CHAPTER XVII.

LYDIANS. — MEDES. — CIMMERIANS. — SCYTHIANS.

The early relations between the Lydians and the Asiatic Greeks,

anterior to the reign of Gygês, are not better known to us than those

of the Phrygians. Their native music became partly incorporated with

the Greek, as the Phrygian music was; to which it was very analogous,

both in instruments and in character, though the Lydian mode was

considered by the ancients as more effeminate and enervating. The

flute was used alike by Phrygians and Lydians, passing from both of

them to the Greeks; but the magadis or pectis (a harp with sometimes

as many as twenty strings, sounded two together in octave) is said

to have been borrowed by the Lesbian Terpander from the Lydian

banquets.[416] The flute-players who acquired esteem among the early

Asiatic Greeks were often Phrygian or Lydian slaves; and even the

poet Alkman, who gained for himself permanent renown among the Greek

lyric poets, though not a slave born at Sardis, as is sometimes said,

was probably of Lydian extraction.

[416] Pindar. ap. Athenæ. xiv, p. 635: compare Telestês ap.

Athenæ. xiv, p. 626; Pausan. ix, 5, 4.

It has been already mentioned that Homer knows nothing of Lydia or

Lydians. He names Mæonians in juxtaposition with Karians, and we

are told by Herodotus that the people once called Mæonian received

the new appellation of Lydian from Lydus son of Atys. Sardis, whose

almost inexpugnable citadel was situated on a precipitous rock on the

northern side of the ridge of Tmôlus, overhanging the plain of the

river Hermus, was the capital of the Lydian kings: it is not named

by Homer, though he mentions both Tmôlus and the neighboring Gygæan

lake: the fortification of it was ascribed to an old Lydian king

named Mêlês, and strange legends were told concerning it.[417] Its

possessors were enriched by the neighborhood of the river Paktôlus,

which flowed down from Mount Tmôlus towards the Hermus, and brought

with it considerable quantities of gold in its sands. To this cause

historians often ascribe the abundant treasure belonging to Crœsus

and his predecessors; but Crœsus possessed, besides, other mines near

Pergamus;[418] and another cause of wealth is also to be found in

the general industry of the Lydian people, which the circumstances

mentioned respecting them seem to attest. They were the first people,

according to Herodotus, who ever carried on retail trade; and the

first to coin money of gold and silver.[419]

[417] Herodot. i, 84.

[418] Aristot. Mirabil. Auscultat. 52.

[419] Herodot. i, 94.

The archæologists of Sardis in the time of Herodotus, a century

after the Persian conquest, carried very far back the antiquity of

the Lydian monarchy, by means of a series of names which are in

great part, if not altogether, divine and heroic. Herodotus gives

us first, Manês, Atys, and Lydus,—next, a line of kings beginning

with Hêraklês, twenty-two in number, succeeding each other from

father to son and lasting for 505 years. The first of this line

of Herakleid kings was Agrôn, descended from Hêraklês in the

fourth generation,—Hêraklês, Alkæus, Ninus, Bêlus, and Agrôn. The

twenty-second prince of this Herakleid family, after an uninterrupted

succession of father and son during 505 years, was Kandaulês, called

by the Greeks Myrsilus the son of Myrsus: with him the dynasty ended,

and ended by one of those curious incidents which Herodotus has

narrated with his usual dramatic, yet unaffected, emphasis. It was

the divine will that Kandaulês should be destroyed, and he lost his

rational judgment: having a wife the most beautiful woman in Lydia,

his vanity could not be satisfied without exhibiting her naked person

to Gygês son of Daskylus, his principal confidant and the commander

of his guards. In spite of the vehement repugnance of Gygês, this

resolution was executed; but the wife became aware of the inexpiable

affront, and took her measures to avenge it. Surrounded by her most

faithful domestics, she sent for Gygês, and addressed him: “Two

ways are now open to thee, Gygês: take which thou wilt. Either kill

Kandaulês, wed me, and acquire the kingdom of Lydia,—or else thou

must at once perish. For thou hast seen forbidden things, and either

thou, or the man who contrived it for thee must die.” Gygês in vain

entreated to be spared so terrible an alternative: he was driven to

the option, and he chose that which promised safety to himself.[420]

The queen planted him in ambush behind the bed-chamber door, in the

very spot where Kandaulês had placed him as a spectator, and armed

him with a dagger, which he plunged into the heart of the sleeping

king.

[420] Herodot. i, 11. αἱρέεται αὐτὸς περιεῖναι,—a phrase to which

Gibbon has ascribed an intended irony, which it is difficult to

discover in Herodotus.

Thus ended the dynasty of the Herakleids; but there was a large

party in Lydia who indignantly resented the death of Kandaulês, and

took arms against Gygês. A civil war ensued, which both parties at

length consented to terminate by reference to the Delphian oracle.

The decision of that holy referee was given in favor of Gygês, and

the kingdom of Lydia thus passed to his dynasty, called the Mermnadæ.

But the oracle accompanied its verdict with an intimation, that in

the person of the fifth descendant of Gygês, the murder of Kandaulês

would be avenged,—a warning of which, Herodotus innocently remarks,

no one took any notice, until it was actually fulfilled in the person

of Crœsus.[421]

[421] Herodot. i, 13. τούτου τοῦ ἔπεος ... λόγον οὐδένα

ἐποιεῦντο, πρὶν δὴ ἐπετελέσθη.

In this curious legend, which marks the commencement of the dynasty

called Mermnadæ, the historical kings of Lydia,—we cannot determine

how much, or whether any part, is historical. Gygês was probably a

real man, contemporary with the youth of the poet Archilochus; but

the name Gygês is also an heroic name in Lydian archæology. He is

the eponymus of the Gygæan lake near Sardis; and of the many legends

told respecting him, Plato has preserved one, according to which

Gygês is a mere herdsman of the king of Lydia: after a terrible storm

and earthquake, he sees near him a chasm in the earth, into which he

descends and finds a vast horse of brass, hollow and partly open,

wherein there lies a gigantic corpse with a golden ring. This ring

he carries away, and discovers unexpectedly that it possesses the

miraculous property of rendering him invisible at pleasure. Being

sent on a message to the king, he makes the magic ring available to

his ambition: he first possesses himself of the person of the queen,

then with her aid assassinates the king, and finally seizes the

sceptre.[422]

[422] Plato, Republ. ii, p. 360; Cicero, Offic. iii, 9. Plato (x,

p. 612) compares very suitably the ring of Gygês to the helmet of

Hadês.

The legend thus recounted by Plato, different in almost all points

from the Herodotean, has this one circumstance in common, that the

adventurer Gygês, through the favor and help of the queen, destroys

the king and becomes his successor. Feminine preference and patronage

is the cause of his prosperity. Klausen has shown[423] that this

“aphrodisiac influence” runs in a peculiar manner through many of

the Asiatic legends, both divine and heroic. The Phrygian Midas, or

Gordius, as before recounted, acquires the throne by marriage with a

divinely privileged maiden: the favor shown by Aphroditê to Anchisês,

confers upon the Æneadæ sovereignty in the Troad: moreover, the great

Phrygian and Lydian goddess Rhea or Cybelê has always her favored and

self-devoting youth Atys, who is worshipped along with her, and who

serves as a sort of mediator between her and mankind. The feminine

element appears predominant in Asiatic mythes: Midas, Sardanapalus,

Sandôn, and even Hêraklês,[424] are described as clothed in women’s

attire and working at the loom; while on the other hand the Amazons

and Semiramis achieve great conquests.

[423] See Klausen, Æneas und die Penaten, pp. 34, 110, etc:

compare Menke, Lydiaca, ch. 8, 9.

[424] See the article of O. Müller in the Rheinisch. Museum für

Philologie Jahrgang, iii, pp. 22-38; also Movers, Die Phönizier,

ch. xii, pp. 452-470.

Admitting therefore the historical character of the Lydian kings

called Mermnadæ, beginning with Gygês about 715-690 B. C., and

ending with Crœsus, we find nothing but legend to explain to us the

circumstances which led to their accession. Still less can we make

out anything respecting the preceding kings, or determine whether

Lydia was ever in former times connected with or dependent upon the

kingdom of Assyria, as Ktêsias affirmed.[425] Nor can we certify

the reality or dates of the old Lydian kings named by the native

historian Xanthus,—Alkimus, Kamblês, Adramytês.[426] One piece

of valuable information, however, we acquire from Xanthus,—the

distribution of Lydia into two parts, Lydia proper and Torrhêbia,

which he traces to the two sons of Atys,—Lydus and Torrhêbus; he

states that the dialect of the Lydians and Torrhebians differed much

in the same degree as that of Doric and Ionic Greeks.[427] Torrhêbia

appears to have included the valley of the Kaïster, south of Tmôlus,

and near to the frontiers of Karia.

[425] Diodor. ii, 2. Niebuhr also conceives that Lydia was in

early days a portion of the Assyrian empire (Kleine Schriften, p.

371).

[426] Xanthi Fragment. 10, 12, 19, ed. Didot; Athenæ. x, p. 415;

Nikolaus Damasc. p. 36, Orelli.

[427] Xanthi Fragm. 1, 2; Dionys. Halik. A. R. i, 28; Stephan.

Byz. v. Τόῤῥηβος. The whole genealogy given by Dionysius is

probably borrowed from Xanthus,—Zeus, Manês, Kotys, Asiês and

Atys, Lydus and Torrhêbus.

With Gygês, the Mermnad king, commences the series of aggressions

from Sardis upon the Asiatic Greeks, which ultimately ended in their

subjection. Gygês invaded the territories of Milêtus and Smyrna, and

even took the city, probably not the citadel, of Kolophôn. Though he

thus, however, made war upon the Asiatic Greeks, he was munificent

in his donations to the Grecian god of Delphi, and his numerous

as well as costly offerings were seen in the temple by Herodotus.

Elegiac compositions of the poet Mimnermus celebrated the valor of

the Smyrnæans in their battle with Gygês.[428] We hear also, in a

story which bears the impress of Lydian more than of Grecian fancy,

of a beautiful youth of Smyrna named Magnês, to whom Gygês was

attached, and who incurred the displeasure of his countrymen for

having composed verses in celebration of the victories of the Lydians

over the Amazons. To avenge the ill-treatment received by this youth,

Gygês attacked the territory of Magnêsia (probably Magnêsia on

Sipylus) and after a considerable struggle took the city.[429]

[428] Herod, i, 14; Pausan. ix, 29, 2.

[429] Nikolaus Damasc. p. 52, ed. Orelli.

How far the Lydian kingdom of Sardis extended during the reign of

Gygês, we have no means of ascertaining. Strabo alleges that the

whole Troad[430] belonged to him, and that the Greek settlement

of Abydus on the Hellespont was established by the Milesians only

under his auspices. On what authority this statement is made, we are

not told, and it appears doubtful, especially as so many legendary

anecdotes are connected with the name of Gygês. This prince reigned

(according to Herodotus) thirty-eight years, and was succeeded by

his son Ardys, who reigned forty-nine years (about B. C. 678-629).

We learn that he attacked the Milesians, and took the Ionic city of

Priênê, but this possession cannot have been maintained, for the city

appears afterwards as autonomous.[431] His long reign, however, was

signalized by two events, both of considerable moment to the Asiatic

Greeks; the invasion of the Cimmerians,—and the first approach

to collision, at least the first of which we have any historical

knowledge, between the inhabitants of Lydia and those of Upper Asia

under the Median kings.

[430] Strabo, xiii, p. 590.

[431] Herodot. i, 15.

It is affirmed by all authors that the Medes were originally

numbered among the subjects of the great Assyrian empire, of which

Nineveh—or Ninos, as the Greeks call it—was the chief town, and

Babylon one of the principal portions. That the population and power

of these two great cities, as well as of several others which the

Ten Thousand Greeks in their march found ruined and deserted in

those same regions, is of high antiquity,[432] there is no room for

doubting; but it is noway incumbent upon a historian of Greece to

entangle himself in the mazes of Assyrian chronology, or to weigh the

degree of credit to which the conflicting statements of Herodotus,

Ktêsias, Berosus, Abydênus, etc. are entitled. With the Assyrian

empire,[433]—which lasted, according to Herodotus, five hundred

and twenty years, according to Ktêsias, thirteen hundred and sixty

years,—the Greeks have no ascertainable connection: the city of

Nineveh appears to have been taken by the Medes a little before the

year 600 B. C. (in so far as the chronology can be made out), and

exercised no influence upon Grecian affairs. Those inhabitants of

Upper Asia, with whom the early Greeks had relation, were the Medes,

and the Assyrians or Chaldæans of Babylon,—both originally subject to

the Assyrians of Nineveh,—both afterwards acquiring independence,—and

both ultimately embodied in the Persian empire. At what time

either of them became first independent, we do not know:[434] the

astronomical canon which gives a list of kings of Babylon, beginning

with what is called the era of Nabonassar, or 747 B. C., does not

prove at what epoch these Babylonian chiefs became independent of

Nineveh: and the catalogue of Median kings, which Herodotus begins

with Dêïokês, about 709-711 B. C., is commenced by Ktêsias more than

a century earlier,—moreover, the names in the two lists are different

almost from first to last.

[432] Xenophon, Anabas. iii, 4, 7; 10, 11.

[433] Herodot. i, 95; Ktêsias, Fragm. Assyr. xiii, p. 419,

ed. Bahr; Diodor. ii, 21. Ktêsias gives thirty generations

of Assyrian kings from Ninyas to Sardanapalus: Velleius, 33;

Eusebius, 35; Syncellus, 40; Castor, 27; Cephalion, 23. See

Bahr ad Ctesiam, p. 428. The Babylonian chronology of Berosus

(a priest of Belus, about 280 B. C.) gave 86 kings and 34,000

years from the Deluge to the Median occupation of Babylon; then

1,453 years down to the reign of Phul king of Assyria (Berosi

Fragmenta, p. 8, ed. Richter).

