IV. THE LYDIANS 421…

IV. THE LYDIANS 421

APPENDIX A. CLASSICAL TRADITIONS 438

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS 464

A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE HISTORY OF THE MINOR NATIONS OF WESTERN ASIA 465

THE POSITION OF ASIA MINOR IN HISTORY

BY WILLIAM J. HAMILTON

From his work Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus, and Armenia

No country in the world presents, perhaps, more interesting associations to the geographer, the historian, and the antiquary than Asia Minor. It is no exaggeration to say that there is scarcely a spot of ground, however small, throughout this extensive peninsula, which does not contain some relic of antiquity, or is not more or less connected with that history, which, through an uninterrupted period of more than thirty centuries, records the most spirit-stirring events in the destinies of the human race, and during which time this country attracted the attention of the world as the battle-field of powerful nations.

Other countries and other people have flourished for a time, and may have left behind them a stronger feeling of interest in the thought and speculations of mankind. But this remarkable difference exists between them, that, while they have attracted paramount attention for a century or more, having risen to eminence only to fall into a greater depth of barbarism, Asia Minor has continued to be a main point of interest and attraction from the very beginning of the historic period.

It may indeed be true, when we turn over the first pages of the annals of the world, that Asia Minor was only of secondary importance when the dynasties of Pharaoh ruled in Egypt. When the sons of Israel went down to buy corn of the Egyptian kings, we read not of the civilisation of Asia Minor, nor did she produce at any period such structures as the pyramids, or the temples of the Nile, to record the talents of her architects or the perseverance of her people; it may be that the student of history will hardly find, during the most flourishing periods of the Ionian commonwealth, a galaxy of talent, patriotism, and courage equal to that which spreads its brightness over the palmy days of Athens, when science, literature, and art flourished under the ægis of Minerva, and the greatest of her military heroes did not disdain to take lessons from philosophers, or to superintend the labours of the sculptor, the painter, and the architect.

Again, if we look to the history of ancient Rome, and consider the events which occurred there during a thousand years, we might possibly find more to admire and to attract our attention than anything which the history of Asia Minor can afford. The systematic legislation and constitution of the Roman republic, the unrestrained power of the emperors, the schemes of conquest carried on under both forms of government, and the boundless wealth amassed in the first years of the empire, are some of its characteristic features which have never been repeated elsewhere.

And to mention but one instance more, even Syria itself was also an object of greater interest than any other district in the universe ever was, either before or since. The birth of our Saviour, and the events which took place at Jerusalem during His abode on earth, have stamped upon that part of Syria a degree of interest and lofty associations which bears no parallel.

The interest of Asia Minor attaches, in a greater or less degree, to all ages, from the first dawn of history, through the classic periods of the Greek republics, and the darker ages of Byzantine misrule, down to the very times in which we live. Without pretending to give even a faint sketch of its history, I shall here refer to a few of the most interesting points by which this part of the world has been distinguished.

Here was the scene of those remarkable events which the learning or imagination of the early poets have attributed to the Heroic age. The Argonautic expedition, starting from the coast of Thessaly, proceeded through the Propontis and the Euxine, and along the shores of Bithynia, Paphlagonia, and Pontus, visiting various nations, the descriptions of which have been handed down to us with an accuracy worthy of admiration. But a still more interesting locality is presented to us on the shores of Asia Minor. Between the Simœis and Scamander, and on the plains of Troy, we may visit the spot where, in the imaginations of the poet, the gods of antiquity descended from the Olympus and joined in the sport and contests of mankind. As we approach the period of classic history, the importance of the country increases. The town of Sardis was built near the confluence of the gold-bearing Pactolus and the Hermus; and we are dazzled by the accounts of the wealth of Crœsus, which attracted the arms and fell under the bravery of the Persians, who, having crossed the Halys, established their seat of government in Sardis, in the year 548 B.C. Here they reigned for upwards of two hundred years, during which period Sardis was sacked by the troops of Athens; and the myriads of Darius and Xerxes in vain attempted to revenge the insult of putting chains on a band of freemen.

After this came the expeditions of the younger Cyrus, and the retreat of the Ten Thousand; and numerous Greek cities, chiefly on the coast of Ionia, Æolis, and Caria, founded by emigrants and exiles from the parent state of Greece, had in the meantime sprung up, flourished, and increased,--at one period independent, at another subject to Persian rule, but ever sending forth a supply of learned men, who, in the pursuits of philosophy, music, history, sculpture, painting, and architecture, were no mean rivals of their European instructors.

But Asia Minor became again the scene of war and conquest. The battle of the Granicus was an auspicious commencement of the career of Alexander, and his conquest of the peninsula was secured by the battle of Issus. But the empire which he founded, fell to pieces when the hand which had formed it no longer governed. His conquests fell into the hands of rival generals, and the plains of Asia Minor were amongst the prizes for which they fought. Antigonus Eumenes and Lysimachus established themselves in various parts with various success, but a line of kings reigned at Pergamus in uninterrupted succession until Attalus Philopator, in 133 B.C., bequeathed his kingdom to the Roman people.

Another element of discord was thus introduced into this country. Many years intervened before Rome could be said to have obtained quiet possession of the bequest. Since the death of Alexander a rival power to that of the kings of Pergamus had been silently growing up in the distant province of Pontus, the last king of which, Mithridates Eupator, exerted all his extraordinary energies, and the resources of his people, in opposing, for a long time with success, the advance of the Roman arms. In Cappadocia and in Pontus, in Isauria and in the mountainous districts of Cilicia, the rocky and almost impenetrable nature of the country enabled the native tribes long to resist the invader; and it was not until the time of Julius Cæsar and his successor, that the whole peninsula became an integral portion of the territories of the Mistress of the World. The accounts of these long-contested engagements form some of the most interesting pages in the works of the writers of the Augustan age.

Another and a brighter epoch was now to dawn upon this portion of the world; every province and every district felt the high civilisation and luxurious habits of Rome during the first years of the imperial government. New towns owed the splendour and magnificence of their public buildings to the protection of the emperors, while those which had suffered during the wars were rebuilt and enriched by the same liberal hands. New honours and privileges were granted to them, and the products of a favoured clime received fresh encouragement from universal peace. Even those convulsive throes of nature which, during this period, destroyed many of her cities and temples, were but incentives to renewed acts of liberality, as is attested by the coins and the inscriptions, which the traveller meets with in almost every part of this peninsula.

But this prosperity was of short duration; the luxury and the extent of the Roman empire brought with them the accompanying cankers of weakness and dissolution. Rebellion at home, and insurrection on the frontiers attended by military insubordination, soon changed the fair features of peace into the distorted aspect of war; plenty gave way to misery and religious zeal lent its hand to increase the evil. Asia Minor could not be expected to escape the calamity--indeed, an undue proportion of wretchedness seems to have been her lot; for the establishment of the first Christian churches in her territory added fuel to the contests between the pagans and Christians; and while the latter destroyed the temples of paganism, regardless of the beauty of the work or the skill of the builder, they met with personal cruelties and suffered worse persecutions at the hands of their idolatrous enemies.

A vain prospect of better days appeared, when Constantine, after fighting under the cross and conquering Maxentius, laid the foundations of Constantinople on the site of Byzantium, the seat of the future Empire of the East. During this period the early history of the church is intimately associated with that of Asia Minor. It is enough to allude to the celebrated council of Nicæa and its creed, and to mention the names of George of Cappadocia, Gregory of Nazianzus, Eusebius, and St. Basil of Cæsarea. The illusion soon vanished: the apostate Julian, carried along by a love of speculation, and fond of the philosophy of the pagans, led the way by his liberalism, to the establishment of those sects which long agitated the Eastern empire, and shed their baneful influence over the Christians of the West. Amidst these calamities, the same hordes of barbarians who had sacked the plains of Italy and Thrace, carried desolation and ruin into the other parts of the empire, and while the nations of the West were falling into the hands of successive northern chieftains, Asia Minor could not escape the ravages which overwhelmed the eastern provinces.

The annals of the Byzantine empire contain a melancholy list of facts of violence, intrigue, oppression, and vice. In Sapor, king of Persia, a powerful and determined enemy came to the aid of these domestic foes, and a warfare was carried on against him with various success; the conquest or defence of Asia Minor was the rich prize for which they fought. But it is most painful to reflect that some of the greatest cruelties and miseries which were suffered during the fifth century were owing to the dissensions of the Christian sects, in which the names of the two patriarchs, Nestorius of Constantinople and Cyril of Alexandria, were most conspicuous, and the city of Ephesus was the scene of their disgraceful quarrels.

In the reign of Justinian the contests with Persia still continued, and the gold-mines of Trebizond became a subject of dispute between the Greeks and Chosroes I. During his reign the name of Turk first appears in the page of history. Having driven the Avars from their northern wildernesses, they reached the Caucasus, from whence they sent ambassadors to the emperor. Mutual interest dictated the alliance between them and Justinian against the Persians. This did not, however, long avail to protect the Empire of the East against the power of the Great King.

Heraclius ascended the throne A.D. 610, and in the following year Chosroes II invaded the empire; after the conquest of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, his troops marched from the Euphrates to the Thracian Bosporus, devastating the seacoast of Pontus, sacking Ancyra and taking Chalcedon by storm. The heroism of Heraclius, which shone forth during the middle portion of his reign, saved the capital and the empire. Conveying his army by sea to the Gulf of Issus, and carrying the war into the enemy’s country, he compelled the Persians to evacuate Asia Minor and hasten to the defence of Dastagerd and Ctesiphon; and the battle of Nineveh (A.D. 627) reduced the haughty Chosroes to the state of a fugitive.

In the eighth century a new incentive to crime and folly burst upon the Eastern world. The worship of images, which had crept into the practice of the church, now began to be looked upon as idolatry; and the vacillating Greeks were visited by this imputation on the one hand, or by the accusation of impiety on the other, if they renounced the practice. In the year 718 an adventurer from the mountains of Isauria, who had the command of the Anatolian legions, taking the name of Leo III, ascended the throne of Constantinople. The energy with which he adopted the views and directed the measures of the popular party, soon gained for him the name of the Iconoclast. The dispute ceased in 842, on the final establishment of the worship of the images by the Empress Theodora.

Now a fiercer and more lasting enemy had made his appearance; unrelenting efforts were directed against the whole Christian world, from Jerusalem to the Pillars of Hercules and the shores of the Atlantic; and the plains of Asia Minor fell an easy prey to valour and numbers. Mohammedanism had, during the last century, spread rapidly along the southern shore of the Mediterranean; and the worshippers of the Koran had recruited the ranks of the army of the Faithful with hosts of Arabs, Saracens, and Moors. The Caliph Harun al-Rashid twice crossed the plains of Phrygia and Bithynia to invest the heights of Scutari and the Pontic Heraclea, and compelled Nicephorus I to pay him an annual tribute. Theophilus, son of Michael II, avenged these insults and on his fifth expedition penetrated into Syria; but the Caliph Mutazzim again ravaged the plains of Phrygia and directed his efforts against Amorium, the birthplace of Michael. The imperial army was routed and pursued to Dorylæum, which fell into the hands of the conqueror.

It is not necessary here to dwell upon the rise and progress of the Turkish nation, or to show how Toghrul Bey, the grandson of Seljuk, became their leader after the defeat of Mahmud of Ghazni. Alp Arslan, the nephew of Toghrul, completed the conquest of Armenia and Georgia; but having penetrated into Phrygia, his troops were driven back to the Euphrates by the emperor, Romanus Diogenes, a brave soldier, whom the Empress Eudocia had espoused for the safety of the state. The battle of Malaskerd was, however, imprudently fought and lost by the emperor, in August 1071, when the power of the house of Seljuk was established; and the Asiatic provinces of Rome, now lost to Christendom, were soon after overrun by the five sons of Kutulmish, a prince of the house of Seljuk, who established their camp at Kutahiyah. On the death of Alp Arslan by the hand of an assassin, he was succeeded by his son, the celebrated Malik Shah.

On his death, in 1092, his empire, extending from the Black Sea to the confines of Syria, and from the Euphrates to Constantinople, was divided amongst his five sons, the youngest of whom invaded the Roman provinces of Asia Minor, and after several years of treachery and folly on the part of the Greek commanders, the sultan Solyman [Sulaiman] erected his palace and his fortress at Nicæa, the capital of Bithynia, and the seat of the Seljukian Dynasty of Rum was planted within a hundred miles of Constantinople.

The general historian supplies ample details of these interesting events: Jerusalem, the holy city, the object of veneration and of pilgrimage, soon fell into the hands of these Seljukian Turks. The hollow alliance between the emperor and the sultan of Nicæa was burst asunder; a thrill of horror vibrated from Constantinople to the distant shores of Britain at the conduct of the Infidels, and a band of warriors rushed from every part of Christendom to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre, and to release the emperor of Byzantium from the iron grasp of his Turkish conqueror.

In the first crusade their success began with the siege and conquest of Nicæa, and the plains of Asia Minor became again the battle-field of nations. Here the chivalry of Europe met the horsemen of the sultan, and withstood their shock, and Dorylæum became the second time the scene of a decisive battle; the cities of Antioch of Pisidia and Iconium recruited the crusaders, after an exhausting march through the bare and arid plains of Phrygia. Thence they crossed the mountain barrier of Taurus, and descending into Cilicia, proceeded to the conquest of Syria and the Holy Land. The establishment of the Genoese at Constantinople, and in numerous places along the coast and in the interior, followed the march of the Crusaders, and the Greek emperor received an insidious foe into his confidence, instead of an open enemy at his door, whilst in the course of the ensuing half century the Seljukian Turks had again invaded Asia Minor, and re-established the flourishing kingdom of Iconium.

But soon a new power appeared on the stage of the war. In the beginning of the thirteenth century Jenghiz Khan led his Mogul followers from their native deserts to the conquest of the world. Their progress was not checked by his death in 1227, for under his sons and grandsons their power extended over China, Persia, Hungary, Russia, and Syria; and when checked in Egypt they spread themselves over Armenia and Asia Minor. Here the Sultans of Iconium offered some resistance to their progress until Ala-ud-Din sought refuge in Constantinople. But when at length the tide of Mogul conquest rolled back towards the East, the Seljukian Dynasty of Iconium was extinct; Orthogrul, one of the followers of Ala-ud-Din, the last of their sultans, pitched his camp of four hundred families at Surghut on the banks of the Sangarius; and his immediate descendants, having penetrated into Bithynia in 1299, established themselves soon after in the city of Brusa. The division of Anatolia amongst the Turkish emirs was the immediate result of this conquest; the remaining Asiatic provinces, with the seven churches of Asia, were finally lost to the Christian emperor, and the Turkish rulers of Lydia and Ionia still trample on the ruins of Christian monuments.

For above 150 years the Turks of the Ottoman line held possession of Anatolia, and the frequent contests which took place between them and the naval forces of the Christians only tended to increase the power of the Ottomans, to facilitate their passage into Europe, and to bring about their establishment in Thrace and in the neighbourhood of Adrianople. With the exception of the kingdom of Trebizond, Bajazet I had conquered all the Asiatic provinces of the emperor, and only a small extent of ground in the neighbourhood of Constantinople remained to him in Europe. From the imperial residence at Brusa were issued commands almost to the Indus, and Constantinople itself appeared to be within the grasp of Bajazet. Already he had prepared his expedition, and the capital of the empire was about to become his prey, when a temporary relief appeared from a new quarter, and Bajazet himself was overthrown by a stronger arm.

