These have been found in great numbers, and show that this people developed a peculiar architecture of their own, but that they subsequently submitted to the artistic influence of Greece, though they never copied their models slavishly. The Lycian tombs are very numerous; most of them are built in the sides or carved in isolated fragments and pinnacles of the rocks. It is evident that the utmost reverence was shown to the dead, and their resting places were often placed in close proximity to the houses of the living. The inscriptions are in a language peculiar to the country, and in a writing resembling that used in the Peloponnesus, but distinct from it. None of very ancient date has as yet been deciphered.
The independence of the Lycian character was not only shown in the peculiarly national stamp they gave to everything which they borrowed from the Greek, but when the Lydian kingdom extended its borders so as to include most of the surrounding nations, the Lycians still preserved their own liberties, and Herodotus records the valiant resistance of the inhabitants of Xanthus to the overwhelming forces of the Persian, Harpagus. Though greatly outnumbered, they faced him in battle, but in spite of their heroic efforts he at last succeeded in overpowering them and driving them within their city of Xanthus; whereupon they first collected their families and all their treasures within the walls of the citadel and then burnt it to the ground. After which they sallied forth against the enemy and were all slain, fighting to the last.
The city of Xanthus was afterwards rebuilt and received a population of foreigners, to which, Herodotus asserts, there were added eighty families of Xanthians who had chanced to be abroad at the time of the disaster. The vast ruins of Xanthus proclaim it as the chief city of the Lycians, but many others existed. Pliny even asserts that they were once seventy in number. Strabo speaks of the twenty-three towns of the Lycian League. They were for the most part built on high ridges, and were governed by a senate and a general assembly of the people. The different towns had each a certain number of votes in the federative assembly, the number of votes being determined by the importance of the individual town. The supreme authority was vested in the Lyciarch, an official chosen by the assembly. This form of government survived after the Persian conquest, and, though the country was afterwards conquered by Alexander, and subsequently passed under the dominion alternately of the Ptolemies and Seleucids, its institutions were not destroyed, but continued to exist even under the suzerainty of Rome and down to the time of Claudius.
Lycia was the scene of the devastations of the legendary Chimæra, whom Bellerophon slew; and the latter was also said to have conquered the Solymi for the Lycian king. The Chimæra is a favourite subject of representation in the Lycian sculptures, and it has been supposed that the origin of the legend may be found in the streams of inflammable gas which issue from the side of a mountain of the Solyma range, in the neighbourhood of Deliktash.
THE MYSIANS
The Carians said that Mysus, ancestor of the Mysian nation, was the brother of Car and Lydus, and that this was the reason why the Mysians and Lydians had the privilege of worshipping in the temple of the Carian Jove. Xanthus of Lydia declared that they spoke a language composed of Phrygian and Lydian. As we only possess one specimen of the Mysian language, and that a somewhat doubtful one, our means of testing the question are somewhat inadequate, nor is our knowledge of Mysian early history much more satisfactory. Some ancient writers said that they came from Thrace, and a connection was supposed to exist between them and the Mœsians on the Danube, the latter being regarded as emigrants from Asia by those who believed in the relationship between the Mysians and Lydians.
The Mysians seem to have been driven into the interior by the Greek settlers who had established themselves all along their shores, and in this mountainous region they remained, having apparently made little progress in civilisation even in Persian times.
In the Homeric catalogue the Mysians appear as the allies of Troy, and we hear of their being conquered by Lydia. Their subsequent fate was the usual one of submission to the successive monarchs of the ancient world. They formed part of the Syrian monarchy and after 190 B.C. their country was added to the territory of the king of Pergamus. In 130 B.C. they were included in the Roman province of Asia, after which we hear no more of them as a nation.
THE BITHYNIANS AND THE PAPHLAGONIANS
Between the Olympus Mountains on the northeast of Mysia and the river Halys, which formed the western boundary of Cappadocia on the Pontus, lay the territory of the Bithynians and Paphlagonians. We know little of the early history of either nation.