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63-694: Strabo mentions that around his time (1st century BCE), the Lydian language was no longer spoken in Lydia proper but was still being spoken among the multicultural population of Kibyra (now Gölhisar ) in southwestern Anatolia, by the descendants of the Lydian colonists, who had founded the city. In 1916 the Sardis bilingual inscription , a bilingual inscription in Aramaic and Lydian allowed Enno Littmann to decipher

126-429: A , 𐤤 e , 𐤦 i , 𐤬 o , 𐤰 u , 𐤵 ã , and 𐤶 ẽ , the last two being nasal vowels, typically before a ( synchronic or diachronic ) nasal consonant (like n , ñ or m ). The vowels e , o , ã , and ẽ occur only when accented. A vowel or glide 𐤧 y appears rarely, only in the oldest inscriptions, and probably indicates an allophone of i or e that is perhaps unstressed. Lydian

189-623: A consequence of his time spent in Nysa with Aristodemus. At around the age of 21, Strabo moved to Rome, where he studied philosophy with the Peripatetic Xenarchus , a highly respected tutor in Augustus's court. Despite Xenarchus's Aristotelian leanings, Strabo later gives evidence to have formed his own Stoic inclinations. In Rome, he also learned grammar under the rich and famous scholar Tyrannion of Amisus . Although Tyrannion

252-757: A descriptive history of people and places from different regions of the world known during his lifetime. Although the Geographica was rarely used by contemporary writers, a multitude of copies survived throughout the Byzantine Empire . It first appeared in Western Europe in Rome as a Latin translation issued around 1469. The first printed edition was published in 1516 in Venice . Isaac Casaubon , classical scholar and editor of Greek texts, provided

315-413: A few of the extant Lydian texts have been found in or near Sardis , the Lydian capital, but fewer than 30 of the inscriptions consist of more than a few words or are reasonably complete. Most of the inscriptions are on marble or stone and are sepulchral in content, but several are decrees of one sort or another, and some half-dozen texts seem to be in verse, with a stress-based meter and vowel assonance at

378-435: A similar paradigm: Examples of substantives: Examples of adjectives: Examples of pronomina: Just as in other Anatolian languages verbs in Lydian were conjugated in the present-future and preterite tenses with three persons singular and plural. Imperative or gerundive forms have not been found yet. Singular forms are often hard to distinguish from plural forms in the third person present active (both ending in -t/-d ):

441-491: A valuable source of information on the ancient world of his day, especially when this information is corroborated by other sources. He travelled extensively, as he says: "Westward I have journeyed to the parts of Etruria opposite Sardinia; towards the south from the Euxine [Black Sea] to the borders of Ethiopia; and perhaps not one of those who have written geographies has visited more places than I have between those limits." It

504-527: A very rocky mountain, called the Trojan mountain; beneath it there are caves, and near the caves and the river a village called Troy, an ancient settlement of the captive Trojans who had accompanied Menelaus and settled there. Strabo commented on volcanism ( effusive eruption ) which he observed at Katakekaumene (modern Kula , Western Turkey). Strabo's observations predated Pliny the Younger who witnessed

567-582: Is "... pro-Roman throughout the Geography. But while he acknowledges and even praises Roman ascendancy in the political and military sphere, he also makes a significant effort to establish Greek primacy over Rome in other contexts." In Europe , Strabo was the first to connect the Danube (which he called Danouios) and the Istros – with the change of names occurring at "the cataracts," the modern Iron Gates on

630-496: Is subject-object-verb , but constituents may be extraposed to the right of the verb. Like other Anatolian languages, Lydian features clause-initial particles with enclitic pronouns attached in a chain. It also has a number of preverbs and at least one postposition. Modifiers of a noun normally precede it. In May 1912 American excavators at the Sardis necropolis discovered a bilingual inscription in Lydian and Aramaic . Being among

693-453: Is clearly of Indo-European stock. Gusmani provides lists of words that have been linked to Hittite , various other Indo-European languages, and Etruscan . Labrys (Greek: λάβρυς, lábrys) is the term for a symmetrical double-bitted axe originally from Crete in Greece, one of the oldest symbols of Greek civilization. The priests at Delphi in classical Greece were called Labryades (the men of

