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GYGES' USURPATION

The introduction of coined money by Gyges was a momentous event which,
together with other unusual aspects of his rule, stirred the imagination
and the emotions of the Greeks, with the result that what they recounted
of him belongs to the realm of tales. These tales proved to be of an
unusual appeal and vitality, and they became the subject of many
elaborations of which the last outcome are the Biblical tale of Susanna
at the Bath and the tale of Aladdin in the /Arabian Nights/. These tales
are complex; nevertheless, if they are carefully examined one can arrive
at their historical nucleus.

The Greeks were particularly impressed by the fact that Gyges
legitimized his position as ruler of Lydia by marrying the widowed queen
of the Maionian king he had slain. It will be shown below that this is
not an entirely correct description of the events, but it is the way
they looked to Greek eyes. Gyges' action was in conformity with the
social institutions of Lydia which had many matriarchal traits, but was
repugnant to the Greeks who put a great stress on the patriarchal
practices they had rather recently adopted.

The less dramatic version of Gyges' ascent to power is told by
Plutarch:1 Gyges was a member of King Candaules' retinue (etairoi) who
revolted against their master and defeated his retinue with an army that
included a body of Carian mercenaries.

In Plato Gyges appears as a mythical character, the type of the perfect
villain who, having discovered a ring that gave invisibility, felt free
from all moral scruples.2 With the help of this ring Gyges seduced the
king's wife and then in agreement with her killed the king and seized
the throne.

Herodotos (I. 8-14) relates the same tale in a version that tries to
exclude the miraculous element and also presents Gyges in a better
light. Gyges, son of Daskylos, was the favorite among the hoplite
bodyguards of King Kandaules. He was forced by the king to look at the
naked queen from a place where he could not be seen. The queen, upon
discovering the fact, felt outraged and proceeded to win the bodyguards
to her side; then she forced Gyges under threat of death to join in her
plot and married him after he had killed the king. More historically
reliable is the further information that the Lydians resented Gyges'
usurpation of the throne and took up arms against him. According to
Herodotos the Lydians ceased resistance when the oracle of Delphoi
confirmed Gyges in power. Gyges, having succeeded Kandaules as tyrannos
of the Lydians, sent his famous gold and silver offerings to Delphoi.

Nikolaos of Damaskos3 relates a long and confused story which, however,
can be clarified when one recognizes that it contains a duplication of
the same event, that is, the establishment of the Mermnad dynasty of
Lydia. This duplication is the result of an effort to extend backwards
the list of kings of Lydia which should have started with Gyges. The
chronographers list four Lydian kings before Gyges, even though all
other sources agree on the fact that he was the first king. Nikolaos
also lists four Lydian kings as having preceded Gyges, but his names do
not agree with those of the chronographers. The number of four for
Gyges' predecessors was probably derived from that of his successors who
were actually four.

According to Nikolaos, Adyattes, king of Lydia, left his power to his
two sons Kadys and Ardys who ruled together and were popular with the
Lydians. But Kadys' wife, Damonno, had an adulterous relation with
Spermos, cousin of her husband, and because of it organized a plot in
which the ability to make an underground hollow invisible had a part.
When Kadys died Damonno with her bounties won a great number of Lydians
to her side and, in agreement with Spermos, expelled Ardys. She married
Spermos and proclaimed him king. Ardys fled to Kyme where he made a
living as a chariot-maker. Ardys foiled Spermos' attempts to dispatch
him, succeeded in causing the death of Spermos, and was called back to
the throne by an embassy of Lydians "among which there were some
Herakleidai." But, after having been restored to the throne, Ardys in
his old age allowed all power to fall into the hand of his favorite
Daskylos, son of Gyges. Fearing that Daskylos might seize the throne at
the king's death, Ardys' son Adyattes (II) killed Daskylos. The son of
Daskylos, also called Daskylos (II), fled to Phrygia and thence to the
area of Pontic Syria near Sinope. The murderer of Daskylos did not
become king; the next king was a Meles who, however, went into exile in
order to expiate Daskylos' murder. There followed the reign of Myrsos
and then of Sadyattes. At this time Gyges, son of the second Daskylos,
returned to Lydia where he was adopted by an Ardys who introduced him to
the king. King Sadyattes made him one of his bodyguards, but a Lixos,
member of the family of the Tylonidai, intrigued against Gyges' power;
the Adyattes (II) who had killed Daskylos also belonged to the family of
the Tylonidai. Gyges fell in love with Queen Tudo, raped her, and then,
in order to escape punishment, won part of the bodyguard to his side and
killed the king. Supported by this body of hoplites, he confronted the
assembly of the Lydians who at first were hostile, but then, cowed by
the presence of Gyges' troops, decided to consult the oracle of Delphoi.
Gyges was confirmed in power by the oracle and married the queen who had
earlier called for vengeance against him. Lixos was removed from the
court and Gyges vowed that he would kill him if he ever met him. But, as
a result of an adventure in which chariots played a part, Lixos' life
was spared.

