THE NATIONS OF ASIA MINOR.
The peninsula of Asia Minor is a table-land of about 750 miles in length
by 400 in breadth, lying between the Black Sea, the AEgean, and the
Mediterranean. This table-land reaches its highest level in the south;
here run along the Mediterranean, from east to west, parallel ranges of
mountains, the chain of Taurus, and under the snow-clad heights lie
green Alpine pastures, while the slopes are filled with the most
beautiful wood. Under these mountains on the sea we find here and there
narrow and hot but fruitful plains, which are separated into several
sharply-divided districts by the spurs of the Taurus, which run athwart
them into the sea. Northward of the peaks of Taurus the soil gradually
sinks to the Black Sea, so that while the southern coast possesses only
short streams, with the exception of the Sarus and Pyramus, the larger
arteries of the land empty into the Black Sea--the Iris, the Halys, the
Billaeus, the Sangarius, and the Rhyndakus. These rivers take their
course, partly through rocky districts, partly through extremely
fruitful valleys. The centre of the land, from the middle course of the
Halys to the Sangarius in the west, is taken up with a wide treeless
desert, the great Salt-steppe, the edges of which are formed by a mass
of volcanic craters, by deep ravines and large lakes. Further to the
west the waters streaming from the table-land find their way to the
AEgean, down a series of mountain terraces, so that the valleys of the
Maeander and the Hermus are at the same time the highways which connect
the coast with the interior. These terraces sometimes advance to the
western shore, with steep limestone rocks and precipitous promontories
running out into the bright blue sea; at other times they approach the
coast with softer outlines; in one place broader, in others narrower
plains are left, which, owing to the great fertility of the soil, are
covered with orchards and vineyards. Further inland, on the rising
heights, is a splendid forest of oaks, firs, and planes, broken by
mountain pastures, over which rise the jagged rocks of Ida, Tmolus,
Messogis, and Latmus; in the far distance the snow-capped peaks of
Taurus fill the horizon. On the western coast the proximity of the ocean
softens the heat of summer and the cold of winter; and the combination
of sea and mountain, of ocean breezes and upland air, the connection
opened to the table-land on the east by the Hermus and Maeander and the
calm sea on the west, which forms a passage to a number of adjacent
islands--make these districts on the shore of the AEgean Sea the favoured
home of civilisation in Asia Minor.
On the north-east, where the peninsula joins the broad mountain land of
the isthmus between the Black Sea and the Caspian, around the sources of
the Euphrates and Tigris, on the course of the Araxes, which falls into
the Caspian Sea, and the high table-land of Lake Van, lay the home of
the Armenians. According to Strabo, their customs were like those of the
Medes, who were the neighbours of the Armenians, to the east of the
Lake of Urumiah, and at the mouth of the Araxes. And if, according to
the same evidence, the Armenians paid the greatest reverence to the
goddess Anaitis,[688] the goddess Anahita held a prominent position in
the worship of the nations of the table-land of Iran. Moreover, even in
modern Armenian, the affinity with the Iranian languages is predominant;
and there is therefore no doubt that the Armenians belong to the
Indo-Germanic stock, and are a nation of Aryan descent.
On the southern slope of the group of mountains which they possessed
south-east of the Lake of Van, on the upper course of the Great Zab, lay
the district of Arphaxad, with which we have already become acquainted
from Semitic sources; south of the lake lay the Carduchi, whom the later
Greeks call the Gordyaeans and Gordyenes; but among the Armenians they
were known as Kordu, among the Syrians as Kardu.[689] These are the
ancestors of the modern Kurds, a nation also of the Aryan stock, whose
language is even nearer to those of Iran than the Armenian. Westward of
the Carduchi, at the confluence of the two streams of the Euphrates, we
again meet with a Semitic race.[690] The north-western slope of the
Armenian mountains, as far as the Phasis and the Black Sea, was the home
of the Muskai of the Assyrian inscriptions, the Mesech of the Hebrews,
the Moschi of the Greeks. Beside them, further to the west, on the
coast, were the Tabal of the Assyrians, the Tubal of the Hebrews, the
Tibarenes of the Greeks; westward from these, as far as the mouth of the
Iris, were the Chalti of the Armenians, the Chalybians (Chaldaeans) of
the Greeks. Of the origin and language of the Moschi and Tibarenes we
know nothing further; the genealogies of the Hebrews placed Mesech and
Tubal among the sons of Japhet.
The territory of the Armenians round Lake Van lies 5,000 feet high. The
only extensive plain among the mountains which are the home of the
Armenians is the valley on the middle course of the Araxes, which is
separated from the district of the Van by the range of the Masis
(Ararat). The highest peak of this range, a mighty cone of dark rock,
veiled by wide glaciers, rises to a height of 16,000 feet. Only the
valley of the Araxes allowed agriculture on any extensive scale; it only
brought forth abundant produce. Other more protected and warmer
depressions, though small in extent, on the southern slopes, permitted
the culture of the vine. The inhabitants of the heights followed a
pastoral life, and the mountain pastures supported splendid horses and
mules.
Moses of Chorni (Khorene), who wrote the history of Armenia in the years
460-480 of our era,[691] tells us as follows:--Japhet, the third son of
Noah, had a son Gomer; Gomer's son was Thiras; Thiras had a son Thorgom;
Thorgom's son Haik, together with his son Armenak and all his family,
emigrated from Babylon to the plain of Airarat, in order to escape the
tyranny of Belus, the king of Babel. This plain Haik then left to
Cadmus, his grandson, the son of Armenak, and himself, with Armenak,
passed on to the west, and founded Haikashen. But when the army of the
Babylonians marched out to attack Airarat, Haik came to the assistance
of his grandson, and defeated Belus on the shore of Lake Van. Then
Armenak marched eastwards from Haikashen into the plain at the foot of
the Aragazd, where at a later time Armajis, the son of Armenak, built
the city of Armavir. The son of Armajis was Amasiaj, and of Amasiaj,
Arast. The grandson of Arast was Aram, who undertook distant campaigns,
and subjugated Syria and Cappadocia to his rule. With him Ninus, king of
Assyria, out of respect to his power and bravery, made a league. Aram's
son and successor was Araj, whose beauty inflamed Shamiram (Semiramis),
the queen of Assyria. When Araj resisted her inclinations, Shamiram, at
the head of her army, invaded Armenia, but, before the battle, she bade
her soldiers spare Araj. The Armenians were defeated, and in spite of
the command of Shamiram, Araj was slain in the _melee_, and she
attempted in vain to resuscitate the corpse by magic arts. Then Shamiram
caused builders to come from Assyria to Armenia, and with the help of
these she erected a splendid city, Shamiramakert (city of Semiramis), on
the shore of the lake of Van, in order to dwell in the cool air of the
mountains during the heat of the summer months; and the throne of
Armenia she gave to Cardus, the son of Araj. But he rebelled against
her, fought without success, and, like his father, fell in battle. At
last the Medes rebelled against Shamiram, and after defeat she fled to
Armenia. On the shores of Lake Van she was overtaken by her pursuers,
and when she had thrown her necklace and her ornaments into the water,
she was slain. Then her son Zames (Ninyas) ascended the throne of
Assyria, and for twenty-six generations the descendants of Cardus were
vassals of the kings of Assyria.[692] After these twenty-six kings,
whose names are given by Moses, when Nineveh had fallen, Barbakis
(Arbaces) the Mede, crowned Baroir king of Armenia, and his descendants
ruled as independent princes. The ninth successor of Baroir was Tigran
(Tigranes). He conquered Azdahag (Astyages), the king of the Medes, and
pierced him through with his lance in the battle. Owing to Tigran's
bravery and victory, the prince of the Persians became the lord of the
Medes.[693]
We can trace the elements out of which this account has arisen. The
names Japhet, Gomer, and Thiras are borrowed from the Hebrew scriptures,
from the genealogy of the Japhetic nations in Genesis; but the order of
succession is altered. To the same book belongs Thorgom, the son of
Thiras, and father of Haik; in the Hebrew his name is Torgarmah.
Torgarmah was the name of Armenia among the Syrians;[694] the Hebrews
appear to have used the word to denote the district of Van. The native
name of the Armenians was Haikh, and of the land, Haiastan. From these
names is derived Haik, the son of Thorgom, the progenitor of the race.
