peninsula there existed a tribe who bore the name of Milyans. Herodotus declares that these Milyans were formerly called Solymi, and that they were the original inhabitants of the country. Herodotus further states that the Termilians were driven from Crete with their leader Sarpedon, in consequence of the latter's quarrel with his brother, Minos. Modern historians, however, reject the idea of a Cretan origin, as also the derivation which Herodotus gives for the name Lycians. The ancient writer said that it came from the name of Lycus, an Athenian exile who took refuge with Sarpedon; but it is considered more likely that it was derived from Apollo Lyceus, and if this is really the case the Lycians probably worshipped a god of light. Another statement of Herodotus; namely, that the Lycians reckoned descent through their mothers, is not confirmed by the monuments.

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

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. 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 Mosians 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.

The Paphlagonians are mentioned in Homer as the allies of the Trojans. Herodotus includes them among the nations conquered by Croesus and describes the equipment of the Paphlagonians in Xerxes' army, while Xenophon also speaks of the numerous soldiers they were able to put into the field. Like the other nations of Asia Minor, the Paphlagonians passed successively under the dominion of Persia and Macedonia and they were included with Cappadocia in the territory of Eumenes; but it was only when their country was annexed to the kingdom of Pontus that they ceased to be ruled by native princes. (Third century B.C.)

Bithynia takes its name from the tribe of the Bithyni who, with the Thyni, are said to have originally crossed from Thrace. There was an older population which they expelled, but the tribe of the Maryandini continued to maintain themselves in the northeastern mountains. Bithynia shared the fate of its neighbour in being conquered by both Lydians and Persians, but in the fourth century B.C. we find the beginning of a native monarchy which increased in power, until, under Nicomedes I, the founder of the city of Nicomedia, it became an important kingdom. This kingdom

continued to exist till the encroaching strength of that of Pontus drove its sovereign to seek protection from the Roman power. It then became a Roman province and as such was for a time united with Paphlagonia.

The greater part of both these countries is wild and mountainous, and they possess extensive forests, but in many districts the rugged country gives place to fertile plains and valleys. The Greeks founded cities all along the coast, of which Sinope in Paphlagonia was the most important and the last place in that country to submit to the rule of Pontus (183 B.C.).

ARMENIA

In the native language Armenia is called Haik, and accordingly in the native legend we find the name of Haik ascribed to the founder of the first Armenian kingdom. This hero was said to be the fourth in descent from Japhet, and to have fled with a band of followers into the mountains of Ararat in consequence of the tyranny of Belus, king of Babylon, whom he afterwards defeated in a battle on the shores of Lake Van. The inscriptions reveal a close resemblance between the Babylonian writing and that used by the people of Urartu, the name employed in the Assyrian inscriptions for the country of Ararat. A distinction is however to be drawn between two races, the Armenians proper, who are of Aryan origin, and probably first appeared about the sixth century B.C., and the Alarodians, who were previously settled in the country and were eventually completely absorbed by the new-comers. It is the Alarodians, mentioned only by Herodotus, who seem to have possessed an affinity with the Babylonians.

A descendant of Haik is said to have extended his power even as far as Syria and Cappadocia and to have entered into alliance with Ninus of Assyria. The legend further states that Semiramis (Shamiram), queen of Assyria, made war on Araj of Armenia who had refused her love, and that she defeated and slew him in battle, after which she gave Armenia to Cardus. But Cardus rebelled against her and suffered the same fate as his predecessor, though his descendants were permitted to retain the throne as vassals to Assyria, till on the dissolution of the empire they recovered their independence. A later king, Tigranes, appears as the ally of Cyrus and the slayer of his rival Astyages. Tigranes is mentioned by Xenophon, but the value of the rest of the legendary history is extremely doubtful. The Assyrian inscriptions make frequent mention of expeditions into the Armenian territory. It was divided into various principalities. The Haikian dynasty had its seat at Armavir beyond the Araxes, and Van on the lake of the same name was a very ancient capital. The Haikian dynasty continued to reign till Alexander the Great defeated Vahi in 317 B.C. The eastern portion of Armenia was constituted an independent kingdom by Artaxias in 190 B.C., and under a later dynasty, the Arsacid, it seemed likely to become the centre of a great empire. The Romans, however, stepped in and its king Artavasdes, having been taken prisoner by Antony, was beheaded in the year 30 B.C. at the command of Cleopatra, while the country was split up into numerous rival principalities.a

Or the somewhat numerous nations that inhabited Asia Minor after the disappearance of the Hittites, the Lydians were the only ones who attained a degree of prominence that makes them an object of particular interest to the present day student of ancient history. And even these have an interest of a somewhat negative kind through their associations with the Greeks on the one hand and the Persians on the other.

