Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/368

 35 2 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. have offered such an example to the world ; 1 once at the time of the Persian invasion, and long after, when she was besieged by Brutus, Caesar's murderer. 2 We find no parallel instance, either in the north or the centre of the peninsula. Hence the idea suggests itself that if a people made up of ploughmen and wood- men, rose to a notion of the city and devotion consequent upon it, long before the tribes of Cappadocia, Phrygia, and Paphlagonia, it is probable that they had learnt it by contact with the Greeks of Phaselis and Rhodes ; the more so that they built their towns in imitation of Hellenic centres, and provided each canton with a capital whose Acropolis commanded the country around. Those who first copied Greek models could not but have found it a convenient scheme. Quarrels, in regard to a piece of woodland or pasturage lying close to the border, must often have occurred between these small communities. During similar affrays the immense advantage of placing man and beast in safety behind fortified walls must have been felt on all hands. Lycia is washed on three sides by the sea, which advances in between the saliences of lofty promontories and forms bays, closed against the wind blowing from the main by a barrier of clustering islands ; it lies peaceably at the foot of mountains that yield an abundance of timber of excellent quality. Consequently, as soon as the Lycians turned their eyes towards the sea, they could have as many ships as they needed, which they not infrequently ran, as privateers, against the Rhodians. 3 There is no doubt that a certain amount of maritime traffic was always carried on in and out amongst these coasts, unbroken, like those of Caria and Ionia, into fjord-like bays which advance far inland and continue the great fluvial valleys, hollowed by nature for the very 1 As the formal statement of the text is rebutted in the footnote, I thought it better to make the sense dubious, so as to prepare the reader for what is to follow. TRS. 2 APPIAN, Civil Wars, iv. 76-80; Dion, xlvii. 34. There seems to be no foundation in the story according to which the Xanthians once again met their death rather than surrender to Alexander, during his progress through Lycia (APPIAN, loc. tit., iv. 80). Arrian, who is so exact, has naught about it, and represents Lycia as having submitted without striking a blow (Anabasis, i. 24). As to Diodorus, if he mentions so tragic an event, it is that he may credit the Pisidian town of Marmara with it (xvii. 28). The second catastrophe was an in- vention of the rhetors, in whose eyes the Xanthians were bound to go through the same tragedy every time an enemy knocked at their gates. 8 Heraclid. Pontinus (MULLER, Fragm. Hist. Gra-t.,'tom. ii. p. 21).