The emigration from Babylon is no doubt an invention arising out of some
early contact, out of the trade of Armenia with Babylonia, and intended
to give the Armenians a share in the splendour of that ancient centre of
the civilisation of Hither Asia, from which, as a fact, they derived
such important elements of culture as their system of writing. Eastward
of Lake Van Haik defeats the Babylonians, for here lay Haik's fortress;
in Armenian Haikabjerd, _i.e._ fortress of the Armenians, and
Hajots-dsor, _i.e._ valley of the Armenians. Northeast of this lake lies
the canton of Harkth, _i.e._ the fathers, the canton of the
fathers;[695] and in this, on the Eastern Euphrates, is Haikashen,
_i.e._ Haik's building, which Haik is said to have founded, and where
his grave was reported to be. As the name of Haik, _i.e._ the name of
the nation, clings especially to the neighbourhood of Lake Van, so are
the names of his supposed successors, his son Armenak, and grandsons
Cadmos and Amajis, attached to the district of Airarat, to Mount
Aragadz, and the city of Armavir. The land of Airarat, _i.e._ the
fruitful plain, on the middle course of the Araxes, was, as we have
heard, the first object of the immigrants, who must have come, not from
the south, as the story represents, but from the east, from Media, and
must have reached the valley of the Araxes from the shore of the Caspian
Sea. As Haikh is the name by which the Armenians called themselves, so
Armenak is obviously formed from the name Armina, which the Medes and
Persians gave to the Armenians. Cadmus, the son of Armenak, is inserted
in the story; and has been borrowed, as the form of the name shows, from
Grecian sources, perhaps to represent the Semitic population in the
South of Armenia. That in this learned construction of the Armenian myth
the eastern, and not the southern, district of Armenia is given to
Cadmus, is due, no doubt, to the fact that the Semitic word _kedem_
could hardly have any other meaning than that of "the East." Armenak's
grandson and great-grandson, Amasiaj and Arast, represent respectively
the mountain chain of Masis and the river Araxes; in old Armenian the
name of the latter was Eras'ch.[696]
The division of the two centres of the Armenian land and Armenian
life--the land in the East and the land in the West, the land of Ararat
on the Araxes, and the district of Van--is strongly marked in this
tradition, and not less so in the Assyrian inscriptions and the
scriptures of the Hebrews. The first text of the Pentateuch represents
Noah's ship as landing on Mount Ararat, and this text or the second
mentions Togarmah beside Gomer. The prophet Ezekiel speaks of the horses
and mules which came from Togarmah, the land of mountain pastures, to
Tyre.[697] The Assyrian inscriptions mention the land of Van (_mat
vannai_) beside the land of Urarti, _i.e._ Ararat; each is ruled by its
own prince.
King Aram represents the land of Aram, the Aramaeans, whose neighbours
the Armenians were, and with whom they came into frequent contact. The
oldest historical recollections of the Armenians might perhaps go back
to the times when the kings of Assyria made an inroad into their
mountains and reduced their princes to tribute and obedience. But when
Moses of Chorni tells us of the meetings of Aram, Araj, and Cardus with
Ninus, Semiramis, and Ninyas, of the twenty-six kings who governed under
Assyrian dominion, and of the liberation of the land by Arbaces, these
supposed names of the Assyrian riders are enough to prove that the
narratives were framed upon the accounts of the Greeks, especially the
Greek chronographers.
On the other hand, the story of the city of Semiramis on Lake Van is
grounded upon the Assyrian images and ruins, which are still found in
various parts of Armenia, especially at Van, Bitlis, Karkar, Egil, and
Achlat, as also upon monuments of the Persian kings, and Xerxes in
particular; but no doubt it is due in the greatest extent to the
monuments of the native princes, of whom inscriptions are in existence
belonging to the end of the seventh and the sixth century B.C. Later
historians knew nothing of these princes, and were unable to read the
inscriptions. The long list of Armenian kings in Moses of Chorni does
not contain a single name of the Armenian princes mentioned in the
inscriptions of the Assyrian kings, or in the native inscriptions of
these princes.
The narrative of king Tigran appears to be of an earlier date than the
rest of the material from which Moses of Chorni compiled his history of
Armenia in the older period. Tigran is said to have ruled over Armenia
at the time of Cyrus, with whom he entered into a league; he overcame
Astyages (Azdahag) of Media in battle, and slew him in single combat.
The first wife of Astyages and a number of his children, together with
other captives, Tigran then conducted to Armenia, and there he settled
them in the neighbourhood of Koghten. In the songs of the people of
Koghten the descendants of Astyages are "allegorically" spoken of as the
descendants of the dragon, "for Azdahag," Moses adds, "signifies a
dragon in our language."[698] Hence it is clear that the Armenians
claimed the glory of having conquered the Medes and overthrown their
supremacy. And if they called the descendants of Astyages the
descendants of the dragon, they obviously contracted the old cloud-demon
of the Avesta, Azhi-dahaka, into Azdahag, and confounded him with
Astyages. Xenophon in his romance of Cyrus calls Tigranes the son of the
king of Armenia, and represents him as paying the most considerable
services to Cyrus. It may have been the case that Xenophon in his march
through Armenia, when he crossed the snowclad heights of this mountain
region, and entered the mud huts of the mountaineers, and was
hospitably entertained by them with barley-wine, _i.e._ with beer, heard
the name and deeds of Tigranes.[699]
The kings of Assyria at an early period turned their arms to the North.
On the Zibene-su, the eastern source of the Western Tigris, the likeness
of Tiglath Pilesar I. (1130-1110 B.C.) has been found engraved on the
rocks at Karkar. The inscription tells us that he had overcome the land
of Nairi, _i.e._ in all probability the land of the rivers (Euphrates
and Tigris), and that he had defeated the Muskai (p. 512), who had not
paid their tribute for fifty years, and had invaded Kumukh (Commagene).
More than 200 years later, Tiglath Adar II. (889 to 883 B.C.) caused his
image to be hewn in the rocks here beside that of the first Tiglath
Pilesar. Tiglath Adar's successor, Assurnasirpal (883-859 B.C.), made
repeated campaigns against the Nairi, destroyed 250 of their towns, slew
many of their princes, and set up his image beside those of Tiglath Adar
and Tiglath Pilesar. In his tenth campaign he took Amida (Diabekr) on
the Tigris. Below this city, at Kurkh, there is a second image of this
king. His successor also, Shalmanesar II. (859-823 B.C.), fought against
the Nairi, set up his image at the source of the Tigris, and in the year
843 defeated the king of Urarti. In the year 831 his troops again
defeated a king of Urarti, of another name than the first; in the year
828 B.C. they laid waste the land of king Udaki of Van, and in the
following campaign fifty places in Urarti were burnt. Bin Nirar III.,
king of Asshur (810-781 B.C.), marched twice against the district of
Lake Van, and seven times against the Nairi; he boasts that he has taken
possession of the land of the Nairi throughout its whole extent.[700]
Shalmanesar III. (781-771 B.C.) led his army six times against Urarti.
Then Tiglath Pilesar II. (745-727 B.C.), in the year 742, defeated king
Sarda, or Sarduri, of Urarti, with his confederates; in the year 728
B.C. removed Vassarmi from Tubal, and placed Chulli on the throne in his
stead. In the time of Sargon of Assyria (722-705 B.C.), Aza, the prince
of the land of Van, who, like his predecessor Iranzu, was a tributary to
Assyria, was murdered. His brother Ullusun, whom Sargon put in his
place, combined with Urza, prince of Ararat, and the prince of Mount
Mildis against Assyria. Sargon was victorious; Ullusun submitted (716
B.C.); but Urza maintained himself in Ararat, and although Sargon boasts
to have burnt fifty of his townships, he combined with Urzana of
Musasir, _i.e._ probably of Arsissa on Lake Van, with Mita, prince of
the Moschi, with Ambris, prince of Tubal, the son of Chulli, whom Sargon
had allowed to succeed his father on the throne of the Tibarenes, and to
whom at the same time he had entrusted the sovereignty over Cilicia, and
had given his daughter in marriage.[701] The confederates were defeated;
Ambris was carried prisoner to Assyria, a part of his nation were
transplanted to Assyria, and Assyrians settled at Tubal in his place.
