Pergamos (Thoroughly Married)
Background
Pergamos was the chief city of Mysia, near the Caicus River in northwest Asia Minor (modern Turkey). The city was situated opposite the island of Lesbos, being 24 kilometers (15 miles) from the Aegean Sea.
Great buildings were erected and a library containing over 200, 000 items was established. A new form of writing material, Pergamena charta, or parchment, was developed.
Temples dedicated to Athena, Asklepios (the Greco-Roman god of medicine and healing), Dionysos, and Zeus were located there.
Asklepios (scalpel) was the god of healing, and people came from all over the ancient world to Pergamum, seeking to be healed at his shrine. Asklepios was depicted as a snake, and non-poisonous snakes roamed freely in his temple. Suppliants seeking healing either slept or lay down on the temple’s floor, hoping to be touched by one of the snakes (symbolically representing the god himself) and thereby be healed.
The altar of Zeus is the structure of a monumental colonnaded court in the form of a horseshoe, 120 ft wide by 112 feet deep; the front stairway alone being almost 66 feet wide; and the podium of the altar almost 18 feet high. The base is decorated with a frieze that ran 446 feet in high relief showing the battle between the Giants and the Olympian gods known as the Gigantomachy. There is a second, smaller and less well-preserved high relief frieze on the inner court walls which surround the actual fire altar on the upper level of the structure at the top of the stairs. In a set of consecutive scenes, it depicts events from the life of Telephus, legendary founder of the city of Pergamon and son of the hero Heracles and Auge, one of Tegean king Aleus's daughters.
Pergamos built the first temple devoted to emperor worship in Asia (29 B.C.), in honor of Emperor Augustus. Later the city built two more such temples, honoring the emperors Trajan and Septimus Severus. The city became the center of emperor worship in the province, more than any other city in Asia.
It is likely that the martyr Antipas (Revelation 2:13) was executed (ca. 92 A.D.), at least in part, for refusing to worship the emperor.
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