§ 1. The Burning of Sardanapalus.
(M128) The theory that kings or princes were formerly burned to death at
Tarsus in the character of gods is singularly confirmed by another and
wholly independent line of argument. For, according to one account, the
city of Tarsus was founded not by Sandan but by Sardanapalus, the famous
Assyrian monarch whose death on a great pyre was one of the most famous
incidents in Oriental legend. Near the sea, within a day’s march of
Tarsus, might be seen in antiquity the ruins of a great ancient city named
Anchiale, and outside its walls stood a monument called the monument of
Sardanapalus, on which was carved in stone the figure of the monarch. He
was represented snapping the fingers of his right hand, and the gesture
was explained by an accompanying inscription, engraved in Assyrian
characters, to the following effect:—“Sardanapalus, son of Anacyndaraxes,
built Anchiale and Tarsus in one day. Eat, drink, and play, for everything
else is not worth that,” by which was implied that all other human affairs
were not worth a snap of the fingers.(499) The gesture may have been
misinterpreted and the inscription mistranslated,(500) but there is no
reason to doubt the existence of such a monument, though we may conjecture
that it was of Hittite rather than Assyrian origin; for, not to speak of
the traces of Hittite art and religion which we have found at Tarsus, a
group of Hittite monuments has been discovered at Marash, in the upper
valley of the Pyramus.(501) The Assyrians may have ruled over Cilicia for
a time, but Hittite influence was probably much deeper and more
lasting.(502) The story that Tarsus was founded by Sardanapalus may well
be apocryphal,(503) but there must have been some reason for his
association with the city. On the present hypothesis that reason is to be
found in the traditional manner of his death. To avoid falling into the
hands of the rebels, who laid siege to Nineveh, he built a huge pyre in
his palace, heaped it up with gold and silver and purple raiment, and then
burnt himself, his wife, his concubines, and his eunuchs in the fire.(504)
The story is false of the historical Sardanapalus, that is, of the great
Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, but it is true of his brother Shamashshumukin.
Being appointed king of Babylon by Ashurbanipal, he revolted against his
suzerain and benefactor, and was besieged by him in his capital. The siege
was long and the resistance desperate, for the Babylonians knew that they
had no mercy to expect from the ruthless Assyrians. But they were
decimated by famine and pestilence, and when the city could hold out no
more, King Shamashshumukin, determined not to fall alive into the hands of
his offended brother, shut himself up in his palace, and there burned
himself to death, along with his wives, his children, his slaves, and his
treasures, at the very moment when the conquerors were breaking in the
gates.(505) Not many years afterwards the same tragedy was repeated at
Nineveh itself by Saracus or Sinsharishkun, the last king of Assyria.
Besieged by the rebel Nabopolassar, king of Babylon, and by Cyaxares, king
of the Medes, he burned himself in his palace. That was the end of Nineveh
and of the Assyrian empire.(506) Thus Greek history preserved the memory
of the catastrophe, but transferred it from the real victims to the far
more famous Ashurbanipal, whose figure in after ages loomed vast and dim
against the setting sun of Assyrian glory.
§ 2. The Burning of Croesus.
(M129) Another Oriental monarch who prepared at least to die in the flames
was Croesus, king of Lydia. Herodotus tells how the Persians under Cyrus
captured Sardes, the Lydian capital, and took Croesus alive, and how Cyrus
caused a great pyre to be erected, on which he placed the captive monarch
in fetters, and with him twice seven Lydian youths. Fire was then applied
to the pile, but at the last moment Cyrus relented, a sudden shower
extinguished the flames, and Croesus was spared.(507) But it is most
improbable that the Persians, with their profound reverence for the
sanctity of fire, should have thought of defiling the sacred element with
the worst of all pollutions, the contact of dead bodies.(508) Such an act
would have seemed to them sacrilege of the deepest dye. For to them fire
was the earthly form of the heavenly light, the eternal, the infinite, the
divine; death, on the other hand, was in their opinion the main source of
corruption and uncleanness. Hence they took the most stringent precautions
to guard the purity of fire from the defilement of death.(509) If a man or
a dog died in a house where the holy fire burned, the fire had to be
removed from the house and kept away for nine nights in winter or a month
in summer before it might be brought back; and if any man broke the rule
by bringing back the fire within the appointed time, he might be punished
with two hundred stripes.(510) As for burning a corpse in the fire, it was
the most heinous of all sins, an invention of Ahriman, the devil; there
was no atonement for it, and it was punished with death.(511) Nor did the
law remain a dead letter. Down to the beginning of our era the death
penalty was inflicted on all who threw a corpse or cow-dung on the fire,
nay, even on such as blew on the fire with their breath.(512) It is hard,
therefore, to believe that a Persian king should have commanded his
subjects to perpetrate a deed which he and they viewed with horror as the
most flagitious sacrilege conceivable.