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756-513: Is little record of his travels until AD 17. It is not known precisely when Strabo's Geography was written, though comments within the work itself place the finished version within the reign of Emperor Tiberius . Some place its first drafts around 7 BC, others around AD 17 or AD 18. The latest passage to which a date can be assigned is his reference to the death in AD ;23 of Juba II , king of Maurousia ( Mauretania ), who

819-490: Is not known when he wrote Geographica , but he spent much time in the famous library in Alexandria taking notes from "the works of his predecessors". A first edition was published in 7 BC and a final edition no later than 23 AD, in what may have been the last year of Strabo's life. It took some time for Geographica to be recognized by scholars and to become a standard. Alexandria itself features extensively in

882-513: Is notable for its extensive consonant clusters, which resulted from the loss of word-final short vowels, together with massive syncope ; there may have been an unwritten [ə] in such sequences. (Note: until recently the Buckler (1924) transliteration scheme was often used, which may lead to confusion. This older system wrote v , ν , s , and ś , instead of today's w (𐤥), ñ (𐤸), š (𐤳), and s (𐤮). The modern system renders

945-506: Is often difficult to determine. Examples of verbal conjugation: To emphasize where an important next part of a sentence begins, Lydian uses a series of enclitic particles that can be affixed to a pivotal word. Examples of such "emphatic" enclitics are -in-, -it-/-iτ-, -t-/-τ-, -at-, and -m-/-um-. When stacked and combined with other suffixes (such as pronomina, or the suffix -k = 'and') veritable clusters are formed. The word ak = 'so..., so if...' provides many examples: The basic word order

1008-465: Is possibly derived from the native town of King Gyges of Lydia , founder of the Mermnad dynasty , which was Tyrrha in classical antiquity and is now Tire, Turkey . Yet another is the element molybdenum , borrowed from Ancient Greek mólybdos , "lead", from Mycenaean Greek mo-ri-wo-do , which in Lydian was mariwda- "dark". All of those loanwords confirm a strong cultural interaction between

1071-431: Is proper,' he observes in continuation, ' to derive our explanations from things which are obvious, and in some measure of daily occurrences, such as deluges, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and sudden swellings of the land beneath the sea; for the last raise up the sea also, and when the same lands subside again, they occasion the sea to be let down. And it is not merely the small, but the large islands also, and not merely

1134-745: Is said to have died "just recently". He probably worked on the Geography for many years and revised it steadily, but not always consistently. It is an encyclopaedic chronicle and consists of political, economic, social, cultural, and geographic descriptions covering almost all of Europe and the Mediterranean: Britain and Ireland, the Iberian Peninsula, Gaul, Germania, the Alps, Italy, Greece, Northern Black Sea region, Anatolia, Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa. The Geography

1197-488: Is similar to the Luwic languages : a suffix -li is added to the root of a substantive, and thus an adjective is formed that is declined in turn. However, recently it has been defended that a form ending in -l, formerly thought to be an "endingless" variant of the possessive, was indeed a genitive singular. Of an ablative case there are only a few uncertain examples. Nouns, adjectives, and pronomina are all declined according to

1260-445: Is the only extant work providing information about both Greek and Roman peoples and countries during the reign of Augustus. On the presumption that "recently" means within a year, Strabo stopped writing that year or the next (AD 24), at which time he is thought to have died. He was influenced by Homer , Hecataeus and Aristotle . The first of Strabo's major works, Historical Sketches ( Historica hypomnemata ), written while he

1323-563: Is the thirteenth letter of the Greek alphabet , representing the voiced alveolar nasal IPA: [n] . In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 50. It is derived from the Phoenician nun [REDACTED] . Its Latin equivalent is N , though the lowercase ( ν {\displaystyle \nu } ) resembles the Roman lowercase v . The name of the letter

