The History of Antiquity Volume I Part 30

according to the date of Eusebius. His wife was Damodice, the daughter of Agamemnon, the king of the Greek city of Cyme, who is said to have been a woman distinguished by beauty and wisdom.[721] The seat on which he used to dispense justice, a work well worth seeing, as Herodotus says, he consecrated at Delphi. When Phrygia was attacked by the first great invasion of the Cimmerians, he took away his own life by drinking bull's blood (693 B.C.).[722] Of a third Midas, who reigned apparently about a century later, we learn that his tomb was adorned with the image of a maiden in bra.s.s, and that a Greek poet composed as an inscription for this monument the following verses:--

"I am a maiden of bra.s.s, I lie on the tomb of Midas; While waters flow, and tall trees grow, On Midas' tearful tomb I lie.

I say to every pa.s.ser by, 'Here Midas sleeps in earth below.'"[723]

With the descendants of this Midas, Gordius and his son Adrastus, this dynasty came to an end in the sixth century B.C.[724]

Between Prymnessus and Midaeum (Jazili Kaja and Sidi Ghazi), in the valley of Doganlu, lie the tombs of these kings, sepulchral chambers, which are hewn in the perpendicular walls of red sandstone. On the face of the rock there is no trace of any entrance; and the corpses must have been lowered down behind the exterior front. The walls of rock are changed into sculptures, in imitation of the outlines and rudiments of a light wooden building. In low relief a framework of beams is sketched, and over this a low-pitched gable rises. Such are the simplest of these facades, which apparently we must also consider the oldest. Others display a frieze of palm leaves in the upper field of the framework.

Others again put the figures of animals in the gable, _e.g._ two horses, between which is an obelisk, and exhibit traces of h.e.l.lenic influence, while another presents a perfect imitation of the Doric arrangement of pillars. Among these sepulchres may once have been the tomb with the maiden of bra.s.s. The inscriptions found on some, or in the neighbourhood, are Phrygian, but written in Greek characters. The most important tomb is that of a more ancient Midas at k.u.mbet. The facade of this monument, which is in framework of the Phrygian style, covers about sixty square feet of the hundred feet of the rock. The s.p.a.ce in the field of the framework is entirely filled up with rectangular ornaments and a kind of scroll, while the tympanum of the gable is covered with a key pattern.[725]

Other remarkable remains of buildings are found in Phrygia. Strabo tells us of a tribe on the borders of Cilicia who lived in the arches and hollows of the rocks above the fruitful valley which they cultivated; till conquered by the Romans the tribe was considered invincible, and Vitruvius remarks that the Phrygians excavated the natural hills, cut pa.s.sages in them, and extended the s.p.a.ces into dwellings as far as the nature of the place allowed.[726] On the Rhyndakus, in the district of the ancient Prymnessus, at Beibazar, on Lake Egerdir, to the east near Iconium, numerous habitations are found excavated in the rocks, so that it really seems that the Phrygians dwelt in the walls of their mountains.[727] Lofty walls of rock, thousands of isolated cones, and some mighty mountain summits are excavated into dwellings, into rock cities--a task which was rendered easier by the softness of the stone (peperino and tufa). Steep and at times wonderfully jagged rocks, overhanging picturesque valleys, are chiselled out for one or two hundred feet in height in such a manner that several galleries of habitations lie one upon the other. These are lighted by openings in the front, and connected with each other by shafts and staircases: of seats, hearths, or couches there is no trace whatever--only niches and recesses are found. Yet in some of the rock cities an advance may be observed. In these the entrances to some extent exhibit indications of pillars, architraves, portals, and the like, so that the habitations of this kind seem to have been built at a later period. The ruins of the cities of the Phrygians, the remains of Gordium, Midaeum, Pessinus, Prymnessus, and Ancyra allow us to see the so-called Cyclopian style.[728]

Our knowledge of the religious rites of the Phrygians is extremely scanty. They are said to have invoked the G.o.d Men, or Manes under various t.i.tles,[729] and the names of the cities Manegordum and Manesium seem to go back to this deity. Whether this is the G.o.d whom the Greeks called the Phrygian Zeus is not clear. The G.o.ddess, whom the Greeks called Rhea or Cybele, Dindymene, Agdistis, after the mountains sacred to her, is said to have been called Amma by the Phrygians.[730] The chief home of her rites was that sanctuary on Mount Agdus near Pessinus, which the first Midas is said to have dedicated to her (p. 525). Here she was wors.h.i.+pped in a shapeless stone of no great size, not larger than a man could lift. At the side of her statue in the temple lions and panthers are said to have stood.[731] Her priests were eunuchs, who waited on the G.o.ddess in gaily coloured vestments. The chief priest at Pessinus, or Archigallus, is afterwards found holding a princely position. At the festivals of the G.o.ddess, which were celebrated every year, it was the custom for young men to make themselves eunuchs with a sharp sh.e.l.l, crying out at the same time, "Take this, Agdistis." Then they went round the country asking alms in the name of the G.o.ddess, and they were known to the Greeks as "Metragyrtes," _i.e._ "beggars of the mother;"[732] for the G.o.ddess, whose priests were eunuchs, and whose service demanded the sacrifice of s.e.x, was called by the Greeks the "Great Mother," the "Mountain Mother," the "Nouris.h.i.+ng Earth," the "Giver of all." She must, therefore, have been regarded as the maternal power of the earth, the power of nature, which gives life. It is especially stated that she gave increase to the flocks,[733] and since she was named after different mountains we may a.s.sume that high places and mountains were the chosen seats of her wors.h.i.+p. In Greek and Roman art the Phrygian G.o.ddess is represented as sitting on a chariot drawn by lions and panthers, with a cymbal in her hand, and wearing on her head the mural crown as the G.o.ddess of the earth which supports cities.

By the side of the Great Mother stands the G.o.d Atys, whom Herodotus calls a son of Manes.[734] He grew up with the shepherds among the goats of the forest. The G.o.ddess loved him, but he fled away into the mountains, and there, under a fir-tree, into which his spirit pa.s.sed, he made himself an eunuch. In search of him Amma roams over the hills in frantic grief, and carries into her cave the tree into which his spirit pa.s.sed. The emasculation and death of Atys, as also his resurrection, were celebrated by the Phrygians.[735] At these festivals a fir-tree was felled, crowned with violets, twined with garlands, and carried into the sanctuary of the G.o.ddess. Afterwards Atys was sought in the mountains with wild music and frenzy, as Amma had sought him. The third day of the festival was "the day of blood," i.e. of the mutilation and death of Atys, who was bewailed with despairing grief, amid rending of the hair and beating of the breast. Then followed a happier scene, the festival of "the resurrection," and the was.h.i.+ng of the stone of the G.o.ddess.[736]

We learn further that Atys was also called Papas among the Phrygians. He is also ent.i.tled the goat-herd and neat-herd; the plastic art of Greece and Rome represents him as a youthful shepherd with the Pan's-pipe, and by his side is a pine and a ram. According to later accounts he was the "shepherd of the bright stars."[737] Hence we must a.s.sume that in Atys the Phrygians personified the youthful bloom of nature, the bloom of the spring, and they mourned the disappearance of this, just as, according to the Greeks, they sang a piercing wail--the Lityerses--at the time of corn-cutting. They lamented the death of the spring, and the fall of the fruit; the youthful G.o.d had resigned his own power; the creative vigour continued only to exist in the tree of Atys, the ever-green fir. In the spring time it awoke again; this was the day of the resurrection with its joy and pleasure. This orgiastic wors.h.i.+p, and roaming with wild cries over the heights and in the ravines of the mountains, sometimes in wailing and lamentation, sometimes in joy, is peculiar to the religion of the Phrygians.

