The History of Antiquity Volume Iii Part 27

[759] Brugsch, "Hist. of Egypt," II. 288.

[760] Brugsch, "Hist. of Egypt," pp. 263, 294.

[761] Herod. 2, 175, 176, 169; 3, 116.

[762] Brugsch, "Hist. of Egypt," II. 299.

[763] Diod. 1, 95.

[764] Herod. 2, 177. According to Diod. 1, 31, Egypt in the ancient time had 18,000 communities, and under the Ptolemies 30,600. According to Theocritus ("Idyll." 17, 83), Egypt possessed 33,600 communities.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE OVERTHROW OF THE HERACLEIDS IN LYDIA.

On the western coast of Asia Minor the nation of the Lydians, which possessed the vallies of the Hermus and Maeander, had early arrived at a monarchy and a point of civilization far in advance of the stages of primitive life. The ancient royal house of the Lydians claimed to be sprung from the G.o.ds, from Attys, the son of the G.o.d Manes. The city of Sardis is said to have been built under the dominion of this dynasty, to have been dedicated to the sun-G.o.d and fortified.[765] This house of the Attyadae was said to have been followed about the year 1200 B.C. by a second dynasty which carried back its genealogy to Sandon, the sun-G.o.d himself, a deity whom the Greeks, according to the various aspects of the nature ascribed to him by the Lydians, sometimes identified with their Apollo, and at other times with their Heracles. As the founder of the new dynasty the Greeks call him Heracles. Agron, the fourth descendant of this Sandon-Heracles, is said to have ascended the throne of Lydia in the year 1194 B.C. After him twenty-two kings, the descendants of Agron, bore the crown of Lydia for a s.p.a.ce of 505 years, down to the year 689 B.C.[766]

The power possessed by Lydia under this family of rulers cannot have been very considerable. When the Greeks forced the Phenicians from the islands of the aegean Sea, and then, about the end of the eleventh and beginning of the tenth century B.C., landed on the western coast of Asia Minor, the Lydians were not able any more than the Teucrians and Mysians in the North, or the Carians in the South, to prevent the establishment of the Greeks on their coasts, the loss of the ancient native sanctuaries at Smyrna, Colophon, Ephesus, and the founding of Greek cities in their land on the mouths of the Lydian rivers, the Hermus and the Cayster, though the Greek emigrants came in isolated expeditions over the sea. It was on the Lydian coasts that the most important Greek cities rose; Cyme, Phocaea, Smyrna, Colophon, Ephesus. Priene, Myus, and Miletus were on the land of the Carians. The Homeric poems would hardly have omitted to place a strong body of auxiliaries from Maeonia, which is their name for Lydia, by the side of the oppressed Ilium, if the fame of a powerful Lydian kingdom had then existed among the Greeks of the coast. The land of the Lydians is well-known to the Homeric poems; they give a distinct prominence to the trade, wealth, and horse-breeding of the Maeonians; but they make no mention of any prominent race of rulers;[767] and yet the Sandonids were on the throne at Sardis when the poems were sung, and when they came to an end. The loss of her coasts and the mouths of her rivers must have been heavily felt by Lydia. The trade with the sea and beyond it was henceforth only possible by the intervention of the Greek cities which had grown up there.

Of the exploits and fortunes of the kings of the race of Sandon we have almost no information. It is only of the five or six last rulers that we have the names and a few traces; and to these we may add two or three very doubtful stories of the fall of the last king of the house.

According to Eusebius, Ardys, Sadyattes, Meles, and Candaules, brought the series of this dynasty to an end: Ardys reigned from 768 to 732 B.C.; Sadyattes down to 718; Meles down to the year 706 B.C., and he was then succeeded by Candaules.[768] The fragments of Nicolaus of Damascus, which must have been derived from the lost history of the Lydian Xanthus, give us the following account: Alyattes, the predecessor of Ardys, had left his kingdom jointly to his sons Cadys and Ardys. Cadys soon died, and Ardys was driven from the throne by Spermus, a relation of Cadys, who during the life of Cadys had had an intrigue with his wife. Ardys with his wife and daughter fled to Cyme, and there he lived in such poverty that he worked as a wheelwright. Two years after the flight of Ardys the usurper was struck down by an a.s.sa.s.sin whom he had hired against Ardys, and the Lydians sent messengers to Cyme to invite Ardys to ascend again the throne of his fathers. When restored to the throne, Ardys exercised a mild and just rule, and the Lydians had never known such prosperity since the days of the ancient king Alkimus (I.

