PART
4 – Ch.XXIV.3
Prehistoric
monuments of metallurgic art in
(Stele Chryse Megale – The great gold column)
XXIV.
3. The island called Panchea (Peuce) in Evhemerus’ sacred history.
Near the region,
called by Evhemerus “Arabia felix”,
he also mentions a territory with important cities, with mountains and
expansive plains, called Panchea (Pagchaia),
which was on the eastern part of the
water Oceanos.
The text of
Evhemerus regarding this part of blessed Arabia is not clear enough.
Panchea figures
either as a continental region (chora), or as an island (nasos).
This is evidence that his Panchea formed in fact only a geographical continuity
of blessed Arabia, and was not situated in the open waters of the big sea.
The ancients,
although in possession at that time of the whole text of this
historian-philosopher, were themselves not entirely oriented regarding the
geographic character of this region.
With Polybius, Evhemerus’ Panchea is called region (Hist. lib. XXXIV. 5. 9), with Strabo (Geogr. lib. II. c. 4. 2; Ibid.
lib. VII. 3. 6), it is called tera
(TN – country), and with Diodorus
Siculus it appears as region and island (chora and nasos).
Evhemerus’ Panchea was definitely an island, but not a sea island.
The Danube Delta appears in Greek geographical
literature, even beginning with the 3rd century b.c., under the name
of Peuce (Peuche), a name which Eratosthenes derives from the species
of trees peuche (fir tree),
which grew in this island (Stephanus,
Thesaurus gr. L. v. Peuche).
But in reality Peuche
was only the Greek form of an indigenous name.
In the epic poem
about the Argonauts attributed to Orpheus,
are mentioned near the mouths of the river Oceanos or Istru, the inhabitants
called Pacti (v. 1070-1073), who
were no other than Evhemerus’ Panchei.
Various similar
topographical names exist to these days in the lower parts of the Danube.
We mention here the
following: Pangalia, one of the most important cities of
Dobrogea in the Middle Ages, situated south of Constanta, on the ruins of
ancient Calatis (Jirecek, Gesch. D.
Bulg. 1876, p. 400); Panga, a valley
to the north of Daieni village; Pancesci,
town in Roman district; three villages called Pancesci in the districts of Putna, Bacau, Roman; Panciu, a city in Roman district; Pancea, a hill in Prahova district.
We can therefore
establish with total historical conviction, that the name Peuce, which the
Greek geographers from later times of antiquity had attributed to the island
formed by the arms of the Danube, is the same geographical name of Evhemerus’
Panchea. But the Cyrenaic philosopher extends this name also to a significant
part of little Scythia, or Dobrogea [1].
[1. In a very remote antiquity, the principal mouth of the Danube was
located a lot more towards south. So, Herodotus
(II. 34), who apparently had before him some much older geographical sources,
tells us that the Istru flowed into
the sea in front of the city Sinope
of Asia Minor – Cf. Aristotle,
Meteor. D. I. 13 and De generat. Anim. VIII. 28)]
We have also
another geographical circumstance which we can not ignore.
According to
Evhemerus, the region, or the island, called Panchea, was situated close to
another smaller island, but considered sacred,
which can not be other than Leuce
island, which had the epithets sacred,
divine and bright (Scylax,
Periplus, c. 68; see Ch.V.6) attributed to it until late antiquity.
The region, or
island, Panchea, situated close to the sea, between the Scythians and the
Getes, appears to have been even in Evhemerus’ times a blessed corner of the
earth, where the economic and commercial interests compelled different groups
of inhabitants of the neighboring lands, and of the islands of the Aegean Sea,
to meet and settle there.
Panchea’s
population, Evhemerus tells us, apart from the native inhabitants, who called
themselves Panchei, was composed
from the following tribes, which had migrated there in later times, namely Scythians, Oceanites (or inhabitants from the upper parts of the Ocean, the
Istru), Cretans, Indians and finally
Doi.
These Doi, about whom Evhemerus tells us that
had once dwelt in Panchea in considerable numbers, but had been later expelled,
are Strabo’s Daii (lib. VII. 3. 12), a name under which the ancients understood
the Daci(ans), or the pastoral tribes
from the Carpathians. Theirs were the cities Doia and Dalis, of which
the first appears to be identical with Ptolemy’s
Dausdava, situated between the arms of the Danube (Geogr. III. 10. 6),
while the second was probably the important shepherd village from Dobrogea,
today called Daieni.