This rival power had sprung up in the wilds about Samarcand, and the world was again to be conquered by an army of Tatars and Moguls, under the command of Timur, or Tamerlane. Persia, Tatary, and India had already yielded to his arms before he turned them against the Ottoman empire, influenced by the quarrels and dissensions which had arisen between Bajazet and his Christian neighbours. The genius of Tamerlane prevailed in the memorable battle of Angora; the sultan lost at once his kingdom and his liberty, and the conqueror established himself at Kutahiyah. The sea put a limit to his progress, and, without the means of transporting his army into Europe, he meditated at Smyrna the conquest of China, but died on his march to the Celestial empire.

Brusa became again, in 1403, the capital of the Ottoman empire, and shared with Adrianople the honours of imperial residence; but Anatolia was distracted for nearly forty years by the civil wars of the sons and descendants of Bajazet, until Muhammed II ascended the throne, in 1451, to close the existence of the Byzantine empire. Weakened and exhausted in each successive reign, and having lost one by one those rich and fertile provinces which formed the brightest gems in the imperial diadem, Constantinople was reduced to the last stage of misery, even before the Turkish host had surrounded its triple fortifications. It still breathed with convulsive throbs, like a trunk deprived of its limbs, suffering under the last pulsations of life. Some Greeks displayed at the last moments an unavailing courage, even after the enemy had scaled the walls, but it only served to exasperate the cruelty of their conquerors.

The fall of Constantinople, in 1453, and the loss of Trebizond in 1461, concluded the history of the Empire of the East. Since that period, subject to the rule and grasp of Turkish despots, the towns of Asia Minor have lost their trade and commerce, her population has been exhausted, and her fairest and richest plains have been left without care or culture. The authority of the janissaries, the despotism of the porte, and the revolts of the local governors have kept up, until within a few years, a system of hostility between the different provinces, while the uncertain tenure of their command, and their jealousy of each other, prevented the chiefs who were well disposed from checking the incursions of the nomad tribes of Turkomans and Kurds, who had settled in her central plains. These combined causes paralysed also, for many years, the energies of European travellers. Dangers and difficulties, which could neither be anticipated nor prevented, rendered a great part of the interior of Asia Minor a sealed book to the inquirer; and her many interesting records of antiquity, towns, temples, citadels, and sepulchral monuments, in various stages of decay, were long unknown. During this dark period the avarice and bigotry of the Turks systematically destroyed them, or consigned them to the chisel or the limekiln.

But there is a dawn, however faint, of happier days in the East. The bigotry of the Turk has yielded to a more frequent intercourse with the Christians, and many of the former difficulties are removed by the establishment, for a time at least, of the authority of the Porte throughout the Asiatic provinces, from the Euxine to the shores of Caramania, and from the coast of Ionia to the eastern confines of Cappadocia, and the effect of this partial improvement is visible in the crowds of eager and enterprising travellers who direct their steps to the shores of Ionia and Caria, and penetrate into the districts of Phrygia, Lydia, and Galatia.

HISTORY IN OUTLINE OF THE MINOR KINGDOMS OF WESTERN ASIA

A PRELIMINARY SURVEY COMPRISING A CURSORY VIEW OF THE SWEEP OF EVENTS, AND A TABLE OF CHRONOLOGY

THE HITTITES

An important Mongoloid tribe of Asia Minor descended by tradition from Heth, son of Canaan, son of Ham. They were one of the seven principal Canaanite tribes. In the days of their might their power extended over the greater part of Asia Minor, and perhaps into northern Syria. The extension of Egypt’s power during the XVIIIth Dynasty soon brought the Pharaohs into contact with the Hittites, or Kheta, as the Egyptians called them.

1528 B.C. The Hittites fight against Tehutimes III at the battle of Megiddo.

1400 The power of the Hittites begins to be formidable. They threaten the Egyptian provinces in Syria, and join their forces with those of Babylonia and Naharain. They make their southern capital at Kadesh.

1360 Hittites attacked by Seti I at Kadesh.

1341 =Mau-than-ar=, son of =Maro-sar=, murdered by his brother =Kheta-sar=, who succeeds to the throne.

1340 Battle of Kadesh. Great victory of Ramses II over the Hittites and their allies.

1325 Treaty of peace between Kheta-sar, king of the Hittites, and Ramses II.

1110 The Hittites, or Khatti, as the Assyrians called them, are overcome by Tiglathpileser I.

882 The Hittites pay tribute to Asshurnazirpal III, who carries their princes into captivity.

876 Carchemish, once the Hittite capital, now the capital of the petty state of Sangara, is entered by Asshurnazirpal.

854 Hittites enter into the alliance formed by Ben-Hadad II of Damascus. They suffer in the defeat at Qarqar. Most of the states are annexed to Assyria.

717 By this time Sangara is the sole state of the former Hittite empire that has retained independence. =Pisiris=, its king, joins with Mita of Moschi to refuse payment of tribute to Assyria. Sargon II proceeds against him. The people of Carchemish are transported to Assyria, and the city is populated with Assyrian colonists. This is the end of the last remnant of the Hittite empire. Many monuments of the Hittites have been discovered of recent years--most important of all, ruins and sculpture in Cappadocia east of the Halys. The art exhibited on these works is of a rude, primitive character, although it was influenced in succession by Babylonian, Egyptian, and Assyrian culture.

THE KINGDOM OF MITANNI

One of the important kingdoms of antiquity was Mitanni (called Naharain by the Egyptians, and Aram-Naharaim in the Bible), but at present we have no connected account of its history. “The kingdom of Mitanni,” says Rogers, “must take its place among the small states which have had their share in influencing the progress of the world, but whose own history we are unable to trace.”

1580 Tehutimes I of Egypt reaches the kingdom of Mitanni in his Asiatic campaign. In a battle fought on the borders, the king of Mitanni is defeated. From this time forth there is constant intercourse between the Nile and the Euphrates.

1522 Tehutimes III extends his conquest as far as Mitanni, which is made tributary to Egypt.

1470-1400 From the Tel-el-Amarna letters we know that =Artatana=, =Artashuma=, =Sutarna=, and =Dushratta= are the names of some of the ruling kings at this period. Between these and the Pharaohs there are family ties, since several of the Egyptian rulers married princesses from Mitanni. This shows that the kingdom is now of some importance.

1400 We find from now on the forces of Mitanni in alliance with those of the Hittites, and they doubtless play an important part in the Hittite conquests. In the last years of the XVIIIth Egyptian Dynasty, they are instrumental in driving the Egyptians from the land of the Amorites. The power of Mitanni is increasing. It is constantly allied with the Canaanitish and Babylonian princes against Egypt.

1225 =Cushan-rish-athaim=, king of Mitanni, overruns Syria and holds the Israelites in bondage for eight years. After this we find Aleppo, Hamath, and even Damascus in the hands of the Aramæans. Out of this occupation came the kingdoms of Damascus, Hamath, Zobah, etc. Mitanni and the other Aramæan states in Mesopotamia begin to lose their power as that of Assyria increases.

1120 Tiglathpileser I conquers much of their territory, and by the time of Asshurnazirpal III it has become practically incorporated in the Assyrian dominions.

THE ARAMÆANS

The Aramæans were a people of Semitic race, language, and religion, who came from northern Arabia and settled in the region between the western boundaries of Babylonia and the highlands of Western Asia.

THE KINGDOM OF DAMASCUS

The Aramæan conquests in Syria gave rise to a number of small states, among them Zobah, Hamath, Patin, and Damascus. The latter is the only one that attained world-historic importance, and is that country referred to in the Bible as the kingdom of Syria. The kings of Damascus first appear in history in the reign of David.

1000 David makes the king of Damascus pay tribute.

950 Damascus becomes independent of Solomon. =Rezon= is king. He is succeeded probably by =Hezion=, and then by the latter’s son, =Tabrimon=, whose names are known to us only through the Bible (1 Kings xv. 18), although there is every reason to believe that Hezion is identical with Rezon.

900 =Ben-Hadad I= succeeds to the throne of Damascus. Asa of Judah purchases, by means of the temple and palace treasures, the alliance of Ben-Hadad, in his war against Baasha of Israel. Ben-Hadad invades Israel and brings the conflict to a close.

870 =Ben-Hadad II= (=Hadad-idri= of the Assyrian monuments). The kingdom of Damascus now becomes the active enemy of Israel. Omri and Ahab ally themselves with Phœnicia to resist it. Ben-Hadad besieges Samaria, but is driven off by Ahab. The following year the siege is resumed and Ben-Hadad is again defeated in a battle near Aphek. Ahab suddenly changes his policy and makes a friendly alliance with Ben-Hadad to resist the growing power of Assyria.

854 Ben-Hadad is the head of the alliance of Damascus, Israel, and Hamath, and other states to resist Shalmaneser II, who invades Hamath. Battle of Qarqar and defeat of the allies. The alliance is broken and Damascus and Syria again go to war.

849 Ben-Hadad and Irkhulina of Hamath oppose Shalmaneser, who has again invaded the latter country. The result seems to have been undecisive.

846 Shalmaneser invades Hamath a third time and is prevented from any decisive conquest by Ben-Hadad.

845 =Hazael= succeeds his father Ben-Hadad; probably murdered him.

842 Hazael, deserted by his former allies, resolves to fight alone Shalmaneser, who had proceeded against Syria for the fourth time. Siege of Damascus, with no decisive result.

839 Shalmaneser again attacks Damascus, but is still unable to subjugate it completely. Damascus now takes the offensive against Israel. By the end of the century the land east of Jordan and north of the Arnon has been annexed by Hazael and his successor =Ben-Hadad III=. But a fresh onslaught from Assyria gives the Israelites an opportunity to recover their lost territory.

806-797 Adad-Nirari III makes expeditions to the west and Damascus, under King =Mari=, who has succeeded Ben-Hadad III,[10] is compelled to pay heavy tribute in 797.

773 The king of Assyria (either Asshur-dan III or Shalmaneser III, probably the former) makes a campaign against Damascus. The kingdom of Damascus is now in a thoroughly weak condition. Its decline has been rapid. Besides its subjection by Assyria, it has probably been forced to become tributary to Israel, now at the height of its power. It is probably on account of this connection that

735 Pekah forms an alliance with =Rezin= (the successor though not the immediate one of Mari or Ben-Hadad III) against Ahaz of Judah, who is attacked. The Syrio-Ephramitic war begins. Ahaz appeals to Tiglathpileser III for aid, which is willingly given.

734 Tiglathpileser marches into Syria and defeats Rezin, who shuts himself up in Damascus.

732 Fall of Damascus. Rezin slain. The inhabitants deported. The kingdom of Damascus is merged into the Assyrian empire.

HAMATH AND ZOBAH

There were two of the Aramæan kingdoms of Syria, whose existence was more or less contemporaneous with Damascus, although they never attained the power of the latter state. Zobah lay in northeastern Syria, and probably arose out of the ruins of the Hittite and Mitannian kingdoms. It seems to have been in conflict with Hamath. Its last king, =Hadad-ezer=, leads the Syrian forces against David, but is overthrown (about 1000 B.C.) and Zobah becomes part of the kingdom of Judah.

Hamath lay to the west of Zobah. Ramses III mentions taking the land among his conquests about 1200 B.C. It seems to have been then in Hittite hands, but later on passed to the Aramæans.

1000 B.C. Before David’s conquest we find =Toi=, king of Hamath, in conflict with Hadad-ezer of Zobah. After the latter’s overthrow we find Hamath always in friendly relations with Judah. Toi’s son =Joram= succeeds him.

854 =Irkhulina=, king of Hamath, joins the Syrian alliance against Shalmaneser II. The latter invades Hamath, in which country the battle of Qarqar is fought.

849-468 Shalmaneser II invades Hamath in these years, but the combined efforts of Irkhulina and Ben-Hadad II prevent any decisive Assyrian success. After this, Hamath remains the faithful ally of Assyria, but not a part of the empire.

720 A national party objects to the payment of tribute to Assyria. The king of Hamath, =Eni-el=, is deposed, and a usurper, =Il-ubidi= or =Ya-ubidi=, put on the throne. He prepares to resist Assyria, aided by Hanno of Gaza. Other states join the confederation. Sargon II immediately invades Syria. The city of Hamath is taken, and the kingdom becomes part of the Assyrian empire.

Among the other states of Western Asia deserving, at least, of mention are Edom, Moab, Ammon, and Philistia. It is impossible to give any connected account of their history.

The children of Esau settled in Edom, driving the Horites out. They come under the sway of Judah, but make a few attempts to regain their independence.

About 743 Tiglathpileser III makes King =Kaush-malik= of Edom tributary. In Esarhaddon’s time =Kaush-gabri= is king. Sennacherib makes =Malik-rammu= pay tribute. In Nebuchadrezzar’s time Edom is attacked by the Babylonians. During the captivity the Edomites move into portions of Judea.

Moab has the same origin as Israel. It is incorporated into David’s kingdom, but recovers its independence in a degree after his death. Thereafter the more powerful kings of Israel make war upon it. About 890 Omri makes =Sichon=, king of Moab, pay tribute, and sacks the capital Heshbon. About 885 =Kammush-gad= succeeds Sichon, and he, in turn, is succeeded by his son =Mesha= (ca. 855), whose inscription, known as the “Moabite” stone, is one of the most famous monuments of antiquity, and the oldest in the Semitic alphabet. He shakes off the yoke of Israel, and is afterwards shut up in Kir-Haresheth by the allied forces of Judah and Israel, but the assailants retire without a victory. Later the Moabite king pays tribute to Assyria. Some of them as mentioned doing so are =Shaman=, =Kammush-nadab=, and =Mussari=. Nebuchadrezzar subjects the Moabites in his expedition to Egypt.

The history of Ammon, whose capital was Rabbath or Rabbath Ammon, is similar to that of the other petty kingdoms with whose names it is constantly allied. After the Exodus the Israelites find the Ammonites driven out of their ancient territory, and settled east of the upper Jabbok. Here they develop a spirit of intense hostility towards the Israelites, and unite with the Moabites and Philistines against them.

In the days of Uzziah and Jotham they pay tribute to Judah, and assist Nebuchadrezzar against Jehoiakim. They continue to exist always inimical to Jewish power, at least until the time of Justin Martyr, who mentions them.

The origin of the Philistines is unknown, though it is supposed that they came from the Egyptian Delta, or perhaps from Crete. Their principal cities were Askalon, Ashdod, Gaza, Gath, and Ekron. During the XVIIIth Egyptian Dynasty they belonged to Egypt. The Philistines may have recovered their independence after Khun-aten’s death (ca. 1400), but in Ramses II’s time they are again under Egyptian rule. But with Ramses III the Philistines join the other enemies of Egypt against him. Saul has a long struggle with them now at the height of their power and is killed in a Philistine victory. David conquers them after an arduous struggle. In Jehoram’s time, 845 B.C., they and the Arabians invade Judah and attack Jerusalem. In 797 Adad-nirari III receives tribute from Philistia, which is a new conquest. In 734 the Philistine cities are taken by Tiglathpileser III. Hanno, king of Gaza, flees to Egypt. In 720 Hanno and Il-ubidi of Hamath form a confederation against Sargon, but are badly defeated at Raphia. Hanno is captured and borne off to Assyria. Philistia becomes an Assyrian province.

