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Asianic Elements in Greek Civilisation.
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HEAVEN AND EARTH
ON p. 56 a well-known passage from Plato’s Republic, end of Book ix., has been quoted, expressing in philosophic form that the ideal city-state exists in heaven, that the city-state on earth is an inferior and inadequate copy of it, and that the true philosopher and wise man will do only what is characteristic of the former, i.e. the ideal city. This is a thoroughly oriental idea, and came to Plato through Anatolia by the land journey, not by ships across the sea from Syria.
In another way, and in rude rustic fashion, the idea is expressed on monuments found in Anatolia; that the world of heaven forms the model and ensample for the world of earth, that the god above, simultaneously with the right performance of the ordained and revealed ritual by his worshipper on earth, is doing the same act in heaven as a ratification of the act on earth; and the monuments express the idea most clearly, where the European Greek fashion of degenerating Hellenism had not penetrated too deeply into the Anatolian heart.
FIG. 4.
A Rite Consecrated by the God in Heaven and performed by his Priest on Earth.
The best example is a monument found at the modern town of Koula in the Maeonian country, but brought possibly from Sandal or Geulde, two villages which have taken the place of the ancient sacred kome Satala in the Katakekaumene (called Lydian, but really belonging to the Maeonian period, pre-Lydian and Old-Anatolian). There are many proofs in both these villages of a
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local shrine. As often is the case elsewhere, the site of Satala was occupied by a Turkish village Geulde and a diminishing remnant of the old Christian bishopric Satala, called in Anatolian fashion Sandal (where nasalisation transforms “t” to “d”). Yet possibly Sandal may be a true ancient form (cp. Hesychius, sandalia, women’s shoes) of which “satala” was the simpler form. Gradually the Christian element died out. Speculation on the cause in such cases are stated in the Thousand and One Churches, p. 31 f. On the co-existence of a Christian and a Moslem element at an ancient sIte, as at Deli-Hiderli, Hider being St. George, and Sarikli, the turban wearers; Tefeni (i.e. Stephani) and Karamanli; Sivasli (ancient Sebaste), with a Turkish turn at the end, and Seljükler, see Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, i. 30 f., 279, 303, ii. 576.
The evident very recent volcanic action, seen in rivers of lava, hardened but black and without any soil gathered over it, were signs of the divine action and the volcanic fire, and that the divine power had its chosen abode in this Katakekaumene of Lydia.1 Satala was a permanent centre where the god and the goddess in their life and relations manifested a divine model for human life, taught their obedient people, punished the careless and the erring, and required from the sinner public confession and atonement in one way or other for all violation of the divine law; the punishment might come quickly or slowly, but the sin was always punished sooner or later by the divine fire of fever or by other more patent form of misfortune, accidental wound, or ill-luck in any of its various forms: the same thought seems to underlie the modern Italian use of disgrazia in the sense of misfortune;
215That there was a Katoikia called Koloe in the neighbourhood is certain from the inscription on the accompanying monument, which is in many respects the most important of all. Despite the resemblance of the ancient Koloe to the modern Koula, the late Byzantine evidence shows that Koula was understood as the Turkish, and probably old Anatolian, kula, kale, a fort or castle.
There is a distinction now made between koula, tower, and kala or kale, strong place, fortress. The term koula, kula, is explained by Ducange, Notae in Alexiadem, p. 621, as applied by the Greeks to all acropoleis. The acropolis of Antioch on the Orontes was called Koula by Anna Comnena, ii. pp. 89 f., and Kala is mentioned as a strong tower on the west side, by Scylitzes in Niceph. Phocam, quoted by Ducange, loc. cit., which shows that the words are practically identical. In all probability the words are variants of an old Anatolian word, taken over by the Turks; but H. Kiepert in a letter to me preferred to consider them early Turkish words.2
The relief was brought, the owners assured us, from the district Kara-Tash, which lies at no very great distance to the north of Koula, by a Greek dealer in madder-root. We visited Kara-Tash, but discovered on this journey nothing of consequence. The Greek and Turkish people there were concerned chiefly with the cessation of the demand for madder-root, which had formerly made them wealthy; and we found it difficult to explain to their satisfaction that madder-root, which was used in making the famous turkey-red colour, had been supplanted by inferior and cheaper aniline dyes. Koula was, and probably is still, a great seat of the manufacture of Turkey carpets. The relief had been in the possession of the same family nearly thirty years before we made 216 the drawing of it in 1884: the family was rich, and they assured me that this was the complete history of the stone from its discovery.
