CYZICUS
(Kyzikos)
From the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica:
CYZICUS, an ancient town of Mysia in Asia Minor, situated on the shoreward side of the present peninsula of Kapu-Dagh (Arctonnesus), which is said to have been originally an island in the Sea of Marmora, and to have been artificially connected with the mainland in historic times. It was, according to tradition, occupied by Thessalian settlers at the coming of the Argonauts, and in 756 B.C. the town was founded by Greeks from Miletus. Owing to its advantageous position it speedily acquired commercial importance, and the gold staters of Cyzicus were a staple currency in the ancient world till they were superseded by those of Philip of Macedon. During the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) Cyzicus was subject to the Athenians and Lacedaemonians alternately, and at the peace of Antalcidas (387 B.C.), like the other Greek cities in Asia, it was made over to Persia. The history of the town in Hellenistic times is closely connected with that of the dynasts of Pergamum, with whose extinction it came into direct relations with Rome. Cyzicus was held for the Romans against Mithradates in 74 B.C. till the siege was raised by Lucullus: the loyalty of the city was rewarded by an extension of territory and other privileges. Still a flourishing centre in Imperial times, the place appears to have been ruined by a series of earthquakes - the last in A.D. 1063 - and the population was transferred to Artaki at least as early as the 13th century, when the peninsula was occupied by the Crusaders. The site is now known as Bal-Kiz and entirely uninhabited, though under cultivation. The principal extant ruins are: - the walls, which are traceable for nearly their whole extent, a picturesque amphitheatre intersected by a stream, and the substructures of the temple of Hadrian. Of this magnificent building, sometimes ranked among the seven wonders of the ancient world, thirty-one immense columns still stood erect in 1444. These have since been carried away piecemeal for building purposes by the Turks.
CYZICUS, an ancient town of Mysia in Asia Minor, situated on the shoreward side of the present peninsula of Kapu-Dagh (Arctonnesus), which is said to have been originally an island in the Sea of Marmora, and to have been artificially connected with the mainland in historic times. It was, according to tradition, occupied by Thessalian settlers at the coming of the Argonauts, and in 756 B.C. the town was founded by Greeks from Miletus. Owing to its advantageous position it speedily acquired commercial importance, and the gold staters of Cyzicus were a staple currency in the ancient world till they were superseded by those of Philip of Macedon. During the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) Cyzicus was subject to the Athenians and Lacedaemonians alternately, and at the peace of Antalcidas (387 B.C.), like the other Greek cities in Asia, it was made over to Persia. The history of the town in Hellenistic times is closely connected with that of the dynasts of Pergamum, with whose extinction it came into direct relations with Rome. Cyzicus was held for the Romans against Mithradates in 74 B.C. till the siege was raised by Lucullus: the loyalty of the city was rewarded by an extension of territory and other privileges. Still a flourishing centre in Imperial times, the place appears to have been ruined by a series of earthquakes - the last in A.D. 1063 - and the population was transferred to Artaki at least as early as the 13th century, when the peninsula was occupied by the Crusaders. The site is now known as Bal-Kiz and entirely uninhabited, though under cultivation. The principal extant ruins are: - the walls, which are traceable for nearly their whole extent, a picturesque amphitheatre intersected by a stream, and the substructures of the temple of Hadrian. Of this magnificent building, sometimes ranked among the seven wonders of the ancient world, thirty-one immense columns still stood erect in 1444. These have since been carried away piecemeal for building purposes by the Turks.
Cyzicus
Fredrick William Hasluck
1910
CHAPTER XV.
THE ARGONAUTIC LEGEND.
The foundation of the city by the eponymous King Cyzicus and his Thessalian followers is dated by the Chronicon Paschale "thirty-four years after the foundation of Ilium." In spite of this traditional date and the attempts, which we shall notice in passing, to bring the history of Cyzicus into the Trojan cycle, neither the town of Cyzicus nor the Doliones appear as Trojan allies in Homer. King Cyzicus is however the central figure in an episode of the Argonautic expedition. Of this episode we have no very ancient account, that of Apollonius' being the oldest and the most valuable. He drew, like his scholiasts, on earlier writers, notably on Deiochus of Proconnesus,and Neanthes of Cyzicus. It is important to remark that both authorities are local, which accounts for Apollonius' detailed topography, a feature not found in the later authors: we may also rely on the inverse application of his aetiological explanations to throw some light on the Cyzicene archaeology and topography of Hellenistic times.
Apollonius calls the Kapu Dagh an island yet twice refers to an isthmus, by which he probably means the long spit of land stretching towards the shore where the causeway was afterwards to be made8, for the Argonauts evidently sailed through the channel. Between the isthmus and the promontory of S. Simeon lay the harbour and town of Cyzicus.
