Chapter VII. Sardanapalus and Hercules.

§ 1. The Burning of Sardanapalus.

(M128) The theory that kings or princes were formerly burned to death at Tarsus in the character of gods is singularly confirmed by another and wholly independent line of argument. For, according to one account, the city of Tarsus was founded not by Sandan but by Sardanapalus, the famous Assyrian monarch whose death on a great pyre was one of the most famous incidents in Oriental legend. Near the sea, within a day’s march of Tarsus, might be seen in antiquity the ruins of a great ancient city named Anchiale, and outside its walls stood a monument called the monument of Sardanapalus, on which was carved in stone the figure of the monarch. He was represented snapping the fingers of his right hand, and the gesture was explained by an accompanying inscription, engraved in Assyrian characters, to the following effect:—“Sardanapalus, son of Anacyndaraxes, built Anchiale and Tarsus in one day. Eat, drink, and play, for everything else is not worth that,” by which was implied that all other human affairs were not worth a snap of the fingers.(499) The gesture may have been misinterpreted and the inscription mistranslated,(500) but there is no reason to doubt the existence of such a monument, though we may conjecture that it was of Hittite rather than Assyrian origin; for, not to speak of the traces of Hittite art and religion which we have found at Tarsus, a group of Hittite monuments has been discovered at Marash, in the upper valley of the Pyramus.(501) The Assyrians may have ruled over Cilicia for a time, but Hittite influence was probably much deeper and more lasting.(502) The story that Tarsus was founded by Sardanapalus may well be apocryphal,(503) but there must have been some reason for his association with the city. On the present hypothesis that reason is to be found in the traditional manner of his death. To avoid falling into the hands of the rebels, who laid siege to Nineveh, he built a huge pyre in his palace, heaped it up with gold and silver and purple raiment, and then burnt himself, his wife, his concubines, and his eunuchs in the fire.(504) The story is false of the historical Sardanapalus, that is, of the great Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, but it is true of his brother Shamashshumukin. Being appointed king of Babylon by Ashurbanipal, he revolted against his suzerain and benefactor, and was besieged by him in his capital. The siege was long and the resistance desperate, for the Babylonians knew that they had no mercy to expect from the ruthless Assyrians. But they were decimated by famine and pestilence, and when the city could hold out no more, King Shamashshumukin, determined not to fall alive into the hands of his offended brother, shut himself up in his palace, and there burned himself to death, along with his wives, his children, his slaves, and his treasures, at the very moment when the conquerors were breaking in the gates.(505) Not many years afterwards the same tragedy was repeated at Nineveh itself by Saracus or Sinsharishkun, the last king of Assyria. Besieged by the rebel Nabopolassar, king of Babylon, and by Cyaxares, king of the Medes, he burned himself in his palace. That was the end of Nineveh and of the Assyrian empire.(506) Thus Greek history preserved the memory of the catastrophe, but transferred it from the real victims to the far more famous Ashurbanipal, whose figure in after ages loomed vast and dim against the setting sun of Assyrian glory.

§ 2. The Burning of Croesus.

(M129) Another Oriental monarch who prepared at least to die in the flames was Croesus, king of Lydia. Herodotus tells how the Persians under Cyrus captured Sardes, the Lydian capital, and took Croesus alive, and how Cyrus caused a great pyre to be erected, on which he placed the captive monarch in fetters, and with him twice seven Lydian youths. Fire was then applied to the pile, but at the last moment Cyrus relented, a sudden shower extinguished the flames, and Croesus was spared.(507) But it is most improbable that the Persians, with their profound reverence for the sanctity of fire, should have thought of defiling the sacred element with the worst of all pollutions, the contact of dead bodies.(508) Such an act would have seemed to them sacrilege of the deepest dye. For to them fire was the earthly form of the heavenly light, the eternal, the infinite, the divine; death, on the other hand, was in their opinion the main source of corruption and uncleanness. Hence they took the most stringent precautions to guard the purity of fire from the defilement of death.(509) If a man or a dog died in a house where the holy fire burned, the fire had to be removed from the house and kept away for nine nights in winter or a month in summer before it might be brought back; and if any man broke the rule by bringing back the fire within the appointed time, he might be punished with two hundred stripes.(510) As for burning a corpse in the fire, it was the most heinous of all sins, an invention of Ahriman, the devil; there was no atonement for it, and it was punished with death.(511) Nor did the law remain a dead letter. Down to the beginning of our era the death penalty was inflicted on all who threw a corpse or cow-dung on the fire, nay, even on such as blew on the fire with their breath.(512) It is hard, therefore, to believe that a Persian king should have commanded his subjects to perpetrate a deed which he and they viewed with horror as the most flagitious sacrilege conceivable.

