Note 479 — Chapter XVII · LYDIANS. — MEDES. — CIMMERIANS. — SCYTHIANS.

Kallinus, Fragment. 2, 3, ed. Bergk. Νῦν δ᾽ ἐπὶ Κιμμερίων στρατὸς ἔρχεται ὀβριμοεργῶν (Strabo, xiii, p. 627; xiv, 633-647). O. Müller (History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. x, s. 4) and Mr. Clinton (Fasti Hellenici, B. C. 716-635) may be consulted about the obscure chronology of these events. The Scythico-Cimmerian invasion of Asia, to which Herodotus alludes, appears fixed for some date in the reign of Ardys the Lydian, 640-629 B. C., and may stand for 635 B. C. as Mr. Clinton puts it; and I agree with O. Müller that the fragment of the poet Kallinus above cited alludes to this invasion; for the supposition of Mr. Clinton, that Kallinus here alludes to an invasion past and not present, appears to be excluded by the word νῦν. Mr. Clinton places both Kallinus and Archilochus (in my judgment) half a century too high; for I agree with O. Müller in disbelieving the story told by Pliny of the picture sold by Bularchus to Kandaulês. O. Müller follows Strabo (i, p. 61) in calling Madys a Cimmerian prince, who drove the Trêres out of Asia Minor; whereas Herodotus mentions him as the Scythian prince, who drove the Cimmerians out of their own territory into Asia Minor (i, 103).

The chronology of Herodotus is intelligible and consistent with itself: that of Strabo we cannot settle, when he speaks of many different invasions. Nor does his language give us the smallest reason to suppose that he was in possession of any means of determining dates for these early times,—nothing at all calculated to justify the positive chronology which Mr. Clinton deduces from him: compare his Fasti Hellenici, B. C. 635, 629, 617. Strabo says, after affirming that Homer knew both the name and the reality of the Cimmerians (i, p. 6; iii, p. 149),—καὶ γὰρ καθ᾽ Ὅμηρον, ἢ πρὸ αὐτοῦ μικρὸν, λέγουσι τὴν τῶν Κιμμερίων ἔφοδον γενέσθαι τὴν μέχρι τῆς Αἰολίδος καὶ τῆς Ἰωνίας,—“which places the first appearance of the Cimmerians in Asia Minor a century at least before the Olympiad of Corœbus,” (says Mr. Clinton.) But what means could Strabo have had to chronologize events as happening at or a little before the time of Homer? No date in the Grecian world was so contested, or so indeterminable, as the time of Homer: nor will it do to reason, as Mr. Clinton does, i. e. to take the latest date fixed for Homer among many, and then to say that the invasion of the Cimmerians must be at least B. C. 876: thus assuming it as a certainty that, whether the date of Homer be a century earlier or later, the invasion of the Cimmerians must be made to fit it. When Strabo employs such untrustworthy chronological standards, he only shows us—what everything else confirms—that there existed no tests of any value for events of that early date in the Grecian world.

Mr. Clinton announces this ante-Homeric calculation as a chronological certainty: “The Cimmerians first appeared in Asia Minor about a century before B. C. 776. An irruption is recorded in B. C. 782. Their last inroad was in B. C. 635. The settlement of Ambrôn (the Milesian, at Sinôpê) may be placed at about B. C. 782, twenty-six years before the era assigned to (the Milesian or Sinôpic settlement of) Trapezus.”

On what authority does Mr. Clinton assert that a Cimmerian irruption was recorded in B. C. 782? Simply on the following passage of Orosius, which he cites at B. C. 635: “Anno ante urbem conditam tricesimo,—Tunc etiam Amazonum gentis et Cimmeriorum in Asiam repentinus incursus plurimum diu lateque vastationem et stragem intulit.” If this authority of Orosius is to be trusted, we ought to say that the invasion of the Amazons was a recorded fact. To treat a fact mentioned in Orosius, an author of the fourth century after Christ, and referred to B. C. 782, as a recorded fact, confounds the most important boundary-lines in regard to the appreciation of historical evidence.

In fixing the Cimmerian invasion of Asia at 782 B. C., Mr. Clinton has the statement of Orosius, whatever it may be worth, to rest upon; but in fixing the settlement of Ambrôn the Milesian (at Sinôpê) at 782 B. C., I know not that he had any authority at all. Eusebius does, indeed, place the foundation of Trapezus in 756 B. C., and Trapezus is said to have been a colony from Sinôpê; and Mr. Clinton, therefore, is anxious to find some date for the foundation of Sinôpê anterior to 756 B. C.; but there is nothing to warrant him in selecting 782 B. C., rather than any other year.

In my judgment, the establishment of any Milesian colony in the Euxine at so early a date as 756 B. C. is highly improbable: and when we find that the same Eusebius fixes the foundation of Sinôpê (the metropolis of Trapezus) as low down as 629 B. C., this is an argument with me for believing that the date which he assigns to Trapezus is by far too early. Mr. Clinton treats the date which Eusebius assigns to Trapezus as certain, and infers from it, that the date which the same author assigns to Sinôpê is one hundred and thirty years later than the reality: I reverse the inference, considering the date which he assigns to Sinôpê as the more trustworthy of the two, and deducing the conclusion, that the date which he gives for Trapezus is one hundred and thirty years at least earlier than the reality.

On all grounds, the authority of the chronologists is greater with regard to the later of the two periods than to the earlier, and there is, besides, the additional probability arising out of what is a suitable date for Milesian settlement. To which I will add, that Herodotus places the settlement of the Cimmerians near “that spot where Sinôpê is now settled,” in the reign of Ardys, soon after 635 B. C. Sinôpê was, therefore, not founded at the time when the Cimmerians went there, in the belief of Herodotus.