On the Arctonnesus dwelt two races in harmony, on the mountains the monstrous six-handed giants, on the isthmus and the plain the Doliones ruled by their King Cyzicus, son of Aeneus and Aenete daughter of Eusorus, King of Thrace. The Argo first touched at the western side of the island, where by the Artacian spring they left their anchor stone. Cyzicus and his folk welcomed them and bade them moor their ship in the harbour of the city, Chytus, where they built an altar and sacrificed to Apollo. Food was set before them by Cleite, the newly-married wife of Cyzicus, who is represented as the daughter of Merops of Percote, a Homeric hero whose sons ruled in Adrasteia and fought in the Trojan war. They then ascended Dindymon, "by the way called Jasonian to this day," leaving the Argo drawn up on the beach in charge of Heracles. An isolated episode follows, of no value to the story, but perhaps accounting for natural features in the harbour of Cyzicus, to the effect that in the heroes' absence the giants came and tried to block the mouth of the harbour with stones, but Heracles slew them with his arrows.
The heroes on their return put to sea with a fair wind: but in the night it changed and they were unwittingly carried back to the island, but naturally to the eastern side: there is no mention of Artaki or of Chytus, only of a rock called Sacred— possibly the point beyond Yeni Keui, where there is a small landing-place—to which they moored. The Doliones, taking them for their neighbours, the Makries, attacked them, and the Argonauts in the dark slew Cyzicus and several of his chiefs. The mistake was discovered at dawn: the Argonauts mourned with the Doliones, instituted games in Cyzicus' honour, and built him a tumulus "on the Leimonian plain"—perhaps the tumulus just south of the road from Pandemia to Aidinjik.
Cleite in her grief hanged herself, and from her tears the nymphs made a spring, afterwards called Cleite, after her—not, I think, the stream so called by Perrot, which rises far out of the city, above Yappaji-keui: streams, too, are almost invariably personified as males. Cleite may have been identical with the Fons Cupidinis of Pliny', which, being a reputed cure for love, is appropriately associated with a love tragedy.
For twelve days after the Argonauts were wind-bound, till Mopsus by his augury foretold that they must appease the Great Mother: they then loosed from the Sacred Rock and rowed to the Thracian harbour, whence they ascended the mountain. Argos carved the image of the goddess and set it up on a hill, while the heroes called on Mother Dindymene and Titias and Cyllenus with her, and beat their swords upon their shields' to drown the ill-omened wailing for Cyzicus in the town below. Dindymene as a sign that her anger was appeased made a spring (afterwards called Jasonian) come forth from the ground, and sent them a favouring wind.
Conon's account' is coloured by the politics of Hellenistic Greece. Cyzicus, here a son of Apollo, was driven with his people from his Thessalian home by Aeolians. In Asia he contracted a politic marriage with Cleite, daughter of Merops, king of the Rhyndacus country; when the Argonauts landed, his people set on them as soon as they knew the ship was from Thessaly, and Cyzicus, attempting to stop the battle, was slain by Jason*. There is no mention of Cybele. Cyzicus leaving no heir, the government passed to an aristocratic oligarchy, who were evicted by the Tyrrhenians, and these in turn by the Milesians.
The account of Valerius Flaccus is thoroughly romanized and has no local colour. The story is briefly—The Argonauts are welcomed by Cyzicus and Cleite, with Vergilian rhetoric and properties, and entertained for three days; after which they set sail. Cyzicus incurs the anger of Rhea, by slaying one of her lions, a piece of stage machinery regularly employed for this purpose, and convenient as justifying the death of Cyzicus. Meanwhile the Argonauts set sail, and are driven back to the island; the Cyzicenes, who take them for Pelasgian enemies, attack and are slain in large numbers before the mistake is discovered. Cyzicus himself is killed by Jason, and Cleite bewails him in the words of Andromache. Cyzicus is awarded a sumptuous funeral and the Argonauts give themselves up to grief till, on the advice of Mopsus, the "ignota numina divum" (the gods of the underworld) are appeased by the sacrifice of two black ewes and a lustranten is performed on the Aesepus, whither Jason apparently walks from Cyzicus.
In the account of the pseudo-Orpheus (4th c A.D.?) the circumstances of the death of Cyzicus are again slightly different, and the construction is clumsy. The Argonauts land, dedicate the anchor-stone to Athena, and are welcomed by Cyzicus: the mountain folk, who are six-handed monsters like the Cyclopes and giants, attack the Argo by night; the heroes beat them off with great slaughter—apparently a fusion of the Heracles' adventure of Apollonius, with the fight of the Pelasgians: Cyzicus, for an unexplained reason, is slain among the Giants by Heracles. The Argonauts then put to sea, but Rhea will not let them go. Athena appears to Tiphys and explains: at her command they propitiate the ghost, and bury the body in a slab-grave under a tumulus, while Argos carves the image and builds a stone temple. Rhea sends a fair wind, they give thanks to her as Piesmatia, and set forth.
