Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/41

 CUSTOMS AND RELIGION OF THE PHRYGIANS. 25 be so, how much more sedulously must observances relating to the public worship of deities have been watched over and preserved as relics bound up with the instincts and early awakening of these primitive societies ? Contact with Greek polytheism did not materially affect the religions of Asia Minor or Syria, which kept their ground far more energetically, and were more successful in repelling alien influences, than those of the Italians and Gauls. This they owed to their intense spirituality ; for, although they were acted upon by the new religion, they reacted and gave back in their turn quite as much, if not more, than they had received. Consequently, in trying to unravel the inner meaning and out- ward form of these cults, we may unhesitatingly draw from authorities acknowledged as such, Herodotus, Strabo, Diodorus, etc., as well as from later ones, who, when Greece ceased to create in the domain of art and poetry, set themselves to write the histories of the Hellenic race and of the various peoples who had preceded them in the country. In so doing they made use of the accumulated data which lay open to them at Pergamus and Alexandria. The Phrygians were distinguished from their neighbours of Lydia, and the Greeks on the coast, in that they were essentially a nation of shepherds and husbandmen. From the earliest time they partially cleared out the forest-clad mountains, to feed numerous flocks and herds, which constituted one main source of the revenue of native princes, as it does to the present day. This was forcibly borne home to us as we sat at the door of our tents and watched the kine and yearlings roaming under majestic pines, or as we journeyed along the banks of the Sangarius, around its copious springs, which give the river from the outset a considerable volume of water, and render it unfordable save at rare intervals. If in summer herbage is scanty on the plateau, an abundance of grass is always to be had on the first slopes of the hills. Homer extols the fiery steeds foremost in the chase led by the Phrygians (Iliad, ii. 862 ; iii. 185 ; x. 431 ; Hymns, iii. 138). Close at hand, Pan engaged Phcebus in unequal contest, when public opinion, as was to be expected, declared in favour of the greater god, and honest but imprudent Midas withdrew with ass's ears (Ovio, Metam., lib. xi., iv. 1 ). However this may be, the same god 1 The reference given is according to English arrangement, and not that which appears in the text. TRS.