Mita submitted. Arsissa was captured; 20,000 prisoners, their treasures,
the gods Haldia (?) and Bagamazda (?), with the holy vessels, were
carried away. When Urza perceived this, he took away his own life (714
B.C.).[702] In the seventh century Esarhaddon of Assyria had to fight
against the Cilicians, the Tibarenes, and the Mannai; the last name
seems to denote the Armenian district of Minyas, on the upper course of
the Eastern Euphrates, of which the chief city was Manavazakert;
Manavaz, the son of Haik, is said to have built this city.[703] Against
the Mannai, or the Minni of Ezekiel, Esarhaddon's successor,
Assurbanipal (668-626 B.C.), also directed his weapons. In the course of
this war Asheri, the prince of the Minni, was slain by his own
dependents, and his son Ualli submitted; the previous tribute of the
Minni was raised by thirty horses; and Mugalla, king of Tubal, and
Sandasarmi of Cilicia voluntarily submitted to Assurbanipal.[704]
The mountains of Armenia, as these narratives prove, were divided into
several principalities. The Assyrians first attacked the land to the
south of the high mountain-range, _i.e._, in the first instance the land
of Ararat, the most powerful of these Armenian principalities. On either
side of the mountain, in the basin of Lake Van, and in the valley of the
Araxes, the Armenians made a vigorous resistance, so that the obedience
of the Armenian chieftains never seemed to be secured for any length of
time. In spite of this resistance, the civilisation of the Assyrians
exercised great influence on the Armenians. This is not merely shown in
the adoption of the system of cuneiform writing on the part of the
Armenians; Sargon caused the capture of Arsissa to be represented in his
palace at Khorsabad. If these reliefs are true representations, the
style of architecture and the plan of the Armenian temples were not
essentially different from the Assyrian. The altars also, the ornaments,
and the weapons appear to be similar.[705] On the other hand it would
admit of no doubt that the Armenians, in spite of this influence,
retained the worship of their Iranian gods without any foreign
admixture, if the name of that Armenian deity Bagamazda, _i.e._ the
great god, were read correctly. That deity would at the same time afford
a new proof that the deities of Iran were worshipped in Armenia also.
Strabo, as already (p. 512) remarked, gives an account of the worship of
Anaitis, the water-giving goddess, the Anahita of the Iranians, among
the Armenians; and the name of this goddess is found, in the form
"Anaid," in the cuneiform inscriptions of the Armenian princes.
Unfortunately these inscriptions, which mainly belong to the land of
Van, have not as yet been sufficiently deciphered. The names of the
kings, from which they come, are read as Bagridur, Isbuinis, Minuas,
Argistis II. and Bagridur II.[706] These kings reigned successively;
each calls himself the son of his predecessor. An older Argistis of
Ararat is mentioned after the time of Urza in an inscription of Sargon,
king of Assyria, belonging apparently to the year 708 B.C. The
inscriptions of the kings of Armenia from the first to the second
Bagridur are filled with the wars which they carried on, the numbers of
the slain, of the captives, the cattle in the spoil, the towns and
temples destroyed. As Asshur is mentioned in the inscriptions of
Argistis II., and in those of his successor Bagridur II. a war against
Babylon is narrated,[707] these two kings must have been contemporaries
of the last ruler of Assyria, Assuridilili (626-606 B.C.), and
Nebuchadnezzar II. of Babylon (604-568 B.C.), and their three
predecessors contemporaries of Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and
Assurbanipal.
The central plain of the table-land of Asia Minor, from the valley of
the Halys and the great salt lake to the Cadmus and the Mysian Olympus,
north-westwards as far as the coasts of the Propontis, was inhabited by
the Phrygians. According to Herodotus the Thracians asserted that the
Phrygians had once dwelt in their land under the name of Briges. Hence
they had passed through Thrace to Asia, though a part, who still
preserved the name of Briges, had remained behind in Thrace. Of those
who arrived in Asia, some passed still further to the east; and the
Armenians were colonists of the Phrygians.[708] In Strabo also the
Phrygians are immigrants, and come from Thrace.[709] In any case the
Bithynians, who were settled on the lower course of the Sangarius from
the mouth of this stream westward as far as the Bosporus, were of
Thracian descent; they are said to have emigrated from the Strymon to
Asia.[710] On the other hand, the Phrygians themselves maintained that
they were not an offshoot from the Thracian Briges, but the Briges in
Thracia had emigrated from them.[711] If the affinity of the Armenians,
the Phrygians, and Thracians is established, the Phrygians must be
considered in the right. These migrations could not have proceeded from
the Strymon, they must rather have taken place from the east to the
west, from Armenia to Thrace, and the Thracians rather than the
Armenians were the last link in this emigration. As the modern science
of language finds Indo-Germanic roots in the slight remains of the
Phrygian language which have come down to us,[712] we must assume that
the progenitors of the Phrygians and Thracians passed from the Armenian
mountains in the east towards the west. The ancestors of the Phrygians
remained on the table-land of Asia Minor, those of the Thracians went
further to the north-west, towards Bithynia, over the Bosporus, which
the Greeks named after the Thracians; and beyond the strait they
inhabited the land under the Balkan from the Black Sea to the shores of
the Adriatic. The character of the language of the Thracians and
Illyrians, remains of which are preserved in Rumanisch and Albanian,
places it in the Indo-Germanic family.
The Phrygians are said to have been a very ancient nation.[713]
According to the accounts of the Greeks, the legends of the Phrygians
began the history of their country with Gordius and Midas. Gordius, it
was said, was a poor farmer, who possessed only two yoke of oxen. At
that time the Phrygians were divided by factions, and in order to
restore peace, the deity commanded that they should elect as king the
man whom they first met on a waggon on the way to the shrine of Zeus.
Then they met Gordius on his waggon and greeted him as king. Gordius
built the city of Gordium at the confluence of the Scopas and Sangarius,
and dedicated in the temple of Zeus on the citadel of Gordium the
chariot which carried him to the throne. After Gordius's death the
throne descended to his son Midas, to whose lips, when a boy, ants had
carried grains of corn. Midas is said to have founded the city of
Gordiutichus in the south of the land, on the borders of Phrygia, and
Ancyra in the north: at Pessinus on the slope of Mount Agdus he built a
temple to the goddess of Phrygia and established the sacrifices.[714] He
was the richest king who ever lived. Everything that he touched turned
to gold. Once he bathed in the Pactolus, and ever since the sands washed
down by the river became sands of gold. When Pan blew his shepherd's
pipe, and Apollo touched his lyre, Midas preferred the music of Pan. In
revenge, Apollo caused asses' ears to grow upon Midas, and he covered
them with a tall cap. But the barber of Midas knew the secret, and told
it into a pit; and some rushes grew in the pit, and whispered "Midas has
asses' ears."[715]
The gold of Midas and his power of changing everything into that metal
comes from the Greeks, whose legends desired to celebrate and explain
the ancient wealth of the kings of Phrygia. From the same source are the
asses' ears and the whispering rushes. The use of the pan's pipe, though
not of the shepherd's pipe, was learnt by the Greeks through their
colonists in Asia Minor from the Phrygians. The reed (or flute) was
called "eleg" among the Armenians: its notes first accompanied the
Elegies of Callinus of Ephesus, and Archilochus of Paros, to which it
gave the name. Among the Greeks many judges, and those by no means of
the least reputation, gave the most decided preference to the music of
the cithara, the lyre of Apollo, over the flute. In the same feeling
which prompted this judgment, the want of taste in finding the tones of
the flute more beautiful than those of the cithara is visited by a
punishment which at the same time is intended to explain the origin of
the tall Phrygian cap. The reeds belong to a brook in the vicinity of
Celaenae in Phrygia, which the Greeks called "the flute-spring"
(Aulokrene) because the reeds growing on the shores were used as
wind-instruments. There is another story in which the Greeks have
expressed the contrast between the quiet and composed tones of the
cithara, and the wild music of the Phrygian flutes--the Phrygian
harmonies to which they ascribed the power of rousing the feelings into
a passionate excitement of pain or delight.[716] The music of the flute
was introduced into choric poetry in the first half of the sixth century
by Polymnestus of Colophon, and Sakadas of Argos. Among the Phrygians,
Marsyas, a faithful and chaste companion of their national goddess, was
the genius of flute-music.[717] A brook which flowed into the Maeander
through the city Apamaea Cibotus, in the neighbourhood of Celaenae, was
named after Marsyas. The Greeks had a story that their god Apollo had
overcome with his cithara the flute-player of the Phrygians, and had
flayed him in punishment for his presumption in entering on the contest.
At Celaenae a bottle of Marsyas was exhibited, on which the story of the
flaying of Marsyas may have been founded.[718]
After removing the fictions and additions of the Greeks, the
characteristic trait of the Phrygian story still remains, that their
monarchs arose out of the agricultural class, that grains of corn were
carried into the lips of the son of the first ruler, and that the king
of Phrygia loved the pan's pipe of the shepherds. Elsewhere also the
respect of the Phrygians for the agricultural life is brought into
prominence. Nicolaus of Damascus tells us of a law of the Phrygians by
which the slaughter of the ploughing ox, or the theft of agricultural
implements, was punished with death.[719] In the fourth century B.C. the
waggon of Gordius was still standing on the citadel of Gordium. The yoke
was bound so fast to the pole with the bark of dog-wood--the knot is
reported to been tied by Gordius himself--that it was said in Phrygia
that the man who should untie this knot would rule over all Asia. The
name Gordius should apparently be traced back to the Armenian "gords,"
i.e. labour, or "day labour."[720] That side by side with these traits
the national tradition ascribed the erection of the ancient cities and
temples, the building of Gordium, Gordiuteichus, and Ancyra to the
earliest princes, is only natural. The names of the cities Manegordum
(near Ancyra) and Midaeum also point to these.