As regards the
immigrant Cretans of Panchea, they were only the pre-historical avant-garde of
the Milesian commercial colonies from the Lower Danube. Miletus itself, this
flowering and powerful city from the shores of Asia Minor, had been in the
beginning only a Cretan colony. Finally, Evhemerus, in describing Panchea,
mentions also a group of immigrants, whom he calls Indi. According to Apollonius
Rhodius, on the vast and deserted plain which stretched from the mouths of
the Istru upwards, dwelt in older times the so-called Sindi (lib. IV. v. 322) [2].
[2. According to the historian Timonax, the plain of the Sindi stretched as far as the point where the Istru
separated in two beds, or to the cataracts, as we shall see later (Fragm. Hist.
graec. IV. 522. 1). Another group of Sindi
dwelt according to Scylax (72) near
the Meotic lake.
To these refers Evhemerus when
writing that, as it was said, from Panchea could be seen Indica shrouded in fog].
The Indi of
Evhemerus, immigrated in the island of Panchea, and the Sindi of Apollonius
Rhodius, from upwards of the mouths of the Danube, appear the same people of
Pelasgian race.
As Pliny tells us (lib. VI. 23. 1), the
big river of Asia, Indus, was called
by the indigenous inhabitants Sindus.
This explains why the old geographers identified the name Sindi with Indi. About
the inhabitants called Indi from the
Istru we also have a geographical tradition. In an old Serbian ballad, the
actual territory of the Romanian country is called India (Hasdeu,
Etymologicum mgnum Romaniae. Tom. IV. p. CXXXV).
Evhemerus mentions
also the cities Hyracia, Oceanis and Panara among the more important centers of
the population of Panchea, apart from Doia
and Dalis.
Hyracia seems to be the old city encircled by
walls Heraclea, which had once
existed close to the mouths of the Istru, but had disappeared in the times of Pliny (lib. IV. 18. 5) [3].
[3. This Heraclea seems to have been situated near the southern arm of the
Istru, today called of St. George,
and by Ptolemy (III. 10. 2)
Inariacion stoma, where king Filip II of Macedonia had wanted to erect o statue
of Hercules (Justinis lib. IX. 2).
Connect also the note of Arrianis
about the sacrifice made by Alexander the Great near the Danube Delta to Jove
Soteros, to Hercules and to the
Istru (De exp. Alex. I. 4. 5). We also must note here that one of the mouths of
the Nile was also consecrated to Hercules and had the name of stoma Heracleoticon (Tacit, Ann. II. 60; Strabo,
II. 1. 35; Diodorus, I. 3. 37)].
And Oceanis is probably ancient Axium or Axiopolis from the right bank of the Danube, near Rasova of today.
In essence Oceanis and Axium was one and the same name.
In regard to the
political and social organization of the inhabitants of Panchea, it presents
all the characteristics of the traditional institutions of the Hyperboreans and
of the Dacians.
In all the cities
of Panchea, according to Evhemerus, the priests were the dominant class. They
were not only the ministers of the altars, but the rulers of the people at the
same time. Apart from their sacerdotal functions the priests of Panchea had
concentrated in their hands all the political and juridical powers.
We find the same
form of government with the Hyperboreans.
As Hecateus tells us, the
descendants of king Boreas had not only the political reign over the sacred
island of the Hyperboreans, but were at the same time the administrators of
Apollo’s great temple (Diodorus Siculus,
lib. II. 47). The Dacians too had
the same theocratic national institutions (Strabo,
lib. VII. 3. 11; Ibid, XvI. 2. 39; Jornandis,
De Get. Orig. c. 5. We find a similar constitution with the Pelasgian tribes of
Cappadocia – Strabo, lib. XII. 2. 3).
Finally, the sharing of possessions, which we
find with the agricultural and pastoral tribes of Panchea, has in everything
the character of the ancient Pelasgo-Getic institutions.
We know the
following verses of Horatius (Od.
Lib. III. 24): Much better live the rigid people of the Getae, whose fields without boundaries give crops for all. Here
nobody cultivates the land more than one year; and after one has finished his
work, another comes while he is resting, and takes his place doing the same
work. And Criton, who had lived in
the time of Trajan and had written a history of the Getae, tells us in a
fragment which had been preserved by Suidas,
that part of the Getae had to work in agriculture, while the military, who
followed the king in wars, looked after the castles.
The origin of
having all the goods in common, which was characteristic to the Pelasgian
people, went back to the blessed times of Saturn. Trog Pompeius writes about this: that Saturn had been a king with
such high standards of justice, that during the time when he reigned, nobody
served another and nobody had private wealth, but everything was kept in common
and not distributed, as a unique patrimony of everybody (Justinis, Hist. ex Trogo Pompeio, lib. XLIII. 1).