Kitap 1
Since Minos had subjected a good deal of territory for himself and was victorious in war, this made the Carians too at that time by far the most respected of all nations.
They invented three things in which they were followed by the Greeks: it was the Carians who originated wearing crests on their helmets and devices on their shields, and who first made grips for their shields; until then all who used shields carried them without these grips, and guided them with leather belts which they slung round the neck and over the left shoulder.This is the management of the Homeric “man-covering” shield, as shown in the Iliad. The shield is not carried on the arm, but hangs by a belt which passes over the left shoulder and under the right arm-pit; by a pull on the τελαμών it can be shifted so as to protect breast or back.
Then, a long time afterwards, the Carians were driven from the islands by Dorians and Ionians and so came to the mainland. This is the Cretan story about the Carians; but the Carians themselves do not subscribe to it, but believe that they are aboriginal inhabitants of the mainland and always bore the name which they bear now;
and they point to an ancient shrine of Carian Zeus at Mylasa [27.8,37.3167] (Perseus) Mylasa , to which Mysians and Lydians, as brethren of the Carians (for Lydus and Mysus, they say, were brothers of Car), are admitted, but not those who spoke the same language as the Carians but were of another people.
I think the Caunians are aborigines of the soil, but they say that they came from Crete [25,35.166] (region), Greece, Europe Crete . Their speech has become like the Carian, or the Carian like theirs (for I cannot clearly decide), but in their customs they diverge widely from the Carians, as from all other men. Their chief pleasure is to assemble for drinking-bouts in groups according to their ages and friendships: men, women, and children.
Certain foreign rites of worship were established among them; but afterwards, when they were inclined otherwise, and wanted to worship only the gods of their fathers, all Caunian men of full age put on their armor and went together as far as the boundaries of Calynda, striking the air with their spears and saying that they were casting out the alien gods.
Such are their ways. The Lycians were from Crete [25,35.166] (region), Greece, Europe Crete in ancient times (for in the past none that lived on Crete [25,35.166] (region), Greece, Europe Crete were Greek).
Now there was a dispute in Crete [25,35.166] (region), Greece, Europe Crete about the royal power between Sarpedon and Minos, sons of Europa; Minos prevailed in this dispute and drove out Sarpedon and his partisans; who, after being driven out, came to the Milyan land in Asia (continent) Asia . What is now possessed by the Lycians was in the past Milyan, and the Milyans were then called Solymi.
For a while Sarpedon ruled them, and the people were called Termilae, which was the name that they had brought with them and that is still given to the Lycians by their neighbors; but after Lycus son of Pandion came from Athens [23.7333,37.9667] (Perseus) Athens —banished as well by his brother, Aegeus—to join Sarpedon in the land of the Termilae, they came in time to be called Lycians after Lycus.
Their customs are partly Cretan and partly Carian. But they have one which is their own and shared by no other men: they take their names not from their fathers but from their mothers,
and when one is asked by his neighbor who he is, he will say that he is the son of such a mother, and rehearse the mothers of his mother. Indeed, if a female citizen marries a slave, her children are considered pure-blooded; but if a male citizen, even the most prominent of them, takes an alien wife or concubine, the children are dishonored.
Neither the Carians nor any Greeks who dwell in this country did any thing notable before they were all enslaved by Harpagus.
Among those who inhabit it are certain Cnidians, colonists from Sparta [22.416,37.83] (inhabited place), Laconia, Peloponnese, Greece, Europe Lacedaemon . Their country (it is called the Triopion) lies between the sea and that part of the peninsula which belongs to Bubassus, and all but a small part of the Cnidian territory is washed by the sea
(for it is bounded on the north by the gulf of Ceramicus, and on the south by the sea off Nisos Symi [27.833,36.583] (island), Sporades, Aegean Islands, Greece, Europe Syme and Rhodes [28,36.166] (island), Sporades, Aegean Islands, Greece, Europe Rhodes ). Now while Harpagus was conquering Ionia (region (general)), Europe Ionia , the Cnidians dug a trench across this little space, which is about two-thirds of a mile wide, in order that their country might be an island. So they brought it all within the entrenchment; for the frontier between the Cnidian country and the mainland is on the isthmus across which they dug.
Many of them were at this work; and seeing that the workers were injured when breaking stones more often and less naturally than usual, some in other ways, but most in the eyes, the Cnidians sent envoys to Delphi [22.5167,38.4917] (Perseus) Delphi to inquire what it was that opposed them.
Then, as they themselves say, the priestess gave them this answer in iambic verse: “Do not wall or trench the isthmus: Zeus would have given you an island, if he had wanted to.”
At this answer from the priestess, the Cnidians stopped their digging, and when Harpagus came against them with his army they surrendered to him without resistance.
There were Pedaseans dwelling inland above Bodrum [27.466,37.5] (inhabited place), Mugla Ili, Ege kiyilari, Turkey, Asia Halicarnassus ; when any misfortune was approaching them or their neighbors, the priestess of Athena grew a long beard. This had happened to them thrice. These were the only men near Caria [28,37.5] (region (general)), Turkey, Asia Caria who held out for long against Harpagus, and they gave him the most trouble; they fortified a hill called Lide.
The Pedaseans were at length taken, and when Harpagus led his army into the plain of Xanthos [29.35,36.3833] (Perseus) Xanthus , the Lycians came out to meet him, and showed themselves courageous fighting few against many; but being beaten and driven into the city, they gathered their wives and children and goods and servants into the acropolis, and then set the whole acropolis on fire.
