Part 12

LYDENBURG, a town and district of the Transvaal, South Africa. The town is 60 m. by rail N.N.E. of Belfast on the Pretoria-Delagoa Bay railway. Pop. (1904) 1523. It is picturesquely situated on the Spekboom tributary of the Olifants river at an altitude of 4900 ft. Some 15 m. E. is the Mauchberg (8725 ft.), the highest point in the Transvaal. The town is the chief centre for the Lydenburg goldfields. Next to Lydenburg the most important settlement in these goldfields is Pilgrim's Rest, pop. (1904) 1188, 23 m. N.E. of Lydenburg. Lydenburg (the town of suffering) was founded in 1846 by Boers who two years previously had established themselves farther north at Ohrigstad, which they abandoned on account of the fever endemic there. Lydenburg at once became the capital of a district (of the same name) which then embraced all the eastern part of the Transvaal. In 1856 the Boers of Lydenburg separated from their brethren and proclaimed an independent republic, which was, however, incorporated with the South African Republic in 1860. The discovery of gold near the town was made in 1869, and in 1873 the first successful goldfield in the Transvaal was opened here. It was not until 1910, however, that Lydenburg was placed in railway communication with the rest of the country. The present district of Lydenburg consists of the north-east and central parts of the original district. In the Lulu Mountains, a spur of the Drakensberg, and some 40 m. N.W. of Lydenburg, was the stronghold of the Kaffir chief Sikukuni, whose conflict with the Boers in 1876 was one of the causes which led to the annexation of the Transvaal by Great Britain in 1877. (See TRANSVAAL: _History_.)

LYDFORD, or LIDFORD, a village, once an important town, in the western parliamentary division of Devonshire, England, near the western confines of Dartmoor, 27 m. N. of Plymouth by the London & South-Western railway. From its Perpendicular church of St Petrock fine views of the Dartmoor tors are seen. The village stands on the small river Lyd, which traverses a deep narrow chasm, crossed by a bridge of single span; and at a little distance a tributary stream forms a cascade in an exquisite glen. Close to the church are slight remains of the castle of Lydford.

Lydford (_Lideford_) was one of the four Saxon boroughs of Devon, and possessed a mint in the days of Aethelred the Unready. It first appears in recorded history in 997, when the Danes made a plundering expedition up the Tamar and Tavy as far as "Hlidaforda." In the reign of Edward the Confessor it was the most populous centre in Devonshire after Exeter, but the Domesday Survey relates that forty houses had been laid waste since the Conquest, and the town never recovered its former prosperity; the history from the 13th century centres round the castle, which is first mentioned in 1216, when it was granted to William Briwere, and was shortly afterwards fixed as the prison of the stannaries and the meeting-place of the Forest Courts of Dartmoor. A gild at Lideford is mentioned in 1180, and the pipe roll of 1195 records a grant for the reestablishment of the market. In 1238 the borough, which had hitherto been crown demesne, was bestowed by Henry III. on Richard, earl of Cornwall, who in 1268 obtained a grant of a Wednesday market and a three days' fair at the feast of St Petrock. The borough had a separate coroner and bailiff in 1275, but it was never incorporated by charter, and only once, in 1300, returned members to parliament. Lydford prison is described in 1512 as "one of the most hainous, contagious and detestable places in the realm," and "Lydford Law" was a by-word for injustice. At the time of the Commonwealth the castle was entirely in ruins, but in the 18th century it was restored and again used as a prison and as the meeting-place of the manor and borough courts.

LYDGATE, JOHN (c. 1370-c. 1451), English poet, was born at the village of Lydgate, some 6 or 7 m. from Newmarket. It is, however, with the Benedictine abbey of Bury St Edmunds that he is chiefly associated. Probably he was educated at the school attached to the monastery, and in his _Testament_ he has drawn a lively picture of himself as a typical orchard-robbing boy, who had scant relish for matins, fought, and threw creed and paternoster at the cock. He was ordained sub-deacon in 1389, deacon in 1393, and priest in 1397. These dates are valuable as enabling us to fix approximately the date of his birth, which must have occurred somewhere about 1370. Lydgate passed as a portent of learning, and, according to Bale, he pursued his studies not only at both the English universities but in France and Italy. Koeppel (see _Laurents de Premierfait und John Lydgates Bearbeitungen von Boccaccios De Casibus_, Munich, 1885) has thrown much doubt on this statement as regards Italy, but Lydgate knew France and visited Paris in an official capacity in 1426. Bale is also the authority for another assertion that figures in what has been aptly termed the poet's "traditional biography," viz. that Lydgate, on completing his own education, kept school for the sons of noblemen and gentlemen. This "traditional biography" prolongs his life to the year 1461, but it is quite improbable that he lived many years after 1446, when Abbot Curteys died and John Baret, treasurer of Bury, signed an extant receipt for a pension which he shared with Lydgate, and which continued to be paid till 1449. If it be true, as Bishop Alcock of Ely affirms, that Lydgate wrote a poem on the loss of France and Gascony, it seems necessary to suppose that he lived two years longer, and thus indications point to the year 1451, or thereabouts, as the date of his death.

