Opening
A GENERAL HISTORY FOR COLLEGES AND HIGH SCHOOLS.
BY P. V. N. MYERS, A.M.
Preface
This volume is based upon my Ancient History and Mediæval and Modern History. In some instances I have changed the perspective and the proportions of the narrative; but in the main, the book is constructed upon the same lines as those drawn for the earlier works. In dealing with so wide a range of facts, and tracing so many historic movements, I cannot hope that I have always avoided falling into error. I have, however, taken the greatest care to verify statements of fact, and to give the latest results of discovery and criticism.
Considering the very general character of the present work, an enumeration of the books that have contributed facts to my narration, or have helped to mould my views on this or that subject, would hardly be looked for; yet I wish here to acknowledge my special indebtedness, in the earlier parts of the history, to the works of George Rawlinson, Sayce, Wilkinson, Brugsch, Grote, Curtius, Mommsen, Merivale, and Leighton; and in the later parts, and on special periods, to the writings of Hodgkin, Emerton, Ranke, Freeman, Michaud, Bryce, Symonds, Green (J. R.), Motley, Hallam, Thiers, Lecky, Baird, and Müller.
Several of the colored maps, with which the book will be found liberally provided, were engraved especially for my Ancient History; but the larger number are authorized reproductions of charts accompanying Professor Freeman's Historical Geography of Europe. The Roman maps were prepared for Professor William F. Allen's History of Rome, which is to be issued soon, and it is to his courtesy that I am indebted for their use.
The illustrations have been carefully selected with reference to their authenticity and historical truthfulness. Many of those in the Oriental and Greek part of the work are taken from Oscar Jäger's Weltgeschichte; while most of those in the Roman portion are from Professor Allen's forthcoming work on Rome, to which I have just referred, the author having most generously granted me the privilege of using them in my work, notwithstanding it is to appear in advance of his.
Further acknowledgments of indebtedness are also due from me to many friends who have aided me with their scholarly suggestions and criticism. My warmest thanks are particularly due to Professor W.F. Allen, of the University of Wisconsin; to Dr. E.W. Coy, Principal of Hughes High School, Cincinnati; to Professor William A. Merrill, of Miami University; and to Mr. D. H. Montgomery, author of The Leading Facts of History series.
P. V. N. M. COLLEGE HILL, OHIO, July, 1889.
PREFACE LIST OF MAPS GENERAL INTRODUCTION: THE RACES AND THEIR EARLY MIGRATIONS
I. ANCIENT HISTORY
SECTION I.--THE EASTERN NATIONS.
CHAPTER I. India and China. 1. India. 2. China. II. Egypt. 1. Political History. 2. Religion, Arts, and General Culture. III. Chaldæa. 1. Political History. 2. Arts and General Culture. IV. Assyria. 1. Political History. 2. Religion, Arts, and General Culture. V. Babylonia. VI. The Hebrews. VII. The Phoenicians. VIII. The Persian Empire. 1. Political History. 2. Government, Religion, and Arts.
SECTION II.--GRECIAN HISTORY.
IX. The Land and the People. X. The Legendary or Heroic Age. XI. Religion of the Greeks. XII. Age of the Tyrants and of Colonization: the Early Growth of Sparta and of Athens. 1. Age of the Tyrants and of Colonization. 2. The Growth of Sparta. 3. The Growth of Athens. XIII. The Græco-Persian Wars. XIV. Period of Athenian Supremacy. XV. The Peloponnesian War: the Spartan and the Theban Supremacy. 1. The Peloponnesian War. 2. The Spartan and the Theban Supremacy. XVI. Period of Macedonian Supremacy: Empire of Alexander. XVII. States formed from the Empire of Alexander. XVIII. Greek Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting. 1. Architecture. 2. Sculpture and Painting. XIX. Greek Literature. 1. Epic and Lyric Poetry. 2. The Drama and Dramatists. 3. History and Historians. 4. Oratory. XX. Greek Philosophy and Science. XXI. Social Life of the Greeks.
SECTION III.--ROMAN HISTORY.
XXII. The Roman Kingdom. XXIII. The Early Roman Republic: Conquest of Italy. XXIV. The First Punic War. XXV. The Second Punic War. XXVI. The Third Punic War. XXVII. The Last Century of the Roman Republic. XXVIII. The Last Century of the Roman Republic (concluded). XXIX. The Roman Empire (from 31 B.C. to A.D. 180). XXX. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the West (A.D. 180-476). XXXI. Roman Civilization. 1. Architecture. 2. Literature, Philosophy, and Law. 3. Social Life.