A mountain often indicates and guards like a sign the city or village near which it is seen by a traveller; but it is in accordance with the spirit of ancient paganism that it did not rest content with the vague conception that the mountain beside the town was the home of the deity and a sign indicating its locality to travellers. It was not merely a divine thing, but divine character and personality were attributed to it. Just as the heaven above was filled with a dense crowd of living beings, the Bear, the hunter Orion, the nymph Kassiopeia, and so on, with all the signs of the Zodiac, the Ram, the Virgin, the Balance, the Twins, Aquarius, etc., so the earth was a defective and poor copy of the heavens, and the surface of Anatolia and the Aegean lands was covered with figures like Leontoskephalai, the strongest fortress in Phrygia Hyroma (Sows village), Opheoskephale (Serpent’s Head, one can see from the proper point the long snake stretched out far across the Lake), Kynoskephalai, Gorgoroma (Gorgon village), the Rising Moon and so forth. It may be taken for granted as a principle of investigation and observation (1) that far more of these existed than the very defective sources reveal to a casual observer: we possess so little information about the country. Miss Gertrude Bell said that every stone or hillock projecting from the desert surface had its special name to the Bedouin; (2) that every great home of divine power was indicted to men on the divine map by these signs as well as by evident proofs of the divine power, such as hot springs and medicinal or curative properties in the soil and its products; (3) that local names mirrored these divine things to men, but they are rarely preserved to us in their native Anatolian form, and when they are preserved they are not always intelligible to us, since the language is unknown. See p. 148.
Sometimes such local names are known in a Greek translation, 217 of which examples have already (Ch. II.) been given, sometimes in modern Turkish. The Mount of God, Allah-Dagh, is not due to the imaginative interpretation of nature by the Turkish mind, for Turkish nomenclature is not of that type, nor to the Mohammedan religion, for the faith of Islam forbids the idea that any mountain could be so named. Allah does not dwell in a mountain, nor has He any local habitation except in Arabia, where certain local sacred places and things, which had too strong a hold on the Arab mind for Mohammed to disregard, were accepted and Islamised as part of the Faith. Such, e.g., was the Black Stone at Mecca, to which the pilgrims go: it was a holy thing or fetish long before Mohammed taught a higher thought and it was quite inconsistent with his teaching. Yet the Kaaba had to be accepted as the centre and rallying point of the true believers in Islam.
Accordingly Allah-Dagh, a mountain of God, in Anatolia, is neither Turkish nor Mohammedan. It comes from older Anatolian thought and nomenclature, possibly direct, perhaps through a Greek intermediate rendering.
The Rising Moon, Ai-Doghmush, is conspicuous to every traveller looking from the west or north-west even at a very great distance. I have seen it, and recognised the exact position of Apameia-Kelainai even from the horse-road between Ushak and Ala-Sheher (Philadelphia). The significance of the name gradually dawned on me, as I looked at this beautiful mountain from many points on the great sea-going road down the Lycus valley. Like the full moon half risen above the horizon, Ai-Doghmush rests on the intervening hill ridge. It is only the Rising Moon, not the Setting Moon, for it can be seen only as it rises in the east or south-east, not as is it sets in the west. A traveller coming from the east and looking towards this mountain from near at hand can see no such appearance there, for Ai-Doghmush is only a part of the rim of the central plateau. The appearance depends entirely on locality and direction. In the opposite view the Japanese poet 218 Kamo, looking from east westwards, says “how sad to see the light of the moon sinking behind the edge of the western hills: how good it would be if the light seen should remain for ever.”3 The rising moon is joyous: the setting moon is sad. The emotion in man naturally keeps in tone with the aspect of earth and heaven. It is not fanciful, but a truth seen by imaginative sympathy with ancient thought, that in the Anatolian mind the emotion harmonised with the scene. Of this a good example is found in the famous Boston relief, commonly (and probably rightly) regarded as part of the sarcophagus or monument which bore on another side the exquisite figure of Aphrodite rising from the sea. See also Chapter V.
Professor Ernest Gardner, in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, rightly emphasised the “Ionian” character of the art in this exquisite work, though I could never for a moment accept his doubt as to its genuineness. It is wholly Anatolian in emotion and conception, and the execution must be attributed to an Ionian school. The divine governing power, represented as a great nude winged figure (misinterpreted generally as Eros),4 holds forth the divine Balance, in which the god weighs alike the fate of heroes, the wares of the market, and the right times and movements of the heavenly Signs and the seasons of the year. Two goddesses sit on each side, contemplating the Justice of God in its action. They represent the sad and the joyous aspect of Nature, the Earth-goddess in her two moods and characters, of winter and summer, of death and life, of darkness and light. Professor Gardner gives in his article a good photograph of this exquisite monument of Ionian art.
The contrast of emotion, the gaiety and the melancholy of this monument, proves its genuineness and makes it a work of fine art: it is not merely the skilful workmanship, but the embodied 219 thought, that gives it such a high place among the remains of antiquity. No modern could have re-created the ancient ether and created a world to move in that ether. The idea is ancient and Anatolian, totally different in quality from the art of European Greece; and it had never been caught and envisaged even in words by any modern writer, although some speculations had been pointing that way. It needed the discovery of the monument to crystallise in the modern mind the floating elements of the great clashing world of ideas that produced such a work.
A similar group of priests to those mentioned in the above inscription (Fig. 4) has been printed in Sterret’s Epigraphical Journey, 1888, p. 91, No. 59, where a certain Mênis dedicates an altar to his fellow-priests of Zeus. The whole college of priests is six in number. The cost was added, but the number of denarii is obliterated. The priests are συνιερῖς of Mênis, evidently the chief-priest and head of the college. No special duties for each priest are mentioned; but priest of Hermes in one case, priest of Dionysos in another; possibly priest of Demeter and Saoazos, belonged to the college. This whole series of Killanian inscriptions5 was probably made or arranged by priests who succeeded to a place in the college. The priesthood was probably annual, and it is easy to make a list of priests from about A.D. 199 to 260, with a few small gaps due to breaks in the stone. The estates are called Killanian, or Choria Miluadika, or Hadriana (doubtless because they were reorganised by that Emperor). There were three separate estates, farmed out to three different contractors (μασθωταί), and the imperial interests were managed by a procurator, always an imperial freedman, and the three actores, slaves of the Emperors. A 220 passage in Pliny, Epist.. iii. 19, shows that a procurator and actores were the proper administrators of a group of estates in Italian Gaul.6 Critoboulos, dated A.D. 207-8 in Sterrett, No. 46 (Cities and Bish. Pt. I. p. 281), was a freedman of the imperial owners, Annia Faustina and Tiberius Claudius (date probably A.D. 207-8); but others may have been equestrian procurators.
The importance of this group of inscriptions for our purpose lies in the fact that they were imperial property, on the borders of the province Asia, and that the imperial owner was the divine lord and god manifested on earth, and his procurator represented him with supreme authority. The procurator was charged with the maintenance of public order, and had a corps of police (παραφυλακῖται), and frontier guardians (ὁροφύλακες, saltuarii). They were a sort of police force for a district or even for a city.
As we returned in 1884, after an excursion northwards and eastwards from Koula to Simav, Aizani, and Prymnessos, we took the opportunity of crossing the Kara-Tash region southwards by a different route; and in the district near the city Saittae we found the accompanying inscription, which was printed in the Classical Review, October 1905, p. 370.
In the year 307 (equivalent to A.D. 219?) on the seventh day of the month Daisios, Battos, son of Rufus, citizen of Saittae, with his parents dedicated the (statue of) Asklepios together with the (statue of) Hygeia in Ariandos in the temple of Zeus Agoraios. The priest of Asklepios.7
In the rearranged Augustan calendar, adapted to the Julian 221 year (solar), the names of the months were retained from the Macedonian year (which had been lunar); and Daisios was fixed 23rd April to 23rd May. That the seventh day of the Augustan month was chosen for this solemn act, has doubtless some relation to the moon; but that cannot be determined without intricate astronomical calculation. There can be no doubt that the Augustan calendar, settled for the province Asia, and doubtless for the Roman provinces generally, was used at Saittae.
