Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/239

 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PHRYGIAN CIVILIZATION. 223 montories, which clustering islands prolong far out into the sea, they owned perhaps the largest and safest. In conditions such as these, a race of hardy mariners soon sprang up, who spread in the Archipelago, perhaps even on the coasts of continental Greece, along with the home produce of the rich Hermus valley, the raw material brought by caravans from Cappadocia and from farther still, to the markets of the seaboard. It is but an hypothesis that we offer, but an hypothesis apparently confirmed, and on the one hand by traditions connecting the Tantalidae with Peloponnesus, on the other by truly curious analogies observable between certain very antique monuments found within the Argolid and those of Phrygia. When or what the causes that wrought the downfall of the state on Sipylus, it is impossible to say. Its pristine importance, due at the outset to its situation as a natural bulwark, was already lost during historical times ; and it became little more than a store- room for the memory, a holy mount. Following on the foundation of the Greek colonies, all movement and bustle had migrated to the lowlands and the narrow strips girding the sea. But the new- comers, the ^olians of Magnesia and of Smyrna, as they settled, some to the north, and others to the south of Sipylus, learnt of their predecessors traditions which told of the wealth and power of the ancient rulers ; their glowing fancy, exercising itself on this theme, drew forth the myths of Tantalus, Pelops, and Niobe. In the same frame of mind, they adopted the cults they had found established in the country, and became fervent worshippers of the Phrygian Cybele ; and whilst they raised her new temples, they continued to surround with pious reverence her old simulacra and the sanctuaries that were one with the holy mount. Thus the old state of Phrygia outlived itself in the impress it left in the soil and the religion it bequeathed to its heirs. But towards the tenth or ninth centuries B.C. the Phrygians of the Lower Hermus ceased to exist as a nation ; for the tribes that go by that name in the epos are grouped around the head-springs of the Sangarius ; they still try to extend eastward, and this brings them into conflict with the Amazons, that is to say, the warlike populations or Cappadocia. The various stages in the onward march of the Phrygians, starting from the shores of the yEgean and Propontis on to the Halys, may be guessed from the monuments themselves. Thus the tomb at Delikli Tach, situate in the Rhyndacus basin, looks older than any of the funereal monuments in the necropoles