(M130) Another and in some respects truer version of the story of Croesus and Cyrus has been preserved by two older witnesses—namely, by the Greek poet Bacchylides, who was born some forty years after the event,(513) and by a Greek artist who painted the scene on a red-figured vase about, or soon after, the time of the poet’s birth. Bacchylides tells us that when the Persians captured Sardes, Croesus, unable to brook the thought of slavery, caused a pyre to be erected in front of his courtyard, mounted it with his wife and daughters, and bade a page apply a light to the wood. A bright blaze shot up, but Zeus extinguished it with rain from heaven, and Apollo of the Golden Sword wafted the pious king and his daughters to the happy land beyond the North Wind.(514) In like manner the vase-painter clearly represents the burning of Croesus as a voluntary act, not as a punishment inflicted on him by the conqueror. He lets us see the king enthroned upon the pyre with a wreath of laurel on his head and a sceptre in one hand, while with the other he is pouring a libation. An attendant is in the act of applying to the pile two objects which have been variously interpreted as torches to kindle the wood or whisks to sprinkle holy water. The demeanour of the king is solemn and composed: he seems to be performing a religious rite, not suffering an ignominious death.(515)

Thus we may fairly conclude with some eminent modern scholars(516) that in the extremity of his fortunes Croesus prepared to meet death like a king or a god in the flames. It was thus that Hercules, from whom the old kings of Lydia claimed to be sprung,(517) ascended from earth to heaven: it was thus that Zimri, king of Israel, passed beyond the reach of his enemies: it was thus that Shamashshumukin, king of Babylon, escaped a brother’s vengeance: it was thus that the last king of Assyria expired in the ruins of his capital; and it was thus that, sixty-six years after the capture of Sardes, the Carthaginian king Hamilcar sought to retrieve a lost battle by a hero’s death.(518)

(M131) Semiramis herself, the legendary queen of Assyria, is said to have burnt herself on a pyre out of grief at the death of a favourite horse.(519) Since there are strong grounds for regarding the queen in her mythical aspect as a form of Ishtar or Astarte,(520) the legend that Semiramis died for love in the flames furnishes a remarkable parallel to the traditionary death of the love-lorn Dido, who herself appears to be simply an Avatar of the same great Asiatic goddess.(521) When we compare these stories of the burning of Semiramis and Dido with each other and with the historical cases of the burning of Oriental monarchs, we may perhaps conclude that there was a time when queens as well as kings were expected under certain circumstances, perhaps on the death of their consort, to perish in the fire. The conclusion can hardly be deemed extravagant when we remember that the practice of burning widows to death survived in India under English rule down to a time within living memory.(522)

(M132) At Jerusalem itself a reminiscence of the practice of burning kings, alive or dead, appears to have lingered as late as the time of Isaiah, who says: “For Tophet is prepared of old; yea, for the king it is made ready; he hath made it deep and large: the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it.”(523) We know that “great burnings” were regularly made for dead kings of Judah,(524) and it can hardly be accidental that the place assigned by Isaiah to the king’s pyre is the very spot in the Valley of Hinnom where the first-born children were actually burned by their parents in honour of Moloch “the King.” The exact site of the Valley of Hinnom is disputed, but all are agreed in identifying it with one of the ravines which encircle or intersect Jerusalem; and according to some eminent authorities it was the one called by Josephus the Tyropoeon.(525) If this last identification is correct, the valley where the children were burned on a pyre lay immediately beneath the royal palace and the temple. Perhaps the young victims died for God and the king.(526)