The year 307 is probably (as stated above) dated from the era of the united province of Asia and Phrygia (made a province under Sulla). In it were included also Lydia, Caria, the Cibyratis, Hellespontus, etc. It is, however, possible that the Kara-Tash region was included in the original province taken into the Empire in 133 B.C., according to the will8 of the last Pergamenian king Attalus III., who left no son. There is, therefore, the possible alternative that in Arianzos (whose precise situation is not known),9 the era of the province Asia, 133 B.C., was used, which would make the date of this inscription A.D. 174.
A third possible date is according to the Seleucid era, 305-4 B.C.; and in that case the date would be 2-3 B.C. It is extremely difficult to determine what era was used in those frontier regions between Phrygia and Lydia9 or Caria.9 Several different eras were used actually in the same place at different times.
22In the present instance there is no criterion, except that there is no allusion to any Roman imperial name, which favours an early date.
The identity of Cappadocian Arianzos and the Maeonian name is noteworthy. Ariandos was evidently an ancient Anatolian name, identical with Arianzos, family estate of Gregory Nazianzen near the village Karbala or Kaprala (modern Gelvere)10 in the territory of Diocaesarea-Nazianzos. When we were at Gelvere in 1882, the inhabitants talked freely of Nazianzos, now called Nenizi, as the city of their saint. These facts imply that Arianzos was an estate of a land-owning family, under the kôme Karbala, which was comprised in the territory of the city-state Diocaesarea. It is clearly stated in two passages (Mansi, Act. Concil. ix. pp. 256, 258) that Arianzos was a farm (praedium), belonging to Gregory Nazianzen, where he was born. The phrase “an estate in Arianzos” occurs; Gregory mentions in his Epist. 25 a festival of the holy martyrs on the twenty-second day of the month Dathousa (a Cappadocian month); Gregory, writing to the governor of Cappadocia Secunda says that when the latter happened to be present at Nazianzos, he had had the opportunity of conversing with him: obviously Gregory had been at that time resident on his family estate at Arianzos of Karbala or Kaprala. About A.D. 376-380, Diocaesarea-Nazianzos was threatened by the governor with degradation from the rank of a city-state. Gregory interceded successfully on its behalf with Olympius the governor. Gregory rarely travelled far from his own home, and felt deeply hurt when Basil made him a bishop, and Podandos a bishopric, and required him to reside there in that deep pit among the mountains of Taurus.
With the identity of Ariandos in Lydia, and Arianzos in western 223 Cappadocia, compare the statement that Nadiandos was the same as Nazianzos (on which see Philostorgius, Hist. Eccles. viii. 11).
Turkish names were in late Byzantine times used for the old name. Cinnamus has Ἄκσιαρη (Ak-Sheher), and Πέγσιαρη (Bey-Sheher, older Beg-Sheher). Archelais Colonia is often mentioned by the Byzantine writers under the latter name, but Nicetas Choniates says that it was called by the Turks in the twelfth century Taksara (obviously Ak-Serai), whereas Acropolita, p. 146, mentions it as Aksara. Chalcocondylas, p. 243, still later, speaks of Konia as Tokoneion.11
The name Diocaesarea, which is found in Ptolemy, dates probably from the time of Domitian. Olba bears the name Diocaesarea on a coin of Trajan, but not on the older coins. Nazianzos is called Anathiango in the Jerusalem Itinerary, and Nantianulus in the Antonine Itinerary: these names attest the difficulty of getting a correct recognised spelling for this Cappadocian settlement. Anathiango (ablative with “ab” understood or lost) has prothetic “a” and “th” for the ordinary “z,” and the Anatolian ending “ang” with nasalisation as in lynx (lyk-os), pharyng, laryng-, and the magic bird of the wheel, iung, and many others. Nantianulus has nasalisation in a different place, “nt” for “zi”; the termination is given up in despair, and the Cappadocian “nz” or “nd” becomes “nl” with interposed vowel.