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1386-626: Is written νῦ in Ancient Greek and traditional Modern Greek polytonic orthography , while in Modern Greek it is written νι [ni] . Letters that arose from nu include Roman N and Cyrillic script En . The lower-case letter ν is used as a symbol in many academic fields . Uppercase nu is not used, because it appears identical to Latin N . Encodings of Greek Nu and Coptic Ni. These characters are used only as mathematical symbols. Stylized Greek text should be encoded using

1449-583: The Mithridatic Wars . As the war drew to a close, Strabo's grandfather had turned several Pontic fortresses over to the Romans. Strabo wrote that "great promises were made in exchange for these services", and as Persian culture endured in Amaseia even after Mithridates and Tigranes were defeated, scholars have speculated about how the family's support for Rome might have affected their position in

1512-524: The Aristotelian Xenarchus and Tyrannion who preceded him in teaching Strabo, Athenodorus was a Stoic and almost certainly the source of Strabo's diversion from the philosophy of his former mentors. Moreover, from his own first-hand experience, Athenodorus provided Strabo with information about regions of the empire which Strabo would not otherwise have known about. Strabo is best known for his work Geographica ("Geography"), which presented

1575-561: The Euxine [Black Sea] was so great, that its bed must be gradually raised, while the rivers still continued to pour in an undiminished quantity of water. He therefore conceived that, originally, when the Euxine was an inland sea, its level had by this means become so much elevated that it burst its barrier near Byzantium, and formed a communication with the Propontis [Sea of Marmara], and this partial drainage had already, he supposed, converted

1638-562: The Hittitology minor program. Within the Anatolian group, Lydian occupies a unique and problematic position. One reason is the still very limited evidence and understanding of the language. Another reason is a number of features that are not shared with any other Anatolian language. It is still not known whether those differences represent developments peculiar to pre-Lydian or the retention in Lydian of archaic features that were lost in

1701-559: The Lydian language. From an analysis of the two parallel texts, he identified the alphabetic signs, most of them correctly, established a basic vocabulary, attempted translation of a dozen unilingual texts, gave an outline of Lydian grammar, and even recognized peculiar poetical characteristics in several texts. Eight years later William Hepburn Buckler presented a collection of 51 inscriptions then known. The 109 inscriptions known by 1986 have been treated comprehensively by Roberto Gusmani ; new texts keep being found from time to time. All but

1764-464: The Lydian metres seem to be compatible with reconstructed common Proto-Indo-European metres. The Lydians probably borrowed these metres from the Greeks; however, the assonance was a unique innovation of their own. Only one text shows mixed character: a poetical middle part is sandwiched in between a prose introduction and a prose conclusion. Analogous to the bilingual text the introduction tells who built

1827-601: The Lydians and the Greeks since the Creto- Mycenaean era (2nd millennium BCE). In his seminal decipherment of Lydian texts Littmann noted that at least five of them show two poetical aspects: Also, partly in order to achieve assonance and metre (" metri causa "), in poetic texts word order is more free than in prose. Martin West , after comparing historical metres in various Indo-European languages, concluded that

1890-661: The Romanian/Serbian border. In India , a country he never visited, Strabo described small flying reptiles that were long with snake-like bodies and bat-like wings (this description matches the Indian flying lizard Draco dussumieri ), winged scorpions, and other mythical creatures along with those that were actually factual. Other historians, such as Herodotus , Aristotle , and Flavius Josephus , mentioned similar creatures. Charles Lyell , in his Principles of Geology , wrote of Strabo: He notices, amongst others,

1953-755: The basis of (1) the verbal root ending ( a -stems, consonant stems, - ši -stems, etc.), and (2) the endings of the third person singular being either unlenited ( -t; -tλ, -taλ ) or lenited ( -d; -dλ, -daλ ). For example, šarpta- (to inscribe, to carve) is an unlenited a -stem ( šarptat , he inscribes), qaλmλa- (to be king) is a lenited a -stem ( qaλmλad , he rules). Differences between the various conjugations are minor. Many Lydian verbs are composite, using prefixes such as ẽn- (= 'in-'?), ẽt- (= 'into-'), fa-/f- ('then, subsequently, again'?), šaw-, and kat-/kaτ- (= 'down-'?), and suffixes like -ãn-/-ẽn- ( durative ?), -no-/-ño- ( causative ?), -ši- ( iterative ?), and -ki- or -ti- ( denominative ?); their meaning