Mr. Clinton sets forth the chief statements and discrepancies

respecting Assyrian chronology in his Appendix, c. 4. But the

suppositions to which he resorts, in order to bring them into

harmony, appear to me uncertified and gratuitous.

Compare the different, but not more successful, track followed by

Larcher (Chronologie, c. 3, pp. 145-157).

[434] Here again both Larcher and Mr. Clinton represent the time,

at which the Medes made themselves independent of Assyria, as

perfectly ascertained, though Larcher places it in 748 B. C., and

Mr. Clinton in 711 B. C. “L’époque ne me paroit pas douteuse,”

(Chronologie, c. iv, p. 157,) says Larcher. Mr. Clinton treats

the epoch of 711 B. C. for the same event, as fixed upon “_the

authority of Scripture_” and reasons upon it in more than one

place as a fact altogether indisputable (Appendix, c. iii, p.

259): “We may collect from Scripture that the Medes did not

become independent till after the death of Sennacherib; and

accordingly Josephus (Ant. x, 2), having related the death of

this king, and the miraculous recovery of Hezekiah from sickness,

adds—ἐν τούτῳ τῷ χρόνῳ συνέβη τὴν τῶν Ἀσσυρίων ἀρχὴν ὑπὸ Μήδων

καταλυθῆναι. But the death of Sennacherib, as will be shown

hereafter, is determined to the beginning of 711 B. C. The Median

revolt, then, did not occur before B. C. 711; which refutes

Conringius, who raises it to B. C. 715, and Valckenaer, who

raises it to B. C. 741. Herodotus, indeed, implies an interval

of some space between the revolt of the Medes and the election

of Dêïokês to be king. But these anni ἀβασίλευτοι could not

have been prior to the fifty-three years of Dêïokês, since the

revolt is _limited by Scripture_ to B. C. 711.” Again, p. 261,

he says, respecting the four Median kings mentioned by Eusebius

before Dêïokês: “If they existed at all, they governed Media

during the empire of the Assyrians, as we _know from Scripture_.”

And again, p. 280: “The precise date of the termination (of the

Assyrian empire) in B. C. 711 is _given by Scripture_, with which

Herodotus agrees,” etc.

Mr. Clinton here treats, more than once, the revolt of the

Medes as fixed to the year 711 B. C. _by Scripture_; but he

produces no passage of Scripture to justify his allegation: and

the passage which he cites from Josephus alludes, not to the

Median revolt, but to the destruction of the Assyrian empire by

the Medes. Herodotus represents the Medes as revolting from the

Assyrian empire, and maintaining their independence for some time

(undefined in extent) before the election of Dêïokês as king;

but he gives us no means of determining the date of the _Median

revolt_; and when Mr. Clinton says (p. 280, Note O.): “I suppose

Herodotus to place the revolt of the Medes in Olymp. 17, 2, since

he places the accession of Dêïokês in Olymp. 17, 3,”—this is

a conjecture of his own: and the narrative of Herodotus seems

plainly to imply that he conceived an interval far greater than

one year between these two events. Diodorus gives the same

interval as lasting “for many generations.” (Diod. ii, 32.)

We know—both from Scripture and from the Phœnician annals, as

cited by Josephus—that the Assyrians of Nineveh were powerful

conquerors in Syria, Judæa, and Phœnicia, during the reigns of

Salmaneser and Sennacherib: the statement of Josephus farther

implies that Media was subject to Salmaneser, who took the

Israelites from their country into Media and Persis, and brought

the Cuthæans out of Media and Persis into the lands of the

Israelites (Joseph. ix, 14, 1; x, 9, 7). We know farther, that

after Sennacherib, the Assyrians of Nineveh are no more mentioned

as invaders or disturbers of Syria or Judæa; the Chaldæans or

Babylonians become then the enemies whom those countries have

to dread. Josephus tells us, that at this epoch the Assyrian

empire was destroyed by the Medes,—or, as he says in another

place, by the Medes and Babylonians (x, 2, 2; x, 5, 1). This is

good evidence for believing that the Assyrian empire of Nineveh

sustained at this time a great shock and diminution of power;

but as to the nature of this diminution, and the way in which it

was brought about, it appears to me that there is a discrepancy

of authorities which we have no means of reconciling,—Josephus

follows the same view as Ktêsias, of the destruction of the

empire of Nineveh by the Medes and Babylonians united, while

Herodotus conceives successive revolts of the territories

dependent upon Nineveh, beginning with that of the Medes, and

still leaving Nineveh flourishing and powerful in its own

territory: he farther conceives Nineveh as taken by Kyaxarês

the Mede, about the year 600 B. C., without any mention of

Babylonians,—on the contrary, in his representation, Nitokris the

queen of Babylon is afraid of the Medes (i, 185), partly from

the general increase of their power, but especially from their

having taken Nineveh (though Mr. Clinton tells us, p. 275, that

“Nineveh was destroyed B. C. 606, as we have seen from the united

testimonies of the Scripture and Herodotus, _by the Medes and

Babylonians_.”)

Construing fairly the text of Herodotus, it will appear that he

conceived the relations of these Oriental kingdoms between 800

and 560 B. C. differently on many material points from Ktêsias,

or Berosus, or Josephus: and he himself expressly tells us, that

he heard “four different tales” even respecting Cyrus (i, 95);

much more, respecting events anterior to Cyrus by more than a

century.

The chronology of the Medes, Babylonians, Lydians, and Greeks

in Asia, when we come to the seventh century B. C., acquires

some fixed points which give us assurance of correctness within

certain limits; but above the year 700 B. C. no such fixed points

can be detected. We cannot discriminate the historical from the

mythical in our authorities,—we cannot reconcile them with each

other, except by violent changes and conjectures,—nor can we

determine which of them ought to be set aside in favor of the

other. The names and dates of the Babylonian kings down from

Nabonassar, in the Canon of Ptolemy, are doubtless authentic,

but they are names and dates only: when we come to apply them

to illustrate real or supposed matters of fact, drawn from

other sources, they only create a new embarrassment, for even

the _names_ of the kings as reported by different authors do

not agree and Mr. Clinton informs us (p. 277): “In tracing the

identity of Eastern kings, the times and the transactions are

better guides than the names; for these, from many well-known

causes (as the changes which they undergo in passing through

the Greek language, and the substitution of a title or an

epithet for the name), are variously reported, so that _the same

king frequently appears under many different appellations_.”

Here, then, is a new problem: we are to employ “the times and

transactions” to identify the kings: but unfortunately the

_times_ are marked only by the succession of kings, and the

_transactions_ are known only by statements always scanty and

often irreconcilable with each other. So that our means of

identifying the kings are altogether insufficient, and whoever

will examine the process of identification as it appears in

Mr. Clinton’s chapters, will see that it is in a high degree

arbitrary; more arbitrary still are the processes which he

employs for bringing about a forced harmony between discrepant

authorities. Nor is Volney (Chronologie d’Hérodote, vol. i, pp.

383-429) more satisfactory in his chronological results.

For the historian of Greece, the Medes first begin to acquire

importance about 656 B. C., under a king whom Herodotus calls

Phraortês, son of Dêïokês. Respecting Dêïokês himself, Herodotus

recounts to us how he came to be first chosen king.[435] The seven

tribes of Medes dwelt dispersed in separate villages, without any

common authority, and the mischiefs of anarchy were painfully felt

among them: Dêïokês having acquired great reputation in his own

village as a just man, was invoked gradually by all the adjoining

villages to settle their disputes. As soon as his efficiency in this

vocation, and the improvement which he brought about, had become

felt throughout all the tribes, he artfully threw up his post and

retired again into privacy,—upon which the evils of anarchy revived

in a manner more intolerable than before. The Medes had now no

choice except to elect a king,—the friends of Dêïokês expatiated

warmly upon his virtues, and he was the person chosen.[436] The

first step of the new king was to exact from the people a body of

guards selected by himself; next, he commanded them to build the city

of Ekbatana, upon a hill surrounded with seven concentric circles

of walls, his own palace being at the top and in the innermost. He

farther organized the scheme of Median despotism; the king, though

his person was constantly secluded in his fortified palace, inviting

written communications from all aggrieved persons, and administering

to each the decision or the redress which it required,—informing

himself, moreover, of passing events by means of ubiquitous spies and

officials, who seized all wrong-doers and brought them to the palace

for condign punishment. Dêïokês farther constrained the Medes to

abandon their separate abodes and concentrate themselves in Ekbatana,

from whence all the powers of government branched out; and the seven

distinct fortified circles in the town, coinciding as they do with

the number of the Median tribes, were probably conceived by Herodotus

as intended each for one distinct tribe,—the tribe of Dêïokês

occupying the innermost along with himself.[437]

[435] Herodot. i, 96-100.

[436] Herodot. i, 97. ὡς δ᾽ ἐγὼ δοκέω, μάλιστα ἔλεγον οἱ τοῦ

Δηϊόκεω φίλοι, etc.

[437] Herodot. i, 98, 99, 100. Οἰκοδομηθέντων δὲ πάντων, κόσμον

τόνδε Δηϊόκης πρῶτός ἐστιν ὁ καταστησάμενος· μήτε ἐσιέναι παρὰ

βασιλέα μηδένα, δι᾽ ἀγγέλων δὲ πάντα χρέεσθαι, ὁρᾶσθαι δὲ βασιλέα

ὑπὸ μηδενός· πρὸς δὲ τούτοισι ἔτι γελᾷν τε καὶ πτύειν ἄντιον, καὶ

ἅπασι εἶναι τοῦτό γε αἰσχρόν, etc. and ... οἱ κατάσκοποί τε καὶ

κατήκοοι ἦσαν ἀνὰ πᾶσαν τὴν χώρην τῆς ἦρχε.

Except the successive steps of this well-laid political plan, we

hear of no other acts ascribed to Dêïokês: he is said to have

held the government for fifty-three years, and then dying, was

succeeded by his son Phraortês. Of the real history of Dêïokês, we

cannot be said to know anything. For the interesting narrative of

Herodotus, of which the above is an abridgment, presents to us in

all its points Grecian society and ideas, not Oriental: it is like

the discussion which the historian ascribes to the seven Persian

conspirators, previous to the accession of Darius,—whether they

shall adopt an oligarchical, a democratical, or a monarchical form

of government;[438] or it may be compared, perhaps more aptly still,

to the Cyropædia of Xenophon, who beautifully and elaborately works

out an ideal which Herodotus exhibits in brief outline. The story

of Dêïokês describes what may be called the despot’s progress, first

as candidate, and afterwards as fully established. Amidst the active

political discussion carried on by intelligent Greeks in the days

of Herodotus, there were doubtless many stories of the successful

arts of ambitious despots, and much remark as to the probable means

conducive to their success, of a nature similar to those in the

Politics of Aristotle: one of these tales Herodotus has employed to

decorate the birth and infancy of the Median monarchy. His Dêïokês

begins like a clever Greek among other Greeks, equal, free, and

disorderly. He is athirst for despotism from the beginning, and is

forward in manifesting his rectitude and justice, “as beseems a

candidate for command;”[439] he passes into a despot by the public

vote, and receives what to the Greeks was the great symbol and

instrument of such transition, a personal body-guard; he ends by

organizing both the machinery and the etiquette of a despotism in

the Oriental fashion, like the Cyrus of Xenophon,[440] only that

both these authors maintain the superiority of their Grecian ideal

over Oriental reality by ascribing both to Dêïokês and Cyrus a

just, systematic, and laborious administration, such as their own

experience did not present to them in Asia. Probably Herodotus

had visited Ekbatana (which he describes and measures like an

eye-witness, comparing its circuit to that of Athens), and there

heard that Dêïokês was the builder of the city, the earliest known

Median king, and the first author of those public customs which

struck him as peculiar, after the revolt from Assyria: the interval

might then be easily filled up, between Median autonomy and Median

despotism, by intermediate incidents, such as would have accompanied

that transition in the longitude of Greece. The features of these

inhabitants of Upper Asia, for a thousand years forward from the

time at which we are now arrived,—under the descendants of Dêïokês,

of Cyrus, of Arsakês, and of Ardshir,—are so unvarying,[441] that we

are much assisted in detecting those occasions in which Herodotus or

others infuse into their history indigenous Grecian ideas.

[438] Herodot. iii, 80-82. Herodotus, while he positively asserts

the genuineness of these deliberations, lets drop the intimation

that many of his contemporaries regarded them as of Grecian

coinage.

[439] Herodot. i, 96. Ἐόντων δὲ αὐτονόμων πάντων ἀνὰ τὴν ἤπειρον,

ὧδε αὖτις ἐς τυραννίδας περιῆλθον. Ἀνὴρ ἐν τοῖσι Μήδοισι ἐγένετο

σοφὸς, τῷ οὔνομα ἦν Δηϊόκης.... Οὗτος ὁ Δηϊόκης, ἐρασθεὶς

τυραννίδος, ἐποίεε τοιάδε, etc.... Ὁ δὲ δὴ, οἷα μνεώμενος ἀρχὴν,

ἰθύς τε καὶ δίκαιος ἦν.