In this inscription of Kara-Tash in Maeonia, the note at the end was apparently intended to explain who Battos was. He was evidently one of a group of priests, each doubtless with his special duties.12 A similar group of priests, comprising at least seven, is 224 enumerated in Fig. 4. A similar group may be found in Sterrett, Epigraphical Journey, p. 91, No. 59, where a certain Menis places “that altar” to his fellow-priests of Zeus: the whole college appears to be six in number. The cost was stated, but the number is obliterated. They were published for the most part by A. H. Smith in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1887, p. 216 ff., and by Sterrett in his Epigraphical Journey, p. 38 ff.; and explanations with chronology were added by me in the Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, Pt. I. pp. 278-294 and 304-316.
In the Kara-Tash inscription, the name Rouphos (Rufus) is probably a translation of an Anatolian word used as a personal name: cp. Longus, Dolichos, Macer or Makros, etc.
Battos and its derivative Battakês were names usual among the priests of Cybele at Pessinus. Battos was also a common name among the kings of Cyrene, and the founder of the colony somewhere about 630 B.C. (on very uncertain evidence, Meyer, Gesch. Des. Altherthums, ii. 301): the Greeks made Battos into a Libyan name, and invented Greek names for the founder; but it is really a pre-Hellenic and Anatolian name. Battea was a village or homestead in the Tekmoreian district.13 Battos was a mythological herdsman, who observed Hermes driving away the stolen herds of Apollo; and he was changed into a rock. Battos was also a ruler of Melite, who received hospitably Anna, sister of Dido.
The evidence points to Battos and Battakes as being pre-Hittite Anatolian names. Much of Greek mythological nomenclature has the same origin, though the actual tales are commonly transformed by Greek fancy.
225The name Batieia in the speech of men, called also the “sign of dancing Myrina” in the language of the gods, designated a little hillock near the Scaean gate of Troy, between the Scamander and the Simoeis. See p. 299.
Bateia,14 again, was the daughter of Teucer, wife of Dardanos, mother of Ilus, Erichthonios and Zakynthos (Dionysius Halic. Antiq. Rom. i. 50). Here perhaps we find ourselves amid Hittite surroundings, for Teukros was the god Tarku.
It is important to study the constitution of the imperial estates, for these estates preserve the old Asian system of a god ruling his people. The labourers (coloni) on those estates occupied almost the position of serfs. They were not at first actually bound to live on and cultivate the soil; but the natural reluctance of Asiatics to move from their hereditary place affected more and more the coloni on imperial estates in Europe (which were fewer in number and not so large in extent). The imperial power, however, gradually encroached on the rights of these free-born labourers. More and more the imperial lord claimed the right to their labour; and they were powerless to resist. The land passed into the possession of the imperial lord, who was not only master and owner, but also the image of god. He is in the Revelation called the Beast. His image, Eikôn, was a holy thing, and his worship was obligatory on all. Private estates passed into the possession of the Emperor. Often in the first century A.D., the Emperor gave landed estates to his favourites; but gradually these were brought back under his power. Confiscation of the property of unpopular persons, stigmatised as enemies of the state and hostile to the safety of the realm, implied that all the land which they had possessed was transferred to the ownership of the Emperor. Most part of Cappadocia was imperial property. The cities, which had, under the early empire, owned considerable lands, gradually lost it, and the Emperors gained it all, as the city-system decayed.
226Thus the population came to consist of the lord Emperor and peasant coloni and soldiers. Gradually that system became the law of the empire. Finally in 415 the coloni on estates were made practically serfs, when the right of the owner to the labour of his coloni was recognised by law.
The long Arab wars for three centuries after 660, re-invigorated the peasants. It was the peasants who drove back the Arabs, as they gradually learned to defend themselves against the external enemy. Peace, even the peace of heaven, was not so good for the peasantry as war proved to be. When we speak of the distinction of earth and heaven in Anatolia and the empire generally, the meaning depends on the period. Great estates continued to exist in Asia Minor, and are important in the ninth century and later: the owners were not the masters but the friendly leaders of a good peasantry; owner and peasant were necessary to each other, and each felt that this was the case.