Lydgate had a consuming passion for literature, and it was probably that he might indulge this taste more fully that in 1434 he retired from the priorate of Hatfield Broadoak (or Hatfield Regis), to which he had been appointed in June 1423. After 1390--but whilst he was still a young man--he made the acquaintance of Geoffrey Chaucer, with whose son Thomas he was on terms of considerable intimacy. This friendship appears to have decided Lydgate's career, and in his _Troy-book_ and elsewhere are reverent and touching tributes to his "master." The passages in question do not exaggerate his obligations to the "well of English." The themes of all his more ambitious poems can be traced to Chaucerian sources. _The Story of Thebes_, for instance, was doubtless suggested by the "romance" which Cressida and her companions are represented as reading when interrupted by Pandarus (_Troilus and Cressida_, II. xii.-xvi.). The _Falls of Princes_, again, is merely the _Monk's Tale_ "writ large."

Lydgate is a most voluminous writer. The _Falls of Princes_ alone comprises 7000 stanzas; and his authentic compositions reach the enormous total of 150,000 lines. Cursed with such immoderate fluency Lydgate could not sustain himself at the highest level of artistic excellence; and, though imbued with a sense of the essentials of poetry, and eager to prove himself in its various manifestations, he stinted himself of the self-discipline necessary to perfection of form. As the result the bulk of his composition is wholly or comparatively rough-hewn. That he was capable of better work than is suggested by his average accomplishment is shown by two allegorical poems--the _Complaint of the Black Knight_ and the _Temple of Glass_ (once attributed to Hawes). In these he reveals himself as a not unworthy successor of Chaucer, and the pity of it is that he should have squandered his powers in a futile attempt to create an entire literature. For a couple of centuries Lydgate's reputation equalled, if it did not surpass, that of his master. This was in a sense only natural, since he was the real founder of the school of which Stephen Hawes was a distinguished ornament, and which "held the field" in English letters during the long and dreary interval between Chaucer and Spenser. One of the most obvious defects of this school is excessive attachment to polysyllabic terms. Lydgate is not quite so great a sinner in this respect as are some of his successors, but his tendency cannot be mistaken, and John Metham is amply justified in his censure--

Eke John Lydgate, sometime monk of Bury, His books indited with terms of rhetoric And half-changed Latin, with conceits of poetry.

Pedantry was an inevitable effect of the early Renaissance. French literature passed through the same phase, from which indeed it was later in emerging; and the ultimate consequence was the enrichment of both languages. It must be conceded as no small merit in Lydgate that, in an age of experiment he should have succeeded so often in hitting the right word. Thomas Warton remarks on his lucidity. Since his writings are read more easily than Chaucer's, the inference is plain--that he was more effectual as a maker of our present English. In spite of that, Lydgate is characteristically medieval--medieval in his prolixity, his platitude, his want of judgment and his want of taste; medieval also in his pessimism, his Mariolatry and his horror of death. These attributes jarred on the sensitive Ritson, who racked his brains for contumelious epithets such as "stupid and disgusting," "cart-loads of rubbish," &c.; and during the greater part of the 18th and 19th centuries Lydgate's reputation was at its lowest ebb. Recent criticism has been far more impartial, and almost too much respect has been paid to his attainments, especially in the matter of metre, though Lydgate himself, with offensive lightheartedness, admits his poor craftsmanship.

