Page:EB1911 - Volume 25.djvu/297

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SMYBERT —SMYRNA
281

vendor may recover the price of goods, even though he knew the buyer intended them to he smuggled, unless he actually aids in the smuggling so as to become particeps criminis. Contracts to defraud the revenue of a foreign state are, according to English decisions, not illegal. There is a German decision, more consonant with international morality ; to the opposite effect.

The penalties for smuggling in the United States will be found mainly in tit. xxxiv. ch. 10 of the Revised Statutes. The seaman guilty' of smuggling is liable to the same penalty as in England, and in addition to imprisonment for twelve months, s. 4596.

See Stephen Dowell's History of Taxation (2nd ed., 1888), and Luke Owen Pike's History of Crime in England (1873–1876) ; and for general accounts of smuggling see W. D. Chester, Chronicles of the Customs Department (1885) ; H. N. Shore, Smuggling Days and Smuggling Ways (1892); Alton and Holland, The King's Customs (1908) ; C. G. Harper, The Smugglers: Picturesque Chapters in the Story of an Ancient Craft (1909).


SMYBERT (or Smibert), JOHN (1684–1751); Scottish American artist, was born at Edinburgh in 1684, and died in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1751. He studied under Sir James Thornhill, and in 1728 accompanied Bishop Berkeley to America, with the intention of becoming professor of fine arts in the college which Berkeley was planning to found in Bermuda. The college, however, was never established, and Smybert settled in Boston, where he married in 1730. In 1731 he painted " Bishop Berkeley and His Family," now in the dining-hall, Yale University, a group of eight figures. He painted portraits of Jonathan Edwards and Judge Edmund Quincy (in the Boston Art Museum) , Mrs Smybert, Peter Faneuil and Governor John Endecott (in the Massachusetts Historical Society), John Lovell (Memorial Hall, Harvard University), and probably one of Sir William Pepperrell; and examples of his works are owned by Harvard and Yale Universities, by Bowdoin College, by the Massachusetts Historical Society, and by the New England Historical and Genealogical Society. A son, Nathaniel Smybert (1734–1756), was born in Boston on the 20th of January 1734, and died there on the 8th of November 1756. He was a pupil of his father, and dying at the age of twenty-two, left several important canvases, notably a portrait of Dorothy Wendell (in the Collection of Dr John L. Hale, Boston).


SMYRNA (Ismir), in ancient times one of the most important and now by far the greatest of the cities of Asia Minor, has preserved an unbroken continuity of record and identity of name from the first dawn of history to the present time.

1. The Ancient City.—It is said to have been a Lelegian city before the Greek colonists settled in Asia Minor. The name, which is said to be derived from an Amazon called Smyrna, is indubitably Anatolian, having been applied also to a quarter of Ephesus, and (under the cognate form Myrina) to a city of Aeolis, and to a tumulus in the Troad. The Aeolic settlers of Lesbos and Cyme, pushing eastwards by Larissa and Neonteichus and over the Hermus, seized the valley of Smyrna. It was the frontier city between Aeolis on the N. and Ionia on the S., and was more accessible on the S. and E. than on the N. and W. By virtue of its situation it was necessarily a commercial city, like the Ionian colonies. It is therefore not surprising that the Aeolic element grew weaker; strangers or refugees from the Ionian Colophon settled in the city, and finally Smyrna passed into the hands of the Colophonians and became the thirteenth of the Ionian states. The change had taken place before 688, when the Ionian Onomastus of Smyrna won the boxing prize at Olympia, but it was probably then a recent event. The Colophonian conquest is mentioned by Mimnermus (before 600 B.C.), who counts himself equally a Colophonian and a Smyrnaean. The Aeolic form of the name, Σμύρνα, was retained even in the Attic dialect, and the-epithet " Aeolian Smyrna " remained long after the conquest. The situation of Smyrna on the path of commerce between Lydia and the west raised it during the 7th century to the height of power and splendour. It lay at the head of an arm of the sea, which reached far inland and admitted the Greek trading ships into the heart of Lydia. One of the great trade routes which cross Anatolia descends the Hermus valley past Sardis, and then diverging from the valley passes S. of Mt Sipylus and crosses a low pass into the little valley, about 7 m. long and 2 broad, where Smyrna lies between the mountains and the sea. Miletus, and later Ephesus, situated at the sea end of the other great trade route across Anatolia, competed for a time successfully with Smyrna, but both cities long ago lost their harbours and Smyrna remains without a rival.