[440] Compare the chapters above referred to in Herodotus with

the eighth book of the Cyropædia, wherein Xenophon describes

the manner in which the Median despotism was put in effective

order and turned to useful account by Cyrus, especially the

arrangements for imposing on the imagination of his subjects

(καταγοητεύειν, viii, 1, 40)—(it is a small thing, but marks

the cognate plan of Herodotus and Xenophon). Dêïokês forbids

his subjects to laugh or spit in his presence. Cyrus also

directs that no one shall spit, or wipe his nose, or turn

round to look at anything, when the king is present (Herodot.

i, 99; Xen. Cyrop. viii, 1, 42). Again, viii, 3, 1, about the

pompous procession of Cyrus when he rides out,—καὶ γὰρ αὐτῆς

τῆς ἐξελάσεως ἡ σεμνότης ἡμῖν δοκεῖ μία τῶν τεχνῶν εἶναι τῶν

μεμηχανημένων, τὴν ἀρχὴν μὴ εὐκαταφρόνητον εἶναι—analogous to

the Median Dêïokês in Herodotus—Ταῦτα δὲ περὶ ἑωυτὸν ἐσέμνυνε

τῶνδε εἵνεκεν, etc. _Cyrus_—ἐμφανίζων δὲ καὶ τοῦτο ὅτι περὶ

πολλοῦ ἐποιεῖτο, μηδένα μήτε φίλον ἀδικεῖν μήτε σύμμαχον, ἀλλὰ

τὸ δίκαιον ἰσχυρῶς ὁρῶν (Cyrop. viii, 1, 26). _Dêïokês_—ἦν τὸ

δίκαιον φυλάσσων χαλεπός (Herodot. i, 100). _Cyrus_ provides

numerous persons who serve to him as eyes and ears throughout the

country (Cyrop. viii, 2, 12), _Dêïokês_ has many κατάσκοποι and

κατήκοοι (Herodot. _ib._).

[441] When the Roman emperor Claudius sends the young Parthian

prince Meherdatês, who had been an hostage at Rome, to occupy

the kingdom which the Parthian envoys tendered to him, he gives

him some good advice, conceived in the school of Greek and Roman

politics: “Addidit præcepta, ut non dominationem ac servos, sed

rectorem et cives, cogitaret: clementiamque ac justitiam quanto

ignara barbaris, tanto toleratiora, capesseret.” (Tacit, Annal.

xii, 11.)

Phraortês (658-636 B. C.), having extended the dominion of the Medes

over a large portion of Upper Asia, and conquered both the Persians

and several other nations, was ultimately defeated and slain in a

war against the Assyrians of Nineveh: who, though deprived of their

external dependencies, were yet brave and powerful by themselves. His

son Kyaxarês (636-595 B. C.) followed up with still greater energy

the same plans of conquest, and is said to have been the first who

introduced any organization into the military force;—before his

time, archers, spearmen, and cavalry had been confounded together

indiscriminately, until this monarch established separate divisions

for each. He extended the Median dominion to the eastern bank of the

Halys, which river afterwards, by the conquests of the Lydian king

Crœsus, became the boundary between the Lydian and Median empires;

and he carried on war for six years with Alyattês king of Lydia,

in consequence of the refusal of the latter to give up a band of

Scythian nomads, who, having quitted the territory of Kyaxarês in

order to escape severities with which they were menaced, had sought

refuge as suppliants in Lydia.[442] The war, indecisive as respects

success, was brought to its close by a remarkable incident: in

the midst of a battle between the Median and Lydian armies, there

happened a total eclipse of the sun, which occasioned equal alarm to

both parties, and induced them immediately to cease hostilities.[443]

The Kilikian prince Syennesis, and the Babylonian prince Labynêtus,

interposed their mediation, and effected a reconciliation between

Kyaxarês and Alyattês, one of the conditions of which was, that

Alyattês gave his daughter Aryênis in marriage to Astyagês son of

Kyaxarês. In this manner began the connection between the Lydian and

Median kings which afterwards proved so ruinous to Crœsus. It is

affirmed that the Greek philosopher Thalês foretold this eclipse;

but we may reasonably consider the supposed prediction as not less

apocryphal than some others ascribed to him, and doubt whether at

that time any living Greek possessed either knowledge or scientific

capacity sufficient for such a calculation.[444] The eclipse itself,

and its terrific working upon the minds of the combatants, are facts

not to be called in question; though the diversity of opinion among

chronologists, respecting the date of it, is astonishing.[445]

[442] The passage of such nomadic hordes from one government in

the East to another, has been always, and is even down to the

present day, a frequent cause of dispute between the different

governments: they are valuable both as tributaries and as

soldiers. The Turcoman Ilats—so these nomadic tribes are now

called—in the north-east of Persia frequently pass backwards and

forwards, as their convenience suits, from the Persian territory

to the Usbeks of Khiva and Bokhara: wars between Persia and

Russia have been in like manner occasioned by the transit of the

Ilats across the frontier from Persia into Georgia: so also the

Kurd tribes near Mount Zagros have caused by their movements

quarrels between the Persians and the Turks.

See Morier, Account of the Iliyats, or Wandering Tribes of

Persia, in the Journal of the Geographical Society of London,

1837, vol. vii, p. 240, and Carl Ritter, Erdkunde von Asien,

West-Asien, Band ii, Abtheilung ii, Abschnitt ii, sect. 8, p. 387.

[443] Herodot. i, 74-103.

[444] Compare the analogous case of the prediction of the coming

olive crop ascribed to Thalês (Aristot. Polit. i, 4, 5; Cicero,

De Divinat. i, 3). Anaxagoras is asserted to have predicted the

fall of an aërolithe (Aristot. Meteorol. i, 7; Pliny, H. N. ii,

58; Plutarch, Lysand. c. 5).

Thalês is said by Herodotus to have predicted that the eclipse

would take place “in the year in which it actually did occur,”—a

statement so vague that it strengthens the grounds of doubt.

The fondness of the Ionians for exhibiting the wisdom of their

eminent philosopher Thalês, in conjunction with the history of

the Lydian kings, may be seen farther in the story of Thalês and

Crœsus at the river Halys (Herod. i, 75),—a story which Herodotus

himself disbelieves.

[445] Consult, for the chronological views of these events,

Larcher ad Herodot. i, 74; Volney, Recherches sur l’Histoire

Ancienne, vol. i, pp. 330-355; Mr. Fynes Clinton, Fasti

Hellenici, vol. i, p. 418 (Note ad B. C. 617, 2); Des Vignoles,

Chronologie de l’Histoire Sainte, vol. ii, p. 245; Ideler,

Handbuch der Chronologie, vol. i, p. 209.

No less than eight different dates have been assigned by

different chronologists for this eclipse,—the most ancient

625 B. C., the most recent 583 B. C. Volney is for 625 B. C.;

Larcher for 597 B. C.; Des Vignoles for 585 B. C.; Mr. Clinton

for 603 B. C. Volney observes, with justice, that the eclipse

on this occasion “n’est pas l’accessoire, la broderie du fait,

mais le _fait principal_ lui-même,” (p. 347:) the astronomical

calculations concerning the eclipse are, therefore, by far the

most important items in the chronological reckoning of this

event. Now in regard to the eclipse of 625 B. C., Volney is

obliged to admit that it does not suit the case; for it would

be visible only at half-past five in the morning on February 3,

and the sun would hardly be risen at that hour in the latitude

of Media and Lydia (p. 343). He seeks to escape from this

difficulty by saying that the data for the calculation, according

to the astronomer Pingré, are not quite accurate for these early

eclipses; but after all, if there be error, it may just as well

be in one direction as in another, _i. e._ the true hour at which

the eclipse would be visible for those latitudes is as likely

to have been _earlier_ than half-past five A. M. as to have

been later, which would put this eclipse still more out of the

question.

The chronology of that period presents difficulties which our

means of knowledge hardly enable us to clear up. Volney remarks,

and the language of Herodotus is with him, that not merely the

war between Kyaxarês and Alyattês (which lasted five years,

and was terminated by the eclipse), but also the conquest made

by Kyaxarês of the territory up to the river Halys, took place

anterior (Herodot. i, 103: compare i, 16) to the _first siege_

of Nineveh by Kyaxarês,—that siege which he was forced to raise

by the inroad of the Scythians. This constitutes a strong

presumption in favor of Volney’s date for the eclipse (625 B.

C.) if astronomical considerations would admit of it, which they

will not. Mr. Clinton, on the other hand, puts the first siege of

Nineveh in the very first year of the reign of Kyaxarês, which is

not to be reconciled with the language of Herodotus. In placing

the eclipse, therefore, in 603 B. C., we depart from the relative

arrangement of events which Herodotus conceived, in deference

to astronomical reasons: and Herodotus is our only authority in

regard to the general chronology.

According to Ideler, however (and his authority upon such a point

is conclusive, in my judgment), astronomical considerations

decisively fix this eclipse for the 30th September 610 B. C., and

exclude all those other eclipses which have been named. Recent

and more trustworthy calculations made by Oltmanns, from the

newest astronomical tables, have shown that the eclipse of 610 B.

C. fulfils the conditions required, and that the other eclipses

named do not. For a place situated in 40° N. lat. and 36° E.

long. this eclipse was nearly total, only one-eightieth of the

sun’s disc remaining luminous: the darkness thus occasioned would

be sufficient to cause great terror. (Ideler, Handbuch, _l. c._)

Since the publication of my first edition, I have been apprized

that the late Mr. Francis Baily had already settled the date of

this eclipse to the 30th of September 610 B. C., in his first

contribution to the Transactions of the Royal Society as long

ago as 1811,—much before the date of the publication of Ideler’s

Handbuch der Chronologie. Sir John Herschel (in his Memoir of

Mr. Francis Baily, in the Transactions of the Royal Astronomical

Society, vol. xv, p. 311), after completely approving Mr. Baily’s

calculations, and stating that he had been the first to solve the

disputed question, expresses his surprise that various French

and German astronomers, writing on the same subject afterwards,

have taken no notice of “that remarkable paper.” Though a

fellow-countryman of Mr. Baily, I am sorry that I have to plead

guilty to a similar ignorance, until the point was specially

brought to my notice by a friend. Had I been aware of the paper

and the Memoir, it would have been unnecessary to cite any other

authority than that of Mr. Baily and Sir John Herschel.

It was after this peace with Alyattês, as far as we can make out

the series of events in Herodotus, that Kyaxarês collected all his

forces and laid siege to Nineveh, but was obliged to desist by the

unexpected inroad of the Scythians. Nearly at the same time that

Upper Asia was desolated by these formidable nomads, Asia Minor too

was overrun by other nomads,—the Cimmerians,—Ardys being then king of

Lydia; and the two invasions, both spreading extreme disaster, are

presented to us as indirectly connected together in the way of cause

and effect.

The name Cimmerians appears in the Odyssey,—the fable describes

them as dwelling beyond the ocean-stream, immersed in darkness and

unblessed by the rays of Helios. Of this people as existent we can

render no account, for they had passed away, or lost their identity

and become subject, previous to the commencement of trustworthy

authorities: but they seem to have been the chief occupants of

the Tauric Chersonesus (Crimea) and of the territory between that

peninsula and the river Tyras (Dniester), at the time when the Greeks

first commenced their permanent settlements on those coasts in the

seventh century B. C. The numerous localities which bore their name,

even in the time of Herodotus,[446] after they had ceased to exist

as a nation,—as well as the tombs of the Cimmerian kings then shown

near the Tyras,—sufficiently attest this fact; and there is reason

to believe that they were—like their conquerors and successors the

Scythians—a nomadic people, mare-milkers, moving about with their

tents and herds, suitably to the nature of those unbroken steppes

which their territory presented, and which offered little except

herbage in profusion. Strabo tells us[447]—on what authority we do

not know—that they, as well as the Trêres and other Thracians, had

desolated Asia Minor more than once before the time of Ardys, and

even earlier than Homer.

[446] Herodot. iv, 11-12. Hekatæus also spoke of a town Κιμμερίς

(Strabo, vii, p. 294).

Respecting the Cimmerians, consult Ukert, Skythien, p. 360,

_seqq._

[447] Strabo, i, pp. 6, 59, 61.

The Cimmerians thus belong partly to legend partly to history; but

the Scythians formed for several centuries an important section of

the Grecian contemporary world. Their name, unnoticed by Homer,

occurs for the first time in the Hesiodic poems. When the Homeric

Zeus in the Iliad turns his eye away from Troy towards Thrace, he

sees, besides the Thracians and Mysians, other tribes, whose names

cannot be made out, but whom the poet knows as milk-eaters and

mare-milkers;[448] and the same characteristic attributes, coupled

with that of “having wagons for their dwelling-houses,” appear in

Hesiod connected with the name of the Scythians.[449] The navigation

of the Greeks into the Euxine, gradually became more and more

frequent, and during the last half of the seventh century B. C. their

first settlements on its coasts were established. The foundation of

Byzantium, as well as of the Pontic Herakleia, at a short distance

to the east of the Thracian Bosphorus, by the Megarians, is assigned

to the 30th Olympiad, or 658 B. C.;[450] and the succession of

colonies founded by the enterprise of Milesian citizens on the

western coast of the Euxine, seem to fall not very long after this

date,—at least within the following century. Istria, Tyras, and

Olbia, or Borysthenes, were planted respectively near the mouths of

the three great rivers Danube, Dniester, and Bog: Kruni, Odêssus,

Tomi, Kallatis, and Apollonia, were also planted on the south-western

or Thracian coast, northward of the dangerous land of Salmydessus, so

frequent in wrecks, but south of the Danube.[451] According to the

turn of Grecian religious faith, the colonists took out with them

the worship of the hero Achilles (from whom, perhaps, the œkist and

some of the expatriating chiefs professed to be descended), which

they established with great solemnity both in the various towns

and on the small adjoining islands: and the earliest proof which

we find of Scythia, as a territory familiar to Grecian ideas and

feeling, is found in a fragment of the poet Alkæus (about B. C. 600),

wherein he addresses Achilles[452] as “sovereign of Scythia.” There

were, besides, several other Milesian foundations on or near the

Tauric Chersonese (Crimea) which brought the Greeks into conjunction

with the Scythians,—Herakleia, Chersonêsus, and Theodosia, on the

southern coast and south-western corner of the peninsula,—Pantikapæum

and the Teian colony of Phanagoria (these two on the European and

Asiatic sides of the Cimmerian Bosphorus respectively), and Kêpi,

Hermônassa, etc. not far from Phanagoria, on the Asiatic coast of the

Euxine: last of all, there was, even at the extremity of the Palus

Mæotis (Sea of Azof), the Grecian settlement of Tanais.[453] All or

most of these seem to have been founded during the course of the

sixth century B. C., though the precise dates of most of them cannot

be named; probably several of them anterior to the time of the mystic

poet Aristeas of Prokonnêsus, about 540 B. C. His long voyage from

the Palus Mæotis (Sea of Azof) into the interior of Asia as far as

the country of the Issêdones (described in a poem, now lost, called

the Arimaspian verses), implies an habitual intercourse between

Scythians and Greeks which could not well have existed without

Grecian establishments on the Cimmerian Bosphorus.

