Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 8, 2025
The non-Aryan, "Asianic," group of languages, to which certainly Lycian and probably Karian belong, has been shown by the German philologer Kretschmer to have spread over Greece into Italy in the period before the Aryan Greeks entered Hellas, and to have left undoubted traces of its presence in Greek place-names and in the Greek language itself.
Here he was with Layard for a time, dreaming of the ancient Assyrians and their winged bulls. Hence he passed into the Lycian room, and saw something of the strange remains of the Xanthus of old; and then, probably, he went home to dream of these great marvels of the times gone by. But he came again; and this time hovered throughout the day amid the ruins of the arts of ancient Greece.
Around the walls stand the Antinous, the Amazon, the Lycian Apollo, the Juno; all famous productions of antique sculpture, and still shining in the undiminished majesty and beauty of their ideal life, although the marble that embodies them is yellow with time, and perhaps corroded by the damp earth in which they lay buried for centuries.
Scepticism seems ill-inspired when it attacks the most vital memories of the popular mind. It is not without a lively satisfaction that I have found myself able to reconcile the authority of the ballad with the silence of the ancient biographers of the Lycian pontiff. I am happy to proclaim the result of my long meditations and scholastic researches.
There he discerns, mournful and unhonoured dead, Leucaspis and Orontes, captains of the Lycian squadron, whom, as they sailed together from Troy over gusty seas, the south wind overwhelmed and wrapped the waters round ship and men.
And Agis the Lycian advanced only to be struck from horseback by Valerus, brave as his ancestry; and Thronius by Salius, and Salius by Nealces with treacherous arrow-shot that stole from far. Now the heavy hand of war dealt equal woe and counterchange of death; in even balance conquerors and conquered slew and fell; nor one nor other knows of retreat.
So the heroes heaped a mound above them, and set upon it an oar on high, and left them there to sleep together, on the far-off Lycian shore. But Idas killed the boar, and avenged Tiphys; and Ancaios took the rudder and was helmsman, and steered them on toward the east.
Alexander, however, chanced to find a guide in exact correspondence with what the Pythia had foretold when he was a child, that a lycus should conduct him into Persia. For by such an one, whose father was a Lycian, and his mother a Persian, and who spoke both languages, he was now led into the country, by a way something about, yet without fetching any considerable compass.
The 92nd, 93rd and 94th cases are filled with various mirrors from Athens; the anciently prized knuckle bones of a small animal; bronze earrings from a tomb in Cephalonia; sling bullets found at Saguntum; part of a lyre, and wooden flutes discovered near Athens; a gilt myrtle crown; glass mosaics from the Parthenon; iron knives and fetters from Athens; a jar that once held the famed Lycian eye ointment; one of the bronze tickets of a judge; and leaden weights.
The visitor, having now examined the two most remarkable remains of Lycian tombs in the room, should rapidly notice the fragments of sepulchres placed here and there, but legibly numbered. Here he will find in bas-relief a procession consisting of a horse and horseman, priest and priestesses with wands, an armed female figure, and two chariots, with youthful charioteers and old men.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking