Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

any other name. But it is clear that this Tantalean settlement was not on the Smyrnaean gulf, but further inward, near Mt. Sipylus. Hence the connection between the older Lelegian town, near the Sipylus, and the thriving Hellenic colony, by the sea, was not very direct. Tantalus's town may be regarded as the head-quarters or nucleus of the Leleges, who were dispossessed of their lands by the Greeks. The Greek writers connect the two settlements, or regard the Greek colony as the continuation of the Lydian, in order to claim for their city a more august antiquity.1 Aristides? names Pelops and Tantalus in one place as the founders ; in another, Theseus, simply because in one place he has the Lydian town in mind, in another the Greek.

The name of Theseus brings us a step nearer to authentic history, and to the Greek accounts of Smyrna. We must premise that, as Smyrna was held at different times by two races, the Aeolic and Ionic, two theories were held with respect to its foundation: first, the AEOLIC theory, supported by Ephorus and Herodotus; secondly, the IONIAN theory, supported by Strabo. The Aeolic theory traces the origin of the city to Cyme, the Ionian to Ephesus, and through Ephesus to Athens. In both of these versions the name of Theseus occurs, and much of the confusion in the early history of Smyrna is due to his name. According to the Ionic theory, Theseus is the famous hero of Attica; according to the Aeolic, and as we believe the true theory, Theseus comes from Cyme, and is a descendant of the royal house of Pherae, in Thessaly. The personal existence of this Theseus may, perhaps, be doubted, since the whole narrative in which he plays a part is of a mythical character. But we can hardly doubt, on weighing the evidence, that Smyrna was a secondary colony, founded not directly

Aoxov. Mr. S. makes no mention of this. Evidently Steph. is in error; is it in reality the name of the suburb of the later city along the gulf, which, as we glean from Philostratus and Aristides, was a sort of city by itself?

So the embassy in Tac. A. 4, 56 At Zmyrnaei, repetita vetustate, seu Tantalus, etc.

2 Προςφ. Σμ. Ι. p. 440, and Παλιν. ἐπὶ Σμ. I. p. 436.

from Greece, but from some Aeolian colony in Asia Minor; and that this colony was, in all probability, Cyme; and the same evidence leads us to reject confidently the IonianEphesian theory of Strabo, and of modern critics, who have followed Strabo, as K. O. Müller and Oeconomus, since all the seeming indications of an Ionian origin may easily be accounted for without recourse to this assumption.

We find, to be sure, many other versions of the story besides that of Ephorus, some of them mythical, some seemingly historical. According to one of the most current local legends, the founder of the town, like the founder of Ephesus, Myrina, and Cyme itself, was an Amazon, who called the town after her own name. The name of the Amazons naturally brings up the name of Theseus, with all the stories. of his battles and loves; and hence the Cymaean Theseus was confounded, as we have seen, with the Attic Theseus, and the Attic Theseus is married to the Amazon Smyrna. Strabo's error may be due in part to these confused accounts of Theseus; and the Attic theory of the direct origin of the city from Athens, is only a particularized version of the Ionic theory, with which the name of Theseus had much to do. The assumption once made, that this Theseus was the Attic Theseus, the Athenians had a strong motive for insisting that Smyrna was an Attic colony. For, of all the seven towns that claimed Homer as their citizen, the Smyrnaeans were adjudged to have the best claim, and to assert the claim of Athens as the metropolis of Smyrna was to assert some share in the heritage of the Homeric songs. With what interest the Athenians seized on every pretext to identify themselves with the great strife between Troy and the forces of Greece is well known from Pisistratus's interpolation in the Catalogue of Ships; and the theory of a direct colonization from Attica is due to the same period, and is, indeed, closely connected with the name of Pisistratus. On the pedestal of a statue erected to this tyrant, stood the

1 Plin. N. H. 5, 31; Strab. 12, p. 550, and of Ephesus 14, p. 633.
2 Cf. Aristid. Σμ. Πολ. Ι. p. 372; Προςφ. Σμ. Ι. p. 440.

following inscription, claiming the "golden citizen," Homer, as an Athenian; (auct. vit. Hom., p. 27, Westerm.)

Ημέτερος γὰρ ἐκεῖνος ὁ χρύσεος ἦν πολιήτης,

Εἴπερ ̓Αθηναῖοι Σμύρναν ἀπῳκίσαμεν.

This theory of a direct colonization from Attica may therefore be dismissed, as founded originally on a confusion of names, and propagated by interested literary speculators like Pisistratus and his school in Athens, or by declamatory municipal patriots like Aristides in Smyrna.