Introduction
SECTION I.--MEDIÆVAL HISTORY.
FIRST PERIOD.--THE DARK AGES. (From the Fall of Rome, A.D. 476, to the Eleventh Century.)
XXXII. Migrations and Settlements of the Teutonic Tribes. XXXIII. The Conversion of the Barbarians. XXXIV. Fusion of the Latin and Teutonic Peoples. XXXV. The Roman Empire in the East. XXXVI. Mohammed and the Saracens. XXXVII. Charlemagne and the Restoration of the Empire in the West. XXXVIII. The Northmen. XXXIX. Rise of the Papal Power.
SECOND PERIOD.--THE AGE OF REVIVAL. (From the opening of the Eleventh Century to the Discovery of America by Columbus, in 1492.)
XL. Feudalism and Chivalry. 1. Feudalism. 2. Chivalry. XLI. The Norman Conquest of England. XLII. The Crusades. 1. Introductory: Causes of the Crusades. 2. The First Crusade. 3. The Second Crusade. 4. The Third Crusade. 5. The Fourth Crusade. 6. Close of the Crusades: Their Results. XLIII. Supremacy of the Papacy: Decline of its Temporal Power. XLIV. Conquests of the Turanian Tribes. XLV. Growth of the Towns: The Italian City-Republics. XLVI. The Revival of Learning. XLVII. Growth of the Nations: Formation of National Governments and Literatures. 1. England. 2. France. 3. Spain. 4. Germany. 5. Russia. 6. Italy. 7. The Northern Countries.
SECTION II. MODERN HISTORY.
Introduction
THIRD PERIOD.--THE ERA OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION. (From the Discovery of America to the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648.)
XLVIII. The Beginnings of the Reformation under Luther. XLIX. The Ascendency of Spain. 1. Reign of the Emperor Charles V. 2. Spain under Philip II. L. The Tudors and the English Reformation. 1. Introductory. 2. The Reign of Henry VII. 3. England severed from the Papacy by Henry VIII. 4. Changes in the Creed and Ritual under Edward VI. 5. Reaction under Mary. 6. Final Establishment of Protestantism under Elizabeth. LI. The Revolt of the Netherlands: Rise of the Dutch Republic. LII. The Huguenot Wars in France. LIII. The Thirty Years' War.
FOURTH PERIOD.--THE ERA OF THE POLITICAL REVOLUTION. (From the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648, to the present time.)
LIV. The Ascendency of France under the Absolute Government of Louis XIV. LV. England under the Stuarts: The English Revolution. 1. The First Two Stuarts. 2. The Commonwealth. 3. The Restored Stuarts. 4. The Orange-Stuarts. 5. England under the Earlier Hanoverians. LVI. The Rise of Russia: Peter the Great. LVII. The Rise of Prussia: Frederick the Great. LVIII. The French Revolution. 1. Causes of the Revolution: The States-General of 1789. 2. The National, or Constituent Assembly. 3. The Legislative Assembly. 4. The National Convention. 5. The Directory. LIX. The Consulate and the First Empire: France since the Second Restoration. 1. The Consulate and the Empire. 2. France since the Second Restoration. LX. Russia since the Congress of Vienna. LXI. German Freedom and Unity. LXII. Liberation and Unification of Italy. LXIII. England since the Congress of Vienna. 1. Progress towards Democracy. 2. Expansion of the Principle of Religious Equality. 3. Growth of the British Empire in the East.
CONCLUSION: THE NEW AGE. INDEX, PRONOUNCING VOCABULARY, AND GLOSSARY
LIST OF COLORED MAPS.
