Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/232

216 HISTORY OF GREECE. icter of these two Asiatic people yet effaced even in the second century after the Christian era. For the same Mysians, who in the time of Herodotus and Xenophon gave so much trouhle to the Persian satraps, are described by the rhetor Aristeides as seizing and plundering his property at Laneion near Hadriani, while on the contrary he mentions the Phrygians as habitually xmaing from the interior towards the coast-regions to do the work i>f the olive-gathering. 1 During the times of Grecian autonomy and ascendency, in the fifth century B. c., the conception of a Phrygian or a Lydian was associated in the Greek mind with ideas of contempt and servitude, 2 to which unquestionably these Asiatics became fashioned, since it was habitual with them under the Roman empire to sell their own children into slavery, 3 a practice certainly very rare among the Greeks, even when they too had become confounded among the mass of subjects of impe- rial Rome. But we may fairly assume that this association of contempt with the name of a Phrygian or a Lydian did not pre- vail during the early period of Grecian Asiatic settlement, or even in the time of Alkman, Mimnermus, or Sappho, down to 600 B. c. We first trace evidence of it in a fragment of Hippo- nax, and it began with the subjection of Asia Minor generally, 1 Aristcid. Orat. xxvi, p. 346. The A60oc "Arvof was very near to this place Laneion, which shows the identity of the religious names throughout Lydia and Mysia (Or. xxv, p. 318). Abou", the Phrygians, Aristeides, Orat. xlvi, p. 308, Tuv 6e Kfavaiuv IVEKCL elf TTJV inrepopiav tnraipovaiv, uaTrep 01 fypvyeg r&v i'Xauv IVEKO. rfc av7.7.oyii. The declamatory prolixities of Aristeides offer little reward to the reader, except these occasional valuable evidences of existing custom. 1 Hermippns ap. Athense. i, p. 27. 'Avdpuxod" ex $pv-yiac> etc., the saying ascribed to Sokrates in JElian, V. II. x, 14; Euripid. Alcest. 691 ; Strabo, vii, p. 304 ; Polyb. iv. 38. The Tliracians sold their children into slavery, (Herod, v, 6) as the Circassians do at present (Clarke's Travels, vol. i, p. 378). Ae^orepof /Uiyw $pvyb<; was a Greek proverb 'Strabo, i, p. ?6 : compare Cicero pro Flacco, c. 27). 3 Philostrat. Vit. Apollon. viii, 7, 12, p. 346. The slave-merchants seem to have visited Thessaly, and to have bought slaves at Pagasae ; these -wera either Penests sold by their masters out of the country, or perhaps non- Greeks procured from the borderers in th'j interior (Aristoph. Plutus, 521 ; Hermippns ap. Athenac. i, p. 27. Ai Slr.jaaai JovAovc ical