Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/29

 HISTORY AND ORIGIN OF THE PHRYGIANS. more renowned for the breed of their horses and skill in breaking them than for other earthly goods. 1 Moreover, in the Iliad, as also in a later poem, the Hymn to Aphrodite? the chiefs who head the Phrygian forces are Phorcys and Ascanios, Asios and Hymas, Otrseus and Mygdon names to which there is no need to ascribe an historical value ; in the " strongly walled cities of the Phrygians," Gordios and Midas reign not. 3 The vast majority of critics hold that the Iliad, as we possess it, has not materially changed since the ninth century B.C. Survey of the Epos and consideration of other intelligence bring us round to the conclusion reached a few pages back, namely, that if the Phrygians were already settled in the heart of the peninsula before the time of Homer, it was not until the year 800, or thereabouts, that they succeeded in laying the foundations of that state, which was to be the most influential in Western Asia down to the day when Lydia, under the leadership of Gyges and Ardys, entered upon the scene. 4 Tradition told of Gordios, a tiller of the soil, as the founder of the dynasty ; he was succeeded by his son Midas, and from that time the two names would seem to have alternated in the royal family ; they were, perhaps, those of eponymous heroes of the Phrygian tribes, fabulous ancestors worshipped as gods. 5 Ex- amination of the rare texts that bear upon this history permits us to make out, with more or less certainty, three Midases and four Gordioses. 6 The number of these princes is unimportant ; the one 1 Iliad, x. 431. 2 Hymns, iii. 111,112. 8 Ibid., 112. 4 This result, to which several routes have led, is in perfect agreement with the chronology of Eusebius. He sets the beginning of Midas' reign in the fourth year of the tenth Olympiad, e.g. in 737 B.C. (ANGELO MAI, C/iron., p. 321). Eusebius had, it is true, put another Midas 552 years earlier, and made him coeval with Pelops (p. 291) and the foundation of Troy. All that can be urged is that the first data belong to the fabulous period of his tables, and have no historical value ; whereas the second are comprised within the truly historical part of his work, when the materials he had to hand were of a very different character. The same observa- tion applies to the date he assigns for the suicide of the last Midas (p. 324), which he places in the fifty-ninth Olympiad, clearly too late. 5 The fact is proved for Midas, at least, who in the west of the peninsula was confounded with one of those gods whose worship prevailed down to the last days of paganism (Hesychius, s.v. Mt'Sas 6(6<>). The representations of Midas on a certain number of painted vases are only to be explained by a similar confusion of the two names. See PANOFKA, Midas auf Bild-werken (Archce. Zeitung, iii. p. 92, 1845). B See article entitled " Midas," Real-Encydop. Pauly.