[448] Homer, Iliad, xiii, 4.—

... Αὐτὸς δὲ πάλιν τρέπεν ὄσσε φαεινὼ,

Νόσφιν ἐφ᾽ ἱπποπόλων Θρῃκῶν καθορώμενος αἶαν

Μυσῶν τ᾽ ἀγχεμάχων, καὶ ἀγαυῶν Ἱππημολγῶν,

Γλακτοφάγων, Ἀβίων τε, δικαιοτάτων ἀνθρώπων.

Compare Strabo, xii, p. 553.

[449] Hesiod, Fragm. 63-64, Marktscheffel:—

Γλακτοφάγων εἰς αἶαν, ἀπήναις οἴκι᾽ ἐχόντων ...

Αἰθίοπας, Δίγυάς τε, ἰδὲ Σκύθας ἱππημολγούς.

Strabo, vii, pp. 300-302.

[450] Raoul Rochette, Histoire des Colonies Grecques, tom. iii,

ch. xiv, p. 297. The dates of these Grecian settlements near the

Danube are very vague and untrustworthy.

[451] Skymnus Chius, v, 730, Fragm. 2-25.

[452] Alkæus, Fragm. 49, Bergk; Eustath. ad Dionys. Perieg. 306.—

Ἀχιλλεῦ, ὃ τᾶς (γᾶς, Schneid.) Σκυθικᾶς μέδεις.

Alkman, somewhat earlier, made mention of the Issêdones (Alkm.

Frag. 129, Bergk; Steph. Byz. v. Ἰσσήδονες,—he called them

Assêdones) and of the Rhipæan mountains (Fr. 80).

In the old epic of Arktinus, the deceased Achilles is transported

to an elysium in the λευκὴ νῆσος (see the argument of the

Æthiopis in Düntzer’s Collection of Epicc. Poet. Græc. p. 15),

but it may well be doubted whether λευκὴ νῆσος in his poem was

anything but a fancy,—not yet localized upon the little island

off the mouth of the Danube.

For the early allusions to the Pontus Euxinus and its neighboring

inhabitants, found in the Greek poets, see Ukert, Skythien, pp.

15-18, 78; though he puts the Ionian colonies in the Pontus

nearly a century too early, in my judgment.

[453] Compare Dr. Clarke’s description of the present commerce

between Taganrock—not far from the ancient Greek settlement of

Tanais—and the Archipelago: besides exporting salt-fish, corn,

leather, etc. in exchange for wines, fruit, etc. it is the great

deposit of Siberian productions: from Orenburg it receives

tallow, furs, iron, etc; this is, doubtless, as old as Herodotus

(Clarke’s Travels in Russia, ch. xv, p. 330).

Hekatæus of Milêtus,[454] appears to have given much geographical

information respecting the Scythian tribes; but Herodotus, who

personally visited the town of Olbia, together with the inland

regions adjoining to it, and probably other Grecian settlements in

the Euxine (at a time which we may presume to have been about 450-440

B. C.),—and who conversed with both Scythians and Greeks competent

to give him information,—has left us far more valuable statements

respecting the Scythian people, dominion, and manners, as they stood

in his day. His conception of the Scythians, as well as that of

Hippokratês, is precise and well-defined,—very different from that

of the later authors, who use the word almost indiscriminately to

denote all barbarous nomads. His territory, called Scythia, is a

square area, twenty days’ journey or four thousand stadia (somewhat

less than five hundred English miles) in each direction,—bounded by

the Danube (the course of which river he conceives in a direction

from N. W. to S. E.), the Euxine, and the Palus Mæotis with the

river Tanais, on three sides respectively,—and on the fourth or

north side by the nations called Agathyrsi, Neuri, Androphagi, and

Melanchlæni.[455] However imperfect his idea of the figure of this

territory may be found, if we compare it with a good modern map,

the limits which he gives us are beyond dispute: from the lower

Danube and the mountains eastward of Transylvania to the lower

Tanais, the whole area was either occupied by or subject to the

Scythians. And this name comprised tribes differing materially in

habits and civilization. The great mass of the people who bore it,

strictly nomadic in their habits,—neither sowing nor planting, but

living only on food derived from animals, especially mare’s milk

and cheese,—moved from place to place, carrying their families

in wagons covered with wicker and leather, themselves always on

horseback with their flocks and herds, between the Borysthenês and

the Palus Mæotis; they hardly even reached so far westward as the

Borysthenês, since a river (not easily identified) which Herodotus

calls Pantikapês, flowing into the Borysthenês from the eastward,

formed their boundary. These nomads were the genuine Scythians,

possessing the marked attributes of the race, and including among

their number the regal Scythians,[456]—hordes so much more populous

and more effective in war than the rest, as to maintain undisputed

ascendency, and to account all other Scythians no better than their

slaves. It was to these that the Scythian kings belonged, by whom

the religious and political unity of the name was maintained,—each

horde having its separate chief, and to a certain extent separate

worship and customs. But besides these nomads, there were also

agricultural Scythians, with fixed abodes, living more or less upon

bread, and raising corn for exportation, along the banks of the

Borysthenês and the Hypanis.[457] And such had been the influence of

the Grecian settlement of Olbia at the mouth of the latter river in

creating new tastes and habits, that two tribes on its western banks,

the Kallippidæ and the Alazônes, had become completely accustomed

both to tillage and to vegetable food, and had in other respects

so much departed from their Scythian rudeness as to be called

Hellenic-Scythians, many Greeks being seemingly domiciled among

them. Northward of the Alazônes, lay those called the agricultural

Scythians, who sowed corn, not for food but for sale.[458]

[454] Hekatæi Fragment. Fr. 153, 168, ed. Klausen. Hekatæus

mentioned the Issêdones (Fr. 168; Steph. Byz. v. Ἰσσήδονες);

both he and Damastês seem to have been familiar with the poem of

Aristeas: see Klausen, _ad loc._; Steph. Byz. v. Ὑπερβόρειοι.

Compare also Æschyl. Prometh. 409, 710, 805.

Hellanikus, also, seems to have spoken about Scythia in a manner

generally conformable to Herodotus (Strabo, xii, p. 550). It

does little credit to the discernment of Strabo that he treats

with disdain the valuable Scythian chapter of Herodotus,—ἅπερ

Ἑλλάνικος καὶ Ἡρόδοτος καὶ Εὔδοξος ~κατεφλυάρησαν~ ἡμῶν (_ib._).

[455] Herodot. iv, 100-101. See, respecting the Scythia of

Herodotus, the excellent dissertation of Niebuhr, contained in

his Kleine Historische Schriften, “Ueber die Geschichte der

Skythen, Geten, und Sarmaten,” p. 360, alike instructive both

as to the geography and the history. Also the two chapters in

Völcker’s Mythische Geographie, ch. vii-viii, sects. 23-26,

respecting the geographical conceptions present to Herodotus in

his description of Scythia.

Herodotus has much in his Scythian geography, however, which

no comment can enable us to understand. Compared with his

predecessors, his geographical conceptions evince very great

improvement; but we shall have occasion, in the course of this

history, to notice memorable examples of extreme misapprehension

in regard to distance and bearings in these remote regions,

common to him not only with his contemporaries, but also with his

successors.

[456] Herodot. iv, 17-21, 46-56; Hippokratês, De Aëre, Locis et

Aquis, c. vi; Æschyl. Prometh. 709; Justin, ii, 2.

It is unnecessary to multiply citations respecting nomadic

life, the same under such wide differences both of time and

of latitude,—the same with the “armentarius Afer” of Virgil

(Georgic, iii, 343) and the “campestres Scythæ” of Horace (Ode

iii, 24, 12), and the Tartars of the present day; see Dr.

Clarke’s Travels in Russia, ch. xiv, p. 310.

The fourth book of Herodotus, the Tristia and Epistolæ ex Ponto

of Ovid, the Toxaris of Lucian (see c. 36, vol. i, p. 544

Hemst.), and the Inscription of Olbia (No. 2058 in Boeckh’s

Collection), convey a genuine picture of Scythian manners as

seen by the near observer and resident, very different from the

pleasing fancies of the distant poet respecting the innocence of

pastoral life. The poisoned arrows, which Ovid so much complains

of in the Sarmatians and Getæ (Trist. iii, 10, 60, among other

passages, and Lucan, iii, 270), are not noticed by Herodotus in

the Scythians.

The dominant Golden Horde among the Tartars, in the time of

Zinghis Khan, has been often spoken of; and among the different

Arab tribes now in Algeria, some are noble, others enslaved;

the latter habitually, and by inheritance, servants of the

former, following wherever ordered (Tableau de la Situation des

Établissemens Français en Algérie, p. 393, Paris, Mar. 1846).

[457] Ephorus placed the Karpidæ immediately north of the Danube

(Fragm. 78, Marx; Skymn. Chius, 102). I agree with Niebuhr that

this is probably an inaccurate reproduction of the Kallippidæ of

Herodotus, though Boeckh is of a different opinion (Introduct. ad

Inscriptt. Sarmatic. Corpus Inscript. part xi, p. 81). The vague

and dreamy statements of Ephorus, so far as we know them from the

fragments, contrast unfavorably with the comparative precision of

Herodotus. The latter expressly separates the Androphagi from the

Scythians,—ἔθνος ἐὸν ἴδιον καὶ οὐδαμῶς Σκυθικόν (iv, 18), whereas

when we compare Strabo vii. p. 302 and Skymn. Chi. 105-115,

we see that Ephorus talked of the Androphagi as a variety of

Scythians,—ἔθνος ἀνδροφάγων Σκυθῶν.

The valuable inscription from Olbia (No. 2058 Boeckh) recognizes

Μιξέλληνες near that town.

[458] Herod. iv, 17. We may illustrate this statement of

Herodotus by an extract from Heber’s journal as cited in Dr.

Clarke’s Travels, ch. xv, p. 337: “The Nagay Tartars begin to the

west of Marinopol: they cultivate a good deal of corn, yet they

dislike bread as an article of food.”

Such stationary cultivators were doubtless regarded by the

predominant mass of the Scythians as degenerate brethren; and some

historians maintain that they belonged to a foreign race, standing

to the Scythians merely in the relation of subjects,[459]—an

hypothesis contradicted implicitly, if not directly, by the words of

Herodotus, and no way necessary in the present case. It is not from

them, however, that Herodotus draws his vivid picture of the people,

with their inhuman rites and repulsive personal features. It is the

purely nomadic Scythians whom he depicts, the earliest specimens of

the Mongolian race (so it seems probable)[460] known to history,

and prototypes of the Huns and Bulgarians of later centuries. The

sword, in the literal sense of the word, was their chief god,[461]—an

iron scymetar solemnly elevated upon a wide and lofty platform,

which was supported on masses of fagots piled underneath,—to whom

sheep, horses, and a portion of their prisoners taken in war, were

offered up in sacrifice: Herodotus treats this sword as the image

of the god Arês, thus putting an Hellenic interpretation upon that

which he describes literally as a barbaric rite. The scalps and

the skins of slain enemies, and sometimes the skull formed into a

drinking-cup, constituted the decoration of a Scythian warrior:

whoever had not slain an enemy, was excluded from participation in

the annual festival and bowl of wine prepared by the chief of each

separate horde. The ceremonies which took place during the sickness

and funeral obsequies of the Scythian kings (who were buried at

Gerrhi, at the extreme point to which navigation extended up the

Borysthenês), partook of the same sanguinary disposition. It was

the Scythian practice to put out the eyes of all their slaves;

and the awkwardness of the Scythian frame, often overloaded with

fat, together with extreme dirt of body, and the absence of all

discriminating feature between one man and another, complete the

brutish portrait.[462] Mare’s milk (with cheese made from it) seems

to have been their chief luxury, and probably served the same purpose

of procuring the intoxicating drink called _kumiss_, as at present

among the Bashkirs and the Kalmucks.[463]

[459] Niebuhr (Dissertat. _ut sup._ p. 360), Boeckh (Introd.

Inscrip. _ut sup._ p. 110), and Ritter (Vorhalle der Geschichte,

p. 316) advance this opinion. But we ought not on this occasion

to depart from the authority of Herodotus, whose information

respecting the people of Scythia, collected by himself on the

spot, is one of the most instructive and precious portions of his

whole work. He is very careful to distinguish what is Scythian

from what is not: and these tribes, which Niebuhr (contrary

to the sentiment of Herodotus) imagines _not_ to be Scythian,

were the tribes nearest and best known to him; probably he had

personally visited them, since we know that he went up the river

Hypanis (Bog) as high as the Exampæus, four days’ journey from

the sea (iv, 52-81).

That some portions of the same ἔθνος should be ἀροτῆρες, and

other portions νόμαδες, is far from being without parallel; such

was the case with the Persians, for example (Herodot. i, 126),

and with the Iberians between the Euxine and the Caspian (Strabo,

xi, p. 500).

The Pontic Greeks confounded Agathyrsus, Gelônus, and Scythês in

the same genealogy, as being three brethren, sons of Hêraklês by

the μιξοπάρθενος Ἔχιδνα of the Hylæa (iv, 7-10). Herodotus is

more precise: he distinguishes both the Agathyrsi and Gelôni from

Scythians.