The Phrygians obeyed a dynasty which saw its ancestors in the kings
Gordius and Midas, and called themselves alternately by these names. The
first king of whom we have any more definite information was Midas, the
son of Gordius, who ascended the throne of Phrygia in the year 738 B.C.
according to the date of Eusebius. His wife was Damodice, the daughter
of Agamemnon, the king of the Greek city of Cyme, who is said to have
been a woman distinguished by beauty and wisdom.[721] The seat on which
he used to dispense justice, a work well worth seeing, as Herodotus
says, he consecrated at Delphi. When Phrygia was attacked by the first
great invasion of the Cimmerians, he took away his own life by drinking
bull's blood (693 B.C.).[722] Of a third Midas, who reigned apparently
about a century later, we learn that his tomb was adorned with the image
of a maiden in brass, and that a Greek poet composed as an inscription
for this monument the following verses:--
"I am a maiden of brass,
I lie on the tomb of Midas;
While waters flow, and tall trees grow,
On Midas' tearful tomb I lie.
I say to every passer by,
'Here Midas sleeps in earth below.'"[723]
With the descendants of this Midas, Gordius and his son Adrastus, this
dynasty came to an end in the sixth century B.C.[724]
Between Prymnessus and Midaeum (Jazili Kaja and Sidi Ghazi), in the
valley of Doganlu, lie the tombs of these kings, sepulchral chambers,
which are hewn in the perpendicular walls of red sandstone. On the face
of the rock there is no trace of any entrance; and the corpses must have
been lowered down behind the exterior front. The walls of rock are
changed into sculptures, in imitation of the outlines and rudiments of a
light wooden building. In low relief a framework of beams is sketched,
and over this a low-pitched gable rises. Such are the simplest of these
facades, which apparently we must also consider the oldest. Others
display a frieze of palm leaves in the upper field of the framework.
Others again put the figures of animals in the gable, _e.g._ two horses,
between which is an obelisk, and exhibit traces of Hellenic influence,
while another presents a perfect imitation of the Doric arrangement of
pillars. Among these sepulchres may once have been the tomb with the
maiden of brass. The inscriptions found on some, or in the
neighbourhood, are Phrygian, but written in Greek characters. The most
important tomb is that of a more ancient Midas at Kuembet. The facade of
this monument, which is in framework of the Phrygian style, covers about
sixty square feet of the hundred feet of the rock. The space in the
field of the framework is entirely filled up with rectangular ornaments
and a kind of scroll, while the tympanum of the gable is covered with a
key pattern.[725]
Other remarkable remains of buildings are found in Phrygia. Strabo tells
us of a tribe on the borders of Cilicia who lived in the arches and
hollows of the rocks above the fruitful valley which they cultivated;
till conquered by the Romans the tribe was considered invincible, and
Vitruvius remarks that the Phrygians excavated the natural hills, cut
passages in them, and extended the spaces into dwellings as far as the
nature of the place allowed.[726] On the Rhyndakus, in the district of
the ancient Prymnessus, at Beibazar, on Lake Egerdir, to the east near
Iconium, numerous habitations are found excavated in the rocks, so that
it really seems that the Phrygians dwelt in the walls of their
mountains.[727] Lofty walls of rock, thousands of isolated cones, and
some mighty mountain summits are excavated into dwellings, into rock
cities--a task which was rendered easier by the softness of the stone
(peperino and tufa). Steep and at times wonderfully jagged rocks,
overhanging picturesque valleys, are chiselled out for one or two
hundred feet in height in such a manner that several galleries of
habitations lie one upon the other. These are lighted by openings in the
front, and connected with each other by shafts and staircases: of seats,
hearths, or couches there is no trace whatever--only niches and recesses
are found. Yet in some of the rock cities an advance may be observed. In
these the entrances to some extent exhibit indications of pillars,
architraves, portals, and the like, so that the habitations of this kind
seem to have been built at a later period. The ruins of the cities of
the Phrygians, the remains of Gordium, Midaeum, Pessinus, Prymnessus,
and Ancyra allow us to see the so-called Cyclopian style.[728]
Our knowledge of the religious rites of the Phrygians is extremely
scanty. They are said to have invoked the god Men, or Manes under
various titles,[729] and the names of the cities Manegordum and Manesium
seem to go back to this deity. Whether this is the god whom the Greeks
called the Phrygian Zeus is not clear. The goddess, whom the Greeks
called Rhea or Cybele, Dindymene, Agdistis, after the mountains sacred
to her, is said to have been called Amma by the Phrygians.[730] The
chief home of her rites was that sanctuary on Mount Agdus near Pessinus,
which the first Midas is said to have dedicated to her (p. 525). Here
she was worshipped in a shapeless stone of no great size, not larger
than a man could lift. At the side of her statue in the temple lions and
panthers are said to have stood.[731] Her priests were eunuchs, who
waited on the goddess in gaily coloured vestments. The chief priest at
Pessinus, or Archigallus, is afterwards found holding a princely
position. At the festivals of the goddess, which were celebrated every
year, it was the custom for young men to make themselves eunuchs with a
sharp shell, crying out at the same time, "Take this, Agdistis." Then
they went round the country asking alms in the name of the goddess, and
they were known to the Greeks as "Metragyrtes," _i.e._ "beggars of the
mother;"[732] for the goddess, whose priests were eunuchs, and whose
service demanded the sacrifice of sex, was called by the Greeks the
"Great Mother," the "Mountain Mother," the "Nourishing Earth," the
"Giver of all." She must, therefore, have been regarded as the maternal
power of the earth, the power of nature, which gives life. It is
especially stated that she gave increase to the flocks,[733] and since
she was named after different mountains we may assume that high places
and mountains were the chosen seats of her worship. In Greek and Roman
art the Phrygian goddess is represented as sitting on a chariot drawn by
lions and panthers, with a cymbal in her hand, and wearing on her head
the mural crown as the goddess of the earth which supports cities.
By the side of the Great Mother stands the god Atys, whom Herodotus
calls a son of Manes.[734] He grew up with the shepherds among the goats
of the forest. The goddess loved him, but he fled away into the
mountains, and there, under a fir-tree, into which his spirit passed, he
made himself an eunuch. In search of him Amma roams over the hills in
frantic grief, and carries into her cave the tree into which his spirit
passed. The emasculation and death of Atys, as also his resurrection,
were celebrated by the Phrygians.[735] At these festivals a fir-tree was
felled, crowned with violets, twined with garlands, and carried into the
sanctuary of the goddess. Afterwards Atys was sought in the mountains
with wild music and frenzy, as Amma had sought him. The third day of the
festival was "the day of blood," i.e. of the mutilation and death of
Atys, who was bewailed with despairing grief, amid rending of the hair
and beating of the breast. Then followed a happier scene, the festival
of "the resurrection," and the washing of the stone of the goddess.[736]
We learn further that Atys was also called Papas among the Phrygians. He
is also entitled the goat-herd and neat-herd; the plastic art of Greece
and Rome represents him as a youthful shepherd with the Pan's-pipe, and
by his side is a pine and a ram. According to later accounts he was the
"shepherd of the bright stars."[737] Hence we must assume that in Atys
the Phrygians personified the youthful bloom of nature, the bloom of the
spring, and they mourned the disappearance of this, just as, according
to the Greeks, they sang a piercing wail--the Lityerses--at the time of
corn-cutting. They lamented the death of the spring, and the fall of the
fruit; the youthful god had resigned his own power; the creative vigour
continued only to exist in the tree of Atys, the ever-green fir. In the
spring time it awoke again; this was the day of the resurrection with
its joy and pleasure. This orgiastic worship, and roaming with wild
cries over the heights and in the ravines of the mountains, sometimes in
wailing and lamentation, sometimes in joy, is peculiar to the religion
of the Phrygians.