1. Ancient Egypt 2. The Tigris and the Euphrates 3. Lydia, Media, and Babylonia, c. B.C. 550 4. Greece and the Greek Colonies 5. Greece in the 5th Century B.C. 6. Dominions and Dependencies of Alexander, c. B.C. 323 7. Kingdoms of the Successors of Alexander, c. B.C. 300 8. Italy before the Growth of the Roman Power 9. Mediterranean Lands at the Beginning of Second Punic War 10. Roman Dominions at the End of the Mithridatic War, B.C. 64 11. The Roman Empire under Trajan, A.D. 117 12. Roman Empire divided into Prefectures 13. Europe in the Reign of Theodoric, c. A.D. 500 14. Europe in the Time of Charles the Great, 814 15. The Western Empire as divided at Verdun, 843 16. Spanish Kingdoms, 1360 17. Central Europe, 1360 18. The Spanish Kingdoms and their European Dependencies under Charles V 19. Europe in the 16th and 17th Centuries 20. The Baltic Lands, c. 1701 21. Central Europe, 1801 22. Sketch Map of Europe showing Principal Battles of Napoleon [Footnote: For the use of this map I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. D. H. Montgomery, author of "Leading Facts of French History."] 23. Central Europe, 1810 24. Central Europe, 1815 25. South-Eastern Europe according to the Treaty of Berlin, 1878 26. Europe in 1880
GENERAL HISTORY.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION: THE RACES AND THEIR EARLY MIGRATIONS
DIVISIONS OF HISTORY.--History is usually divided into three periods,-- Ancient, Mediæval, and Modern. Ancient History begins with the earliest nations of which we can gain any certain knowledge, and extends to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, A.D. 476. Mediæval History embraces the period, about one thousand years in length, lying between the fall of Rome and the discovery of the New World by Columbus, A.D. 1492. Modern History commences with the close of the mediæval period and extends to the present time. [Footnote: It is thought preferable by some scholars to let the beginning of the great Teutonic migration (A.D. 375) mark the end of the period of ancient history. Some also prefer to date the beginning of the modern period from the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, A.D. 1453; while still others speak of it in a general way as commencing about the close of the 15th century, at which time there were many inventions and discoveries and a great stir in the intellectual world.]
ANTIQUITY OF MAN.--We do not know when man first came into possession of the earth. We only know that, in ages vastly remote, when both the climate and the outline of Europe were very different from what they are at present, man lived on that continent with animals now extinct; and that as early as 4000 or 3000 B.C.,--when the curtain first rises on the stage of history,--in some favored regions, as in the Valley of the Nile, there were nations and civilizations already venerable with age, and possessing languages, arts, and institutions that bear evidence of slow growth through very long periods of time before written history begins. [Footnote: The investigation and study of this vast background of human life is left to such sciences as Ethnology, Comparative Philology, and Prehistoric Archeology.]
THE RACES OF MANKIND.--Distinctions in form, color, and physiognomy divide the human species into three chief types, or races, known as the Black (Ethiopian, or Negro), the Yellow (Turanian, or Mongolian), and the White (Caucasian). But we must not suppose each of these three types to be sharply marked off from the others; they shade into one another by insensible gradations.
There has been no perceptible change in the great types during historic times. The paintings upon the oldest Egyptian monuments show us that at the dawn of history, about five or six thousand years ago, the principal races were as distinctly marked as now, each bearing its racial badge of color and physiognomy. As early as the times of Jeremiah, the permanency of physical characteristics had passed into the proverb, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin?"
Of all the races, the White, or Caucasian, exhibits by far the most perfect type, physically, intellectually, and morally.
THE BLACK RACE.--Africa is the home of the peoples of the Black Race, but we find them on all the other continents, whither they have been carried as slaves by the stronger races; for since time immemorial they have been "hewers of wood and drawers of water" for their more favored brethren.
THE YELLOW, OR TURANIAN RACE.--The term Turanian is very loosely applied by the historian to many and widely separated families and peoples. In its broadest application it is made to include the Chinese and other more or less closely allied peoples of Eastern Asia; the Ottoman Turks, the Hungarians, the Finns, the Lapps, and the Basques, in Europe; and (by some) the Esquimaux and American Indians.
The peoples of this race were, it seems, the first inhabitants of Europe and of the New World; but in these quarters, they have, in the main, either been exterminated or absorbed by later comers of the White Race. In Europe, however, two small areas of this primitive population escaped the common fate--the Basques, sheltered among the Pyrenees, and the Finns and Lapps, in the far north; [Footnote: The Hungarians and Turks are Turanian peoples that have thrust themselves into Europe during historic times] while in the New World, the Esquimaux and the Indians still represent the race that once held undisputed possession of the land.
The polished stone implements found in the caves and river-gravels of Western Europe, the shell-mounds, or kitchen-middens, upon the shores of the Baltic, the Swiss lake habitations, and the barrows, or grave-mounds, found in all parts of Europe, are supposed to be relics of a prehistoric Turanian people.