THE LESSER PEOPLES OF ASIA MINOR

PHRYGIA

So far as we know, the Phrygians were of a race closely akin to some of the tribes of Macedonia and Thrace. Their country lay on the central plateau of Asia Minor and extended east to the river Halys. The date of the origin of the kingdom is unknown, but Greek tradition tells of rulers at Gordium, on the Gangerius, among whom the names of =Gordius= and =Midas= are common. In the ninth century B.C. its power was at its greatest. About the end of the eighth century B.C. =Midas=, king of Phrygia, is said to have married Damodice, daughter of Agamemnon, the last king of Cyme. After this time the power of Phrygia declines before that of Lydia. About 660 B.C. the Cimmerians sweep over Phrygia, and =Midas= the king commits suicide. The Cimmerians hold the country until the end of the seventh century, when it comes under Lydian rule, the matter being definitely fixed by the treaty of 585. After this the country is ruled by native princes under subjection to Lydia until the fall of Crœsus in 546, when it becomes part of the Persian empire.

Phrygian culture is distinctly non-oriental in character and bears a distinct resemblance to that of early Greece.

Alexander the Great placed Phrygia under the command of Antigonus; then it passed to Seleucus. The western half of the country was included in the kingdom of Pergamus. Under the Roman Empire Phrygia formed part of the province of Asia.

LYCIA

The Lycians were a small nation in the southwest of Asia Minor, between Caria and Pamphylia. They alone among the peoples of this region preserved their independence against the Lydian kings, but they succumbed to Harpagus, the general of Cyrus, in 545 B.C.

After a while they recovered their independence, and in a degree maintained it by joining the Athenian Maritime League. Alexander had no difficulty in conquering this people, and in his empire they were ruled sometimes by the Ptolemies and sometimes by the Seleucidæ. Nevertheless, they managed to preserve their federal institutions, even when subject to and controlled by Rome. Not until the time of Claudius was Lycia formally annexed to the Roman Empire.

MYSIA

The Mysians were a race allied to the Lydians. They formed part of the conquests of Alyattes and Crœsus, and passed with Lydia into the Persian empire.

At Alexander’s death the country was annexed to the Syrian monarchy, of which it formed part until the defeat of Antiochus the Great. The Romans transferred the country to the dominions of Eumenes of Pergamus as a reward for his services during the war. Pergamus was the most important city of Mysia, and under Alexander’s successors became the seat of a flourishing Greek monarchy. It became prominent under =Attalus I= in the third century B.C. The successor of Attalus, =Eumenes II=, greatly extended and beautified the city. When =Attalus III= died, 133 B.C., he bequeathed the kingdom to Rome, and thus all Mysia became a portion of the province of Asia.

CAPPADOCIA

The Cappadocians were originally a Semitic people. They absorbed a portion of the invading Cimmerians in the eighth century B.C.

Our real knowledge of them goes back only to the Persian conquest in the middle of the sixth century. It was included in the third satrapy of Darius’s empire, although the satraps succeeded in making themselves virtually independent. =Ariarathes I= maintained himself on the throne after the conquest of Alexander. But at the latter’s death Perdiccas took him prisoner and put him to death. His son regained the throne, and his descendants ruled more or less in full possession of the kingdom. They fought against the Romans and afterwards with them, taking part in the struggles in Bithynia and Pontus. On the death of =Archelaus= (17 A.D.) the kingdom of Cappadocia was reduced to a Roman province.

CILICIA

The Cilicians, like the Cappadocians, were a Semitic or Aramæan people, ruled by a king with the title of Syennesis as early as the time of Alyattes of Lydia (about 600 B.C.). Cilicia passed successively into the Persian and Macedonian empires and formed part of the Seleucid dominions. Owing to loose government the western portion of Cilicia became the stronghold of a great pirate confederation which was stamped out by Pompey in 66 B.C. Cicero governed the country as proconsul 51-50 B.C., but it did not formally become a province until the time of Vespasian.

PAMPHYLIA AND PISIDIA

The peoples of these countries first appear in history in Xenophon’s Anabasis. In fact, Cyrus the Younger gave as his excuse for raising the army with which he tried to seize his brother’s throne the necessity of putting down the Pisidians, who were constantly harrying their neighbours. At the time of Alexander the Great they made a determined but unsuccessful resistance to the progress of the great conqueror. They passed tranquilly to Roman dominion, though they continued to be governed by their petty chiefs.

CARIA

Of the origin and early history of the Carians there is practically nothing known. They passed with little resistance under the Persian yoke, but joined the Ionic revolt, and were only reduced again with difficulty. Until the Macedonian conquest, although subject to Persia, the country had rulers of its own at Halicarnassus, who came strongly under the influence of Hellenic civilisation. The last native prince was =Pexodarus=, and after his death =Orontobates=, a Persian, seized the throne and offered a vigorous resistance to Alexander. The latter bestowed the country upon =Ada=, a native princess, but it soon became a portion of the Macedonian empire, ruled by Syria and Pergamus. At the extinction of the Pergamanian kingdom, Caria became a part of the Roman province of Asia.

BITHYNIA

Bithynia was first populated by a tribe of Thracian origin, first subdued by Crœsus, and then taken into the Persian empire when the country formed part of the satrapy of Phrygia. When the Seleucid monarchy fell into decay, the kingdom of Bithynia arose. =Nicomedes I=, the first king, founded Nicomedia during his long reign (278-250 B.C.). His successors were =Prusias I=, =Prusias II=, =Nicomedes II=, and =Nicomedes III=. This last king was unable to hold out against Pontus, and was sustained on his throne by the Romans. At his death (74 B.C.) he bequeathed his kingdom to Rome.

PAPHLAGONIA

The Paphlagonians play little part in history, although they were one of the most ancient nations of Asia Minor, and in all probability belonged to the same Semitic race as the Cappadocians. Under the Persian dominion they are said to have had a prince of their own, and were not dependent upon the Satraps. At Alexander’s death the country was assigned with Cappadocia to Eumenes, but was still governed by native rulers until it was absorbed by Pontus (183 B.C.).

GALATIA

The original Galatians were a body of Gauls that invaded Asia Minor about 277 B.C. It had formed part of Brennus’ army, but separated from him, crossed into Asia Minor, and ravaged its western portion. Attalus of Pergamus defeated this people in 239 and compelled them to settle in Galatia, where they maintained an independent existence and gave the Romans much trouble in the wars against Antiochus. But an army was sent directly against them, and they were completely subjected to Rome, 189 B.C. At first the native chiefs held power under tetrarchs. This system did not hold, and soon there was only one ruler. One of the single tetrarchs, Deiotarus, was styled King by the Roman Senate for the assistance given in the Mithridatic wars. Galatia was afterwards united with Lycaonia, Isauria, and their adjoining districts under a king named =Amyntas=, and when he died (25 B.C.) the country became a Roman province.

LYCAONIA

The Lycaonian tribes inhabited the interior of Asia Minor in a district bounded by Galatia, Cappadocia, Cilicia, Phrygia, and Pisidia. The country is first mentioned by Xenophon. The people seem to have been a wild and lawless race of freebooters, practically independent of the Persian and Macedonian empires. They became, however, subjects of the king, Amyntas, who ruled in Galatia, and at his death passed with the latter country into the Roman Empire.

ISAURIA

Isauria lay to the west of Lycaonia. It does not appear in the early history of Asia Minor, but its people were undoubtedly similar in manners and customs to the Lycaonians. Their sole prominence in ancient history is due to the fact that they took so active a part in the war of Rome against the Cilician pirates that P. Servilius, the proconsul, found it necessary to pursue them into their own country and reduce them to submission, which earned him the title of Isauricus.

PONTUS

Pontus lay in the northeast corner of Asia Minor, bordering on Armenia and Colchis. It was originally that part of Cappadocia known as “Cappadocia on the Pontus,” and its existence as a separate territory did not begin probably until after the time of Alexander the Great. Under the Persian empire the province was governed as a satrapy, although virtually independent. Finally the satraps began to call themselves kings. The first was =Ariobarzanes=, about the middle of the fourth century B.C. His successor, =Mithridates II=, the first really independent monarch, began his reign 337 B.C. Then came a line of kings mostly called Mithridates, who managed to rule independent of the Macedonian monarchs, and extended their dominions along the shores of the Euxine or Black Sea. When Sinope fell (183 B.C.), captured by =Pharnaces I=, Bithynia became the western boundary of the land, and under =Mithridates VI= “the Great” nearly the whole of Asia Minor acknowledged the sceptre of the powerful monarch. Pontus plays a part in world history only in the wars of Mithridates and Rome, a full account of which struggle will be found in the history of the latter country. When Pompey finally subdued Mithridates (65 B.C.), Pontus was confined to its original limits, and afterwards united with Bithynia as a Roman province. Mark Antony placed the government of a portion of the province in the hands of a Greek rhetorician named =Polemon=, whose descendants continued to rule until the time of Nero, when it was finally annexed to the empire.

ARMENIA

This was the Urartu of the Assyrian inscriptions, the Ararat of the Bible. It seems originally to have been one of the countries of Nairi, and gradually gained superiority over the others. It extended northward from Lake Van, between the Upper Euphrates and Media. The Assyrians began their assaults on Urartu at the time of Tiglathpileser I (ca. 1100 B.C.). Asshurnazirpal marched through its southern districts, but made no attempt to annex it to his dominions. Shalmaneser II laid the first plan for conquest. In 860 and 857 he invaded Urartu while =Arame= was king, defeating that monarch and bringing his dynasty to an end. A new house came to the throne, founded by =Sarduris I=, son of Lutipris. He immediately extended his borders by conquest and strengthened his kingdom, so, when the Assyrians came again in 850, 833, and 829, they went home without making any real progress in the north and west. Shalmaneser III (782-773) made six ineffectual campaigns against Urartu, which was now a real menace to the Assyrian empire. =Argistis= of Urartu wrested considerable territory from the Assyrians, and his successor, =Sarduris II=, continued the conquest of adjacent territory, and, forming a coalition of northern princes, started on a conquest of Syria. At this moment the prospects of Armenia becoming a great world-power were very bright, but Tiglathpileser III, of Assyria, having the same ambitions, encountered Sarduris and badly defeated him. The boundaries of Urartu were gradually narrowed to their original limits by the Assyrian conqueror about 735 B.C. The capital, Turuspa (Van), was besieged, but not taken; the spirit of Urartu was now completely broken. =Ursa= or =Rusas= succeeded Sarduris. Sargon II, of Assyria, had many conflicts with him, and when his son, =Argistis II=, came to the throne, he had only a small territory around Lake Van left to rule over. =Tigranes I= was the contemporary of Cyrus. After the fall of Assyria Armenia became a portion of the Persian empire. Alexander the Great conquered it with the defeat of King =Vahi=, but the Macedonian yoke was thrown off in 317 B.C. =Ardvates= was chosen king, but at his death the Seleucidæ again gained possession. When Antiochus the Great was defeated by the Romans, =Artaxias=, the governor of Greater Armenia, made himself independent. It was with this prince that the exiled Hannibal found refuge. =Zadriades=, in Lesser Armenia, followed the example of Artaxias, and his descendants maintained their position until the time of Tigranes II, when this country was annexed to Greater Armenia.

About 150 B.C. the Parthians stepped in, and Mithridates I established his brother =Valarsaces= in Armenia. Thus a new branch of the Asarcid dynasty was founded.

=Tigranes II= gave promise of making a great empire, but his father-in-law, Mithridates of Pontus, brought him in collision with the Romans. Pompey allowed him to keep Armenia, and made a new kingdom of Sophene and Gordyene, but another son, =Artavasdes=, tried to free himself from Rome, and Mark Antony carried him prisoner to Alexandria, where he was beheaded by Cleopatra (30 B.C.).

THE LYDIANS

The territory of Lydia was originally confined to the Plain of Sardis at the foot of Tmolus and Sipylus. Later it extended to include the Troad and became a maritime as well as an inland power. The coast of Ionia came under its dominion and at the time of Crœsus all Asia Minor west of the Halys, with the exception of Lycia, composed the Lydian kingdom.

B.C. The Lydian rulers traced their origin back to the sun-god Hercules, but there was an earlier dynasty which, however, is purely mythical, founded by Attys, another form of the sun-god. The Heraclid Dynasty shows Hittite or perhaps Semitic influence, and was founded by a son of Ninus and a descendant of Hercules and Omphale. About the end of the thirteenth century B.C. Lydia was conquered by the Hittites, and the Heraclid Dynasty seems to have arisen with the decline of the Hittite rule. It is said to have lasted 505 years and 690 come to an end with =Sadyattes=--the =Candaules= of Herodotus--who is slain by one of his herdsmen, Gyges, with the connivance of the queen. =Gyges= founds the dynasty of the Mermnadæ.

660 The kingdom is overrun by the Cimmerians. They capture Sardis. Gyges appeals to Asshurbanapal for aid. The latter beseeches the gods Asshur and Ishtar to aid Gyges, who gains a great victory over the invaders. But Gyges turns against Asshurbanapal. He sends aid to Psamthek against the Assyrians (655 B.C.).

652 The Cimmerians return, retake Sardis, and Gyges is slain in battle. His son =Ardys= succeeds. He at once gives allegiance to Assyria.

617 =Sadyattes= succeeds his father Ardys. He ends an eleven years’ war with Miletus.

612 =Alyattes= succeeds his father Sadyattes. Under him Phrygia is conquered, and the Greek cities of the coast are taken. The latter pay heavy duties to the Lydian king, and he thus becomes the richest monarch of the time.

585 Treaty with the Phrygians fixing boundaries of the two countries. Lydia is now threatened with the growing power of the Manda or eastern Scythians, and a six years’ struggle is ended by the marriage of Alyattes’ daughter, Aryenis, to Astyages, king of the Manda. The two kingdoms become friendly.

560 =Crœsus= ascends the throne on the death of his father Alyattes. He makes friends with Miltiades, the tyrant of the Thracian Chersonesus.

546 Crœsus heads an alliance with Aahmes II of Egypt, Nabonidus of Babylon, and the Spartans against Cyrus of Elam, who has overthrown his suzerain Astyages of the Manda. He enters Cappadocia on his way to meet Cyrus, is defeated in two battles and retires to Sardis. The allies do not send aid and the city falls. Lydia is absorbed into the Persian empire and then into the Greek. At Alexander’s death Lydia passed to Antigonus; then Achæus made himself king of Sardis, but Antiochus put him to death. Eumenes presented the country to the Romans, and subsequently it formed part of the province of Asia.

FOOTNOTES

[10] [There still exists an uncertainty as to the chronological order of these two kings. Meyer places Mari first, although the Biblical narrative would indicate the reverse to be the true order.]

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I. THE HITTITES

When we pass to the north and west from Syria and Mesopotamia, we enter a region by no means so well known as the home of the Semites. The peninsula of Asia Minor is so situated, geographically, that it is the only highway between Asia and Europe, much as Palestine is the highway between Asia and Africa. The peoples which inhabited it were therefore necessarily, in some sense, a buffer between the great nations of the two continents. For the most part, the rôle they played, at any rate in later history, was a comparatively insignificant one. It is becoming more and more evident, however, that there was a time in ancient history,--using the term in the ordinary or relative sense,--when the people who inhabited Asia Minor took a foremost rank among the nations of their time as a warlike and conquering race.

This people is known as the Hittite race: just who they were, or whence they came, we have no present means of ascertaining. They are vaguely referred to in the Bible records as descendants of Heth, son of Canaan, the son of Ham, and they are even mentioned as one of the seven Canaanite tribes, but no one nowadays ascribes great historical importance to these Hebrew records.

