| 
View
 

EB32

Page history last edited by Robert Brauer 19 years, 10 months ago

Page 32    Bible Empires:Origin of Nations:2:6

Contents Prev Next

6.

“The Cimmerian invaders carried ruin and devastation over all the fairest regions of lower Asia. Paphlagonia, Bithynia, Ionia, Phrygia, even Cilicia, as well as Lydia, were plundered and laid waste; in Phrygia.
Midas, the king, despairing of any effectual resistance, on the approach of the dreaded foe is said to have committed suicide; in Lydia, as we know from Herodotus, they took the capital city, all but the acropolis; in Ionia, they ravaged the valley of the Cayster, besieged Ephesus, and, according to some accounts, burnt the temple of Diana in its vicinity; after which they are thought to have proceeded southward into the plain of the Maeander, and to have sacked the city of Magnesia.
One body, under a leader whom the Greeks called Lygdamis, even penetrated as far as Cilicia, and there sustained a terrible reverse at the hands of the hardy mountaineers. . . . Still the strength of the invaders was not broken by this defeat.
It was only in the third generation that the Lydian princes were able to expel them from the territories under their dominion. Even then, it is a mistake to say that they were driven out of Asia. . . . The Cimmerians, long after the time of their expulsion from Lydia by Alyattes, maintained themselves in certain strongholds, as Antandrus, which, according to Aristotle, they occupied for a hundred years, and Sinope, where, Herodotus informs us, they made a permanent settlement.
The history of Lydia during the time of their supremacy was almost a blank.”

- Rawlinson. Herodotus, Appendix to book i, essay i, sec. 14.

Page 32    Bible Empires:Origin of Nations:2:6

Contents Prev Next

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.