(M133) With the “great burnings” for dead Jewish kings it seems worth while to compare the great burnings still annually made for dead Jewish Rabbis at the lofty village of Meiron in Galilee, the most famous and venerated place of pilgrimage for Jews in modern Palestine. Here the tombs of the Rabbis are hewn out of the rock, and here on the thirtieth of April, the eve of May Day, multitudes of pilgrims, both men and women, assemble and burn their offerings, which consist of shawls, scarfs, handkerchiefs, books, and the like. These are placed in two stone basins on the top of two low pillars, and being drenched with oil and ignited they are consumed to ashes amid the loud applause, shouts, and cries of the spectators. A man has been known to pay as much as two thousand piastres for the privilege of being allowed to open the ceremony by burning a costly shawl. On such occasions the solemn unmoved serenity of the Turkish officials, who keep order, presents a striking contrast to the intense excitement of the Jews.(527) This curious ceremony may be explained by the widespread practice of burning property for the use and benefit of the dead. So, to take a single instance, the tyrant Periander collected the finest raiment of all the women in Corinth and burned it in a pit for his dead wife, who had sent him word by necromancy that she was cold and naked in the other world, because the clothes he buried with her had not been burnt.(528) In like manner, perhaps, garments and other valuables may have been consumed on the pyre for the use of the dead kings of Judah. In Siam, the corpse of a king or queen is burned in a huge structure resembling a permanent palace, which with its many-gabled and high-pitched roofs and multitudinous tinselled spires, soaring to a height of over two hundred feet, sometimes occupies an area of about an acre.(529) The blaze of such an enormous catafalque may resemble, even if it far surpasses, the “great burnings” for the Jewish kings.

§ 3. Purification by Fire.

(M134) These events and these traditions seem to prove that under certain circumstances Oriental monarchs deliberately chose to burn themselves to death. What were these circumstances? and what were the consequences of the act? If the intention had merely been to escape from the hands of a conqueror, an easier mode of death would naturally have been chosen. There must have been a special reason for electing to die by fire. The legendary death of Hercules, the historical death of Hamilcar, and the picture of Croesus enthroned in state on the pyre and pouring a libation, all combine to indicate that to be burnt alive was regarded as a solemn sacrifice, nay, more than that, as an apotheosis which raised the victim to the rank of a god.(530) For it is to be remembered that Hamilcar as well as Hercules was worshipped after death. Fire, moreover, was regarded by the ancients as a purgative so powerful that properly applied it could burn away all that was mortal of a man, leaving only the divine and immortal spirit behind. Hence we read of goddesses who essayed to confer immortality on the infant sons of kings by burning them in the fire by night; but their beneficent purpose was always frustrated by the ignorant interposition of the mother or father, who peeping into the room saw the child in the flames and raised a cry of horror, thus disconcerting the goddess at her magic rites. This story is told of Isis in the house of the king of Byblus, of Demeter in the house of the king of Eleusis, and of Thetis in the house of her mortal husband Peleus.(531) In a slightly different way the witch Medea professed to give back to the old their lost youth by boiling them with a hell-broth in her magic cauldron;(532) and when Pelops had been butchered and served up at a banquet of the gods by his cruel father Tantalus, the divine beings, touched with pity, plunged his mangled remains in a kettle, from which after decoction he emerged alive and young.(533) “Fire,” says Jamblichus, “destroys the material part of sacrifices, it purifies all things that are brought near it, releasing them from the bonds of matter and, in virtue of the purity of its nature, making them meet for communion with the gods. So, too, it releases us from the bondage of corruption, it likens us to the gods, it makes us meet for their friendship, and it converts our material nature into an immaterial.”(534) Thus we can understand why kings and commoners who claimed or aspired to divinity should choose death by fire. It opened to them the gates of heaven. The quack Peregrinus, who ended his disreputable career in the flames at Olympia, gave out that after death he would be turned into a spirit who would guard men from the perils of the night; and, as Lucian remarked, no doubt there were plenty of fools to believe him.(535) According to one account, the Sicilian philosopher Empedocles, who set up for being a god in his lifetime, leaped into the crater of Etna in order to establish his claim to godhead.(536) There is nothing incredible in the tradition. The crack-brained philosopher, with his itch for notoriety, may well have done what Indian fakirs(537) and the brazen-faced mountebank Peregrinus did in antiquity, and what Russian peasants and Chinese Buddhists have done in modern times.(538) There is no extremity to which fanaticism or vanity, or a mixture of the two, will not impel its victims.

