Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/255

THE LYDIANS, THEIR COUNTRY, HISTORY, AND RELIGION. 239 Semitic were those sacred prostitutions which Herodotus notices with astonishment as existing among the Lydians, 1 as well as in Cyprus, whither they had been imported from the same source.* The stamp of Syrian cults is even more distinct in the myth of Atys, slain by a wild boar raised against him by Zeus, wroth at the divine honours paid to the former ; 3 in which we at once recognize the great Byblos myth, that of Adonis-Tamuz. Again, in the story told by Herodotus of Atys, the eldest son of Crcesus, who is killed by Adrates during a boar's hunt, one is tempted to see a later and somewhat modified form of the same myth. 4 The theme is invariably that of a fair youth, tenderly beloved, who falls a victim to an impure, loathsome monster ; stirred by the catastrophe which had engulfed the powerful family of the Mermnadse, popular fancy demanded of fable the elements it spun around the tragic event, so as to deepen the interest attaching to a great empire overthrown, together with the royal family which had created it. When did the warlike people whose power was supreme in Cappadocia cease to overrun as conquerors the basins of rivers that descend towards the -^Egean, or, at any rate, maintain their ascendency, based upon superiority of arms and civilization ? When did the Lydians constitute themselves into a well-ordered indepen- dent state ? These are questions which it is hard to answer. The Assyrian horizon, down to the reign of Asur-nat-sirpal, was bounded in this direction by the Amanus and the Taurus range. As to the Greeks of the coast, they at the outset lived with their eyes fixed upon the sea by which they communicated with their brethren ; not until ambitious princes arose, who began to threaten and molest them in their rear, did they turn their faces in that direction. From that hour, self-defence compelled them to interest themselves in the events that were taking place in Lydia, the re- bound of which would ere long be felt on the littoral. It caused them to acquaint themselves with the names, deeds, and character of the kings of Sardes. Henceforward, Western Asia has a history of its own ; and albeit, down to the Persian conquest, it is still mixed up with many fables, it contains, none the less, a 1 Herodotus, i. 93, 94. a Ibid., 199. 8 This was the rendering of the myth as presented by the poet Hermesianax, a native of Colophon, familiar, therefore, with the legends of Lydia. 4 Ibid., 36-46.