Although some of the Turanian peoples, as for instance the Chinese, have made considerable advance in civilization, still as a rule the peoples of this race have made but little progress in the arts or in general culture. Even their languages have remained undeveloped. These seem immature, or stunted in their growth. They have no declensions or conjugations, like those of the languages of the Caucasian peoples.
THE WHITE RACE AND ITS THREE FAMILIES.--The White Race embraces the historic nations. This type divides into three families,--the Hamitic, the Semitic, and the Aryan, or Indo-European (formerly called the Japhetic).
The ancient Egyptians were the chief people of the Hamitic branch. In the gray dawn of history we discover them already settled in the Valley of the Nile, and there erecting great monuments so faultless in construction as to render it certain that those who planned them had had a very long previous training in the art of building.
The Semitic family includes among its chief peoples the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians, the Hebrews, the Phoenicians, and the Arabians. We are not certain what region was the original abode of this family. We only know that by the dawn of history its various clans and tribes, whencesoever they may have come, had distributed themselves over the greater part of Southwestern Asia.
It is interesting to note that the three great historic religions of the world,--the Hebrew, the Christian, and the Mohammedan,--the three religions that alone (if we except that of Zoroaster) teach a belief in one God, arose among peoples belonging to the Semitic family.
The Aryan, or Indo-European, though probably the youngest, is the most widely scattered family of the White Race. It includes among its members the ancient Hindus, Medes, and Persians, the classic Greeks and Romans, and the modern descendants of all these nations; also almost all the peoples of Europe, and their colonists that have peopled the New World, and taken possession of other parts of the earth.
MIGRATIONS OF THE ARYANS.--The original seat of the Aryan peoples was, it is conjectured [Footnote: Some scholars seek the primitive home in Europe], somewhere in Asia. At a period that cannot be placed later than 3000 B.C., the Aryan household began to break up and scatter, and the different clans to set out in search of new dwelling-places. Some tribes of the family spread themselves over the table-lands of Iran and the plains of India, and became the progenitors of the Medes, the Persians, and the Hindus. Other clans entering Europe probably by the way of the Hellespont, pushed themselves into the peninsulas of Greece and Italy, and founded the Greek and Italian states. Still other tribes seem to have poured in successive waves into Central Europe. The vanguard of these peoples are known as the Celts. After them came the Teutonic tribes, who crowded the former out on the westernmost edge of Europe--into Gaul and Spain, and out upon the British Isles. These hard-pressed Celts are represented to-day by the Welsh, the Irish, and the Highland Scots. Behind the Teutonic peoples were the Slavonic folk, who pushed the former hard against the Celts, and, when they could urge them no farther to the west, finally settled down and became the ancestors of the Russians and other kindred nations.
Although these migratory movements of the various clans and tribes of this wonderful Aryan family began in the early morning of history, some five thousand or more years ago, still we must not think of them as something past and unrelated to the present. These movements, begun in those remote times, are still going on. The overflow of the population of Europe into the different regions of the New World, is simply a continuation of the prehistoric migrations of the members of the primitive Aryan household.
Everywhere the other races and families have given way before the advance of the Aryan peoples, who have assumed the position of leaders and teachers among the families of mankind, and are rapidly spreading their arts and sciences and culture over the earth.
EARLY CULTURE OF THE ARYANS.--One of the most fascinating studies of recent growth is that which reveals to us the customs, beliefs, and mode of life of the early Aryans, while they were yet living together as a single household. Upon comparing the myths, legends, and ballads of the different Aryan peoples, we discover the curious fact that, under various disguises, they are the same. Thus our nursery tales are found to be identical with those with which the Hindu children are amused. But the discovery should not surprise us. We and the Hindus are kinsmen, children of the same home; so now, when after a long separation we meet, the tales we tell are the same, for they are the stories that were told around the common hearth-fire of our Aryan forefathers.
And when we compare certain words in different Aryan languages, we often find them alike in form and meaning. Thus, take the word father. This word occurs with but little change of form in several of the Aryan tongues. [Footnote: Sanscrit, pitri; Persian, padar; Greek, pater; Latin, pater; German, vater.] From this we infer that the remote ancestors of the now widely separated Aryan peoples once lived together and had a common speech.