Lydgate's most doughty and learned apologist is Dr Schick, whose preface to the _Temple of Glass_ embodies practically all that is known or conjectured concerning this author, including the chronological order of his works. With the exception of the _Damage and Destruction in Realms_--an account of Julius Caesar, his wars and his death--they are all in verse and extremely multifarious--narrative, devotional hagiological, philosophical and scientific, allegorical and moral, historical, satirical and occasional. The _Troy-book_, undertaken at the command of Henry V., then prince of Wales, dates from 1412-1420; the _Story of Thebes_ from 1420-1422; and the _Falls of Princes_ towards 1430. His latest work was _Secreta Secretorum_ or _Secrets of Old Philosophers_, rhymed extracts from a pseudo-Aristotelian treatise. Lydgate certainly possessed extraordinary versatility, which enabled him to turn from elaborate epics to quite popular poems like the _Mumming at Hertford_, _A Ditty of Women's Horns_ and _London Lickpenny_. The humour of this last is especially bright and effective, but, unluckily for the author, the piece is believed to have been retouched by some other hand. The longer efforts partake of the nature of translations from sundry medieval compilations like those of Guido di Colonna and Boccaccio, which are in Latin.

See publications of the Early English Text Society, especially the _Temple of Glass_, edited by Dr Schick; Koeppel's _Lydgate's Story of Thebes, eine Quellenuntersuchung_ (Munich, 1884), and the same scholar's _Laurents de Premierfait und John Lydgates Bearbeitungen von Boccaccios De Casibus Illustrium Virorum_ (Munich, 1885); Warton's _History of English Poetry_; Ritson's _Bibliotheca Anglo-Poética_; Furnivall's _Political Poems_ (E. E. T. S.); and Sidney Lee's article in the _Dict. Nat. Biog._ (F. J. S.)

LYDIA, in ancient geography, a district of Asia Minor, the boundaries of which it is difficult to fix, partly because they varied at different epochs. The name is first found under the form of _Luddi_ in the inscriptions of the Assyrian king Assur-bani-pal, who received tribute from Gyges about 660 B.C. In Homer we read only of Maeonians (_Il_. ii. 865, v. 43, x. 431), and the place of the Lydian capital Sardis is taken by Hyde (_Il_. xx. 385), unless this was the name of the district in which Sardis stood (see Strabo xiii. p. 626).[1] The earliest Greek writer who mentions the name is Mimnermus of Colophon, in the 37th Olympiad. According to Herodotus (i. 7), the Meiones (called Maeones by other writers) were named Lydians after Lydus, the son of Attis, in the mythical epoch which preceded the rise of the Heraclid dynasty. In historical times the Maeones were a tribe inhabiting the district of the upper Hermus, where a town called Maeonia existed (Pliny, _N.H._ v. 30; Hierocles, p. 670). The Lydians must originally have been an allied tribe which bordered upon them to the north-west, and occupied the plain of Sardis or Magnesia at the foot of Tmolus and Sipylus. They were cut off from the sea by the Greeks, who were in possession, not only of the Bay of Smyrna, but also of the country north of Sipylus as far as Temnus in the pass (_boghaz_), through which the Hermus forces its way from the plain of Magnesia into its lower valley.[2] In a Homeric epigram the ridge north of the Hermus, on which the ruins of Temnus lie, is called Sardene. Northward the Lydians extended at least as far as the Gygaean Lake (Lake Coloe, mod. Mermereh), and the Sardene range (mod. Dumanli Dagh). The plateau of the Bin Bir Tepe, on the southern shore of the Gygaean Lake, was the chief burial-place of the inhabitants of Sardis, and is still thickly studded with tumuli, among which is the "tomb of Alyattes" (260 ft. high). Next to Sardis the chief city was Magnesia ad Sipylum (q.v.), in the neighbourhood of which is the famous seated figure of "Niobe" (_Il_. xxiv. 614-617), cut out of the rock, and probably intended to represent the goddess Cybele, to which the Greeks attached their legend of Niobe. According to Pliny (v. 31), Tantalis, afterwards swallowed up by earthquake in the pool Sale or Saloe, was the ancient name of Sipylus and "the capital of Maeonia" (Paus. vii. 24; Strabo xii. 579). Under the Heraclid dynasty the limits of Lydia must have been already extended, since according to Strabo (xiii. 590), the authority of Gyges reached as far as the Troad. Under the Mermnads Lydia became a maritime as well as an inland power. The Greek cities were conquered, and the coast of Ionia included within the Lydian kingdom. The successes of Alyattes and of Croesus finally changed the Lydian kingdom into a Lydian empire, and all Asia Minor westward of the Halys, except Lycia, owned the supremacy of Sardis. Lydia never again shrank back into its original dimensions. After the Persian conquest the Maeander was regarded as its southern boundary, and in the Roman period it comprised the country between Mysia and Caria on the one side and Phrygia and the Aegean on the other.

