236 



DISCOVERY 



native was to extend his frontiers to include their 

 fellow-nationals, who were as yet free, and in con- 

 sequence Daiius embarked upon the " European 

 policy " which was to lead to the Persian invasion of 

 (ireece. His so-called " Scythian expedition " in 

 512 B.C. probably achieved its object in making the 

 Lower Danube his north-western frontier ; and the 

 fruits of this campaign were secured by the subse- 

 quent conquest of the Thracian sea-board by Mega- 

 bazus, the most trusted of his generals. 



Megabazus was on the whole successful in his mission. 

 As a result of his campaign the northern coast of the 

 Aegean was brought under Persian sovereignty and 

 Macedonia within the Persian sphere of influence. 

 A minor reverse, however, provided Herodotus with 

 the excuse for inserting a brief ethnological digression 

 which is of the very greatest interest to students of 

 the early history of Europe. Some of the hill tribes, 

 he tells us, successfully resisted the Persians. " They 

 likewise who inhabited Lake Prasias " (the modern 

 Lake Tachynos, familiar to those who have visited the 

 Struma Front), " were not conquered b\' Megabazus. 

 He sought indeed to subdue the dwellers upon the lake, 

 but could not effect his purpose. Their manner of 

 living is the following. Platforms supported upon 

 tall piles stand in the middle of the lake which are 

 approached from the land by a single narrow bridge. 

 At the first the piles which bear up the platforms were 

 fixed in their places by the whole body of citizens, 

 but since that time the custom which has prevailed 

 about fixing them is this. They are brought from a 

 hill called Orbelus, and every man drives in three for 

 each wife that he marries ; and this is the way in 

 which they live. Each has his own hut, wherein he 

 dwells, upon one of the platforms, and each also a trap- 

 door giving access to the lake beneath ; and their 

 wont is to tie their baby children by the foot with a 

 string, to save them from rolling into the water. They 

 feed their horses and their other beasts upon fish, 

 which abound in the lake to such a degree that a man 

 has only to open his trap-door and to let down a basket 

 by a rope into the water and then to wait a very short 

 .time, when he draws it up quite full of them." ' 



WTien Rawlinson published the translation from 

 which I have quoted, the pile-dwellings of the Swiss 

 Lakes had been recently discovered * ; but the full 

 interest of the description given by Herodotus was 

 not yet apparent. For archreological investigation 

 has since revealed that buildings of this character 



' Herodotus, v. 16. Athenaeus, viii. 35, has also recorded the 

 existence of a Tliracian tribe which fed its livestock upon fish. 

 The name Mosynus, by which he describes the district, suggests, 

 that he is thinking of the same or similar dwellers in pile-villages, 

 for the word means " a wooden hut or tower." 



' In 1854 the first of these lake-villages was discovered in the 

 Lake of Zurich. 



are spread over a wide area from Hungary to Switzer- 

 land ; and the remains of similar villages are to be 

 found in the Italian Lakes. 



Indeed the construction of j)ile-dwellings in lakes 

 or marshes is one of the most important features of 

 the end of the Stone Age in Central Europe ; and the 

 fishermen of Lake Tachynos, who under favouring 

 natural conditions retained their original mode of 

 living into the fifth century B.C.,' must belong to an 

 offshoot of the same race as the Bronze-Age invaders 

 of Northern Italy. 



The earliest pile-dwellings on the Italian I.akes 

 belong to the beginning of the Bronze Age, and it is 

 probable in fact that their builders first brought the 

 use of that metal into Italj'. Whether these settle- 

 ments were due to a single invasion from Switzerland 

 or to two different streams of migration, one from the 

 Swiss lakes and the other direct from the Danube 

 valley, is a matter of dispute ; but that their builders 

 were an intrusive people belonging to the Central 

 European stock is certain. They differ from the 

 previous Neolithic inhabitants of Northern Italy ahke 

 in their funeral customs, their mode of dwellings, and 

 their degree of ci\'ilisation. Their Stone-Age predeces- 

 sors in Italy buried their dead. The contracted position 

 of the skeleton at burial, secondary burial (i.e. the 

 burial of the bones after the flesh has been artificially 

 removed or allowed to decompose), the breaking of 

 objects buried with the dead man for his use in the 

 next world, and the use of red ochre for painting the 

 skin of the living or the bones of the dead are character- 

 istics which the Italians of the later Stone Age share 

 with other branches cf the Neolithic race of the Mediter- 

 ranean area. Evidence for the earliest Italian lake 

 dwellings is imfortunately lacking, but in the full 

 Bronze Age it is certain that the lake-dwellers did not 

 bury but cremated their dead. The body was burned 

 and the ashes buried in the earth in an urn covered 

 with a fiat stone or an inverted basin. Bronze objects, 

 often broken before deposition, have been found buried 

 with the ashes. 



Again, the previous inhabitants of Northern Italy 

 lived, as indeed their descendants in the Ligurian hills 

 continued to do in tlie days of Diodorus Siculus,* 

 in caves or rock-shelters or in villages of curious circular 

 huts. A circular or elhptical hole was dug in the 

 ground, sometimes more than three feet in depth, and 

 its sides were continued above ground by wicker-work 

 covered with clay or skins. The lake-dwellers, on the 

 other hand, lived in settlements like that described 



» Herodotus' history must have been published before 425 

 B.C., when Aristophanes parodied its opening chapters in the 

 Achamians. 



♦ Diodorus, iv. 20, v. 39. Diodorus wrote his history in the 

 reign of .Augustus (31 b.c.-a.d. 14). 