The central point of the Phrygian kingdom lay westwards of the great salt plain in the region between Gordium and Ancyra, between Midaeum and Pessinus in the valley of the Sangarius, on whose banks the Homeric poems place the Phrygians, who are the possessors of "well-walled cities."[738] If the majority of the Phrygians remained farmers and shepherds, they nevertheless arrived at an early date at a monarchy, and under this they reached a civilisation by no means contemptible, a national culture, with an architecture and music of their own. On the religion of the Phrygians the rites of their Semitic neighbours on the north and south no doubt exercised a strong influence. The combination of the creative power and the power hostile to procreation into one deity, and the custom of mutilation, are conceptions and rites unknown to the Aryan nations. But they are closely connected with the forms and wors.h.i.+p of Astarte-Ashera, just as Atys resembles the Adonis of the Syrians. On the other hand, as was remarked above, the Phrygians adopted the Greek alphabet on their monuments, and Greek verses were composed for the tomb of Midas (p. 528). In return the Greeks adopted the Phrygian flute, and along with it the form of the elegy and the Phrygian harmonies. Nor were these all. The wild roaming, the unchecked sorrow and joy, the tambourines and drums of the Phrygian festivals pa.s.sed without doubt in the first instance to the Greek colonies in the Propontis, and more especially to Cyzicus, and from thence to the mother country at the celebration of certain festivals of Demeter and Dionysus.

"Take," says Euripides in the _Bacchae_, "take the drums, the invention of the Phrygians and the mother Rhea. Long ago the Corybantes (the attendants of the Great Mother) devised the mighty circle of the stretched hide and placed in Rhea's hand, with the loud, sweet-sounding tone of Phrygian flutes, the thunder for the festal song."[739]

Towards the east, the south coast of Asia Minor was inhabited by the Cilicians and the Solymi. To the former belonged the slopes of Taurus and the coast to the right bank of the Kalykadnus. Towards the west came the Solymi, in a wild and broken mountain country. They took their name from the Solyma mountains (_sallum_ = steps), which they inhabited, and according to Ch.o.e.rilus of Samos, they spoke the language of the Phenicians.[740] "The pa.s.s," so Xenophon tells us, "which leads to Cilicia (from the interior of Asia Minor) is very steep, and only broad enough for a single waggon. On descending from it you come into a well-watered plain by the sea, which is inclosed from one end to the other by lofty and precipitous mountains. But the plain itself is large and beautiful, and filled with trees of every kind, and with vines. It produces much sesame, wheat, millet, and barley."[741] In addition to these advantages the slopes of Taurus offered splendid pastures for horses, and on the coast were excellent harbours. The inhabitants of this favoured land, known in a.s.syrian inscriptions as Chillakai, and on the coins of the district from the Persian times as Chelech,[742]

belonged, like their neighbours on the Orontes and on the Upper Euphrates, to the Semitic stock. This is proved by the names of their districts and places of their G.o.ds, and by the inscriptions on their coins. The Semitic stamp of names of places like Ama.n.u.s (_amana_, firm), Adana (_eden_, delight), Mallus (_maa'la_, height), Tarsus (_tars_, dry) is beyond a doubt.[743] Herodotus tells us that the Cilicians wore woollen clothes, and peculiar helmets of ox-leather, and carried swords and spears like the Egyptians, and he maintained that they were descended from Cilix, the son of Agenor, a Phenician. Their princes were always styled Syennesis.[744] This standing name was, without doubt, the t.i.tle given by the princes of Cilicia to themselves: it must have been _schu'a nasi_, _i.e._ "n.o.ble prince."[745] h.e.l.lanicus tells us that of the two kings of the name of Sardanapalus, who ruled over a.s.syria, one had built the two cities of Tarsus and Anchiale in Cilicia in one day.[746] On the other hand Berosus informs us that Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.) had heard in a.s.syria that an army of Greeks had landed in Cilicia; against this he marched and defeated it, but with heavy loss.

As a memorial of this victory he caused his image to be set up there, and afterwards the city of Tarsus was built in such a way that the Cydnus flowed through the middle of it. The temple at Anchiale (west of Tarsus, on the sea) was also founded by Sennacherib.[747] When Alexander of Macedonia reached Cilicia his attendants found that the circuit and towers of the walls of Anchiale proved that the city was planned on a large scale. Near the walls they saw the statue of an a.s.syrian king. His right hand was raised, and the inscription in a.s.syrian letters is said to have called him Sardanapalus, the son of Anakyndaraxes.[748]

No king of the name of Anakyndaraxes or Sardanapalus ever ruled over a.s.syria, unless perhaps by the latter is meant a.s.surbanipal (a.s.surbanhabal), the son of Esarhaddon. On the other hand, the inscriptions of Shalmanesar II. of a.s.shur (859-828 B.C.) mention the fact that he had overcome "Pikhirim the chief of the land of Chilakku (Cilicia)," and Sargon, king of a.s.syria (722-705 B.C.), tells us that the Cilicians had not been subject to his father, and that he had transferred the dominion over Cilicia to Ambris, king of Tubal. Hence Cilicia must have become subject to Sargon in the earliest years of his reign. In consequence of the revolt, which Ambris undertook with Urza of Ararat, and Mita, the king of Moschi, as we saw above (p. 520), Ambris was taken captive and dethroned in the year 714 B.C. Sennacherib, the successor of Sargon (705-681 B.C.), informs us that in the very first years of his reign he had caused rebellious Cilicians to be removed: the inscriptions of the later years of his reign remark that the cities of the Cilicians were destroyed and burnt, and the Cilicians in the forests were reduced. After this the inscriptions of Esarhaddon (681-668 B.C.) a.s.sure us that he reduced the Cilicians; and a.s.surbanipal recounts that Sandasarmi of Cilicia, who had not submitted to the kings his fathers, and fulfilled their commands, sent his daughter with many presents to Nineveh for the harem of a.s.surbanipal, and kissed his feet.[749]

The fall of the a.s.syrian kingdom restored their freedom to the Cilicians, and they appear to have maintained it till the times of Cyrus. After that time the princes of Cilicia were merely the viceroys of the kings of Persia. To these sovereigns Cilicia paid each year 500 Babylonian talents of silver and 360 selected horses. The harbours, which carried on a lively trade, were able, at the beginning of the fifth century B.C., to equip and man a hundred s.h.i.+ps of war (triremes).[750]

The coins which have come down to us from the supremacy of the Persians allow us to form some conclusions about the religious rites of the Cilician cities. They represent Baal, the sun-G.o.d of the Syrians, on the throne, with grapes and ears of corn in his right hand, and sometimes an eagle at his side. Others exhibit Heracles attacking a lion with his club. The inscriptions name the G.o.d thus represented Bal Tars, _i.e._ Baal of Tarsus. A coin of Mallus also exhibits Heracles strangling the lion, i.e. the beneficent sun-G.o.d who overcomes the terrible sun-G.o.d in the sign of the lion, the consuming glow of the sun. On other coins we can trace the war-G.o.ddess, on others the birth-G.o.ddess of the Syrians, or her cow; some coins of Celenderis exhibit the goat of this G.o.ddess.[751]

The land of the Cilicians must at one time have stretched northwards over the Taurus range to the inner table-land as far as the sources of the Sarus, to the watershed between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, or even further. Sargon could not have transferred the sovereignty over Cilicia to the king of Tubal if his territory was not contiguous to Cilicia. And if we a.s.sume that the land of Tubal reached at that time as far as the Taurus, we are met by the objection that even Herodotus represents the Halys as pa.s.sing through the land of the Cilicians on its way from Armenia.[752] Hence the land afterwards called Cataonia, between Taurus and Ant.i.taurus and the northern spur of the latter range, must, even in the time of Herodotus, have belonged to Cilicia.

