Phrygians

“ In this way, he says, the Phrygians call him “Amygdalus,” from which proceeded and was born the Invisible (One) , “by whom all things were made, and nothing was made without Him.” [1] And the Phrygians say that what has been thence produced is “Syrictas” (piper) , because the Spirit that is born is harmonious. “For God,” he says, “is Spirit; wherefore,” he affirms, “neither in this mountain do the true worshippers worship, nor in Jerusalem, but in spirit. For the adoration of the perfect ones,” he says, “is spiritual, not carnal.” ”

“ Along the western shores of this great peninsula were Pelasgians, Mysians, Bythinians, Phrygians, Lydians, and other nations, before the Greeks established their colonies. Further eastward were Lycians, Pisidians, Phrygians, Cappadocians, Paphlagonians, and others. The Phrygians, Mysians, and Teucrians were on the northwest. These various nations were not formed into large kingdoms or confederacies, nor even into large cities, but were inconsiderable tribes, that presented no formidable resistance to external enemies. ”

“ But there are others who themselves are even more heretical in nature (than the foregoing) , and are Phrygians [1] by birth. These have been rendered victims of error from being previously captivated by (two) wretched women, called a certain Priscilla and Maximilla, whom they supposed (to be) prophetesses. And they assert that into these the Paraclete Spirit had departed; and antecedently to them, they in like manner consider Montanus as a prophet. And being in possession of an infinite number of their books, (the Phrygians) are overrun with delusion ”

“ The Illyrians were in these ancient times also bounded on the east by the Phrygians and Thracians, as well as by the Pelasgians. The Phrygians were at this time the immediate neighbours of the Macedonians in Lebæa, by whom they were called Brygians (Βρύγες, Βρύγοι, Βρίγες) ;30 they dwelt at the foot of the snowy Bermius, where the fabulous rose-gardens of king Midas were situated, while walking in which the wise Silenus was said to have been taken prisoner. They also fought from this place (as the Telegonia of Eugammon related) 31 with the Thesprotians of Epirus. ”

“ PHRY. With a clamor having burst by means of bars the doors and cells where we were waiting, we run to her assistance, each to different parts of the house, one bringing stones, another spears, another having a long-handled sword in his hand. But Pylades came against us, impetuous, like as the Phrygian Hector or Ajax in his triple-crested helmet, whom I saw, I saw at the gates of Priam: but we clashed together the points of our swords: then indeed, then did the Phrygians give clear proof how inferior we were in the force of Mars to the spear of Greece. ”

“ Phrygian cheese and salt-provisions, Lydian unguents, [405] carpets and colored shoes, acquired notoriety. Both Phrygians and Lydians are noticed by Greek authors subsequent to the establishment of the Persian empire as a people timid, submissive, industrious, and useful as slaves,—an attribute not ascribed to the Mysians, [406] who are usually described as brave and hardy mountaineers, difficult to hold in subjection: nor even true respecting the Lydians, during the earlier times anterior to the complete overthrow of Crœsus by Cyrus; for they were then esteemed for their warlike prowess. ”

“ In a note to this Mr Mead quotes from The Life of Isidorus: "I fell asleep and in a vision Attis seemed to appear to me, and on behalf of the Mother of gods to initiate me into the feast called Hilario, a mystery which discloses the way of our salvation from Hades." Throughout the document reference is continually made to the Phrygians and their doctrine of Man. The Eleusinian Mysteries are then treated of as subsequent to the Phrygian, "after the Phrygians, the Athenians," but the teaching is represented as being essentially identical. ”

“ The Phrygians imagine that the god sleeps in winter and wakes in summer, and accordingly they celebrate with Bacchic rites the putting him to bed in winter and his awakening in summer. The Paphlagonians allege that he is bound fast and shut up in winter, but that he stirs and is set free in spring. And the season furnishes a hint that the sadness is for the hiding of those fruits of the earth which the ancients esteemed, not indeed gods, but great and necessary gifts bestowed by the gods in order that men might not lead the life of savages and of wild beasts. ”