The central point of the Phrygian kingdom lay westwards of the great
salt plain in the region between Gordium and Ancyra, between Midaeum and
Pessinus in the valley of the Sangarius, on whose banks the Homeric
poems place the Phrygians, who are the possessors of "well-walled
cities."[738] If the majority of the Phrygians remained farmers and
shepherds, they nevertheless arrived at an early date at a monarchy, and
under this they reached a civilisation by no means contemptible, a
national culture, with an architecture and music of their own. On the
religion of the Phrygians the rites of their Semitic neighbours on the
north and south no doubt exercised a strong influence. The combination
of the creative power and the power hostile to procreation into one
deity, and the custom of mutilation, are conceptions and rites unknown
to the Aryan nations. But they are closely connected with the forms and
worship of Astarte-Ashera, just as Atys resembles the Adonis of the
Syrians. On the other hand, as was remarked above, the Phrygians adopted
the Greek alphabet on their monuments, and Greek verses were composed
for the tomb of Midas (p. 528). In return the Greeks adopted the
Phrygian flute, and along with it the form of the elegy and the Phrygian
harmonies. Nor were these all. The wild roaming, the unchecked sorrow
and joy, the tambourines and drums of the Phrygian festivals passed
without doubt in the first instance to the Greek colonies in the
Propontis, and more especially to Cyzicus, and from thence to the mother
country at the celebration of certain festivals of Demeter and Dionysus.
"Take," says Euripides in the _Bacchae_, "take the drums, the invention
of the Phrygians and the mother Rhea. Long ago the Corybantes (the
attendants of the Great Mother) devised the mighty circle of the
stretched hide and placed in Rhea's hand, with the loud, sweet-sounding
tone of Phrygian flutes, the thunder for the festal song."[739]
Towards the east, the south coast of Asia Minor was inhabited by the
Cilicians and the Solymi. To the former belonged the slopes of Taurus
and the coast to the right bank of the Kalykadnus. Towards the west came
the Solymi, in a wild and broken mountain country. They took their name
from the Solyma mountains (_sallum_ = steps), which they inhabited, and
according to Choerilus of Samos, they spoke the language of the
Phenicians.[740] "The pass," so Xenophon tells us, "which leads to
Cilicia (from the interior of Asia Minor) is very steep, and only broad
enough for a single waggon. On descending from it you come into a
well-watered plain by the sea, which is inclosed from one end to the
other by lofty and precipitous mountains. But the plain itself is large
and beautiful, and filled with trees of every kind, and with vines. It
produces much sesame, wheat, millet, and barley."[741] In addition to
these advantages the slopes of Taurus offered splendid pastures for
horses, and on the coast were excellent harbours. The inhabitants of
this favoured land, known in Assyrian inscriptions as Chillakai, and on
the coins of the district from the Persian times as Chelech,[742]
belonged, like their neighbours on the Orontes and on the Upper
Euphrates, to the Semitic stock. This is proved by the names of their
districts and places of their gods, and by the inscriptions on their
coins. The Semitic stamp of names of places like Amanus (_amana_, firm),
Adana (_eden_, delight), Mallus (_maa'la_, height), Tarsus (_tars_, dry)
is beyond a doubt.[743] Herodotus tells us that the Cilicians wore
woollen clothes, and peculiar helmets of ox-leather, and carried swords
and spears like the Egyptians, and he maintained that they were
descended from Cilix, the son of Agenor, a Phenician. Their princes were
always styled Syennesis.[744] This standing name was, without doubt, the
title given by the princes of Cilicia to themselves: it must have been
_schu'a nasi_, _i.e._ "noble prince."[745] Hellanicus tells us that of
the two kings of the name of Sardanapalus, who ruled over Assyria, one
had built the two cities of Tarsus and Anchiale in Cilicia in one
day.[746] On the other hand Berosus informs us that Sennacherib (705-681
B.C.) had heard in Assyria that an army of Greeks had landed in
Cilicia; against this he marched and defeated it, but with heavy loss.
As a memorial of this victory he caused his image to be set up there,
and afterwards the city of Tarsus was built in such a way that the
Cydnus flowed through the middle of it. The temple at Anchiale (west of
Tarsus, on the sea) was also founded by Sennacherib.[747] When Alexander
of Macedonia reached Cilicia his attendants found that the circuit and
towers of the walls of Anchiale proved that the city was planned on a
large scale. Near the walls they saw the statue of an Assyrian king. His
right hand was raised, and the inscription in Assyrian letters is said
to have called him Sardanapalus, the son of Anakyndaraxes.[748]
No king of the name of Anakyndaraxes or Sardanapalus ever ruled over
Assyria, unless perhaps by the latter is meant Assurbanipal
(Assurbanhabal), the son of Esarhaddon. On the other hand, the
inscriptions of Shalmanesar II. of Asshur (859-828 B.C.) mention the
fact that he had overcome "Pikhirim the chief of the land of Chilakku
(Cilicia)," and Sargon, king of Assyria (722-705 B.C.), tells us that
the Cilicians had not been subject to his father, and that he had
transferred the dominion over Cilicia to Ambris, king of Tubal. Hence
Cilicia must have become subject to Sargon in the earliest years of his
reign. In consequence of the revolt, which Ambris undertook with Urza of
Ararat, and Mita, the king of Moschi, as we saw above (p. 520), Ambris
was taken captive and dethroned in the year 714 B.C. Sennacherib, the
successor of Sargon (705-681 B.C.), informs us that in the very first
years of his reign he had caused rebellious Cilicians to be removed: the
inscriptions of the later years of his reign remark that the cities of
the Cilicians were destroyed and burnt, and the Cilicians in the forests
were reduced. After this the inscriptions of Esarhaddon (681-668 B.C.)
assure us that he reduced the Cilicians; and Assurbanipal recounts that
Sandasarmi of Cilicia, who had not submitted to the kings his fathers,
and fulfilled their commands, sent his daughter with many presents to
Nineveh for the harem of Assurbanipal, and kissed his feet.[749]
The fall of the Assyrian kingdom restored their freedom to the
Cilicians, and they appear to have maintained it till the times of
Cyrus. After that time the princes of Cilicia were merely the viceroys
of the kings of Persia. To these sovereigns Cilicia paid each year 500
Babylonian talents of silver and 360 selected horses. The harbours,
which carried on a lively trade, were able, at the beginning of the
fifth century B.C., to equip and man a hundred ships of war
(triremes).[750]
The coins which have come down to us from the supremacy of the Persians
allow us to form some conclusions about the religious rites of the
Cilician cities. They represent Baal, the sun-god of the Syrians, on the
throne, with grapes and ears of corn in his right hand, and sometimes an
eagle at his side. Others exhibit Heracles attacking a lion with his
club. The inscriptions name the god thus represented Bal Tars, _i.e._
Baal of Tarsus. A coin of Mallus also exhibits Heracles strangling the
lion, i.e. the beneficent sun-god who overcomes the terrible sun-god in
the sign of the lion, the consuming glow of the sun. On other coins we
can trace the war-goddess, on others the birth-goddess of the Syrians,
or her cow; some coins of Celenderis exhibit the goat of this
goddess.[751]
The land of the Cilicians must at one time have stretched northwards
over the Taurus range to the inner table-land as far as the sources of
the Sarus, to the watershed between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea,
or even further. Sargon could not have transferred the sovereignty over
Cilicia to the king of Tubal if his territory was not contiguous to
Cilicia. And if we assume that the land of Tubal reached at that time as
far as the Taurus, we are met by the objection that even Herodotus
represents the Halys as passing through the land of the Cilicians on its
way from Armenia.[752] Hence the land afterwards called Cataonia,
between Taurus and Antitaurus and the northern spur of the latter range,
must, even in the time of Herodotus, have belonged to Cilicia.
On the north-western slope of the Armenian mountains toward the Black
Sea we have already found the Moschi and Tibarenes, whom the Hebrews
counted among the sons of Japhet. The western neighbours of the
Tibarenes on the coasts of the Black Sea were the Chalybians. It is the
land of the Chalybians of which the Homeric poems speak, when they
mention the city of Alybe--"where is the birth of silver."[753] But it
is not only the obtaining of silver that is ascribed by the Greeks to
the Chalybians; they are also the discoverers of the working of iron;
and steel, which the Greeks obtained from this coast, was named after
the Chalybians. AEschylus calls the Chalybians "barbarous workers in
brass, men averse to foreigners."[754] In the scriptures of the Hebrews
Tubal-cain, a name of which the first part seems to denote the
Tibarenes, is the father of the smiths in brass and iron. Hence it is
clear that the mines of ore and iron in the land of the Tibarenes and
Chalybians must have been opened at a very early period. As a fact the
ore lies at a very slight depth in the mountains. Even now large masses
of copper are discovered along the coast to the west of Trebizond;
beside copper, the mines of Guemuesh Khane, two days' journey in the
interior from Trebizond, even now yield lead containing silver, which is
also found in the mines of Baibut and Tokat, further to the south.[755]
Hence these districts could furnish not only iron and steel, but silver
also; elsewhere silver was only to be got in the mines on Mount Ida till
the Phenicians imported this metal in large quantities from Tartessus.