[460] Both Niebuhr and Boeckh account the ancient Scythians to be

of Mongolian race (Niebuhr in the Dissertation above mentioned,

Untersuchungen über die Geschichte der Skythen, Geten, und

Sarmaten, among the Kleine Historische Schriften, p. 362; Boeckh,

Corpus Inscriptt. Græcarum, Introductio ad Inscriptt. Sarmatic.

part xi, p. 81). Paul Joseph Schafarik, in his elaborate

examination of the ethnography of the ancient people described as

inhabiting northern Europe and Asia, arrives at the same result

(Slavische Alterthümer, Prag. 1843, vol. i, xiii, 6, p. 279).

A striking illustration of this analogy of race is noticed by

Alexander von Humboldt, in speaking of the burial-place and the

funeral obsequies of the Tartar Tchinghiz Khan:—

“Les cruautés lors de la pompe funèbre des grands-khans

ressemblent entièrement à celles que nous trouvons décrites par

Hérodote (iv, 71) environ 1700 ans avant la mort de Tchinghiz, et

65° de longitude plus à l’ouest, chez les Scythes du Gerrhus et

du Borysthène.” (Humboldt, Asie Centrale, vol. i, p. 244.)

Nevertheless, M. Humboldt dissents from the opinion of Niebuhr

and Boeckh, and considers the Scythians of Herodotus to be of

Indo-Germanic, not of Mongolian race: Klaproth seems to adopt

the same view (see Humboldt, Asie Centrale, vol. i, p. 401, and

his valuable work, Kosmos, p. 491, note 383). He assumes it as

a certain fact, upon what evidence I do not distinctly see,

that no tribe of Turk or Mongol race migrated westward out of

Central Asia until considerably later than the time of Herodotus.

To make out such a negative, seems to me impossible: and the

marks of ethnographical analogy, so far as they go, decidedly

favor the opinion of Niebuhr. Ukert also (Skythien, pp. 266-280)

controverts the opinion of Niebuhr.

At the same time it must be granted that these marks are not very

conclusive, and that many nomadic hordes, whom no one would refer

to the same race, may yet have exhibited an analogy of manners

and characteristics equal to that between the Scythians and

Mongols.

The principle upon which the Indo-European family of the human

race is defined and parted off, appears to me inapplicable to any

particular case wherein the _language_ of the people is unknown

to us. The nations constituting that family have no other point

of affinity except in the roots and structure of their language;

on every other point there is the widest difference. To enable

us to affirm that the Massagetæ, or the Scythians, or the Alani,

belonged to the Indo-European family, it would be requisite that

we should know something of their language. But the Scythian

language may be said to be wholly unknown; and the very few

words which are brought to our knowledge do not tend to aid the

Indo-European hypothesis.

[461] See the story of the accidental discovery of this Scythian

sword when lost, by Attila, the chief of the Huns (Priscus ap.

Jornandem de Rebus Geticis, c. 35, and in Eclog. Legation. p. 50).

Lucian in the Toxaris (c. 38, vol. ii, p. 546, Hemst.) notices

the worship of the akinakes, or scymetar, by the Scythians in

plain terms without interposing the idea of the god Arês: compare

Clemen. Alexand. Protrept. p. 25, Syl. Ammianus Marcellinus, in

speaking of the Alani (xxxi, 2), as well as Pomponius Mela (ii,

1) and Solinus (c. 20), copy Herodotus. Ammianus is more literal

in his description of the Sarmatian sword-worship (xvii, 12).

“Eductisque mucronibus, quos pro numinibus colunt,” etc.

[462] Herodot. iv, 3-62, 71-75; Sophoklês, Œnomaus,—ap. Athenæ.

ix, p. 410; Hippokratês, De Aëre, Locis et Aquis, ch. vi, s.

91-99, etc.

It is seldom that we obtain, in reference to the modes of life of

an ancient population, two such excellent witnesses as Herodotus

and Hippokratês about the Scythians.

Hippokratês was accustomed to see the naked figure in its highest

perfection at the Grecian games: hence, perhaps, he is led to

dwell more emphatically on the corporeal defects of the Scythians.

[463] See Pallas, Reise durch Russland, and Dr. Clarke, Travels

in Russia, ch. xii, p. 238.

If the habits of the Scythians were such as to create in the near

observer no other feeling than repugnance, their force at least

inspired terror. They appeared in the eyes of Thucydidês so numerous

and so formidable, that he pronounces them irresistible, if they

could but unite, by any other nation within his knowledge. Herodotus,

too, conceived the same idea of a race among whom every man was a

warrior and a practised horse-bowman, and who were placed by their

mode of life out of all reach of an enemy’s attack.[464] Moreover,

Herodotus does not speak meanly of their intelligence, contrasting

them in favorable terms with the general stupidity of the other

nations bordering on the Euxine. In this respect Thucydidês seems to

differ from him.

[464] Thucyd. ii, 95; Herodot. ii, 46-47: his idea of the

formidable power of the Scythians seems also to be implied in his

expression (c. 81), καὶ ὀλίγους, ὡς Σκύθας εἶναι.

Herodotus holds the same language about the Thracians, however,

as Thucydidês about the Scythians,—irresistible, if they could

but act with union (v, 3).

On the east, the Scythians of the time of Herodotus were separated

only by the river Tanais from the Sarmatians, who occupied the

territory for several days’ journey north-east of the Palus Mæôtis:

on the south, they were divided by the Danube from the section of

Thracians called Getæ. Both these nations were nomadic, analogous to

the Scythians in habits, military efficiency, and fierceness: indeed,

Herodotus and Hippokratês distinctly intimate that the Sarmatians

were nothing but a branch of Scythians,[465] speaking a Scythian

dialect, and distinguished from their neighbors on the other side

of the Tanais, chiefly by this peculiarity,—that the women among

them were warriors hardly less daring and expert than the men.

This attribute of Sarmatian women, as a matter of fact, is well

attested,—though Herodotus has thrown over it an air of suspicion

not properly belonging to it, by his explanatory genealogical mythe,

deducing the Sarmatians from a mixed breed between the Scythians and

the Amazons.

[465] The testimony of Herodotus to this effect (iv, 110-117)

seems clear and positive, especially as to the language.

Hippokratês also calls the Sauromatæ ἔθνος Σκυθικόν (De Aëre,

Locis et Aquis, c. vi, sect. 89, Petersen).

I cannot think that there is any sufficient ground for the

marked ethnical distinction which several authors draw (contrary

to Herodotus) between the Scythians and the Sarmatians. Boeckh

considers the latter to be of Median or Persian origin, but

to be, also, the progenitors of the modern Sclavonian family:

“Sarmatæ, Slavorum haud dubie parentes,” (Introduct. ad Inscr.

Sarmatic. Corp. Inscr. part xi, p. 83.) Many other authors have

shared this opinion, which identifies the Sarmatians with the

Slavi; but Paul Joseph Schafarik (Slavische Alterthümer, vol. i,

c. 16) has shown powerful reasons against it.

Nevertheless, Schafarik admits the Sarmatians to be of Median

origin, and radically distinct from the Scythians. But the

passages which are quoted to prove this point from Diodorus (ii,

43), from Mela (i, 19), and from Pliny (H. N. vi. 7), appear to

me of much less authority than the assertion of Herodotus. In

none of these authors is there any trace of inquiries made in or

near the actual spot from neighbors and competent informants,

such as we find in Herodotus. And the chapter in Diodorus, on

which both Boeckh and Schafarik lay especial stress, appears to

me one of the most untrustworthy in the whole book. To believe in

the existence of Scythian kings who reigned over all Asia from

the eastern ocean to the Caspian, and sent out large colonies

of Medians and Assyrians, is surely impossible; and Wesseling

speaks much within the truth when he says, “Verum hæc dubia

admodum atque incerta.” It is remarkable to see Boeckh treating

this passage as conclusive against Herodotus and Hippokratês.

M. Boeckh has also given a copious analysis of the names found

in the Greek inscriptions from Scythian, Sarmatian, and Mæotic

localities (_ut sup._ pp. 107-117), and he endeavors to establish

an analogy between the two latter classes and Median names. But

the analogy holds just as much with regard to the Scythian names.

The wide extent of steppe eastward and north-eastward of the

Tanais, between the Ural mountains and the Caspian, and beyond the

possessions of the Sarmatians, was traversed by Grecian traders, even

to a good distance in the direction of the Altai mountains,—the rich

produce of gold, both in Altai and Ural, being the great temptation.

First, according to Herodotus, came the indigenous nomadic nation

called Budini, who dwelt to the northward of the Sarmatians,[466] and

among whom were established a colony of Pontic Greeks, intermixed

with natives, and called Gelôni; these latter inhabited a spacious

town built entirely of wood. Beyond the Budini eastward dwelt the

Thyssagetæ and the Jurkæ, tribes of hunters, and even a body

of Scythians who had migrated from the territories of the regal

Scythians. The Issêdones were the easternmost people respecting whom

any definite information reached the Greeks; beyond them we find

nothing but fable,[467]—the one-eyed Arimaspians, the gold-guarding

Grypes, or Griffins, and the bald-headed Argippæi. It is impossible

to fix with precision the geography of these different tribes, or

to do more than comprehend approximatively their local bearings and

relations to each other.

[466] The locality which Herodotus assigns to the Budini creates

difficulty. According to his own statement, it would seem that

they ought to be near to the Neuri (iv, 105), and so in fact

Ptolemy places them (v, 9) near about Volhynia and the sources of

the Dniester.

Mannert (Geographie der Griech. und Römer, Der Norden der Erde,

v, iv, p. 138) conceives the Budini to be a Teutonic tribe; but

Paul Joseph Schafarik (Slavische Alterthümer, i, 10, pp. 185-195)

has shown more plausible grounds for believing both them and the

Neuri to be of Slavic family. It seems that the names Budini

and Neuri are traceable to Slavic roots; that the wooden town

described by Herodotus in the midst of the Budini is an exact

parallel of the primitive Slavic towns, down even to the twelfth

century; and that the description of the country around, with its

woods and marshes containing beavers, otters, etc. harmonizes

better with southern Poland and Russia than with the neighborhood

of the Ural mountains. From the color ascribed to the Budini,

no certain inference can be drawn: γλαυκόν τε πᾶν ἰσχυρῶς ἐστὶ

καὶ πυῤῥόν (iv, 108). Mannert construes it in favor of Teutonic

family, Schafarik in favor of Slavic; and it is to be remarked,

that Hippokratês talks of the Scythians generally as extremely

πυῤῥοί (De Aëre, Locis et Aquis, c. vi: compare Aristot. Prob.

xxxviii, 2).

These reasonings are plausible; yet we can hardly venture to

alter the position of the Budini as Herodotus describes it,

eastward of the Tanais. For he states in the most explicit manner

that the route as far as the Argippæi _is thoroughly known_,

traversed both by Scythian and by Grecian traders, and all

the nations in the way to it known (iv, 24): μέχρι μὲν τούτων

πολλὴ περιφάνεια τῆς χώρης ἐστὶ καὶ τῶν ἔμπροσθεν ἐθνέων· καὶ

γὰρ Σκυθέων τινες ἀπικνέονται ἐς αὐτοὺς, τῶν οὐ χαλεπόν ἐστὶ

πυθέσθαι, καὶ Ἑλλήνων τῶν ἐκ Βορυσθένεός τε ἐμπορίου καὶ τῶν

ἄλλων Ποντικῶν ἐμπορίων. These Greek and Scythian traders,

in their journey from the Pontic seaports into the interior,

employed seven different languages and as many interpreters.

Völcker thinks that Herodotus or his informants confounded the

Don with the Volga (Mythische Geographie, sect. 24, p. 190),

supposing that the higher parts of the latter belonged to the

former; a mistake not unnatural, since the two rivers approach

pretty near to each other at one particular point, and since the

lower parts of the Volga, together with the northern shore of the

Caspian, where its embouchure is situated, appear to have been

little visited and almost unknown in antiquity. There cannot be a

more striking evidence how unknown these regions were, than the

persuasion, so general in antiquity, that the Caspian sea was a

gulf of the ocean, to which Herodotus, Aristotle, and Ptolemy

are almost the only exceptions. Alexander von Humboldt has some

valuable remarks on the tract laid down by Herodotus from the

Tanais to the Argippæi (Asie Centrale, vol. i, pp. 390-400).

[467] Herodot. iv, 80.

But the best known of all is the situation of the Tauri (perhaps

a remnant of the expelled Cimmerians), who dwelt in the southern

portion of the Tauric Chersonesus (or Crimea), and who immolated

human sacrifices to their native virgin goddess,—identified by

the Greeks with Artemis, and serving as a basis for the affecting

legend of Iphigeneia. The Tauri are distinguished by Herodotus from

Scythians,[468] but their manners and state of civilization seem

to have been very analogous. It appears also that the powerful and

numerous Massagetæ, who dwelt in Asia on the plains eastward of the

Caspian and southward of the Issêdones, were so analogous to the

Scythians as to be reckoned as members of the same race by many of

the contemporaries of Herodotus.[469]

[468] Herodot. iv, 99-101. Dionysius Periêgêtês seems to

identify Cimmerians and Tauri (v, 168: compare v, 680, where

the Cimmerians are placed on the Asiatic side of the Cimmerian

Bosphorus, adjacent to the Sindi).

[469] Herodot. i, 202. Strabo compares the inroads of the Sakæ,

which was the name applied by the Persians to the Scythians, to

those of the Cimmerians and the Trêres (xi, pp. 511-512).

