Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 2.djvu/56

 40 A History of Art in Sardinia and Jud^a. fluenced by Greece until Alexander. A tradition, still current at the end of the old era, declared Heracles the founder of Tarsus ; ^ a supposed older tradition, soothing to the national pride, named Samdam, the Asiatic Heracles, as its real builder;^ again, a third maintained that it was erected by Sarda-nat-sirpal ; ^ finally, a later account, with pretensions to historical truth, stated that it was raised by Sennacherib and enclosed on the pattern of Babylon.* Whatever the truth may be, Assyrian inscriptions tell us that Cilicia was among the provinces conquered by the kings of Babylon; and in one of them Shalmaneser HI. boasts of having taken Tarzi.^ Perhaps no other city of equal size exceeds the number of coins that were struck in its name, bearing witness to the intimate relations that existed for centuries between it and the countries east and south of the Amanus mountains.® Aramaean legends do not disappear from the coins of Tarsus until the Seleucidae, and occur far more frequently than Greek legends in the two centuries preceding that era.^ During the whole archaic period the ornament on these pieces is of a decidedly Asiatic charac- ter — a character preserved to a certain extent even under Roman rule ; when, if the style and make had nothing to distinguish them from count- less other contemporary objects of the same class, the subjects, as a rule, were still those dear to the Phoenician artist. The stirring incidents of the chase were replaced by more peaceful occupations ; instead of the traditional hero, holding a sword which he is about to plunge into the side of the animal (Fig. 266), a local deity is figured. But even he has undergone modification to suit the taste of the time. In early days — as on the bas-reliefs of Cappadocia — the god with high headdress, and bow or quivers slung behind his back, or holding a double-headed axe in one hand and a scourge in the other, stood erect on the back of some fabulous animal, ^ NoNNOS, Dionysiaques^ xli. 85, ^ Dion Chrysostom, xxxiii. torn. ii. pp. i, 23. Reiske's edition. ^ Ammien Marcellin, xiv. 8. Samdam^ signifies "strong," "i:)owerful." ^ Clearque do Soli, quoted by Athenius, xii. p. 599. ^ Eusebius, Chron. p. 25. Mai's edition, after Abydinus. ^ Men ANT, Annales des Rois d^Assyrie, p. 10 1. ^ See Hist, of Art, torn. iii. Fig. 285, showing a Tarsus coin. Fig. 266. — Silver Coin of Tarsus. Waddington. Melanges, 1861, p. 80, Plate v., Fig. 7.