The History of Antiquity Volume Iii Part 29

[793] The attack of Sadyattes on Smyrna is vouched for by Nicolaus, fragm. 64, ed. Muller.

[794] Herod. 1, 17-19.

[795] The reasons for which I believe it necessary to maintain this date are given above, p. 288, _n._

[796] Nicol. Damasc. fragm. 64, ed. Muller. At the time of this Carian campaign of Alyattes, Croesus, according to this fragment, was viceroy of the region of Adramytteum. It must therefore be placed about the year 580, since Croesus was born in 598 B.C. Adramytteum is said to have been founded by a brother of Croesus of the name of Adramyttus: Steph.

Byz. _s. v._ In Nicolaus Adramys is an illegitimate son of Sadyattes.

The city was certainly much older. Athenaeus, p. 515, mentions an old king of Lydia of the name of Adramyttus.

[797] Mimnerm. fragm. 11, ed. Bergk. If Mimnermus, the contemporary of Solon, is sometimes called a Smyrnaean, and sometimes a Colophonian, the explanation is that Mimnermus derived his race from the Colophonians, who had taken Smyrna from the Achaeans. Strabo, p. 634. It is not strange that Mimnermus as a boy may have heard the story of the struggles against Gyges from his fathers and grandfathers. The attack of Alyattes upon Smyrna, belongs to the period after 580, the last decade of Alyattes, because Croesus continues the war against the Greek cities without any break.

[798] Herod. 1, 16. Nic. Damasc. frag. 64. Strabo (p. 646) tells us that the Smyrnaeans had been compelled to dwell separately in several open villages, and that they lived in this manner for 400 years, down to the time of Antigonus. In this reckoning, in any case, there is a century too much; moreover, Pindar (fragm. incert. 152, ed. Dissen) speaks of the charming city of Smyrna. Hence the view given in the text is taken.

[799] Xenophan, fragm. 3. Arist. "Pol." 4, 3, 9. Athenaeus, p. 526.

Pausan. 7, 5, 4.

[800] Theogn. fragm. 1103, ed. Gaisford.

[801] Herod. 1, 16; Diog. Laert. 1, 83.

[802] Suidas [Greek: Alyattes].

[803] Hipponact., fragm. 15, ed. Bergk. Schneidewin's conjecture to read Alyattes for Attales ought certainly to be adopted, though Alyattes had a son called Attales. The way must have been fixed by the largest monument. [Greek: Attyos] for [Greek: otys] seems certain; on the other hand [Greek: Myrsilou] for [Greek: Mytalidi] is not permissible.

[804] Herod. 1, 93.

[805] Xenophon makes use of it in the Cyropaedia for his own object (7, 3). Clearchus of Soli calls the tomb of Alyattes "the tomb of the Hetaera." Athen. p. 573. Gyges loved a paramour so pa.s.sionately that she governed him and the kingdom. After her death he collected the Lydians and heaped up a mound in her honour, which was still called the grave of the Hetaera; it was so high that all the Lydians had it before their eyes, and every traveller who journeyed within Tmolus. All this may be founded on a partic.i.p.ation of the numerous Lydian Hetaerae (vol. I. p.

566) in the tomb of Alyattes. Cf. Strabo, p. 627.

[806] Hamilton, "Asia Minor," p. 144, 145. Spiegelthal, "Monatsber. B.

A." 1854, s. 700 ff. Olfers, "Die lydischen Konigsgraber, Abhandl. B.

A." 1858, s. 539 ff.

[807] Herod. 1, 92. Nicol. Damasc. fragm. 65, ed. Muller.

[808] Herod. 1, 25. Pausan. 10, 16, 1, 2. Athen. p. 210.

[809] Aesch. "Pers." v. 45. Herod. 1, 29; 5, 101.

[810] Fragm. 11, ed. Welcker.

[811] Herod. 1, 170. Diog. Laert. 1, 25.

[812] Herod. 1, 82, says: "as many as to Delphi, and like the Delphian presents."

