Lycians

Background

The Lycians were an ancient Anatolian people that resided in Lycia on Asia Minor. According to the account by Herodotus the Lycians were originally Minoans who were expelled by king Minos and settled in the territory of the Solymoi or Milyans. The Lycians were not always named such, they were originally called the Termilae but acquired this name from Lycus, the son of Pandion.

The Lycian culture is very reminiscent of Minoan however, there are also influences from the Carians that is seen. Contradicting Herodotus however, the Greek historian Strabo talks about the Trojan Lycians and believes the Termilae were a different culture altogether. The first major settlement on Lycia excavated in the 1950's by P. Demargne and H. Metzger was Xanthos.

It was discovered through the excavations that there was pottery in the citadel that dated to the 8th century BC during the Geometric Period. J.M Cook would later conclude that these would be the earliest human remains found in the Lycian region which had not been inhabited during the Neolithic Period. Thus it seems likely that this was just one of the many groups that settled during the Greek Dark Ages when there was significant population movements and re-settlements.

Herodotus

"The Lykians however have sprung originally from Crete (for in old time the whole of Crete was possessed by Barbarians). When the sons of Europa, Sarpedon and Minos, came to be at variance in Crete about the kingdom, Minos having got the better in the strife of parties drove out both Sarpedon himself and those of his party. Those expelled came to the land of Milyas in Asia, for the land which now the Lykians inhabit was anciently called Milyas, and the Milyans were then called Solymoi. Now while Sarpedon reigned over them, they were called by the name which they had when they came thither, and by which the Lykians are even now called by the neighbouring tribes, namely Termilai; but when from Athens Lycos the son of Pandion came to the land of the Termilai and to Sarpedon, he too having been driven out by his brother namely Aigeus, then by the name taken from Lycos they were called after a time Lykians. The customs which these have are partly Cretan and partly Carian; but one custom they have which is peculiar to them, and in which they agree with no other people, that is they call themselves by their mothers and not by their father; and if one asks his neighbour who he is, he will state his parentage on the mother's side and enumerate his mother's female ascendants. If a woman who is a citizen marry a slave, the children are accounted to be of gentle birth; but if a man who is a citizen, though he were the first man among them, have a slave for wife or concubine, the children are without civil rights."

Macaulay, G.C. and Lateiner, Donald. The Histories. Spark Educational Publishing, 2004, ISBN 1-59308-102-2, p. 63.

Strabo

"The existence of two groups of Lycians arouses suspicion that they were of the same tribe, whether it was the Trojan Lycians or those near Caria that colonized the country of the other of the two."

Strabo. Geographica, 12.8.4

"Not only the Carians, who in earlier times were islanders, but also the Leleges, as they say, became mainlanders with the aid of the Cretans, who founded, among other places, Miletus, having taken Sarpedon from the Cretan Miletus as founder; and they settled the Termilae in the country which is now called Lycia; and they say that these settlers were brought from Crete by Sarpedon, a brother of Minos and Rhadamanthus, and that he gave the name Termilae to the people who were formerly called Milyae, as Herodotus says, and were in still earlier times called Solymi, but that when Lycus the son of Pandion went over there he named the people Lycians after himself. Now this account represents the Solymi and the Lycians as the same people, but the poet makes a distinction between them."

Strabo. Geographica, 12.8.5

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Sources

Primary Sources

Strabo. Geographica,

Macaulay, G.C. and Lateiner, Donald. The Histories. Spark Educational Publishing, 2004, ISBN 1-59308-102-2,

Secondary Sources

Cook, J.M. "Greek Archaeology in Western Asia Minor". Archaeological Reports, No. 6 (1959 - 1960), pp. 27-57.

Cook, p. 54. "The remainder of this survey is of necessity sketchy and selective. In LYCIA P. Demargne and H. Metzger have carried out an extensive exploration of the site of XANTHUS in the years 1950-1959. They have devoted special attention to the so-called Lycian acropolis which rises sheer above the river; this seems to have been the citadel of Xanthus in early times, with monumental tombs of its occupants on the shelf to the north.

Cook, p. 55. "Professor Metzger now kindly informs me that Geometric pottery has been found at the citadel, thus dating the occupation back to the eighth century (and so to the time of Homer). This is the earliest stratum encountered at Xanthus—despite the recent researches in the field—in Lycia as a whole. The problem of Lycian origins is a baffling one. The country may have been uninhabited in prehistoric times; but it is strange if the Lycians did not descend into south-west Asia Minor until the eighth century. It may be that nomadic settlement, leaving virtually no trace behind, is in part the explanation here."