Mysians

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The Mysians (Latin: Mysi) were the inhabitants of Mysia, a region in northwestern Asia Minor. Herodotus wrote that they were brethren of the Carians and Lydians[1] and that the Mysians were "Lydian colonists".[2] This identification may be supported by the fact that only Mysians, Carians, and Lydians were allowed to worship at the temple of Carian Zeus in the country of the Mylasians,[3] based on the tradition that the eponymous figures Car (Carians), Lydus (Lydians), and Mysus (Mysians) were brothers.[4] Little is known about the Mysian language. A short inscription which may be in Mysian and which dates from between the 5th and 3rd centuries BC was found in Uyuçik, near Kütahya, and seems to include Indo-European words,[5] but it has not been deciphered. If Herodotus was right, the Mysian language would be a language of the Anatolian group, akin to Carian and Lydian. However, a passage in Athenaeus suggests that Mysian was akin to the barely attested Paionian language of Paionia, north of Macedon. According to Homer, the Mysians fought in the Trojan War on the side of Troy.[6] Herodotus recorded the tradition that Mysians (along with the Teucrians) invaded Europe, conquering "all of Thrace" and invading Greece as far as Elis in early times.[7]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Herodotus. Histories, 1.171. After conquering the Ionians, Harpagus proceeded to attack the Carians, the Caunians, and the Lycians. The Ionians and Aeolians were forced to serve in his army. Now, of the above nations the Carians are a race who came into the mainland from the islands. In ancient times they were subjects of king Minos, and went by the name of Leleges, dwelling among the isles, and, so far as I have been able to push my inquiries, never liable to give tribute to any man. They served on board the ships of king Minos whenever he required. And thus, as he was a great conqueror and prospered in his wars, the Carians were in his day the most famous by far of all the nations of the earth. They likewise were the inventors of three things, the use of which was borrowed from them by the Greeks. They were the first to fasten crests on helmets and to put devices on shields, and they also invented handles for shields. In the earlier times shields were without handles, and their wearers managed them by the aid of a leather thong, by which they were slung round the neck and left shoulder. Long after the time of Minos, the Carians were driven from the islands by the Ionians and Dorians, and so settled upon the mainland. The above is the account which the Cretans give of the Carians. But the Carians themselves say very differently. They maintain that they are the aboriginal inhabitants of the part of the mainland where they now dwell, and never had any other name than that which they still bear. And in proof of this they show an ancient temple of Carian Zeus in the country of the Mylasians, in which the Mysians and Lydians have the right of worshipping, as brother races to the Carians; for Lydus and Mysus, they say, were brothers of Car. These nations, therefore, have the aforesaid right; but such as are of a different race, even though they have come to use the Carian tongue, are excluded from this temple.
  2. ^ Herodotus. Histories, 7.74.
  3. ^ Herodotus. Histories, 1.171.
  4. ^ Herodotus. Herodotus, 1.171.
  5. ^ Donald C. Swanson (Review of Louis H. Gray). "Foundations of Language". Language, 16:3:235, 1940. (JSTOR)
  6. ^ Homer. Iliad, 2.858.
  7. ^ Herodotus. Histories, 7.20.
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