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2016-431: The double axe). The term labrys "double-axe" is not found in any surviving Lydian inscription, but on the subject, Plutarch states that "the Lydians call the axe labrys " (Λυδοὶ γὰρ ‘λάβρυν’ τὸν πέλεκυν ὀνομάζουσι). Another possibly Lydian loanword may be tyrant "absolute ruler", which was first used in Ancient Greek sources, without negative connotations, for the late 8th century or early 7th century BCE. It

2079-516: The ears of ancient Greeks, and transcription of Lydian names into Greek would therefore present some difficulties. Recently a case has been made that the Lydian word Qλdãns, pronounced /kʷɾʲ'ðãns/, both meaning 'king' and the name of a god, could correspond to the Greek Κροῖσος, or Croesus , the last Lydian king, whose kingdom was conquered by the Persians. If the identification is correct it would have

2142-525: The end of the line. Tomb inscriptions include many epitaphs , which typically begin with the words 𐤤𐤮 𐤥𐤠𐤫𐤠𐤮 es wãnas ("this grave"). The short texts are mostly graffiti, coin legends, seals, potter's marks, and the like. The language of the Ionian Greek poet Hipponax (sixth century BCE, born at Ephesus ) is interspersed with Lydian words, many of them from popular slang . Lydian can be officially studied at Marburg University, Germany, within

2205-586: The eruption of Mount Vesuvius on 24 August AD 79 in Pompeii : …There are no trees here, but only the vineyards where they produce the Katakekaumene wines which are by no means inferior from any of the wines famous for their quality. The soil is covered with ashes, and black in colour as if the mountainous and rocky country was made up of fires. Some assume that these ashes were the result of thunderbolts and subterranean explosions, and do not doubt that

2268-486: The explanation of Xanthus the Lydian, who said that the seas had once been more extensive, and that they had afterwards been partially dried up, as in his own time many lakes, rivers, and wells in Asia had failed during a season of drought. Treating this conjecture with merited disregard, Strabo passes on to the hypothesis of Strato , the natural philosopher, who had observed that the quantity of mud brought down by rivers into

2331-448: The first critical edition in 1587. Although Strabo cited the classical Greek astronomers Eratosthenes and Hipparchus , acknowledging their astronomical and mathematical efforts covering geography, he claimed that a descriptive approach was more practical, such that his works were designed for statesmen who were more anthropologically than numerically concerned with the character of countries and regions. As such, Geographica provides

2394-463: The first texts found, it provided a limited equivalent of the Rosetta Stone and permitted a first understanding of the Lydian language. The first line of the Lydian text has been destroyed, but can be reconstructed from its Aramaic counterpart. Examples of words in the bilingual: Other words with Indo-European roots and with modern cognates: Only a small fraction of the Lydian vocabulary

2457-543: The hot masses burst out from the ground as estimated by a logical reasoning. Such type of soil is very convenient for viniculture , just like the Katanasoil which is covered with ashes and where the best wines are still produced abundantly. Some writers concluded by looking at these places that there is a good reason for calling Dionysus by the name ("Phrygenes"). Nu (letter) Nu ( / ˈ nj uː / ; uppercase Ν , lowercase ν ; Greek : vι ni [ni] )

2520-455: The interesting historical consequence that king Croesus was not saved from being burnt at the stake, as Herodotus tells us, but chose suicide and was subsequently deified. Heiner Eichner developed rules to determine which syllable in a word has the stress accent. In short, the rules are: A useful application of those rules is the investigation of metres in Lydian poetry. Nouns and adjectives distinguish singular and plural forms. Words in

2583-412: The islands, but the continents, which can be lifted up together with the sea; and both large and small tracts may subside, for habitations and cities, like Bure, Bizona, and many others, have been engulfed by earthquakes.' Strabo commented on fossil formation mentioning Nummulite (quoted from Celâl Şengör ): One extraordinary thing which I saw at the pyramids must not be omitted. Heaps of stones from

