Kitabı oku: «The History of Antiquity, Vol. 1 (of 6)», sayfa 32

The essential result of the examination of Lydian legend and Lydian worship is the obvious and very close relationship between the Lydian and Syrian deities and rites. Moreover, the mountain range which bounds the valley of the Mæander to the south, bears the Semitic name of Cadmus, i. e. "the Eastern;" and at the foot of the range lies the city of Ninoë (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, Asshur, 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 gods Manes and Atys, from whom the first royal house was derived, and after whom it was named, the goddess 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 worship.

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 astonishing the pedigree which Herodotus gives to these Heracleids (the son of Heracles, Alcæus, 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 the taking of Sardis fell in the year 549 B.C., the Heracleids must have ascended the throne of Lydia 645 years previously, i. e. in the year 1194 B.C.⁸³¹ What degree of civilisation had been reached by the Lydians about the year 1000 B.C. we can only conclude from the fact that the Greek settlers on their coasts found money already coined by the Lydians, and therefore ascribe to them the invention of the art of coining.⁸³² The art of dying wool also was, in the opinion of the Greeks, an invention of the Lydians; and games at ball as well as at dice were thought to have been learnt from the Lydians by the Greeks.⁸³³ That the Greeks made use of the Lydian flute, and subsequently of the Lydian cithara (both the cithara with three strings and that with twenty strings), and the Lydian harmonies to enrich their own music, is an established fact.⁸³⁴ The Homeric poems describe the Lydians (Mæonians) as an "armed equestrian people," and mention their trade and wealth.⁸³⁵

North of the Lydians, in the river valleys of the Caïcus Macestus and Rhyndacus, were settled the Mysians. According to Strabo, they spoke a language of mixed Phrygian and Lydian elements.⁸³⁶ It was apparently the Mysian legend which told of king Tantalus, who possessed the greatest treasures, who slew his son and offered him for a banquet, i. e. for a sacrifice to the gods. His grave was shown on Sipylus.⁸³⁷ Before the Greek colonists took the coasts from them, the Mysians may have risen to the first elements of civilisation; but when they were debarred from the sea, they remained within the limits of their mountains, pursuing an agricultural and pastoral life. About the year 500 B.C. their armour was still a small round shield and javelins, the points of which were hardened in the fire.⁸³⁸ In spite of these miserable weapons they gave a good deal of trouble to the satraps of the Persian king, and even at a later time desolated the fruitful plains on the coasts by marauding inroads. Of their worship we only know that the Greeks found the rites of a god of light on the coasts at Thymbra, Chryse, and Cilla, who was invoked under the title Smintheus, a word which is said to mean the expeller or destroyer of field-mice;⁸³⁹ and that a goddess of procreation and fertility was worshipped on Ida.⁸⁴⁰ In the Homeric poems it is Aphrodite, by the side of Apollo, who protects Ilium, and favours Capys and the sons of Priam in the dells of Ida.

The coast of Asia Minor, to the south of the Lydians, was in the possession of the Carians. Herodotus tells us that, according to the legends of the Cretans, the Carians were, in the most ancient times, called Leleges, and inhabited the islands of the Ægean at the time when Minos reigned in Crete. They were compelled to man the fleet of Minos. A long time afterwards they were driven out of the islands by the Ionians and Dorians, and migrated to Asia Minor. But the Carians themselves maintained that they had always lived in the land which they possessed.⁸⁴¹ We cannot hesitate to give the preference to the assertion of the Carians. From the numerous harbours of their coast they could easily cross to the neighbouring islands, and thus they could populate Rhodes Samos and Chios.⁸⁴² Advancing from one to another in the numerous islands of this sea, they reached the Cyclades and settled there. The most ancient population of Crete, called by the Greeks Eteocretes, may very likely have consisted of Carians only, as is proved by the position which Greek legend gives to the Carians in reference to Minos, as well as by other evidence. This occupation of the islands of the Ægean Sea by the Carians must be placed about the year 1500 B.C. For when the Phenicians colonised these islands in the thirteenth century, they were occupied by Carians. The Carian population became dependent on the Phenicians. Subsequently, about the year 1000 B.C., the Hellenes landed on the islands of the Ægean, and drove out the Carians. The Carians lost even Samos and Chios; they were again confined to their old home, and they could not even maintain themselves in that, for the best harbours of their coasts passed into the hands of the Greeks. Yet the Carians continued to be seamen and pirates. They lay in wait, as before, for the merchants, and overran the rich coast land. Even in the seventh century we meet with Carian pirates and mercenaries, and these not only on the mouths and banks of the Nile; and the Chronographers mention, apparently, a hegemony of the Carians on the sea, which is placed in the interval from the year 731 to the year 670 B.C.⁸⁴³