561), as they enjoyed under Ardys. The army of the Lydians also was strong under the rule of this king: it numbered 30,000 hors.e.m.e.n.[769] A fragment of Heracleides Ponticus also gives us information about the fortunes of Ardys at Cyme. "Severely oppressed by their ruler the Lydians sent to Cyme, when they found that one of their countrymen was there, to summon him to the throne. The man was the slave of a wheelwright. The Lydians paid his price and took him with them. But a Cymaean who had ordered a wagon kept him back, and told those who remonstrated with him, to put no hindrances in his way, for he considered it a great thing to possess a wagon which the king of the Lydians had made."[770]

Herodotus tells us that Candaules, whom the Greeks call Myrsilus, placed the greatest confidence in Gyges the son of Dascylus, one of his lance-bearers. He went so far in this that he determined to convince Gyges by the evidence of his own eyes that the queen, his consort, was the most beautiful of all women. For this purpose he brought Gyges one evening into his bed-chamber, and bade him place himself behind the open door, so that when the queen undressed herself he might see her naked.

This was done. But the queen saw Gyges when he pa.s.sed out. Enraged at the insult offered to her by Candaules she sent for Gyges on the following morning, and gave him the choice whether he would die on the spot, or slay Candaules on the following night. He chose the latter. She gave him a dagger and concealed him behind the door, and Gyges stabbed Candaules as soon as he was asleep. But the Lydians rose in arms to avenge the death of their king. The adherents of Gyges and the rest of the Lydians came to a compromise, that, if the oracle of the G.o.d should declare for Gyges as the king of the Lydians, he should rule, but if not, Gyges was to restore the kingdom to the race of Sandon.

According to the fragments of Nicolaus it was the good king Ardys who laid the foundation for the overthrow of the house of the Sandonids. In his old age, so we are told, Ardys took great delight in a man of the race of the Mermnadae. This was Dascylus, the son of Gyges. At length Ardys handed over to him the entire government. Sadyattes, the son and heir of Ardys, became apprehensive that, at the death of Ardys, Dascylus would misuse the great power entrusted to him, in order to establish himself on the throne. He caused Dascylus to be secretly put out of the way. Filled with grief, the old king caused the Lydians to be a.s.sembled, had himself carried into the a.s.sembly in a litter, bade the Lydians discover the murderers, on whose heads he imprecated bitter curses, and ended by saying that any one who discovered them might slay them. But the murderers were not discovered. After the death of Ardys, Sadyattes ascended the throne, and he was succeeded by Meles. In this reign Lydia was visited by a severe famine, and an oracle demanded that the death of Dascylus should be expiated. The wife of Dascylus had fled to Phrygia, her home, and had there brought forth a son, with whom she was pregnant at the time of his father's death. She had given him the name of his father. Dascylus, who had now grown up, was requested by Meles to return to Sardis, in order to receive there the atonement for the murder of his father. But Dascylus feared to return, and retired to the Syrians who dwell in Sinope, on the Pontus, where he married a Syrian woman, who bore him Gyges. After the reigns of Meles and Myrsus, Candaules ascended the throne of Lydia. Then the aged brother of the murdered Dascylus, who had remained in Sardis and was childless, besought the king that his nephew Dascylus might be allowed to return to Sardis, that he might adopt him as his son before his death. This prayer the king granted, but Dascylus refused to leave his abode; he sent his son Gyges, then eighteen years old, to his great-uncle at Sardis. Gyges was a handsome youth. In riding and in all martial exercises he surpa.s.sed his comrades; and he had also proved his bravery in war. Owing to his stature and his beauty the king took him into his body-guard, made him his favourite, honoured him before all others, and gave him large presents of land.