Westward of the Chalybians on the Thermodon, the Iris, and the lower
course of the Halys, dwelt a population which, setting aside any later
admixture, were of Semitic origin. Herodotus calls the inhabitants of
the land which reaches from Armenia on the east to the Halys on the
west, from the coast of the Black Sea southwards as far as Cilicia,
Syrians, and remarks that this was the name of the people in use among
the Greeks.[756] Pindar speaks of "a spear-armed Syrian host" on the
mouth of the Thermodon.[757] The Greek colony of Sinope west of the
mouth of the Halys is said to have been founded in the land of the
Syrians of noble stock.[758] A promontory running into the sea to the
north of Sinope is called Syrias.[759] The Greeks derived the people in
this district from Syrus, a son of Apollo.[760] Scylax of Caryanda names
the coast of the Black Sea, from the Chalybians to Armene, westward of
the promontory of Syrias, Assyria.[761] Strabo states that these
Syrians, who extended from the Taurus northwards as far as the Pontus,
were named Leuco-Syrians, _i.e._ white Syrians, to distinguish them from
the true Syrians, and that the Cataonians (p. 538) spoke the same
language with them.[762] The coins struck at Sinope (Sanab), Side and
Kotyora (Gazir), in the fourth century B.C., have Aramaic legends, and
we can trace on them the name and form of the god Baal.[763] The
Persians called these people Cappadocians (Katapatuka), and extend the
name to Cilicia also. If the Phrygians when marching westwards from
Armenia not only traversed but took possession of the land, the
Phrygians who remained in the country must have retired to the west
before the Semitic tribe, which forced its way from Cilicia and the
Upper Euphrates, or have been absorbed by them.
In the eighth century B.C. the Syrians between the Lower Halys and
Armenia received a peculiar admixture. "On the shore of the Pontus,
where the Scythians now dwell"--such is the account of Herodotus--"it is
said that the territory of the Cimmerians lay, and in Scythia the
Cimmerian Bosporus and Cimmerian walls and harbours remain, and a region
which is called Cimmeria. When the Scythians who once dwelt in the east
were driven out by the Massagetes or the Issedones, they came into the
land of the Cimmerians. The latter took counsel on the river Tyras, and
one part were inclined with the kings to fight against the Scythians,
but the others wished to abandon the land. Thus a strife arose between
the two parties, and those who wished to retire from the land defeated
the king and all who were of the same opinion with him, and buried the
slain on the Tyras, where their grave is still to be seen. Then the
remainder fled before the Scythians along the sea to Asia, and settled
on the peninsula, where Sinope, the city of the Greeks, is now built.
But the Scythians took their land in possession, and, led by their king
Madyas, they pursued the retreating Cimmerians, but missed them, as they
took the upper road, which is far longer, and keeps the Caucasus on the
right."[764]
We shall return to the Scythians again; for the present we may leave
them out of the question. In Homer the Cimmerians, "miserable men, who
are veiled in cloud, darkness, and night, and are never illuminated by
the sun," dwell "at the end of earth and Oceanus, where is the opening
of the entrance into the under-world."[765] As guardians of the
under-world Aristophanes calls them after the dog of Hades,
Cerberians.[766] Following the guidance of the Homeric poems, the
Cimmerians were sought in the west, where the sun sinks, and the
entrance to the under-world was supposed to be; they were placed in the
neighbourhood of the Italic Kyme.[767] When the Milesians, about the
middle of the eighth century, discovered the north shore of the Black
Sea, they found in the extreme north, at the end of the earth, a nation
whom the Greeks called Cimmerians. Thus the entrance into Lake Maeotis
obtained among the Greeks the name of the Bosporus of the Cimmerians, in
contrast to the Bosporus of the Thracians. At a later time the
Cimmerians were identified with the Germanic Cimbri and the Celtic
Kymri.
Hence the decision would seem to be correct that the Cimmerians ought to
be struck out of history as a mythical nation and a mythical name, which
was perhaps intended to correspond to the misty, wintry nature of some
remote lands, did not the poet Callinus of Ephesus, whose date falls
about the year 700 B.C., speak of "the approaching army of the
Cimmerians, who achieved mighty deeds:" did not Herodotus himself tell
us that the expelled Cimmerians "settled on the peninsula at the place
where the Greek city of Sinope now stands"; and also narrate that the
Cimmerians, while king Ardys ruled over the Lydians (654-617 B.C.),
invaded Lydia, and captured Sardis, the metropolis, except the citadel;
and that Alyattes king of Lydia (612-563 B.C.) first expelled the
Cimmerians entirely out of Asia Minor:[768] did not Aristotle tell us
that the Cimmerians had been settled for a hundred years in Antandros,
on the Trojan coast, and Scymnus of Chius, that the Milesian Abron, who
founded Sinope, was said to have been slain by the Cimmerians, that Coes
and Cretines founded the city anew, "after the Cimmerians, when their
array traversed Asia"?[769]
The Cimmerians then were not a legendary fiction: the Cimmerian Bosporus
really owed its name to a people who called themselves, or were known to
the Greeks, by this name, as also the hamlet of Cimmerikum on the
Crimea, and Cimmerium on the peninsula of Kertch. Strabo, the best
authority on the Eastern districts of Asia Minor, of which he was a
native, says: "The wanderings of the Scythian Madys (it is the Madyas of
Herodotus) and of Kobos the Trerian are unknown to most people. The
Cimmerians, who are called Treres,[770] or a tribe of them, dwelt on the
gloomy Bosporus. They came from a far distant region, and are said to
have been driven out by the Scythians. They have often attacked the
right side, _i.e._ the eastern side of the Pontus, and fought against
the Cappadocians, Paphlagonians, and Phrygians;[771] they crossed the
Halys, and forced their way as far as the Ionian cities.[772] Their
first invasion is placed by the chronologers in the time of Midas, who
put an end to his life by drinking bull's blood, _i.e._ as we saw above
(p. 528) in the period from 738 to 693 B.C., or according to others, in
the time of Homer, or shortly before him.[772] But Lygdamis, with a
horde of his own, forced his way to Lydia and Ionia, and conquered
Sardis, though he remained in Cilicia.[773] Callisthenes says that
Sardis was first taken by the Cimmerians, then by the Treres, and
finally by Cyrus. The first capture is also proved by Callinus. At
length the Treres, under Kobos, are said to have been driven out by the
Scythians under Madys."[774]
From this account it is clear that the Cimmerians, or a part of them,
were called Treres, a name also given to a Thracian tribe between the
Skomius and Hebrus, on the Bistonian Lake;[775] that they made at least
two invasions into the west of Asia Minor; that the second of these,
which in Strabo is undertaken under the command of Lygdamis, is the same
as the invasion of the Cimmerians which Herodotus places in the time of
king Ardys of Lydia. In both writers this invasion extends to Sardis and
to some of the Greek cities on the coast, and Plutarch expressly
establishes the identity of the invasion of the Treres under Lygdamis
with that of the Cimmerians in Herodotus, on ancient authorities.[776]
Justin calls the Cimmerians a part of the Scythians, who, owing to their
internal contentions, migrated under the leadership of Ilinus and
Scolopitus, and established themselves on the coast of Cappadocia.[777]
The incursion of the Scythians into Media, with which Herodotus has
combined the migration of the Cimmerians, took place, as we shall show
from Herodotus' own statement, about the year 630 B.C. But if Alyattes
of Lydia was the first to expel the Cimmerians from the west of Asia
Minor after they had been settled for a century in Antandros, these
Cimmerians must have been in Asia at least as early as 663 B.C., since
Alyattes reigned till 563 B.C. Further, if Herodotus only mentions the
destruction of Sardis, which took place about 630 B.C., and is wholly
silent on the first destruction by the Cimmerians, this first capture
must have taken place before the time from which he commences his
accurate account of Lydian history, _i.e._ before the accession of Gyges
in the year 689 B.C., or, according to the data of Herodotus, even
before 719 B.C. This capture of Sardis is the only one which could have
been known to Callinus. Further, the Cimmerians are said to have invaded
Phrygia at the time of that Midas who put himself to death in the year
693 B.C. Hence they must have been in Asia Minor before this year, and
if they overpowered Phrygia, they could easily at the same time have
forced their way as far as the western coast. Moreover, Strabo remarks
that the Milesians built Sinope, when they had become acquainted with
the favourable position of the place and the weakness of the people, but
the people were not weak after the Cimmerians had occupied the mouth of
the Halys. The first foundation of Sinope under Abron must therefore be
placed before the arrival of the Cimmerians in Asia Minor. The ancient
Sinope founded the city of Trapezus in the year 756 B.C.,[778] and
therefore that city must have been founded at least ten years earlier,
and its destruction by the Cimmerians must be placed after the year 756
B.C. Hence the Cimmerians might have reached the mouth of the Halys
about 750 B.C., though they cannot have come along the coast from
Colchis, but over the sea. With this agrees the statement that the
Cimmerians forced their way into Asia Minor in the year 782.[779]
From this investigation it follows that the Cimmerians once possessed
the north shore of the Black Sea on the straits from Kaffa, westward
perhaps as far as the mouth of the Danube. Since the Treres, a Thracian
nation, are always mentioned in connexion with the Cimmerians, and it is
ascertained that Thracian tribes possessed the western coast of Pontus
from the Thracian Bosporus northwards as far as the mouth of the Danube,
and as the Agathyrsi in Transylvania are also called Thracians, there
can hardly be any doubt remaining that the Cimmerians were of Thracian
origin, or at least nearly related to the Thracians. According to the
account of Herodotus the Cimmerians held a consultation on the Tyras
(Dniester), their kings were said to have been killed there, and in
confirmation of the story he appeals to the tumuli which were still to
be seen on the Dniester. The only certain conclusion to be drawn from
this statement is that mounds on the Dniester were shown to Herodotus as
coming down from an older population of those districts. The Cimmerians,
who arrived in Asia Minor (the Tauri, on the peninsula which was named
after them, appear to be a remnant of this nation, who maintained their
old settlements, and the modern name Crimea goes back to the
Cimmerians), must have been a numerous and martial people, if they were
able not only to establish themselves firmly in the East on the Halys,
but also to force their way to the western coast, there to settle down
in several places and maintain themselves in these, and to capture twice
the fortified metropolis of the Lydians, the most warlike nation in Asia
Minor.