Lydia proper was exceedingly fertile. The hill-sides were clothed with vine and fir, and the rich broad plain of Hermus produced large quantities of corn and saffron. The climate of the plain was soft but healthy, though the country was subject to frequent earthquakes. The Pactolus, which flowed from the fountain of Tarne in the Tmolus mountains, through the centre of Sardis, into the Hermus, was believed to be full of golden sand; and gold mines were worked in Tmolus itself, though by the time of Strabo the proceeds had become so small as hardly to pay for the expense of working them (Strabo xiii. 591). Maeonia on the east contained the curious barren plateau known to the Greeks as the Katakekaumene ("Burnt country"), once a centre of volcanic disturbance. The Gygaean lake (where remains of pile dwellings have been found) still abounds with carp.

Herodotus (i. 171) tells us that Lydus was a brother of Mysus and Car. The statement is on the whole borne out by the few Lydian, Mysian and Carian words that have been preserved, as well as by the general character of the civilization prevailing among the three nations. The race was probably a mixed one, consisting of aborigines and Aryan immigrants. It was characterized by industry and a commercial spirit, and, before the Persian conquest, by bravery. The religion of the Lydians resembled that of the other civilized nations of Asia Minor. It was a nature worship, which at times became wild and sensuous. By the side of the supreme god Medeus stood the sun-god Attis, as in Phrygia the chief object of the popular cult. He was at once the son and bridegroom of Cybele (q.v.) or Cybebe, the mother of the gods, whose image carved by Broteas, son of Tantalus, was adored on the cliffs of Sipylus (Paus. iii. 22). The cult may have been brought westward by the Hittites who have left memorials of themselves in the pseudo-Sesostris figures of Kara-bel (between Sardis and Ephesus) as well as in the figure of the Mother-goddess, the so-called Niobe. At Ephesus, where she was adored under the form of a meteoric stone, she was identified with the Greek Artemis (see also GREAT MOTHER OF THE GODS). Her mural crown is first seen in the Hittite sculptures of Boghaz Keui (see PTERIA and HITTITES) on the Halys. The priestesses by whom she was served are depicted in early art as armed with the double-headed axe, and the dances they performed in her honour with shield and bow gave rise to the myths which saw in them the Amazons, a nation of woman-warriors. The pre-Hellenic cities of the coast--Smyrna, Samorna (Ephesus), Myrina, Cyme, Priene and Pitane--were all of Amazonian origin, and the first three of them have the same name as the Amazon Myrina, whose tomb was pointed out in the Troad. The prostitution whereby the Lydian girls gained their dowries (Herod, i. 93) was a religious exercise, as among the Semites, which marked their devotion to the goddess Cybele. In the legend of Heracles, Omphale takes the place of Cybele, and was perhaps her Lydian title. Heracles is here the sun-god Attis in a new form; his Lydian name is unknown, since E. Meyer has shown (_Zeitschr. d. Morg. Gesell._ xxxi. 4) that Sandon belongs not to Lydia but to Cilicia. By the side of Attis stood Manes or Men, identified later with the Moon-god.

According to the native historian Xanthus (460 B.C.) three dynasties ruled in succession over Lydia. The first, that of the Attiads, is mythical. It was headed by a god, and included geographical personages like Lydus, Asies and Meies, or such heroes of folk-lore as Cambletes, who devoured his wife. To this mythical age belongs the colony which, according to Herodotus (i. 94), Tyrsenus, the son of Attis, led to Etruria. Xanthus, however, puts Torrhebus in the place of Tyrsenus, and makes him the eponym of a district in Lydia. It is doubtful whether Xanthus recognized the Greek legends which brought Pelops from Lydia, or rather Maeonia, and made him the son of Tantalus. The second dynasty was also of divine origin, but the names which head it prove its connexion with the distant East. Its founder, a descendant of Heracles and Omphale, was, Herodotus tells us (i. 7), a son of Ninus and grandson of Belus. The Assyrian inscriptions have shown that the Assyrians had never crossed the Halys, much less known the name of Lydia, before the age of Assur-bani-pal, and consequently the theory which brought the Heraclids from Nineveh must be given up. But the Hittites, another Oriental people, deeply imbued with the elements of Babylonian culture, had overrun Asia Minor and established themselves on the shores of the Aegean before the reign of the Egyptian king Rameses II.

