Chapter XII: The Nations of Asia Minor (1)

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.