On the north-western slope of the Armenian mountains toward the Black Sea we have already found the Moschi and Tibarenes, whom the Hebrews counted among the sons of j.a.phet. The western neighbours of the Tibarenes on the coasts of the Black Sea were the Chalybians. It is the land of the Chalybians of which the Homeric poems speak, when they mention the city of Alybe--"where is the birth of silver."[753] But it is not only the obtaining of silver that is ascribed by the Greeks to the Chalybians; they are also the discoverers of the working of iron; and steel, which the Greeks obtained from this coast, was named after the Chalybians. aeschylus calls the Chalybians "barbarous workers in bra.s.s, men averse to foreigners."[754] In the scriptures of the Hebrews Tubal-cain, a name of which the first part seems to denote the Tibarenes, is the father of the smiths in bra.s.s and iron. Hence it is clear that the mines of ore and iron in the land of the Tibarenes and Chalybians must have been opened at a very early period. As a fact the ore lies at a very slight depth in the mountains. Even now large ma.s.ses of copper are discovered along the coast to the west of Trebizond; beside copper, the mines of Gumush Khane, two days' journey in the interior from Trebizond, even now yield lead containing silver, which is also found in the mines of Baibut and Tokat, further to the south.[755]

Hence these districts could furnish not only iron and steel, but silver also; elsewhere silver was only to be got in the mines on Mount Ida till the Phenicians imported this metal in large quant.i.ties from Tartessus.

Westward of the Chalybians on the Thermodon, the Iris, and the lower course of the Halys, dwelt a population which, setting aside any later admixture, were of Semitic origin. Herodotus calls the inhabitants of the land which reaches from Armenia on the east to the Halys on the west, from the coast of the Black Sea southwards as far as Cilicia, Syrians, and remarks that this was the name of the people in use among the Greeks.[756] Pindar speaks of "a spear-armed Syrian host" on the mouth of the Thermodon.[757] The Greek colony of Sinope west of the mouth of the Halys is said to have been founded in the land of the Syrians of n.o.ble stock.[758] A promontory running into the sea to the north of Sinope is called Syrias.[759] The Greeks derived the people in this district from Syrus, a son of Apollo.[760] Scylax of Caryanda names the coast of the Black Sea, from the Chalybians to Armene, westward of the promontory of Syrias, a.s.syria.[761] Strabo states that these Syrians, who extended from the Taurus northwards as far as the Pontus, were named Leuco-Syrians, _i.e._ white Syrians, to distinguish them from the true Syrians, and that the Cataonians (p. 538) spoke the same language with them.[762] The coins struck at Sinope (Sanab), Side and Kotyora (Gazir), in the fourth century B.C., have Aramaic legends, and we can trace on them the name and form of the G.o.d Baal.[763] The Persians called these people Cappadocians (Katapatuka), and extend the name to Cilicia also. If the Phrygians when marching westwards from Armenia not only traversed but took possession of the land, the Phrygians who remained in the country must have retired to the west before the Semitic tribe, which forced its way from Cilicia and the Upper Euphrates, or have been absorbed by them.

In the eighth century B.C. the Syrians between the Lower Halys and Armenia received a peculiar admixture. "On the sh.o.r.e of the Pontus, where the Scythians now dwell"--such is the account of Herodotus--"it is said that the territory of the Cimmerians lay, and in Scythia the Cimmerian Bosporus and Cimmerian walls and harbours remain, and a region which is called Cimmeria. When the Scythians who once dwelt in the east were driven out by the Ma.s.sagetes or the Issedones, they came into the land of the Cimmerians. The latter took counsel on the river Tyras, and one part were inclined with the kings to fight against the Scythians, but the others wished to abandon the land. Thus a strife arose between the two parties, and those who wished to retire from the land defeated the king and all who were of the same opinion with him, and buried the slain on the Tyras, where their grave is still to be seen. Then the remainder fled before the Scythians along the sea to Asia, and settled on the peninsula, where Sinope, the city of the Greeks, is now built.

But the Scythians took their land in possession, and, led by their king Madyas, they pursued the retreating Cimmerians, but missed them, as they took the upper road, which is far longer, and keeps the Caucasus on the right."[764]

We shall return to the Scythians again; for the present we may leave them out of the question. In Homer the Cimmerians, "miserable men, who are veiled in cloud, darkness, and night, and are never illuminated by the sun," dwell "at the end of earth and Ocea.n.u.s, where is the opening of the entrance into the under-world."[765] As guardians of the under-world Aristophanes calls them after the dog of Hades, Cerberians.[766] Following the guidance of the Homeric poems, the Cimmerians were sought in the west, where the sun sinks, and the entrance to the under-world was supposed to be; they were placed in the neighbourhood of the Italic Kyme.[767] When the Milesians, about the middle of the eighth century, discovered the north sh.o.r.e of the Black Sea, they found in the extreme north, at the end of the earth, a nation whom the Greeks called Cimmerians. Thus the entrance into Lake Maeotis obtained among the Greeks the name of the Bosporus of the Cimmerians, in contrast to the Bosporus of the Thracians. At a later time the Cimmerians were identified with the Germanic Cimbri and the Celtic Kymri.

Hence the decision would seem to be correct that the Cimmerians ought to be struck out of history as a mythical nation and a mythical name, which was perhaps intended to correspond to the misty, wintry nature of some remote lands, did not the poet Callinus of Ephesus, whose date falls about the year 700 B.C., speak of "the approaching army of the Cimmerians, who achieved mighty deeds:" did not Herodotus himself tell us that the expelled Cimmerians "settled on the peninsula at the place where the Greek city of Sinope now stands"; and also narrate that the Cimmerians, while king Ardys ruled over the Lydians (654-617 B.C.), invaded Lydia, and captured Sardis, the metropolis, except the citadel; and that Alyattes king of Lydia (612-563 B.C.) first expelled the Cimmerians entirely out of Asia Minor:[768] did not Aristotle tell us that the Cimmerians had been settled for a hundred years in Antandros, on the Trojan coast, and Scymnus of Chius, that the Milesian Abron, who founded Sinope, was said to have been slain by the Cimmerians, that Coes and Cretines founded the city anew, "after the Cimmerians, when their array traversed Asia"?[769]

