XANTIIIIS, the name of the capital of the ancient Lycia, anciently called Arina, city of the Tramilte, or Solymi, the primitive inhabitants. It lies at the s.w. corner of Asia Minor, and near the village of kourtik. %Frain the earliest historic times to that of 'Crcesus, the Lycians appear to have been independent under native rulers; but after the fall of Sardis and the capture of Crcesus, the Persian conqueror Cyrus sent an army for the conquest of Lycia, led by Harpagus, in 546 n.c. The most desperate resistance was made by the Lycians, and the people of Xanthus burned themselves in their citadel, rather than surrender to the conqueror, only 80 families surviving the catastrophe. Reduced to a Persian satrapy, they sent 50 ships to the expedition of Xerxes against Greece, and contributed to the revenues of Persia. Little is known of the history of this town till the days of Alexander the great. Alexander took Xanthus, which is said to have made as determined a resistance as it did on the former occasion. In the war which ensued among the successors of Alexander, Ptolemy took Xanthus from the gar rison of Antigonus; and the city subsequently passed into the possession of the Ptole mies and Seleucids. After the defeat of Antiochus it was ceded by the Romans to Rhodes, but subsequently had its liberties restored. In the civil war between Brutus and the Triumvirs (43 n.e.), Xmithns was taken by Brutus. The inhabitants a third time destroyed themselves and their families, and few survived the capture. From that time Xanthus belonged to the Roman empire, and suffered in the earthquake in the reign of Tiberius; but Lycia did not lose all its freedom till the time of Claudius, who reduced it. to a province. Xanthus was situated 70 stadia, or 9 m., from the sea, on the left bank of the Sibres or Sibrus, the Greek Xanthus, or Yellow river, on a plateau of elevated ground, of nearly rectangular shape, the elevated parts close to the river rising 200 feet. The most remarkable edifices in the city and its vicinity, according to ancient authors, -were the Sarpedonion, or temple of Sarpedon; that of the Lucian Apollo; and Letoon, or temple of Leto. On the elevated ground, or acropolis, stood the so called Harpy Tomb, and an ancient theater of Greek workmanship; while in the other part of the city which lay to the e. was a mixture of Greek and Roman buildings. The whole city and its environs contained numeroultemples and tombs. The discoveries of sir C. Fellows in 1838 revealed the city of Xanthus, its temples and its monuments, and they appear to fall into the following classes: 1. The sepulchers of the early inhabitants, placed inside the wall in shape of square columns, with step-shaped bases, and sepulchral chamber en the summit. The most remarkable of these is the Harpy Tomb, so culled from the sub ject of the bas-reliefs being the Harpies hearing off the daughters of Pandarus, king of Lycia—executed in a style resembling-the earliest efforts of oriental Greek art. Another,
with a frieze of lions and hunters in Persian style, and the inscribed obelisk, with long Lycian inscription and some Greek verses, apparently of the time of Artaxerxes Lon. gimanus, and made about 466 B. c. 2. The tombs of the age of the Persian subjection, with roof-shaped tops and ridges, and imitation of wood-work, the sepulchral chamber for the principal dead being at the summit, the others in the middle and base, the sides ornamented with reliefs of a later style of art. Of a later style, but of more beautiful art, was the Ionic peristyle temple or monument of 14 columns, with a solid cella, placed on a base or pedestal, both temple and base ornamented with friezes, supposed to represent the conquest of Lycia by Harpagus, and with figures between the columns. The friezes represent hunts and feasts, the combats of Lycians and Persians, and taking of the city of Xanthus by the latter—the whole treated in a style not unlike the school of Phidas and his successors. These sculptures have been supposed to represent the exploits of Harpagus, or the suppression of the revolt of the Ciliehms by a Lycian satrap, and to have been made between 450 and 387 B. C. This temple was discovered. by sir C. Fellows in 1840 14.
The language found on the monuments of Lycia, written in an alphabet of 25 letters, is an Aryan walect, distinguished by a prevalence of vowels. The letters, with two exceptions, are archaic Greek, and borrowed from by no means the oldest form of that language. The syntax and inflections are Aryan or Indo-European, but many of the roots are different from the languages of that family, although certain words may be referred to well-known equivalents—as goda, "lord," to the Persian; tedeeme, " son," to the Slavonic; and lade, to the Anglo-Saxon. Some words, too, resemble the Zend. The presence of many Greek words barbarously transcribed can also be well recognized in the different inscriptions, and some few derived from their Persian con querors—as gssatrape, or "satrap." The inscriptions are generally short and sepulchral, and follow the well-known formula commonly used under the Roman empire, and are sometimes accompanied by Greek versions or translations, helping to explain the Lyclan. One inscription alone, recording the exploits of one of the family of the Ha'pagi aft, r the battle of Eurymedon (466 B. C.), on the so-called obelisk of Xanthus, is of any length. The language seems to have lasted from about the 5th c. B.°. to the 1st c. A.D. —Itawlin son, Herodotus, vol. i. pp. 311, Synopsis of the Contents of the British Museum, 1855. p. 105; Fellows, Asia Minor (Land. 1839); Discos-cries in Lyda (1841); Birch in the Arclasologk, vol. xxx. pp. 176-204.