According to the genealogy in Genesis, Gomer is the eldest son of
Japhet. This name is without doubt the Semitic term for the population
on the north shore of the Pontus, who were known to the Greeks as
Cimmerians. In the sixth century B.C. the prophet Ezekiel mentions Gomer
beside Togarmah.[780] Esarhaddon, king of Assyria (681-668 B.C.), tells
us that Tiuspa from the distant land of the Cimmerians (Gimirai)
submitted to him with his army. Assurbanipal (668-626 B.C.) relates:
"The Cimmerians were not afraid of my fathers or of me, and would not
take the yoke of my sovereignty. Gugu (Gyges), king of Ludi (Lydia), a
land beyond the sea, a distant region, of which my fathers had not heard
the name, sent a messenger into my presence, in order to implore my
friendship and kiss my feet. From the day on which he accepted my yoke,
he took Cimmerians, desolators of his land, alive in the battle with his
own hand. From the number of the captured leaders he bound two with
strong fetters of iron, and sent them with numerous presents to Nineveh,
the city of my dominion. He constantly sent messengers to ask for my
friendship. He omitted to do so when he disregarded the will of Asshur,
the god, my creator, trusted to his own power, and hardened his heart.
He sent his forces to aid Pisamilki (Psammetichus), king of Egypt, who
had thrown off the yoke of my sovereignty. I heard this, and prayed to
Asshur and Istar thus: May his body be cast out to his enemies, and his
servants be carried away captive. Asshur answered me: His body shall be
cast out to his enemies, and his servants carried away captive. The
Cimmerians, whom he had brought under his feet by the renown of my name,
conquered and laid waste his whole land. His son (Ardys) sat upon his
throne. He sent to me and received the yoke of my supremacy, saying
thus: I am thy subject and servant, and my people will do all thy
will."[781]
Thus the account of the Greeks is completely established. To be
subjugated by Esarhaddon the Cimmerians must have been in Asia Minor in
the first decades of the seventh century B.C., they must also have got
the upper hand here to such a degree that Gyges, king of Lydia, found it
impossible to defend himself against them without the help of the
Assyrians. The first capture of Sardis must have taken place before the
accession of Gyges, on that campaign which the Cimmerians made in the
year 693 B.C. to Phrygia. On the other hand it may be that the
Cimmerians had got possession of the city of Antandrus in the reign of
Gyges. When Gyges had repulsed the Cimmerians he thought that he had no
longer any need of Assyria. For this, according to Assurbanipal, he was
punished by a second invasion of the Cimmerians, who desolated his land;
he lost his life in the battle, of which the Greeks know nothing, and
his son and successor Ardys was again forced to submit to Assyria. That
Ardys had to fight severe battles with the Cimmerians is proved by the
second capture of Sardis, which took place in his reign about the year
630 B.C. While the Cimmerians were thus engaged in the West, the city of
Miletus, or some exiled Milesians, seized the opportunity to re-found
Sinope. Alyattes succeeded in forcing back the Cimmerians and attacking
them with such vigour that they were no longer able to undertake any
invasions to the West. Even Sinope had no more to fear from them,
although their settlements lay in the neighbourhood of this city. At a
subsequent period in the third century B.C. the invading Celts threw the
whole of Asia Minor into a panic, and plundered it, until they were
confined to Galatia; and the invasion of the Cimmerians appears to have
taken a similar course. The Celts, however, maintained themselves within
a limited district; the Cimmerians disappeared so entirely among the
Cappadocians, that Syncellus calls Gomer the progenitor of the
Cappadocians, and the Armenians denote the Cappadocians by the name
Gamir.[782]
In Cappadocia also, rock tombs, sculptures, and fragments of buildings
have been discovered, the authors of which and the date of their
erection we cannot ascertain even approximately. Near Amasia, on the
middle course of the Iris, we find graves hewn in the rocks, of which
those lying nearest the city may have belonged to the first kings of
Pontus. Near Aladja also the facade of a large rock-tomb may be seen.
Near Uejuek, on an elevated terrace, are the ruins of a palace, the lower
part of which is formed by great blocks worked and joined in the
Cyclopian style, and the blocks are in part covered with sculptures. In
the middle of the south front is a spacious doorway guarded by two pairs
of lions; one pair is detached, the other is worked out of the stone
posts of the doorway, like the protecting figures in the palaces of
Nineveh.[783] Near Boghaskoi, which is perhaps the site of the ancient
city of Pteria, at the foot of a lofty limestone plateau, overhung by
cones of rock, in the fork of a mountain stream which flows northward to
the Halys, are the remains of a building about 200 feet in length and
140 feet in breadth. A broad staircase leads from the river to a
terrace, on which rises the palace surrounded by a wall. As at Uejuek,
the lower part of the structure consists of Cyclopian blocks of fifteen
to twenty feet in length, and some six feet in depth. About thirty
chambers, greater or smaller, surround the court of this structure. The
ground plan is like that of the palaces of Nineveh; in the sculptures a
resemblance has been traced to the reliefs of the buildings of the
Achaemenids. Pteria was afterwards the abode of a Persian commander. On
the rocky plateau over the palace we see the remains of two citadels,
surrounded by lines of fortification, of which the Cyclopian foundations
may still be traced.[784] Two miles and a half to the north-west of the
ruins of the citadels, in the rocks surrounding the plateau, remarkable
sculptures have been discovered. In a deep recess of the rocks the rough
walls, which have been but slightly hewn and smoothed, are covered with
reliefs. There are two rows of figures which meet each other. They
advance from the outer curve of the niche along the side-walls, on the
right and left, towards the back wall. While the figures in these rows
are only from two to three feet high, the shapes on the back wall, which
form the centre of the picture, are of the size of life, and indeed the
main figure is even larger. All the figures are in profile. The main
figure, which moves from left to right, as does the long row of figures
following it on the left side of the niche, is a bearded warrior, who
steps over, or even upon, two bending figures with high and pointed
caps, falling over in front, and in garments which fall in folds from
the girdle. In his right hand he carries a sceptre, the left hand, which
is not very distinct, holds a flower out of which peers a circle, or an
oval ring. His doublet hardly reaches to the knee; the head is covered
with a tall conical cap, and on the feet are pointed shoes. He is
followed by two male figures suitably clothed, who stand on mountain
summits; then between two winged genii are two figures with round caps,
who carry bowls, and behind them a form in a long garment, with a bent
staff in his hand, and a winged circle on his head. Then follow warriors
armed with sabres, or clubs, in the same short doublet and the same
pointed shoes as the three leaders, and between them are two demons, the
only figures presenting a full face, with round, broad faces, who carry
two segments of a circle, one upon the other. They were followed by
warriors and two priests with pointed caps falling over in front. The
end of the row on the left entrance is formed by a series of twelve
warriors, who march on without armour, close together, and with even
step. On the right side of the niche is another row, coming to meet the
row described. Opposite the leader of the warriors, in the middle of the
north wall, is a large female figure, who advances from the right to the
left on a lion or leopard, whose feet rest on four mountain summits. She
wears a long robe falling in folds to her ankles; her hair streams down,
and upon it is a cylindrical head-dress; the right hand carries a staff,
while the left, which holds something similar to the ring already
mentioned, is held out towards the outstretched left hand of the leader
of the warriors. Behind her, on a smaller scale, but also riding on a
lion with the feet resting on mountain summits, is a youthful warrior,
without a beard, in the clothing of the main figure; the head is covered
with a lofty pointed cap, the shoes are also pointed; in the girdle is
the two-edged bill, in the left hand a long battle-axe, and in the right
a staff. He is followed by two female figures above a double eagle, in
the dress of the main female figure; behind them come thirteen more
female figures of a similar kind, with staves or harps in their hands.
