Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/366

 35O HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. short and rare, and, besides, few are older than the successors of Alexander. As already observed, Lycian inscriptions still await decipherment, with the exception of half a dozen formulas or so, that add nothing to our knowledge. As to historians, they take little heed of this small people, who, hidden behind a belt of mountains, like a tortoise in its calipash, had no part in the quarrels of the great powers of the world. That which in a large measure enables us to supplement the insufficiency of literary data, is the study of the configuration of the soil, along with the ruins that are sprinkled on its surface. The Persian empire was not one where the central government was strong enough, its policy systematic enough, to make it possible to frame laws that should be binding on every subject, irrespective of race and language ; laws, in fact, whose constant and lasting action would attenuate differences bearing on local customs, and sometimes succeed in effacing them altogether. The Lycians were subject to the Achaemenidse in name rather than in fact ; Darius comprised them in the satrapy of laouna, the chief of his divisions, and they were supposed to contribute four hundred talents 1 as their share of the tribute levied upon the province ; yet in 300 B.C. Isocrates wrote, "No Persian king was ever lord of Lycia." 2 Mountains in Lycia entirely cover the soil with their ramifica- tions, and subdivide it in so many distinct sections as to have made it impossible for any one captain or city to unite the territory into one state. The pre-eminence of Xanthus was purely honorary. Lycia, that Eastern Switzerland, was carved out by nature for cantonal existence, and was bound sooner or later to drift into^ a federal system. People of one family and language, inhabiting valleys which mountains- keep apart, ere long feel the need of breaking through their isolated position, of meeting at festivals common to both, and frequenting market-places open to all. Lycian federacy, as described by Strabo, 3 would appear to have constituted itself late enough after Alexander the Great ; conscious that union of all the clans is the surest means of being respected abroad ; but its organization had certainly been prepared by more than one essayal, more than one compact concluded at the end of perhaps years of warfare between adjoining townships, those 1 Herodotus, iii. 90.' 2 ISOCRATES, Panegyric, 161. 3 Strabo, XIV. iii. 3.