Cimmerians Sentence Examples
The entrance to it was in the extreme west, on the borders of Ocean, in the mythical land of the Cimmerians.
The Cimmerians who preceded the Scythians used Iranian proper names, and probably represented this Iranian element in greater purity.
According to it the Scyths dwell in Asia, and were forced by the Massagetae over the Araxes (Volga ?) into the land of the Cimmerians.
They have been referred to the Cimmerians, but for this there is no clear evidence.
In the 7th century B.C. these Cimmerians were attacked and partly driven out by a horde of newcomers from upper Asia called Scythae; these imposed their name and their yoke upon all that were left in the Euxine steppes, but probably their coming did not really change the basis of the population, which remained Iranian.
It is, however, more probable that Sardis was not the original capital of the Maeonians, but that it became so amid the changes which produced the powerful Lydian empire of the 8th century B.C. The city was captured by the Cimmerians in the 7th century, by the Persians and by the Athenians in the 6th, and by Antiochus the Great at the end of the 3rd century.
On its southern banks, from east to west, dwell the "blameless Aethiopians" in, perfect happiness, and beyond it on the west, in the realms of eternal night, the "Cimmerians," wrapped in fogs and darkness.
Between 680 and 670 the Cimmerians in their destructive progress over Asia Minor overran Phrygia; the king Midas in despair put an end to his own life; and from henceforth the history of Phrygia is a story of slavery, degradation and decay, which contrasts strangely with the earlier legends.
The Cimmerians were finally expelled from Asia Minor by Alyattes before his war with the Medes under Cyaxares (590-585 B.C.).
The Cimmerians, therefore, were ravaging Asia Minor, and presumably held possession of Phrygia, the only country where they achieved 4 See Furtwangler, Goldfund von Vettersfelde, Winckelm.
AdvertisementTwice in the period 700 -500 B.C. the city owed its preservation to the interference of the goddess; once when the swarms of the Cimmerians overran Asia Minor in the 7th century and burnt the Artemision itself; and once when Croesus besieged the town in the century succeeding, and only retired after it had solemnly dedicated itself to Artemis, the sign of such dedication being the stretching of a rope from city to sanctuary.
Ancient writers spoke of all these Gauls as Cimbri, and identified them with the Cimmerians of earlier date, who in Homeric times dwelt on the ocean next to the Laestrygones, in a region of wintry gloom, but where the sun set not in summer.
The kings of Cilicia and the Tabal offered their daughters to the harem of Assur-bani-pal; embassies came from Ararat, and even Gyges of Lydia despatched envoys to "the great king" in the hope of obtaining help against the Cimmerians.
The original inhabitants were Cimmerians, and after them came Scythians.
The Phrygian monarchy was destroyed by the Cimmerians about 670 B.C., and the name Midas became in Greek tradition the representative of this ancient dynasty.
AdvertisementWith these inroads of the Cimmerians and Scythians (see ScYTIIIA), we must doubtless connect the great ethnographical revolution in the north of anterior Asia; the Indo-European Armenians (Haik), displacing the old Alaro..
One of the earliest movements after this discovery was probably that of the Achaeans of Homer, who about 1450 B.C. invaded Greece (see Achaeans), bringing with them the use of iron and brooches, the practice of cremating the dead, and the style of ornament known as Geometric. Later the Cimmerians (see Scythia and Cimmerii) passed down from the Cimbric Chersonese, doubtless following the amber routes, and then turned east along the Danube, some of their tribes, e.g.