Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

LYCIAN ANTIQUITIES.

BY W. FRANCIS AINSWORTH, ESQ.

THE most ancient traditions of the Pelasgians make mention of the Kingdom of Lycia, the theatre of the semi-fabulous exploits of Bellerophon. According to Diodorus Siculus, Xanthus, who gave his name to the chief city and to the river of "flowery bounds" and "silver flood,” was a Pelasgian, son of Triopas. According to Homer and Apollodorus, Proetus, King of Argos, married a daughter of Jobates, King of the Lycians, called Anteia by Homer, but by the tragic poets Stheneboea. This princess, "burning with lawless flame" for the son of the Corinthian Glaucus, he was sent to the court of King Jobates to be put to death, instead of which, conquering every thing that was opposed to him, the hero wedded another daughter of Proetus, variously called Philonoë, Anticleia, and Cassandra, by whom he became father of Isander, Hippolochus, and Laodameia. Glaucus and Sarpedon, the Trojan heroes sung of by Homer, were sons, the one of Hippolochus, the other of Laodameia. Homer further notices, among the auxiliaries of the Trojans, the Zelians, whom he describes as a people of Lycia, dwelling at the foot of Mount Ida, under the command of Pandarus, son of Lycaon.

According to Herodotus, Minos, King of Crete, drove his brother Sarpedon out of that Doric island, and that prince passing over with his party into Asia, founded a kingdom among the Milyans or Solymi, who thence took the name of Termiles, which they changed for that of Lycians when Lycus, son of Pandion, driven from Athens by his brother Egeus, took refuge at the court of Sarpedon. Müller, in his History of the Dorians, has however referred the name of Lycia to one of the surnames of Apollo, as that given by Homer of Auknyevýs has been alike held to indicate born in "Lycia," or begotten of “light."

However much at variance with one another, there is sufficient in these statements to intimate satisfactorily that Lycia received at the earliest historical times emigrations of Pelasgian and Dorian races and chieftains, and that when it had its own native population, Milyans and Solymi, whose name has been traced by Bochart (Chanaan, i., c. vi.) to an Aramæan source, signifying Highlanders, who wore helmets of hide and had their dress buckled on, and with whom were further associated the Cabalyians, whose dress and arms resembled those of the Cilicians.

It appears further, that the Phoenicians had a settlement upon the same coast from the most remote times. We learn from the Smyrnian Quintus that the portion of Lycia, which is near the mouth of the River Limyra, was called the "Land of the Phoenicians." Strabo also notices the mountain of the Phoenicians in the same locality, and there exists in the same neighbourhood in the present day, a castle, two villages, a cape, a river, and a mountain, severally called Phineka, and in the same vicinity, and close by the site, supposed by Sir C. Fellows to be Gage, but determined by Mr. Daniel and his companions to be Corydalla, an inscription was found with the words ΦΟΙΝΙΚΟΣ ΤΥΡΙΩ, but which was merely looked upon by the latter travellers as a brief memorial of strangers who had visited the country for purposes of trade.

Lycia appears to have preserved its independence from the earliest

times, till the conquests of Cyrus. Herodotus expressly informs us that the Lycians and the Cilicians successfully held out against the power of the Lydian monarchs. It is difficult to determine, if among the remarkable monuments of antiquity which have been recently discovered in that country, some of the most interesting of which have by the zeal of Sir C. Fellows been removed to this country, there are any which belong to those remote and semi-fabulous epochs. It was Sir C. Fellows's opinion, that among the many beautiful relics of Grecian art, remains of Persian, and of indigenous art were also to be met with, that there were traces of times evidently antecedent to the Greek or classical era, and that the primitive seal of the Oriental style could not fail to be recognised.

Mr. Daniel and his companions, however, after a careful inquiry into the value of such evidences, historical and existing, as seem to throw light on the history and origin of the monuments, rock-tombs of a peculiar architecture, and the language of the inscriptions carved upon them, have come to a different conclusion, and uphold that the Lycians had no rock-tombs, nor monuments, nor written language, nor coins, previous to the conquests of the Persians.

