THE OVERTHROW OF THE HERACLEIDS IN LYDIA.
On the western coast of Asia Minor the nation of the Lydians, which
possessed the vallies of the Hermus and Mæander, had early arrived at a
monarchy and a point of civilization far in advance of the stages of
primitive life. The ancient royal house of the Lydians claimed to be
sprung from the gods, from Attys, the son of the god Manes. The city of
Sardis is said to have been built under the dominion of this dynasty, to
have been dedicated to the sun-god and fortified.[765] This house of the
Attyadæ was said to have been followed about the year 1200 B.C. by a
second dynasty which carried back its genealogy to Sandon, the sun-god
himself, a deity whom the Greeks, according to the various aspects of
the nature ascribed to him by the Lydians, sometimes identified with
their Apollo, and at other times with their Heracles. As the founder of
the new dynasty the Greeks call him Heracles. Agron, the fourth
descendant of this Sandon-Heracles, is said to have ascended the throne
of Lydia in the year 1194 B.C. After him twenty-two kings, the
descendants of Agron, bore the crown of Lydia for a space of 505 years,
down to the year 689 B.C.[766]
The power possessed by Lydia under this family of rulers cannot have
been very considerable. When the Greeks forced the Phenicians from the
islands of the Ægean Sea, and then, about the end of the eleventh and
beginning of the tenth century B.C., landed on the western coast of Asia
Minor, the Lydians were not able any more than the Teucrians and Mysians
in the North, or the Carians in the South, to prevent the establishment
of the Greeks on their coasts, the loss of the ancient native
sanctuaries at Smyrna, Colophon, Ephesus, and the founding of Greek
cities in their land on the mouths of the Lydian rivers, the Hermus and
the Cayster, though the Greek emigrants came in isolated expeditions
over the sea. It was on the Lydian coasts that the most important Greek
cities rose; Cyme, Phocæa, Smyrna, Colophon, Ephesus. Priene, Myus, and
Miletus were on the land of the Carians. The Homeric poems would hardly
have omitted to place a strong body of auxiliaries from Mæonia, which is
their name for Lydia, by the side of the oppressed Ilium, if the fame of
a powerful Lydian kingdom had then existed among the Greeks of the
coast. The land of the Lydians is well-known to the Homeric poems; they
give a distinct prominence to the trade, wealth, and horse-breeding of
the Mæonians; but they make no mention of any prominent race of
rulers;[767] and yet the Sandonids were on the throne at Sardis when
the poems were sung, and when they came to an end. The loss of her
coasts and the mouths of her rivers must have been heavily felt by
Lydia. The trade with the sea and beyond it was henceforth only possible
by the intervention of the Greek cities which had grown up there.
Of the exploits and fortunes of the kings of the race of Sandon we have
almost no information. It is only of the five or six last rulers that we
have the names and a few traces; and to these we may add two or three
very doubtful stories of the fall of the last king of the house.
According to Eusebius, Ardys, Sadyattes, Meles, and Candaules, brought
the series of this dynasty to an end: Ardys reigned from 768 to 732
B.C.; Sadyattes down to 718; Meles down to the year 706 B.C., and he was
then succeeded by Candaules.[768] The fragments of Nicolaus of Damascus,
which must have been derived from the lost history of the Lydian
Xanthus, give us the following account: Alyattes, the predecessor of
Ardys, had left his kingdom jointly to his sons Cadys and Ardys. Cadys
soon died, and Ardys was driven from the throne by Spermus, a relation
of Cadys, who during the life of Cadys had had an intrigue with his
wife. Ardys with his wife and daughter fled to Cyme, and there he lived
in such poverty that he worked as a wheelwright. Two years after the
flight of Ardys the usurper was struck down by an assassin whom he had
hired against Ardys, and the Lydians sent messengers to Cyme to invite
Ardys to ascend again the throne of his fathers. When restored to the
throne, Ardys exercised a mild and just rule, and the Lydians had never
known such prosperity since the days of the ancient king Alkimus (I.
