Here Tancred, followed by Baldwin, turned into Cilicia, and began to take possession of the Cilician towns, and especially of Tarsus - thus beginning, it would seem, the creation of the Norman principality of Antioch.
Meanwhile the armies of Alexius not only prevented any farther advance to the N.W., but conquered the Cilician towns (1104).
Modified though never essentially changed, (1) by contact with the star-worship of the Chaldaeans, who identified Mithras with Shamash, god of the sun,(2) by the indigenous Armenian religion and other local Asiatic faiths and (3) by the Greeks of Asia Minor, who identified Mithras with Helios, and contributed to the success of his cult by equipping it for the first time with artistic representations (the famous Mithras relief originated in the Pergamene school towards the 2nd century B.C.), Mithraism was first transmitted to the Roman world during the 1st century B.C. by the Cilician pirates captured by Pompey.
After crossing the low hills east of the Pyramus it passed through a masonry (Cilician) gate, Demir Kapu, and entered the plain of Issus.
The Seljuk invasion of Armenia was followed by an exodus of Armenians southwards, and in 1080 Rhupen, a relative of the last king of Ani, founded in the heart of the Cilician Taurus a small principality, which gradually expanded into the kingdom of Lesser Armenia.