ixS 



NATURE 



[March 30, 191 1 



fessor of Zoology represent a body of useful and 

 interesting scientific work on which Oxford Univer- 

 sity can be heartily congratulated. The excellent 

 work done is honourable also to the science of ento- 

 mology. The laws of life generally apply equally 

 to the lower forms as to the higher, the general 

 l)roblems of heredity, variation, environment, &c., all 

 receive illustration in the insect world, and such 

 studies and observations as are recorded in these 

 " Hope Reports " make a wide appeal to all zoologists 

 and students of biological problems. 



CYUCVS. 

 Cyzictis: Being some Account of the History and 



Antiquities of that City and of the District Adjacent. 



By F. W. Hasluck. (Cambridge Archaeological 



and Ethnological Series.) Pp. xii + 326; sketch 



maps. (Cambridge : University Press, 1910.) 



Price 10^. net. 

 jV/r R. F. W. HASLUCK, the assistant-director of 

 i-*! the British School at Athens, is an archaeo- 

 logist whose knowledge of the bypaths of travel in 

 the Levant is extensive and peculiar. His work, too, 

 has lain among the bypaths of antiquity rather than 

 on its main routes. One of the pleasures of the 

 "Annual of the British School at Athens" for some 

 years past has been the reading of the assistant- 

 director's articles on ,Frankish Greece and the ^gean 

 Isles in mediaeval days. Mr. Hasluck has devoted 

 most of his time to the lands still under Turkish 

 sway, and the present book is a description of what is 

 known of a certain district of Bithynia, of which the 

 centre was the ancient and famous city of Cyzicus. 



The author modestly says that his book "lays little 

 claim to be considered as more than a compilation, 

 checked, where possible, by original research." It is 

 more than this, and the original research has been 

 so fruitful and is so genially described that we may 

 wish, perhaps, that Mr. Hasluck had given us only 

 his original research and had left the compilation 

 part out. The book would not have been much 

 smaller, and it would have been more interesting. 

 However, this was not the plan and intention of 

 the book, and no doubt the material derived by Mr. 

 Hasluck from Wiegand and other recent authorities 

 on this part of Asia Minor will be useful to English 

 readers. Wiegand 's drawings of the Roman bridge 

 at Sultan Chair, reproduced by Mr. Hasluck, should 

 be of interest to architects. It is a fine and dignified 

 design, worthy of modern adaptation. 



The book, part original and part compilation, then, 

 is a very exhaustive monograph on Cyzicus and its 

 district, followed by a very complete' bibliography, 

 Mr. Hasluck treats first of topography, in which the 

 results of his own journeys are included, and various 

 new identifications of ancient sites are made. Then 

 he passes to the history, religion, and ancient govern- 

 ment of Cyzicus, followed by a very useful index of 

 inscriptions. Mr. Hasluck's photographs are good, 

 and it is a pity there are not more of them. The 

 plans are mostly from Wiegand. 



Mr. Hasluck traces the history of Cyzicus from its 

 NO. 2 161, VOL. 86] 



foundation to the present day, when its site is a 

 waste of meagre and uninteresting ruins, and only 

 the name Bal-kiz preserves the ancient lUiXtua KtiCiKot 

 In Turkish, lial-kiz means "Honey-Maid," so natur- 

 ally the Moslem mind identified this Bal-kiz with 

 Balkis, the Queen of Sheba, who visited Suleiman the 

 Wise; and the ruined Roman amphitheatre, turned 

 into a castle in Frankish days, was for the Turks 

 Balkis Serai, "the Palace of Balkis." This is one 

 of the many curious little bypaths into which Mr. 

 Hasluck leads us. 



The only criticism one has to make is that Mr. 

 Hasluck is too much inclined to rely upon classical 

 authority for his early dates. He accepts the tradi- 

 tional date (756 B.C.) for the foundation of Cyzicus, 

 although there are serious grounds for thinking that 

 this, like all the generally accepted dates of the 

 founding of the oldest Greek colonies, is too early. 

 The traditional year of the second colonisation, 

 675 B.C., is a more probable date for the first. After 

 all, these dates rest on no more trustworthy grounds 

 than do the Greek dates for the kings of Lydia, 

 which are known to be all wrong. It is odd to find 

 Mr. Hasluck quoting the Eusebian date for Ardys, 

 which is nearly a century and a half too high. 

 Surely, nowadays, we should quote the certain date, 

 known from the contemporary Assyrian records, 

 which place the reign of his father Gyges between 675 

 and 650. If the "second" founding (which one may 

 think was probably the first and only founding) took 

 place in 675, it can hardly have been due, as Mr. Has- 

 luck considers, to the friendliness of Gyges to Greek 

 colonisation, as in 675 he had hardly been any time 

 upon the throne. However this may be, it is in any 

 case certain that Ardys became king about 650, and 

 Eusebius is really too doubtful an authority even to 

 be mentioned. 



In the chapter on religion we find an instance of 

 the same indifference to the results of Oriental le- 

 search in an adhesion to the old fable of the Sinopean 

 origin of the god Serapis, who is accepted by Mr. 

 Hasluck as originally a native deity of northern Asia 

 Minor (p. 227). L<etronne long ago explained the 

 genesis of this story, first circulated by Plutarch and 

 then copied by Tacitus. Sarapis was a purely 

 Eg}ptian deity, Asar-Hapi, Osiris-Apis, represented at 

 .Alexandria in a Greek Zeus- form. The seat of his 

 cult at Memphis seems to have been called Si-n-Hapi, 

 " Place-of-Apis," Sinopion in Greek. Hence the 

 Sinope story. 



However, Mr. Hasluck may be excused for not 

 knowing this fact, notwithstanding that attention 

 was directed to it in an article (by the late 

 Mr. P. D. Scott-Moncrieflf) on Plutarch's "De 

 Iside et Osiride," which lately appeared in the 

 "Journal of Hellenic Studies." Classical archaeo- 

 logists should, no doubt, be a little more open than 

 they often are to the reception of Eg}-ptological and 

 other Oriental knowledge; but they cannot be ex- 

 pected to be always aware that some time-honoured 

 Greek belief or other about Oriental matters has long 

 been exploded. 



The point is a very minor one in this book, and has 