It is only recently that the students of ancient history have come to recognise the importance of the tribe bearing the name of Hittite; indeed, in so far as the Bible records throw any light upon them at all, it would now appear that the impression it conveyed was quite a faulty one, for the Hittites were represented as a people over whom the Hebrews were able to gain an advantage with great ease. It now appears that they were in point of fact one of the most powerful and warlike of ancient nations. There is one Bible narrative, familiar to every one, which would lead one to suppose that the Hittites were at times allies or subordinates of the Hebrews. It will be recalled that Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon, was the wife of a man designated as Uriah the Hittite, at the time when she was seduced by David, and the further details of this shameful history, in which David shielded himself from the consequences of his misdeed by arranging what was substantially the assassination of Uriah, are only too clearly known to all readers of Biblical history. If, however, this Uriah were really a Hittite, it is quite clear that he must have been a man of some distinction, and in any event it is probable that the presence of a Hittite in the army of David was a quite exceptional circumstance, for at this time the Hittites were still a powerful nation, at least the equals, if not the superiors, of the Hebrews themselves.

The time of the greatest power of the Hittites, however, was some centuries earlier, for it is now known that this people is to be identified with the Kheta of the Egyptians and the Khatti of the Assyrians. It will be recalled that the Egyptians under Tehutimes III waged war against the Kheta, as did Seti in a later succeeding generation. But in particular the Kheta are memorable in Egyptian annals because of the great battle at Kadesh, their city on the Orontes, in which Ramses II so distinguished himself. It was this battle, it will be recalled, which is celebrated in that famous description still extant--a description which represents Ramses as combating single-handed against hosts of the enemy, and himself personally destroying the hundred thousand of his assailants. Making all due allowance for the manifest exaggeration usual in oriental inscriptions, it is conceded that Ramses actually gained the victory on this occasion; but it is also clear from the inscriptions that the people against whom this war was waged was regarded as one of the most powerful, if not the very most important, of contemporary nations.

At a slightly later period, when the new Assyrian empire was waxing strong, the Hittites found an enemy on the other side in Tiglathpileser, who defeated them in a memorable battle, as also a few centuries later did Ashurnazirpal. The latter prince, it would appear, completely subjected them and carried their princes into captivity. Yet they waxed strong again, and took up arms in alliance with Ben-Hadad of Syria against Shalmaneser II in the year 855; and though again defeated, their power was not entirely broken until the year 717 B.C., when Sargon utterly subjected them and deported the inhabitants of their city of Carchemish to a city of Assyria, repeopling it with his own subjects.

All these details of the contests of the Hittites against the Egyptians on the one hand and Assyrians on the other were quite unknown until the records of the monuments of Egypt and Assyria were made accessible through the efforts of recent scholars. But it now appears, judged only by the records of their enemies, that the Hittites were a very powerful and important nation for many centuries, and more recent explorations of Asia Minor have brought to light various monuments, which are believed to be records made by the Hittites themselves. To the delight and mystification of oriental scholars it was found that these monuments contained inscriptions in hieroglyphic characters of a kind quite different from any hitherto known. These inscriptions have been carefully studied, in particular by Professor Sayce who has made himself the greatest authority on the subject. As yet, however, very little progress has been made toward the decipherment of this new form of writing. It would appear, however,--at least, such is the opinion of Professor Sayce and others best competent to judge,--that this Hittite script is quite independent of any other form of writing of which we have any knowledge.

It has long been the opinion of scholars that the art of writing originated quite independently in at least four different centres; namely, China, Central America, Egypt, and Mesopotamia; but the discovery of the Hittite monuments seems to add a fifth form. It would be going much beyond the secure footing of present knowledge to assert positively that these five hieroglyphic scripts were really of absolutely independent origin. What we have already said of the vagueness of our knowledge of the early history of man applies with full force here, but with this qualification, it is held that the Hittite hieroglyphics are a thing utterly apart, and if, perchance, at some very remote period, they had the same point of departure as any of the other scripts, there are no present means of proving the fact. It is believed by Professor Sayce and others that the hieroglyphic syllabary found on the monuments of Cyprus is based on this Hittite system of hieroglyphics, and not upon those of Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Aside from their mystifying hieroglyphics, the recently discovered monuments of the Hittites have a peculiar interest because of their rude sculptures which, notwithstanding their primitive character as works of art, are quite unique and very individual. The figures of these sculptures are always represented as wearing a peculiar form of shoe with upturned toe; their headdress is also very typical, usually consisting of a high conical cap. These features, along with the other less marked ones, serve to show that the artist had in mind always to represent a characteristic ethnic type.

It is held by scholars that their language was equally characteristic and more sharply differentiated from any known contemporary tongue, and though the point is not yet as fully established as might be wished, it is thought that the evidence in hand justifies the conclusion that the Hittites were not a Semitic race. It has been even suggested that they had Mongoloid affinities. If such was the case, the Hittites were related rather to the people of the north and northeast--to the Scythians, perhaps even to the Chinese--than to their neighbours of the south. But all these questions must await the results of future investigations. For the moment the Hittites are only just beginning to be revealed to us as a great conquering nation of Western Asia, who at one time rivalled the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians, but the memory of whose deeds had almost altogether faded from the minds of later generations.[a]

RECENT HITTITE RESEARCH

The results of recent Hittite research have been summarised by Charles W. Super. In essence, he says that during the past two decades no problems of antiquity have received more careful study and thorough investigation than have those connected with the history and civilisation of the people now known as the Hittites; and yet no historical data have been determined with sufficient certainty for a cautious student to draw conclusions even fairly definite. Something like order has been brought out of the pre-existing chaos of that nation’s history, and a few simple facts established; but the results of all this study have been largely conjectural, and the details of the researches, fascinating though they may be to the historian and the antiquarian, have but little interest or value to other students. What is known in a historical sense of this ancient people can be briefly outlined.

We are quite certain that several centuries before our era the Hittites founded a powerful empire in Western Asia, probably with outlying provinces in Africa, and even in Europe as far west as Italy. The greatness of this nation we are able to conjecture from the numerous references made to it in the Bible and Egyptian history, and from the mighty monuments of its power that still exist. The carved figures on these monuments and the representations given by the Egyptians, prove the Hittites to have been of an altogether different physical type from the Semites, and, therefore, of a different race; but their origin has not been clearly determined. The burden of proof appears to favour a Mongol ancestry, and is supported by physical and lingual characteristics common to both races.

Their primitive home is thought to have been in that part of Armenia where the Euphrates, the Halys, and Lycus approach nearest to one another; and it is even asserted that the modern Armenians are descendants of the old Hittites. From this point they began their career of conquests, probably under the leadership of some able and vigorous chief, whose ambition overleaped his native boundaries. One conquest led to another. Their leaders acquired great armies, and subdued many nations, until the Hittites became one of the most powerful peoples of ancient times, and their kings were able successfully to defy even Egypt, at that time the strongest nation on the globe. Then began their decline. They came in conflict with the more progressive Semitic race, and finally were subdued or exterminated by them.

This, in brief, gives the meagre results of modern Hittite research; but the details of the conjecture and theories evolved by the antiquarians concerning this remarkable people would fill many volumes, and be of interest only to historians and antiquarians. A few of the more important facts may be stated however.[ab]

Traces of Hittite influence have been discovered all over Asia Minor, and the oldest inhabitants of the peninsula seem to have been closely allied both by race and language with this non-Semitic people of northern Syria. Rather more than two thousand years before Christ the Hittites were, as the cuneiform inscriptions testify, the northwestern neighbours of the territory of the Euphrates. The great astrological work of the old king Sargon of Agade contains this entry:

“On the 16th (of the month of Abu) there was an eclipse; the king of Agade died; the god Nergal (i.e., war) devoured the land.

“On the 20th (of the month Abu) there was an eclipse; the king of the land of the Khatti made an attack (?) and gained possession of the throne.”

THE HITTITES AND THE EGYPTIANS

We do not again hear of the Hittites until near the close of the seventeenth century before Christ, but then it is from contemporary Egyptian records. Ramses I had made an offensive and defensive treaty with them, which a sense of their power encouraged them to break and thus involve themselves in a war with Seti I, in which the latter was successful.

In the fifth year of the reign of Ramses the Great a great war broke out between the Kheta and the Egyptians, and the king of the enemy, Kheta-sar, assembled his troops and auxiliaries at Kadesh. Various texts, amongst which is the famous heroic poem once credited to a copyist, Pentaur, have commemorated the great battle of Kadesh; in this way we may easily read between the lines that the triumph which Ramses gained there was a Pyrrhic victory.

It was followed by a peace between Ramses and Kheta-sar, a copy of which is still preserved on a stele of a southern wall of the great hypostyle of Karnak. This highly interesting document “compels,” as Ebers says, the greatest “respect for the high state of civilisation in the Asiatic kingdom and the advanced political organisation of the two nations bound by this document.” This treaty, which in Brugsch’s translation fills seven large octavo pages, emanated from the Kheta king who had a draft of it on a silver tablet submitted to Ramses in the twenty-first year of the latter’s reign. In the centre of this tablet was a portrait in relief of the chief god of the Kheta, “Sutekh, king of heaven and earth.” Ramses was glad to be able to end the long war in so honourable a fashion, and most willingly accepted the proposal of the great king of the Kheta, the “powerful.” We even know the nature of the characters which are engraved on that silver tablet, and can obtain, from a crowd of proper names, a clew to the family to which the Hittite language did, or, what is almost as good, to that to which it did not belong. We learn that it cannot in any case have been a Semitic tongue, and finally we are in a position to form a good idea from the representations on the walls of the Egyptian temples, as well as from recently discovered Hittite monuments, of the dress and even the colour of the skin of this ancient civilised nation. But first let us briefly outline the remainder of its history.

We now come to the oldest inscription of the Assyrian kings, and there, on the stone-tablet of Adad-nirari I (ca. 1340 B.C.), we find that ruler at war with the people of the Lulumi and Shubari, two tribes in northern Syria. These northern countries are directly connected with the Hittites in the great royal annals of Tiglathpileser I (ca. 1100 B.C.), where Column ii. 89 runs, “The land of the Shubari the refractory, the insubordinate, I subdued; on the land of Alzi and the land of Purukhumi which had refused their tribute, I laid the yoke of my lordship; … four thousand inhabitants of Kashka, of Uruma, people of the land of Khatti, the insubordinate who in the pride of their strength had taken towns of the land of Shubartu which were subject to my lord Asshur; they heard of my march against Shubartu, the splendour of my strength overthrew them; they avoided a battle and embraced my feet.”

Further, in Column v. line 48, etc., “[The territory] of the region of the land of Sukhi to Kargamisch [the spelling here indicates the Bible Carchemish] in the land of the Khatti, I plundered in one day,” and finally by way of recapitulation in Column vi. 39, etc., “From the beginning of my rule to the fifth year of my reign my hand has conquered in the whole forty-two countries and defeated their princes from beyond the Lower Zab as far as to beyond the Euphrates and the land of Khatti and the Upper Sea towards the sunset (i.e., Phœnicia).”

From these inscriptions it seems that the term Shubartu (land of the Shubari) had a general significance, and denoted the whole of the mountainous territory in the north of Mesopotamia proper, that is east of Kummukh and on the hither side of the Euphrates. Thus neither Asshur-uballit nor Adad-nirari I penetrated to the narrower sphere of Hittite rule, and it was only towards the end of the twelfth century B.C. that Tiglathpileser I made war against it directly and with success.

This again confirms the view that the most flourishing period of the powerful kingdom of the Hittites and of its civilisation was in the fourteenth and perhaps also in the thirteenth century before Christ.

THE HITTITES AND THE HEBREWS

The Hebrew literature furnishes us with further information. From this we learn that in the year 1000 B.C. and later (in the time of David and Solomon) the Hittites were Israel’s neighbours on the northern frontier, and that intermarriages even took place between the Hittites and the Israelites. For Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, was an Israelitish woman of good family. So far south then did the power of the Hittites extend in the most ancient period of the Israelite kingdom, though the former had been already much endangered by the invasion of a new people, the Aramæans, who had probably wandered there as nomads from the eastern bank of the Euphrates.

In brief, those Hittites whom we had hitherto looked upon as more or less dim figures have suddenly revealed themselves to us in a new character, and it is almost impossible to say in what department of the science of antiquity they will not prove of pre-eminent importance. As regards Semitic antiquity in particular, they possibly possess the same value for a correct estimate of the relics of the civilisation of the northern Canaanites and the western Syrians as the Sumerians and Accadians have in respect to the civilisation of the Semitic Babylonians and Assyrians and of the Hebrews. Further inquiry, and certainly rich accessions of material, will clear up many points at which it is at present only permissible to guess; and perhaps the immediate future may bring the most interesting conclusion, especially regarding their linguistic position and also in respect to their religious history.[c]

HITTITE ART

There is no originality in the Hittite art of Syria. It is Assyrian art, interpreted by barbarians and debased in the process. With the exception of one rude torso, found in Cilicia, and the inscribed statue of a lion from Marash, it is all in low relief, according to Assyrian precedent, and the costumes and attitudes of the figures have evidently been copied from the Assyrian, though we remark some difference of detail. For example, the Hittite Astarte, corresponding to the Istar of Babylon and similarly represented, has the special peculiarities of being winged and wearing a conical tiara.

The debasement of the art in Hittite hands is exhibited by a series of bas-reliefs found at Sindjerli, and another in a mound in the same district. The latter of these represents a lion hunt, evidently copied from some Ninevite model, but without any of the vigour which the Assyrians put into their sculptures. The animal appears to be submitting with perfect tranquillity, while he is stabbed to death with javelots.

Farther west, and especially in Cilicia, the sculptures become more original, but also more rude. The special attributes of the Hittites, as shown in these monuments, are the diadem, the women’s tall cap with a long veil, and the pointed shoes. The latter, however, are the ordinary wear of the modern populations of Asia Minor.

One canton of Cappadocia, the Pteria of Herodotus, contains many Hittite ruins. The village of Boghaz-Keui, its ancient capital, possesses bas-reliefs cut in the rock, and the remains of a royal palace having many points in common with those of Assyria. The same is true of the palace of Euiuk; but a sphinx, placed at the door, betrays an Egyptian influence, though details of its sculpture have been borrowed from Assyria.

Both influences are also apparent in the rock sculpture of Boghaz-Keui, called Iasili-Kaïa, “the written stone,” and with these the sculptures of the palace of Euiuk have much in common. But while the Assyrian monuments are in honour of the sovereigns, these of the Hittites all have a religious significance and refer to the worship of the god Men or the goddess Ma or Enio, who corresponds to Anaïtis or Astarte.

The tombs of Gherdek-Kaïasi, not far from Boghaz-Keui and Euiuk, seem also to belong to this Cappadocian civilisation. The façade of the principal vault has a portico with three short columns, somewhat suggestive of the Doric style. These tombs perhaps belong to a period not earlier than 549 B.C., the year when Crœsus ravaged Pteria.

To sum up, we may conclude with M. Perrot that the monuments of Boghaz-Keui and Euiuk, which bear witness to the primitive Cappadocian civilisation, have all, like those of northern Syria, come under the Assyrian influence. The palaces are like “a reduced copy of the great royal edifices of the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates.” The winged figures, the monsters with eagles’ or lions’ heads, are Assyrian, as are also the divinities carried on the backs of different quadrupeds, the flowers in the hands of the persons represented, and the winged globe, the image of Asshur.

