Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/115

Rh L Y D I A 99 Under the Heraclid dynasty the limits of Lydia must have been already extended, since according to Strabo {xiii. p. 590), the authority of Gyges reached as far as the Troad, and we learn from the Assyrian inscriptions that the same king sent tribute to Assur-bani-pal, whose dominions were bounded on the west by the Halys. But under the Mermnads Lydia became a maritime as well as an inland power. The Greek cities were conquered, and the coast of Ionia included within the Lydian kingdom. The successes of Croesus finally changed the Lydian king dom into a Lydian empire, and all Asia Minor westward of the Halys, with the exception of Lycia, owned the supre macy of Sardes. Lydia never again shrank back into its original dimensions. After the Persian conquest the Mreander was regarded as its southern boundary, and in the Roman period it comprised the country between Mysia and Caria on the one side and Phrygia and the /Egean on the other. Lydia proper was exceedingly fertile. The hill-sides were clothed with vine and fir, and the rich broad plain of Hermus produced large quantities of corn and saffron. The climate of the plain was soft but healthy, though the country was subject to frequent earthquakes. The Pactolus, which flowed from the fountain of Tarne in the Tinolus mountains, through the centre of Sardes. into the Hermus, was believed to be full of golden sand ; and gold mines were worked in Tmolus itself, though by the time of Strabo the proceeds had become so small as hardly to pay for the expense of working them (Strabo, xiii. 591). Maeonia on the east contained the curious barren plateau known to the Greeks as the Catacecaumene or Burnt country, once a centre of volcanic disturbance. The Gygsean lake (where remains of pile dwellings have been found) still abounds with carp, which frequently grow to a very large size. Herodotus (i. 171) tells us that Lydus was a brother of Mysus and Car. The statement is on the whole borne out by the few Lydian, Mysian, and Carian words that have been preserved, as well as by the general character of the civilization prevailing among the three nations. The language, so far as can be judged from its scanty remains, was Indo-European, and more closely related to the western than to the eastern branch of the family. The race was probably a mixed one, consisting of aborigines and Aryan immigrants. It was characterized by industry and a commercial spirit, and, before the Persian conquest, by bravery as well. The religion of the Lydians resembled that of the other civifized nations of Asia Minor. It was a nature-worship, which at times became wild and sensuous. By the side of the supreme god Medeus stood the sun-god Attys, as in Phrygia the chief object of the popular cult. He was at once the son and bridegroom of Cybele or Cybebe, the mother of the gods, whose image carved by Broteas, son of Tantalus, was adored on the cliffs of Sipylus (Paus., iii. 22). Like the Semitic Tammuz or Adonis, he was the beautiful youth who had mutilated himself in a moment of frenzy or despair, and whose temples were served by eunuch priests. Or again he was the dying sun-god, slain by the winter, and mourned by Cybele, as Adonis was by Aphrodite in the old myth which the Greeks had borrowed from Phoenicia. This worship of Attys was in great measure due to foreign influence. Doubtless there had been an ancient native god of the name, but the associated myths and rites came almost wholly from abroad. The Hittites in their stronghold of Carchemish on the Euphrates had adopted the Babylonian cult of Istar (Ashtoreth) and T;unmuz-Adonis, and had handed it on to the tribes of Asia Minor. The close resemblance between the story of Attys and that of Adonis was the result of a common origin. The old legends of the Semitic East had come to the West through two channels. The Phoenicians brought them by sea and the Hittites by land. But though the worship of Makar or Melkarth on Lesbos (//., xxiv. 544) shows that the Phoenician faith had found a home on this part of the coast of Asia Minor, it could have had no influence upon Lydia, which, as we have seen, was cut off from the sea before the rise of the Mermnads. It was rather to the Hittites that Lydia, like Phrygia and Cappadocia, owed its faith in Attys and Cybele. The latter became &quot;the mother of Asia,&quot; and at Ephesus, where she was adored under the form of a meteoric stone, was identified with the Greek Artemis. Her mural crown is first seen in the Hittite sculptures of Boghaz Keui on the Halys, and the bee was sacred to her. A gem found near Aleppo represents her Hittite counterpart standing on this insect. The priestesses by whom she was served are depicted in early art as armed with the double-headed axe, and the dances they performed in her honour with shield and bow gave rise to the myths which saw in them the Amazons, a nation of woman-warriors. The pne-Hellenic cities of the coast Smyrna, Samorna (Ephesus), Myrina, Cyme, Priene, and Pitane were all of Amazonian origin, and the first three of them have the same name as the Amazon Myrina, whose tomb was pointed out in the Troad. The prostitution whereby the Lydian girls gained their dowries (Herod., i. 93) wus a religious exercise, as among the Semites, which marked their devotion to the goddess Cybele. In the legend of Hercules, Omphale takes the place of Cybele, and was perhaps her Lydian title. Hercules is here the sun-god Attys in a new form ; his Lydian name is unknown, since E. Meyer has shown (Z. D. M. G. t xxxi. 4) that Sandon belongs not to Lydia but to Cilicia. By the side of Attys stood the moon-god Manes or Men. According to the native historian Xanthus (460 B.C.) three dynasties ruled in succession over Lydia. The first, that of the Attyads, is wholly mythical. It was headed by a god, and included geographical personages like Lydus, Asies, and Meles, or such heroes of folk-lore as Cambletes, who devoured his wife. To this mythical age belongs the colony which, according to Herodotus (i. 94), Tyrsenus, the son of Attys, led to Etruria. Xanthus, however, puts Torrhebus in the place of Tyrsenus, and makes him the eponym of a district in Lydia. There was no connexion between the Etrurians and Lydians in either language or race, and the story in Herodotus rests solely on the sup posed resemblance of Tyrrhenus and Torrhebus. It is doubtful whether Xanthus recognized the Greek legends which brought Pelops from Lydia, or rather Mseonia, and made him the son of Tantalus. The legends must have grown up after the Greek colonization of ^Eolis and Ionia, though Dr Schliemann s discoveries at Mycenae have shown a certain likeness between the art of early Greece and that of Asia Minor, while the gold found there in such abundance may have been derived from the mines of Tmolus. The second dynasty was also of divine origin, but the names which head it prove its connexion with the distant East, Its founder, a descendant of Hercules and Omphale, was, Herodotus tells us (i. 7), a son of Ninus and grandson of Belus. The Assyrian inscriptions have shown that the Assyrians had never crossed the Halys, much less known the name of Lydia, before the age of Assur- bani-pal, and consequently the old theory which brought the Heraclids from Nineveh must be given up. But we now know that the case was otherwise with another Oriental people, which was deeply imbued with the elements of Babylonian culture. The Hittites had overrun Asia Minor and established themselves on the shores of the JEgean before the reign of the Egyptian king Bamses IL