Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/26

 io HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. declared in his favour, he was able to bear down all opposition and enmity. As an earnest of his gratitude, he laid before the shrine of the Delphian Apollo rich donations of gold and silver," described at some length, and, adds the historian, " To our knowledge Gyges was the first of the Barbarians who sent gifts to Delphi, the first at any rate since Midas, son of Gordios, king of Phrygia. Indeed, Midas had consecrated his throne, that upon which he sat to administer justice, a throne fully deserving to be seen, and this throne is exhibited on the exact spot where are the crateras of Gyges ; " 1 that is to say, the Thesaurion of Corinth. If, as is generally held, Gyges reigned from 687-653, Midas should come, at the earliest, towards 700 B.C. 2 The influence of Greek culture had been unfelt before that date in the peninsula ; and nothing was known of the sanctuary that played so important a part in the Hellenic world, before the unfolding of philosophy and scepticism a part akin to that which the papacy filled in Europe during the Middle Ages. The greatest develop- ment, physical and spiritual, ever attained by Ionia was between the latter half of the eighth and the beginning of the seventh century B.C. She had already produced that marvel, the epic poem, and, with Archilochus, she created lyric poetry. In the domain of art she was beginning to chisel Parian marble ; her architects were striving to bring out of the complex and undefined shapes of the Asiatic decoration they beheld around them, the elements of their column and entablature ; they even sought proportions and lines, the felicitous selection of which was to make the fortune of that noble and attractive type with which her name will ever be linked. To this splendid display of inventive genius and activity corresponds a bold movement of expansion ; the cities of Ionia turned betimes their vessels towards the main, and multiplied their counting-houses from the mouth of the Phasus and the Borysthenes to those of the Nile; when Miletus, along with Tyre, becomes the great emporium of the eastern basin of the Mediterranean. The Dorian cities of Caria, the yEolian townships of Mysia, though not with equal dash, join in 1 Herodotus, i. 14. 2 The dates 687-653 are those given by Gelzer, after Assyrian documents, and should be read in his admirable work bearing the title Des Zeitalter des Gyges (Rheinisches Museum, N. F., torn. xxx. pp. 231-268, and torn. xxxv. pp. 514-528). The first portion of the paper deals with the chronology and dynasty of the Merm- nadse. The work has lately appeared.