Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/249

 THE LYDIANS, THEIR COUNTRY, HISTORY, AND RELIGION. 233 to Herodotus and Xanthus of Lydia. 1 The latter was an Hel- lenicized Lydian, who wrote in the early part of the fifth century. His book is unfortunately lost ; and it may be questioned whether the fragments that have been preserved by Strabo, notably Nicholas of Damascus, really belong to the old logographer, and not rather to a far less reliable writer, one Dionysius Skytho- brachion, who seems to have compiled a history of Lydia during the Alexandrian age, which he published under the venerable name of Xanthus. 2 Such a suspicion, in a certain measure, throws discredit on the testimony of Xanthus, who on many points is at variance with Herodotus ; nevertheless there is a tendency to believe that, though the Alexandrian rhetorician may have embellished and added many stories of his own to the work of his predecessor, 3 whose great name he pirated, he yet, on the whole, closely followed him. From the citations we infer that he was a man given to the observation of nature, one, too, who had lived in the country ; for he is circumstantial and precise in his remarks respecting the natural phenomena to which Lydia owes its peculiar configuration ; nor is he less well informed as to its antiquities. Such things would have had no interest for the pedantic bookworms of Pergamus and Alexandria. It is possible that had the work of Xanthus been preserved in its entirety and in the language in which it was originally written, its testimony, in matters pertaining to Lydia, would be found of even greater weight than that of Herodotus himself. He was familiar with the native language, which had not yet fallen into desuetude through the diffusion of the Greek tongue ; he was thus able to consult the archives of the country, which were of no small importance for the work in hand. 4 The main thread of Herodotus's narrative is made 1 BERGK, Poetce lyrici Greed, 3rd ed. ; Sappho, Frag. 85 ; Anacreon, Frag. 18 ; Hip- ponax, Frag. 15 ; Xenophanes, Fr. 3, etc. 2 See notice upon Xanthus and the fragments preserved in torn, i., Fragmenta historicorum grcecorum, Ch. and Th. Miiller. 8 Nicholas of Damascus, a famous rhetorician of the Augustan age, probably bor- rowed the substance of the fourth and sixth book of his Universal History, dealing with Lydia, from Dionysius Skythobrachion's work, rewritten and arranged to suit the taste of the day. Lengthy fragments exist of these two books, notably the second (Fr. Hist. Grac., torn, iii.) ; if mixed up with much that is purely romantic and fan- tastical, there are yet curious data which would seem to belong to Xanthus himself. 4 Nicholas of Damascus (Frag. 49, 21) says of a certain Spermios, who would seem to have occupied the throne for the space of two years : V rols /fao-tAtiois OVK dvaypa<^>Tat. As to the time when Xanthus lived, see I.etronne's notice ((Eitrres choisies, torn. i. pp. 203-206, 8vo, 1883, Leroux).