Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/887

 P H R Y G I A 851 appears to be the city of Midas, 1 and the name is one more link in the chain that binds Mycenae to Phrygia. This connexion, whatever may have been its character, belongs to the remote period when the Phrygians inhabited the yEgean coasts. In the 8th and probably in the 9th cen tury B.C. communication with Phrygia seems to have been maintained especially by the Greeks of Cyme, Phocaea, and Smyrna. About the end of the 8th century Midas king of Phrygia married Damodice, daughter of Agamemnon, the last king of Cyme. Gyges, the first Mermnad king of Lydia (687-653), had a Phrygian mother. The worship of Cybele spread over Phocasa to the west as far as Massilia : rock monuments in the Phrygian style and votive reliefs of an Anatolian type are found near Phocaea. Smyrna was devoted to the Phrygian Meter Sipylene. It is then natural that the lays of the Homeridae refer to Phrygia in the terms above described, and make Priam s wife a Phrygian woman. After the foundation of the Greek colony at Sinope in 751 there can be no doubt that it formed the link of connexion between Greece and Phrygia. Phrygian and Cappadocian traders brought their goods, no doubt on camels, to Sinope, and the Greek sailors, the deivavrai of Miletus, carried home the works of Oriental and Phrygian artisans. The Greek alphabet was carried back to Phrygia and Pteria, either from Sinope or more probably from Cyme, in the latter part of the 8th century. The immense importance of Sinope in early times is abun dantly attested, and we need not doubt that very intimate relations existed at this port between the Ionic colonists and the natives. The effects of this commerce on the development of Greece were very great. It affected Ionia in the first place, and the mainland of Greece indirectly ; the art of Ionia at this period is almost unknown, but it was probably most closely allied to that of Phrygia. 2 A striking fact in this connexion is the frequent use of a very simple kind of Ionic capital on the early Phrygian monuments, making it practically certain that the &quot; proto- lonic &quot; column came to Greece over Phrygia. It is obvious that the revolution which took place in the relations between Phrygians and Greeks must be due to some great movement of races which disturbed the old paths of communication. Abel is probably correct in placing the inroads of the barbarous European tribes, Bithynians, Thyni, Mariandyni, &c., into Asia Minor about the beginning of the 9th century B.C. The Phrygian element on the coast was weakened and in many places annihilated ; that in the interior was strengthened ; and we may suppose that the kingdom of the Sangarius valley now sprang into greatness. The kingdom of Lydia appears to have become important about the end of the 8th century, and to have completely barred the path between Phrygia and Cyme or Smyrna. Ionian maritime enterprise opened a new way over Sinope. 3 The downfall of the Phrygian monarchy can be dated with comparative accuracy. Between 680 and 670 the Cimmerians in their destructive progress over Asia Minor overran Phrygia ; the king Midas in despair put an end to his own life ; and from henceforth the history of Phrygia is a story of slavery, degradation, and decay, which contrasts strangely with the earlier legends. The catastrophe seems to have deeply impressed the Greek mind, and the memory of it was preserved. The date of the Cimmerian invasion is fixed by the concurrent testimony of the contemporary 1 A city Midea occurs also in Boeotia, a village Midea on the Hellespont, and a city Midoeum in the Sangarius valley. 2 See Furtwangler, Goldfund von Vettersfelde, Winckelm. Progr., ] 884. The closest analogies of old Phrygian art are to be found in the earliest Greek bronze work in Olympia, Italy, and the northern lands. 3 Hipponax, fr. 36 [49], proves that a trade-route from Phrygia down the Mseander to Miletus was used in the 6th century. poets Archilochus and Callinus, of the late chronologers Eusebius, &c., and of the inscriptions of the Assyrian king Essar-haddon. The Cimmerians were finally expelled from Asia Minor by Alyattes before his war with the Medes under Cyaxares (590-585 B.C.). The Cimmerians, therefore, were ravaging Asia Minor, and presumably held possession of Phrygia, the only country where they achieved complete success, till some time between 610 and 590. Phrygia then fell under the Lydian power, and by the treaty of 585 the Halys was definitely fixed as the boundary between Lydia and Media. The period from 675 to 585 must there fore be considered as one of great disturbance and probably of complete paralysis in Phrygia. After 585 the country was ruled again by its own princes, under subjection to Lydian supremacy. To judge from the monuments, it appears to have recovered some of its old prosperity, but the art of this later period has to a great extent lost the strongly-marked individuality of its earlier bloom. The later sepulchral monuments belong to a class which is widely spread over Asia Minor, from Lycia to Pontus. The graves are made inside a chamber excavated in the rock, and the front of the chamber imitates a house or temple. No attempt is made to conceal the entrance or render it inaccessible. The architectural details are in some cases unmistakably copied without ntentional modi fication from the architecture of Greek temples, others point perhaps to Persian influence, while several which are perhaps among the early works of this period show the old freedom and power of employing in new and original ways details partly learned from abroad. This style continued in use under the Persians, under whose rule the Phrygians passed when Cyrus defeated Crcesus in 546, and probably lasted till the 3d century B.C. One monument appears to presuppose a development of Greek plastic art later than the time of Alexander. 4 It would, however, be quite wrong to suppose that the influence of truly Hellenic art on Phrygia began with the conquest of Alexander. Under the later Mermnad kings the Lydian empire was penetrated with Greek influence, and Xanthus, the early Lydian historian, wrote his history in Greek. Under the Persian rule perhaps it was more difficult for Greek manners to spread far east ; but we need not think that European influence was absolutely unfelt even in Phrygia. The probability is that Alexander found in all the large cities a party favourable to Greek manners and trade. Very little is to be learned from the ancient writers with regard to the state of Phrygia from 585 to 300. The slave-trade flourished : Phrygian slaves were common in the Greek market, and the Phrygian names Midas and Manes were stock-names for slaves. Herodotus (i. 14) records that a king Midas of Phrygia dedicated his own chair at Delphi ; the chair stood in the treasury of Cypselus, and cannot have been deposited there before 680 to 660 B.C. It is not improbable that the event belongs to the time of Alyattes or Crcesus, when Greek influence was favoured throughout the Lydian empire ; and it is easy to understand how the offering of a king Midas should be considered, in the time of Herodotus, as the earliest made by a foreign prince to a Greek god. The Phrygian troops in the army of Xerxes were armed like the Armenians and led by the same commander. It is to be presumed that the cities of the Sangarius valley gradually lost importance in the Persian period. Formerly the great line of communication across Anatolia traversed the Sangarius valley, but a better and shorter path south of the Salt Desert came into use in this period, from which these cities were far distant. The final cata strophe was the invasion of the Gauls about 270 to 250 ; and, though the circumstances of this invasion are almost 4 A gorgoneum, on a tomb engraved in Jour. Hell. Stud., pL xxvi.