(M130) Another and in some respects truer version of the story of Croesus
and Cyrus has been preserved by two older witnesses—namely, by the Greek
poet Bacchylides, who was born some forty years after the event,(513) and
by a Greek artist who painted the scene on a red-figured vase about, or
soon after, the time of the poet’s birth. Bacchylides tells us that when
the Persians captured Sardes, Croesus, unable to brook the thought of
slavery, caused a pyre to be erected in front of his courtyard, mounted it
with his wife and daughters, and bade a page apply a light to the wood. A
bright blaze shot up, but Zeus extinguished it with rain from heaven, and
Apollo of the Golden Sword wafted the pious king and his daughters to the
happy land beyond the North Wind.(514) In like manner the vase-painter
clearly represents the burning of Croesus as a voluntary act, not as a
punishment inflicted on him by the conqueror. He lets us see the king
enthroned upon the pyre with a wreath of laurel on his head and a sceptre
in one hand, while with the other he is pouring a libation. An attendant
is in the act of applying to the pile two objects which have been
variously interpreted as torches to kindle the wood or whisks to sprinkle
holy water. The demeanour of the king is solemn and composed: he seems to
be performing a religious rite, not suffering an ignominious death.(515)
Thus we may fairly conclude with some eminent modern scholars(516) that in
the extremity of his fortunes Croesus prepared to meet death like a king
or a god in the flames. It was thus that Hercules, from whom the old kings
of Lydia claimed to be sprung,(517) ascended from earth to heaven: it was
thus that Zimri, king of Israel, passed beyond the reach of his enemies:
it was thus that Shamashshumukin, king of Babylon, escaped a brother’s
vengeance: it was thus that the last king of Assyria expired in the ruins
of his capital; and it was thus that, sixty-six years after the capture of
Sardes, the Carthaginian king Hamilcar sought to retrieve a lost battle by
a hero’s death.(518)
(M131) Semiramis herself, the legendary queen of Assyria, is said to have
burnt herself on a pyre out of grief at the death of a favourite
horse.(519) Since there are strong grounds for regarding the queen in her
mythical aspect as a form of Ishtar or Astarte,(520) the legend that
Semiramis died for love in the flames furnishes a remarkable parallel to
the traditionary death of the love-lorn Dido, who herself appears to be
simply an Avatar of the same great Asiatic goddess.(521) When we compare
these stories of the burning of Semiramis and Dido with each other and
with the historical cases of the burning of Oriental monarchs, we may
perhaps conclude that there was a time when queens as well as kings were
expected under certain circumstances, perhaps on the death of their
consort, to perish in the fire. The conclusion can hardly be deemed
extravagant when we remember that the practice of burning widows to death
survived in India under English rule down to a time within living
memory.(522)
(M132) At Jerusalem itself a reminiscence of the practice of burning
kings, alive or dead, appears to have lingered as late as the time of
Isaiah, who says: “For Tophet is prepared of old; yea, for the king it is
made ready; he hath made it deep and large: the pile thereof is fire and
much wood; the breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle
it.”(523) We know that “great burnings” were regularly made for dead kings
of Judah,(524) and it can hardly be accidental that the place assigned by
Isaiah to the king’s pyre is the very spot in the Valley of Hinnom where
the first-born children were actually burned by their parents in honour of
Moloch “the King.” The exact site of the Valley of Hinnom is disputed, but
all are agreed in identifying it with one of the ravines which encircle or
intersect Jerusalem; and according to some eminent authorities it was the
one called by Josephus the Tyropoeon.(525) If this last identification is
correct, the valley where the children were burned on a pyre lay
immediately beneath the royal palace and the temple. Perhaps the young
victims died for God and the king.(526)
(M133) With the “great burnings” for dead Jewish kings it seems worth
while to compare the great burnings still annually made for dead Jewish
Rabbis at the lofty village of Meiron in Galilee, the most famous and
venerated place of pilgrimage for Jews in modern Palestine. Here the tombs
of the Rabbis are hewn out of the rock, and here on the thirtieth of
April, the eve of May Day, multitudes of pilgrims, both men and women,
assemble and burn their offerings, which consist of shawls, scarfs,
handkerchiefs, books, and the like. These are placed in two stone basins
on the top of two low pillars, and being drenched with oil and ignited