This short enumeration of the various tribes near the Euxine and

the Caspian, as well as we can make them out, from the seventh to

the fifth century B. C., is necessary for the comprehension of that

double invasion of Scythians and Cimmerians which laid waste Asia

between 630 and 610 B. C. We are not to expect from Herodotus, born

a century and a half afterwards, any very clear explanations of

this event, nor were all his informants unanimous respecting the

causes which brought it about. But it is a fact perfectly within

the range of historical analogy, that accidental aggregations of

number, development of aggressive spirit, or failure in the means

of subsistence, among the nomadic tribes of the Asiatic plains,

have brought on the civilized nations of southern Europe calamitous

invasions, of which the prime moving cause was remote and unknown.

Sometimes a weaker tribe, flying before a stronger, has been in this

manner precipitated upon the territory of a richer and less military

population, so that an impulse originating in the distant plains of

Central Tartary has been propagated until it reached the southern

extremity of Europe, through successive intermediate tribes, a

phenomenon especially exhibited during the fourth and fifth centuries

of the Christian era, in the declining years of the Roman empire.

A pressure so transmitted onward is said to have brought down the

Cimmerians and Scythians upon the more southerly regions of Asia.

The most ancient story in explanation of this incident seems to have

been contained in the epic poem (now lost) called _Arimaspia_, of

the mystic Aristeas of Prokonnêsus, composed apparently about 540

B. C. This poet, under the inspiration of Apollo,[470] undertook

a pilgrimage to visit the sacred Hyperboreans (especial votaries

of that god) in their elysium beyond the Rhipæan mountains; but

he did not reach farther than the Issêdones. According to him,

the movement, whereby the Cimmerians had been expelled from their

possessions on the Euxine sea, began with the Grypes or Griffins in

the extreme north,—the sacred character of the Hyperboreans beyond

was incompatible with aggression or bloodshed. The Grypes invaded

the Arimaspians, who on their part assailed their neighbors the

Issêdones;[471] these latter moved southward or westward and drove

the Scythians across the Tanais, while the Scythians, carried forward

by this onset, expelled the Cimmerians from their territories along

the Palus Mæotis and the Euxine.

[470] Herodot. iv, 13. φοιβολαμπτὸς γενομένος.

[471] Herodot. iv, 13.

We see thus that Aristeas referred the attack of the Scythians upon

the Cimmerians to a distant impulse proceeding in the first instance

from the Grypes or Griffins; but Herodotus had heard it explained in

another way, which he seems to think more correct,—the Scythians,

originally occupants of Asia, or the regions east of the Caspian, had

been driven across the Araxês, in consequence of an unsuccessful

war with the Massagetæ, and precipitated upon the Cimmerians in

Europe.[472]

[472] Herodot. iv, 11. Ἐστι δὲ καὶ ἄλλος λόγος, ἔχων ὧδε, τῷ

μάλιστα λεγομένῳ αὐτὸς προσκεῖμαι.

When the Scythian host approached, the Cimmerians were not agreed

among themselves whether to resist or retire: the majority of the

people were dismayed and wished to evacuate the territory, while

the kings of the different tribes resolved to fight and perish at

home. Those who were animated with this fierce despair, divided

themselves along with the kings into two equal bodies and perished

by each other’s hands near the river Tyras, where the sepulchres of

the kings were yet shown in the time of Herodotus.[473] The mass of

the Cimmerians fled and abandoned their country to the Scythians;

who, however, not content with possession of the country, followed

the fugitives across the Cimmerian Bosphorus from west to east, under

the command of their prince Madyês son of Protothyês. The Cimmerians,

coasting along the east of the Euxine sea and passing to the west

of Mount Caucasus, made their way first into Kolchis, and next into

Asia Minor, where they established themselves on the peninsula on

the northern coast, near the site of the subsequent Grecian city of

Sinôpê. But the Scythian pursuers, mistaking the course taken by the

fugitives, followed the more circuitous route east of Mount Caucasus

near to the Caspian sea;[474] which brought them, not into Asia

Minor, but into Media. Both Asia Minor and Media became thus exposed

nearly at the same time to the ravages of northern nomades.

[473] Herodot. iv, 11.

[474] Herodot. iv, 1-12.

These two stories, representing the belief of Herodotus and Aristeas,

involve the assumption that the Scythians were comparatively recent

emigrants into the territory between the Ister and the Palus Mæotis.

But the legends of the Scythians themselves, as well as those of the

Pontic Greeks, imply the contrary of this assumption; and describe

the Scythians as primitive and indigenous inhabitants of the country.

Both legends are so framed as to explain a triple division, which

probably may have prevailed, of the Scythian aggregate nationality,

traced up to three heroic brothers: both also agree in awarding the

predominance to the youngest brother of the three,[475] though in

other respects, the names and incidents of the two are altogether

different, The Scythians call themselves Skoloti.

[475] Herodot. iv, 5-9. At this day, the three great tribes of

the nomadic Turcomans, on the north-eastern border of Persia

near the Oxus,—the Yamud, the Gokla, and the Tuka,—assert for

themselves a legendary genealogy deduced from three brothers

(Frazer, Narrative of a Journey in Khorasan, p. 258).

Such material differences, in the various accounts given to Herodotus

of the Scythian and Cimmerian invasions of Asia, are by no means

wonderful, seeing that nearly two centuries had elapsed between that

event and his visit to the Pontus. That the Cimmerians—perhaps the

northernmost portion of the great Thracian name, and conterminous

with the Getæ on the Danube—were the previous tenants of much of

the territory between the Ister and the Palus Mæotis, and that they

were expelled in the seventh century B. C., by the Scythians, we may

follow Herodotus in believing; but Niebuhr has shown that there is

great intrinsic improbability in his narrative of the march of the

Cimmerians into Asia Minor, and in the pursuit of these fugitives by

the Scythians. That the latter would pursue at all, when an extensive

territory was abandoned to them without resistance, is hardly

supposable: that they should pursue and mistake their way, is still

more difficult to believe: nor can we overlook the great difficulties

of the road and the Caucasian passes, in the route ascribed to the

Cimmerians.[476] Niebuhr supposes the latter to have marched into

Asia Minor by the western side of the Euxine, and across the Thracian

Bosphorus, after having been defeated in a decisive battle by the

Scythians near the river Tyras, where their last kings fell and were

interred.[477] Though this is both an easier route, and more in

accordance with the analogy of other occupants expelled from the same

territory, we must, in the absence of positive evidence, treat the

point as unauthenticated.

[476] Read the description of the difficult escape of Mithridates

Eupator, with a mere handful of men, from Pontus to Bosphorus by

this route, between the western edge of Caucasus and the Euxine

(Strabo, xi, pp. 495-496),—ἡ τῶν Ἀχαιῶν καὶ Ζυγῶν καὶ Ἡνιόχων

παραλία,—all piratical and barbarous tribes,—τῇ παραλίᾳ χαλεπῶς

ᾔει, τὰ πολλὰ ἐμβαίνων ἐπὶ τὴν θάλασσαν: compare Plutarch,

Pompeius, c. 34. Pompey thought the route unfit for his march.

To suppose the Cimmerian tribes with their wagons passing along

such a track would require strong positive evidence. According

to Ptolemy, however, there were two passes over the range of

Caucasus,—the Caucasian or Albanian gates, near Derbend and

the Caspian, and the Sarmatian gates, considerably more to the

westward (Ptolemy, Geogr. v, 9; Forbiger, Handbuch der Alten

Geographie, vol. ii, sect. 56, p. 55). It is not impossible

that the Cimmerians may have followed the westernmost, and the

Scythians the easternmost, of these two passes; but the whole

story is certainly very improbable.

[477] See Niebuhr’s Dissertation above referred to, pp. 366-367.

A reason for supposing that the Cimmerians came into Asia Minor

from the west and not from the east, is, that we find them so

much confounded with the Thracian Trêres indicating seemingly a

joint invasion.

The inroad of the Cimmerians into Asia Minor was doubtless connected

with their expulsion from the northern coast of the Euxine by the

Scythians, but we may well doubt whether it was at all connected,

as Herodotus had been told that it was, with the invasion of Media

by the Scythians, except as happening near about the same time. The

same great evolution of Scythian power, or propulsion by other tribes

behind, may have occasioned both events,—brought about by different

bodies of Scythians, but nearly contemporaneous.

Herodotus tells us two facts respecting the Cimmerian emigrants

into Asia Minor. They committed destructive, though transient,

ravages in many parts of Paphlagonia, Phrygia, Lydia, and Ionia,—and

they occupied permanently the northern peninsula,[478] whereon the

Greek city of Sinôpê was afterwards planted. Had the elegies of

the contemporary Ephesian poet Kallinus been preserved, we should

have known better how to appreciate these trying times: he strove

to keep alive the energy of his countrymen against the formidable

invaders.[479] From later authors, who probably, had these poems

before them, we learn that the Cimmerian host, having occupied the

Lydian chief town Sardis (its inaccessible acropolis defied them),

poured with their wagons into the fertile valley of the Kaïster,

took and sacked Magnêsia on the Mæander, and even threatened the

temple of Artemis at Ephesus. But the goddess so well protected

her own town and sanctuary,[480] that Lygdamis the leader of the

Cimmerians, whose name marks him for a Greek, after a season of

prosperous depredation in Lydia and Ionia, conducting his host into

the mountainous regions of Kilikia, was there overwhelmed and slain.

But though these marauders perished, the Cimmerian settlers in the

territory near Sinôpê remained; and Ambrôn, the first Milesian

œkist who tried to colonize that spot, was slain by them, if we may

believe Skymnus. They are not mentioned afterwards, but it seems

not unreasonable to believe that they appear under the name of the

Chalybes, whom Herodotus mentions along that coast between the

Mariandynians and Paphlagonians, and whom Mela notices as adjacent to

Sinôpê and Amisus.[481] Other authors place the Chalybes on several

different points, more to the east, though along the same parallel

of latitude,—between the Mosynœki and Tibarêni,—near the river

Thermôdôn,—and on the northern boundary of Armenia, near the sources

of the Araxês; but it is only Herodotus and Mela who recognize

Chalybes westward of the river Halys and the Paphlagonians, near

to Sinôpê. These Chalybes were brave mountaineers, though savage

in manners; distinguished as producers and workers of the iron

which their mountains afforded. In the conceptions of the Greeks,

as manifested in a variety of fabulous notices, they are plainly

connected with Scythians or Cimmerians; whence it seems probable that

this connection was present to the mind of Herodotus in regard to the

inland population near Sinôpê.[482]

[478] Herodot. i, 6-15; iv, 12. φαίνονται δὲ οἱ Κιμμέριοι,

φεύγοντες ἐς τὴν Ἀσίην τοὺς Σκύθας, καὶ τὴν Χερσόνησον

~κτίσαντες~, ἐν τῇ νῦν Σινώπη πόλις Ἑλληνὶς οἴκισται.

[479] Kallinus, Fragment. 2, 3, ed. Bergk. ~Νῦν~ δ᾽ ἐπὶ Κιμμερίων

στρατὸς ἔρχεται ὀβριμοεργῶν (Strabo, xiii, p. 627; xiv, 633-647).

O. Müller (History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, ch.

x, s. 4) and Mr. Clinton (Fasti Hellenici, B. C. 716-635) may

be consulted about the obscure chronology of these events.

The Scythico-Cimmerian invasion of Asia, to which _Herodotus_

alludes, appears fixed for some date in the reign of Ardys the

Lydian, 640-629 B. C., and may stand for 635 B. C. as Mr. Clinton

puts it; and I agree with O. Müller that the fragment of the

poet Kallinus above cited alludes to _this_ invasion; for the

supposition of Mr. Clinton, that Kallinus here alludes to an

invasion past and not present, appears to be excluded by the

word νῦν. Mr. Clinton places both Kallinus and Archilochus (in

my judgment) half a century too high; for I agree with O. Müller

in disbelieving the story told by Pliny of the picture sold by

Bularchus to Kandaulês. O. Müller follows Strabo (i, p. 61) in

calling Madys a Cimmerian prince, who drove the Trêres out of

Asia Minor; whereas Herodotus mentions him as the _Scythian_

prince, who drove the Cimmerians _out_ of their own territory

_into_ Asia Minor (i, 103).

The chronology of Herodotus is intelligible and consistent

with itself: that of Strabo we cannot settle, when he speaks

of many different invasions. Nor does his language give us the

smallest reason to suppose that he was in possession of any

means of determining dates for these early times,—nothing at all

calculated to justify the positive chronology which Mr. Clinton

deduces from him: compare his Fasti Hellenici, B. C. 635, 629,

617. Strabo says, after affirming that Homer knew both the name

and the reality of the Cimmerians (i, p. 6; iii, p. 149),—καὶ

γὰρ καθ᾽ Ὅμηρον, ἢ ~πρὸ αὐτοῦ~ μικρὸν, λέγουσι τὴν τῶν Κιμμερίων

ἔφοδον γενέσθαι τὴν μέχρι τῆς Αἰολίδος καὶ τῆς Ἰωνίας,—“which

places the first appearance of the Cimmerians in Asia Minor a

century _at least_ before the Olympiad of Corœbus,” (says Mr.

Clinton.) But what means could Strabo have had to chronologize

events as happening _at or a little before_ the time of Homer? No

date in the Grecian world was so contested, or so indeterminable,

as the time of Homer: nor will it do to reason, as Mr. Clinton

does, _i. e._ to take the latest date fixed for Homer among many,

and then to say that the invasion of the Cimmerians _must_ be _at

least_ B. C. 876: thus assuming it as a certainty that, whether

the date of Homer be a century earlier or later, the invasion of

the Cimmerians must be made to fit it. When Strabo employs such

untrustworthy chronological standards, he only shows us—what

everything else confirms—that there existed no tests of any value

for events of that early date in the Grecian world.