When Candaules would marry Tudo, the daughter of Arnossus, the king of the Mysians, he sent Gyges to bring home the bride. While Gyges was bringing the princess to Sardis in his chariot, he fell violently in love with her, and, no longer master of himself, attempted to embrace her, in spite of her struggles and threats. On her arrival in Sardis she did not conceal what Gyges had done, and the king swore that the offender should be put to death on the next day. A maid who was devoted to Gyges overheard the words of the king and repeated them to Gyges on the same night. Determined to slay the king rather than allow himself to be slain, Gyges collected his nearest friends, besought their a.s.sistance, and reminded them of the curse which Ardys had laid on the murderers of his grandfather. In arms they hastened into the royal citadel. The maid opened the door of the bed-chamber for Gyges, who stabbed the sleeping king with his sword. In the morning a message went forth from the citadel to the chief men in the kingdom; they were to appear before the face of the king. They obeyed without any suspicion, in the belief that they had been summoned by Candaules. Gyges caused those to be slain who, as he thought, would be his enemies, and gave handsome presents to those whom he hoped to win. He armed all whom he gained to his side: the body-guard also took his part, so that the Lydians, when they discovered what had taken place, though they rose against the murderer of the king, did not venture to attack him. But they sent to Delphi to inquire whether they should take Gyges to be their king; and the G.o.d bade them do so, and Gyges took Tudo to wife.[771]

In the narrative of Nicolaus it is the curse which Ardys uttered upon the murderers of the first Dascylus, and the late vengeance for this murder which comes upon the descendants of Sadyattes, and causes the overthrow of the kingdom. But the guilt of Sadyattes is not the only cause: Ardys himself sinned by the excessive confidence which he reposed in Dascylus; and Candaules goes further still in his blind confidence in the grandson of Dascylus; he gives him land; he sets him above all others; he commissions the youth of twenty years to bring home the royal bride to her marriage. The same fault of excessive and misplaced confidence, though in another direction, is in Herodotus the cause of the overthrow of Candaules and his house. In a third version, given by Plutarch, we still find the same motive. When Heracles had slain Hippolyte (the queen of the Amazons), he gave her battle-axe to Omphale.

The kings who ruled over Lydia after Omphale, had carried this battle-axe, each handing it to his successor, down to Candaules, who disregarded it and gave it to his favourite to carry; but this favourite in Plutarch is not Gyges.[772]

The relation into which Herodotus represents the wife of Candaules as entering, after her dishonour, with Gyges, the guard of her husband, appears to be founded on a similar story, which a legend ascribes to an ancestor of Gyges. Gyges, the forefather of Lydus, so we are told in Plato, was one of the shepherds of the king of the Lydians. After a severe storm of rain and an earthquake, the earth opened where he was keeping his cattle. Out of curiosity he descended into the gulf, and saw marvellous things: among others a brazen horse with windows, through which he saw a dead man of superhuman size, who had nothing on beyond a golden ring on his finger. This ring Gyges took, and climbed out. When he sat among the rest of the shepherds in order to give the king the monthly account of the condition of the flocks, with this ring on his finger, he happened to turn the stone on it towards himself. Then he perceived that the others did not see him, and spoke of him as though absent. When he turned the stone away from himself, he was again seen by them. Having a.s.sured himself of this fact, he procured that he should be chosen among the messengers sent to the king. There he won the favour of the queen, united with her for the overthrow of the king, slew him, and seized the throne.[773]

We saw that the Lydians derived the tribes of their nation from Attys and Cotys; the sons of the G.o.d Manes, and from the sons of Lydus, Torrhebus and Asius. If the first Gyges could be called an ancestor of Lydus, he must have held a high position in the legend of the Lydians.

This conclusion is confirmed by the Homeric poems in which the lake of Gyges is the centre of the Lydian land and the Lydian life. On this lake of Gyges the descendants of the youngest Gyges, his successors on the throne, which he had won for them, had their tombs; but the graves of the kings before them were also to be sought on the same lake. The race of the Mermnadae, which carried back its origin to the first Gyges, must, therefore, have been ancient and important among the Lydians. Conscious of such a descent, it may have considered itself little inferior to the house of the kings, whose ancestor was the sun-G.o.d himself. We might, perhaps, a.s.sume that the Mermnadae, in the later days of Ardys or after him, attained to prominent importance; that anxiety on account of this prominence brought on them persecution and expulsion on the part of the successors of Ardys. The wife of the murdered Dascylus flies to the Phrygians; her son of the same name takes refuge with the Syrians on the Pontus, at Sinope. Hence the exiles sought not only protection but also support among their neighbours against the kings of the Lydians.