they are consumed to ashes amid the loud applause, shouts, and cries of
the spectators. A man has been known to pay as much as two thousand
piastres for the privilege of being allowed to open the ceremony by
burning a costly shawl. On such occasions the solemn unmoved serenity of
the Turkish officials, who keep order, presents a striking contrast to the
intense excitement of the Jews.(527) This curious ceremony may be
explained by the widespread practice of burning property for the use and
benefit of the dead. So, to take a single instance, the tyrant Periander
collected the finest raiment of all the women in Corinth and burned it in
a pit for his dead wife, who had sent him word by necromancy that she was
cold and naked in the other world, because the clothes he buried with her
had not been burnt.(528) In like manner, perhaps, garments and other
valuables may have been consumed on the pyre for the use of the dead kings
of Judah. In Siam, the corpse of a king or queen is burned in a huge
structure resembling a permanent palace, which with its many-gabled and
high-pitched roofs and multitudinous tinselled spires, soaring to a height
of over two hundred feet, sometimes occupies an area of about an
acre.(529) The blaze of such an enormous catafalque may resemble, even if
it far surpasses, the “great burnings” for the Jewish kings.
§ 3. Purification by Fire.
(M134) These events and these traditions seem to prove that under certain
circumstances Oriental monarchs deliberately chose to burn themselves to
death. What were these circumstances? and what were the consequences of
the act? If the intention had merely been to escape from the hands of a
conqueror, an easier mode of death would naturally have been chosen. There
must have been a special reason for electing to die by fire. The legendary
death of Hercules, the historical death of Hamilcar, and the picture of
Croesus enthroned in state on the pyre and pouring a libation, all combine
to indicate that to be burnt alive was regarded as a solemn sacrifice,
nay, more than that, as an apotheosis which raised the victim to the rank
of a god.(530) For it is to be remembered that Hamilcar as well as
Hercules was worshipped after death. Fire, moreover, was regarded by the
ancients as a purgative so powerful that properly applied it could burn
away all that was mortal of a man, leaving only the divine and immortal
spirit behind. Hence we read of goddesses who essayed to confer
immortality on the infant sons of kings by burning them in the fire by
night; but their beneficent purpose was always frustrated by the ignorant
interposition of the mother or father, who peeping into the room saw the
child in the flames and raised a cry of horror, thus disconcerting the
goddess at her magic rites. This story is told of Isis in the house of the
king of Byblus, of Demeter in the house of the king of Eleusis, and of
Thetis in the house of her mortal husband Peleus.(531) In a slightly
different way the witch Medea professed to give back to the old their lost
youth by boiling them with a hell-broth in her magic cauldron;(532) and
when Pelops had been butchered and served up at a banquet of the gods by
his cruel father Tantalus, the divine beings, touched with pity, plunged
his mangled remains in a kettle, from which after decoction he emerged
alive and young.(533) “Fire,” says Jamblichus, “destroys the material part
of sacrifices, it purifies all things that are brought near it, releasing
them from the bonds of matter and, in virtue of the purity of its nature,
making them meet for communion with the gods. So, too, it releases us from
the bondage of corruption, it likens us to the gods, it makes us meet for
their friendship, and it converts our material nature into an
immaterial.”(534) Thus we can understand why kings and commoners who
claimed or aspired to divinity should choose death by fire. It opened to
them the gates of heaven. The quack Peregrinus, who ended his disreputable
career in the flames at Olympia, gave out that after death he would be
turned into a spirit who would guard men from the perils of the night;
and, as Lucian remarked, no doubt there were plenty of fools to believe
him.(535) According to one account, the Sicilian philosopher Empedocles,
who set up for being a god in his lifetime, leaped into the crater of Etna
in order to establish his claim to godhead.(536) There is nothing
incredible in the tradition. The crack-brained philosopher, with his itch
for notoriety, may well have done what Indian fakirs(537) and the
brazen-faced mountebank Peregrinus did in antiquity, and what Russian
peasants and Chinese Buddhists have done in modern times.(538) There is no
extremity to which fanaticism or vanity, or a mixture of the two, will not
impel its victims.
