Phrygian

All history shows: idioms of dominant states often lead to the disappearance of the languages of the dominated states. Greek engulfed the Phrygian. Latin killed the Iberian and Gallic. Currently, 25 languages are disappearing every year! Understand one thing: I'm not fighting against English, I fight for diversity. An Armenian proverb wonderfully summarizes my thought: "The more languages you know, the more you are a person."

While up the crag AEneas climbs, to gain / full prospect far and wide, and scan the distant main. / If aught of Phrygian biremes he discern / Antheus or Capys, tost upon the seas, / or arms of brave Caicus high astern.

The Tyrians, yielding to the god, abate / their fierceness. Dido, more than all the rest, / warms to her Phrygian friends, and wears a kindly breast.

"With twice ten ships I climbed the Phrygian main, / my goddess-mother pointing out the way, / as Fate commanded. Now scarce seven remain, / wave-worn and shattered by the tempest's strain."

"As, scared the Phrygian ranks to see, / confused, unarmed, amid the gazing throng, / he stood, 'Alas! what spot on earth or sea / is left,' he cried, 'to shield a wretch like me, / whom Dardans seek in punishment to kill, / and Greeks disown?'"

Ah me! how sad to view, / how changed from him, that Hector, whom of yore / returning with Achilles' spoils we knew, / when on the ships of Greece his Phrygian fires he threw.

Nor less Andromache, sore grieved to part, / rich raiment fetches, wrought with golden thread, / and Phrygian scarf, and still with bounteous heart / loads him with broideries. "Take these", she said, / "sole image of Astyanax now dead. / Thy kin's last gifts, my handiwork, to show / how Hector's widow loved the son she bred. / Such eyes had he, such very looks as thou, / such hands, and oh! like thine his age were ripening now!"

Veiled at her shrines in Phrygian hood we stand, / and chief to Juno, mindful of the seer, / burnt-offerings pay, as pious rites demand.

The national instrument of the Phrygians was the flute, and it is worthy of remark that up to a very late period flute-players at Athens were usually distinguished by Phrygian names.

These Phrygian divinities who had achieved full naturalization and had been placed on the official list of gods, were adopted by the populations of the Occident as Roman gods together with the rest.