[813] ael. "Var. Hist." 3, 26. Polyaen. "Strateg." 6, 50. If aelian tells us that Pindarus was at that time tyrant of Ephesus, and had received the throne by inheritance, the statement is corrected by the tenor of the narrative in which Pindarus gives advice, not orders, to the Ephesians. The "tyranny" of Pindarus therefore was no more than a prominent position in the city, such as would fall to a man of the race of the Basilidae, who carried the sceptre and wore purple. This does not set aside the fact that Melas, the father of Pindarus, had to wife a daughter of Alyattes: only I observe that Nicolaus of Damascus calls the Milesian, who had to wife a sister of Sadyattes, a descendant of Melas, the brother-in-law of Gyges.

[814] Herod. 1, 27. That the Ionians did not render service in war is clear from the account which Herodotus gives of the war of Croesus against Cyrus. Another point is more doubtful. Herodotus remarks, 1, 141, that the cities at the approach of Cyrus had "surrounded themselves with walls." If we take this in the strictest sense, we might draw the conclusion, that the cities had been compelled to throw down their walls when subjugated by Croesus.

[815] Herod. 6, 37.

[816] Herod. 1, 69.

[817] Herod. 6, 125. If Herodotus on this occasion has in his mind the emba.s.sy which Croesus sent to Delphi in 551 B.C., Alcmaeon must at that time have been at least 70 years old. But Croesus had sent to Delphi earlier (Herod. 1, 85). Xenophon ("Cyr. inst." 7, 2, 7) represents Croesus as sending to Delphi before he had any sons born to him, and again after the death of Attys. According to the Parian Marble, Ep. 41, 42, the first mission of Croesus was 14 years before his overthrow, in the first year of his reign.

[818] Pind. "Pyth." 1, 184.

[819] The chronological difficulties which are brought against this meeting, and to which Plutarch refers, "Sol." c. 27, rest on the fact that Plutarch, like Herodotus, represents Solon as going to Sardis after the establishment of the Athenian const.i.tution. According to this the meeting occurred in 593, or rather in 583 B.C. Either date is impossible: in 593 B.C. Croesus was five years old, in 583 B.C. he was fifteen, and he did not ascend the throne till 563 B.C. The meeting with Croesus therefore cannot be placed earlier than 560 B.C. when Solon left Athens after Pisistratus became tyrant. After 558 B.C. Croesus could no longer count as the happiest of mortals, with whom everything went well, for in 558 B.C. Cyrus had already deposed Astyages, the connection of Croesus. Herodotus says (1, 34, 46), that Croesus had bewailed the loss of his son Attys for two years before the account of the fall of Astyages was brought to him; Attys must have died in 560 B.C. With this the exact account of Phanias of Eresus, a scholar of Aristotle (Suidas, [Greek: Phanias]), entirely agrees. He tells us that Solon did not live two complete years after Pisistratus had seized the tyranny, for Pisistratus became tyrant under the archons.h.i.+p of Comias; Solon died under the archons.h.i.+p of Hegestratus (Plut. "Sol." 32); the archons.h.i.+p of Comias falls in the year 559 B.C. Cf. aelian, "Var. Hist."

8, 16. Diogenes Laertius, 1, 50, 62, remarks that Solon, after Pisistratus had become tyrant, went to Croesus, to Cilicia and Cyprus; that he died in Cyprus in his eightieth year. If Suidas tells us that Solon went to Soli in Cilicia after Pisistratus became tyrant, this, like the founding of the city in Diogenes, is a confusion with Soli in Cyprus. Solon went to Cyprus, where he had been so well received between 583 and 573 B.C., where Soli, his own foundation, offered him a worthy refuge. As there can hardly have been direct communication between Athens and Soli, he went by way of the Ionian harbours. The general statement of Heracleides of Pontus, that Solon lived for a long time after the tyranny of Pisistratus (Plut. "Sol." c. 32), proves nothing against the precise statement of Phanias, and that Solon, as Plutarch says without giving his authority, died in Athens as the adviser of Pisistratus, is as much opposed to the character of Solon as to the statement that he died in Cyprus.

[820] Schol. Pind. "Olymp." 7, 152; Aen. Tact. c. 17. Pausan. 2, 20, 3.

Plut. fragm. 22, 7, ed. Dubner.

END OF VOL. III.