For Cedrenus', the king of the Doliones is the "toparch of the Hellespont," nor is there any subterfuge about his death. He opposes the Argonauts in a sea-fight, and is killed. The town, characteristically described as the "metropolis of the Hellespont," is taken by the heroes. What little epic incident remains—the discovery of the Argonauts' kinship with the dead man, and the consequent building of the temple and enquiry of Apollo as to its dedication, merely leads up to the oracle of the latter given at the Pythia Therma—an elaborate prophecy of the birth of Christ and the redemption of mankind. The temple is to belong to the Virgin Mother of God; Jason (not unnaturally) dedicates it to the Mother of the Gods, writing the oracle over the lintel of the door: "but afterwards in the time of the emperor Zeno the name was changed and the house after the holy Mother of God."
The traditional chronology of this early period, though naturally fanciful, is interesting as shewing the supposed relative antiquity of Troy and Cyzicus, and in connection with the later attempts to join the two cycles of legend. The first foundation by King Cyzicus is placed in the year of the world 4152, thirtyfour years after the foundation of Troy, and three, four, or thirty-four years before the Argonautic expedition; further, despite Cyzicus' marriage with Cleite, whose brothers fought in the Trojan war, the fall of Ilium is computed no less than ninety-five years after the foundation of Cyzicus.
Source: F. W. Hasluck, Cyzicus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910), 157-162 (slightly adapted).
THE ARGONAUTIC LEGEND.
The foundation of the city by the eponymous King Cyzicus and his Thessalian followers is dated by the Chronicon Paschale "thirty-four years after the foundation of Ilium." In spite of this traditional date and the attempts, which we shall notice in passing, to bring the history of Cyzicus into the Trojan cycle, neither the town of Cyzicus nor the Doliones appear as Trojan allies in Homer. King Cyzicus is however the central figure in an episode of the Argonautic expedition. Of this episode we have no very ancient account, that of Apollonius' being the oldest and the most valuable. He drew, like his scholiasts, on earlier writers, notably on Deiochus of Proconnesus,and Neanthes of Cyzicus. It is important to remark that both authorities are local, which accounts for Apollonius' detailed topography, a feature not found in the later authors: we may also rely on the inverse application of his aetiological explanations to throw some light on the Cyzicene archaeology and topography of Hellenistic times.
Apollonius calls the Kapu Dagh an island yet twice refers to an isthmus, by which he probably means the long spit of land stretching towards the shore where the causeway was afterwards to be made8, for the Argonauts evidently sailed through the channel. Between the isthmus and the promontory of S. Simeon lay the harbour and town of Cyzicus.
On the Arctonnesus dwelt two races in harmony, on the mountains the monstrous six-handed giants, on the isthmus and the plain the Doliones ruled by their King Cyzicus, son of Aeneus and Aenete daughter of Eusorus, King of Thrace. The Argo first touched at the western side of the island, where by the Artacian spring they left their anchor stone. Cyzicus and his folk welcomed them and bade them moor their ship in the harbour of the city, Chytus, where they built an altar and sacrificed to Apollo. Food was set before them by Cleite, the newly-married wife of Cyzicus, who is represented as the daughter of Merops of Percote, a Homeric hero whose sons ruled in Adrasteia and fought in the Trojan war. They then ascended Dindymon, "by the way called Jasonian to this day," leaving the Argo drawn up on the beach in charge of Heracles. An isolated episode follows, of no value to the story, but perhaps accounting for natural features in the harbour of Cyzicus, to the effect that in the heroes' absence the giants came and tried to block the mouth of the harbour with stones, but Heracles slew them with his arrows.
The heroes on their return put to sea with a fair wind: but in the night it changed and they were unwittingly carried back to the island, but naturally to the eastern side: there is no mention of Artaki or of Chytus, only of a rock called Sacred— possibly the point beyond Yeni Keui, where there is a small landing-place—to which they moored. The Doliones, taking them for their neighbours, the Makries, attacked them, and the Argonauts in the dark slew Cyzicus and several of his chiefs. The mistake was discovered at dawn: the Argonauts mourned with the Doliones, instituted games in Cyzicus' honour, and built him a tumulus "on the Leimonian plain"—perhaps the tumulus just south of the road from Pandemia to Aidinjik.