Certain features of the Cappadocian sculptures appear on as good evidence to be borrowed from Egypt, Persia, and even from the Greeks of Asia Minor; but this is the exception. In any case there is nothing in the Hittite art of Pteria that is original or shows individuality, if we except the two-headed eagle, which is evidently connected with the oldest Asiatic forms of worship and reminds us of the Sirens; and if we also except the long curved lituus, the dress cut in the shape of a chasuble, the pointed tiara, and the peaked shoes: details of costume more interesting from the point of view of fashion than from that of art.

As to the relations between the sculptures of Pteria and those of Hittite Syria they are obvious: we have the same hieroglyphics, the same short tunic, the same long robe, the same foot-gear, the same pointed tiara, and the same round cap. The female dress is almost identical at Marash and Iasili-Kaïa; the divinities have like attributes; the lion and the bull are animals which figure by preference in either place.

We may conclude that the same semi-barbarous nation, lacking the power to free itself, either artistically or politically, from the yoke of Egypt and Assyria, inhabited the two slopes of the Taurus.

HITTITE MONUMENTS IN ASIA MINOR

North of the Taurus and beyond the Halys, the monuments connected with Hittite civilisation are, as in Cappadocia, bas-reliefs carved on the sides of rocks or elsewhere. At Ivris, in Lycaonia, there is an inscription in Hittite hieroglyphics and also two colossal figures with unmistakably Assyrian characteristics, and at Iflatun, also in Lycaonia, the winged globe, the divine symbol both in Egypt and Assyria, can still be discerned on the fragment of a ruined building.

Farther west the Hittite monuments become more rare. Two bas-reliefs, which Herodotus mentions as having been carved by order of Ramses II, have been discovered in Lydia. They represent a warrior wearing the conical tiara, the short tunic and the peaked shoe. He is armed with a spear and bow. The style is the same as that of the bas-reliefs of Cilicia, Lycaonia, Cappadocia, and Syria.

The serpentine moulds which were used for manufacturing metal ornaments or charms are superior in workmanship, though here also the ideas represented are evidently Assyrian. But the best Hittite work was lavished on the glyptic art, as is shown by their seals and cylinders. A cylinder found at Aidin in Lydia even exhibits some originality in its ornamental border, though the scene represented is Assyrian.[e]

The districts of Asia Minor were repeatedly attacked and probably subjugated for considerable periods by the Hittite kings. Everywhere in Asia Minor they left monuments of their campaigns which exactly correspond in style with the monuments of Jerabis, and in part also bear remains of Hamathite inscriptions. Since the discovery of Jerabis there can be no further doubt as to their origin. Among their characteristic peculiarities is the costume, with a high pointed cap and pointed shoes; the figures are usually cut in profile, with widespread legs.

The first of these monuments is an inscribed relief at Ivris on the northern slope of the Taurus, which represents a prince in rich Assyrian costume worshipping a god who is standing and bearing grapes and ears of corn.

Then there are sculptures on the wall of an ancient building at Iflatun on Lake Karaliti in Isauria, and the figure of a warrior in Iconium.

From here the Hittites penetrated into Phrygia and to the coast of the Ægean Sea. On a cliff below the ancient fortress Giaurkalesi in Phrygia (southwest of Ancyra) are the figures of two Hittite warriors wearing a modification of the Egyptian uræus serpent on the front of their caps. The two famous reliefs of Nymphæum on the cliffs of Sipylus which are mentioned in Herodotus and on which remains of Hamathite inscriptions have been preserved, are quite similar. There is also on Sipylus, near Magnesia, a rude rock-sculpture with symbols of the same alphabet, which perhaps represents a goddess, and was looked upon by the Greeks as Niobe.

But the ruins and sculptures found at Euiuk and Boghaz-Keui, east of the Halys, in Cappadocian territory, are the most important and extensive. At the former place are the ruins of a great palace, with an entrance guarded by two sphinxes; on the walls are numerous sculptures of gods and men, lions, bulls, and beings of mixed form, among them a double-headed eagle. At Boghaz-Keui are the ruins of an ancient fortress (the Pteria of Herodotus?), and the walls of a rocky gorge show a long procession, presumably of a religious character. The most important symbols on all these monuments are modifications of the winged sun-disk.

These monuments enable us to perceive clearly the extent of the Hittite conquests. From now on Carchemish, instead of the valley of the Orontes, forms the centre of the Hittite realm, and evidently becomes the residence of the kings. Aside from this, however, only very uncertain reports of these wars have come down to us.

One passage in the Odyssey says that Neoptolemus killed Eurypylus, the son of Telephus, prince of the Κήτειοι, who is later always called prince of Teuthrania; evidently a trace of the name of the Hittites has been preserved here.

Perhaps we may also detect a reminiscence of their campaigns in the Greek legend of the Ethiopian Memnon, son of the dawn, who undertook great campaigns and hastened to the aid of Priam. Herodotus (II, 106) says that the reliefs of Nymphæum, which he claims for Sesostris, were declared by others to be portraits of Memnon. In other respects, however, the dim tradition that the Greeks preserved of these conquests was transferred to the Egyptians (expeditions of Sesostris to Asia Minor and Thrace) and the Assyrians. Moreover, when Lydian tradition connects the royal family of the Heraclidæ with Ninus the son of Belus, the legendary representatives of the Assyrians have perhaps here taken the place of the Hittites, for the Assyrians did not come into direct contact with the Lydians until the seventh century.

A further reminiscence of the wars of the Lydians and the Hittites is perhaps contained in two fragments of the Lydian Xanthus, which refer to the expeditions of the Lydian hero Mopsus (Moxos?) and Askalus, brother of Tantalus, to Syria and especially to Askalon.

The effects of the Syrian conquest upon Asia Minor were permanent in an unusual degree. It has long been recognised that the names of the Lydian kings Sadyattes and Alyattes, and also Myattes, are Semitic forms; now we may perhaps venture the conjecture that the Lydian royal family of the Heraclidæ was of Hittite origin. Furthermore, we can now identify the god Attes (Attys) of Asia Minor directly with the Syrian Ate and ascribe to him a foreign origin. In fact, the religion of Asia Minor shows a very intimate connection with that of the Semites, which, however, could not hitherto be explained with certainty.[d]

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II. SCYTHIANS AND CIMMERIANS

THE SCYTHIANS

Scythian is a word of somewhat vague application, designating the barbaric tribes of middle Asia and northern Europe, who from time to time invaded the territories of their more civilised neighbours of the south. They are most prominently noticed in Asiatic history with the conquests of Darius I, who made a memorable invasion of Scythia, as recorded by Herodotus a few centuries later. The Scythians were so powerful as to demand the attention of Alexander the Great before he could feel free to undertake his Asiatic invasion. At a still later period the Scythian hordes invaded Greece itself and even captured Athens. In a word we must recall that at almost every historic period of antiquity the Scythian hordes were hovering about the northern bounds of the oriental civilised world, and from time to time harassing even such powerful nations as the Assyrians and Persians.

Yet if we strive to place the Scythian in the ethnic scale, we find ourselves quite unable to do so. The Scythians were barbarians, and barbarians have no history in the narrower sense of the word. That these same barbarians were the progenitors, in the direct line, of nations that were to make themselves felt at later periods of history can hardly be in question, but the fact is not susceptible of proof.

For our present purpose it will suffice, after a brief citation of two modern authorities, to view the Scythians through the eyes of the ancient Greeks, chiefly Herodotus, recognising that their rôle was a subordinate one in the scheme of Ancient history, and remembering that modern historians have been able to do little but paraphrase the ancient accounts, and to criticise them from various personal standpoints.

The Scythians in their emigration into Asia were careful to avoid the powerful country of Assyria. The stream parted at the northern frontier, one branch passing to the east, the other to the west. The eastern branch will come into prominence later, when we treat of the Manda, under the history of Persia.[a]

Scythian Influences in Asia Minor

The powerful invasion of Scythian influence into historical life and historical development, and its great influence on the intellectual life of the peoples of Asia Minor (which may be traced in the so-called Hittite monuments, in the Amazonian myths, in the worship of the Chalybian Jupiter or Ares, and in the transformation of the Greek hero, Hercules, into the hero of Asia Minor, confused with the sun-god of the Scythians and the peninsula) cannot be without its influence in the domain of true history. It is impossible to think of the Chalybian-Cimmerian or the Amazonian expeditions as achieving momentary destruction but leaving no trace in the historical life of the nations. On the contrary, everything points to the conclusion that over and above these warlike expeditions a permanent state of affairs was called into being in Asia Minor.

The new conditions form the life and character of the post-Homeric section of the ancient history of Asia Minor before the Persian empire. And in regard to these new conditions in the eastern half of the peninsula, we find there the powerful kingdoms of Moschi and Tubal, which stretched from Pontus as far as Cilicia and Mesopotamia, and for centuries obstinately vindicated their independence against the overwhelming power of Assyria. Still more important, though also more complicated, are the ethnological, political, and the general historical conditions of the post-Homeric world in the western half of Asia Minor.

Not to mention the changes introduced into the countries along the coast by the founding of numerous Greek colonies, we see that the Homeric Asia Minor of the ancient Pelasgian peoples, the Trojans, Ascanians, Mæonians, Esionians, and the pre-Homeric or Homeric Phrygians, shows in the post-Homeric world a shape which differs from the former in many aspects. Thus we come across new names of peoples and countries, as the Lydians, Thynians, Bithynians, Lasonians, Chalybians, Hygennes; names of new dynasties, as the Sandonids (Heraclids) and Mermnadæ of Lydia; new names of kingdoms and towns, as Lydia, Sardis, Smyrna, Ephesus, and new names of gods, new cults, new names of demon-gods or of priests. The “man-equalling” Amazons, who are referred to in Homer as a host dwelling beyond Phrygia and inimical to the peoples of western Asia Minor, now appear as native to western Asia Minor, as allies of Troy and founders of towns in that part of the peninsula.

This new post-Homeric world of western Asia Minor at last finds its centre and culmination on the soil of true history, in the founding and development of the Lydian empire. In this world the Scythian expeditions play much the same part as the Doric immigration in the post-Homeric Greece; and as there that immigration ends with the creation of new states, so also the Scythian immigrations into Asia Minor have an important result in the foundation of a great kingdom in the west of that peninsula, namely the Lydian kingdom.[b]

Scythian Movements

The Scythians formed for several centuries an important section of the Grecian contemporary world. Their name, unnoticed by Homer, occurs for the first time in the Hesiodic poems. When the Homeric Zeus in the Iliad turns his eye away from Troy toward Thrace, he sees, besides the Thracians and Mysians, other tribes whose names cannot be made out, but whom the poet knows as milk-eaters and mare-milkers; and the same characteristic attributes, coupled with that of “having wagons for their dwelling-houses,” appear in Hesiod connected with the name of the Scythians: and the earliest proof which we find of Scythia, as a territory familiar to Grecian ideas and feeling, is found in a fragment of the poet Alcæus (ca. 600 B.C.), wherein he addresses Achilles as “sovereign of Scythia.” There were, besides, several other Milesian foundations on or near the Tauric Chersonesus (Crimea) which brought the Greeks into conjunction with the Scythians--Heraclea, Chersonesus, and Theodosia, on the southern coast and the southwestern corner of the peninsula--Panticapæum and the Teian colony of Phanagoria (these two on the European and Asiatic sides of the Cimmerian Bosporus respectively), and Cepi, Hermonassa, etc., not far from Phanagoria, on the Asiatic coast of the Euxine: last of all, there was, even at the extremity of the Palus Mæotis (Sea of Azov), the Grecian settlement of Tanais.

All or most of these seem to have been founded during the course of the sixth century B.C., though the precise dates of most of them cannot be named; probably several of them anterior to the time of the mystic poet Aristeas of Proconnesus, about 540 B.C. His long voyage from the Palus Mæotis (Sea of Azov) into the interior of Asia as far as the country of the Issedones (described in the poem, now lost, called the Arimaspian verses), implies an habitual intercourse between Scythians and Greeks which could not well have existed without Grecian establishments on the Cimmerian Bosporus.

Hecatæus of Miletus appears to have given much geographical information respecting the Scythian tribes; but Herodotus, who personally visited the town of Olbia, together with the inland regions adjoining to it, and probably other Grecian settlements in the Euxine (at a time which we may presume to have been about 450-440 B.C.)--and who conversed with both Scythians and Greeks competent to give him information--has left us far more valuable statements respecting the Scythian people, dominion, and manners, as they stood in his day. His conception of the Scythians, as well as that of Hippocrates, is precise and well-defined--very different from that of the later authors, who use the word almost indiscriminately to denote all barbarous nomads. His territory called Scythia is a square area, twenty days’ journey or four thousand stadia (somewhat less than five hundred English miles) in each direction--bounded by the Danube (the course of which river he conceives in a direction from N. W. to S. E.), the Euxine, and the Palus Mæotis with the river Tanais, on three sides respectively--and on the fourth or north side by the nations called Agathyrsi, Neuri, Androphagi, and Melanchlæni. However imperfect his idea of the figure of this territory may be found, if we compare it with a good modern map, the limits which he gives us are beyond all dispute: from the Lower Danube and the mountains eastward of Transylvania to the Lower Tanais, the whole area was either occupied by or subject to the Scythians. And this name comprised tribes differing materially in habits and civilisation. The great mass of the people who bore it, strictly nomadic in their habits,--neither sowing nor planting, but living only on food derived from animals, especially mare’s milk and cheese--moved from place to place, carrying their families in wagons covered with wicker and leather, themselves always on horseback with their flocks and herds, between the Borysthenes and the Palus Mæotis. They hardly even reached so far westward as the Borysthenes, since a river (not easily identified) which Herodotus calls Panticapes, flowing into the Borysthenes from the eastward, formed their boundary. These nomads were the genuine Scythians, possessing the marked attributes of the race, and including among their number the Regal Scythians--hordes so much more populous and more effective in war than the rest, as to maintain undisputed ascendency, and to account all other Scythians no better than their slaves. It was to these that the Scythian kings belonged, by whom the religious and political unity of the name was maintained--each horde having its separate chief and to a certain extent separate worship and customs. But besides these nomads, there were also agricultural Scythians, with fixed abodes, living more or less upon bread, and raising corn for exportation, along the banks of the Borysthenes and the Hypanis. And such had been the influence of the Grecian settlement of Olbia at the mouth of the latter river in creating new tastes and habits, that two tribes on its western banks, the Callipidæ and the Alazones, had become completely accustomed both to tillage and to vegetable food, and had in other respects so much departed from their Scythian rudeness as to be called Hellenic-Scythians, many Greeks being seemingly domiciled among them. Northward of the Alazones lay those called the agricultural Scythians, who sowed corn, not for food, but for sale.