Mr. Clinton announces this ante-Homeric calculation as a

chronological certainty: “The Cimmerians first appeared in

Asia Minor about a century before B. C. 776. An irruption is

_recorded_ in B. C. 782. Their last inroad was in B. C. 635. The

settlement of Ambrôn (the Milesian, at Sinôpê) may be placed at

about B. C. 782, twenty-six years before the era assigned to (the

Milesian or Sinôpic settlement of) Trapezus.”

On what authority does Mr. Clinton assert that a Cimmerian

irruption was _recorded_ in B. C. 782? Simply on the following

passage of Orosius, which he cites at B. C. 635: “Anno ante urbem

conditam tricesimo,—Tunc etiam _Amazonum gentis et Cimmeriorum_

in Asiam repentinus incursus plurimum diu lateque vastationem et

stragem intulit.” If this authority of Orosius is to be trusted,

we ought to say that the invasion of the Amazons was a _recorded_

fact. To treat a fact mentioned in Orosius, an author of the

fourth century after Christ, and referred to B. C. 782, as a

_recorded_ fact, confounds the most important boundary-lines in

regard to the appreciation of historical evidence.

In fixing the Cimmerian invasion of Asia at 782 B. C., Mr.

Clinton has the statement of Orosius, whatever it may be worth,

to rest upon; but in fixing the settlement of Ambrôn the Milesian

(at Sinôpê) at 782 B. C., I know not that he had any authority

at all. Eusebius does, indeed, place the foundation of Trapezus

in 756 B. C., and Trapezus is said to have been a colony from

Sinôpê; and Mr. Clinton, therefore, is anxious to find some date

for the foundation of Sinôpê anterior to 756 B. C.; but there is

nothing to warrant him in selecting 782 B. C., rather than any

other year.

In my judgment, the establishment of _any_ Milesian colony in

the Euxine at so early a date as 756 B. C. is highly improbable:

and when we find that the same Eusebius fixes the foundation of

Sinôpê (the metropolis of Trapezus) as low down as 629 B. C.,

this is an argument with me for believing that the date which he

assigns to Trapezus is by far too early. Mr. Clinton treats the

date which Eusebius assigns to Trapezus as certain, and infers

from it, that the date which the same author assigns to _Sinôpê_

is one hundred and thirty years _later_ than the reality: I

reverse the inference, considering the date which he assigns to

_Sinôpê_ as the more trustworthy of the two, and deducing the

conclusion, that the date which he gives for _Trapezus_ is one

hundred and thirty years at least _earlier_ than the reality.

On all grounds, the authority of the chronologists is greater

with regard to the later of the two periods than to the earlier,

and there is, besides, the additional probability arising out of

what is a suitable date for Milesian settlement. To which I will

add, that Herodotus places the settlement of the Cimmerians near

“that spot where Sinôpê is _now_ settled,” in the reign of Ardys,

soon after 635 B. C. Sinôpê was, therefore, _not_ founded at the

time when the Cimmerians went there, in the belief of Herodotus.

[480] Strabo i, p. 61; Kallimachus, Hymn. ad Dianam, 251-260—

... ἠλαίνων ἀλαπάζεμεν ἠπείλησε (Ἔφεσον)

Λύγδαμις ὑβριστὴς, ἐπὶ δὲ στρατὸν ἱππημόλγων

Ἤγαγε Κιμμερίων, ψαμάθῳ ἴσον, οἳ ῥα παρ᾽ αὐτὸν

Κεκλίμενοι ναίουσι βοὸς πόρον Ἰναχιώνης.

Ἆ δειλὸς βασιλέων ὅσον ἤλιτεν· οὐ γὰρ ἔμελλε

Οὔτ᾽ αὐτὸς Σκυθίηνδε παλίμπετες, οὔτε τις ἄλλος

Ὅσσων ἐν λειμῶνι Καϋστρίῳ ἦσαν ἅμαξαι,

Ἂψ ἀπονοστήσειν....

In the explanation of the proverb Σκυθῶν ἐρημία, allusion is

made to a sudden panic and flight of _Scythians_ from Ephesus

(Hesychius, v. Σκυθῶν ἐρημία),—probably this must refer to some

story of interference on the part of Artemis to protect the town

against these Cimmerians. The confusion between Cimmerians and

Scythians is very frequent.

[481] Herodot. i, 28; Mela, i, 19, 9; Skymn. Chi. Fragm. 207.

[482] The ten thousand Greeks in their homeward march passed

through a people called Chalybes between Armenia and the town of

Trapezus, and also again after eight days’ march westerly from

Trapezus, between the Tibarêni and Mosynœki: compare Xenophon,

Anabas. iv, 7, 15; v, 5, 1; probably different sections of the

same people. The last-mentioned Chalybes seem to have been the

best known, from their iron works, and their greater vicinity

to the Greek ports: Ephorus recognized them (see Ephori Fragm.

80-82, ed. Marx); whether he knew of the more easterly Chalybes,

north of Armenia, is less certain: so also Dionysius Periêgêtês,

v, 768: compare Eustathius, _ad loc._

The idea which prevailed among ancient writers, of a connection

between the Chalybes in these regions and the Scythians or

Cimmerians (Χάλυβος Σκυθῶν ἄποικος, Æschyl. Sept. ad Thebas, 729;

and Hesiod. ap. Clemen. Alex. Str. i, p. 132), and of which the

supposed residence of the Amazons on the river Thermôdôn seems to

be one of the manifestations, is discussed in Hoeckh, Kreta, book

i, pp. 294-305; and Mannert, Geographie der Griechen und Römer,

vi, 2, pp. 408-416: compare Stephan. Byz. v. Χάλυβες. Mannert

believes in an early Scythian emigration into these regions. The

ten thousand Greeks passed through the territory of a people

called Skythini, immediately bordering on the Chalybes to the

north; which region some identify with the Sakasênê of Strabo

(xi, 511) occupied, according to that geographer, by invaders

from Eastern Scythia.

It seems that Sinôpê was one of the most considerable places for

the export of the iron used in Greece: the Sinopic as well as the

Chalybdic (or Chalybic) iron had a special reputation (Stephan.

Byz. v. Λακεδαίμων).

About the Chalybes, compare Ukert, Skythien, pp. 521-523.

Herodotus seems to have conceived only one invasion of Asia by the

Cimmerians, during the reign of Ardys in Lydia. Ardys was succeeded

by his son Sadyattês, who reigned twelve years; and it was Alyattês,

son and successor of Sadyattês, according to Herodotus, who expelled

the Cimmerians from Asia.[483] But Strabo seems to speak of several

invasions, in which the Trêres, a Thracian tribe, were concerned,

and which are not clearly discriminated; while Kallisthenês affirmed

that Sardis had been taken by the Trêres and Lykians.[484] We see

only that a large and fair portion of Asia Minor was for much of this

seventh century B. C. in possession of these destroying nomads, who,

while on the one hand they afflicted the Ionic Greeks, on the other

hand indirectly befriended them by retarding the growth of the Lydian

monarchy.

[483] Herodot. i, 15-16.

[484] Strabo, xi, p. 511; xii, p. 552; xiii, p. 627.

The poet Kallinus mentioned both Cimmerians and Trêres (Fr. 2, 3,

ed. Bergk; Strabo. xiv, pp. 633-647).

The invasion of Upper Asia by the Scythians appears to have been

nearly simultaneous with that of Asia Minor by the Cimmerians, but

more ruinous and longer protracted. The Median king Kyaxarês,

called away from the siege of Nineveh to oppose them, was totally

defeated; and the Scythians became full masters of the country. They

spread themselves over the whole of Upper Asia, as far as Palestine

and the borders of Egypt, where Psammetichus the Egyptian king met

them, and only redeemed his kingdom from invasion by prayers and

costly presents. In their return, a detachment of them sacked the

temple of Aphroditê at Askalon; an act of sacrilege which the goddess

avenged both upon the plunderers and their descendants, to the third

and fourth generation. Twenty-eight years did their dominion in

Upper Asia continue,[485] with intolerable cruelty and oppression;

until, at length, Kyaxarês and the Medes found means to entrap the

chiefs into a banquet, and slew them in the hour of intoxication.

The Scythian host once expelled, the Medes resumed their empire.

Herodotus tells us that these Scythians returned to the Tauric

Chersonese, where they found that, during their long absence, their

wives had intermarried with the slaves, while the new offspring which

had grown up refused to readmit them. A deep trench had been drawn

across a line[486] over which their march lay, and the new-grown

youth defended it with bravery, until at length,—so the story

runs,—the returning masters took up their whips instead of arms, and

scourged the rebellious slaves into submission.

[485] Herodot. i, 105. The account given by Herodotus of the

punishment inflicted by the offended Aphroditê on the Scythian

plunderers, and on their children’s children down to his time,

becomes especially interesting when we combine it with the

statement of Hippokratês respecting the peculiar incapacities

which were so apt to affect the Scythians, and the religious

interpretation put upon them by the sufferers (De Aëre, Locis, et

Aquis, c. vi, s. 106-109).

[486] See, in reference to the direction of this ditch, Völcker,

in the work above referred to on the Scythia of Herodotus

(Mythische Geographie, ch. vii, p. 177).

That the ditch existed, there can be no reasonable doubt; though

the tale given by Herodotus is highly improbable.

Little as we know about the particulars of these Cimmerian and

Scythian inroads, they deserve notice as the first—at least the

first historically known—among the numerous invasions of cultivated

Asia and Europe by the nomads of Tartary. Huns, Avars, Bulgarians,

Magyars, Turks, Mongols, Tartars, etc., are found in subsequent

centuries repeating the same infliction, and establishing a dominion

both more durable, and not less destructive, than the transient

scourge of the Scythians during the reign of Kyaxarês.

After the expulsion of the Scythians from Asia, the full extent

and power of the Median empire was reëstablished; and Kyaxarês was

enabled again to besiege Nineveh. He took that great city, and

reduced under his dominion all the Assyrians except those who formed

the kingdom of Babylon. This conquest was achieved towards the close

of his reign, and he bequeathed the Median empire, at the maximum of

its grandeur, to his son Astyagês, in 595 B. C.[487]

[487] Herodot. i. 106. Mr. Clinton fixes the date of the capture

of Nineveh at 606 B. C. (F. H. vol. i. p. 269), upon grounds

which do not appear to me conclusive: the utmost which can be

made out is, that it was taken during the last ten years of the

reign of Kyaxarês.

As the dominion of the Scythians in Upper Asia lasted twenty eight

years before they were expelled by Kyaxarês, so also the inroads

of the Cimmerians through Asia Minor, which had begun during the

reign of the Lydian king Ardys, continued through the twelve years

of the reign of his son Sadyattês (629-617 B. C.), and were finally

terminated by Alyattês, son of the latter.[488] Notwithstanding the

Cimmerians, however, Sadyattês was in a condition to prosecute a

war against the Grecian city of Milêtus, which continued during the

last seven years of his reign, and which he bequeathed to his son

and successor. Alyattês continued the war for five years longer.

So feeble was the sentiment of union among the various Grecian

towns on the Asiatic coast, that none of them would lend any aid

to Milêtus except the Chians, who were under special obligations

to Milêtus for previous aid in a contest against Erythræ: and the

Milesians unassisted were no match for the Lydian army in the field,

though their great naval strength placed them out of all danger of

a blockade; and we must presume that the erection of those mounds

of earth against the walls, whereby the Persian Harpagus vanquished

the Ionian cities half a century afterwards, was then unknown to

the Lydians. For twelve successive years the Milesian territory was

annually overrun and ravaged, previous to the gathering in of the

crop. The inhabitants, after having been defeated in two ruinous

battles, gave up all hope of resisting the devastation, so that the

task of the invaders became easy, and the Lydian army pursued their

destructive march to the sound of flutes and harps. They ruined

the crops and the fruit-trees, but Alyattês would not allow the

farm-buildings or country-houses to be burnt, in order that the means

of production might still be preserved, to be again destroyed during

the following season. By such unremitting devastation the Milesians

were reduced to distress and famine, in spite of their command of

the sea; and the fate which afterwards overtook them during the

reign of Crœsus, of becoming tributary subjects to the throne of

Sardis, would have begun half a century earlier, had not Alyattês

unintentionally committed a profanation against the goddess Athênê.

Her temple at Assêssus accidentally took fire, and was consumed, when

his soldiers on a windy day were burning the Milesian standing corn.

Though no one took notice of this incident at the time, yet Alyattês

on his return to Sardis was smitten with prolonged sickness. Unable

to obtain relief, he despatched envoys to seek humble advice from

the god at Delphi; but the Pythian priestess refused to furnish any

healing suggestions until he should have rebuilt the burnt temple

of Athênê,—and Periander, at that time despot of Corinth, having

learned the tenor of this reply, transmitted private information of

it to Thrasybulus, despot of Milêtus, with whom he was intimately

allied. Presently there arrived at Milêtus a herald on the part of

Alyattês, proposing a truce for the special purpose of enabling him

to rebuild the destroyed temple,—the Lydian monarch believing the

Milesians to be so poorly furnished with subsistence that they would

gladly embrace this temporary relief. But the herald on his arrival

found abundance of corn heaped up in the agora, and the citizens

engaged in feasting and enjoyment: for Thrasybulus had caused all

the provision in the town, both public and private, to be brought

out, in order that the herald might see the Milesians in a condition

of apparent plenty, and carry the news of it to his master. The

stratagem succeeded. Alyattês, under the persuasion that his repeated

devastations inflicted upon the Milesians no sensible privations,

abandoned his hostile designs, and concluded with them a treaty of

amity and alliance. It was his first proceeding to build two temples

to Athênê, in place of the one which had been destroyed, and he

then, forthwith, recovered from his protracted malady. His gratitude

for the cure was testified by the transmission of a large silver

bowl, with an iron footstand welded together by the Chian artist

Glaukus,—the inventor of the art of thus joining together pieces of

iron.[489]

[488] From whom Polyænus borrowed his statement, that Alyattês

employed with effect savage dogs against the Cimmerians, I do not

know (Polyæn. vii, 2, 1).