The whole picture contains more than sixty figures. In a niche receding
to the back we find, beside a demon of remarkable shape, a young
beardless man with an exceedingly tall conical cap; in his outstretched
right hand he appears to carry the picture of a temple; and with his
left he embraces the neck of a very youthful female form, whose
head-dress and robe fall down in numerous folds. Beside them march
twelve warriors with lower caps than those in the main recess, and
scythe swords in their right hands; the left arm is raised as high as
the shoulder, since they are treading on the left heel, and the top of
the right foot.[785]
If this great rock picture is not intended to represent some act of
religious worship, it might depict the conclusion of a treaty between
two nations. In this case it might belong to the period in which Media,
under Cyaxares, extended her borders to the Halys, and came into fierce
conflict with the Lydians. This war was brought to an end by a treaty of
peace, accompanied by the betrothal of the daughter of Alyattes of
Lydia to the son of Cyaxares. The picture might be explained in
reference to this treaty and betrothal, did not the style and manner
appear closely allied to the figure near Smyrna (p. 151), and a relief
not far from Ancyra.[786]
As to the religious rites of the Cappadocians, we know that they
worshipped the god Men, who is called a moon-god, and a female deity,
Mene, or Ma. On the Lycus, an affluent of the Iris, at Cabeira, stood
the sanctuary of Men in the middle of large precincts; the sanctuary of
Mene was at Comana, on the Iris, and was the oldest, richest, and most
important sanctuary in the land. Ma, or Mene, was a war-goddess whom
Greeks and Romans called Enyo and Bellona; to Strabo she is known as
Artemis, and this name is evidence of her relation to the moon, no less
than of her position as a war-goddess. That relation is confirmed by
further evidence. Comana, says Strabo, is thickly populated; but the
inhabitants are effeminate; the greater part are fanatics or religious
maniacs, and there is also a number of women who serve the goddess with
their bodies, of whom the greater part are dedicated to the temple.
Here, twice in the year, the "Exodus of the Goddess" was celebrated. To
this festival pilgrims, male and female, came from every side, and in
frenzy and ecstasy performed certain sacred customs, which consisted
partly in wounding themselves with swords, and partly in sensual
excesses. In the south of Cappadocia, on the upper Sarus, there was a
second city of Comana, which also possessed a sanctuary of Ma. Here, as
at Comana on the Iris, six thousand servants are said to have attended
upon Ma.[787] We know the tendencies of the Syrian worship, to bring
man, by means of certain services, nearer to the deity to whom the
services are performed, and make him resemble the peculiar nature of the
deity whom he worships. The maidens who served the maiden goddess in her
temples on the Pontus carried weapons like the goddess, and honoured her
by dancing in armour.
Out of these armed maidens in the temples of Ma there grew up among the
Greeks a peculiar and widely-developed legend--the legend of the warlike
tribe of the Amazons. When the Greek colonists landed on the western
coast of Asia Minor, they found, in the land of the Lydians, where they
built Smyrna, Cyme, and Ephesus, seats of the worship of a goddess whom
they compared to their Artemis, and whose attendants were eunuchs and
armed maidens (p. 556). They next perceived that similar seats of
worship were to be found in the East also, on the coasts of the Pontus.
Thus the Homeric poems already placed the "Amazons equal to men" on the
east of the Phrygians, and represented king Priam as meeting them with
his men on the banks of the Sangarius.[788] As natives of Asia Minor the
Amazons must have fought with the Trojans against the Greeks. Arctinus
represented the Amazons as coming to Troy after the death of Hector, and
distressing the Greeks till Achilles slew their queen, the beautiful
"Penthesilea, the daughter of the dread, manslaying Ares." The cyclic
poets knew the abode of the Amazons more accurately than Homer; they
place them at Themiscyra, on the Thermodon;[789] and at this place
Pindar represents them as drawing up their army. AEschylus also places
the Amazons on the Thermodon;[790] according to Pherecydes the war-god
begot the Amazons with Harmonia on the Thermodon.[791] We have seen that
the Greeks gave the name Harmonia to Astarte, the moon-goddess of the
Phenicians. When the Greeks at the time of Arctinus had founded Sinope
and Trapezus in those regions, they believed that they were in the land
of the Amazons; and Sinope was thought to have been previously inhabited
by the Amazons.[792] The places at which the Greeks here founded a new
home were thought to have been named and sanctified long before their
arrival, not only by the voyage of the Argonauts, for Heracles, Theseus,
and Peirithous were said to have set foot there, in order to perform
their mighty deeds against the Amazons. At the command of Eurystheus
Heracles had been compelled to bring the girdle from Hippolyte, the
queen of the Amazons, for Admete. Theseus and Peirithous had carried off
Antiope. Among the Phenicians, as we have seen, Baal-Melkarth looses the
girdle of the moon-goddess; the Greeks transferred the legend of
Melicertes to their Heracles. Even as early as the thirteenth or twelfth
century B.C. the ships of the Phenicians had probably brought the
worship of the warlike moon-goddess to the coast of Attica. At any rate,
at a later time, tombs of the Amazons, _i.e._ abandoned seats of the
worship of the Artemis of Syria and Asia Minor, were shown there. After
the Attic territory was united under the rule of a military monarchy, of
which, among the Ionians, Theseus was the embodiment, the Phenicians
were driven back from the coasts of the Greeks: Theseus was said to
have conquered the Minotaur and the Amazons. In order to establish the
existence of Amazons in Attica, Theseus was said to have carried off
Antiope. To avenge this wrong, the Amazons marched from their distant
home on the Thermodon to Attica; and the Athenians considered it one of
their greatest services towards their common fatherland that they had
conquered the Amazons, "an enemy who threatened all Hellas."[793]
Out of these elements the Greeks framed a circumstantial history of the
Amazons. Even among the historians, their home is the land of the
Thermodon. Here the Amazons dwelt, according to Herodotus, Diodorus, and
Strabo, and here, as Diodorus tells us, they offered splendid sacrifices
to Ares and Artemis Tauropolus. Their first queen is said to have been
the daughter of Ares, and she built the great city of Themiscyra; the
second queen extended the dominion of the Amazons as far as Syria; and
finally queen Myrina reduced the whole of Syria, and received the
voluntary submission of the Cilicians.[794] It is obvious that the
Amazons founded all the cities where the worship of the maiden
war-goddess flourished or had ever existed. Roused by the crime of
Theseus, they marched to the west, founded the sanctuary of Ephesus,
where "they set up the image of the goddess under the trunk of an elm,
and, armed with shields, danced the war-dance, so that their quivers
sounded."[795] Then they marched to the north, and founded Smyrna,
Myrina, and Cyme.[796] Analogous rites proved that they were also in
Lesbos and Samothrace. Through Thrace and Thessaly, and finally across
Euboea, they are said to have marched to Attica; tombs of the Amazons
were shown at Scotussa and Cynoscephalae, in Thessaly, and at Chalcis, in
Euboea.[797] After returning home, the Amazons next marched to the aid
of the Trojans, and were conquered by Achilles. When the Greeks had
founded Cyrene on the coast of Attica, and found, among the Libyan
tribes of the surrounding district, the worship of a female
war-goddess--when they found the Libyan women wearing corslets of
goatskins, they came to the conclusion that the Amazons once dwelt on
the Tritonian lake in Libya.[798]