Our knowledge of the prehistoric culture of the Aryans, gained through the sciences of comparative philology and mythology, may be summed up as follows: They personified and worshipped the various forces and parts of the physical universe, such as the Sun, the Dawn, Fire, the Winds, the Clouds. The all-embracing sky they worshipped as the Heaven-Father (Dyaus-Pitar, whence Jupiter). They were herdsmen and at least occasional farmers. They introduced the sheep, as well as the horse, into Europe: the Turanian people whom they displaced had neither of these domestic animals. In social life they had advanced to that stage where the family is the unit of society. The father was the priest and absolute lord of his house. The families were united to form village-communities ruled by a chief, or patriarch, who was assisted by a council of elders.
IMPORTANCE OF ARYAN STUDIES.--This picture of life in the early Aryan home, the elements of which are gathered in so novel a way, is of the very greatest historical value and interest. In these customs and beliefs of the early Aryans, we discover the germs of many of the institutions of the classical Greeks and Romans, and of the nations of modern Europe. Thus, in the council of elders around the village patriarch, political historians trace the beginnings of the senates of Greece and Rome and the national parliaments of later times.
Just as the teachings of the parental roof mould the life and character of the children that go out from under its discipline, so have the influences of that early Aryan home shaped the habits, institutions, and character of those peoples and families that, as its children, went out to establish new homes in their "appointed habitations."
RACES OF MANKIND, WITH CHIEF FAMILIES AND PEOPLES.
BLACK RACE (Ethiopian, or Negro). Tribes of Central and Southern Africa, the Papuans and the Australians. (This group includes two great divisions, the Negroid and Australoid.)
YELLOW RACE (Turanian, or Mongolian). (1) The Chinese, Burmese, Japanese, and other kindred peoples of Eastern Asia; (2) the Malays of Southeastern Asia, and the inhabitants of many of the Pacific islands; (3) the nomads (Tartars, Mongols, etc.) of Northern and Central Asia and of Eastern Russia; (4) the Turks, the Magyars, or Hungarians, the Finns and Lapps, and the Basques, in Europe; (5) the Esquimaux and the American Indians. Languages of these peoples are monosyllabic or agglutinative. (Note that the Malays and American Indians were formerly classified as distinct races.)
WHITE RACE (Caucasian). Hamitic Family Egyptians, Libyans, Cushites. Semitic Family Chaldæans (partly Turanian) Assyrians, Babylonians, Canaanites (chiefly Semitic), Phoenicians, Hebrews, Arabs. Aryan, or Indo-European Family Indo-Iranic Branch Hindus, Medes, Persians. Græco-Italic Branch Greeks, Romans. Celtic Branch Gauls, Britons, Scots (Irish), Picts. Teutonic Branch High Germans, Low Germans, Scandinavians. Slavonic Branch Russians, Poles, etc.
The peoples of modern Germany are the descendants of various Germanic tribes. The Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes represent the Scandinavian branch of the Teutonic family. The Irish, the Welsh, the Scotch Highlanders, and the Bretons of Brittany (anciently Armorica), in France, are the present representatives of the ancient Celts. The French, Spaniards, Portuguese, and Italians have sprung, in the main, from a blending of the Celts, the ancient Romans, and the Germanic tribes that thrust themselves within the limits of the Roman Empire in the West. The English are the descendants of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes (Teutonic tribes), slightly modified by interminglings with the Danes and Normans (also of Teutonic origin). (See Mediæval and Modern History, pp. 169- 178.)
Part I
ANCIENT HISTORY.
SECTION I.--THE EASTERN NATIONS.
I. INDIA AND CHINA
1. INDIA.
THE ARYAN INVASION.--At the time of the great Aryan migration (see p. 4), some Aryan bands, journeying from the northwest, settled first the plains of the Indus and then occupied the valley of the Ganges. They reached the banks of the latter river as early probably as 1500 B.C.
These fair-skinned invaders found the land occupied by a dark-skinned, non-Aryan race, whom they either subjugated and reduced to serfdom, or drove out of the great river valleys into the mountains and the half- desert plains of the peninsula.
THE ORIGIN OF CASTES.--The conflict of races in Northern India gave rise to what is known as the system of castes; that is, society became divided into a number of rigid hereditary classes. There arose gradually four chief castes: (1) Brahmans, or priests; (2) warriors; (3) agriculturists and traders; and (4) serfs, or Sudras. The Brahmans were those of pure Aryan blood, while the Sudras were the despised and oppressed non-Aryan aborigines. The two middle classes, the warriors and the cultivators of the soil, were of mixed Aryan and non-Aryan blood. Below these several castes were the Pariahs, or outcasts, the most degraded of the degraded natives. [Footnote: At a later period, the Brahmans, in order to perpetuate their own ascendancy and to secure increased reverence for their order, incorporated among the sacred hymns an account of creation which gave a sort of divine sanction to the system of castes by representing the different classes of society to have had different origins. The Brahmans, the sacred books are made to say, came forth from the mouth of Brahma, the soldier from his arms, the farmer from his thighs, and the Sudra from his feet. ]
The system of castes, modified however by various influences, particularly by the later system of Buddhism (see p. 11), has characterized Hindu society from the time the system originated down to the present, and is one of the most important facts of Indian history.