Such stationary cultivators were doubtless regarded by the predominant mass of the Scythians as degenerate brethren. Some historians even maintain that they belonged to a foreign race, standing to the Scythians merely in the relation of subjects--an hypothesis contradicted implicitly, if not directly, by the words of Herodotus, and no way necessary in the present case. It is not from them, however, that Herodotus draws his vivid picture of the people, with their inhuman rites and repulsive personal features. It is the purely nomadic Scythians whom he depicts, the earliest specimens of the Mongolian race (so it seems probable) known to history, and prototypes of the Huns and Bulgarians of later centuries. The Sword, in the literal sense of the word, was their chief god--an iron scimitar solemnly elevated upon a wide and lofty platform, which was supported on masses of fagots piled underneath--to whom sheep, horses, and a portion of their prisoners taken in war, were offered up in sacrifice: Herodotus treats this sword as the image of the god Ares, thus putting an Hellenic interpretation upon that which he describes literally as a barbaric rite. The scalps and the skins of slain enemies, and sometimes the skull formed into a drinking-cup, constituted the decoration of a Scythian warrior: whoever had not slain an enemy, was excluded from participation in the annual festival and bowl of wine prepared by the chief of each separate horde. The ceremonies which took place during the sickness and funeral obsequies of the Scythian kings (who were buried at Gerrhi at the extreme point to which navigation extended up the Borysthenes) partook of the same sanguinary disposition. It was the Scythian practice to put out the eyes of all their slaves; and the awkwardness of the Scythian frame, often overloaded with fat, together with extreme dirt of body, and the absence of all discriminating feature between one man and another, complete the brutish portrait. Mare’s milk (with cheese made from it) seems to have been their chief luxury, and probably served the same purpose of procuring the intoxicating drink called kumiss, as at present among the Bashkirs and the Calmucks.

If the habits of the Scythians were such as to create in the near observer no other feeling than repugnance, their force at least inspired terror. They appeared in the eyes of Thucydides so numerous and so formidable, that he pronounces them irresistible, if they could but unite, by any other nation within his knowledge. [He says of them, to quote Hobbes’ translation (1676): “For there’s no nation, not to say of Europe, but neither of Asia, that are comparable to this, or that, as long as they agree, are able, one nation to one, to stand against the Scythians: and yet in matters of Counsel and Wisdom in the present occasions of life, they are not like to other men.”]

Herodotus, too, conceived the same idea of a race among whom every man was a warrior and a practised horse-bowman, and who were placed by their mode of life out of all reach of an enemy’s attack. Moreover, Herodotus does not speak meanly of their intelligence, contrasting them in favourable terms with the general stupidity of the other nations bordering on the Euxine. In this respect Thucydides seems to differ from him.[c]

HERODOTUS ON THE CUSTOMS OF THE SCYTHIANS

The Scythians affirm of their country that it was of all others the last formed, which happened in this manner: When this region was in its original and desert state, the first inhabitant was named Targitaus, a son, as they say (but which to me seems incredible) of Jupiter, by a daughter of the Borysthenes. This Targitaus had three sons, Lipoxais, Arpoxais, and lastly Colaxais. Whilst they possessed the country, there fell from heaven into the Scythian district a plough, a yoke, an axe, and a goblet, all of gold. The eldest of the brothers was the first who saw them; who, running to take them, was burnt by the gold. On his retiring, the second brother approached, and was burnt also. When these two had been repelled by the burning gold, last of all the youngest brother advanced; upon him the gold had no effect, and he carried it to his house. The two elder brothers, observing what had happened, resigned all authority to the youngest.

From Lipoxais those Scythians were descended who are termed the Auchatæ; from Arpoxais, the second brother, those who are called the Catiari and the Traspies; from the youngest, who was king, came the Paralatæ. Generally speaking, these people are named Scoloti, from a surname of their king, but the Greeks call them Scythians.

This is the account which the Scythians give of their origin; and they add, that from their first king Targitaus, to the invasion of their country by Darius, is a period of a thousand years, and no more. The sacred gold is preserved by their kings with the greatest care; and every year there are solemn sacrifices, at which the prince assists. They have a tradition, that if the person who has the custody of this gold, sleeps in the open air during the time of their annual festival, he dies before the end of the year; for this reason they give him as much land as he can pass over on horseback in the course of a day. As this region is extensive, king Colaxais divided the country into three parts, which he gave to three sons, making that portion the largest in which the gold was deposited. As to the district which lies farther to the north, and beyond the extreme inhabitants of the country, they say that it neither can be passed, nor yet discerned with the eye, on account of the feathers which are continually falling: with these both the earth and the air are so filled, as effectually to obstruct the view.

Such is the manner in which the Scythians describe themselves and the country beyond them. The Greeks who inhabit Pontus speak of both as follows: Hercules, when he was driving away the heifers of Geryon, came to this region, now inhabited by the Scythians, but which then was a desert. This Geryon lived beyond Pontus, in an island which the Greeks call Erythia, near Gades (Cadiz) which is situate in the ocean, and beyond the Columns of Hercules. The ocean, they say, commencing at the east, flows round all the earth; this, however, they affirm without proving it. Hercules coming from thence arrived at this country, now called Scythia, where, finding himself overtaken by a severe storm, and being exceedingly cold, he wrapped himself up in his lion’s skin and went to sleep. They add, that his mares, which he had detached from his chariot to feed, by some divine interposition disappeared during his sleep.

As soon as he awoke, he wandered over all the country in search of his mares, till at length he came to the district which is called Hylæa: there in a cave he discovered a female of most unnatural appearance, resembling a woman as far as the thighs, but whose lower parts were like a serpent. Hercules beheld her with astonishment, but he was not deterred from asking her whether she had seen his mares? She made answer that they were in her custody; she refused, however, to restore them, but upon condition of his cohabiting with her. The terms proposed, induced Hercules to consent; but she still deferred restoring his mares, from the wish of retaining him longer with her, whilst Hercules was equally anxious to obtain them and depart. After a while she restored them with these words: “Your mares, which wandered here, I have preserved; you have paid what was due to my care, I have conceived by you three sons; I wish you to say how I shall dispose of them hereafter; whether I shall detain them here, where I am the sole sovereign, or whether I shall send them to you.” The reply of Hercules was to this effect: “As soon as they shall be grown up to man’s estate, observe this, and you cannot err; whichever of them you shall see bend this bow, and wear this belt as I do, him detain in this country: the others, who shall not be able to do this, you may send away. By minding what I say, you will have pleasure yourself, and will satisfy my wishes.”

Having said this, Hercules took one of his bows, for thus far he had carried two, and showing her also his belt, at the end of which a golden cup was suspended, he gave her them, and departed. As soon as the boys of whom she was delivered grew up, she called the eldest Agathyrsus, the second Gelonus, and the youngest Scytha. She remembered also the injunctions she had received; and two of her sons, Agathyrsus and Gelonus, who were incompetent to the trial which was proposed, were sent away by their mother from this country. Scytha the youngest was successful in his exertions, and remained. From this Scytha, the son of Hercules, the Scythian monarchs are descended; and from the golden cup the Scythians to this day have a cup at the end of their belts.

This is the story which the Greek inhabitants of Pontus relate; but there is also another, to which I am more inclined to assent: the Scythian Nomades of Asia, having been harassed by the Massagetæ in war, passed the Araxes and settled in Cimmeria; for it is to be observed, that the country now possessed by the Scythians belonged formerly to the Cimmerians. This people, when attacked by the Scythians, deliberated what it was most adviseable to do against the inroad of so vast a multitude. Their sentiments were divided; both were violent, but that of the kings appears preferable. The people were of opinion that it would be better not to hazard an engagement, but to retreat in security; the kings were, at all events, for resisting the enemy. Neither party would recede from their opinions, the people and the princes mutually refusing to yield; the people wished to retire before the invaders, the princes determined rather to die where they were, reflecting upon what they had enjoyed before, and alarmed by the fears of future calamities. From verbal disputes they soon came to actual engagement, and they happened to be nearly equal in number. All those who perished by the hands of their countrymen were buried by the Cimmerians near the river Tyras, where their monuments may still be seen. The survivors fled from their country, which in its abandoned state was seized and occupied by the Scythians.

There are still to be found in Scythia walls and bridges which are termed Cimmerian; the same name is also given to a whole district, as well as to a narrow sea. It is certain that when the Cimmerians were expelled their country by the Scythians, they fled to the Asiatic Chersonesus, where the Greek city of Sinope is at present situated. It is also apparent that whilst engaged in the pursuit the Scythians deviated from their proper course and entered Media. The Cimmerians in their flight kept uniformly by the seacoast; but the Scythians, having Mount Caucasus to their right, continued the pursuit, till by following an inland direction they entered Media.

The Scythians have the advantage of all these celebrated rivers [the Danube, Don, Tyras, Hypanis, Borysthenes, etc.] The grass which this country produces is, of all that we know, the fullest of moisture, which evidently appears from the dissection of their cattle.

We have shown that this people possess the greatest abundance; their particular laws and observances are these: of their divinities, Vesta is without competition the first, then Jupiter, and Tellus, whom they believe to be the wife of Jupiter; next to these are Apollo, the Cœlestial Venus, Hercules, and Mars. All the Scythians revere these as deities, but the Royal Scythians pay divine rites also to Neptune. In the Scythian tongue Vesta is called Tabiti; Jupiter, and, as I think very properly, Papæus; Tellus, Apia; Apollo, Œtosyrus; the Cœlestial Venus, Artimpasa; and Neptune, Thamimasadas. Among all these deities Mars is the only one to whom they think it proper to erect altars, shrines, and temples.

Their mode of sacrifice in every place appointed for the purpose is precisely the same, and it is this: the victim is secured with a rope by its two fore feet; the person who offers the sacrifice, standing behind, throws the animal down by means of this rope; as it falls, he invokes the name of the divinity to whom the sacrifice is offered; he then fastens a cord round the neck of the victim and strangles it, by winding the cord round a stick; all this is done without fire, without libations, or without any of the ceremonies in use amongst us. When the beast is strangled, the sacrificer takes off its skin and prepares to dress it.

As Scythia is very barren of wood, they have the following contrivance to dress the flesh of the victim: having flayed the animal, they strip the flesh from the bones, and if they have them at hand, they throw it into certain pots made in Scythia, and resembling the Lesbian caldrons, though somewhat larger; under these a fire is made with the bones. If these pots cannot be procured, they enclose the flesh with a certain quantity of water in the paunch of the victim, and make a fire with the bones as before. The bones being very inflammable, and the paunch without difficulty made to contain the flesh separated from the bone, the ox is thus made to dress itself, which is also the case with the other victims. When the whole is ready, he who sacrifices throws down with some solemnity before him the entrails and the more choice pieces. They sacrifice different animals, but horses in particular.

Such are the sacrifices and ceremonies observed with respect to their other deities; but to the god Mars, the particular rites which are paid are these: in every district they construct a temple to this divinity of this kind; bundles of small wood are heaped together, to the length of three stadia, and quite as broad, but not so high; the top is a regular square, three of the sides are steep and broken, but the fourth is an inclined plane forming the ascent. To this place are every year brought one hundred and fifty wagons full of these bundles of wood, to repair the structure which the severity of the climate is apt to destroy. Upon the summit of such a pile each Scythian tribe places an ancient scimetar, which is considered as the shrine of Mars, and is annually honoured by the sacrifice of sheep and horses; indeed, more victims are offered to this deity than to all the other divinities. It is their custom also to sacrifice every hundredth captive, but in a different manner from their other victims. Having poured libations upon their heads, they cut their throats into a vessel placed for that purpose. With this, carried to the summit of the pile, they besmear the above-mentioned scimetar. Whilst this is doing above, the following ceremony is observed below: from these human victims they cut off the right arms close to the shoulder, and throw them up into the air. This ceremony being performed on each victim severally, they depart; the arms remain where they happen to fall, the bodies elsewhere.

The above is a description of their sacrifices. Swine are never used for this purpose, nor will they suffer them to be kept in their country.

Their military customs are these: every Scythian drinks the blood of the first person he slays; the heads of all the enemies who fall by his hand in battle he presents to his king: this offering entitles him to a share of the plunder, which he could not otherwise claim. Their mode of stripping the skin from the head is this: they make a circular incision behind the ears, then, taking hold of the head at the top, they gradually flay it, drawing it towards them. They next soften it in their hands, removing every fleshy part which may remain by rubbing it with an ox’s hide; they afterwards suspend it, thus prepared, from the bridles of their horses, when they both use it as a napkin, and are proud of it as a trophy. Whoever possesses the greater number of these, is deemed the most illustrious. Some there are who sew together several of these portions of human skin and convert them into a kind of shepherd’s garment. There are others who preserve the skins of the right arms, nails and all, of such enemies as they kill, and use them as a covering for their quivers. The human skin is of all others certainly the whitest, and of a very firm texture; many Scythians will take the whole skin of a man, and having stretched it upon wood, use it as a covering to their horses.

Such are the customs of this people: this treatment, however, of their enemies’ heads, is not universal; it is only perpetrated on those whom they most detest. They cut off the skull below the eye-brows, and having cleansed it thoroughly, if they are poor, they merely cover it with a piece of leather; if they are rich, in addition to this, they decorate the inside with gold; it is afterwards used as a drinking cup. They do the same with respect to their nearest connections, if any dissensions have arisen, and they overcome them in combat before the king. If any stranger whom they deem of consequence happen to visit them, they make a display of these heads, and relate every circumstance of the previous connection, the provocations received, and their subsequent victory: this they consider as a testimony of their valour.

Once a year the prince or ruler of every district mixes a goblet of wine, of which those Scythians drink who have destroyed a public enemy. But of this they who have not done such a thing are not permitted to taste; these are obliged to sit apart by themselves, which is considered as a mark of the greatest ignominy. They who have killed a number of enemies, are permitted on this occasion to drink from two cups joined together.

They have amongst them a great number who practise the art of divination; for this purpose they use a number of willow twigs, in this manner: they bring large bundles of these together, and having untied them, dispose them one by one on the ground, each bundle at a distance from the rest. This done, they pretend to foretell the future, during which they take up the bundles separately and tie them again together. This mode of divination is hereditary among them. The enaries, or “effeminate men,” affirm that the art of divination was taught them by the goddess Venus. They take also the leaves of the lime-tree, which dividing into three parts they twine round their fingers; they then unbind it, and exercise the art to which they pretend.

Whenever the Scythian monarch happens to be indisposed, he sends for three of the most celebrated of these diviners. When the Scythians desire to use the most solemn kind of oath, they swear by the king’s throne: these diviners, therefore, make no scruple of affirming that such or such individual, pointing him out by name, has forsworn himself by the royal throne. Immediately the person thus marked out is seized, and informed that by their art of divination, which is infallible, he has been indirectly the occasion of the king’s illness by having violated the oath which we have mentioned. If the accused not only denies the charge, but expresses himself enraged at the imputation, the king convokes a double number of diviners, who, examining into the mode which has been pursued in criminating him, decide accordingly. If he be found guilty, he immediately loses his head, and the three diviners who were first consulted share his effects. If these last diviners acquit the accused, others are at hand, of whom if the greater number absolve him, the first diviners are put to death.

The manner in which they are executed is this: some oxen are yoked to a wagon filled with fagots, in the midst of which, with their feet tied, their hands fastened behind, and their mouths gagged, these diviners are placed; fire is then set to the wood, and the oxen are terrified to make them run violently away. It sometimes happens that the oxen themselves are burned; and often when the wagon is consumed, the oxen escape severely scorched. This is the method by which for the above-mentioned or similar offences they put to death those whom they call false diviners.

Of those whom the king condemns to death, he constantly destroys the male children, leaving the females unmolested. Whenever the Scythians form alliances, they observe these ceremonies: a large earthen vessel is filled with wine; into this is poured some of the blood of the contracting parties, obtained by a slight incision of a knife or a sword; in this cup they dip a scimetar, some arrows, a hatchet, and a spear. After this they pronounce some solemn prayers, and the parties who form the contract, with such of their friends as are of superior dignity, finally drink the contents of the vessel.