Pausanias mentions to us a place belonging to Dascylus on the White Plain in Caria, on the borders of Lydia;[774] and Plutarch tells us: "a.r.s.elis, the Carian of Mylasa, came to the aid of Gyges, the son of Dascylus the younger, when he fought against Candaules, and helped Gyges to victory. a.r.s.elis slew both Candaules and the youth to whom Candaules had given the sacred symbol of the royal office of Lydia, and placed the battle-axe as an ornament in the hand of the statue of Zeus at Mylasa."

Hence Gyges was in communication with the Carians when he rebelled against Candaules.

We may go a step further. At the time when Candaules reigned over Lydia (706-689 B.C.), the Cimmerians invaded Phrygia from Pontus, the very region to which the younger Dascylus, the father of Gyges, is said to have fled; king Midas took his own life in consequence of this disaster (696 B.C.). The Magnesians, who inhabited the most inland city of the Greeks on the lower Maeander, suffered at the hands of the Cimmerians a defeat much lamented by the Greeks; and the poet Callinus of Ephesus cried to his countrymen, "the army of the Cimmerians, who have done mighty deeds, is approaching," and urged them to brave resistance.[775]

Lydia was not spared. Sardis was taken by the Cimmerians (I. 542). The storm pa.s.sed over, but it had beyond a doubt deeply shaken the Lydian kingdom and the position of king Candaules. Of this king we only know that he paid the Greek painter, Bularchus, for a picture which represented the battle and defeat of the Magnesians with an equal weight of gold, though the picture was of moderate size only. This was a pa.s.sion for art little in accordance with the position of his kingdom, and it seems to confirm the account of Plutarch that Candaules reigned with little care, and left the government to a favourite. After the blow which Lydia suffered by the invasion of the Cimmerians, the Mermnadae must have considered that their time was come. Whether they were really allowed to return, whether Gyges had a place in the body-guard or not, cannot be decided. What is certain is that he did not attain to the throne without an open struggle, whether it was against Candaules himself, or his party, the party of the ancient royal family; it is certain, too, that Carian troops supported him, though the a.r.s.elis in Plutarch is not a Carian, but the Carian war-G.o.d, or the axe of this war-G.o.d of Mylasa.[776] Moreover, it is certain that Gyges was not able to overcome by force of arms the resistance of the Lydians, who adhered to the ancient royal family. In Herodotus, as in Nicolaus, the Lydians take up arms against Gyges; in both the decision which follows is due to the oracle of the G.o.d. The arrangement in Herodotus--if the oracle of the G.o.d declared for Gyges he was to reign, and if against him, the kingdom was to go back to the race of Heracles, _i.e._ of the sun-G.o.d--may be regarded as historical, and that the decision should be sought from the deity, from whom the house hitherto on the throne sprang, shows that the Lydians adhered firmly to their ancient royal family.

The decision of the civil war in Lydia was sought in Delphi. The fame of the temple at Delphi, which belonged to the light-G.o.d of the h.e.l.lenes, had long reached the Lydians and Phrygians through the Greeks of the coast. Before this time Midas of Phrygia had dedicated a pedestal and other presents at Delphi (I. 527). As the Greeks recognised their Apollo and their Heracles in the sun-G.o.d of the Lydians (I. 564), so did the Lydians regard the G.o.d of light, the archer-G.o.d of Delphi, as their own sun-G.o.d. The impartial sun-G.o.d of the stranger was to decide whether the descendants of the native sun-G.o.d were to lose or keep the throne.

The oracle of the G.o.d of Delphi decided for Gyges. In grat.i.tude he sent rich presents, a great ma.s.s of silver and gold, to Delphi. Herodotus mentions especially six golden milk-vessels, thirty talents in weight.[777]

FOOTNOTES:

[765] Vol. I. p. 563 ff.

