Mysians

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The Mysians (Latin: Mysi) were the inhabitants of Mysia, a region in northwestern Asia Minor. Herodotus wrote that they were brethren of the Carians and Lydians and that the Mysians were "Lydian colonists". This identification may be supported by the fact that only Mysians, Carians, and Lydians were allowed to worship at the temple of Carian Zeus in the country of the Mylasians, based on the tradition that the eponymous figures Car (Carians), Lydus (Lydians), and Mysus (Mysians) were brothers. Little is known about the Mysian language. A short inscription which may be in Mysian and which dates from between the 5th and 3rd centuries BC was found in Uyuçik, near Kütahya, and seems to include Indo-European words, but it has not been deciphered. If Herodotus was right, the Mysian language would be a language of the Anatolian group, akin to Carian and Lydian. However, a passage in Athenaeus suggests that Mysian was akin to the barely attested Paionian language of Paionia, north of Macedon. According to Homer, the Mysians fought in the Trojan War on the side of Troy. Herodotus recorded the tradition that Mysians (along with the Teucrians) invaded Europe, conquering "all of Thrace" and invading Greece as far as Elis in early times.

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