CHAPTER XVII.
LYDIANS. — MEDES. — CIMMERIANS. — SCYTHIANS.
The early relations between the Lydians and the Asiatic Greeks, anterior to the reign of Gygês, are not better known to us than those of the Phrygians. Their native music became partly incorporated with the Greek, as the Phrygian music was; to which it was very analogous, both in instruments and in character, though the Lydian mode was considered by the ancients as more effeminate and enervating. The flute was used alike by Phrygians and Lydians, passing from both of them to the Greeks; but the magadis or pectis (a harp with sometimes as many as twenty strings, sounded two together in octave) is said to have been borrowed by the Lesbian Terpander from the Lydian banquets.[416] The flute-players who acquired esteem among the early Asiatic Greeks were often Phrygian or Lydian slaves; and even the poet Alkman, who gained for himself permanent renown among the Greek lyric poets, though not a slave born at Sardis, as is sometimes said, was probably of Lydian extraction.
It has been already mentioned that Homer knows nothing of Lydia or Lydians. He names Mæonians in juxtaposition with Karians, and we are told by Herodotus that the people once called Mæonian received the new appellation of Lydian from Lydus son of Atys. Sardis, whose almost inexpugnable citadel was situated on a precipitous rock on the northern side of the ridge of Tmôlus, overhanging the plain of the river Hermus, was the capital of the Lydian kings: it is not named by Homer, though he mentions both Tmôlus and the neighboring Gygæan lake: the fortification of it was ascribed to an old Lydian king named Mêlês, and strange legends were told concerning it.[417] Its possessors were enriched by the neighborhood of the river Paktôlus, which flowed down from Mount Tmôlus towards the Hermus, and brought with it considerable quantities of gold in its sands. To this cause historians often ascribe the abundant treasure belonging to Crœsus and his predecessors; but Crœsus possessed, besides, other mines near Pergamus;[418] and another cause of wealth is also to be found in the general industry of the Lydian people, which the circumstances mentioned respecting them seem to attest. They were the first people, according to Herodotus, who ever carried on retail trade; and the first to coin money of gold and silver.[419]
The archæologists of Sardis in the time of Herodotus, a century after the Persian conquest, carried very far back the antiquity of the Lydian monarchy, by means of a series of names which are in great part, if not altogether, divine and heroic. Herodotus gives us first, Manês, Atys, and Lydus,—next, a line of kings beginning with Hêraklês, twenty-two in number, succeeding each other from father to son and lasting for 505 years. The first of this line of Herakleid kings was Agrôn, descended from Hêraklês in the fourth generation,—Hêraklês, Alkæus, Ninus, Bêlus, and Agrôn. The twenty-second prince of this Herakleid family, after an uninterrupted succession of father and son during 505 years, was Kandaulês, called by the Greeks Myrsilus the son of Myrsus: with him the dynasty ended, and ended by one of those curious incidents which Herodotus has narrated with his usual dramatic, yet unaffected, emphasis. It was the divine will that Kandaulês should be destroyed, and he lost his rational judgment: having a wife the most beautiful woman in Lydia, his vanity could not be satisfied without exhibiting her naked person to Gygês son of Daskylus, his principal confidant and the commander of his guards. In spite of the vehement repugnance of Gygês, this resolution was executed; but the wife became aware of the inexpiable affront, and took her measures to avenge it. Surrounded by her most faithful domestics, she sent for Gygês, and addressed him: “Two ways are now open to thee, Gygês: take which thou wilt. Either kill Kandaulês, wed me, and acquire the kingdom of Lydia,—or else thou must at once perish. For thou hast seen forbidden things, and either thou, or the man who contrived it for thee must die.” Gygês in vain entreated to be spared so terrible an alternative: he was driven to the option, and he chose that which promised safety to himself.[420] The queen planted him in ambush behind the bed-chamber door, in the very spot where Kandaulês had placed him as a spectator, and armed him with a dagger, which he plunged into the heart of the sleeping king.
