Sicily (in 275 or end of 276 b.c.), the Syracusan army and citizens alike marked their approval of Hiero’s military and popular qualities by placing him at the head of the troops, and he materially strengthened his position by marrying the daughter of Leptines, the leading citizen. A body of Campanian mercenaries, who had been employed by King Agathocles of Syracuse, had taken the designation of Mamertines, and occupied Messana. From this stronghold they harassed the Syracusans. Hiero led his army against them, and in the engagement that ensued he abandoned to the enemy his mercenary troops, whose fickle disposition he distrusted, and retreated with the rest of his soldiers to Syracuse. There he raised a native force, with which he drove the Mamertines into the corner of the island, defeated them in a pitched battle, and was prevented from capturing Messana only by Carthaginian interference. His grateful countrymen then chose him king (270 b.c.). In 264 he again returned to the attack, and the Mamertines called in the aid of Rome. Hiero at once joined the Punic leader Hanno, who had newly landed in Sicily; but being defeated by the consul Appius Claudius, he withdrew to Syracuse. Pressed by the Roman forces, he was in 263 compelled to conclude a treaty with Rome, by which he was to rule over the south-east of Sicily and the eastern coast to Tauromenium. From this time till his death in 216 he remained the fast friend of Rome, rendering frequent and valuable service during the First Punic War by supplying men, material, and provisions. Presents were sent him in acknowledgment of these good offices; but the strong desire of the Romans to occupy Sicily prevented his receiving any accession of territory at the close of the war. When the Second Punic War broke out, he was faithful as ever, joined his fleet to that of Sempronius, and offered supplies of food and clothing. At home, he was a wise and just ruler. He retained the republican senate, and governed as a constitutional monarch. Munificent in his gifts to foreigners—witness his presents to Olympia, to the Rhodians, to King Ptolemy, and above all to the Romans— and in the erection of public buildings within his own domain, he was exceedingly simple in his personal tastes; he wore a citizen’s dress, and was not attended by guards. So wise were his financial arrangements that they were retained by the Romans after the reduction of Sicily. He kept up a powerful fleet for defensive purposes, and employed his famous kinsman Archimedes in the construction of those engines that, at a later date, played so important a part during the siege of Syracuse by the Romans. His only son, Gelon, predeceased him, and he was succeeded by his grandson Hieronymus.

HIEROCLES, a Neo-Platonic writer of the 5th century a.d., was apparently a native of Alexandria. He was born most probably about the beginning of the 5th century, studied under the celebrated Neo-Platonist Plutarch at Athens, and taught for some years in his native town. He seems to have been banished from Alexandria and to have taken up his abode in Constantinople, where he endured some persecution for his religious opinions. His death must be referred to the closing decade of the 5th century, probably about 490. The only complete work of his which has come down to us is the commentary on the great Pythagorean Carmen Aureum, but several other writings, specially one on Providence or Foreknowledge, are quoted or referred to by Photius and Stobaeus. The commentary contains several remarkable utterances, and is written with much elegance. Philosophy is there regarded in its practical aspect, as a discipline for purifying or elevating the mind by inculcating virtue and leading to truth. The most curious doctrines contained in the work are those bearing on providence and the human soul. The activity of the Divine Being, the supreme God, although eternal and allreaching, is viewed as extending specially or immediately only to spiritual existences, or rather to the genera of such existences. The individuals are not directly the objects of divine operation, but are left to natural chance or law. Iu more modern phraseology there is only, according to Hierocles, general, not particular, providence. As against divine foreknowledge, perfect freedom of individual will is maintained. All that is preordained is but the connexion between volitions and their natural consequents. As regards the human soul, the teaching of Hierocles in the main resembles Neo-Pythagoreanism. He states the doctrine of transmigration and pre-existence, holds that there is an ethereal body which is purified by trial along with the soul, and regards the world as the means by which judgment upon the past actions of the individual spirit is carried out.

The earliest edition of the commentary is the Latin translation by Aurispa in 1474; the Greek text was first given by Curterius in 1583. The fragments of the works on Providence and Fate weré published in 1593 by Morellus. Later editions of all that is preserved appeared in 1654-5, 1673, and 1709. The commentary alone has been edited by Ashton (1742), by Wolf (1710), by Gaisford in his edition of Stobaeus (1850), and finally by Mullach (1853). The jest-book entitled α<ττ∈7α (edited by Schier, 1768, and Eberhard, 1869), though frequently attributed to this author, is certainly the work of a later hand. The most complete information regarding Hierocles is to be found in Mullach’s edition, and in the relative portions of his Fragmenta Phil. Groecorum, 1860, i. 408 sq. Cf. Zeller, PhU. d. Griechen (2d ed,), iii. 2, pp. 681-7.