The monuments of Lycia are as various as they are beautiful, and they are replete with historical, poetical, and religious reminiscences. The rock-tombs are sometimes circular hollows or simple sepulchral grottoes as in the mountains above Pinara, at other times they are adorned with sculptures and arch-lidded or rock-hewn yet isolated, like wood built cottages, with rectangular mullions and raftered roofs verging gradually to the perfection of the Harpy and other of the more finished tombs of Xanthus. Among these tombs are some which belong to great personages who lived many ages before the Persian Conquest. Such, for example, is the tomb of Bellerophon at Tlos. This is a temple-tomb fronted by a pediment, borne on columns of a peculiar form and Egyptian aspect. On one side of the portico, the Lycian hero is represented mounted on Pegasus, and galloping up a rocky hill to encounter an enormous leopard-the kaplan, Mr. Forbes remarks, of Mount Cragus. Now scenes from the story of Bellerophon were frequently represented in ancient works of art. His contest with the Chimara was seen on the throne of Amyclae and in the vestibule of the Delphic temple. On coins, gems, and vases, he is often seen fighting against the Chimæra, taking leave of Proetus, taming Pegasus, or giving him to drink, or falling from him, in allusion to the later legends, related by Pindar and by Horace. It is impossible, therefore, to say if the sculptures upon the tomb of Bellerophon do not belong to Persian times, but it cannot be supposed otherwise than that the tomb itself dates back to the time immediately succeeding the death of the hero. What is good of one is therefore goed of others, and if one sepulchral grotto can be traced to times anterior to Cyrus, so may we suppose that other uninscribed tombs belonged to the same remote periods. Midas, King of Phrygia, had, as Colonel Leake discovered, his rock-tomb as well as Darius or Xerxes, and taken as a whole, rock-tombs are far more numerous and more characteristic of Phrygia, Lycia, and Cappadocia, and other countries of Asia Minor, than of Persia. It is not even easy of belief that the tomb of Bellerophon had to wait for the Persian Conquest, to be embellished, and that in his own country, which was so long before inhabited by Greeks of the same race as those who worshipped him as a hero at Corinth, and had a sanctuary sacred to his memory in the

cypress grove of Craneion. The Persians were too much engaged in conferring monumental immortality on their leader Harpagus, to be expected to confer similar honours on a hero of the vanquished, and they would feel a greater anxiety in erecting obelisks to Ormuzd, than in commemorating the feats of the son of Glaucus, or the more humble story of the daughters of Pandarus, for what applies to the one monument also applies itself to the other.

If the singular pit, excavated on the summit of the hill above Patara, with its central square column, is, as Captain Beaufort conjectured it to have been, the seat of the oracle of Apollo Patareus, such a monument in all probability dates anterior to the Persian conquests, for that worship was peculiar to the Doric race and was transplanted by them to the coast of Asia Minor. So it is also probably in regard to the decree referring to the worship of Apollo found at Sura, probably the Simena of Pliny. Divination by fish is related, however, to have been practised at Limyra

not at Sura.

The smaller theatre and gigantic portal at Pinara, the great wall north of Xanthus, the cyclopean walls at Phellus, Arnae, and other places, the massive Hellenic ruin at Corydalla, and not improbably the Hellenic fortress at Phineka, and the Hellenic towers in the gorge of Myra, besides many other similar remains, appear also to belong to ante-Persian times. In fact, in arguments of this kind, it must be held in mind, that in the third century after their establishment in the East and above seven hundred years before the Christian era, the Greeks of Asia far surpassed their European ancestors in splendour and prosperity. To use the descriptive language of Dr. Gillies, "with the utmost industry and perseverance they improved and ennobled the useful or elegant arts, which they found already exercised among the Phrygians and Lydians. They incorporated the music of those nations with their own. Their poetry far excelled whatever Pagan antiquity could boast most precious. They rivalled the skill of their neighbours in moulding clay, and casting brass. They appear to have been the first people who made statues of marble. The Doric and Ionic orders of architecture perpetuate, in their names, the honour of their inventors." This, it is to be remembered too, upon the authority of Herodotus, was at a time "when the neighbouring countries of Cappadocia and Armenia remained equally ignorant of laws and arts, and when the Medes and Persians, destined successively to obtain the empire of Asia, lived in scattered villages, subsisted by hunting, pasturage, or robbery, and were clothed with the skins of wild beasts."

It seems scarcely credible that there should be no remains of an art that attained such high perfection anterior to the Persian conquest, and that one of those countries whence Grecian civilisation took its origin, should have had to depend upon a less intellectual nation for its language and monuments. It may be true that rock-tombs abound most in the rich maritime valleys of Lycia, and that they are scarcely met with as we advance into the eastern highlands inhabited by the Solymi; but again in the country of the Cabalian Moeonians or Highlanders of Cabalia, as Herodotus designated them, rock-tombs are as frequent as elsewhere, and according even to our travellers have the aspect of being as ancient as any in Lycia. The same authors describe the precipices of Mount Cragus in the immediate vicinity of Telmissus as being honeycombed with tombs hewn in the rock and richly sculptured, some in imitation of IONIC temples, often to represent edifices of ornamental wood-work. Inscriptions,

some Greek, others in the mysterious character which has been designated Lycian, are carved on many of them, adding greatly to their interest. At Pinara again-the city of King Pandarus-we have a building with Ionic columns. At Xanthus we have fragments both of Doric and Corinthian architecture. At Bubon is a tomb which is described as having an aspect of being as ancient as any in Lycia and as having a pediment supported by two rudely-shaped (Doric?) pillars. So also of the tomb of Bellerophon, one of the oldest in the country, it is said of the columns which support the pediment, that "from such the Ionic may have originated;" for we can hardly suppose this, apparently the most ancient and important tomb in Tlos, to have been left unfinished. There is something inconsistent in thus admitting the possible existence of ancient Dorian tombs and of others of a style so primitive, as to be supposed to have suggested the Ionic order of architecture, and yet to deny to these tombs an existence anterior to the Persian conquests.

