The History of the Ancient Civilizations. Duncker Max

may very likely have consisted of Carians only, as is proved by the position which Greek legend gives to the Carians in reference to Minos, as well as by other evidence. This occupation of the islands of the Ægean Sea by the Carians must be placed about the year 1500 B.C. For when the Phenicians colonised these islands in the thirteenth century, they were occupied by Carians. The Carian population became dependent on the Phenicians. Subsequently, about the year 1000 B.C., the Hellenes landed on the islands of the Ægean, and drove out the Carians. The Carians lost even Samos and Chios; they were again confined to their old home, and they could not even maintain themselves in that, for the best harbours of their coasts passed into the hands of the Greeks. Yet the Carians continued to be seamen and pirates. They lay in wait, as before, for the merchants, and overran the rich coast land. Even in the seventh century we meet with Carian pirates and mercenaries, and these not only on the mouths and banks of the Nile; and the Chronographers mention, apparently, a hegemony of the Carians on the sea, which is placed in the interval from the year 731 to the year 670 B.C.[843]

The Carians had no monarchy embracing the whole of their territory. But here also, so far as we can see, princes stood at the head of the various cities. A kind of confederation united the several places. About the year 500 we hear of assemblies of Carians on the banks of the Marsyas near the white pillars, and afterwards we find common sacrifices of the Carian cities, and days of meeting in the temple of Zeus Chrysaor, which was situated in the neighbourhood of Mylasa (now Milas) at Lagina (now Leïna).[844] Among the Carians the Greek colonists found a style of armour superior to their own, and they adopted it. The "Catalogue of ships," in Homer, represents the leader of the Carians as going into battle decked with gold.[845] In Alcæus "the Carian helmet laments," and Anacreon speaks "of putting the hand upon the well-fitted Carian haft." Herodotus tells us that the Greeks learned from the Carians to wear plumes upon their helmets, to paint devices upon their shields, and to furnish them with fixed handles—in Homer the shields are carried over the shoulder by straps. Greaves also are said to have been invented by the Carians.[846]

We are unable to tell with certainty the origin or the national characteristics of the Carians, though Herodotus maintains that the Lydians, Mysians, and Carians spoke the same language. Of the religious worship of the Carians he tells us that they were the only nation who worshipped Zeus as a warrior. Mylasa was the centre of their worship. On the heights which tower over the plain of Mylasa, in a forest of plane-trees, near Labranda, lay the temple of "Zeus Stratius." The image of the god is said to have carried the double axe. Carian coins of the fourth century B.C. display the image of a god with a double axe.[847] The same axe is also found on the remains of Carian altars. The Greeks even maintain that the god was named after this axe, that his national name was Labrandeus, and that in Lydian and Carian labrys meant a battle-axe. Plutarch says:—Arselis, the Carian of Mylasa, marched to the aid of Candaules, king of Lydia (he ruled about the year 700 B.C.), and afterwards he left the sacred axe of the kings of Lydia to the god of Labranda.[848] This giving up of the battle-axe to the god of the battle-axe allows us to suppose that the god of Mylasa is meant by the Carian of Mylasa; and that Arselis may have been the name or attribute of this god—a supposition which is changed into a certainty by the fact that in Semitic languages, Chars-el means "axe of El," "axe of God."[849] Beside this warrior Zeus, a warlike Aphrodite was also worshipped at Mylasa,[850] and if Strabo calls the goddess of Leïna Hecate, the reason of the name may be the death-bringing power of the goddess Astarte-Ashera. The sacred fish who were to be found in a pool at Mylasa, with gold rings round the neck, would then be evidence of the bountiful, increase-giving side of the nature of this goddess.[851]

      East of the Carians, on the south coast, in the valley of the Xanthus, were the settlements of the Lycians. The range of Taurus, which here rises to a height of 10,000 feet, sinks down in fields of snow and Alpine pastures to the course of the Xanthus. The sides of this valley, Mounts Kragus and Anti-Kragus, are beautifully wooded, and traversed by sounding rills. The view extends from the upper course of the river over the luxuriant vegetation of the plain down to the sea.

Herodotus tells us that this district was once known as Milyas, and that the Lycians, who were originally called Termilians, immigrated from Crete. Sarpedon and Minos contended for the throne, and as Minos got the upper hand, Sarpedon went with the Termilians to Asia, and took possession of Milyas. Afterwards Lycus, the son of the Attic king Pandion, when driven out by his brother Aegeus, came to Sarpedon, and from him the Termilians got the name of Lycians. Their laws were Cretan and Carian. They wore hats adorned with feathers, goat skins round their shoulders, sickle-shaped swords and daggers, coats of mail, greaves, bows, and arrows of reeds. They were named after the mother, and not after the father, and spoke of the mothers of their mothers as their ancestors. The son of a free woman and a slave was free and passed for a well-born man; but if a free man, even the first among them, begot children with a foreign woman or a concubine, these were outlaws.[852] Heraclides of Pontus extends these statements so far as to assert that the Lycians from ancient times had been under the dominion of their wives; Nicolaus, of Damascus tells us that the daughters of the Lycians, and not the sons, took the inheritance.[853]

      In the Homeric poems, Prœtus, king of Argos, sends Bellerophontes of Ephyra (Corinth) to the king of the Lycians, to be put to death. The king bade him slay the Chimæra, a monster which was a lion in front, a goat in the middle part, and a dragon behind, and when he succeeded in this he sent him to fight against the Solymi and the Amazons. But afterwards he gave him half his kingdom and his daughter, who bore him Hippolochus and Laodameia. The son of Hippolochus was Glaucus, and the son of Laodameia was Sarpedon, the chieftains who led the Lycians to the aid of the Trojans.

Beside the supposed immigration of the Lycians from Crete and the poetry of Homer we know nothing of the history of the Lycians beyond the fact that they did not submit to the army of Cyrus without a most obstinate resistance. And even under the supremacy of the Persians the Lycians managed their internal affairs independently. They formed a federation which was in existence at Strabo's time, and then included twenty-three places. Each city was represented at the assembly; the six larger cities had three votes each, the next largest had two, and the smaller cities had one.[854]

The name Milyas, which, according to Herodotus, was borne by the valley of the Xanthus, clung even in later times to the spur under the ridge of Mount Taurus, which runs out eastward towards Mount Solyma. Hence the Lycians could easily be represented as in conflict with the Solymi. The name Chimæra is given to a high mountain valley on Mount Kragus.[855] If the Greeks call the inhabitants of the valley of the Xanthus Lycians, the name has not arisen among them from the supposed Lycus, the brother of Ægeus, but rather from the Grecian god of light, Apollo Lyceus. According to the mythus of the Greeks, Apollo Bellerophontes (who was worshipped at Corinth), dashes down from his cloud-horse and with his crown of rays breaks through the thick clouds which obscure the sun; he overcomes Bellerus, the spirit of darkness. In the mind of the Greeks, Lycia was free from the clouds of winter; and, as a fact, the climate of the valley of the Xanthus is excellent. Into this bright land, therefore, the god was thought to have marched when he had become a hero; here he overcame the Chimæra, the creature of mist and cloud. The Greeks went still further in this conception. The east, the land of sunrise, was in itself the land of light, of the god of light, Lyceus. The god of light was thought to pass the winter in the brighter east, in the home of the sun. When the Greek colonists