Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/36

 2O HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. the Karabel Pass, where it divided : one running down to the furthest point of the bay, the other debouching into the marvellous plain of Hermus. If we have correctly made out the stages and guessed the terminus of this highway, would there not be ground for believing that, at the point where it reached the sea, a mart of exchange, both for merchandise and ideas, would almost imme- diately have sprung up; and should not this be the explanation of that precocious prosperity with which legend endowed the Tantalis of Sipylus, the proud city overthrown by Zeus, as else- where Sodom and Gomorrha were destroyed by Jahveh ? On this hypothesis Tantalus and his subjects would be Phrygians, as said tradition, but Phrygians formed in the school of those eastern conquerors whom we have tentatively called, to give them a name, Syro-Cappadocians or Hittites. Are commercial relations enough to explain borrowings and progress, or did the Hittites in their victorious march penetrate as far as these shores which un- locked the sea to them ? Did they occupy for a time Sipylus, plant a colony there, a kind of outpost, whose population in due time intermingled with such of the Thracian immigrants as had been brought to these same slopes and ravines ? Neither myth nor history will answer the question. The monuments of this district, however, exhibit features other than those seen on the examples of the upper valley of the Sangarius ; they look older, and are directly derived from the art which created the sculptures of Pteria and Lycaonia. But for the enormous distance intervening between Sipylus and the Amanus and Laurus range, one would be tempted to attribute them to the Hittites. This we have done for the twin figures at Karabel and the Cybele near Magnesia ; but when the reader, along with us, climbs the rugged sides of Sipylus, and discovers other very archaic works, will not the question arise as to whether all these, even to the Pseudo- Sesostris and the false Niobe, should not be assigned to the Phrygians of Sipylus rather than to transitory invaders ? To these may belong figures whose outward signs and the place they occupy would lend themselves to such explanations ; but there are difficulties not easily overcome in ascribing to hands other than those of the permanent inhabitants themselves, a work which, as the Cybele, Buyuk Souret, clearly shows long and patient labour. Our reason for including the Buyuk Souret with the Hittite series was (i) to make it as complete as possible, (2)