The learned decipherer of the Lycian language, Mr. Daniel Sharpe, has ascribed the earliest monument in that language to a period subsequent to the Persian invasion, but it does not necessarily follow from that, that these inscriptions were in the language of the conquerors. They certainly were not in the characters usually adopted by them, for the inscribed monuments of the Persians, from the time of Cyrus to that of Artaxerxes I., as far as yet known, are all in the third Persepolitan, or Babylonian-Achæmenian character, to which succeeded the Pehlvic. It appears that there is great variety among the Lycian inscriptions themselves, but in the alphabet given by Mr. Sharpe of twenty-nine letters, there are thirteen Greek, two Roman, others where Greek letters have an altered signification, as B for W. There are three which have the lar character of the cuneiform writing, and one apparently Phoenician. Now it is, to say the least of it, a very curious circumstance that a nation of conquerors with a known alphabet should have been the first to introduce into a distant and highly civilised country another alphabet, of which thirteen letters, at least, belonged to European colonists, who had mingled with the native population for two centuries before.

angu

Mr. Sharpe has also shown, that the Lycian language had even more resemblance to Zend than the Persepolitan, all three being of the same family, a fact which throws no direct light upon the antiquity of the said language, as we may readily suppose the languages of all the aboriginal natives of the Asiatic peninsula, who came from the East, to have belonged originally to the same family; while, on the contrary, not being Persepolitan, is a more or less direct argument against its being a language imported by the Achæmenian conquerors. The silence of Homer and of Herodotus upon the fact of the Lycians having a peculiar language of their own is merely negative evidence; they must have had a language anterior even to Greek colonisation, still more so to the Persian invasion, but they do not appear to have had an alphabet till after the Hellenic migrations, when Greek letters were used with some, perchance, original or borrowed signs, to which were added Phoenician and, subsequently, Persian characters. If the Lycian, as a branch of the Aramæan family of languages, were really that of the Persian conquerors, their adoption of a Greek alphabet must have been made in the hopes of familiarising their language to Dorians and natives, for, according to some testimonies, the Solymi spoke the Phoenician language. But even under these circumstances it would have been anticipated that traces of the same language would have

been found throughout the lands subjected by the Persians in the Asiatic peninsula, whereas, as far as is yet known, it has not been found beyond Lycia or its immediate neighbourhood. It is further to be remarked, that as the characters of the Lycian inscriptions are not similar to the Persepolitan, so also the language is not identical with that used in the Persian inscriptions of the time of Cyrus, Darius, or Artaxerxes; and yet, although Cyrus deputed the completion of his peninsula conquests to Harpagus, we have no historical grounds for supposing that the followers of the lieutenant were not Persians of the same race as the other followers of the great king.

The coins usually called triquetras, from the three-limbed emblem on the exergue, are among the most curious of the Lycian monuments. These coins apparently belong to a certain series of cities, many of which are determined by their resemblance to the Greek names, and at all of which tombs with inscriptions in the same language are found; and hence having assumed that these tombs and inscriptions belong to Achæmenian times, Mr. Daniel and his companions have deduced that the coins do so also. The objections to such a deduction, although not perfectly satisfactory, are innumerable. In the first place, in the most ancient of these coins we have the head, supposed to be that of Pan, a lion on the back of a bull, a bearded head with helmet, a naked warrior, all with legends in simple Greek characters. Then we have griffins with mixed characters, boars and other quadrupeds with the same; and all with the same national emblem, the so-called triquetra. Lastly, we have a Perso-Lycian coin in which we have the Lycian form in Greek letters of that common commencement of Persian names of kings and princes which the Greeks rendered Arta, but on which the national emblem is no longer found; and at a still later period we have Persian coins with the figure of Mithra, whose worship was not introduced till the time of Artaxerxes I. And on one of these, as if to give it currency in Lycia, the national emblem was found impressed as a counter-stamp.

It is scarcely to be expected that a conquering nation would have upheld national emblems, national mythology, and an European alphabet, adapted to a native language in preference to their own. On the contrary, on the well-known monuments of Persian origin, on the obelisk at Xanthus, the decree of the king of kings is inscribed in Greek, and the inscription that follows in Lycian, is called "Transcript of the greatest Decree of the King of Kings." The Medes and Lycians are frequently used in the same inscription in opposition to one another; and in one passage a distinction is drawn between the worshippers and the opponents of Ormuzd.

With respect to the triquetra, or national emblem of the Lycians, a theory has been advanced which at once strikes the mind as being more ingenious and plausible than satisfactory. It has been suggested that the instrument to which the name of triquetra has been given, is, in reality, a grappling iron or hook-aprayos-that the Persian general, finding himself governor of a district in which his language was as yet not spoken, and desiring to make his name known as the lord of the district, in all the cities which owed him allegiance, put a symbol upon coins, which must immediately remind all employing the coinage, and acquainted with the Greek language, that APIATOΣ was the governor.

his

It is almost sufficient to object to this ingenious hypothesis, that the exceptions when the hook is single are rare, it is generally a three-limbed

« AnteriorContinuar »