Kitabı oku: «The History of Antiquity, Vol. 1 (of 6)», sayfa 31
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 Assyrians. 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 Assyria. For this, according to Assurbanipal, 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 Assyria. 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 façade of a large rock-tomb may be seen. Near Uejük, 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 spacious 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 Uejük, 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 Achæmenids. 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 worship, 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 worshipped the god Men, who is called a moon-god, 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-goddess 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-goddess. 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 goddess with their bodies, of whom the greater part are dedicated to the temple. Here, twice in the year, the "Exodus of the Goddess" 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 worship, 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 worships. The maidens who served the maiden goddess in her temples on the Pontus carried weapons like the goddess, 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 worship of a goddess whom they compared to their Artemis, and whose attendants were eunuchs and armed maidens (p. 556). They next perceived that similar seats of worship 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. Æschylus also places the Amazons on the Thermodon;790 according to Pherecydes the war-god begot the Amazons with Harmonia on the Thermodon.791 We have seen that the Greeks gave the name Harmonia to Astarte, the moon-goddess 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-goddess; the Greeks transferred the legend of Melicertes to their Heracles. Even as early as the thirteenth or twelfth century B.C. the ships of the Phenicians had probably brought the worship of the warlike moon-goddess to the coast of Attica. At any rate, at a later time, tombs of the Amazons, i. e. abandoned seats of the worship 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 Hellas."793
Out of these elements the Greeks framed a circumstantial 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 worship of the maiden war-goddess 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 goddess under the trunk of an elm, and, armed with shields, danced the war-dance, so that their quivers sounded."795 Then they marched to the north, and founded Smyrna, Myrina, and Cyme.796 Analogous rites proved that they were also in Lesbos and Samothrace. Through Thrace and Thessaly, and finally across Eubœa, they are said to have marched to Attica; tombs of the Amazons were shown at Scotussa and Cynoscephalæ, in Thessaly, and at Chalcis, in Eubœa.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 worship of a female war-goddess – 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 Massagetæ, of Zarinæa, 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 Sauromatæ. Hence the Greeks resolved to make the Amazons the ancestors of the Sarmatians. They were represented as taking ship from the Thermodon across the Black Sea to the coast of the Mæotis, because here, in the Crimea, on the "promontory of the maiden," a cruel maiden goddess, who was also called Artemis Tauropolus by the Greeks, was worshipped. Herodotus, and after him Ephorus, tells us that the Amazons fled over the Pontus from the Thermodon, and landed on the shore of the Mæotis. 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 Sauromatæ, 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 Sauromatæ 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 assertion 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 associated 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 breasts; the older period represents them with a broad girdle, an ample robe, and a Phrygian cap, a crescent shield (the symbol of the moon-goddess), 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 Mæander, the Lydians were settled. Their land reached from the sources of the Hermus in Mount Dindymon to the Ægean 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 Gygæan 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 gods. Atys, the son of the god 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 Asionæans, 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 gods that, in gratitude 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 Jardanus, who had been an enemy of Cambletes, ruled over Lydia.808 Jardanus 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 Jardanus, according to Herodotus, or, according to others, with Omphale, Heracles begot Alcæus; the son of Alcæus 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 worshipped 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-god, who was also worshipped with zeal by the Lydians. We learn from a Lydian that the name Sardis was given to the city in honour of the sun-god.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-tithe, 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 Atargatis815 and the temple of Ascalon, and the children of Atargatis, the fish. We know Atargatis, the Astarte of the Assyrians, as transformed into Hera, and the temple at Ascalon, the city of the Philistines, as the oldest and most famous sanctuary of the Syrian goddess of fertility. The name of the king Jardanus does not differ from "jarden" (river), and if Omphale is said to have forced the maidens of the land to prostitute themselves at a fixed place, we have already found this prostitution in the worship of the Syrian goddess 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 god, 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-god finds and overpowers the moon-goddess; that after the holy marriage, the god on his part succumbs to the goddess, and changes his nature with her; he assumes 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 sexes – this female manhood and male womanhood. Johannes Lydus tells us that the Lydians worshipped the sun-god under the name Sandon, and adds, that because Sandon had lived as a woman, the men at the mysteries of the god 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-god, who overwhelms the lion, and changes his nature with the goddess; 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 worship with the worship 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-god Sandon819 recurs on Assyrian monuments, where it appears as Sandan.820 In the Semitic languages the word means "helper," and is used as an attribute of the god Adar, with whom we are already acquainted as the god of the planet Saturn.821 It is obvious that the title "helper" could be given not to Adar only, but to any other god, from whom special favour and assistance might be expected. The Lydians gave the title to the good sun-god, who vanquishes the glowing heat – the terrible sun-god – who looses the girdle of the moon-goddess, 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 god of light, in the Lydian god. They allowed the sanctuary of the Lydian god at Miletus to remain in the hands of a family of native priests, the Branchidæ. As god 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-god and the Apollo of the Greeks; Gyges and Crœsus 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-god, 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 goddess also, whom the Lydians chiefly worshipped, 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 prostitution with the rule of Omphale, and Johannes Lydus assures us that the goddess Blatta worshipped in Lydia was the same as the Mylitta of the Babylonians. Hence the worship 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 goddess of the Lydians was not without her destructive side – the power and nature of Astarte – we could already infer from the bloody acts of Omphale (p. 562). At the mouths of the Cayster and the Hermus the Greeks found the shrines of a goddess, whose priests were eunuchs, and who was at the same time honoured with dances in armour by maidens, as the moon and war-goddess of the Cappadocians.823 This goddess of the coasts of Lydia was called by the Greeks Artemis, and this name distinguishes her as at once a maiden goddess and the goddess of the moon and of war. And if at the same time the image of Artemis of Ephesus was represented with large breasts, the obvious conclusion is that in the goddess of Lydia, as in the goddesses of Babylonia and Syria, the two opposites, of continence and sensual enjoyment, of fertility and of destruction, were united.
The forms of religious worship 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 prostitution of girls, were common to both countries. We found above that the Arabs and Syrians believed their gods 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 goddess. 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
