Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/43

 CUSTOMS AND RELIGION OF THE PHRYGIANS. 27 of God and man, abound in the Homeric poems, and prove the high esteem in which vine-culture was held ; nor was there lack of flesh, which the Phrygians consumed in prodigious quantities, of milk and fruit, and of such rude comfort as is to be found in primi- tive communities (Iliad, iii. 401 ; xi. 184, etc.). The Phrygians do not seem to have had a taste for warlike adventures or commercial transactions involving long voyages. They were content to sell their raw products, including, perhaps, metals, gold and silver, found on many a point of their territory ; especially gold dust washed down by rivulets flowing down the rocky mountains. This it was which, as with their neighbours, the Lydians, gave " royal power to their kings ; " and though they obeyed a military chief, they remained to the last a quiet, unoffending people. Thus it came to pass that, despite the strong position afforded by their hilly country, they fell an easy prey in turn to the Cimmerians and Lydians. Albeit accounted of slow understanding by their quick-witted neighbours, they could boast a mighty past, and were the first inland tribes that made use of an alphabet derived from Phoenician letters. They left no literature ; but neither did their neighbours, the Lydians and Lycians, whose political existence was more brilliant, and extended over a longer series of years. Their writing, however, is known from the inscriptions already referred to. The substitution of the Greek for the Phrygian language was effected in the time of the Seleucidse. The writers of that day, struck with much that was new and quaint in the narratives recounted to them, set about noting down the chief events and first struggles towards greater light at least, as they appeared to them of the beginnings of the people with whom they had become connected. In so doing much that it were interesting to know, myths, details connected with their religion and history, were rejected as rude and uncouth, altogether unworthy to figure in their pages ; whilst many a fact was distorted or softened down to suit their prejudices. Never- theless we are too severe in our strictures against the Greeks for the part they played in the reviving and editing of the folk-lore of these inland tribes, forgetting that without them the literary monu- ments in question would never have been heard of. If the written records of the Phrygian nation consist of but a few obscure texts graven on stone, their tombs show them to have been possessed of genuine talent for plastic art. Were these non-existent,