“ Nay, so eagerly does the multitude seek after portents that they will oftentimes refuse to pay homage even to the truth, unless it come accompanied with portents: and indeed such is the nature of our Phrygians in this region (and the Paphlagonians are no better) that if a juggler will but play his tricks before them, taking with him a player on the flute or tambourine or cymbals, straightway they will gape upon him as on a messenger from heaven, and believe as he instructs and do as he commands. ”

“ You may see them fighting Ionians on a sarcophagus from Clazomenae which is in the British Museum. They rode bareback on half-tamed horses and slew with tremendous leaf-shaped swords. They destroyed the power of Phrygia, then the greatest in the peninsula, and King Midas, last of his race, killed himself (by drinking bull’s blood, men said) . Lydia succeeded to the place and the peril of the Phrygians. ”

“ Now, that music can heal diseases, Theophrastus asserts in his treatise on Enthusiasm, where he says that men with diseases in the loins become free from pain if any one plays a Phrygian air opposite to the part affected. And the Phrygians are the first people who invented and employed the harmony which goes by their name; owing to which circumstance it is that the flute-players among the Greeks have usually Phrygian and servile-sounding names, such as Sambas in Alcman, and Adon, and Telus. ”

“ This city was evidently the centre of the old Phrygian kingdom of the Sangarius valley, but at least one of the monuments in it seems to belong to the older period of Cappadocian supremacy, and to prove that the city already existed in that earlier time. The Phrygian kingdom and art therefore took the place of an older civilization. It is probable that the tradition of battles between the Phrygians and the Amazons on the banks of the Sangarius preserves the memory of a struggle between the two races and the victory of the Phryges. ”

“ All writers suppose them to have been magicians, attendants upon the mother of the gods, and to have lived in Phrygia about Mount Ida. They call the Troad Phrygia, because, after the devastation of Troy, the neighbouring Phrygians became masters of the country. It is also supposed that the Curetes and the Corybantes were descendants of the Idæan Dactyli, and that they gave the name of Idæan Dactyli to the first hundred persons who were born in Crete ”

“ The national instrument of the Phrygians was the flute, and it is worthy of remark that up 186to a very late period flute-players at Athens were usually distinguished by Phrygian names. Olympos the greatest musician known to the Greeks, was probably himself a native of Phrygia, since he is said to have been a pupil of Marsyas. In fact the barbarians of antiquity appear, though in a somewhat different way, to have made as much use of music as the Greeks themselves. ”

“ And the Idæan Dactyli were Phrygians and barbarians. Herodotus relates that Hercules, having grown a sage and a student of physics, received from the barbarian Atlas, the Phrygian, the columns of the universe; the fable meaning that he received by instruction the knowledge of the heavenly bodies. And Hermippus of Berytus calls Charon the Centaur wise; about whom, he that wrote The Battle of the Titans says, “that he first led the race of mortals to righteousness, by teaching them the solemnity of the oath, and propitiatory sacrifices and the figures of Olympus.” ”

“ The analogy between the Kretan and Phrygian religious practices has been often noticed, and confusion occurs not unfrequently between Mount Ida in Krête and the mountain of the same name in the Troad; while the Teukrians of Gergis in the Troad,—who were not yet Hellenized even at the time of the Persian invasion, and who were affirmed by the elegiac poet Kallinus to have emigrated from Krêtê,—if they were not really Phrygians,—differed so little from them as to be called such by the poets. ”

“ If Phrygia was powerful enough in the ninth century to hold the west Anatolian lands in fee, did it also dominate enough of the eastern peninsula to be ranked the imperial heir of the Cappadocian Hatti? The answer to this question (if any at all can be returned on very slight evidence) will depend on the view taken about the possible identity of the Phrygian power with that obscure but real power of the Mushki, of which we have already heard. The identity in question is so generally accepted nowadays that it has become a commonplace of historians to speak of the "Mushki-Phrygians." ”

“ The first Greeks who engaged in this traffic, which even by the Pagans was supposed to be attended by a curse, are said to have been the Chians, and we shall presently see how ill it prospered with them. They purchased their slaves from the barbarians, among whom the Lydians, the Phrygians, and the natives of Pontos, with many others were accustomed, like the modern Circassians, to carry on a trade in their own people. ”