561), as they enjoyed under Ardys. The army of the Lydians also was
strong under the rule of this king: it numbered 30,000 horsemen.[769] A
fragment of Heracleides Ponticus also gives us information about the
fortunes of Ardys at Cyme. "Severely oppressed by their ruler the
Lydians sent to Cyme, when they found that one of their countrymen was
there, to summon him to the throne. The man was the slave of a
wheelwright. The Lydians paid his price and took him with them. But a
Cymæan who had ordered a wagon kept him back, and told those who
remonstrated with him, to put no hindrances in his way, for he
considered it a great thing to possess a wagon which the king of the
Lydians had made."[770]
Herodotus tells us that Candaules, whom the Greeks call Myrsilus, placed
the greatest confidence in Gyges the son of Dascylus, one of his
lance-bearers. He went so far in this that he determined to convince
Gyges by the evidence of his own eyes that the queen, his consort, was
the most beautiful of all women. For this purpose he brought Gyges one
evening into his bed-chamber, and bade him place himself behind the open
door, so that when the queen undressed herself he might see her naked.
This was done. But the queen saw Gyges when he passed out. Enraged at
the insult offered to her by Candaules she sent for Gyges on the
following morning, and gave him the choice whether he would die on the
spot, or slay Candaules on the following night. He chose the latter. She
gave him a dagger and concealed him behind the door, and Gyges stabbed
Candaules as soon as he was asleep. But the Lydians rose in arms to
avenge the death of their king. The adherents of Gyges and the rest of
the Lydians came to a compromise, that, if the oracle of the god should
declare for Gyges as the king of the Lydians, he should rule, but if
not, Gyges was to restore the kingdom to the race of Sandon.
According to the fragments of Nicolaus it was the good king Ardys who
laid the foundation for the overthrow of the house of the Sandonids. In
his old age, so we are told, Ardys took great delight in a man of the
race of the Mermnadæ. This was Dascylus, the son of Gyges. At length
Ardys handed over to him the entire government. Sadyattes, the son and
heir of Ardys, became apprehensive that, at the death of Ardys, Dascylus
would misuse the great power entrusted to him, in order to establish
himself on the throne. He caused Dascylus to be secretly put out of the
way. Filled with grief, the old king caused the Lydians to be assembled,
had himself carried into the assembly in a litter, bade the Lydians
discover the murderers, on whose heads he imprecated bitter curses, and
ended by saying that any one who discovered them might slay them. But
the murderers were not discovered. After the death of Ardys, Sadyattes
ascended the throne, and he was succeeded by Meles. In this reign Lydia
was visited by a severe famine, and an oracle demanded that the death of
Dascylus should be expiated. The wife of Dascylus had fled to Phrygia,
her home, and had there brought forth a son, with whom she was pregnant
at the time of his father's death. She had given him the name of his
father. Dascylus, who had now grown up, was requested by Meles to return
to Sardis, in order to receive there the atonement for the murder of his
father. But Dascylus feared to return, and retired to the Syrians who
dwell in Sinope, on the Pontus, where he married a Syrian woman, who
bore him Gyges. After the reigns of Meles and Myrsus, Candaules ascended
the throne of Lydia. Then the aged brother of the murdered Dascylus, who
had remained in Sardis and was childless, besought the king that his
nephew Dascylus might be allowed to return to Sardis, that he might
adopt him as his son before his death. This prayer the king granted, but
Dascylus refused to leave his abode; he sent his son Gyges, then
eighteen years old, to his great-uncle at Sardis. Gyges was a handsome
youth. In riding and in all martial exercises he surpassed his comrades;
and he had also proved his bravery in war. Owing to his stature and his
beauty the king took him into his body-guard, made him his favourite,
honoured him before all others, and gave him large presents of land.