The state of the earlier Empire was hated and resisted by the Christians. They were a reform party in the political world, and were more strenuously discouraged and persecuted by the best emperors than by the worst. Trajan fully recognised this inevitable opposition. He did not like it, but he could not prevent it; and he tried to alleviate it.
Heaven to the non-Christian peasantry was based on earth. It was beyond and outside of and utterly separate from earth to the Christians.
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Footnotes
1 We visited Koula, Geulde, Sandal, and the country north as far as Simav and the Rhyndakos river, and east from there to Tchavdir-Hissar (Aizani) and on to the country of the Prepenniseis in 1883 and 1884; but many important inscriptions have been published of similar type by Buckler and others, following on a collection by Steinleitner.
2 “Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia,” in Journal of Hellenic Studies, viii. Pt. II. § cvii.; Historical Geography of Asia Minor, pp. 211, 432; Colonel Von Diest considers Koula to be the same name with Koloe (see p. 48 of his Von Pergamon über den Dindymos zum Pontus; an excellent travel narrative). I came to know him well before the war. Probably the word kala in Arabic is borrowed from Turkish, and ultimately perhaps originated in Anatolia.
3 J.H.S., 1918, p. 145.
4 It could be Eros only in a highly philosophic idea as the governing principle of the world, as in Plato.
5 Sterret’s group of inscriptions Nos. 38-76 all belong to the Killanian estates of the Emperor, and were published also quite independently by A. H. Smith in Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. viii. Education on these imperial estates was slow and late. More exact references are given on p. 224. Numerous similar lists and contributions have since been found.
6 Schulten, Röm. Mitt., 1898, p. 225 ff., considers that actores is the proper designation. On pragmateutai, actores, see Arch. Epigr. Mitt. Österr., 1896, xix. p. 127 ff. From Mommsen in Hermes, xv., 1880, p. 403 f., it is natural to infer that the rents of the coloni (resident native labourers) were paid directly to the board of supervision, i.e. the procurator and actores. My first rendering, long ago made, of “negotiatores” instead of “actores” was approved by that great scholar, Otto Hirschfeld, in the Berlin Sitzungsber., 1891, p. 874, note 122, and the question of management still remains not quite settled.
7 A definition of Battos is appended, as pp. 178, 188 f.
8 The existence of such a will has been ridiculed by some modern historians of Rome, but has been conclusively proved by an inscription found in the German excavations at Pergamos. The truth is that the latest kings of Pergamos from 189 B.C. onwards were merely client-kings subject to the Roman Senate, and that Rome had both the power and the legal right to interfere and to make changes as it pleased. The existence of a will was a natural consequence. Rome was free to accept the will, if it desired to do so, or to nominate another client-king if it preferred.
9 Changes were introduced in the border of Caria (Cities and Bish. of Phrygia, Part I. p. 37). Several different eras were used in the Cibyratic and Killanian regions, and also in the more northern region of Maeonia.
10 Called by the Greek residents Καλβαρή in 1882. It was partly Turkish, partly Greek at that time. Nenizi in the open plain was Turkish. Gelvere is a refuge close to the skirts of Hassan-Daph (Little Argaios).
11 The το or τ is intended apparently to give a Greek look, and is the Greek definite article. Perhaps the modern Tapae for the old Lydian town Hypaipa is a similar case, or possibly it is a case of dissimulation for Papae.
12 No special duties are enumerated. The six were fellow-priests (συνιερεῖς). The whole group of inscriptions in Sterrett‘s group, No. 38 to 76, probably were made by priests: in several cases the makers are said to be priests, but priests only for a limited period, probably in general one year. I copied them all, usually in conjunction with A. H. Smith and J. R. S. Sterrett. These three Killanian estates were imperial, and the people were not highly developed in civilisation. On the dates and names that can be elicited from them of the imperial family, see Prosopogr. Imp. Rom., p. 470. They were reorganised by Hadrian, and sometimes called Hadriana.
13 Sterrett, Epigraphical Journey, p. 338 f. I at first tried to make it β’ Ἀττεανός ; but repented of this error, as mentioned above in the present volume.
14 The connexion of Bateia, Batieia, with the old Anatolian Battos, is doubtful.
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