Then they swore great oaths to each other, and sallying out fell fighting, all the men of Xanthos [29.35,36.3833] (Perseus) Xanthus .
Of the Xanthians who claim now to be Lycians the greater number, all except eighty households, are of foreign descent; these eighty families as it happened were away from the city at that time, and thus survived. So Harpagus gained Xanthos [29.35,36.3833] (Perseus) Xanthus , and Caunus [28.6333,36.8333] (Perseus) Caunus too in a somewhat similar manner, the Caunians following for the most part the example of the Lycians.
Harpagus, then, made havoc of lower Asia (continent) Asia ; in the upper country, Cyrus himself vanquished every nation, leaving none untouched. Of the greater part of these I will say nothing, but will speak only of those which gave Cyrus the most trouble and are most worthy of being described.
When Cyrus had made all the mainland submit to him, he attacked the Assyrians. In Assyria there are many other great cities, but the most famous and the strongest was Babylon [44.4,32.55] (deserted settlement), Babil, Iraq, Asia Babylon , where the royal dwelling had been established after the destruction of Nineveh (deserted settlement), Ninawa, Iraq, Asia Ninus . 606 B.C. Nineveh (deserted settlement), Ninawa, Iraq, Asia Ninus = Nineveh (deserted settlement), Ninawa, Iraq, Asia Nineveh . Babylon [44.4,32.55] (deserted settlement), Babil, Iraq, Asia Babylon was a city such as I will now describe.
It lies in a great plain, and is in shape a square, each side fifteen miles in length; thus sixty miles make the complete circuit of the city. Such is the size of the city of Babylon [44.4,32.55] (deserted settlement), Babil, Iraq, Asia Babylon ; and it was planned like no other city of which we know.
Around it runs first a moat deep and wide and full of water, and then a wall eighty three feet thick and three hundred thirty three feet high. The royal measure is greater by three fingers' breadth than the common measure.Common cubit, 18 1/4 inches : royal, 20 1/2.
Further, I must relate where the earth was used as it was dug from the moat and how the wall was constructed. As they dug the moat, they made bricks of the earth which was carried out of the place they dug, and when they had moulded bricks enough, they baked them in ovens;
then using hot bitumen for cement and interposing layers of wattled reeds at every thirtieth course of bricks, they built first the border of the moat and then the wall itself in the same fashion.
On the top, along the edges of the wall, they built houses of a single room, facing each other, with space enough between to drive a four-horse chariot. There are a hundred gates in the circuit of the wall, all of bronze, with posts and lintels of the same.
There is another city, called Is,The modern Hit or Ait, where the Euphrates [47.5,31.83] (river), Asia Euphrates enters the alluvial plain. eight days' journey from Babylon [44.4,32.55] (deserted settlement), Babil, Iraq, Asia Babylon , where there is a little river, also named Is, a tributary of the Euphrates [47.5,31.83] (river), Asia Euphrates river ; from the source of this river Is, many lumps of bitumen rise with the water; and from there the bitumen was brought for the wall of Babylon [44.4,32.55] (deserted settlement), Babil, Iraq, Asia Babylon .
Thus, then, this wall was built; the city is divided into two parts; for it is cut in half by a river named Euphrates [47.5,31.83] (river), Asia Euphrates , a wide, deep, and swift river, flowing from Armenia (region (general)), Asia Armenia and issuing into the Red Sea [42,15] (sea) Red Sea .
The angles of the wall, then, on either side are built quite down to the river; here they turn, and from here a fence of baked bricks runs along each bank of the stream.
The city itself is full of houses three and four stories high; and the ways that traverse it, those that run crosswise towards the river and the rest, are all straight.
Further, at the end of each road there was a gate in the riverside fence, one gate for each alley; these gates also were of bronze, and these too opened on the river.
These walls are the city's outer armor; within them there is another encircling wall, nearly as strong as the other, but narrower.
In the middle of one division of the city stands the royal palace, surrounded by a high and strong wall; and in the middle of the other is still to this day the sacred enclosure of Zeus Belus, Bel or Baal, the greatest of Assyrian gods. a square of four hundred and forty yards each way, with gates of bronze.
In the center of this sacred enclosure a solid tower has been built, two hundred and twenty yards long and broad; a second tower rises from this and from it yet another, until at last there are eight.
The way up them mounts spirally outside the height of the towers; about halfway up is a resting place, with seats for repose, where those who ascend sit down and rest.
In the last tower there is a great shrine; and in it stands a great and well-covered couch, and a golden table nearby. But no image has been set up in the shrine, nor does any human creature lie there for the night, except one native woman, chosen from all women by the god, as the Chaldaeans say, who are priests of this god.
These same Chaldaeans say (though I do not believe them) that the god himself is accustomed to visit the shrine and rest on the couch, as in Thebes [32.666,25.683] (deserted settlement), Qina, Upper Egypt, Egypt, Africa Thebes of Egypt [30,27] (nation), Africa Egypt , as the Egyptians say
(for there too a woman sleeps in the temple of Theban Zeus, Amon-Api (Greek Ἀμένωφις); cp. Hdt. 2.42. and neither the Egyptian nor the Babylonian woman, it is said, has intercourse with men), and as does the prophetess of the god Apollo. at Patara [29.35,36.2167] (Perseus) Patara in Lycia (region (general)), Turkey, Asia Lycia , whenever she is appointed; for there is not always a place of divination there; but when she is appointed she is shut up in the temple during the night.