A piece of information that must be linked with Nikolaos' story is
provided by Aristotle in .us The Constitution of the Kymeans, as
preserved in Herakleides' .us Epitome: the Lydians, who were badly
oppressed by somebody's despotic rule, learned that somebody was in Kyme
and decided to call him to the throne; but this somebody was working as
a slave in a chariot-making shop and could not be released.

Nikolaos' account gives two parallel versions of Gyges' usurpation and
presents them as having taken place in different generations: Gyges is
called Spermos in the first version and the queen's name, too, is
changed. The two versions agree in the main lines, except for the final
detail in the first version according to which the exiled king succeeded
in causing the death of the usurper. In Nikolaos' narrative, even though
the kings are described as Lydian kings, it is said that the enemies of
Daskylos and Gyges, that is, Adyattes and Lixos, were Tylonidai. Leigh
Alexander has shown that Tylon was the native name of the divinity
identified by the Greeks with Heracles, and that hence the Tylonidai are
the Herakleid dynasty of Maionia.4 Nikolaos reveals the fact that the
original story dealt with the overthrow of the Herakleidai by Gyges when
he relates that the exile of Kyme was called back by an embassy of
Lydians "among which there were some Herakleidai."

By collapsing together the two versions of the usurpation of the throne,
one can reconstruct with reasonable approximation what must have been
the actual course of events. A Heraclid king of Maionia left his throne
to two sons who ruled together. During their rule all actual power was
assumed by a member of the Mermnad family, Daskylos, commander of the
king's hoplite bodyguards. In discussing Gyges' usurpation, Plutarch
relates that the last Herakleid king had entrusted the royal double-ax
to a member of his retinue. As has been pointed out by Alexander (p.
63), this Daskylos was one and the same person with the Askalos whom
Nikolaos (fr. 16-18) describes as a successful general of the Lydian
kings. Askalos after a long seige seized a city of Syria called Krabos
or Nerabos (the mss. are corrupt); the city was actually Daskyleion,
formerly called Bryllion, on the Propontis near Kyzikos.5 Nikolaos
states that the son of the murdered Daskylos fled to Pontic Syria from
which Gyges returned to Lydia. Nikolaos states (fr. 16) that Daskylos
"is said to have led many campaigns and to have acquired great
reputation among the Lydians for his valor and justice." From this we
may conclude that a Daskylos, general of the Maionian kings, acquired
power and reputation by his campaigns in the Propontis; when he was
killed, because his power was a threat to the legitimate rulers, his son
Gyges fled to the Propontis where he could find support among his
father's soldiers. All narratives stress the role played by the hoplite
bodyguards in Gyges' usurpation. Gyges, who was member of the bodyguard
himself, won at least a part of it to his cause. With the bodyguards and
possibly with more mercenaries hired from Ionia and Karia, he was able
to avenge his father by killing one of the kings. He seized power and
maintained it thanks to the mercenary hoplites, but tried also to make
his rule legitimate by marrying the widowed queen. His rule was further
legitimized by a favorable decision of the oracle of Delphoi. The other
king of Maionia fled to Kyme where Gyges tried in vain to have him
assassinated. The exile of Kyme was expected to attempt a restoration of
the legitimate Herakleid dynasty and was invited to do so by an embassy
of disgruntled Lydians. The tradition seems to imply that the exile was
not very active in asserting his claims to the throne and was more
interested in the sport of charioteering. Or perhaps the traditional
information should be interpreted in the sense that the exiled king
while in Kyme made a display of the aristocratic art of chariot-racing
and chariot-fighting in opposition to the upstart Gyges whose power was
based on the less respectable skill of fighting in hoplite armor. In any
case the one of the two kings of Maionia who had succeeded in fleeing to
Kyme died of natural causes, but did not succeed in restoring the
monarchy of Maionia and in avenging his brother.

