BABYLON AND PERSIA

LYDIA AND ASIA MINOR.2O9to them so novel, Amazonian worship, and unhesi¬tatingly adoptedthe deity, merely changing hername to the familiar one of their own Artemis.*The Oriental origin of the conception embodied inthe goddess issufficiently shown by the uncouthbut transparent symbolism of her statue in her greattemple at Ephesus, foreign to all Greek principlesof beauty in art (see ill. 30), yet so expressive ofwhat It IS meant to convey : the idea of nature asthe source of all life and nourishment. The sun-godof the Asiatics, too, in his different aspects, theGreeks easily identified with their own youthful andradiant god ApOLLO, or their toiling, travelling semihumansolar hero, Herakles, himself an inheritanceof Phoenicia and Chaldea, a revised edition of theSyrian Melkarth and the Babylonian Izdubar.f TheLydian name of the sun-god was Sandon, and hehad ahighly revered national sanctuary near theplace where the Greeks built MiLETUS, the queen ofIonian cities.This sanctuary was served by a nativehereditary priesthood of the family known as theBranchiD/E.When the Greeks came, they at onceadopted the sanctuary, which became asfamous asthat of the Ephesian Artemis, under the name of tem¬ple of " Didyma^an Apollo," and was left in the chargeof Its high-born guardians.Nor were the people ofAsia Minor at all unwilling to acknowledge the spir¬itual kinship on their own side ; and so it came to passthat, being moreover attracted by the surpassing lovehnessof Greek culture and myth, they fell into the* See above, p. 208, and " Story of Assyria," pp. 365, 366.t See " Story of Assyria," p. go ; and " Story of Chaldea," Ch. VII.V