The Cimmerians then were not a legendary fiction: the Cimmerian Bosporus really owed its name to a people who called themselves, or were known to the Greeks, by this name, as also the hamlet of Cimmerik.u.m on the Crimea, and Cimmerium on the peninsula of Kertch. Strabo, the best authority on the Eastern districts of Asia Minor, of which he was a native, says: "The wanderings of the Scythian Madys (it is the Madyas of Herodotus) and of Kobos the Trerian are unknown to most people. The Cimmerians, who are called Treres,[770] or a tribe of them, dwelt on the gloomy Bosporus. They came from a far distant region, and are said to have been driven out by the Scythians. They have often attacked the right side, _i.e._ the eastern side of the Pontus, and fought against the Cappadocians, Paphlagonians, and Phrygians;[771] they crossed the Halys, and forced their way as far as the Ionian cities.[772] Their first invasion is placed by the chronologers in the time of Midas, who put an end to his life by drinking bull's blood, _i.e._ as we saw above (p. 528) in the period from 738 to 693 B.C., or according to others, in the time of Homer, or shortly before him.[772] But Lygdamis, with a horde of his own, forced his way to Lydia and Ionia, and conquered Sardis, though he remained in Cilicia.[773] Callisthenes says that Sardis was first taken by the Cimmerians, then by the Treres, and finally by Cyrus. The first capture is also proved by Callinus. At length the Treres, under Kobos, are said to have been driven out by the Scythians under Madys."[774]

From this account it is clear that the Cimmerians, or a part of them, were called Treres, a name also given to a Thracian tribe between the Skomius and Hebrus, on the Bistonian Lake;[775] that they made at least two invasions into the west of Asia Minor; that the second of these, which in Strabo is undertaken under the command of Lygdamis, is the same as the invasion of the Cimmerians which Herodotus places in the time of king Ardys of Lydia. In both writers this invasion extends to Sardis and to some of the Greek cities on the coast, and Plutarch expressly establishes the ident.i.ty of the invasion of the Treres under Lygdamis with that of the Cimmerians in Herodotus, on ancient authorities.[776]

Justin calls the Cimmerians a part of the Scythians, who, owing to their internal contentions, migrated under the leaders.h.i.+p of Ilinus and Scolopitus, and established themselves on the coast of Cappadocia.[777]

The incursion of the Scythians into Media, with which Herodotus has combined the migration of the Cimmerians, took place, as we shall show from Herodotus' own statement, about the year 630 B.C. But if Alyattes of Lydia was the first to expel the Cimmerians from the west of Asia Minor after they had been settled for a century in Antandros, these Cimmerians must have been in Asia at least as early as 663 B.C., since Alyattes reigned till 563 B.C. Further, if Herodotus only mentions the destruction of Sardis, which took place about 630 B.C., and is wholly silent on the first destruction by the Cimmerians, this first capture must have taken place before the time from which he commences his accurate account of Lydian history, _i.e._ before the accession of Gyges in the year 689 B.C., or, according to the data of Herodotus, even before 719 B.C. This capture of Sardis is the only one which could have been known to Callinus. Further, the Cimmerians are said to have invaded Phrygia at the time of that Midas who put himself to death in the year 693 B.C. Hence they must have been in Asia Minor before this year, and if they overpowered Phrygia, they could easily at the same time have forced their way as far as the western coast. Moreover, Strabo remarks that the Milesians built Sinope, when they had become acquainted with the favourable position of the place and the weakness of the people, but the people were not weak after the Cimmerians had occupied the mouth of the Halys. The first foundation of Sinope under Abron must therefore be placed before the arrival of the Cimmerians in Asia Minor. The ancient Sinope founded the city of Trapezus in the year 756 B.C.,[778] and therefore that city must have been founded at least ten years earlier, and its destruction by the Cimmerians must be placed after the year 756 B.C. Hence the Cimmerians might have reached the mouth of the Halys about 750 B.C., though they cannot have come along the coast from Colchis, but over the sea. With this agrees the statement that the Cimmerians forced their way into Asia Minor in the year 782.[779]

From this investigation it follows that the Cimmerians once possessed the north sh.o.r.e of the Black Sea on the straits from Kaffa, westward perhaps as far as the mouth of the Danube. Since the Treres, a Thracian nation, are always mentioned in connexion with the Cimmerians, and it is ascertained that Thracian tribes possessed the western coast of Pontus from the Thracian Bosporus northwards as far as the mouth of the Danube, and as the Agathyrsi in Transylvania are also called Thracians, there can hardly be any doubt remaining that the Cimmerians were of Thracian origin, or at least nearly related to the Thracians. According to the account of Herodotus the Cimmerians held a consultation on the Tyras (Dniester), their kings were said to have been killed there, and in confirmation of the story he appeals to the tumuli which were still to be seen on the Dniester. The only certain conclusion to be drawn from this statement is that mounds on the Dniester were shown to Herodotus as coming down from an older population of those districts. The Cimmerians, who arrived in Asia Minor (the Tauri, on the peninsula which was named after them, appear to be a remnant of this nation, who maintained their old settlements, and the modern name Crimea goes back to the Cimmerians), must have been a numerous and martial people, if they were able not only to establish themselves firmly in the East on the Halys, but also to force their way to the western coast, there to settle down in several places and maintain themselves in these, and to capture twice the fortified metropolis of the Lydians, the most warlike nation in Asia Minor.

According to the genealogy in Genesis, Gomer is the eldest son of j.a.phet. This name is without doubt the Semitic term for the population on the north sh.o.r.e of the Pontus, who were known to the Greeks as Cimmerians. In the sixth century B.C. the prophet Ezekiel mentions Gomer beside Togarmah.[780] Esarhaddon, king of a.s.syria (681-668 B.C.), tells us that Tiuspa from the distant land of the Cimmerians (Gimirai) submitted to him with his army. a.s.surbanipal (668-626 B.C.) relates: "The Cimmerians were not afraid of my fathers or of me, and would not take the yoke of my sovereignty. Gugu (Gyges), king of Ludi (Lydia), a land beyond the sea, a distant region, of which my fathers had not heard the name, sent a messenger into my presence, in order to implore my friends.h.i.+p and kiss my feet. From the day on which he accepted my yoke, he took Cimmerians, desolators of his land, alive in the battle with his own hand. From the number of the captured leaders he bound two with strong fetters of iron, and sent them with numerous presents to Nineveh, the city of my dominion. He constantly sent messengers to ask for my friends.h.i.+p. He omitted to do so when he disregarded the will of a.s.shur, the G.o.d, my creator, trusted to his own power, and hardened his heart.