When Candaules would marry Tudo, the daughter of Arnossus, the king of
the Mysians, he sent Gyges to bring home the bride. While Gyges was
bringing the princess to Sardis in his chariot, he fell violently in
love with her, and, no longer master of himself, attempted to embrace
her, in spite of her struggles and threats. On her arrival in Sardis she
did not conceal what Gyges had done, and the king swore that the
offender should be put to death on the next day. A maid who was devoted
to Gyges overheard the words of the king and repeated them to Gyges on
the same night. Determined to slay the king rather than allow himself to
be slain, Gyges collected his nearest friends, besought their
assistance, and reminded them of the curse which Ardys had laid on the
murderers of his grandfather. In arms they hastened into the royal
citadel. The maid opened the door of the bed-chamber for Gyges, who
stabbed the sleeping king with his sword. In the morning a message went
forth from the citadel to the chief men in the kingdom; they were to
appear before the face of the king. They obeyed without any suspicion,
in the belief that they had been summoned by Candaules. Gyges caused
those to be slain who, as he thought, would be his enemies, and gave
handsome presents to those whom he hoped to win. He armed all whom he
gained to his side: the body-guard also took his part, so that the
Lydians, when they discovered what had taken place, though they rose
against the murderer of the king, did not venture to attack him. But
they sent to Delphi to inquire whether they should take Gyges to be
their king; and the god bade them do so, and Gyges took Tudo to
wife.[771]
In the narrative of Nicolaus it is the curse which Ardys uttered upon
the murderers of the first Dascylus, and the late vengeance for this
murder which comes upon the descendants of Sadyattes, and causes the
overthrow of the kingdom. But the guilt of Sadyattes is not the only
cause: Ardys himself sinned by the excessive confidence which he reposed
in Dascylus; and Candaules goes further still in his blind confidence in
the grandson of Dascylus; he gives him land; he sets him above all
others; he commissions the youth of twenty years to bring home the royal
bride to her marriage. The same fault of excessive and misplaced
confidence, though in another direction, is in Herodotus the cause of
the overthrow of Candaules and his house. In a third version, given by
Plutarch, we still find the same motive. When Heracles had slain
Hippolyte (the queen of the Amazons), he gave her battle-axe to Omphale.
The kings who ruled over Lydia after Omphale, had carried this
battle-axe, each handing it to his successor, down to Candaules, who
disregarded it and gave it to his favourite to carry; but this favourite
in Plutarch is not Gyges.[772]
The relation into which Herodotus represents the wife of Candaules as
entering, after her dishonour, with Gyges, the guard of her husband,
appears to be founded on a similar story, which a legend ascribes to an
ancestor of Gyges. Gyges, the forefather of Lydus, so we are told in
Plato, was one of the shepherds of the king of the Lydians. After a
severe storm of rain and an earthquake, the earth opened where he was
keeping his cattle. Out of curiosity he descended into the gulf, and saw
marvellous things: among others a brazen horse with windows, through
which he saw a dead man of superhuman size, who had nothing on beyond a
golden ring on his finger. This ring Gyges took, and climbed out. When
he sat among the rest of the shepherds in order to give the king the
monthly account of the condition of the flocks, with this ring on his
finger, he happened to turn the stone on it towards himself. Then he
perceived that the others did not see him, and spoke of him as though
absent. When he turned the stone away from himself, he was again seen by
them. Having assured himself of this fact, he procured that he should be
chosen among the messengers sent to the king. There he won the favour
of the queen, united with her for the overthrow of the king, slew him,
and seized the throne.[773]
We saw that the Lydians derived the tribes of their nation from Attys
and Cotys; the sons of the god Manes, and from the sons of Lydus,
Torrhebus and Asius. If the first Gyges could be called an ancestor of
Lydus, he must have held a high position in the legend of the Lydians.
This conclusion is confirmed by the Homeric poems in which the lake of
Gyges is the centre of the Lydian land and the Lydian life. On this lake
of Gyges the descendants of the youngest Gyges, his successors on the
throne, which he had won for them, had their tombs; but the graves of
the kings before them were also to be sought on the same lake. The race
of the Mermnadæ, which carried back its origin to the first Gyges, must,
therefore, have been ancient and important among the Lydians. Conscious
of such a descent, it may have considered itself little inferior to the
house of the kings, whose ancestor was the sun-god himself. We might,
perhaps, assume that the Mermnadæ, in the later days of Ardys or after
him, attained to prominent importance; that anxiety on account of this
prominence brought on them persecution and expulsion on the part of the
successors of Ardys. The wife of the murdered Dascylus flies to the
Phrygians; her son of the same name takes refuge with the Syrians on the
Pontus, at Sinope. Hence the exiles sought not only protection but also
support among their neighbours against the kings of the Lydians.
Pausanias mentions to us a place belonging to Dascylus on the White
Plain in Caria, on the borders of Lydia;[774] and Plutarch tells us:
"Arselis, the Carian of Mylasa, came to the aid of Gyges, the son of
Dascylus the younger, when he fought against Candaules, and helped Gyges
to victory. Arselis slew both Candaules and the youth to whom Candaules
had given the sacred symbol of the royal office of Lydia, and placed the
battle-axe as an ornament in the hand of the statue of Zeus at Mylasa."
Hence Gyges was in communication with the Carians when he rebelled
against Candaules.