The subject allies who then fight under their banners include the Masu or Mysians and the Dardani of the Troad, while the Hittites have left memorials in Lydia. G. Dennis discovered an inscription in Hittite hieroglyphics attached to the figure of "Niobe" on Sipylus, and a similar inscription accompanies the figure (in which Herodotus, ii. 106, wished to see Sesostris or Rameses II.) in the pass of Karabel. We learn from Eusebius that Sardis was first captured by the Cimmerii 1078 B.C.; and since it was four centuries later before the real Cimmerii (q.v.) appeared on the horizon of history, we may perhaps find in the statement a tradition of the Hittite conquest. As the authority of the Hittite satraps at Sardis began to decay the Heraclid dynasty arose. According to Xanthus, Sadyattes and Lixus were the successors of Tylon the son of Omphale. After lasting five hundred and five years, the dynasty came to an end in the person of Sadyattes, as he is called by Nicolas of Damascus, whose account is doubtless derived from Xanthus. The name Candaules, given him by Herodotus, meant "dog strangler" and was a title of the Lydian Hermes. Gyges (q.v.) put him to death and established the dynasty of the Mermnads, 687 B.C. Gyges initiated a new policy, that of making Lydia a maritime power; but towards the middle of his reign the kingdom was overrun by the Cimmerii. The lower town of Sardis was taken, and Gyges sent tribute to Assur-bani-pal, as well as two Cimmerian chieftains he had himself captured in battle. A few years later Gyges joined in the revolt against Assyria, and the Ionic and Carian mercenaries he despatched to Egypt enabled Psammetichus to make himself independent. Assyria, however, was soon avenged. The Cimmerian hordes returned, Gyges was slain in battle (652 B.C.), and Ardys his son and successor returned to his allegiance to Nineveh. The second capture of Sardis on this occasion was alluded to by Callisthenes (Strabo xiii. 627). Alyattes, the grandson of Ardys, finally succeeded in extirpating the Cimmerii, as well as in taking Smyrna, and thus providing his kingdom with a port. The trade and wealth of Lydia rapidly increased, and the Greek towns fell one after the other before the attacks of the Lydian kings. Alyattes's long reign of fifty-seven years saw the foundation of the Lydian empire. All Asia Minor west of the Halys acknowledged his sway, and the six years' contest he carried on with the Medes was closed by the marriage of his daughter Aryenis to Astyages. The Greek cities were allowed to retain their own institutions and government on condition of paying taxes and dues to the Lydian monarch, and the proceeds of their commerce thus flowed into the imperial exchequer. The result was that the king of Lydia became the richest prince of his age. Alyattes was succeeded by Croesus (q.v.), who had probably already for some years shared the royal power with his father, or perhaps grandfather, as V. Floigl thinks (_Geschichte des semitischen Alterthums_, p. 20). He reigned alone only fifteen years, Cyrus the Persian, after an indecisive battle on the Halys, marching upon Sardis, and capturing both acropolis and monarch (546 B.C.). The place where the acropolis was entered was believed to have been overlooked by the mythical Meles when he carried the lion round his fortress to make it invulnerable; it was really a path opened by one of the landslips, which have reduced the sandstone cliff of the acropolis to a mere shell, and threaten to carry it altogether into the plain below. The revolt of the Lydians under Pactyas, whom Cyrus had appointed to collect the taxes, caused the Persian king to disarm them, though we can hardly credit the statement that by this measure their warlike spirit was crushed. Sardis now became the western capital of the Persian empire, and its burning by the Athenians was the indirect cause of the Persian War. After Alexander the Great's death, Lydia passed to Antigonus; then Achaeus made himself king at Sardis, but was defeated and put to death by Antiochus. The country was presented by the Romans to Eumenes, and subsequently formed part of the proconsular province of Asia. By the time of Strabo (xiii. 631) its old language was entirely supplanted by Greek.