The Carians had no monarchy embracing the whole of their territory. But here also, so far as we can see, princes stood at the head of the various cities. A kind of confederation united the several places. About the year 500 we hear of assemblies of Carians on the banks of the Marsyas near the white pillars, and afterwards we find common sacrifices of the Carian cities, and days of meeting in the temple of Zeus Chrysaor, which was situated in the neighbourhood of Mylasa (now Milas) at Lagina (now Leïna).⁸⁴⁴ Among the Carians the Greek colonists found a style of armour superior to their own, and they adopted it. The "Catalogue of ships," in Homer, represents the leader of the Carians as going into battle decked with gold.⁸⁴⁵ In Alcæus "the Carian helmet laments," and Anacreon speaks "of putting the hand upon the well-fitted Carian haft." Herodotus tells us that the Greeks learned from the Carians to wear plumes upon their helmets, to paint devices upon their shields, and to furnish them with fixed handles, – in Homer the shields are carried over the shoulder by straps. Greaves also are said to have been invented by the Carians.⁸⁴⁶

We are unable to tell with certainty the origin or the national characteristics of the Carians, though Herodotus maintains that the Lydians, Mysians, and Carians spoke the same language. Of the religious worship of the Carians he tells us that they were the only nation who worshipped Zeus as a warrior. Mylasa was the centre of their worship. On the heights which tower over the plain of Mylasa, in a forest of plane-trees, near Labranda, lay the temple of "Zeus Stratius." The image of the god is said to have carried the double axe. Carian coins of the fourth century B.C. display the image of a god with a double axe.⁸⁴⁷ The same axe is also found on the remains of Carian altars. The Greeks even maintain that the god was named after this axe, that his national name was Labrandeus, and that in Lydian and Carian labrys meant a battle-axe. Plutarch says: – Arselis, the Carian of Mylasa, marched to the aid of Candaules, king of Lydia (he ruled about the year 700 B.C.), and afterwards he left the sacred axe of the kings of Lydia to the god of Labranda.⁸⁴⁸ This giving up of the battle-axe to the god of the battle-axe allows us to suppose that the god of Mylasa is meant by the Carian of Mylasa; and that Arselis may have been the name or attribute of this god – a supposition which is changed into a certainty by the fact that in Semitic languages, Chars-el means "axe of El," "axe of God."⁸⁴⁹ Beside this warrior Zeus, a warlike Aphrodite was also worshipped at Mylasa,⁸⁵⁰ and if Strabo calls the goddess of Leïna Hecate, the reason of the name may be the death-bringing power of the goddess Astarte-Ashera. The sacred fish who were to be found in a pool at Mylasa, with gold rings round the neck, would then be evidence of the bountiful, increase-giving side of the nature of this goddess.⁸⁵¹

East of the Carians, on the south coast, in the valley of the Xanthus, were the settlements of the Lycians. The range of Taurus, which here rises to a height of 10,000 feet, sinks down in fields of snow and Alpine pastures to the course of the Xanthus. The sides of this valley, Mounts Kragus and Anti-Kragus, are beautifully wooded, and traversed by sounding rills. The view extends from the upper course of the river over the luxuriant vegetation of the plain down to the sea.

Herodotus tells us that this district was once known as Milyas, and that the Lycians, who were originally called Termilians, immigrated from Crete. Sarpedon and Minos contended for the throne, and as Minos got the upper hand, Sarpedon went with the Termilians to Asia, and took possession of Milyas. Afterwards Lycus, the son of the Attic king Pandion, when driven out by his brother Aegeus, came to Sarpedon, and from him the Termilians got the name of Lycians. Their laws were Cretan and Carian. They wore hats adorned with feathers, goat skins round their shoulders, sickle-shaped swords and daggers, coats of mail, greaves, bows, and arrows of reeds. They were named after the mother, and not after the father, and spoke of the mothers of their mothers as their ancestors. The son of a free woman and a slave was free and passed for a well-born man; but if a free man, even the first among them, begot children with a foreign woman or a concubine, these were outlaws.⁸⁵² Heraclides of Pontus extends these statements so far as to assert that the Lycians from ancient times had been under the dominion of their wives; Nicolaus, of Damascus tells us that the daughters of the Lycians, and not the sons, took the inheritance.⁸⁵³

In the Homeric poems, Prœtus, king of Argos, sends Bellerophontes of Ephyra (Corinth) to the king of the Lycians, to be put to death. The king bade him slay the Chimæra, a monster which was a lion in front, a goat in the middle part, and a dragon behind, and when he succeeded in this he sent him to fight against the Solymi and the Amazons. But afterwards he gave him half his kingdom and his daughter, who bore him Hippolochus and Laodameia. The son of Hippolochus was Glaucus, and the son of Laodameia was Sarpedon, the chieftains who led the Lycians to the aid of the Trojans.