§ 4. The Divinity of Lydian Kings.
(M135) But apart from any general notions of the purificatory virtues of
fire, the kings of Lydia seem to have had a special reason for regarding
death in the flames as their appropriate end. For the ancient dynasty of
the Heraclids which preceded the house of Croesus on the throne traced
their descent from a god or hero whom the Greeks called Hercules;(539) and
this Lydian Hercules appears to have been identical in name and in
substance with the Cilician Hercules, whose effigy was regularly burned on
a great pyre at Tarsus. The Lydian Hercules bore the name of Sandon;(540)
the Cilician Hercules bore the name of Sandan, or perhaps rather of
Sandon, since Sandon is known from inscriptions and other evidence to have
been a Cilician name.(541) The characteristic emblems of the Cilician
Hercules were the lion and the double-headed axe; and both these emblems
meet us at Sardes in connexion with the dynasty of the Heraclids. For the
double-headed axe was carried as part of the sacred regalia by Lydian
kings from the time of the legendary queen Omphale down to the reign of
Candaules, the last of the Heraclid kings. It is said to have been given
to Omphale by Hercules himself, and it was apparently regarded as a
palladium of the Heraclid sovereignty; for after the dotard Candaules
ceased to carry the axe himself, and had handed it over to the keeping of
a courtier, a rebellion broke out, and the ancient dynasty of the
Heraclids came to an end. The new king Gyges did not attempt to carry the
old emblem of sovereignty; he dedicated it with other spoils to Zeus in
Caria. Hence the image of the Carian Zeus bore an axe in his hand and
received the epithet of Labrandeus, from _labrys_, the Lydian word for
“axe.”(542) Such is Plutarch’s account; but we may suspect that Zeus, or
rather the native god whom the Greeks identified with Zeus, carried the
axe long before the time of Candaules. If, as is commonly supposed, the
axe was the symbol of the Asiatic thunder-god,(543) it would be an
appropriate emblem in the hand of kings, who are so often expected to make
rain, thunder, and lightning for the good of their people. Whether the
kings of Lydia were bound to make thunder and rain we do not know; but at
all events, like many early monarchs, they seem to have been held
responsible for the weather and the crops. In the reign of Meles the
country suffered severely from dearth, so the people consulted an oracle,
and the deity laid the blame on the kings, one of whom had in former years
incurred the guilt of murder. The soothsayers accordingly declared that
King Meles, though his own hands were clean, must be banished for three
years in order that the taint of bloodshed should be purged away. The king
obeyed and retired to Babylon, where he lived three years. In his absence
the kingdom was administered by a deputy, a certain Sadyattes, son of
Cadys, who traced his descent from Tylon.(544) As to this Tylon we shall
hear more presently. Again, we read that the Lydians rejoiced greatly at
the assassination of Spermus, another of their kings, “for he was very
wicked, and the land suffered from drought in his reign.”(545) Apparently,
like the ancient Irish and many modern Africans, they laid the drought at
the king’s door, and thought that he only got what he deserved under the
knife of the assassin.
(M136) With regard to the lion, the other emblem of the Cilician Hercules,
we are told that the same king Meles, who was banished because of a
dearth, sought to make the acropolis of Sardes impregnable by carrying
round it a lion which a concubine had borne to him. Unfortunately at a
single point, where the precipices were such that it seemed as if no human
foot could scale them, he omitted to carry the beast, and sure enough at
that very point the Persians afterwards clambered up into the
citadel.(546) Now Meles was one of the old Heraclid dynasty(547) who
boasted their descent from the lion-hero Hercules; hence the carrying of a
lion round the acropolis was probably a form of consecration intended to
place the stronghold under the guardianship of the lion-god, the
hereditary deity of the royal family. And the story that the king’s
concubine gave birth to a lion’s whelp suggests that the Lydian kings not
only claimed kinship with the beast, but posed as lions in their own
persons and passed off their sons as lion-cubs. Croesus dedicated at
Delphi a lion of pure gold, perhaps as a badge of Lydia,(548) and Hercules
with his lion’s skin is a common type on coins of Sardes.(549)
(M137) Thus the death, or the attempted death, of Croesus on the pyre
completes the analogy between the Cilician and the Lydian Hercules. At
Tarsus and at Sardes we find the worship of a god whose symbols were the
lion and the double-headed axe, and who was burned on a great pyre, either
in effigy or in the person of a human representative. The Greeks called
him Hercules, but his native name was Sandan or Sandon. At Sardes he seems
to have been personated by the kings, who carried the double-axe and
perhaps wore, like their ancestor Hercules, the lion’s skin. We may
conjecture that at Tarsus also the royal family aped the lion-god. At all
events we know that Sandan, the name of the god, entered into the names of
Cilician kings, and that in later times the priests of Sandan at Tarsus
wore the royal purple.(550)
§ 5. Hittite Gods at Tarsus and Sardes.
