Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/42

 26 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. reappears later under the name of Atys, the chief deity of the Phrygians, whom tradition depicted as a fair young shepherd of whom Cybele was enamoured. 1 Other instances might be added in proof of the rural bent of the Phrygians ; their readiness in turn- ing to account the natural fertility of the soil, which in many places is a soft tufaceous rock, easily disintegrated, and of marvellous productiveness. With them all that related to husbandry was deemed sacred : the husbandman, the ploughshare, and the patient oxen yoked thereto were under Divine protection. Death was the sentence passed upon the evildoer who misappropriated implements of husbandry or killed a plough ox. 2 The gold-plated chariot of their great ancestor, Gordios, had not been a war-chariot, but a lumber- ing cart which served him to garner his crops ; 3 the plating had been of later days, so as to render it a fit offering to Olympus. Had not he commanded his winged messenger, the eagle, to alight on the yoke of Gordios's team, as an earnest of his future power ? This was no other than the famous chariot placed in the Thesaurion at Corinth by his son Midas, and doubtless very similar to the clumsy ardbas of the present day. 4 Then, too, the fabulous wealth of Midas had been foreshadowed in grains of wheat, carried by ants to his infant lips ; 6 whilst his gigantic son, Lityerses, a king among reapers, gloried in the stoutness of his sinews, and overthrew every- body whom he challenged to single combat. His name it was which resounded in song in the lowlands at harvest time, or around the threshing-floor. 6 Others, again, were connected with the vintage, where Midas appears as filling the fountain, out of which Silenus is wont to quench his thirst, with the juice of the grape, so that the unsociable old man may be secured whilst overpowered by the unusual libation. 7 Allusions to the potency of wine, its cheering effect on the hearts 1 In a poem of Atys, partly reproduced by Origen (MILLER, Philosophumena, p. 119), he is called cuTroAos, goat-herd; whilst Theocritus (xx. 40) calls him ySouxoAos, ox-driver. 2 Nicholas of Damascus (Frag. Hist. Grcec., torn. iii. p. 1 28, Miiller's edition). 8 ARRIAN, Anabasis, ii. 3 ; ^ELIAN, De natura animalium, xiii. ; Q. Curtius, iii. i. 4 Ardba is the Turkish name for a chariot drawn by oxen. 8 CICERO, De Divinatione, I. xxxvi. 6 Athenseus, x. p. 415, B ; xiv. p. 419, A. ; THEOCRITUS, Idyls, x. 41 ; Pollux, iv. 54. 7 XENOPHON, Anabasis, I. ii. 13; Pausanias, I. iv. 5; Maximus of Tyre, XI. i. ; PHILOSTRATES, Life of Apollonius, vi. 27. ARNOBIUS (Adversus gentes, v. 6) relates the same story of Agdistis> whom Dionysius overpowers with a generous vintage by the same means.