He sent his forces to aid Pisamilki (Psammetichus), king of Egypt, who had thrown off the yoke of my sovereignty. I heard this, and prayed to a.s.shur and Istar thus: May his body be cast out to his enemies, and his servants be carried away captive. a.s.shur answered me: His body shall be cast out to his enemies, and his servants carried away captive. The Cimmerians, whom he had brought under his feet by the renown of my name, conquered and laid waste his whole land. His son (Ardys) sat upon his throne. He sent to me and received the yoke of my supremacy, saying thus: I am thy subject and servant, and my people will do all thy will."[781]

Thus the account of the Greeks is completely established. To be subjugated by Esarhaddon the Cimmerians must have been in Asia Minor in the first decades of the seventh century B.C., they must also have got the upper hand here to such a degree that Gyges, king of Lydia, found it impossible to defend himself against them without the help of the a.s.syrians. The first capture of Sardis must have taken place before the accession of Gyges, on that campaign which the Cimmerians made in the year 693 B.C. to Phrygia. On the other hand it may be that the Cimmerians had got possession of the city of Antandrus in the reign of Gyges. When Gyges had repulsed the Cimmerians he thought that he had no longer any need of a.s.syria. For this, according to a.s.surbanipal, he was punished by a second invasion of the Cimmerians, who desolated his land; he lost his life in the battle, of which the Greeks know nothing, and his son and successor Ardys was again forced to submit to a.s.syria. That Ardys had to fight severe battles with the Cimmerians is proved by the second capture of Sardis, which took place in his reign about the year 630 B.C. While the Cimmerians were thus engaged in the West, the city of Miletus, or some exiled Milesians, seized the opportunity to re-found Sinope. Alyattes succeeded in forcing back the Cimmerians and attacking them with such vigour that they were no longer able to undertake any invasions to the West. Even Sinope had no more to fear from them, although their settlements lay in the neighbourhood of this city. At a subsequent period in the third century B.C. the invading Celts threw the whole of Asia Minor into a panic, and plundered it, until they were confined to Galatia; and the invasion of the Cimmerians appears to have taken a similar course. The Celts, however, maintained themselves within a limited district; the Cimmerians disappeared so entirely among the Cappadocians, that Syncellus calls Gomer the progenitor of the Cappadocians, and the Armenians denote the Cappadocians by the name Gamir.[782]

In Cappadocia also, rock tombs, sculptures, and fragments of buildings have been discovered, the authors of which and the date of their erection we cannot ascertain even approximately. Near Amasia, on the middle course of the Iris, we find graves hewn in the rocks, of which those lying nearest the city may have belonged to the first kings of Pontus. Near Aladja also the facade of a large rock-tomb may be seen.

Near Uejuk, on an elevated terrace, are the ruins of a palace, the lower part of which is formed by great blocks worked and joined in the Cyclopian style, and the blocks are in part covered with sculptures. In the middle of the south front is a s.p.a.cious doorway guarded by two pairs of lions; one pair is detached, the other is worked out of the stone posts of the doorway, like the protecting figures in the palaces of Nineveh.[783] Near Boghaskoi, which is perhaps the site of the ancient city of Pteria, at the foot of a lofty limestone plateau, overhung by cones of rock, in the fork of a mountain stream which flows northward to the Halys, are the remains of a building about 200 feet in length and 140 feet in breadth. A broad staircase leads from the river to a terrace, on which rises the palace surrounded by a wall. As at Uejuk, the lower part of the structure consists of Cyclopian blocks of fifteen to twenty feet in length, and some six feet in depth. About thirty chambers, greater or smaller, surround the court of this structure. The ground plan is like that of the palaces of Nineveh; in the sculptures a resemblance has been traced to the reliefs of the buildings of the Achaemenids. Pteria was afterwards the abode of a Persian commander. On the rocky plateau over the palace we see the remains of two citadels, surrounded by lines of fortification, of which the Cyclopian foundations may still be traced.[784] Two miles and a half to the north-west of the ruins of the citadels, in the rocks surrounding the plateau, remarkable sculptures have been discovered. In a deep recess of the rocks the rough walls, which have been but slightly hewn and smoothed, are covered with reliefs. There are two rows of figures which meet each other. They advance from the outer curve of the niche along the side-walls, on the right and left, towards the back wall. While the figures in these rows are only from two to three feet high, the shapes on the back wall, which form the centre of the picture, are of the size of life, and indeed the main figure is even larger. All the figures are in profile. The main figure, which moves from left to right, as does the long row of figures following it on the left side of the niche, is a bearded warrior, who steps over, or even upon, two bending figures with high and pointed caps, falling over in front, and in garments which fall in folds from the girdle. In his right hand he carries a sceptre, the left hand, which is not very distinct, holds a flower out of which peers a circle, or an oval ring. His doublet hardly reaches to the knee; the head is covered with a tall conical cap, and on the feet are pointed shoes. He is followed by two male figures suitably clothed, who stand on mountain summits; then between two winged genii are two figures with round caps, who carry bowls, and behind them a form in a long garment, with a bent staff in his hand, and a winged circle on his head. Then follow warriors armed with sabres, or clubs, in the same short doublet and the same pointed shoes as the three leaders, and between them are two demons, the only figures presenting a full face, with round, broad faces, who carry two segments of a circle, one upon the other. They were followed by warriors and two priests with pointed caps falling over in front. The end of the row on the left entrance is formed by a series of twelve warriors, who march on without armour, close together, and with even step. On the right side of the niche is another row, coming to meet the row described. Opposite the leader of the warriors, in the middle of the north wall, is a large female figure, who advances from the right to the left on a lion or leopard, whose feet rest on four mountain summits. She wears a long robe falling in folds to her ankles; her hair streams down, and upon it is a cylindrical head-dress; the right hand carries a staff, while the left, which holds something similar to the ring already mentioned, is held out towards the outstretched left hand of the leader of the warriors. Behind her, on a smaller scale, but also riding on a lion with the feet resting on mountain summits, is a youthful warrior, without a beard, in the clothing of the main figure; the head is covered with a lofty pointed cap, the shoes are also pointed; in the girdle is the two-edged bill, in the left hand a long battle-axe, and in the right a staff. He is followed by two female figures above a double eagle, in the dress of the main female figure; behind them come thirteen more female figures of a similar kind, with staves or harps in their hands.

The whole picture contains more than sixty figures. In a niche receding to the back we find, beside a demon of remarkable shape, a young beardless man with an exceedingly tall conical cap; in his outstretched right hand he appears to carry the picture of a temple; and with his left he embraces the neck of a very youthful female form, whose head-dress and robe fall down in numerous folds. Beside them march twelve warriors with lower caps than those in the main recess, and scythe swords in their right hands; the left arm is raised as high as the shoulder, since they are treading on the left heel, and the top of the right foot.[785]

If this great rock picture is not intended to represent some act of religious wors.h.i.+p, it might depict the conclusion of a treaty between two nations. In this case it might belong to the period in which Media, under Cyaxares, extended her borders to the Halys, and came into fierce conflict with the Lydians. This war was brought to an end by a treaty of peace, accompanied by the betrothal of the daughter of Alyattes of Lydia to the son of Cyaxares. The picture might be explained in reference to this treaty and betrothal, did not the style and manner appear closely allied to the figure near Smyrna (p. 151), and a relief not far from Ancyra.[786]

As to the religious rites of the Cappadocians, we know that they wors.h.i.+pped the G.o.d Men, who is called a moon-G.o.d, and a female deity, Mene, or Ma. On the Lycus, an affluent of the Iris, at Cabeira, stood the sanctuary of Men in the middle of large precincts; the sanctuary of Mene was at Comana, on the Iris, and was the oldest, richest, and most important sanctuary in the land. Ma, or Mene, was a war-G.o.ddess whom Greeks and Romans called Enyo and Bellona; to Strabo she is known as Artemis, and this name is evidence of her relation to the moon, no less than of her position as a war-G.o.ddess. That relation is confirmed by further evidence. Comana, says Strabo, is thickly populated; but the inhabitants are effeminate; the greater part are fanatics or religious maniacs, and there is also a number of women who serve the G.o.ddess with their bodies, of whom the greater part are dedicated to the temple.