The Amazon founder of the city, who is the connecting link between Theseus of Cyme, and Theseus of Attica, is curiously interwoven with all stories of the early history of the town. Some meaning there must be in these myths, if we take care not to interpret them too literally, and look upon the Amazon as a real, concrete person. The Amazons are, of course, not a historical nation, but belong to the Asiatic mythology. They are either divinities 2 or attendants on some divinity (iepódovλot), like the Artemis Tauropolus, who was, according to Diodorus, a deity of the Amazons. Historically analyzed, all traditions of the Amazons as conquerors of men and founders of cities melt away; mythologically analyzed, they are an important connecting link between the Greek mythology and the older local traditions and modes of worship which the Greeks, with their pious veneration for things existing, were reluctant to displace. Hence, a victory of the Greeks over the Amazons, or the marriage of a Greek with an Amazon, stript of its mythical garb, means nothing more than this, that a new cultus was set up where the Asiatic cultus had prevailed, or the Asiatic cultus was engrafted on the Greek. The Amazon Smyrna, the eponymus heroine, afterwards adopted as the personification of the town, was the ancient local Lelegian or Lydian divinity. The myths which celebrated her attributes and deeds were gradually wrought into the form of epic lays;

• 1η Προςφ. Σμ. Ι. p. 443, Athens is called μητρόπολις.

2 See Müller's Dorians, I. p. 404, English translation, and the authorities in

note c.

in the reign of Gyges, Magnes' a Smyrnaean went round the cities of Lydia singing the deeds of the Amazons, and the victories won by the Lydians. From the epos to history it is but a step, and thus the shadowy representative of natural forces or divine attributes becomes a flesh and blood reality.

We may notice in this connection a two-fold, or even a three-fold form of the name. The word σμύρνα οι σμύρνη, probably connected with the name of the town, is a dialectic form of μúppa. The personal name is found in both forms also. Panyasis, quoted by Apollodorus, tells the well known story of Smyrna, the mother of Adonis, which Lycophron tells of Myrrha. C. Helvius Cinna, in his elaborate poem, calls her Smyrna, Ovid calls her Myrrha. This explains what Syncellus3 says of the Aeolic town, Myrina, that "it is called by some Smyrna." Mupiva (only a lengthened form of Μύρρα or Σμύρνα) is said by Strabo to be the name of the Amazon who founded the town of Myrina. This town, then, was a seat of the same ancient Amazon-cultus with Smyrna, though the name of the divinity is a little disguised.5

The story of the Amazon appears in still another form in the Ionic account of Strabo." The city of Smyrna, according to Strabo, was named from the suburb of Ephesus, which again derived its name from an Amazon Smyrna who ruled in Ephesus. In proof of this he quotes Callinus's hymn to Zeus, "Pity the Smyrnaeans," that is, the Ephesians; and this Ephesian Smyrna he goes on to prove

1 Nicol. Damasc. fr. 62; Suid. s. v. Máyvns.

2 Bibl. 3, 14, 3.

8 P. 181. A.

4 On the Trojan plain, according to Strabo, 12, p. 66, Tauchn., was a hill, called by the gods Batieia, but by men, the sepulchre of Myrina: another seat of this cultus.

5 Mr. Schmitz makes no reference to the orthography Zuúpva, found in countless inscriptions, coins and manuscripts. The letter complains in Lucian, judic. vocalium 9 (quoted by Eckhel, I. 2, p. 545), that Z has robbed it of Smyrna. Cf. also Sext. Empir. adv. math. pp. 638 and 639 Bekker. What Weichert, Poett. Latt. Rell. p. 169, advances in favor of Zmyrna, is fully borne out by

recent texts.

6 XIV. p. 632. Steph. Byz. follows him, s. v. Zuúpva.

from Hipponax, was situated between Tpnyein and Aéπîn 'ART. The inhabitants of this suburb went on an expedition against the Leleges, conquered them, drove them out, and built the town. But their stay was not long; the intruders were soon displaced by the Aeolians, and retired to Colophon, and sallying out in conjunction with the Ionian. Colophonians, they regained their own. This again he attests from a poet, Mimnermus in his Navvó:

Ἡμεῖς δ ̓ αἰπὺ Πύλον Νηλήϊον ἄστυ λιπόντες
Ιμερτὴν ̓Ασίην νηυσὶν ἀφικόμεθα.

Ἐς δ ̓ ἐρατὴν Κολοφῶνα βίην υπέροπλον ἔχοντες
Εζόμεθ ̓ ἀργαλέης ὕβριος ἡγεμόνες·
Κεῖθεν δ ̓ ἀστύεντος ἀπορνύμενοι ποταμοῖο

Θεῶν βουλῇ Σμύρνην εἵλομεν Αἰολίδα.

According to the Ionic version, therefore, which Strabo follows, the founders came not from Aeolis, but from the Ionian Ephesus. But here Strabo is at direct issue with a greater authority than himself; Herodotus1 enumerates Smyrna among the twelve towns of the Aeolic confederacy. He adds, to be sure, that the town was taken from the Aeolians by the Colophonians, and in so far the two accounts agree. But in the one vital point there is an essential difference between Strabo and Herodotus. Herodotus regards the Aeolians as the founders and legitimate owners of the town; Strabo regards them as the temporary occupants, who were ejected from a place they had seized by the force of arms. One thing is certain, that the Colophonians. dispossessed the Aeolians. Strabo errs in intimating,

though his language is vague, that the Colophonians did it in aid of original Ephesian founders. This could not have been the case; we do not know, to be sure, how long a period intervened between the foundation of the town and the Colophonian capture, as all dates at this period are necessarily uncertain. We shall endeavor to show hereafter that it was probably a hundred years or more. At any rate it was a tolerably long time. Now, if Smyrna had been

[blocks in formation]
« AnteriorContinuar »