Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/256

 240 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. certain number of well-established facts and dates, which latter, within a few years, may be fixed with certainty. The glimpses we catch in the preceding period are to the effect that when the Phrygians, towards the tenth century B.C., established themselves on the central plateau, the Syrian tribes were obliged to fall back and fortify themselves beyond the Halys ; the new- comers then formed around the head-springs of the Sangarius and the Mseander a thick curtain of sedentary populations, behind which the Lydians were able to constitute themselves into a nation. When the mist that had shrouded them for a long time began to disperse, they appear as a feudal state, in the reign of the last Heraclides ; their principal districts are presided over by those subordinate dynasties, whose bloody quarrels and rebellions greatly curtail the power vested in the nominal sovereigns enthroned at Sardes. The title of " king's companion " l made of the noble- man possessing it a kind of grand vizier, the keeper of the double-edged axe, symbolic of supreme authority, and therefore the real head of the state. Two families both allied to the reigning family the Tylonidee and, above all, the Mermadse, con- tended for so exalted a situation. Now, it happened that the mayor of the palace of the last Heraclid was a Mermnad of the name of Gyges, who, to possess himself of the throne, murdered the king, variously called Sandyattes and Candaul by Xanthus and Herodotus. A long civil war followed, and in the end the usurper saw his authority universally acknowledged. 2 This revolu- tion, the first well-known event in the history of Lydia, was big with meaning for the Asiatic Greeks, and would seem to have made a profound impression upon them. Hence it is that the name and individuality of Gyges speedily passed into the domain of fiction. Herodotus and Plato make him the hero of an extrava- gant tale, in which foolish king Candaul, the owner of a magic ring which renders its possessor invisible, is brought to an untimely end by his indiscreet vanity. 3 Though no less strange and fabulous, Xanthus's version lacks the piquancy and happy turn of phrase, the 1 This may be gathered from a passage where Plutarch (Greek Questions, 45) alludes to the king's companion and axe-bearer as symbolic of supreme power. Cf. Nicholas, Fr. 49, i. 30. 2 The data to be found in Nicholas of Damascus, Fr. 49, relating to the change of dynasty, has enabled Gelzer to reconstitute with a great degree of probability their sequence up to the enthronement of Gyges. 8 Herodotus, i. 8-13 ; PLATO, Republic, ii. 3.