On the shores of the Gygaian Swamp near Sardis there was located the
sanctuary of the Nymph Gygaia, the Mother Goddess of the Lydians, called
by the Greeks Artemis. Around this holiness that was the national
sanctuary of the Lydians, there were located the tombs of King Gyges and
his successors together with those of their queens. These tombs
consisted of a mound of earth piled up in a circular area, with a stone
marker on the top. These tumuli are still visible today, but have been
the object of only cursory explorations. There are more than one hundred
of them in an area of two miles. Some have the huge proportions of the
one described as the tomb of King Alyattes by Herodotos (I 93). As to
the tomb of Alyattes, Strabo (XIII 627) reports that it was known as the
"memorial of the prostitute" (/pornh|s| mnhma/) and Herodotos says that
it had been built by the work of prostitutes. This information becomes
comprehensible in the light of the statement by Klearchos of Soloi that
"Gyges, king of Lydia, became famous not only because he entrusted
himself and his power to his loved one during her life, but also because
he gathered all the people from the country of Lydia to heap up earth
for what is still today call the memorial of the /hetaira/" (th|s|
etaira|s| mnhma). This passage reveals that the legitimacy of the power
of the Mermnad Kings of Lydia, who had usurped the throne of the
Tyloniadae, was based on a marriage with the Nymph Gygaia in the person
of her priestess. The tombs of the Lydian kings at the Gygaian swamp
were first of all the tombs of their .us hetairai, their religious
wives. This fact has been already suspected by Gelzer who maintains that
the marriage by Gyges of Kandaules' wife was just one of the many
examples of Oriental rulers legalizing their power by taking the widow
of their predecessor as a wife or as a mystical wife (/Gotterweib/).

Strabo (XVIII 808) states that the Third Pyramid became the "tomb of the
/hetaira/" (th|s| etaira|s| tafo|s) because Psammetichos who had married
the courtesan Rhodopis of Naucratis, called Doricha by Sappho, after her
death made this pyramid the tomb of his loved one. It is clear that
Strabo is echoing the story told by Klearchos about Gyges' wife. The
legend of the construction of a pyramid by Rhodopis is the product of a
contamination of the story of Psammetichos' /hetaira/ with that of
Gyges' /hetaira/. The tombs of the Gygaian Swamp were constructions
similar to the Egyptian pyramids and could be confused with them.

Herodotos remarks that only in Egypt and in Babylon could one find
buildings comparable to the tombs of the Lydian kings. Ktesias of
Knidos, who adapted the tale of Gyges' wife and out of it concocted the
tale of Semiramis of Babylon, ascribes to the latter the construction of
several monumental buildings of Babylon. The tale of Gyges is the origin
of the tale of Aladdin in the /Arabian Nights/ in which there is also
question of the construction of a palace of miraculous proportions. The
historical courtesan Phryne of Tempe, the one defended by Hypereides,
became in the legend the embodiment of all /hetairai/ and there were
told about her tales which are a combination of what was told about
Gyges' wife and about Rhodopis. Because of her association with
Rhodopis, a statue of Phryne was erected in Delphoi next to the roasting
spits. Phryne was believed to have accumulated an immense fortune by her
charm and to have spent it on erecting various buildings such as the
walls of Thebai. An offshoot of Phryne's tale is the Biblical story of
Susanna at the bath. The motif of the bath appears in the tale of
Aladdin who from a concealed place sees the Sultan's daughter as she is
going to bathe. It appears in Rhodopis' tale combined with the
Aphrodite's slipper motif: while Rhodopis is bathing, and eagle steals
her slipper and drops it into the lap of King Psammetichos. The root of
these tales is the fact that the kings of Lydia were assumed to have
intercourse with the nymph of the Gygaian Swamp who was invisible to
everybody else.

References

1. Moralia I. 302; .us Quaest. Graik. 45.

2. Republic II.359C

3. Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum fr. 44-47.

4. The Kings of Lydia, Dissertation (Princeton, 1913), p. 54.

5. The historical tradition changed the name of the city from Daskyleion
to Askalon, because of a confusion between Syria on the Pontos
(Leukosyria) with the more famous Syria on the Mediterranean in which
there is a town of Askalon; the name of the conquering general was
accordingly changed from Daskylos to Askalos.

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