Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/362

 346 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. turned towards Pamphylia, and the elevated plateau in touch with Pisidia. Were the Milyes and Solymi of Semitic blood, as has been supposed ? There are no data to prove or disprove the hypothesis. 1 The only thing we do know for certain is that no Lycian inscriptions have been encountered east of Massikytos. Homer makes no mention of Lycian cities whose picturesque remains, set in a grand frame of mountains, are the admiration of every traveller. This, however, may have been due to the fact that when he wrote the city, with all the term implies, had no existence in Lycia, and that it started into being by contact with the Greeks of Rhodes, of Phaselis, and of the Carian coast. That the Lycians were stimulated by what they beheld in these intel- ligent centres, is proved by their adoption of an alphabet the chief elements of which are borrowed from one of the systems of Greek writing. Under Hellenic influence and the increase of wealth, the heights upon which the early immigrants had set up their hamlets gradually became veritable cities, with due accompaniment of citadels, public buildings, and necropoles. This change was accomplished somewhere about the sixth century B.C., when Harpagus, a lieutenant of Cyrus, marched against Lycia after having subdued the lonians and Carians. Xanthus sent a force to check his advance ; but it was routed in a battle fought outside the city, when the disordered troops retreated behind the walls of their citadel, set fire to the place, killed their wives, children, and slaves, and met their own death as they madly rushed into the ranks of the enemy. 2 Lycia had kept aloof from the Lydian empire, 3 but had she felt herself menaced by her ambitious and turbulent neighbour ; and many of her other towns (there is no reason to suppose that Xanthus stood alone) must have followed the example of the latter, and have surrounded themselves with ramparts behind which they could defend their territory. If we but hear of Xanthus, it is because her tragic end was so 1 The testimony of Choerilos (cited by JOSEPHUS, Against Apion, i. 22) has been adduced in regard to this subject, to the effect that he numbers among the soldiers who followed Xerxes in his expedition against the Greeks, "a Phoenician-speaking nation who occupy the Solymian mountains ; " but Josephus identifies them with the Jews, and he would seem to be correct, since the poet, the better to define the situation of this people, adds, "close by a vast lake." No such thing exists in Lycia ; if, on the contrary, we turn to Palestine we shall find the great Asphaltic Sea. 2 Herodotus, i. 176. 3 Ibid., 28.