Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/889

P H R P H R 853 (Strabo, p. 543), Ilije Bashi, Bunar Bashi, Geuk Bunar, Uzuk Bashi, which feed the Sangarius. Grea^ part of the Axylum was assigned to Galatia. (3) The rest of Phrygia is mountainous (except the great plateau, Banaz Ova), consisting of hill-country intersected by rivers, each of which flows through a fertile valley of varying breadth. The northern half is drained by rivers which run to the Black Sea ; of these the eastern ones, Porsuk Su (Tembris or Tembrogius), Seidi Su (Partheuius), Bardakehi Tchai (Xerabates), and Bayat Tchai (Alandrus), join the Sangarius, while the western, 1 Taushanly Tchai (Rhyndacus) and Simav Tchai (Macestus), meet and flow into the Propontis. The Hermus drains a small district included in the Byzantine Phrygia, but in earlier times assigned to Lydia and Mysia. Great part of southern and western Phrygia is drained by the Mseander with its tributaries, Sandykly Tchai (Glaucus), Banaz Tchai, Kopli Su (Hippurius), and Tchuruk Su (Lycus) ; moreover, some upland plains on the south, especially the Dornbai Ova (Aulocra), communicate by underground channels with the Mreander. Finally, the Karayuk Ova in the extreme south-west drains through the Kazanes, a tributary of the Indus, to the Lycian Sea. Phrygia Parorius and all the river -valleys are exceedingly fertile, and agricultui e was the chief occupation of the ancient inhabitants ; according to the myth, Gordius was called from the plough to the throne. The high-lying plains and the vast Axylum furnish excellent pasturage, which formerly nourished countless flocks of sheep. The Romans also obtained fine horses from Phrygia. Grapes, which still grow abundantly in various parts, were much cultivated in ancient times. Other fruits are rare, except in a few small districts. Figs cannot be grown in the country, and the ancient references to Phrygian figs are either erroneous or due to a loose use of the term Phrygia. 2 Trees are exceedingly scarce in the country ; the pine-woods on the western tributaries of the Sangarius and the valonia oaks in parts of the Banaz Ova, and a few other districts, form exceptions. The underground wealth is not known to be great. Iron was worked in the district of Cibyra, and the marble of Synnada, or more correctly of Docimium, was largely used by the Romans. The scenery is generally monotonous ; even the mountainous districts rarely show striking features or boldness of character ; where the landscape has beauty, it is of a subdued melancholy character. The water-supply is rarely abundant, and agriculture is more or less dependent on an uncertain rainfall. The circumstances of the country are well calculated to impress the inhabitants with a sense of the overwhelming power of nature and of their complete depend ence on it. Their mythology, so far as we know it, has a melan choly and mystic tone, and their religion partakes of the same character. The two chief deities were Cybele, the Mother, the re productive and nourishing power of Earth, and Sabazius, the Son, the life of nature, dying and reviving every year. The annual vicissitudes of the life of Sabazius, the Greek Dionysus, were accom panied by the mimic rites of his worshippers, who mourned with his sufferings and rejoiced with his joy. They enacted the story of his birth and life and death ; the Earth, the Mother, is fertilized only by an act of violence by her own child ; the representative of the god was probably slain each year by a cruel death, just as the god himself died. 3 The rites were characterized by a frenzy of devotion, unrestrained enthusiasm, wild orgiastic dances, and wanderings in the forests, and were accompanied by the music of the flute, cymbal, and tambourine. 4 At an early time this worship was affected by Oriental influence, coming over Syria from Baby lonia. Sabazius was identified with Adonis or Atys, Cybele with the Syrian goddess ; and many of the coarsest rites of the Phrygian worship, the mutilation of the priests, the prostitution at the shrine, 5 came from the hot countries of the south-east. But one curious point of Semitic religion never penetrated west of the Halys : the pig was always unclean and abhorred among the Semites, whereas it was the animal regularly used in purification by the Phrygians, Lydians, Lycians, and Greeks. 6 The Phrygian religion exercised a very strong influence on Greece. In the archaic period the Dionysiac rites and orgies spread from Thrace into Greece, in 1 This district was according to the Greek view part of Mysia. 2 In Strabo, p. 577, tai&<f>vrov must be wrong ; d/jLire<pvTov is true to fact, and is probably the right reading. Olives cannot grow on the uplands. 3 Those cults of Greece which are most closely related to the Phry gian were certainly accompanied originally by human sacrifices. 4 The influence which was exerted on Greek music and lyric poetry by the Phrygian music was great ; see MARSTAS, OLYMPUS. 5 There is no direct evidence that this was practised in the wor ship of Cybele, but analogy and indirect arguments make it pretty certain. 