We may go a step further. At the time when Candaules reigned over Lydia
(706-689 B.C.), the Cimmerians invaded Phrygia from Pontus, the very
region to which the younger Dascylus, the father of Gyges, is said to
have fled; king Midas took his own life in consequence of this disaster
(696 B.C.). The Magnesians, who inhabited the most inland city of the
Greeks on the lower Mæander, suffered at the hands of the Cimmerians a
defeat much lamented by the Greeks; and the poet Callinus of Ephesus
cried to his countrymen, "the army of the Cimmerians, who have done
mighty deeds, is approaching," and urged them to brave resistance.[775]
Lydia was not spared. Sardis was taken by the Cimmerians (I. 542). The
storm passed over, but it had beyond a doubt deeply shaken the Lydian
kingdom and the position of king Candaules. Of this king we only know
that he paid the Greek painter, Bularchus, for a picture which
represented the battle and defeat of the Magnesians with an equal weight
of gold, though the picture was of moderate size only. This was a
passion for art little in accordance with the position of his kingdom,
and it seems to confirm the account of Plutarch that Candaules reigned
with little care, and left the government to a favourite. After the blow
which Lydia suffered by the invasion of the Cimmerians, the Mermnadæ
must have considered that their time was come. Whether they were really
allowed to return, whether Gyges had a place in the body-guard or not,
cannot be decided. What is certain is that he did not attain to the
throne without an open struggle, whether it was against Candaules
himself, or his party, the party of the ancient royal family; it is
certain, too, that Carian troops supported him, though the Arselis in
Plutarch is not a Carian, but the Carian war-god, or the axe of this
war-god of Mylasa.[776] Moreover, it is certain that Gyges was not able
to overcome by force of arms the resistance of the Lydians, who adhered
to the ancient royal family. In Herodotus, as in Nicolaus, the Lydians
take up arms against Gyges; in both the decision which follows is due to
the oracle of the god. The arrangement in Herodotus--if the oracle of
the god declared for Gyges he was to reign, and if against him, the
kingdom was to go back to the race of Heracles, _i.e._ of the
sun-god--may be regarded as historical, and that the decision should be
sought from the deity, from whom the house hitherto on the throne
sprang, shows that the Lydians adhered firmly to their ancient royal
family.
The decision of the civil war in Lydia was sought in Delphi. The fame of
the temple at Delphi, which belonged to the light-god of the Hellenes,
had long reached the Lydians and Phrygians through the Greeks of the
coast. Before this time Midas of Phrygia had dedicated a pedestal and
other presents at Delphi (I. 527). As the Greeks recognised their Apollo
and their Heracles in the sun-god of the Lydians (I. 564), so did the
Lydians regard the god of light, the archer-god of Delphi, as their own
sun-god. The impartial sun-god of the stranger was to decide whether
the descendants of the native sun-god were to lose or keep the throne.
The oracle of the god of Delphi decided for Gyges. In gratitude he sent
rich presents, a great mass of silver and gold, to Delphi. Herodotus
mentions especially six golden milk-vessels, thirty talents in
weight.[777]
FOOTNOTES:
[765] Vol. I. p. 563 ff.
[766] Herodotus allows 170 years for the Mermnadæ, the successors of the
Heracleidæ of Lydia. If the fall of Croesus is to be placed, as I
shall prove in Book VIII. chap. 6, in the year 549 B.C., his ancestor
Gyges must have ascended the throne in 719 B.C. (549 + 170 = 719). In
the canon of Eusebius the series of the Lydian kings begins with the
Sandonid Ardys, whose accession Eusebius places immediately before
Olymp. I., and it continues 230 years. In the same canon the date of the
Mermnadæ begins 150 years before the fall of Croesus, and consequently
in the year 699 B.C. (549 + 150 = 699). Hence Eusebius allows 20 years
less then Herodotus to the Mermnadæ. The fact that Herodotus allows 106
years to two rulers of the five Mermnadæ, is no reason for departing
from his dates. But we have seen above that the first invasion of the
west of Asia Minor by the Cimmerians must be placed about the year 700
B.C. The time is fixed more exactly by the fact that Midas of Phrygia,
whose wife was the daughter of Agamemnon king of Cyme (I. 527), who
dedicated a throne at Delphi, before Gyges sent presents there, reigned,
in Eusebius, from 738 B.C. to 696 B.C., in which year he killed himself
by bull's blood, because the Cimmerians invaded his land: Strabo, p. 61.