Thus ended the dynasty of the Herakleids; but there was a large party in Lydia who indignantly resented the death of Kandaulês, and took arms against Gygês. A civil war ensued, which both parties at length consented to terminate by reference to the Delphian oracle. The decision of that holy referee was given in favor of Gygês, and the kingdom of Lydia thus passed to his dynasty, called the Mermnadæ. But the oracle accompanied its verdict with an intimation, that in the person of the fifth descendant of Gygês, the murder of Kandaulês would be avenged,—a warning of which, Herodotus innocently remarks, no one took any notice, until it was actually fulfilled in the person of Crœsus.[421]
In this curious legend, which marks the commencement of the dynasty called Mermnadæ, the historical kings of Lydia,—we cannot determine how much, or whether any part, is historical. Gygês was probably a real man, contemporary with the youth of the poet Archilochus; but the name Gygês is also an heroic name in Lydian archæology. He is the eponymus of the Gygæan lake near Sardis; and of the many legends told respecting him, Plato has preserved one, according to which Gygês is a mere herdsman of the king of Lydia: after a terrible storm and earthquake, he sees near him a chasm in the earth, into which he descends and finds a vast horse of brass, hollow and partly open, wherein there lies a gigantic corpse with a golden ring. This ring he carries away, and discovers unexpectedly that it possesses the miraculous property of rendering him invisible at pleasure. Being sent on a message to the king, he makes the magic ring available to his ambition: he first possesses himself of the person of the queen, then with her aid assassinates the king, and finally seizes the sceptre.[422]
The legend thus recounted by Plato, different in almost all points from the Herodotean, has this one circumstance in common, that the adventurer Gygês, through the favor and help of the queen, destroys the king and becomes his successor. Feminine preference and patronage is the cause of his prosperity. Klausen has shown[423] that this “aphrodisiac influence” runs in a peculiar manner through many of the Asiatic legends, both divine and heroic. The Phrygian Midas, or Gordius, as before recounted, acquires the throne by marriage with a divinely privileged maiden: the favor shown by Aphroditê to Anchisês, confers upon the Æneadæ sovereignty in the Troad: moreover, the great Phrygian and Lydian goddess Rhea or Cybelê has always her favored and self-devoting youth Atys, who is worshipped along with her, and who serves as a sort of mediator between her and mankind. The feminine element appears predominant in Asiatic mythes: Midas, Sardanapalus, Sandôn, and even Hêraklês,[424] are described as clothed in women’s attire and working at the loom; while on the other hand the Amazons and Semiramis achieve great conquests.
Admitting therefore the historical character of the Lydian kings called Mermnadæ, beginning with Gygês about 715-690 B. C., and ending with Crœsus, we find nothing but legend to explain to us the circumstances which led to their accession. Still less can we make out anything respecting the preceding kings, or determine whether Lydia was ever in former times connected with or dependent upon the kingdom of Assyria, as Ktêsias affirmed.[425] Nor can we certify the reality or dates of the old Lydian kings named by the native historian Xanthus,—Alkimus, Kamblês, Adramytês.[426] One piece of valuable information, however, we acquire from Xanthus,—the distribution of Lydia into two parts, Lydia proper and Torrhêbia, which he traces to the two sons of Atys,—Lydus and Torrhêbus; he states that the dialect of the Lydians and Torrhebians differed much in the same degree as that of Doric and Ionic Greeks.[427] Torrhêbia appears to have included the valley of the Kaïster, south of Tmôlus, and near to the frontiers of Karia.
With Gygês, the Mermnad king, commences the series of aggressions from Sardis upon the Asiatic Greeks, which ultimately ended in their subjection. Gygês invaded the territories of Milêtus and Smyrna, and even took the city, probably not the citadel, of Kolophôn. Though he thus, however, made war upon the Asiatic Greeks, he was munificent in his donations to the Grecian god of Delphi, and his numerous as well as costly offerings were seen in the temple by Herodotus. Elegiac compositions of the poet Mimnermus celebrated the valor of the Smyrnæans in their battle with Gygês.[428] We hear also, in a story which bears the impress of Lydian more than of Grecian fancy, of a beautiful youth of Smyrna named Magnês, to whom Gygês was attached, and who incurred the displeasure of his countrymen for having composed verses in celebration of the victories of the Lydians over the Amazons. To avenge the ill-treatment received by this youth, Gygês attacked the territory of Magnêsia (probably Magnêsia on Sipylus) and after a considerable struggle took the city.[429]