“ But the Paphlagonians and Phrygians are prone to neither of these vices; nor are the sports of the circus and theatrical exhibitions in much estimation among them even to the present day. And for this reason, it seems to me, these people, as well as others of the same character, so readily assented to the letters then written by Novatus. Fornication and adultery are regarded among them as the grossest enormities: and it is well known that there is no race of men on the face of the earth who more rigidly govern their passions in this respect than the Phrygians and Paphlagonians. ”

“ The East is the point whither they all aim, and the era they assign is invariably that of the deluge! Is it not, therefore, inevitable, but that the object recorded is our reception of the Tuath-de-danaans when ejected by the arms of their Pish-de-danaan rivals? [495]
Amongst the Easterns themselves we find corresponding traditions, wrapt up, as usual, in allegory, of this primordial departure. The Phrygians, who were one of the most ancient and considerable nations of Asia Minor, complain of Apollo having wandered from them, in company with Cybele, to the land of [Pg 437] the Hyperboreans. ”

“ By Phrixus is meant Φρυξ, Phryx, who passed the Hellespont, and settled in Asia minor. However obscured the history may be, I think the purport of it is plainly this, that the Hellenes, and Phrygians were of the Nephelim or Anakim race. Chiron was a temple, probably at Nephele in Thessalia, the most antient seat of the Nephelim. His name is a compound of Chir-On, in purport the same as Kir-On, the tower and temple of the Sun. In places of this sort people used to study the heavenly motions: and they were made use of for seminaries, where young people were instructed ”

“ The same, he says, is the Pleroma, whereby all things that are [137] begotten by the unbegotten have come into being and are filled.
But the same one is called by the Phrygians “unfruitful.” For he is unfruitful when he is fleshly and performs the desire of the flesh. This, he says, is the saying: “Every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is cut down and cast into the fire.” [124] For these fruits, he says, are only the rational, the living man who enter by the third gate. [125] They say, indeed: “Ye who eat dead things and make living ones, what will ye make if ye eat living things?” ”

“ Its introduction is coeval with the earliest facts respecting Grecian music, and must have taken place during the first century of the recorded Olympiads. In the Homeric poems we find no allusion to it, but it may probably have contributed to stimulate that development of lyric and elegiac composition which grew up among the post-Homeric Æolians and Ionians, to the gradual displacement of the old epic. Another instance of the fusion of Phrygians with Greeks is to be found in the religious ceremonies of Kyzikus, Kius, and Prusa, on the southern and south-eastern coasts of the Propontis ”

“ Phrygia, exports of, iii. 353. Phrygian dyers, iii. 231. measures, i. 185185. slaves, iii. 7. Phrygians, their mode of sepulture, iii. 435. Pelasgi, i. 44. tombs of the, iii. 429. Phryginda, a game, i. 155155. Phrynè, golden statue of her at Delphi, ii. 4848. her celebrated beauty, ii. 4747. Phthiotis, called Hellas, i. 11. peopled by Pelasgi, i. 55. a Pelasgian settlement, i. 10, n. 37n. 37 Phygelites, a wine, iii. 116. Physical sciences, study of, i. 240240. organization of the Greeks, i. 4242. studies of the philosophers, i. 349349. Physicians, their opinions concerning wine, iii. ”

“ Under the Persian rule perhaps it was more difficult for Greek manners to spread far east; but we need not think that European influence was absolutely unfelt even in Phrygia. The probability is that Alexander found in all the large cities a party favourable to Greek manners and trade. Very little is to be learned from the ancient writers with regard to the state of Phrygia from 585 to 300. The slave-trade flourished: Phrygian slaves were common in the Greek market, and the Phrygian names Midas and Manes were stock-names for slaves. ”

“ The gathering of foreign merchants and slaves in the Anatolian cities, and the constant shifting of their 31inhabitants by their successive masters, had forced on the votaries of these Phrygian deities a theocrasia of the most complete kind, and the Phrygian god and goddess were in turn identified with the deities of Eleusis, of whom indeed they may have been the prototypes, with the Syrian Aphrodite and Adonis, with the Egypto-Greek Serapis and Isis, and probably with many Oriental deities as well [105] . At the same time, their fame and their worship had spread far beyond Phrygia. ”