[489] Herodot. i, 20-23.

Alyattês is said to have carried on other operations against some of

the Ionic Greeks: he took Smyrna, but was defeated in an inroad on

the territory of Klazomenæ.[490] But on the whole, his long reign of

fifty-seven years was one of tranquillity to the Grecian cities on

the coast, though we hear of an expedition which he undertook against

Karia.[491] He is reported to have been during youth of overweening

insolence, but to have acquired afterwards a just and improved

character. By an Ionian wife he became father of Crœsus, whom, even

during his lifetime, he appointed satrap of the town of Adramyttium,

and the neighboring plain of Thêbê. But he had also other wives and

other sons, and one of the latter, Adramytus, is reported as the

founder of Adramyttium.[492] How far his dominion in the interior

of Asia Minor extended, we do not know, but very probably his long

and comparatively inactive reign may have favored the accumulation

of those treasures which afterwards rendered the wealth of Crœsus so

proverbial. His monument, an enormous pyramidal mound upon a stone

base, erected near Sardis, by the joint efforts of the whole Sardian

population, was the most memorable curiosity in Lydia during the time

of Herodotus; it was inferior only to the gigantic edifices of Egypt

and Babylon.[493]

[490] Herodot. i, 18. Polyænus (vii, 2, 2) mentions a proceeding

of Alyattês against the Kolophonians.

[491] Nikolaus Damasken. p. 54, ed. Orelli; Xanthi Fragment. p.

243, Creuzer.

Mr Clinton states Alyattês to have _conquered_ Karia, and also

Æolis, for neither of which do I find sufficient authority (Fasti

Hellen. ch. xvii, p. 298).

[492] Aristoteles ap. Stephan. Byz. v. Ἀδραμυττεῖον.

[493] Herodot. i, 92-93.

Crœsus obtained the throne, at the death of his father, by

appointment from the latter. But there was a party among the Lydians

who had favored the pretensions of his brother Pantaleon; one of the

richest chiefs of which party was put to death afterwards by the

new king, under the cruel torture of a spiked carding-machine,—his

property confiscated.[494] The aggressive reign of Crœsus, lasting

fourteen years (559-545 B. C.), formed a marked contrast to the long

quiescence of his father during a reign of fifty-seven years.

[494] Herodot. i, 92.

Pretences being easily found for war against the Asiatic Greeks,

Crœsus attacked them one after the other. Unfortunately, we know

neither the particulars of these successive aggressions, nor the

previous history of the Ionic cities, so as to be able to explain

how it was that the fifth of the Mermnad kings of Sardis met with

such unqualified success, in an enterprise which his predecessors had

attempted in vain. Milêtus alone, with the aid of Chios, had resisted

Alyattês and Sadyattês for eleven years,—and Crœsus possessed no

naval force, any more than his father and grandfather. But on this

occasion, not one of the towns can have displayed the like individual

energy. In regard to the Milesians, we may perhaps suspect that the

period now under consideration was comprised in that long duration

of intestine conflict which Herodotus represents (though without

defining exactly when) to have crippled the forces of the city for

two generations, and which was at length appeased by a memorable

decision of some arbitrators invited from Paros. These latter, called

in by mutual consent of the exhausted antagonist parties at Milêtus,

found both the city and her territory in a state of general neglect

and ruin. But on surveying the lands, they discovered some which

still appeared to be tilled with undiminished diligence and skill; to

the proprietors of these lands they consigned the government of the

town, in the belief that they would manage the public affairs with as

much success as their own.[495] Such a state of intestine weakness

would partly explain the easy subjugation of the Milesians by Crœsus;

while there was little in the habits of the Ionic cities to present

the chance of united efforts against a common enemy. These cities,

far from keeping up any effective political confederation, were in

a state of habitual jealousy of each other, and not unfrequently

in actual war.[496] The common religious festivals,—the Deliac

festival as well as the Pan-Ionia, and afterwards the Ephesia in

place of the Delia,—seem to have been regularly frequented by all the

cities throughout the worst of times. But these assemblies had no

direct political function, nor were they permitted to control that

sentiment of separate city-autonomy which was paramount in the Greek

mind,—though their influence was extremely precious in calling forth

social sympathies. Apart from the periodical festival, meetings for

special emergencies were held at the Pan-Ionic temple; but from such

meetings any city, not directly implicated, kept aloof.[497] As in

this case, so in others not less critical throughout the historical

period, the incapacity of large political combination was the source

of constant danger, and ultimately proved the cause of ruin, to the

independence of all the Grecian states. Herodotus warmly commends the

advice given by Thalês to his Ionic countrymen,—and given, to use his

remarkable expression, “before the ruin of Ionia,”[498]—that a common

senate, invested with authority over all the twelve cities, should

be formed within the walls of Teôs, as the most central in position;

and that all the other cities should account themselves mere demes

of this aggregate commonwealth, or polis. Nor can we doubt that

such was the unavailing aspiration of many a patriot of Milêtus or

Ephesus, even before the final operations of Crœsus were opened

against them.

[495] Herodot. v, 28. κατύπερθε δὲ τουτέων, ἐπὶ δύο γενέας ἀνδρῶν

νοσήσασα τὰ μάλιστα στάσει.

Alyattês reigned fifty-seven years, and the vigorous resistance

which the Milesians offered to him took place in the first six

years of his reign. The “two generations of intestine dissension”

may well have succeeded after the reign of Thrasybulus. This,

indeed, is a mere conjecture, yet it may be observed that

Herodotus, speaking of the time of the Ionic revolt (500 B.

C.), and intimating that Milêtus, though then peaceable, had

been for two generations at an earlier period torn by intestine

dissension, could hardly have meant these “two generations” to

apply to a time earlier than 617 B. C.

[496] Herodot. i, 17; v, 99; Athenæ. vi, p. 267. Compare K. F.

Hermann, Lehrbuch der Griech. Staats Alterthümer, sect. 77, note

28.

[497] See the remarkable case of Milêtus sending no deputies to

a Pan-Ionic meeting, being safe herself from danger (Herodot. i,

141).

[498] Herodot. i, 141-170. χρηστὴ δὲ καὶ πρὶν ἢ διαφθαρῆναι

Ἰωνίην, Θάλεω ἀνδρὸς Μιλησίου γνώμη ἐγένετο, etc.

About the Pan-Ionia and the Ephesia, see Thucyd. iii, 104;

Dionys. Halik. iv, 25; Herodot. i, 143-148. Compare also Whitte,

De Rebus Chiorum Publicis, sect. vii, pp. 22-26.

That prince attacked the Greek cities successively, finding or

making different pretences for hostility against each. He began

with Ephesus, which is said to have been then governed by a despot

of harsh and oppressive character, named Pindarus, whose father

Melas had married a daughter of Alyattês, and who was, therefore,

himself nephew of Crœsus.[499] The latter, having in vain invited

Pindarus and the Ephesians to surrender the town, brought up his

forces and attacked the walls: one of the towers being overthrown,

the Ephesians abandoned all hope of defending their town, and sought

safety by placing it under the guardianship of Artemis, to whose

temple they carried a rope from the walls,—a distance not less than

seven furlongs. They at the same time sent a message of supplication

to Crœsus, who is said to have granted them the preservation of their

liberties, out of reverence to the protection of Artemis; exacting

at the same time that Pindarus should quit the place. Such is the

tale of which we find a confused mention in Ælian and Polyænus; but

Herodotus, while he notices the fact of the long rope whereby the

Ephesians sought to place themselves in contact with their divine

protectress, does not indicate that Crœsus was induced to treat them

more favorably. Ephesus, like all the other Grecian towns on the

coast, was brought under subjection and tribute to him.[500] How he

dealt with them, and what degree of coercive precaution he employed

either to insure subjection or collect tribute, the brevity of the

historian does not acquaint us. But they were required partially at

least, if not entirely, to raze their fortifications; for on occasion

of the danger which supervened a few years afterwards from Cyrus,

they are found practically unfortified.[501]

[499] If we may believe the narrative of Nikolaus Damaskenus,

Crœsus had been in relations with Ephesus and with the Ephesians

during the time when he was hereditary prince, and in the

lifetime of Alyattês. He had borrowed a large sum of money from

a rich Ephesian named Pamphaês, which was essential to enable

him to perform a military duty imposed upon him by his father.

The story is given in some detail by Nikolaus, Fragm. p. 54, ed.

Orell.,—I know not upon what authority.

[500] Herodot. i, 26; Ælian, V. H. iii, 26; Polyæn. vi, 50. The

story contained in Ælian and Polyænus seems to come from Batôn of

Sinôpê; see Guhl, Ephesiaca. ii, 3, p. 26, and iv, 5, p. 150.

The article in Suidas, v. Ἀρίσταρχος, is far too vague to be

interwoven as a positive fact into Ephesian history, as Guhl

interweaves it, immediately consequent on the retirement of

Pindarus.

In reference to the rope reaching from the city to the

Artemision, we may quote an analogous case of the Kylonian

suppliants at Athens, who sought to maintain their contact with

the altar by means of a continuous cord,—unfortunately, the cord

broke (Plutarch, Solon, c. 12).

[501] Herodot. i, 141. Ἴωνες δὲ, ὡς ἤκουσαν—τείχεά τε

περιεβάλλοντο ἕκαστοι, etc.: compare also the statement

respecting Phôkæa, c. 168.

Thus completely successful in his aggressions on the continental

Asiatic Greeks, Crœsus conceived the idea of assembling a fleet,

for the purpose of attacking the islanders of Chios and Samos, but

was convinced,—as some said, by the sarcastic remark of one of the

seven Greek sages, Bias or Pittakus—of the impracticability of the

project. He carried his arms, however, with full success, over other

parts of the continent of Asia Minor, until he had subdued the whole

territory within the river Halys, excepting only the Kilikians and

the Lykians. The Lydian empire thus reached the maximum of its power,

comprehending, besides the Æolic, Ionic, and Doric Greeks on the

coast of Asia Minor, the Phrygians, Mysians, Mariandynians, Chalybes,

Paphlagonians, Thynian and Bithynian Thracians, Karians, and

Pamphylians. And the treasures amassed by Crœsus at Sardis, derived

partly from this great number of tributaries, partly from mines in

various places as well as the auriferous sands of the Paktôlus,

exceeded anything which the Greeks had ever before known.

We learn, from the brief but valuable observations of Herodotus, to

appreciate the great importance of these conquests of Crœsus, with

reference not merely to the Grecian cities actually subjected, but

also indirectly to the whole Grecian world.

“Before the reign of Crœsus, observes the historian, all the Greeks

were free; it was by him first that Greeks were subdued into

tribute.” And he treats this event as the initial phenomenon of the

series, out of which grew the hostile relations between the Greeks

on one side, and Asia as represented by the Persians on the other,

which were uppermost in the minds of himself and his contemporaries.

It was in the case of Crœsus that the Greeks were first called upon

to deal with a tolerably large barbaric aggregate under a warlike

and enterprising prince, and the result was such as to manifest the

inherent weakness of their political system, from its incapacity

of large combination. The separated autonomous cities could only

maintain their independence either through similar disunion on the

part of barbaric adversaries, or by superiority on their own side

of military organization as well as of geographical position. The

situation of Greece proper and of the islands was favorable to the

maintenance of such a system,—not so the shores of Asia with a

wide interior country behind. The Ionic Greeks were at this time

different from what they became during the ensuing century, little

inferior in energy to Athens or to the general body of European

Greeks, and could doubtless have maintained their independence, had

they cordially combined. But it will be seen hereafter that the

Greek colonies,—planted as isolated settlements, and indisposed

to political union, even when neighbors,—all of them fell into

dependence so soon as attack from the interior came to be powerfully

organized; especially if that organization was conducted by leaders

partially improved through contact with the Greeks themselves. Small

autonomous cities maintain themselves so long as they have only

enemies of the like strength to deal with: but to resist larger

aggregates requires such a concurrence of favorable circumstances

as can hardly remain long without interruption. And the ultimate

subjection of entire Greece, under the kings of Macedon, was only an

exemplification on the widest scale of this same principle.

The Lydian monarchy under Crœsus, the largest with which the Greeks

had come into contact down to that moment, was very soon absorbed

into a still larger,—the Persian; of which the Ionic Greeks, after

unavailing resistance, became the subjects. The partial sympathy and

aid which they obtained from the independent or European Greeks,

their western neighbors, followed by the fruitless attempt on the

part of the Persian king to add these latter to his empire, gave

an entirely new turn to Grecian history and proceedings. First,

it necessitated a degree of central action against the Persians

which was foreign to Greek political instinct; next it opened to

the noblest and most enterprising section of the Hellenic name,—the

Athenians,—an opportunity of placing themselves at the head of this

centralizing tendency: while a concurrence of circumstances, foreign

and domestic, imparted to them at the same time that extraordinary

and many-sided impulse, combining action with organization, which

gave such brilliancy to the period of Herodotus and Thucydidês. It

is thus that most of the splendid phenomena of Grecian history grew,

directly or indirectly, out of the reluctant dependence in which the

Asiatic Greeks were held by the inland barbaric powers, beginning

with Crœsus.

These few observations will suffice to intimate that a new phase of

Grecian history is now on the point of opening. Down to the time of

Crœsus, almost everything which is done or suffered by the Grecian

cities bears only upon one or other of them separately: the instinct

of the Greeks repudiates even the modified forms of political

centralization, and there are no circumstances in operation to

force it upon them. Relation of power and subjection exist, between

a strong and a weak state, but no tendency to standing political

coördination. From this time forward, we shall see partial causes

at work, tending in this direction, and not without considerable

influence; though always at war with the indestructible instinct of

the nation, and frequently counteracted by selfishness and misconduct

on the part of the leading cities.