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2646-464: The last book of Geographica , which describes it as a thriving port city with a highly developed local economy. Strabo notes the city's many beautiful public parks, and its network of streets wide enough for chariots and horsemen. "Two of these are exceeding broad, over a plethron in breadth, and cut one another at right angles ... All the buildings are connected one with another, and these also with what are beyond it." Lawrence Kim observes that Strabo

2709-753: The left side into marshy ground, and that, at last, the whole would be choked up with soil. So, it was argued, the Mediterranean had once opened a passage for itself by the Columns of Hercules into the Atlantic, and perhaps the abundance of sea-shells in Africa, near the Temple of Jupiter Ammon , might also be the deposit of some former inland sea, which had at length forced a passage and escaped. But Strabo rejects this theory as insufficient to account for all

2772-458: The legendary story of Typhon takes place in this region. Ksanthos adds that the king of this region was a man called Arimus. However, it is not reasonable to accept that the whole country was burned down at a time as a result of such an event rather than as a result of a fire bursting from underground whose source has now died out. Three pits are called "Physas" and separated by forty stadia from each other. Above these pits, there are hills formed by

2835-521: The local community, and whether they might have been granted Roman citizenship as a reward. Strabo's life was characterized by extensive travels. He journeyed to Egypt and Kush , as far west as coastal Tuscany and as far south as Ethiopia in addition to his travels in Asia Minor and the time he spent in Rome . Travel throughout the Mediterranean and Near East, especially for scholarly purposes,

2898-515: The master of rhetoric Aristodemus , who had formerly taught the sons of the Roman general who had taken over Pontus. Aristodemus was the head of two schools of rhetoric and grammar, one in Nysa and one in Rhodes . The school in Nysa possessed a distinct intellectual curiosity in Homeric literature and the interpretation of the ancient Greek epics. Strabo was an admirer of Homer 's poetry, perhaps as

2961-464: The monument (a certain Karos), and for whom (both his son and his ancestors), while the final sentence of the original inscription may be the usual curse for those who would dare to damage it. The poetic middle part seems to claim that the monument was built after consulting a divine oracle, cited between Lydian "quotation marks" ▷...▷, and continues with an appeal to pay as much respect to the builder as to

3024-430: The older texts is either from left to right or right to left. Later texts show exclusively the latter. Use of word-dividers is variable. The texts were found chiefly at the ancient capital of Sardis and include decrees and epitaphs, some of which were composed in verse; most were written during the 5th century and the 4th century BCE, but a few may have been created as early as the 7th century. Lydian has seven vowels: 𐤠

3087-401: The other Anatolian languages. Until more satisfactory knowledge becomes available, the status of Lydian within Anatolian remains a "special" one. The Lydian script , which is strictly alphabetic, consists of 26 signs: The script is related to or derived from that of Greek as well as its western Anatolian neighbours, the exact relationship still remaining unclear. The direction of writing in

3150-401: The phenomena, and he proposes one of his own, the profoundness of which modern geologists are only beginning to appreciate. 'It is not,' he says, 'because the lands covered by seas were originally at different altitudes, that the waters have risen, or subsided, or receded from some parts and inundated others. But the reason is, that the same land is sometimes raised up and sometimes depressed, and

3213-444: The plural form seems to be in principle nasalized, but this could not always be expressed in the writing. Lydian distinguished a mediopassive voice with the third-person singular ending -t(a)λ or -daλ (derived from Proto-Anatolian *-tori; -t(a)λ after consonant stems and part of the stems ending in a vowel, -daλ when lenited after other stems ending in a vowel or glide). About a dozen conjugations can be distinguished, on

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3276-417: The quarries lie in front of the pyramids. Among these are found pieces which in shape and size resemble lentils. Some contain substances like grains half peeled. These, it is said, are the remnants of the workmen's food converted into stone; which is not probable. For at home in our country (Amaseia), there is a long hill in a plain, which abounds with pebbles of a porous stone, resembling lentils. The pebbles of

3339-401: The sea also is simultaneously raised and depressed so that it either overflows or returns into its own place again. We must, therefore, ascribe the cause to the ground, either to that ground which is under the sea, or to that which becomes flooded by it, but rather to that which lies beneath the sea, for this is more moveable, and, on account of its humidity, can be altered with great celerity. It

3402-453: The sea-shore and of rivers suggest somewhat of the same difficulty [respecting their origin]; some explanation may indeed be found in the motion [to which these are subject] in flowing waters, but the investigation of the above fact presents more difficulty. I have said elsewhere, that in sight of the pyramids, on the other side in Arabia, and near the stone quarries from which they are built, is

3465-507: The sibilants more naturally and prevents confusion between v (= w 𐤥) and the Greek nu symbol ν (= ñ 𐤸).) Voicing was likely not distinctive in Lydian. However /p t k/ are voiced before nasals and apparently before /r/. The palatal affricate ( τ ) and sibilant ( š ) may have been palato-alveolar . It has now been argued that the laterals l and λ are actually flaps. The sign 𐤣 has traditionally been transliterated d and interpreted as an interdental /ð/ resulting from

3528-517: The sound change *i̯ > ð or the lenition of Proto-Anatolian *t. However, it has recently been argued that in all contexts d in fact represents the palatal glide /j/, previously considered absent from Lydian. An interdental /ð/ would stand as the only interdental sound in Lydian phonology, whereas a palatal interpretation of d is complemented by a full series of other palatal consonants: λ , š , ñ , and τ . Lydian, with its many palatal and nasal sounds, must have sounded quite strange to

3591-403: The texts are predominantly singular. Plural forms are scarce, and a dual has not been found in Lydian. There are two genders : animate (or 'common') and inanimate (or 'neuter'). Only three cases are securely attested: nominative , accusative , and dative - locative . A genitive case seems to be present in the plural, but in the singular usually a so-called possessive is used instead, which

3654-479: The venerable forefathers. It is remarkable that clear examples of rhyme (like the stock expression aaraλ piraλ-k , 'house and yard', cf. German 'Haus und Hof') and alliteration ( k λidaλ k ofuλ-k q iraλ q elλ-k , 'land and water, property and estate') are absent in the poetical texts, but do occur in the prose bilingual. Strabo Strabo ( / ˈ s t r eɪ b oʊ / ; Greek : Στράβων Strábōn ; 64 or 63 BC – c.  24 AD )

3717-453: The writings of other authors. Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus (in present-day Cappadocia ) in around 64   BC. His family had been involved in politics since at least the reign of Mithridates V . Strabo was related to Dorylaeus on his mother's side. Several other family members, including his paternal grandfather, had served Mithridates VI during

3780-571: Was a Greek geographer , philosopher , and historian who lived in Asia Minor during the transitional period of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire . He is best known for his work Geographica ("Geography"), which presented a descriptive history of people and places from different regions of the world known during his lifetime. Additionally, Strabo authored historical works, but only fragments and quotations of these survive in

3843-427: Was also a Peripatetic, he was more relevantly a respected authority on geography, a fact of some significance considering Strabo's future contributions to the field. The final noteworthy mentor to Strabo was Athenodorus Cananites , a philosopher who had spent his life since 44 BC in Rome forging relationships with the Roman elite. Athenodorus passed onto Strabo his philosophy, his knowledge and his contacts. Unlike

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3906-734: Was in Rome ( c.  20 BC ), is nearly completely lost. Meant to cover the history of the known world from the conquest of Greece by the Romans, Strabo quotes it himself and other classical authors mention that it existed, although the only surviving document is a fragment of papyrus now in the possession of the University of Milan (renumbered [Papyrus] 46). Strabo studied under several prominent teachers of various specialities throughout his early life at different stops during his Mediterranean travels. The first chapter of his education took place in Nysa (modern Sultanhisar , Turkey) under

3969-570: Was popular during this era and was facilitated by the relative peace enjoyed throughout the reign of Augustus (27 BC – AD 14). He moved to Rome in 44 BC, and stayed there, studying and writing, until at least 31 BC. In 29 BC, on his way to Corinth (where Augustus was at the time), he visited the island of Gyaros in the Aegean Sea. Around 25 BC, he sailed up the Nile until he reached Philae , after which point there

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