Beside the supposed immigration of the Lycians from Crete and the poetry of Homer we know nothing of the history of the Lycians beyond the fact that they did not submit to the army of Cyrus without a most obstinate resistance. And even under the supremacy of the Persians the Lycians managed their internal affairs independently. They formed a federation which was in existence at Strabo's time, and then included twenty-three places. Each city was represented at the assembly; the six larger cities had three votes each, the next largest had two, and the smaller cities had one.⁸⁵⁴

The name Milyas, which, according to Herodotus, was borne by the valley of the Xanthus, clung even in later times to the spur under the ridge of Mount Taurus, which runs out eastward towards Mount Solyma. Hence the Lycians could easily be represented as in conflict with the Solymi. The name Chimæra is given to a high mountain valley on Mount Kragus.⁸⁵⁵ If the Greeks call the inhabitants of the valley of the Xanthus Lycians, the name has not arisen among them from the supposed Lycus, the brother of Ægeus, but rather from the Grecian god of light, Apollo Lyceus. According to the mythus of the Greeks, Apollo Bellerophontes (who was worshipped at Corinth), dashes down from his cloud-horse and with his crown of rays breaks through the thick clouds which obscure the sun; he overcomes Bellerus, the spirit of darkness. In the mind of the Greeks, Lycia was free from the clouds of winter; and, as a fact, the climate of the valley of the Xanthus is excellent. Into this bright land, therefore, the god was thought to have marched when he had become a hero; here he overcame the Chimæra, the creature of mist and cloud. The Greeks went still further in this conception. The east, the land of sunrise, was in itself the land of light, of the god of light, Lyceus. The god of light was thought to pass the winter in the brighter east, in the home of the sun. When the Greek colonists had settled on the western coasts of Asia Minor, they regarded the valley of the Xanthus as the eastern land of light, they gave it this name, and supposed that Apollo passed the winter in Lycia, and gave oracles during the six winter months at Patara in Lycia.⁸⁵⁶ In spite of the eastern situation and the climate of Lycia, this idea would hardly have taken root had not the Lycians at Patara, and probably at other places in Lycia, worshipped a god in whom the Greeks could recognise their own god of light. The Homeric poems place the Lycians in the closest connection with the Teucrians. There is a Xanthus in Lycia and in the Troad, and the name Tros seems to be identical with the name of the Lycian city of Tlos, which lies high up in the valley of the Xanthus under Taurus. In any case, from this close combination of the Teucrians and Lycians in Homer, we may conclude that with the Greeks of the coast the Lycians passed for a tribe who had already been for a long time in possession of their settlements. None but native Asiatic tribes could be represented as fighting beside the native Teucrians as their closest confederates.

The Lycians developed a peculiar civilisation and a peculiar art, of which numerous monuments, and many of them accompanied by inscriptions, have come down to us. The alphabet in these inscriptions closely resembles the Greek. With the aid of some inscriptions written in the Greek and Lycian languages, scholars have succeeded in fixing the value of the Lycian letters – of which there are ten for vowels and diphthongs, and twenty for consonants.⁸⁵⁷ By this means we have become acquainted with the name by which the Lycians called themselves. They were not merely called Termilians, as Herodotus supposed, in the most ancient times, but even in their own inscriptions they call themselves Tramele. The city which the Greeks calls Xanthus is in the language of the Tramele, Arna; the city of Patara is Pttarazu; Pegasa is Begssere.⁸⁵⁸ In fixing the character of the Lycian language, it was at first supposed that the Lycians might have been a branch of the Phrygians, who had forced their way over the Taurus to the south coast – an assumption which seems to be supported by the fact that the Lycian monuments resemble the Phrygian in plan and style; and that the Lycians, like the Phrygians, loved to excavate walls of rock and that in Lycia, as in Phrygia, the influence of the Greeks was felt at an early time. But the Lycian idiom, so far as the remains of it have been examined at present, was distinctly different from the Phrygian language. While some of our scholars find in the Lycian language words and inflexions allied to the Albanian, i. e. to the remains of the language of the ancient Illyrians, others are more inclined to place the Lycian in close connection with the Iranian languages.⁸⁵⁹ In either case the Lycians, like the Armenians and Phrygians, belong to the Indo-Germanic stock, and not only the Armenians and Phrygians, but along with them the forefathers of the Lycians came into Asia Minor from the north-east.