[766] Herodotus allows 170 years for the Mermnadae, the successors of the Heracleidae of Lydia. If the fall of Croesus is to be placed, as I shall prove in Book VIII. chap. 6, in the year 549 B.C., his ancestor Gyges must have ascended the throne in 719 B.C. (549 + 170 = 719). In the canon of Eusebius the series of the Lydian kings begins with the Sandonid Ardys, whose accession Eusebius places immediately before Olymp. I., and it continues 230 years. In the same canon the date of the Mermnadae begins 150 years before the fall of Croesus, and consequently in the year 699 B.C. (549 + 150 = 699). Hence Eusebius allows 20 years less then Herodotus to the Mermnadae. The fact that Herodotus allows 106 years to two rulers of the five Mermnadae, is no reason for departing from his dates. But we have seen above that the first invasion of the west of Asia Minor by the Cimmerians must be placed about the year 700 B.C. The time is fixed more exactly by the fact that Midas of Phrygia, whose wife was the daughter of Agamemnon king of Cyme (I. 527), who dedicated a throne at Delphi, before Gyges sent presents there, reigned, in Eusebius, from 738 B.C. to 696 B.C., in which year he killed himself by bull's blood, because the Cimmerians invaded his land: Strabo, p. 61.

It was in this invasion of the Cimmerians that Magnesia succ.u.mbed; the fall of which Archilochus mentioned in the line, "I weep for the disaster of the Thasians, not of the Magnesians," fragm. 19, ed. Bergk.

When this happened Gyges was not yet king of Lydia. Candaules, the last Sandonid, was still on the throne. "Is it not admitted," says Pliny, "that the picture of Bularchus, which represented the battle of the Magnesians, was purchased for its weight in gold by Candaules, the last king of the race of the Heracleidae, who is also called Myrsilus?" "Hist.

Nat." 35, 34 (35, 8 in Detlefsen). And also "King Candaules paid for the picture of Bularchus representing the defeat of the Magnesians--a work of moderate size--with its weight in gold:" _loc. cit._ 7, 39 (7, 38 in Detlefsen). According to this Midas was on the throne before Gyges, and Magnesia fell before the Cimmerians when the last Heracleid held sway in Lydia; and as the Cimmerians could only reach Magnesia through Phrygia, Candaules must have sat on the throne in the year 696 B.C. and later.

Hence both the numbers of Herodotus which give 719 B.C., and those of Eusebius which give 699 B.C. for the accession of Gyges, are too high.

But the latter allow an abbreviation of ten years. In Herodotus twelve years are allowed to Sadyattes, the third Mermnad: in the canon of Eusebius he has fifteen years; but in the list of Lydian kings in the first book, which in the rest agrees with the canon (it is unimportant that Gyges has in the former 35, in the latter 36 years, Ardys 37 in the one and 36 in the other), we find only five years instead of fifteen given to Sadyattes. If we accept this abbreviation Candaules was still on the throne in the year 696 B.C. Gyges ascended the throne after Midas and Candaules in the year 689 B.C. There are other grounds, beside these quoted, which make this necessary. a.s.surbanipal of a.s.shur told us of his dealings with Gyges, of the league between Gyges and Psammetichus, to whom Gyges sent help: a.s.surbanipal began to reign in 668 B.C.

Psammetichus was first placed over Sais as a va.s.sal in a.s.syria in 664, and could not have rebelled against a.s.syria before 654 B.C. (p. 300).

But according to the dates of Herodotus Gyges came to an end in 684 B.C.; and if we follow the date given for the beginning of his reign in Eusebius he died in 663. Hence the only possible solution is to a.s.sume the numbers of the first book of Eusebius, with the reduction for Sadyattes. Hence the dates for the reigns are as follows: Gyges, 689-653; Ardys, 653-617; Sadyattes 617-612; Alyattes, 612-563; Croesus, 563-549 B.C.

[767] The catalogue of the s.h.i.+ps ("Il." 2. 864) mentions only Mesthles and Antiphos as the leaders of the Maeonians, sons of Pylaemenes, and the nymph of the lake Gygaea.

[768] According to the reduction established above for the third Mermnad in the canon, Ardys begins 778 B.C.