§ 4. The Divinity of Lydian Kings.

(M135) But apart from any general notions of the purificatory virtues of fire, the kings of Lydia seem to have had a special reason for regarding death in the flames as their appropriate end. For the ancient dynasty of the Heraclids which preceded the house of Croesus on the throne traced their descent from a god or hero whom the Greeks called Hercules;(539) and this Lydian Hercules appears to have been identical in name and in substance with the Cilician Hercules, whose effigy was regularly burned on a great pyre at Tarsus. The Lydian Hercules bore the name of Sandon;(540) the Cilician Hercules bore the name of Sandan, or perhaps rather of Sandon, since Sandon is known from inscriptions and other evidence to have been a Cilician name.(541) The characteristic emblems of the Cilician Hercules were the lion and the double-headed axe; and both these emblems meet us at Sardes in connexion with the dynasty of the Heraclids. For the double-headed axe was carried as part of the sacred regalia by Lydian kings from the time of the legendary queen Omphale down to the reign of Candaules, the last of the Heraclid kings. It is said to have been given to Omphale by Hercules himself, and it was apparently regarded as a palladium of the Heraclid sovereignty; for after the dotard Candaules ceased to carry the axe himself, and had handed it over to the keeping of a courtier, a rebellion broke out, and the ancient dynasty of the Heraclids came to an end. The new king Gyges did not attempt to carry the old emblem of sovereignty; he dedicated it with other spoils to Zeus in Caria. Hence the image of the Carian Zeus bore an axe in his hand and received the epithet of Labrandeus, from _labrys_, the Lydian word for “axe.”(542) Such is Plutarch’s account; but we may suspect that Zeus, or rather the native god whom the Greeks identified with Zeus, carried the axe long before the time of Candaules. If, as is commonly supposed, the axe was the symbol of the Asiatic thunder-god,(543) it would be an appropriate emblem in the hand of kings, who are so often expected to make rain, thunder, and lightning for the good of their people. Whether the kings of Lydia were bound to make thunder and rain we do not know; but at all events, like many early monarchs, they seem to have been held responsible for the weather and the crops. In the reign of Meles the country suffered severely from dearth, so the people consulted an oracle, and the deity laid the blame on the kings, one of whom had in former years incurred the guilt of murder. The soothsayers accordingly declared that King Meles, though his own hands were clean, must be banished for three years in order that the taint of bloodshed should be purged away. The king obeyed and retired to Babylon, where he lived three years. In his absence the kingdom was administered by a deputy, a certain Sadyattes, son of Cadys, who traced his descent from Tylon.(544) As to this Tylon we shall hear more presently. Again, we read that the Lydians rejoiced greatly at the assassination of Spermus, another of their kings, “for he was very wicked, and the land suffered from drought in his reign.”(545) Apparently, like the ancient Irish and many modern Africans, they laid the drought at the king’s door, and thought that he only got what he deserved under the knife of the assassin.

(M136) With regard to the lion, the other emblem of the Cilician Hercules, we are told that the same king Meles, who was banished because of a dearth, sought to make the acropolis of Sardes impregnable by carrying round it a lion which a concubine had borne to him. Unfortunately at a single point, where the precipices were such that it seemed as if no human foot could scale them, he omitted to carry the beast, and sure enough at that very point the Persians afterwards clambered up into the citadel.(546) Now Meles was one of the old Heraclid dynasty(547) who boasted their descent from the lion-hero Hercules; hence the carrying of a lion round the acropolis was probably a form of consecration intended to place the stronghold under the guardianship of the lion-god, the hereditary deity of the royal family. And the story that the king’s concubine gave birth to a lion’s whelp suggests that the Lydian kings not only claimed kinship with the beast, but posed as lions in their own persons and passed off their sons as lion-cubs. Croesus dedicated at Delphi a lion of pure gold, perhaps as a badge of Lydia,(548) and Hercules with his lion’s skin is a common type on coins of Sardes.(549)

(M137) Thus the death, or the attempted death, of Croesus on the pyre completes the analogy between the Cilician and the Lydian Hercules. At Tarsus and at Sardes we find the worship of a god whose symbols were the lion and the double-headed axe, and who was burned on a great pyre, either in effigy or in the person of a human representative. The Greeks called him Hercules, but his native name was Sandan or Sandon. At Sardes he seems to have been personated by the kings, who carried the double-axe and perhaps wore, like their ancestor Hercules, the lion’s skin. We may conjecture that at Tarsus also the royal family aped the lion-god. At all events we know that Sandan, the name of the god, entered into the names of Cilician kings, and that in later times the priests of Sandan at Tarsus wore the royal purple.(550)

§ 5. Hittite Gods at Tarsus and Sardes.