Here, twice in the year, the "Exodus of the G.o.ddess" was celebrated. To this festival pilgrims, male and female, came from every side, and in frenzy and ecstasy performed certain sacred customs, which consisted partly in wounding themselves with swords, and partly in sensual excesses. In the south of Cappadocia, on the upper Sarus, there was a second city of Comana, which also possessed a sanctuary of Ma. Here, as at Comana on the Iris, six thousand servants are said to have attended upon Ma.[787] We know the tendencies of the Syrian wors.h.i.+p, to bring man, by means of certain services, nearer to the deity to whom the services are performed, and make him resemble the peculiar nature of the deity whom he wors.h.i.+ps. The maidens who served the maiden G.o.ddess in her temples on the Pontus carried weapons like the G.o.ddess, and honoured her by dancing in armour.

Out of these armed maidens in the temples of Ma there grew up among the Greeks a peculiar and widely-developed legend--the legend of the warlike tribe of the Amazons. When the Greek colonists landed on the western coast of Asia Minor, they found, in the land of the Lydians, where they built Smyrna, Cyme, and Ephesus, seats of the wors.h.i.+p of a G.o.ddess whom they compared to their Artemis, and whose attendants were eunuchs and armed maidens (p. 556). They next perceived that similar seats of wors.h.i.+p were to be found in the East also, on the coasts of the Pontus.

Thus the Homeric poems already placed the "Amazons equal to men" on the east of the Phrygians, and represented king Priam as meeting them with his men on the banks of the Sangarius.[788] As natives of Asia Minor the Amazons must have fought with the Trojans against the Greeks. Arctinus represented the Amazons as coming to Troy after the death of Hector, and distressing the Greeks till Achilles slew their queen, the beautiful "Penthesilea, the daughter of the dread, manslaying Ares." The cyclic poets knew the abode of the Amazons more accurately than Homer; they place them at Themiscyra, on the Thermodon;[789] and at this place Pindar represents them as drawing up their army. aeschylus also places the Amazons on the Thermodon;[790] according to Pherecydes the war-G.o.d begot the Amazons with Harmonia on the Thermodon.[791] We have seen that the Greeks gave the name Harmonia to Astarte, the moon-G.o.ddess of the Phenicians. When the Greeks at the time of Arctinus had founded Sinope and Trapezus in those regions, they believed that they were in the land of the Amazons; and Sinope was thought to have been previously inhabited by the Amazons.[792] The places at which the Greeks here founded a new home were thought to have been named and sanctified long before their arrival, not only by the voyage of the Argonauts, for Heracles, Theseus, and Peirithous were said to have set foot there, in order to perform their mighty deeds against the Amazons. At the command of Eurystheus Heracles had been compelled to bring the girdle from Hippolyte, the queen of the Amazons, for Admete. Theseus and Peirithous had carried off Antiope. Among the Phenicians, as we have seen, Baal-Melkarth looses the girdle of the moon-G.o.ddess; the Greeks transferred the legend of Melicertes to their Heracles. Even as early as the thirteenth or twelfth century B.C. the s.h.i.+ps of the Phenicians had probably brought the wors.h.i.+p of the warlike moon-G.o.ddess to the coast of Attica. At any rate, at a later time, tombs of the Amazons, _i.e._ abandoned seats of the wors.h.i.+p of the Artemis of Syria and Asia Minor, were shown there. After the Attic territory was united under the rule of a military monarchy, of which, among the Ionians, Theseus was the embodiment, the Phenicians were driven back from the coasts of the Greeks: Theseus was said to have conquered the Minotaur and the Amazons. In order to establish the existence of Amazons in Attica, Theseus was said to have carried off Antiope. To avenge this wrong, the Amazons marched from their distant home on the Thermodon to Attica; and the Athenians considered it one of their greatest services towards their common fatherland that they had conquered the Amazons, "an enemy who threatened all h.e.l.las."[793]

Out of these elements the Greeks framed a circ.u.mstantial history of the Amazons. Even among the historians, their home is the land of the Thermodon. Here the Amazons dwelt, according to Herodotus, Diodorus, and Strabo, and here, as Diodorus tells us, they offered splendid sacrifices to Ares and Artemis Tauropolus. Their first queen is said to have been the daughter of Ares, and she built the great city of Themiscyra; the second queen extended the dominion of the Amazons as far as Syria; and finally queen Myrina reduced the whole of Syria, and received the voluntary submission of the Cilicians.[794] It is obvious that the Amazons founded all the cities where the wors.h.i.+p of the maiden war-G.o.ddess flourished or had ever existed. Roused by the crime of Theseus, they marched to the west, founded the sanctuary of Ephesus, where "they set up the image of the G.o.ddess under the trunk of an elm, and, armed with s.h.i.+elds, danced the war-dance, so that their quivers sounded."[795] Then they marched to the north, and founded Smyrna, Myrina, and Cyme.[796] a.n.a.logous rites proved that they were also in Lesbos and Samothrace. Through Thrace and Thessaly, and finally across Euboea, they are said to have marched to Attica; tombs of the Amazons were shown at Scotussa and Cynoscephalae, in Thessaly, and at Chalcis, in Euboea.[797] After returning home, the Amazons next marched to the aid of the Trojans, and were conquered by Achilles. When the Greeks had founded Cyrene on the coast of Attica, and found, among the Libyan tribes of the surrounding district, the wors.h.i.+p of a female war-G.o.ddess--when they found the Libyan women wearing corslets of goatskins, they came to the conclusion that the Amazons once dwelt on the Tritonian lake in Libya.[798]

A nation of heroines was certainly never found by the Greeks on the Thermodon. On the other hand, they received accounts of the warlike queens of the Saces and Ma.s.sagetae, of Zarinaea, Sparethra, and Tomyris, who fought against the Medes and Persians; and on the coasts of the Black Sea, in the colonies of the Milesians, they heard of the riding, the archery, and hunting of the women of the Sauromatae. Hence the Greeks resolved to make the Amazons the ancestors of the Sarmatians. They were represented as taking s.h.i.+p from the Thermodon across the Black Sea to the coast of the Maeotis, because here, in the Crimea, on the "promontory of the maiden," a cruel maiden G.o.ddess, who was also called Artemis Tauropolus by the Greeks, was wors.h.i.+pped. Herodotus, and after him Ephorus, tells us that the Amazons fled over the Pontus from the Thermodon, and landed on the sh.o.r.e of the Maeotis. Here they took the young men among the Scythians, who, according to Herodotus, were settled between the mouths of the Danube and the Don, as their husbands, and with them marched eastwards over the Tanais (Don), beyond which river and north of the Caucasus lay, according to Herodotus, the dwellings of the Sauromatae, whom later writers call the Sarmatians. Hence the Sarmatian women still preserved the customs of the Amazons; they carried bows and javelins, and wore the same clothing as the men, sat on horseback, and rode with or without their husbands to the chase or to battle, and no maiden married till she had slain an enemy; "so that some never married at all, because they were unable to satisfy this rule."