It was in this invasion of the Cimmerians that Magnesia succumbed; the
fall of which Archilochus mentioned in the line, "I weep for the
disaster of the Thasians, not of the Magnesians," fragm. 19, ed. Bergk.
When this happened Gyges was not yet king of Lydia. Candaules, the last
Sandonid, was still on the throne. "Is it not admitted," says Pliny,
"that the picture of Bularchus, which represented the battle of the
Magnesians, was purchased for its weight in gold by Candaules, the last
king of the race of the Heracleidæ, who is also called Myrsilus?" "Hist.
Nat." 35, 34 (35, 8 in Detlefsen). And also "King Candaules paid for the
picture of Bularchus representing the defeat of the Magnesians--a work
of moderate size--with its weight in gold:" _loc. cit._ 7, 39 (7, 38 in
Detlefsen). According to this Midas was on the throne before Gyges, and
Magnesia fell before the Cimmerians when the last Heracleid held sway in
Lydia; and as the Cimmerians could only reach Magnesia through Phrygia,
Candaules must have sat on the throne in the year 696 B.C. and later.
Hence both the numbers of Herodotus which give 719 B.C., and those of
Eusebius which give 699 B.C. for the accession of Gyges, are too high.
But the latter allow an abbreviation of ten years. In Herodotus twelve
years are allowed to Sadyattes, the third Mermnad: in the canon of
Eusebius he has fifteen years; but in the list of Lydian kings in the
first book, which in the rest agrees with the canon (it is unimportant
that Gyges has in the former 35, in the latter 36 years, Ardys 37 in the
one and 36 in the other), we find only five years instead of fifteen
given to Sadyattes. If we accept this abbreviation Candaules was still
on the throne in the year 696 B.C. Gyges ascended the throne after Midas
and Candaules in the year 689 B.C. There are other grounds, beside these
quoted, which make this necessary. Assurbanipal of Asshur told us of his
dealings with Gyges, of the league between Gyges and Psammetichus, to
whom Gyges sent help: Assurbanipal began to reign in 668 B.C.
Psammetichus was first placed over Sais as a vassal in Assyria in 664,
and could not have rebelled against Assyria before 654 B.C. (p. 300).
But according to the dates of Herodotus Gyges came to an end in 684
B.C.; and if we follow the date given for the beginning of his reign in
Eusebius he died in 663. Hence the only possible solution is to assume
the numbers of the first book of Eusebius, with the reduction for
Sadyattes. Hence the dates for the reigns are as follows: Gyges,
689-653; Ardys, 653-617; Sadyattes 617-612; Alyattes, 612-563;
Croesus, 563-549 B.C.
[767] The catalogue of the ships ("Il." 2. 864) mentions only Mesthles
and Antiphos as the leaders of the Mæonians, sons of Pylæmenes, and the
nymph of the lake Gygæa.
[768] According to the reduction established above for the third Mermnad
in the canon, Ardys begins 778 B.C.
[769] Nicol. Damasc. fragm. 49, ed. Müller.
[770] Heracl. Pont. fragm. 11, 1, 2, ed. Müller.
[771] Though the last Sandonid is also called Sadyattes in Nicolaus, I
have put Candaules in the text because he, like the Candaules of
Herodotus, is the son of Myrsus. The reign of Myrsus is not found in the
canon or in the other three lists of Lydian kings in Eusebius. The four
Mermnads, Gyges, Dascylus, Dascylus, Gyges, must be met by four
Heracleids, Ardys, Sadyattes, Meles, and Candaules. Myrsus might have
arisen out of the name Myrsilus, which the Greeks gave to Candaules, or
Candaules was the son of a Myrsus who did not reign. That the last
Sandonid reigned only three years as Nicolaus supposes is impossible.
According to this Gyges gained the throne at 21 years of age. And what
we know from other sources of Candaules does not agree with so short a
reign. We must therefore keep to the statement of Eusebius.
[772] Vol. I. p. 573. Plutarch, "Quæst. Græc." 45.
[773] Plato, "De Rep." p. 359, 360.
[774] Pausan. 4, 35, 11.
[775] Fragm. 2, 3, ed. Bergk.
[776] Vol. I. p. 573.
[777] Herod. 1, 14.