Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/17

 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY PHRYGIA, MYSIA, BITHYNIA, AND PAPHLAGONIA. CHAPTER I. THE PHRYGIAN NATION. HISTORY AND ORIGIN OF THE PHRYGIANS. THE part the Phrygians played in the Oriental world is not so important as that played by the Hittites, but the modern historian knows next to nothing of the latter, whilst he is acquainted with the house, parentage, and family of speech of the former. The Phrygians appeared later on the scene of history ; they lived in closer proximity with the Greeks, and left inscriptions, few and brief it is true, but written with characters the full values of which are determined. Herodotus and Xanthus of Lydia, who wrote about the fifth century B.C., are agreed in placing the cradle-land of the Phrygians, Mysians, and Bithynians in Thrace, whence they penetrated into Asia Minor across the straits. 1 Their testimony 1 Herodotus, vii. 73; Xanthus, p. 5; Fragm. Hist. Grae., C. MULLER'S edit., torn. i. p. 37. Strabo (X. iii. 1 6) sums up the opinion of his predecessors, backed by the rich store of historical information which lay open to him, in the following words : " The Phrygians are a Thracian colony." So PLINY : " Sunt auctores tran- sisse ex Europa Mysos et Brigas et Thynos, a quibus appellantur Mysi, Phryges, Bithyni" (Hist. Natur., v. 41). On the Thracian origin of the Bithynians, see also Thucydides, iv. 75; XENO- PHON, Anabasis, VI. ii. 18 ; iv. i, 2 ; Hell., I. iii. a III. ii. 2 ; Herodotus, vii. 75, etc. The geographer clearly perceived that if Homer spoke of the Mysians and Thracians in the same line (Iliad, xiii. 3), this was meant to apply to those that had remained in Europe. The mistake of Herodotus (vii. 74), who writes of the Mysians and Lydians as one people, is easily accounted for from the fact that they fought under the same colours in the Persian army, and that long cohabitation on VOL. i. i;