6 Cleon, the Phrygian, when high priest of the Cappadocian goddess at Comana, caused much scandal by using pigs in the sacred precincts (Strabo, p. 574) ; he only carried out the customs of his country. Pigs were used in all Greek purificatory rites, which were also practised in Lydia (Herod., i. 35). A pig is under the seat of the deified dead on the harpy tomb. spite of opposition which has left many traces in tradition, and the worship of Demeter at Eleusis was modified by Cretan influence ultimately traceable to Asia Minor. Pindar erected a shrine of the Mother of the gods beside his house, and the Athenians were directed by the Delphic oracle to atone for the execution of a priest of Cybele during the Peloponnesian War by building the Metroon. In these and other cases the Phrygian character was more or less Hellenized ; but wave after wave of religious influence from Asia. Minor introduced into Greece the unmodified " barbarian " ritual of Phrygia. The rites spread first among the common people and those engaged in foreign trade. The comic poets satirized them, and Plato and Demosthenes inveighed against them ; but they continued to spread, with all their fervid enthusiasm, their super stition, and their obscene practices, wide among the people, whose religious cravings were not satisfied with the purely external reli gions of Hellenism. The orgies or mysteries were open to all, free men or slaves, who had duly performed the preliminary purifi cations, and secured to the participants salvation and remission of sins. Under MYSTERIES (q.v.) a distinction of character has been pointed out between the true Hellenic mysteries, such as the Eleusinian, and the Phrygian ; but there certainly existed much similarity between the two rituals. In the first centuries after Christ only the Phrygian and the Egyptian rites retained much real hold on the Gneco-Roman world. Phrygia itself, however, wa? very early converted to Christianity. Christian inscriptions in the country begin in the 2d and are abundant in the 3d century. There is every appearance that the great mass of the people were Christians before 300, and Eusebius (H. E., v. 16) is probably correct in his statement that in the time of Diocletian there was a Phrygian city in which every living soul was Christian. The great Phrygian saint of the 2d century was named Abercius ; the mass of legends and miracles in the late biography of him long brought his very existence into dispute, but a recently-discovered fragment of his gravestone has proved that he was a real person, and makes it probable that the wide-reaching conversion of the people attri buted to him did actually take place. The strange enthusiastic character of the old Phrygian religion was not wholly lost when the country became Christian, but is clearly traced in the various heresies that arose in central Anatolia. Especially the wild ecstatic character and the prophecies of the Montanists recall the old type of religion. Montanus (see MONTANISM, vol. xvi. p. 775) was born on the borders of Phrygia and Mysia (doubtless in the Murad Dagh), and was vehemently opposed by Abercius. Of the old Phrygian language very little is known ; a few words are preserved in Hesychius and other writers. Plato mentions that the Phrygian words for "dog," "fire," &c., were the same as the Greek ; and to these we may add from inscriptions the words for "mother" and "king." A few inscriptions of the ancient period are known, and a somewhat larger number of the Roman period have been found, but not yet published. Owing to the scantiness of published material about Phrygia frequent refer ence has been made in this article to unpublished monuments, and historical views are stated which have only quite recently been published by the writer. Besides the works already quoted of Abel and Perrot, see Ritter s " Kleinasien," in his Erdkunde von Asien ; Leake s Asia Minor ; Kiepert s appendix to Franz, Fiinf Inschr. u.fiinf Stcidte Kleinasiens; Haase, in Erschand Gruber s Encyklnp. ; Hamilton s Travels in Asia Minor; Hirschfeld s " Reisebericht," in the Berl. Monatsber. (1879) ; Texier, Asie Mineure ; Steuart, Ancient Monuments ; besides the special chapters in the geographical treatises of Cramer, Vivien St Martin, Forbiger, &c. ; Ramsay, in Mittheil. Instit. Athen. (1882), Bulletin de Corresp. Hellen. (1882-83), and Journal of Hellenic Studies (1SS2 sq.). (W. M. RA.) PHRYNE, a celebrated Greek courtesan, flourished in the time of Alexander the Great (4th century B.C.). She was born at Thespiae in Boeotia, but seems to have lived at Athens. Originally so poor as to earn a living by gathering capers, she acquired so much wealth by her extraordinary beauty that she offered to rebuild the walls of Thebes, which had been destroyed by Alexander (335), on condition of inscribing on them, " Destroyed by Alexander, restored by Phryne the courtesan." On the occasion of a festival of Poseidon at Eleusis she laid aside her garments, let down her hair, and stepped into the sea in the sight of the people, thus suggesting to the painter Apelles his great picture of Aphrodite rising from the Sea, for which Phryne sat as model. The sculptor Praxiteles was one of her lovers, and she is said to have been the model of his celebrated Cnidian Aphrodite, which Pliny declared to be the most beautiful statue in the world. 7 There were statues of her by Praxiteles at Delphi and in 7 So Athenaeus, 590, 591. But according to others (Clemens Alex- andrinus, Protrep., 53, and Arnobius, Adv. Gentes, vi. 13) Praxiteles s model for the Cnidian Aphrodite was Cratina ; and Pliny (xxxv. 87) says that some declared that Apelles s model was Pancaspe.