As to the origin of the Lydians and their early history, all is utterly obscure. It is not even very clearly known whether they are to be regarded as a Semitic, Aryan, or a Turanian stock; most likely they were a mixed race and owed to this fact the relative power which they attained. Tradition, which here does service for history, ascribes to them three dynasties of kings, which are commonly spoken of as the Attyadæ, Heraclidæ, and the Mermnadæ. The first of these dynasties is altogether mythical, and the second very largely so. There are, however, some half dozen kings of the later period of the second dynasty whose names are known to us; these are Alyattes I, Ardys I, Alyattes II, Meles, Myrsus, and Candaules, and they ruled from about the year 814 B.C. to the year 691 B.C. The last of these kings, Candaules by name, is known to fame through the pages of Herodotus and other writers, and with his overthrow by Gyges, the third and last and the only truly historic dynasty of Lydia was ushered in.

The story of the overthrow of Candaules, as told by Herodotus, is one of the most stirring and famous of that author's narratives. That it must be regarded as half mythical, however, is evident from the fact that other Greeks had different traditions as to the same event. Thus Plato tells a fabulous tale of the finding by Gyges of a ring which had the property of rendering him invisible at pleasure, which ring became the means through which he succeeded in winning the favour of the wife of Candaules, and ultimately in overthrowing that monarch. All these tales, taking thus the characteristic cast of ancient narratives, agree, however, in the one essential point, namely, the overthrow of the dynasty by Gyges and the establishing of himself and his successors on the throne.

If tradition is to be credited, Gyges was a man of no small merit as an administrator; in particular, it is believed that he first invented a system of coinage. The alleged fact rests on somewhat insecure evidence; still, in default of another claimant, it is usually accepted by modern historians, and

this alone should be sufficient to preserve the name of Gyges, to the remotest posterity.

The name of Gyges, however, has attained no such popular notoriety as that of his successor, Croesus, of about a century later. It is, indeed, the story of Croesus and his overthrow by Cyrus, as told by Herodotus, that has done more than anything else to preserve the name of Lydia. Thanks to the father of history, the name of Croesus has stood as a synonym of wealth through all the centuries since that monarch lived, and the tragic story of the overthrow of the mighty autocrat through overweening confidence in himself and an underestimate of his enemy will continue, no doubt, to point a moral for successive generations of readers so long as history is read.

Among all the names of antiquity there is, perhaps, no other more widely and popularly known than that of Croesus, and there is certainly no other name in ancient or modern history so famous, whose possessor achieved so little. The wealth of Croesus was largely a heritage from his predecessors, and his share in the only important Lydian war of which we have record, was far from a glorious one. The place of this famous monarch in history is, therefore, as unique as it is interesting.a

THE LAND

It is difficult to fix the boundaries of Lydia very exactly, partly because they varied at different times, partly because we are still but imperfectly acquainted with the geography of western Asia Minor.

The name is first found, under the form of Luddi, in the inscriptions of the Assyrian king Asshurbanapal, who received tribute from Gyges about 660 B.C. In Homer we read only of Mæonians, and the place of the Lydian capital Sardis is taken by Hyde, unless this was the name of the district in which Sardis stood. The earliest Greek writer who mentions the name is Mimnermus of Colophon, in the 37th Olympiad. According to Herodotus the Meiones (called Mæones by other writers) were named Lydians after Lydus, the son of Attys, in the mythical epoch which preceded the rise of the Heraclid dynasty. In historical times, however, the Mæones were a tribe inhabiting the district of the Upper Hermus, where a town called Mæonia (now Mennen) existed. The Lydians must originally have been an allied tribe which bordered upon them to the northwest, and occupied the plain of Sardis, or Magnesia, at the foot of Tmolus and Sipylus. They were cut off from the sea by the Greeks, who were in possession, not only of the Bay of Smyrna, but also of the country north of Sipylus as far as Temnus, in the Boghaz, or pass, through which the Hermus forces its way from the plain of Magnesia into its lower valley. In an Homeric epigram the ridge north of the Hermus, on which the ruins of Temnus lie, is called Sardene. Northward the Lydians extended at least as far as the Gygæan Lake (Lake Colo, now Mermereh) and the Sardene range (now Dumanly Dagh). The plateau of the Bin Bir Tepe, on the southern shore of the Gygaan Lake, was the chief burial-place of the inhabitants of Sardis, and is thickly studded with tumuli, among which the "tomb of Alyattes" towers to a height of 260 feet.

Next to Sardis, Magnesia Sipylum was the chief city of the country, having taken the place of the ancient Sipylus, now probably represented by an almost inaccessible acropolis discovered by Mr. Humann not far from Magnesia on the northern cliff of Mount Sipylus. In its neighbourhood is the famous seated figure of "Niobe," cut out of the rock, and probably intended