Cleite in her grief hanged herself, and from her tears the nymphs made a spring, afterwards called Cleite, after her—not, I think, the stream so called by Perrot, which rises far out of the city, above Yappaji-keui: streams, too, are almost invariably personified as males. Cleite may have been identical with the Fons Cupidinis of Pliny', which, being a reputed cure for love, is appropriately associated with a love tragedy.
For twelve days after the Argonauts were wind-bound, till Mopsus by his augury foretold that they must appease the Great Mother: they then loosed from the Sacred Rock and rowed to the Thracian harbour, whence they ascended the mountain. Argos carved the image of the goddess and set it up on a hill, while the heroes called on Mother Dindymene and Titias and Cyllenus with her, and beat their swords upon their shields' to drown the ill-omened wailing for Cyzicus in the town below. Dindymene as a sign that her anger was appeased made a spring (afterwards called Jasonian) come forth from the ground, and sent them a favouring wind.
Conon's account' is coloured by the politics of Hellenistic Greece. Cyzicus, here a son of Apollo, was driven with his people from his Thessalian home by Aeolians. In Asia he contracted a politic marriage with Cleite, daughter of Merops, king of the Rhyndacus country; when the Argonauts landed, his people set on them as soon as they knew the ship was from Thessaly, and Cyzicus, attempting to stop the battle, was slain by Jason*. There is no mention of Cybele. Cyzicus leaving no heir, the government passed to an aristocratic oligarchy, who were evicted by the Tyrrhenians, and these in turn by the Milesians.
The account of Valerius Flaccus is thoroughly romanized and has no local colour. The story is briefly—The Argonauts are welcomed by Cyzicus and Cleite, with Vergilian rhetoric and properties, and entertained for three days; after which they set sail. Cyzicus incurs the anger of Rhea, by slaying one of her lions, a piece of stage machinery regularly employed for this purpose, and convenient as justifying the death of Cyzicus. Meanwhile the Argonauts set sail, and are driven back to the island; the Cyzicenes, who take them for Pelasgian enemies, attack and are slain in large numbers before the mistake is discovered. Cyzicus himself is killed by Jason, and Cleite bewails him in the words of Andromache. Cyzicus is awarded a sumptuous funeral and the Argonauts give themselves up to grief till, on the advice of Mopsus, the "ignota numina divum" (the gods of the underworld) are appeased by the sacrifice of two black ewes and a lustranten is performed on the Aesepus, whither Jason apparently walks from Cyzicus.
In the account of the pseudo-Orpheus (4th c A.D.?) the circumstances of the death of Cyzicus are again slightly different, and the construction is clumsy. The Argonauts land, dedicate the anchor-stone to Athena, and are welcomed by Cyzicus: the mountain folk, who are six-handed monsters like the Cyclopes and giants, attack the Argo by night; the heroes beat them off with great slaughter—apparently a fusion of the Heracles' adventure of Apollonius, with the fight of the Pelasgians: Cyzicus, for an unexplained reason, is slain among the Giants by Heracles. The Argonauts then put to sea, but Rhea will not let them go. Athena appears to Tiphys and explains: at her command they propitiate the ghost, and bury the body in a slab-grave under a tumulus, while Argos carves the image and builds a stone temple. Rhea sends a fair wind, they give thanks to her as Piesmatia, and set forth.
For Cedrenus', the king of the Doliones is the "toparch of the Hellespont," nor is there any subterfuge about his death. He opposes the Argonauts in a sea-fight, and is killed. The town, characteristically described as the "metropolis of the Hellespont," is taken by the heroes. What little epic incident remains—the discovery of the Argonauts' kinship with the dead man, and the consequent building of the temple and enquiry of Apollo as to its dedication, merely leads up to the oracle of the latter given at the Pythia Therma—an elaborate prophecy of the birth of Christ and the redemption of mankind. The temple is to belong to the Virgin Mother of God; Jason (not unnaturally) dedicates it to the Mother of the Gods, writing the oracle over the lintel of the door: "but afterwards in the time of the emperor Zeno the name was changed and the house after the holy Mother of God."
The traditional chronology of this early period, though naturally fanciful, is interesting as shewing the supposed relative antiquity of Troy and Cyzicus, and in connection with the later attempts to join the two cycles of legend. The first foundation by King Cyzicus is placed in the year of the world 4152, thirtyfour years after the foundation of Troy, and three, four, or thirty-four years before the Argonautic expedition; further, despite Cyzicus' marriage with Cleite, whose brothers fought in the Trojan war, the fall of Ilium is computed no less than ninety-five years after the foundation of Cyzicus.
Source: F. W. Hasluck, Cyzicus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910), 157-162 (slightly adapted).