The language of the Sauromatae was the same as the language of the Scythians, but they spoke it badly, because the Amazons had never perfectly learned it. These statements, and especially the a.s.sertion that the Sarmatian women fought as long as they were maidens, were repeated by Greek writers--in other respects very trustworthy--in the fifth and fourth century B.C. Others also maintained that the women were rulers among the Sarmatians.[799] Poetry and plastic art had stamped the legend of the Amazons so firmly on the Greeks that they could not break loose from it. Several of the historians of Alexander of Macedon tell us that the queen Thalestris, with 300 Amazons, sought out Alexander from a great distance, and made a proposal of marriage to him, on his return from Hyrcania,[800] a story which has perhaps arisen out of the fact that the satrap Atropates of Media sent 100 mounted women to Alexander.[801] When at a later time Pompey fought in the Caucasus, and women were found among the wounded, it was thought that the real Amazons were at last found;[802] and the story was now told that the Amazons dwelt northward of the Gelen (in Ghilan), on the southern foot of the Caucasus. In order to solve the difficulty of their propagation of the race, the story was invented that for two months in the spring they met the Gargareans--a neighbouring tribe--on the mountains by night, and a.s.sociated with them, as accident might determine. The boys were then sent to the Gargareans, who brought them up in common; the daughters were retained by the Amazons.[803] In order to explain the name Amazon, which in Greek can mean "without a breast," the story was invented that they burnt off the right breast of the maidens, so that they might use the right arm better, and draw the bow--a story which Hippocrates had already told about the daughters of the Sarmatians.[804] On the monuments of plastic art the Amazons have both b.r.e.a.s.t.s; the older period represents them with a broad girdle, an ample robe, and a Phrygian cap, a crescent s.h.i.+eld (the symbol of the moon-G.o.ddess), a bow, and a battle-axe. In later sculptures the Amazons, when they had been connected with the Scythians and the Sarmatians, were generally represented on horseback, in a Doric tunic, with naked arms and thighs, a helmet on the head, and a spear in the hand.

On the western slopes of the table-land of Asia Minor, in the river valleys of the Hermus and Maeander, the Lydians were settled. Their land reached from the sources of the Hermus in Mount Dindymon to the aegean sea, from Messogis and Cadmus in the south to the Temnus range in the north. The valley of the Hermus was exuberantly fertile, and still more luxuriant was the vegetation in the district round the Gygaean lake. The mountain pastures supported herds of powerful horses and numerous flocks of sheep. The Pactolus brought sands of gold down from Tmolus; in the rocks of this range and its western continuation, Sipylus, rich veins of gold are said to have been found.[805]

But little has been preserved of the legendary accounts of the Lydians about their rulers in the earliest times. About the middle of the fifth century B.C. the Lydian Xanthus, the son of Candaules, wrote the history of his people in four books, in the Greek language. Of this some fragments have come down to us, which can here and there be supplemented by the statements of Herodotus. From both we learn that the Lydians traced back the origin of their royal house to the G.o.ds. Atys, the son of the G.o.d Manes, was the first sovereign of the Lydians; after him came his son Lydus, who gave the name to the people. From the brother of Lydus, whom Xanthus calls Torrhebus, and Herodotus Tyrsenus, the tribe of the Torrhebians or Tyrsenians was derived. The territory of the Torrhebi lay on the upper Cayster. From Asius, the son of Cotys, the son of Atys, sprang the tribe of the Asionaeans, who inhabited the Asian meadow.[806] From Atys, their progenitor, the first king, his successors, the first house of Lydian kings, were called Atyads. Among the successors of Lydus the most pious and just was Alkimus. During his reign there was peace and quiet in Lydia; every man lived securely and without fear, and all things prospered. After him reigned king Akiamus, who sent Ascalus with an army to Syria. There Ascalus founded the city of Ascalon. After this, as Herodotus narrates, a lion was born to king Meles from his concubine, and this lion, in obedience to an oracle, he caused to be carried round the walls of Sardis, his metropolis, in order that they might be impregnable.[807] According to Xanthus, Meles, who was a tyrannous and cruel king, was overthrown by Moxus, a very just and brave man, after he had vowed to the G.o.ds that, in grat.i.tude for their deliverance, the Lydians should henceforth offer to them a tenth of all their animals. Then Moxus marched to Syria, and there took Atargatis captive, with her son Ichthys (fish). As a punishment for her rebellion she was thrown into the lake of Ascalon, and eaten by the fish. Then king Cambletes reigned, who sacrificed his wife, and ate her, and then slew himself with his sword before all the people. After him Jarda.n.u.s, who had been an enemy of Cambletes, ruled over Lydia.[808] Jarda.n.u.s was followed by his daughter Omphale.[809] To avenge the insult which had been paid to her before she ascended the throne of Lydia, she compelled the maidens of the land to give themselves up to the slaves at an appointed place, and slew the strangers whom she entertained, when she had lain with them.[810] After Omphale, Tylon reigned, who died from the bite of a snake, but was again restored to life by a marvellous herb.[811] But with the slave-girl of Jarda.n.u.s, according to Herodotus, or, according to others, with Omphale, Heracles begot Alcaeus; the son of Alcaeus was Belus; the son of Belus was Ninus, and the son of Ninus was Agron. With the accession of Agron the dominion of the Atyads came to an end, and that of the Heracleids commenced, who then continued to rule over Lydia for 505 years.[812]

Manes and Atys are already known to us as deities of the Phrygians; they must therefore have been wors.h.i.+pped by the Lydians also. Lydus, the second king of the land, is taken from the name of the nation. The prosperous, peaceful reign of the good king Alkimus is no doubt founded on some conception of an early happy age. The story of the lion of Meles obviously goes back to the relations in which the lion was placed, in the religious rites of the Syrians, to the sun-G.o.d, who was also wors.h.i.+pped with zeal by the Lydians. We learn from a Lydian that the name Sardis was given to the city in honour of the sun-G.o.d.[813] The coins of Sardis which have been preserved regularly present the image of a lion and a bull.[814] The vow of Moxus is intended to explain the blood-t.i.the, which we have already found in use among the tribes of Syria. Still more definite are the references to Syrian rites in the supposed marches of Moxus and Ascalus to Syria, and the prominent position of Atargatis[815] and the temple of Ascalon, and the children of Atargatis, the fish. We know Atargatis, the Astarte of the a.s.syrians, as transformed into Hera, and the temple at Ascalon, the city of the Philistines, as the oldest and most famous sanctuary of the Syrian G.o.ddess of fertility. The name of the king Jarda.n.u.s does not differ from "jarden" (river), and if Omphale is said to have forced the maidens of the land to prost.i.tute themselves at a fixed place, we have already found this prost.i.tution in the wors.h.i.+p of the Syrian G.o.ddess of birth and the Babylonian Mylitta. The new dynasty which ascends the throne of Lydia after the Atyads with Agron is again derived from a G.o.d, according to the accounts of the Greeks, from Heracles and Omphale. The Greeks narrated that Omphale carried the lion's skin and club of Heracles, and that she clothed the hero in a transparent female robe of scarlet, and caused him to card wool and spin as her slave.[816] Lydian coins exhibit a female form with the lion's skin and the bow.[817] It was shown above that the Greeks connected Melkarth (Melicertes) with their Heracles, and that according to the mythus of the Syrians, the sun-G.o.d finds and overpowers the moon-G.o.ddess; that after the holy marriage, the G.o.d on his part succ.u.mbs to the G.o.ddess, and changes his nature with her; he a.s.sumes the female nature, she the male; she carries the weapons, while he performs woman's work. We saw that the Syrians symbolised the pre-eminent nature, the unity of the deity, in this amalgamation of the s.e.xes--this female manhood and male womanhood. Johannes Lydus tells us that the Lydians wors.h.i.+pped the sun-G.o.d under the name Sandon, and adds, that because Sandon had lived as a woman, the men at the mysteries of the G.o.d clothed themselves in women's clothes, and put on transparent crimson garments, coloured with vermilion.[818] Thus the Greeks put their hero in the place of the Lydian sun-G.o.d, who overwhelms the lion, and changes his nature with the G.o.ddess; and if they farther tell us that Omphale gave her love to strangers, but also slew all who lay with her, this also is a trait which had already met us in the Syrian Astarte, in the nature of Ashera-Astarte, which at one time grants the enjoyment of love, and at another brings destruction.