The Lycians were settled in a region of strong natural boundaries, and of a very defined and picturesque form. The position of their land, protected as it was by strong natural boundaries, secured for them a more undisturbed development than was possible to the other tribes of Asia Minor. Their cities and towers, Xanthus, Phellus, Myra, Telmissus, Patara, Pinara, and Tlos were surrounded by strong walls of Cyclopian architecture, and the splendid remains are evidence of great skill in masonry. The noble ruins of Xanthus, not far from the mouth of the river of the same name, still proclaim, even at a distance, the ancient metropolis of the Lycians. How far back the monuments of Lycia extend cannot be determined as yet. The oldest of which the date can be fixed go back to the reign of Darius II., the Itariayush of Lycian inscriptions. The reliefs exhibit the Chimæra, as described in Homer; and they repeatedly exhibit a lion slaying a bull.⁸⁶⁰ The Lycians themselves are represented in long garments, just as in works of Greek art; and even to this day the peasants on the Xanthus are to be seen in the caftan.⁸⁶¹ Pictures of battles, of agricultural and pastoral occupations are frequent on the monuments; but so far as the inscriptions have been deciphered at present, they afford no single instance in support of the statement of Herodotus that the Lycians were not named after the father, but after the mother.⁸⁶² The most important remains are the tombs, which are evidence of the great industry and care which the Lycians devoted to the repose and memory of the dead. A considerable number of these tombs lie within the walls of the city, and are surrounded by the ruins of other buildings. Hence the dwellings of the dead and of the living were not separated among the Lycians. Besides sarcophagi, made of blocks brought for the purpose, we also find detached rocks, which are changed into great sarcophagi, rocky peaks transformed into sepulchres, and extensive walls of rock, in which grave-chambers have been cut. The face of the rocky wall, thus hollowed out for tombs, is provided with façades which rise up in rich variety to the number of many thousands, over and alongside of each other, sometimes advancing, sometimes receding, according to the nature of the rock. The style of these tombs, which is for the most part very delicate and slender, is an imitation of a kind of wooden structure, which must have been common in Lycia in ancient times, and the simplest forms of which are still in use among the peasants of the region which corresponds to Lycia;⁸⁶³ sometimes the structure is simpler, at others more complicated, and the effect is strengthened by delicate and luxuriant ornamentation. The faces of the rock-tombs sometimes end with a flat framework of beams, at others with a gable in low relief. The detached sepulchres exhibit the same imitation of a wooden building. Many of these sepulchres are obviously intended for three corpses; in the single chamber included in them are generally found two stone benches in the sides and at the back a receptacle for a corpse in a recess.⁸⁶⁴ The detached sarcophagi are the most numerous. On a sub-structure, or immediately on the ground, stands a long stone coffin, closed by a high massive cover, the section of which exhibits a Gothic pointed arch. On these sarcophagi also the ornamentation is almost always rich, and carried out with neatness even to the smallest detail. Beside the sarcophagi we also find pillars and obelisks among the ruins. The tympana, friezes, and surfaces of all these monuments are covered with reliefs, which represent with much truth and liveliness the life of animals as well as the life of men. Evident remains of colouring on all the monuments show us that a layer of lively and even startling colours was laid upon these buildings. The reliefs also were painted, and some are treated almost as pictures. The inscriptions upon the tombs prove that the Lycians erected these tombs in their lifetime for themselves, wives, and children, and that this was done by several families in common; they invoke the anger of a goddess Phate – whom the Greeks call Leto – on those who might dare to violate them. From the nature and solidity of these tombs and sarcophagi, it is clear that the Lycians were almost at as much trouble to give a secure resting-place to their dead as the Egyptians were to give rest to their mummies, while the ornaments show that the Lycians must have regarded the life after death as a state of peaceful repose; the sculptures on the tombs invariably represent friendly scenes of family life, of occupation in the country, of social life or festal enjoyment. We see mothers with their children, carriage journeys, riders, processions, banquets, and feasts, and finally battle-pieces, in which the combatants are partly armed as Lycians and partly as Greeks. Nothing, not even in the pictures of battles, reminds us of the horrors of death, or of a judgment in the under world. The monuments of Lycia prove that the supremacy of the Persians did not interrupt the progress of Lycian art. But the creations of the later period enable us to see that Greek art, in her bloom, obtained and exercised the strongest influence over the Lycians. The most beautiful monument of Lycia, the tomb of Harpagus, the Persian satrap, which belongs to the first half of the fourth century, exhibits a preponderance of Greek forms.

THE END