[769] Nicol. Damasc. fragm. 49, ed. Muller.

[770] Heracl. Pont. fragm. 11, 1, 2, ed. Muller.

[771] Though the last Sandonid is also called Sadyattes in Nicolaus, I have put Candaules in the text because he, like the Candaules of Herodotus, is the son of Myrsus. The reign of Myrsus is not found in the canon or in the other three lists of Lydian kings in Eusebius. The four Mermnads, Gyges, Dascylus, Dascylus, Gyges, must be met by four Heracleids, Ardys, Sadyattes, Meles, and Candaules. Myrsus might have arisen out of the name Myrsilus, which the Greeks gave to Candaules, or Candaules was the son of a Myrsus who did not reign. That the last Sandonid reigned only three years as Nicolaus supposes is impossible.

According to this Gyges gained the throne at 21 years of age. And what we know from other sources of Candaules does not agree with so short a reign. We must therefore keep to the statement of Eusebius.

[772] Vol. I. p. 573. Plutarch, "Quaest. Graec." 45.

[773] Plato, "De Rep." p. 359, 360.

[774] Pausan. 4, 35, 11.

[775] Fragm. 2, 3, ed. Bergk.

[776] Vol. I. p. 573.

[777] Herod. 1, 14.

CHAPTER XVIII.

LYDIA UNDER THE MERMNADae.

The Delphian priesthood did no service to their countrymen on the western sh.o.r.e of Asia Minor when in the year 689 B.C. they helped Gyges to the throne in spite of the resistance of the Lydians. The cities of the Greeks on these coasts, whose founders had in days past been expelled by war and distress from their cantons, had come to power and prosperity in the course of the three centuries which had since elapsed.

Forced to a vigorous exercise of their powers, amid an environment of many new impulses, they surpa.s.sed the motherland in poetry and art, in navigation and trade. From their harbours they exported the products of Phrygia and the manufactures of Lydia to the Cyclades, to Chalcis and Eretria, to Corinth and the mainland of h.e.l.las. Thus they gradually grew up into a naval power which drove even the trading s.h.i.+ps of the Phenicians from the aegean Sea, opened the Black Sea, and already began to rival the Phenicians in the south and west of the Mediterranean.

Springing up on the soil of Lydia these cities barred the mouths of the Lydian rivers, the highways to the sea, and excluded the Lydian people from intercourse with the sea. Miletus, Myus, and Priene commanded the mouth of the Maeander; Ephesus and Colophon the mouth of the Cayster; Phocaea and Cyme the mouth of the Hermus. An active prince on the throne of Lydia could not endure that the Greeks should remain in possession of the coast, which they had taken from the Lydians, and keep the Lydians for ever cut off from the sea. The new dynasty must attempt to recover the losses which their predecessors had been unable to prevent.

When confronted by the power of the Lydians collected in the hands of a single warrior, the Greek cities could not, for long, avoid falling into a position similar to that in which the Phenicians at that time found themselves as opposed to the a.s.syrians. Lydia was not indeed so strong as a.s.syria, but it lay nearer at hand; and the resources of Phocaea, Smyrna, Colophon, Ephesus, and Miletus, could not bear comparison with those of Tyre, Sidon, and Aradus. In spite of their common origin and kindred blood, the Greek cities, like those of the Phenicians, were without any political combination. It is true that the Ionian cities offered each year a common sacrifice to Poseidon, on the sea-sh.o.r.e under the spur of Mount Mycale, but for the rest, not only was each community isolated from the others, but the communities were often at feud among themselves. Even in the bosom of the separate cities the opposition of parties was not wanting: it was not long since the n.o.bles had overthrown the monarchy, and taken the government into their own hands. If the citizens ventured to give battle in the open field, and the Lydians by means of their superior forces drove them back into their walls, and laid waste their crops, the cities which did not lie immediately on the sea were exposed to continued devastation, and with the greater certainty because these devastations could be made more severe by sieges. Even the cities on the sea could hardly support for any length of time the desolation and loss of their land. Ephesus had extended her possessions on land from the mouth of the Cayster as far northward as Tmolus; Colophon too had a considerable acreage of land.