The sepulchres of the kings are in the district of the Gerrhi. As soon as the king dies, a large trench of a quadrangular form is sunk, near where the Borysthenes begins to be navigable. When this has been done, the body is enclosed in wax, after it has been thoroughly cleansed, and the entrails taken out; before it is sewn up, they fill it with anise, parsley seed, bruised cypress, and various aromatics. They then place it on a carriage, and remove it to another district, where the persons who receive it, like the royal Scythians, cut off a part of their ear, shave their heads in a circular form, take a round piece of flesh from their arm, wound their foreheads and noses, and pierce their left hands with arrows. The body is again carried to another province of the deceased king’s realms, the inhabitants of the former district accompanying the procession. After thus transporting the dead body through the different provinces of the kingdom, they come at last to the Gerrhi, who live in the remotest parts of Scythia, and amongst whom the sepulchres are. Here the corpse is placed upon a couch, round which, at different distances, daggers are fixed; upon the whole are disposed pieces of wood, covered with branches of willow. In some other part of this trench they bury one of the deceased’s concubines, whom they previously strangle, together with the baker, the cook, the groom, his most confidential servant, his horses, the choicest of his effects, and, finally, some golden goblets, for they possess neither silver nor brass: to conclude all, they fill up the trench with earth, and seem to be emulous in their endeavours to raise as high a mound as possible.

The ceremony does not terminate here. They select such of the deceased king’s attendants, in the following year, as have been most about his person; these are all native Scythians, for in Scythia there are no purchased slaves, the king selecting such to attend him as he thinks proper: fifty of these they strangle, with an equal number of his best horses. They open and cleanse the bodies of them all, which, having filled with straw, they sew up again: then upon two pieces of wood they place a third, of a semicircular form, with its concave side uppermost, a second is disposed in like manner, then the third, and so on, till a sufficient number have been erected. Upon these semicircular pieces of wood they place the horses, after passing large poles through them, from the feet to the neck. One part of the structure, formed as we have described, supports the shoulders of the horse, the other his hinder parts, whilst the legs are left to project upwards. The horses are then bridled, and the reins fastened to the legs; upon each of these they afterwards place one of the youths who have been strangled, in the following manner: a pole is passed through each, quite to the neck, through the back, the extremity of which is fixed to the piece of timber with which the horse has been spitted; having done this with each, they so leave them.

The above are the ceremonies observed in the interment of their kings: as to the people in general, when any one dies, the neighbours place the body on a carriage, and carry it about to the different acquaintance of the deceased; these prepare some entertainment for those who accompany the corpse, placing the same before the body, as before the rest. Private persons, after being thus carried about for the space of forty days, are then buried. They who have been engaged in the performance of these rites, afterwards use the following mode of purgation: after thoroughly washing the head, and then drying it, they do thus with regard to the body; they place in the ground three stakes, inclining towards each other; round these they bind fleeces of wool as thickly as possible, and finally, into the space betwixt the stakes they throw red-hot stones.

They have among them a species of hemp resembling flax, except that it is both thicker and larger; it is indeed superior to flax, whether it is cultivated or grows spontaneously. Of this the Thracians make themselves garments, which so nearly resemble those of flax as to require a skilful eye to distinguish them: they who had never seen this hemp, would conclude these vests to be made of flax.

The Scythians take the seed of this hemp, and placing it beneath the woollen fleeces which we have before described, they throw it upon the red-hot stones, when immediately a perfumed vapour ascends stronger than from any Grecian stove. This, to the Scythians, is in the place of a bath, and it excites from them cries of exultation. It is to be observed, that they never bathe themselves: the Scythian women bruise under a stone, some wood of the cypress, cedar, and frankincense; upon this they pour a quantity of water, till it becomes of a certain consistency, with which they anoint the body and the face; this at the time imparts an agreeable odour, and when removed on the following day, gives the skin a soft and beautiful appearance.

The Scythians have not only a great abhorrence of all foreign customs, but each province seems unalterably tenacious of its own.[d]

THE CIMMERIANS

The Cimmerians belong partly to legend, partly to history. We know even less of them than of the Scythians. The name Cimmerians appears in the Odyssey--the fable describes them as dwelling beyond the ocean-stream, immersed in darkness and unblest by the rays of Helios. Of this people as existent we can render no account, for they had passed away, or lost their identity and become subject, previous to the commencement of trustworthy authorities; but they seem to have been the chief occupants of the Tauric Chersonesus (Crimea) and of the territory between that peninsula and the river Tyras (Dniester), at the time when the Greeks first commenced their permanent settlements on those coasts in the seventh century B.C. The numerous localities which bore their name, even in the time of Herodotus, after they had ceased to exist as a nation--as well as the tombs of the Cimmerian kings then shown near the Tyras--sufficiently attest this fact; and there is reason to believe that they were (like their conquerors and successors the Scythians) a nomadic people, mare-milkers, moving about with their tents and herds, suitably to the nature of those unbroken steppes which their territory presented, and which offered little except herbage in profusion. Strabo tells us (on what authority we do not know) that they, as well as the Treres and other Thracians, had desolated Asia Minor more than once before the time of Ardys, and even earlier than Homer.[c] Historical knowledge of the Cimmerians may be briefly summed up:

About 660 B.C. the Assyrian empire was mightier than ever. A brother of the king ruled in Babylon; the host of petty princes in Egypt were tributary; Syria, Mesopotamia, the eastern mountain lands, and even the frontiers of Armenia and Asia Minor had been directly incorporated with the empire. There seemed to be no reason to fear a dangerous uprising anywhere. A few decades later the proud structure had disappeared from the earth. Though the conquered nations had contributed in part to its fall, both the first impulse and the decisive blows were given from without by a great migration of nations. We find the evident effects of them everywhere; but their course in detail is almost completely veiled in darkness.

The first great wandering started from the northern coast of the Black Sea. About the eighth century the Scythian Scoloti, one of the Iranian nomadic tribes, ostensibly themselves crowded out by the Massagetæ, crossed the Volga and the Don, and drove the Cimmerians out of their abode. Apparently a remnant of the original population remained in the Crimea (this name is itself derived from that of the Cimmerians); but the great mass left home with wives and children. In all probability they went over the Danube into Thrace, being joined by Thracian tribes on the way; and the passage of the Thynians and Bithynians across the Bosporus, and their settlement in the ancient territory of the Bebrykians (as far as the Sangarius), are also connected with these movements.

About 700 B.C. the Cimmerians, together with the Thracian tribes that had joined them, invaded Asia Minor, devastating and plundering the land far and wide. It was a migration like that of the northern tribes which passed through Syria in the twelfth century, and that of the Galatians into Asia Minor in the third century, who ravaged there just as the Cimmerians did. The invading tribes were doubtless accompanied by wives and children, and carried all their possessions with them.

The isolated notices of the invasion which are all that we possess cannot be determined chronologically. Aristotle records that Antandrus, the Lelegian city on the southern slope of Mount Ida, was in the possession of the Cimmerians for a hundred years. Thracians are also said to have occupied Abydos before its colonisation from Miletus.

They also made their way farther to the east. Sinope is called the principal seat of the Cimmerians; they are said to have slain here the leader of the Milesian settlement, Abrondas (?). When they entered Phrygia, it is said, the last king, Midas, the son of Gordius, killed himself by drinking the blood of a bull. After that the Phrygian kingdom disappears from history.

From here, then, they presumably first came into contact with the Assyrians. King Esarhaddon tells, before his Cilician campaign, of a fight in the unknown district of Khubushna with “the Teuspa of Gimir [Hebrew Gomer], … whose dwelling is far.” This battle, the scene of which can only be sought in Cappadocia, must be put about 675 B.C.

The movements were directed toward Lydia as well as Phrygia. Here at this time the last of the Heraclids, Candaules or Sadyattes, had fallen a victim to a palace revolution, and his murderer, Gyges, son of Dascylus, of the distinguished family of the Mermnadæ, which had been for generations at feud with the Heraclids, had taken possession of the throne. The Delphian oracle having decided in his favour, he had been acknowledged by the Lydians. The new ruler seems to have been a capable warrior. According to Strabo, the whole Troad was subject to him; consequently, he must also have possessed the coast of Teuthrania. That the districts of Caria were under his rule, if not that of his predecessors, appears certain. The Greek coast cities were also attacked by him, and Colophon was taken. In order to defend himself against the Cimmerians, he swore allegiance to the Assyrian king, Asshurbanapal, who records that Gyges (Assyrian Gugu), in consequence, won a great victory over the Cimmerians, and sent two of their chiefs captive to Nineveh.

The allegiance rendered to the Assyrian king was nothing more than a temporary expedient. As soon as he felt safe from the Cimmerians, Gyges began preparations to attack the Assyrian supremacy, which was likely to become dangerous to the hitherto unassailed countries of Asia Minor. With this end in view, he made an alliance with Psamthek of Saïs, who had revolted against Assyria, and sent Greek and Carian mercenaries to his aid. Asshurbanapal, who was fully occupied by his Elamite wars, could take no steps against him.

But soon afterwards the Cimmerians appeared again in Lydia; Gyges himself fell in battle; the whole land was overrun by the wild hordes and Sardis taken. Then they attacked the Greek coast cities. In Ephesus the poet Callinus inspired a resistance that successfully repulsed the attack of the Cimmerian prince Lygdamis;[11] but the temple of Artemis outside the city was burned. On the other hand, the flourishing city of Magnesia, on the Mæander, was taken and destroyed. However, the savage hordes were no more able to hold the plundered territory permanently than to lay regular siege to the fortified cities. Ardys, the son of Gyges, finally restored the power of his father’s kingdom; and as we are told that he attacked the Greeks, he must first have repulsed the Cimmerians and covered his rear. Asshurbanapal tells that he repented the sins of his father, and sent an embassy to renew his allegiance (646 B.C.); however, this certainly means nothing more than the restoration of friendly relations with Assyria.[e]

FOOTNOTES

[11] [It is possible that this Lygdamis is the “Tuktammu of the Manda,” for whose defeat, according to a recently deciphered inscription, Asshurbanapal returned thanks to the Assyrian gods.]

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III. SOME PEOPLES OF SYRIA, ASIA MINOR, AND ARMENIA

THE ARAMÆANS

Next to the Hittites the Aramæans were the people who held the most important towns of Syria, gradually advancing until at last they occupied the whole country. Of the Aramæan stocks named in Genesis x. 23; xxii. 21 sq. very little is known, but it is certain that Aramæans at an early period had their abode close to the northern border of Palestine (in Maachah). A great part was played in the history of Israel by the state of Aram Dammesek, i.e., the territory of the ancient city of Damascus; it was brought into subjection for a short time under David. The main object of the century-long dispute between the two kingdoms was the possession of the land to the east of the Jordan (Hauran, and especially Gilead). Another Aramæan state often mentioned in the Bible is that of Aram Zobah. That Zobah was situated within Syria is certain, though how far to the west or north of Damascus is not known; in any case it was not far from Hamath. Hamath in the valley of the Orontes, at the mouth of the Beka valley, was from an early period one of the most important places in Syria; according to the Bible, its original inhabitants were Canaanites. The district belonging to it, including amongst other places Riblah (of importance on account of its situation), was not very extensive. In 733 B.C. Tiglathpileser III compassed the overthrow of the kingdom of Damascus; he also took Arpad (Tel-Arfad), an important place three hours to the north of Aleppo. Hamath was taken by Sargon in 720. Henceforth the petty states of Syria were at all times subject to one or other of the great world empires, even if in some cases a certain degree of independence was preserved.[c]

Definite knowledge concerning the smaller peoples of Asia Minor is so limited and vague, the intermixture of small tribes and ruling houses so chaotic, and the literature remaining so meagre and uncertain, that we can do little better than make a brief summary of the fortunes of each of these lesser communities.

PHRYGIA

Phrygia is a country of many mountains and numerous river valleys. The fertility of the latter was always remarkable, and on the northern boundary, at the sources of the river Sangarius, wide stretches of pasture land afforded nourishment for sheep. Grapes were also extensively cultivated.

The ancient Phrygians were an agricultural people, and the strange rites of their religious worship all had reference to the renewal and decay of nature. The “Phrygian mother,” who was called by the Greeks Rhea, or Cybele, and whose name in the Phrygian language is said to have been Amma, had her temple at the foot of Mount Agdus, near Pessinus, where she was served by hosts of priests. She was worshipped in the temple under the guise of a formless stone, said to have fallen from heaven, and was conceived of as driving over the mountains in a chariot, and wearing a crown of towers upon her head. The beloved of Cybele was Attys, and the festivals of his birth and death were celebrated with wild grief and frantic joy and accompanied by barbarous and unlovely rites, much like those of the worship of Adonis at Byblus. Cybele represents nature, or nature as the producer of life, and the birth and death of Attys typify the spring and autumn of the year.

The sovereigns of Phrygia are said to have come from the agricultural class. Gordius, the first king, was called from following his wagon to rule over Phrygia. His son Midas was the hero of many Greek legends. The story of his receiving the gift of turning everything he touched into gold indicates the possession of enormous wealth. This name occurs in various connections, and it appears that the kings of the ancient Phrygian dynasty bore alternately the names of Gordius and Midas. Their tombs are still visible in the Doghanlu valley and exhibit inscriptions in Greek writing, but in the Phrygian language. The dynasty came to an end in face of an invasion of the Cimmerians, about 675 B.C., and on the expulsion of the latter about a century later the kingdom was annexed by Lydia.

A story told by Herodotus shows that the Egyptians regarded the Phrygians as the oldest people of the world. The Greeks thought that they came from Thrace and were originally called Brigians, but the Phrygians, while owning the relationship to the Brigians of Thrace, declared themselves to be the older people. Modern writers are disposed to attribute an Armenian origin to both races. There are indications which serve to show that the Phrygians once extended their rule over a much wider area than that assigned to their country in our maps of the ancient world; that they held command of the seaboard and were even found beyond the Ægean. But these indications do not amount to proof.

The people of Phrygia once inhabited rock-dwellings which still exist, ranged in rows and one above another. They subsequently built towns,--several were ascribed to the first Gordius and Midas,--and developed an advanced type of civilisation. They are credited with the invention of embroidery, and from the wool of their numerous flocks of sheep they manufactured fine cloths. Cotiæum in Phrygia is one of the towns which claims to be the birthplace of Æsop, and though the Greeks affected to despise the Phrygian music, as is shown by the story of Apollo and Marsyas, it is nevertheless a fact that the Hellenes borrowed the Phrygian flute and shepherd’s pipe as well as a Phrygian form of poetry. In the art of sculpture, though they did not invent a school of their own, the Phrygians must have brought considerable originality into play, for they have impressed a distinctly national stamp on their monuments, though the general style was borrowed from abroad.

THE CAPPADOCIANS

The chief point of interest furnished by this people is to be found in their religious worship. Its principal centres were the two cities of Comana, the one situated on the river Iris, which flows north into the Euxine, and the other in the southern part of the country on the slopes of Anti-Taurus, near the river Sarus. The high priests were generally of royal blood and enjoyed great consideration, even wearing a royal diadem at the great religious festival, and their importance does not seem to have been diminished by the Persian conquest.

The Cappadocians had the reputation of being brave but untrustworthy, characteristics appropriate to a people who worshipped a warrior moon-goddess. For besides the moon-god Men, they adored Ma, or Mene, identified with Enio, or Bellona, as well as with Artemis. Ma was waited on by numerous priests and temple servants, who constituted the main population of the southern Comana, while hosts of maidens, clad in warlike dress and wearing the same weapons as their divine mistress, participated in her wild rites. It is thought that it was the existence of these women which gave rise to the legend of the Amazons, or nation of female warriors, whom the Greeks supposed to have had their home in the mythical town of Themiscyra on the banks of the Thermodon in Pontus.