(M138) Now we have traced the religion of Tarsus back by a double thread to the Hittite religion of Cappadocia. One thread joins the Baal of Tarsus, with his grapes and his corn, to the god of Ibreez. The other thread unites the Sandan of Tarsus, with his lion and his double axe, to the similar figure at Boghaz-Keui. Without being unduly fanciful, therefore, we may surmise that the Sandon-Hercules of Lydia was also a Hittite god, and that the Heraclid dynasty of Lydia were of Hittite blood. Certainly the influence, if not the rule, of the Hittites extended to Lydia; for at least two rock-carvings accompanied by Hittite inscriptions are still to be seen in the country. Both of them attracted the attention of the ancient Greeks. One of them represents a god or warrior in Hittite costume armed with a spear and bow. It is carved on the face of a grey rock, which stands out conspicuous on a bushy hillside, where an old road runs through a glen from the valley of the Hermus to the valley of the Cayster. The place is now called Kara-Bel. Herodotus thought that the figure represented the Egyptian king and conqueror Sesostris.(551) The other monument is a colossal seated figure of the Mother of the Gods, locally known in antiquity as Mother Plastene. It is hewn out of the solid rock and occupies a large niche in the face of a cliff at the steep northern foot of Mount Sipylus.(552) Thus it would seem that at some time or other the Hittites carried their arms to the shores of the Aegean. There is no improbability, therefore, in the view that a Hittite dynasty may have reigned at Sardes.(553)

§ 6. The Resurrection of Tylon.

(M139) The burning of Sandan, like that of Melcarth,(554) was probably followed by a ceremony of his resurrection or awakening, to indicate that the divine life was not extinct, but had only assumed a fresher and purer form. Of that resurrection we have, so far as I am aware, no direct evidence. In default of it, however, there is a tale of a local Lydian hero called Tylon or Tylus, who was killed and brought to life again. The story runs thus. Tylon or Tylus was a son of Earth.(555) One day as he was walking on the banks of the Hermus a serpent stung and killed him. His distressed sister Moire had recourse to a giant named Damasen, who attacked and slew the serpent. But the serpent’s mate culled a herb, “the flower of Zeus” in the woods, and bringing it in her mouth put it to the lips of the dead serpent, which immediately revived. In her turn Moire took the hint and restored her brother Tylon to life by touching him with the same plant.(556) A similar incident occurs in many folk-tales. Serpents are often credited with a knowledge of life-giving plants.(557) But Tylon seems to have been more than a mere hero of fairy-tales. He was closely associated with Sardes, for he figures on the coins of the city along with his champion Damasen or Masnes, the dead serpent, and the life-giving branch.(558) And he was related in various ways to the royal family of Lydia; for his daughter married Cotys, one of the earliest kings of the country,(559) and a descendant of his acted as regent during the banishment of King Meles.(560) It has been suggested that the story of his death and resurrection was acted as a pageant to symbolize the revival of plant life in spring.(561) At all events, a festival called the Feast of the Golden Flower was celebrated in honour of Persephone at Sardes,(562) probably in one of the vernal months, and the revival of the hero and of the goddess may well have been represented together. The Golden Flower of the Festival would then be the “flower of Zeus” of the legend, perhaps the yellow crocus of nature or rather her more gorgeous sister, the Oriental saffron. For saffron grew in great abundance at the Corycian cave of Zeus;(563) and it is an elegant conjecture, if it is nothing more, that the very name of the place meant “the Crocus Cave.”(564) However, on the coins of Sardes the magical plant seems to be a branch rather than a blossom, a Golden Bough rather than a Golden Flower.