Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/34

1 8 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. Mseander, a distinct impression was retained of a far-off age when the Phrygians had spread high up around the Mysian Olympus, the Idsean summits, and Sipylus. In the time of Strabo the name of Phrygia Parva, Small Phrygia, or Phrygia Epicteta, was still generally applied to the country ruled by these mountains. 1 It was an indefinite name, and answered to no existing division, yet is of great interest to us as a reminiscence of the old Phrygian empire, in that it serves to prove its extension to the Bay of Smyrna. We have a further proof of this in a passage of Strabo, where he expounds the difficulties that beset the historian who should try to fix the boundaries of the Phrygians and the Mysians. " This," he goes on to say, " is proved by the name of Phrygia, given by the ancients to the region of Sipylus itself. . . . They also called Phrygian Pelops, Tantalus, and Niobe." 2 If, as universally held by the ancients, the Phrygians came from Europe across the straits to Asia Minor, it is natural to suppose that, once on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus and the Helles- pont, they tarried a while ere they ventured on to the thickly wooded heights of the interior ; they would begin to spread along the comparatively clear coast, especially towards the south. In continental Greece, too, at the same time and in the same fashion, other Thracian tribes, following the chain of Pindus, reached Bceotia and Attica. The Phrygians would thus have pushed on to the rich plains which we know as Lydia, as far as, yet not further than, the Bay of Smyrna ; since the southernmost territory specified by Strabo as within the Phrygia of the coast, which he dis- tinguishes from Mediterranean Phrygia, is the district of Sipylus. 3 The more advanced post occupied this fort-like mass, which 1 Strabo distinguishes (XII. viii. i) "what is called Phrygia Major, the ancient kingdom of Midas, part of which has been occupied by the Galatians," from " Phrygia Parva, or, as it also is called to-day, Phrygia Epicteta, which extends along the Hellespont and Mount Olympus." The term eVt/cr^Tos is of recent origin, and only dates from the kings of Pergamos; it designated the province these " acquired," in reality wrested, from the kings of Bithynia (Strabo, XII. iv. 3). 2 Ibid., viii. 2. So Athenseus, who, together with the whole antiquity from Homer, regarded Pelops as the son of Tantalus, states that within Peloponnesus are the tombs : TWV pera IIcXoTros &pvyu>v (xiv. p. 626). Sophocles (Antigone, 825) calls Niobe : TOV &pvyiav evav TavTaA.ou. 8 Nevertheless, mention is made of Mydonians as inhabiting the neighbourhood of Miletus (^ELIAN., Hist. Var., viii. 5) ; of Bebryces, who, together with the Phocseans, would seem to have been engaged in holding in check the surrounding barbarous tribes (POLY^ENUS, Strateg., viii. 37).