The chief festival was that known as the “Exodus” of the goddess, and was attended by many pilgrims from far and near. The worshippers gashed their own bodies and took part in the wildest sensual excesses. These, and the personal sacrifices required from the votaries of Ma, reveal the Semitic origin of the race which practised them, and resemble those belonging to the service of the “Phrygian mother.”

The Greek name for the Cappadocians was “Leuco-Syrians,” i.e., white Syrians, and the myth traced their descent from Syros, son of Apollo. The original Semitic population received a foreign admixture in the eighth century B.C., when some of the Cimmerians, who invaded Asia Minor, settled amongst them and became entirely absorbed in the population. The Cataonians, who inhabited a district in the southeast of the country, were said to be a distinct race, but the personal observations of Strabo in the century before Christ could detect no differences between the two peoples. A further evidence of Semitic origin is found in coins of northern Cappadocia, which date from the fourth century B.C. and bear the image of the Syrian god Baal, with legends inscribed in Aramæan.

The southern part of Cappadocia covers the highest plateau of Asia Minor, and its cold climate is a reason why it can never have been very productive, though wine and oil were grown in certain districts. It furnished, however, ample pasturage for sheep and horses, but the chief wealth of the people seems to have consisted in slaves. Silver, iron, and steel were to be obtained in ancient times from the northeastern districts bordering on Armenia, where dwelt the Tibareni, the Chalybes, and other wild tribes of unknown origin. The mineral products of their territory were turned to account by the Greeks, who had established colonies all along the Cappadocian coast.

Our real knowledge of Cappadocian history goes no farther back than the Persian conquest, and the name of Cappadocians is a Persian appellation--Katapatuka. The Persians divided the country into the two provinces of Cappadocia on the Pontus (afterwards called simply Pontus) and Great Cappadocia, stretching from the Taurus range on the south and including the country on the upper reaches of the Halys. Each constituted a separate satrapy whose governors enjoyed practical independence and royal titles.

THE CILICIANS

Between the Taurus Mountains and that ridge which the ancients called Amanus, lies a fertile and isolated plain which formed the principal part of the ancient kingdom of Cilicia. Xenophon describes it as “a large and beautiful plain, well watered, and full of all sorts of trees and vines, abounding in sesame, panic, millet, wheat, and barley,” and “surrounded with a strong and high ridge of hills from sea to sea.” This plain was by no means the whole of the territory occupied by the Cilicians, which stretched far west among the wild Taurus Mountains as far as Coracesium on the borders of Pamphylia, and appears, from the statements of Herodotus, to have reached to the Euphrates and to have also included a large part of Cappadocia.

The Cilicians were a Semitic race and, like the Cappadocians, nearly related to the Syrians. They evidently worshipped the Syrian gods, for the latter are represented on Cilician coins belonging to the Persian epoch, especially the sun-god Baal, seated on a throne and holding grapes and ears of corn in his hand. But we also find representations of Hercules on these coins, and Greek as well as Aramæan inscriptions, showing that this Semitic race passed under the influence of the Hellenes, who had indeed many settlements in the west of Cilicia.

The Cilician cities of Tarsus and Anchiale were said to have been built in a single day by Sardanapalus, king of Assyria. The Assyrian monuments know of no sovereign of that name, but they make mention of several invasions by Assyria, apparently of the destructive nature common to such expeditions. Sargon conferred the sovereignty of Cilicia on Ambris, king of Tubal, whom he afterwards deposed. Cilicia continued, however, to have her own kings, and they rebelled against Assyria on several occasions, finally recovering their complete independence on the fall of the empire. We hear of more than one king of Cilicia in Persian times, all styled Syennesis, which, therefore, seems to have been rather a title than a name. Xenophon describes the passage of Cyrus the Younger through Cilicia, whose king did homage to him, and was subsequently punished for his disloyalty by being deprived of his power, after which the country was ruled by Persian governors.

Alexander passed through Cilicia on his way to his great battle of Issus just beyond the Amanus range, and the country then passed under Macedonian rule; but in the confused years which followed the death of the great conqueror we find the wild country of Cilicia Trachæ, successfully maintained in independence by hordes of Cilician pirates.

PAMPHYLIA AND PISIDIA

Cilicia Trachæ was the western section of the country; it bordered on Pamphylia and Pisidia, and the Cilician pirates were joined in their predatory expeditions by the two neighbouring peoples, of whom the Pamphylians possessed a convenient harbour, that of Side, which seems to have been their great centre. The Pisidians inhabited a country to the north of Pamphylia, and had no coast line of their own. They were a brave and hardy nation, who dwelt in towns built for the most part on high ridges, and who had opposed an obstinate resistance to Alexander. We know nothing of their origin or language, but from the imposing ruins of their cities it is evident that, in spite of being notorious robbers, they had arrived at an advanced stage of civilisation.

THE CARIANS

When the Dorian Greeks settled on the coast of Caria about the year 1000 B.C., they displaced an ancient people who considered themselves to have been settled in the country from the beginning of time. The Greeks, however, believed that these Carians had originally been called Leleges, and had been the subjects of Minos of Crete, whom they served as sailors. Whether they originally came from the Ægean Islands or no, it seems that they had sent out colonies to the Cyclades, Samos, etc., but had been expelled from them by the Phœnicians some centuries before the Dorians invaded their own continental home.

Though they were now forced to abandon the coast and take refuge in the mountains of the interior, the Carians were nevertheless a peculiarly warlike people. The Greeks imitated their fashion of wearing crested helmets and devices on their shields, as well as their method of carrying the shield itself, and they were much employed as mercenaries. From the middle of the eighth well on into the seventh century B.C., the Carian pirates were the terror of the seas, and their god was a warrior god, the Zeus with a battle-axe, whose image is represented on their coins. In harmony with their connection with the sea, we also find that they regarded Zeus as lord of both the ocean and the heavens, and in this character he was honoured at Mylasa in a temple where Lydians and Mysians had the right to worship with the Carians, a fact which the latter cited as a proof of the affinity of the three peoples.

The Carian nation in its mountain home was not ruled by a single king; the different towns under their aristocratic rulers were united in a kind of federative union, a form of government which was continued even after their conquest by the Persians. The common council met under the protection of the Zeus of Chrysaoris at “the white pillars” on the river Marsyas. Sometimes one town and sometimes another would assume a position of pre-eminence. The most famous of the towns of Caria is Halicarnassus, the city of Herodotus, originally a Greek town, and belonging to a Dorian hexapolis of which Cos, Cnidus, Lindus, Camirus, and Ialysus were the other members. After she had become alienated from the league, Halicarnassus incorporated the Carian city Salmacis. Several of her sovereigns are notable figures in history. Artemisia, queen of Halicarnassus, was with Xerxes at Salamis, and Herodotus represents her in the character of a valued counsellor to the Persian sovereign. Another Artemisia was the wife of Mausolus, who lived in the fourth century B.C. Though a Persian satrap, his power was practically that of an independent monarch and was inherited by his widow. The tomb which she erected to his memory is still regarded as one of the most wonderful monuments of the world.

THE LYCIANS

Southeast of Caria is a mountainous peninsula which was occupied by a nation whom the Greeks named Lycians, but who called themselves Tramilians, or according to Herodotus, Termilians. In the northeast of the peninsula there existed a tribe who bore the name of Milyans. Herodotus declares that these Milyans were formerly called Solymi, and that they were the original inhabitants of the country. Herodotus further states that the Termilians were driven from Crete with their leader Sarpedon, in consequence of the latter’s quarrel with his brother, Minos. Modern historians, however, reject the idea of a Cretan origin, as also the derivation which Herodotus gives for the name Lycians. The ancient writer said that it came from the name of Lycus, an Athenian exile who took refuge with Sarpedon; but it is considered more likely that it was derived from Apollo Lyceus, and if this is really the case the Lycians probably worshipped a god of light. Another statement of Herodotus; namely, that the Lycians reckoned descent through their mothers, is not confirmed by the monuments.

These have been found in great numbers, and show that this people developed a peculiar architecture of their own, but that they subsequently submitted to the artistic influence of Greece, though they never copied their models slavishly. The Lycian tombs are very numerous; most of them are built in the sides or carved in isolated fragments and pinnacles of the rocks. It is evident that the utmost reverence was shown to the dead, and their resting places were often placed in close proximity to the houses of the living. The inscriptions are in a language peculiar to the country, and in a writing resembling that used in the Peloponnesus, but distinct from it. None of very ancient date has as yet been deciphered.

The independence of the Lycian character was not only shown in the peculiarly national stamp they gave to everything which they borrowed from the Greek, but when the Lydian kingdom extended its borders so as to include most of the surrounding nations, the Lycians still preserved their own liberties, and Herodotus records the valiant resistance of the inhabitants of Xanthus to the overwhelming forces of the Persian, Harpagus. Though greatly outnumbered, they faced him in battle, but in spite of their heroic efforts he at last succeeded in overpowering them and driving them within their city of Xanthus; whereupon they first collected their families and all their treasures within the walls of the citadel and then burnt it to the ground. After which they sallied forth against the enemy and were all slain, fighting to the last.

The city of Xanthus was afterwards rebuilt and received a population of foreigners, to which, Herodotus asserts, there were added eighty families of Xanthians who had chanced to be abroad at the time of the disaster. The vast ruins of Xanthus proclaim it as the chief city of the Lycians, but many others existed. Pliny even asserts that they were once seventy in number. Strabo speaks of the twenty-three towns of the Lycian League. They were for the most part built on high ridges, and were governed by a senate and a general assembly of the people. The different towns had each a certain number of votes in the federative assembly, the number of votes being determined by the importance of the individual town. The supreme authority was vested in the Lyciarch, an official chosen by the assembly. This form of government survived after the Persian conquest, and, though the country was afterwards conquered by Alexander, and subsequently passed under the dominion alternately of the Ptolemies and Seleucids, its institutions were not destroyed, but continued to exist even under the suzerainty of Rome and down to the time of Claudius.

Lycia was the scene of the devastations of the legendary Chimæra, whom Bellerophon slew; and the latter was also said to have conquered the Solymi for the Lycian king. The Chimæra is a favourite subject of representation in the Lycian sculptures, and it has been supposed that the origin of the legend may be found in the streams of inflammable gas which issue from the side of a mountain of the Solyma range, in the neighbourhood of Deliktash.

THE MYSIANS

The Carians said that Mysus, ancestor of the Mysian nation, was the brother of Car and Lydus, and that this was the reason why the Mysians and Lydians had the privilege of worshipping in the temple of the Carian Jove. Xanthus of Lydia declared that they spoke a language composed of Phrygian and Lydian. As we only possess one specimen of the Mysian language, and that a somewhat doubtful one, our means of testing the question are somewhat inadequate, nor is our knowledge of Mysian early history much more satisfactory. Some ancient writers said that they came from Thrace, and a connection was supposed to exist between them and the Mœsians on the Danube, the latter being regarded as emigrants from Asia by those who believed in the relationship between the Mysians and Lydians.

The Mysians seem to have been driven into the interior by the Greek settlers who had established themselves all along their shores, and in this mountainous region they remained, having apparently made little progress in civilisation even in Persian times.

In the Homeric catalogue the Mysians appear as the allies of Troy, and we hear of their being conquered by Lydia. Their subsequent fate was the usual one of submission to the successive monarchs of the ancient world. They formed part of the Syrian monarchy and after 190 B.C. their country was added to the territory of the king of Pergamus. In 130 B.C. they were included in the Roman province of Asia, after which we hear no more of them as a nation.

THE BITHYNIANS AND THE PAPHLAGONIANS

Between the Olympus Mountains on the northeast of Mysia and the river Halys, which formed the western boundary of Cappadocia on the Pontus, lay the territory of the Bithynians and Paphlagonians. We know little of the early history of either nation.

The Paphlagonians are mentioned in Homer as the allies of the Trojans. Herodotus includes them among the nations conquered by Crœsus and describes the equipment of the Paphlagonians in Xerxes’ army, while Xenophon also speaks of the numerous soldiers they were able to put into the field. Like the other nations of Asia Minor, the Paphlagonians passed successively under the dominion of Persia and Macedonia and they were included with Cappadocia in the territory of Eumenes; but it was only when their country was annexed to the kingdom of Pontus that they ceased to be ruled by native princes. (Third century B.C.)

Bithynia takes its name from the tribe of the Bithyni who, with the Thyni, are said to have originally crossed from Thrace. There was an older population which they expelled, but the tribe of the Maryandini continued to maintain themselves in the northeastern mountains. Bithynia shared the fate of its neighbour in being conquered by both Lydians and Persians, but in the fourth century B.C. we find the beginning of a native monarchy which increased in power, until, under Nicomedes I, the founder of the city of Nicomedia, it became an important kingdom. This kingdom continued to exist till the encroaching strength of that of Pontus drove its sovereign to seek protection from the Roman power. It then became a Roman province and as such was for a time united with Paphlagonia.

The greater part of both these countries is wild and mountainous, and they possess extensive forests, but in many districts the rugged country gives place to fertile plains and valleys. The Greeks founded cities all along the coast, of which Sinope in Paphlagonia was the most important and the last place in that country to submit to the rule of Pontus (183 B.C.).

ARMENIA

In the native language Armenia is called Haik, and accordingly in the native legend we find the name of Haik ascribed to the founder of the first Armenian kingdom. This hero was said to be the fourth in descent from Japhet, and to have fled with a band of followers into the mountains of Ararat in consequence of the tyranny of Belus, king of Babylon, whom he afterwards defeated in a battle on the shores of Lake Van. The inscriptions reveal a close resemblance between the Babylonian writing and that used by the people of Urartu, the name employed in the Assyrian inscriptions for the country of Ararat. A distinction is however to be drawn between two races, the Armenians proper, who are of Aryan origin, and probably first appeared about the sixth century B.C., and the Alarodians, who were previously settled in the country and were eventually completely absorbed by the new-comers. It is the Alarodians, mentioned only by Herodotus, who seem to have possessed an affinity with the Babylonians.

A descendant of Haik is said to have extended his power even as far as Syria and Cappadocia and to have entered into alliance with Ninus of Assyria. The legend further states that Semiramis (Shamiram), queen of Assyria, made war on Araj of Armenia who had refused her love, and that she defeated and slew him in battle, after which she gave Armenia to Cardus. But Cardus rebelled against her and suffered the same fate as his predecessor, though his descendants were permitted to retain the throne as vassals to Assyria, till on the dissolution of the empire they recovered their independence. A later king, Tigranes, appears as the ally of Cyrus and the slayer of his rival Astyages. Tigranes is mentioned by Xenophon, but the value of the rest of the legendary history is extremely doubtful. The Assyrian inscriptions make frequent mention of expeditions into the Armenian territory. It was divided into various principalities. The Haikian dynasty had its seat at Armavir beyond the Araxes, and Van on the lake of the same name was a very ancient capital. The Haikian dynasty continued to reign till Alexander the Great defeated Vahi in 317 B.C. The eastern portion of Armenia was constituted an independent kingdom by Artaxias in 190 B.C., and under a later dynasty, the Arsacid, it seemed likely to become the centre of a great empire. The Romans, however, stepped in and its king Artavasdes, having been taken prisoner by Antony, was beheaded in the year 30 B.C. at the command of Cleopatra, while the country was split up into numerous rival principalities.[a]

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