Other remarkable remains of buildings are found in Phrygia. Strabo tells us of a tribe on the borders of Cilicia who lived in the arches and hollows of the rocks above the fruitful valley which they cultivated; till conquered by the Romans the tribe was considered invincible, and Vitruvius remarks that the Phrygians excavated the natural hills, cut passages in them, and extended the spaces into dwellings as far as the nature of the place allowed.[726] On the Rhyndakus, in the district of the ancient Prymnessus, at Beibazar, on Lake Egerdir, to the east near Iconium, numerous habitations are found excavated in the rocks, so that it really seems that the Phrygians dwelt in the walls of their mountains.[727] Lofty walls of rock, thousands of isolated cones, and some mighty mountain summits are excavated into dwellings, into rock cities—a task which was rendered easier by the softness of the stone (peperino and tufa). Steep and at times wonderfully jagged rocks, overhanging picturesque valleys, are chiselled out for one or two hundred feet in height in such a manner that several galleries of habitations lie one upon the other. These are lighted by openings in the front, and connected with each other by shafts and staircases: of seats, hearths, or couches there is no trace whatever—only niches and recesses are found. Yet in some of the rock cities an advance may be observed. In these the entrances to some extent exhibit indications of pillars, architraves, portals, and the like, so that the habitations of this kind seem to have been built at a later period. The ruins of the cities of the Phrygians, the remains of Gordium, Midaëum, Pessinus, Prymnessus, and Ancyra allow us to see the so-called Cyclopian style.[728]
Our knowledge of the religious rites of the Phrygians is extremely scanty. They are said to have invoked the god Men, or Manes under various titles,[729] and the names of the cities Manegordum and Manesium seem to go back to this deity. Whether this is the god whom the Greeks called the Phrygian Zeus is not clear. The goddess, whom the Greeks called Rhea or Cybele, Dindymene, Agdistis, after the mountains sacred to her, is said to have been called Amma by the Phrygians.[730] The chief home of her rites was that sanctuary on Mount Agdus near Pessinus, which the first Midas is said to have dedicated to her (p. 525). Here she was worshipped in a shapeless stone of no great size, not larger than a man could lift. At the side of her statue in the temple lions and panthers are said to have stood.[731] Her priests were eunuchs, who waited on the goddess in gaily coloured vestments. The chief priest at Pessinus, or Archigallus, is afterwards found holding a princely position. At the festivals of the goddess, which were celebrated every year, it was the custom for young men to make themselves eunuchs with a sharp shell, crying out at the same time, "Take this, Agdistis." Then they went round the country asking alms in the name of the goddess, and they were known to the Greeks as "Metragyrtes," i.e. "beggars of the mother;"[732] for the goddess, whose priests were eunuchs, and whose service demanded the sacrifice of sex, was called by the Greeks the "Great Mother," the "Mountain Mother," the "Nourishing Earth," the "Giver of all." She must, therefore, have been regarded as the maternal power of the earth, the power of nature, which gives life. It is especially stated that she gave increase to the flocks,[733] and since she was named after different mountains we may assume that high places and mountains were the chosen seats of her worship. In Greek and Roman art the Phrygian goddess is represented as sitting on a chariot drawn by lions and panthers, with a cymbal in her hand, and wearing on her head the mural crown as the goddess of the earth which supports cities.
By the side of the Great Mother stands the god Atys, whom Herodotus calls a son of Manes.[734] He grew up with the shepherds among the goats of the forest. The goddess loved him, but he fled away into the mountains, and there, under a fir-tree, into which his spirit passed, he made himself an eunuch. In search of him Amma roams over the hills in frantic grief, and carries into her cave the tree into which his spirit passed. The emasculation and death of Atys, as also his resurrection, were celebrated by the Phrygians.[735] At these festivals a fir-tree was felled, crowned with violets, twined with garlands, and carried into the sanctuary of the goddess. Afterwards Atys was sought in the mountains with wild music and frenzy, as Amma had sought him. The third day of the festival was "the day of blood," i.e. of the mutilation and death of Atys, who was bewailed with despairing grief, amid rending of the hair and beating of the breast. Then followed a happier scene, the festival of "the resurrection," and the washing of the stone of the goddess.[736] We learn further that Atys was also called Papas among the Phrygians. He is also entitled the goat-herd and neat-herd; the plastic art of Greece and Rome represents him as a youthful shepherd with the Pan's-pipe, and by his side is a pine and a ram. According to later accounts he was the "shepherd of the bright stars."[737] Hence we must assume that in Atys the Phrygians personified the youthful bloom of nature, the bloom of the spring, and they mourned the disappearance of this, just as, according to the Greeks, they sang a piercing wail—the Lityerses—at the time of corn-cutting. They lamented the death of the spring, and the fall of the fruit; the youthful god had resigned his own power; the creative vigour continued only to exist in the tree of Atys, the ever-green fir. In the spring time it awoke again; this was the day of the resurrection with its joy and pleasure. This orgiastic worship, and roaming with wild cries over the heights and in the ravines of the mountains, sometimes in wailing and lamentation, sometimes in joy, is peculiar to the religion of the Phrygians.
The central point of the Phrygian kingdom lay westwards of the great salt plain in the region between Gordium and Ancyra, between Midaëum and Pessinus in the valley of the Sangarius, on whose banks the Homeric poems place the Phrygians, who are the possessors of "well-walled cities."[738] If the majority of the Phrygians remained farmers and shepherds, they nevertheless arrived at an early date at a monarchy, and under this they reached a civilisation by no means contemptible, a national culture, with an architecture and music of their own. On the religion of the Phrygians the rites of their Semitic neighbours on the north and south no doubt exercised a strong influence. The combination of the creative power and the power hostile to procreation into one deity, and the custom of mutilation, are conceptions and rites unknown to the Aryan nations. But they are closely connected with the forms and worship of Astarte-Ashera, just as Atys resembles the Adonis of the Syrians. On the other hand, as was remarked above, the Phrygians adopted the Greek alphabet on their monuments, and Greek verses were composed for the tomb of Midas (p. 528). In return the Greeks adopted the Phrygian flute, and along with it the form of the elegy and the Phrygian harmonies. Nor were these all. The wild roaming, the unchecked sorrow and joy, the tambourines and drums of the Phrygian festivals passed without doubt in the first instance to the Greek colonies in the Propontis, and more especially to Cyzicus, and from thence to the mother country at the celebration of certain festivals of Demeter and Dionysus. "Take," says Euripides in the Bacchæ, "take the drums, the invention of the Phrygians and the mother Rhea. Long ago the Corybantes (the attendants of the Great Mother) devised the mighty circle of the stretched hide and placed in Rhea's hand, with the loud, sweet-sounding tone of Phrygian flutes, the thunder for the festal song."[739]
Towards the east, the south coast of Asia Minor was inhabited by the Cilicians and the Solymi. To the former belonged the