Greater Phrygia was in general a high and barren plateau; the most fertile region was the valley of the Sangarius. Grapes were cultivated extensively, and Phrygian marble, celebrated in antiquity, was quarried. The religion of the Phrygians was an ecstatic nature worship, in which the Great Mother of the Gods, Rhea, or Cybele, and a male deity, Sabazius, played a prominent part. The orgiastic rites of this religion influenced both the Greeks and the Romans.
The Phrygians are believed to have been an Indo-European people who entered Asia Minor from Thrace about 1200 BC and seized control of the whole central tableland. Records exist of numerous kings, bearing alternately the names of Gordius and Midas, but their power was apparently broken by the invasions of the Cimmerians in the 7th century BC. In the 6th century BC Croesus, king of Lydia, conquered all that was left of Phrygia, which passed successively under the rule of Persia, Macedonia, Pergamum, and Rome.
The Phrygian cap, a cloth head-covering worn by the Phrygians, was adopted by freed slaves in Roman times, and thus this cap became a symbol of liberty.