The result of these considerations proves that the traits of the Lydian legends, which have been preserved, present us with very little beyond mere mythical elements. The connection of the Lydian wors.h.i.+p with the wors.h.i.+p of the Syrians comes plainly to the surface, and this connection is confirmed by all that we know from other sources of the rites of the Lydians. The name of their sun-G.o.d Sandon[819] recurs on a.s.syrian monuments, where it appears as Sandan.[820] In the Semitic languages the word means "helper," and is used as an attribute of the G.o.d Adar, with whom we are already acquainted as the G.o.d of the planet Saturn.[821] It is obvious that the t.i.tle "helper" could be given not to Adar only, but to any other G.o.d, from whom special favour and a.s.sistance might be expected. The Lydians gave the t.i.tle to the good sun-G.o.d, who vanquishes the glowing heat--the terrible sun-G.o.d--who looses the girdle of the moon-G.o.ddess, and changes his nature with her. When the Greek colonists landed on the coast of Lydia, they at first recognised their own Apollo, i.e. their G.o.d of light, in the Lydian G.o.d. They allowed the sanctuary of the Lydian G.o.d at Miletus to remain in the hands of a family of native priests, the Branchidae. As G.o.d of the country and protector of the coast, the Homeric poems give to Apollo the foremost place among the deities who defend Troy. The Lydians also on their side recognised the connection between their sun-G.o.d and the Apollo of the Greeks; Gyges and Croesus send rich presents to Delphi. But when the Greeks of the coast became more accurately acquainted with the nature and the myths of the Lydian sun-G.o.d, that side which chiefly corresponded to their Heracles, and the image of Heracles developed under the influence of the Phenician Melkarth, came into prominence. The nature of the female G.o.ddess also, whom the Lydians chiefly wors.h.i.+pped, is beyond doubt.

Herodotus tells us that all the daughters of the Lydians sold themselves, and in this way collected their dowries; others narrate that they received slaves or foreigners in the groves and porticoes of the temples.[822] As we have seen, tradition connects this prost.i.tution with the rule of Omphale, and Johannes Lydus a.s.sures us that the G.o.ddess Blatta wors.h.i.+pped in Lydia was the same as the Mylitta of the Babylonians. Hence the wors.h.i.+p of Bilit, the Ashera of the Syrians, prevailed also among the Lydians, a fact which the campaigns (already mentioned) of Ascalus and Moxus to the shrine of Derceto at Ascalon also prove. That this G.o.ddess of the Lydians was not without her destructive side--the power and nature of Astarte--we could already infer from the b.l.o.o.d.y acts of Omphale (p. 562). At the mouths of the Cayster and the Hermus the Greeks found the shrines of a G.o.ddess, whose priests were eunuchs, and who was at the same time honoured with dances in armour by maidens, as the moon and war-G.o.ddess of the Cappadocians.[823] This G.o.ddess of the coasts of Lydia was called by the Greeks Artemis, and this name distinguishes her as at once a maiden G.o.ddess and the G.o.ddess of the moon and of war. And if at the same time the image of Artemis of Ephesus was represented with large b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the obvious conclusion is that in the G.o.ddess of Lydia, as in the G.o.ddesses of Babylonia and Syria, the two opposites, of continence and sensual enjoyment, of fertility and of destruction, were united.

The forms of religious wors.h.i.+p also would appear to have been in all essentials the same among the Lydians and the Syrians. Mutilation (which we know was practised very widely among the Lydians),[824] and the prost.i.tution of girls, were common to both countries. We found above that the Arabs and Syrians believed their G.o.ds to be present in stones, and prayed to them in that shape. Not far from Magnesia on Sipylus, a stone, some twenty feet in height, juts out of a wall of marble, and this in ancient times must have been regarded with veneration as the idol of a native G.o.ddess. Even in the Homeric poems we find mention of this stone, and the legend connected with it by the Greek colonists. "I have seen the stone of Niobe on Sipylus," said Pausanias. "At a near view it is a fragment of stone, which does not look like a woman or a person weeping; but from a distance you might believe that you saw a weeping and mourning woman."[825]

The essential result of the examination of Lydian legend and Lydian wors.h.i.+p is the obvious and very close relations.h.i.+p between the Lydian and Syrian deities and rites. Moreover, the mountain range which bounds the valley of the Maeander to the south, bears the Semitic name of Cadmus, _i.e._ "the Eastern;" and at the foot of the range lies the city of Ninoe (Nineveh, _i.e._ "to dwell.")[826] Again, from one side the languages of the Phrygians and Lydians are said to be distinctly different; on the other hand, most of the Lydian words which have been preserved to us by the Greeks--it is true they are not numerous--can be traced back to Semitic roots;[827] and the national genealogy of the Hebrews enumerates Lud among the sons of Shem, together with Elam, a.s.shur, Arphaxad, and Aram. Yet, so far as the Lydian language allows us to form an opinion, elements of a different character are not entirely wanting. The G.o.ds Manes and Atys, from whom the first royal house was derived, and after whom it was named, the G.o.ddess Cybele, whose temple stood at Sardis,[828] do not belong to the circle of Semitic deities.

Manes, as well as Atys, we found in Phrygia. Hence, looking back at the connection between the Armenians, Phrygians, and Thracians, already brought into prominence we may suppose that the original population of the river valley of the Hermus was Phrygian, and that Semitic invaders from the east subjugated these Phrygians and absorbed them; but not without adopting on their part some elements of the Phrygian language and wors.h.i.+p.

That a monarchy was in existence among the Lydians before the first Heracleid ascended the throne cannot be doubted. In the time of the Heracleids we find mention made of the descendants of Tylon (p. 562), a king who is said to have belonged to the family of the Atyads. The foundation and fortification of Sardis also seem to belong to the period before the Heracleids, the period of the Atyads. Herodotus tells us that the second dynasty, the supposed descendants of Sandon-Heracles, gave twenty-two sovereigns to the Lydians, who ruled over Lydia for 505 years.[829] However astonis.h.i.+ng the pedigree which Herodotus gives to these Heracleids (the son of Heracles, Alcaeus, begets Belus, Belus begets Ninus, and Ninus Agron),[830] we may regard his statement of the period for which this dynasty lasted, of which several later members are established, as historical. And since, after the Heracleids, the family of Gyges ruled for 140 years down to the time when Cyrus took Sardis, and since