When the Mermnad kings raised the Lydian power and aggressiveness Smyrna was one of the first points of attack. Gyres (c. 687–652) was, however, defeated on the banks of the Hermus; the situation of the battlefield shows that the power of Smyrna extended far to the E., and probably included the valley of Nymphi (Nif). A strong fortress, the ruins of whose ancient and massive walls are still imposing, on a hill in the pass between Smyrna arid Nymphi, was probably built by the Smyrnaean Ionians to command the valley of Nymphi. According to Theognis (about 500 B.C.), " pride destroyed Smyrna." Mimnermus laments the degeneracy of the citizens of his day, who could no longer stem the Lydian advance. Finally, Alyattes III. (609–560) conquered the city, and Smyrna for 300 years lost its place in the list of Greek cities. It did not cease to exist, but the Greek life and political unity were destroyed, and the Smyrnaean state was organized on the village system (ᾠκεῖτο κωμηδόν). It is mentioned in a fragment of Pindar, about 500 B.C., and in an inscription of 388 B.C. A small fortification of early style, rudely but massively built, on the lowest slope of a hill N. of Burnabat, is perhaps a fortified village of this period. Alexander the Great conceived the idea of restoring the Greek city; the two Nemeses who were worshipped at Smyrna are said to have suggested the idea to him in a dream. The scheme was, according to Strabo, carried out by Antigonus (316–301), and Lysimachus enlarged and fortified the city (301–281). The acropolis of the ancient city had been on a steep peak about 1250 ft. high, which overhangs the N.E. extremity of the gulf; its ruins still exist, probably in much the same condition as they were left by Alyattes. The later city was founded on the modern site partly on the slopes of a rounded hill called Pagus near the S.E. end of the gulf, partly on the low ground between the hill and the sea. The beauty of the city, clustering on the low ground and rising tier over tier on the hillside, is frequently praised by the ancients and is celebrated on its coins.

The " crown of Smyrna " seems to have been an epithet applied to the acropolis with its circle of buildings. Smyrna is shut in on the W. by a hill now called Deirmen Tepe, with the ruins of a temple on the summit. The walls of Lysimachus crossed the summit of this hill, and the acropolis occupied the top of Pagus. Between the two the road from Ephesus entered the city by the " Ephesian gate," near which was a gymnasium. Closer to the acropolis the outline of the stadium is still visible, and the theatre was situated on the N. slopes of Pagus. The line of the walls on the E. side is unknown; but they certainly embraced a greater area than is included by the Byzantine wall, which ascends the castle hill (Pagus) from the Basmakhane railway station. Smyrna possessed two harbors—the outer, which was simply the open roadstead of the gulf, and the inner, which was a small basin, with a narrow entrance closed by a rope in case of need, about the place now occupied by bazaars. The inner harbour was partially filled up by Timur in 1402, but it had not entirely disappeared till the beginning of the 19th century. The modern quay has encroached considerably on the sea, and the coast-line of the Greek time was about 90 yds. farther S. The streets were broad, well paved and laid out at right angles; many were named after temples: the main street, called the Golden, ran across the city from W. to E., beginning probably from the temple of Zeus Akraios on the W. side of Pagus, and running round the lower slopes of Pagus (like a necklace on the statue, to use the favourite terms of Aristides the orator) towards Tepejik outside the city on the E., where probably the temple of Cybele, the Metroon; stood. Cybele, worshipped under the name of Meter Sipylene, from Mt Sipylus, which bounds the Smyrna valley on the N., was the tutelar goddess of the city. The plain towards the sea was too low to be properly drained and hence in rainy weather the streets were deep with mud and water.

The river Meles, which flowed by Smyrna, is famous in literature