(M138) Now we have traced the religion of Tarsus back by a double thread
to the Hittite religion of Cappadocia. One thread joins the Baal of
Tarsus, with his grapes and his corn, to the god of Ibreez. The other
thread unites the Sandan of Tarsus, with his lion and his double axe, to
the similar figure at Boghaz-Keui. Without being unduly fanciful,
therefore, we may surmise that the Sandon-Hercules of Lydia was also a
Hittite god, and that the Heraclid dynasty of Lydia were of Hittite blood.
Certainly the influence, if not the rule, of the Hittites extended to
Lydia; for at least two rock-carvings accompanied by Hittite inscriptions
are still to be seen in the country. Both of them attracted the attention
of the ancient Greeks. One of them represents a god or warrior in Hittite
costume armed with a spear and bow. It is carved on the face of a grey
rock, which stands out conspicuous on a bushy hillside, where an old road
runs through a glen from the valley of the Hermus to the valley of the
Cayster. The place is now called Kara-Bel. Herodotus thought that the
figure represented the Egyptian king and conqueror Sesostris.(551) The
other monument is a colossal seated figure of the Mother of the Gods,
locally known in antiquity as Mother Plastene. It is hewn out of the solid
rock and occupies a large niche in the face of a cliff at the steep
northern foot of Mount Sipylus.(552) Thus it would seem that at some time
or other the Hittites carried their arms to the shores of the Aegean.
There is no improbability, therefore, in the view that a Hittite dynasty
may have reigned at Sardes.(553)
§ 6. The Resurrection of Tylon.
(M139) The burning of Sandan, like that of Melcarth,(554) was probably
followed by a ceremony of his resurrection or awakening, to indicate that
the divine life was not extinct, but had only assumed a fresher and purer
form. Of that resurrection we have, so far as I am aware, no direct
evidence. In default of it, however, there is a tale of a local Lydian
hero called Tylon or Tylus, who was killed and brought to life again. The
story runs thus. Tylon or Tylus was a son of Earth.(555) One day as he was
walking on the banks of the Hermus a serpent stung and killed him. His
distressed sister Moire had recourse to a giant named Damasen, who
attacked and slew the serpent. But the serpent’s mate culled a herb, “the
flower of Zeus” in the woods, and bringing it in her mouth put it to the
lips of the dead serpent, which immediately revived. In her turn Moire
took the hint and restored her brother Tylon to life by touching him with
the same plant.(556) A similar incident occurs in many folk-tales.
Serpents are often credited with a knowledge of life-giving plants.(557)
But Tylon seems to have been more than a mere hero of fairy-tales. He was
closely associated with Sardes, for he figures on the coins of the city
along with his champion Damasen or Masnes, the dead serpent, and the
life-giving branch.(558) And he was related in various ways to the royal
family of Lydia; for his daughter married Cotys, one of the earliest kings
of the country,(559) and a descendant of his acted as regent during the
banishment of King Meles.(560) It has been suggested that the story of his
death and resurrection was acted as a pageant to symbolize the revival of
plant life in spring.(561) At all events, a festival called the Feast of
the Golden Flower was celebrated in honour of Persephone at Sardes,(562)
probably in one of the vernal months, and the revival of the hero and of
the goddess may well have been represented together. The Golden Flower of
the Festival would then be the “flower of Zeus” of the legend, perhaps the
yellow crocus of nature or rather her more gorgeous sister, the Oriental
saffron. For saffron grew in great abundance at the Corycian cave of
Zeus;(563) and it is an elegant conjecture, if it is nothing more, that
the very name of the place meant “the Crocus Cave.”(564) However, on the
coins of Sardes the magical plant seems to be a branch rather than a
blossom, a Golden Bough rather than a Golden Flower.