THE VEDAS.--The most important of the sacred books of the Hindus are called the Vedas. They are written in the Sanscrit language, which is believed to be the oldest form of Aryan speech. The Rig-Veda, the most ancient of the books, is made up of hymns which were composed chiefly during the long period, perhaps a thousand years or more, while the Aryans were slowly working their way from the mountains on the northwest of India across the peninsula to the Ganges. These hymns are filled with memories of the long conflict of the fair-faced Aryans with the dark-faced aborigines. The Himalayas, through whose gloomy passes the early emigrants journeyed, must have deeply impressed the wanderers, for the poets often refer to the great dark mountains.
BRAHMANISM.--The religion of the Indian Aryans is known as Brahmanism. This system gradually developed from the same germs as those out of which grew the Greek and Roman religions. It was at first a pure nature-worship, that is, the worship of the most striking phenomena of the physical world as intelligent and moral beings. The chief god was Dyaus-Pitar, the Heaven-Father. As this system characterized the early period when the oldest Vedic hymns were composed, it is known as the Vedic religion.
In course of time this nature-worship of the Vedic period developed into a sort of pantheism, that is, a system which identifies God with the universe. This form of the Indian religion is known as Brahmanism. Brahma, an impersonal essence, is conceived as the primal existence. Forth from Brahma emanated, as heat and light emanate from the sun, all things and all life. Banish a personal God from the universe, as some modern scientists would do, leaving nothing but nature with her original nebula, her endless cycles, her unconscious evolutions, and we have something very like Brahmanism.
A second, fundamental conception of Brahmanism is that all life, apart from Brahma, is evil, is travail and sorrow. We can make this idea intelligible to ourselves by remembering what are our own ideas of this earthly life. We call it a feverish dream, a journey through a vale of sorrow. Now the Hindu regards all conscious existence in the same light. He has no hope in a better future; so long as the soul is conscious, so long must it endure sorrow and pain.
This conception of all conscious existence as necessarily and always evil, leads naturally to the doctrine that it is the part of wisdom and of duty for man to get rid of consciousness, to annihilate himself, in a word, to commit soul-suicide. Brahmanism teaches that the only way to extinguish self and thus get rid of the burden of existence, is by re-absorption into Brahma. But this return to Brahma is dependent upon the soul's purification, for no impure soul can be re-absorbed into the primal essence. The necessary freedom from passion and the required purity of soul can best be attained by self-torture, by a severe mortification of the flesh; hence the asceticism of the Hindu devotee.
As only a few in each generation reach the goal, it follows that the great majority of men must be born again, and yet again, until all evil has been purged away from the soul and eternal repose found in Brahma. He who lives a virtuous life is at death born into some higher caste, and thus he advances towards the longed-for end. The evil man, however, is born into a lower caste, or perhaps his soul enters some unclean animal. This doctrine of re-birth is known as the transmigration of souls (metempsychosis).
Only the first three classes are admitted to the benefits of religion. The Sudras and the outcasts are forbidden to read the sacred books, and for any one of the upper classes to teach a serf how to expiate sin is a crime.
BUDDHISM.--In the fifth century before our era, a great teacher and reformer, known as Buddha, or Gautama (died about 470 B.C.), arose in India. He was a prince, whom legend represents as being so touched by the universal misery of mankind, that he voluntarily abandoned the luxury of his home, and spent his life in seeking out and making known to men a new and better way of salvation. He condemned the severe penances and the self-torture of the Brahmans, yet commended poverty and retirement from active life as the best means of getting rid of desire and of attaining Nirvana, that is, the repose of unconsciousness.
Buddha admitted all classes to the benefits of religion, the poor outcast as well as the high-born Brahman, and thus Buddhism was a revolt against the earlier harsh and exclusive system of Brahmanism. It holds somewhat the same relation to Brahmanism that Christianity bears to Judaism.
Buddhism gradually gained the ascendancy over Brahmanism; but after some centuries the Brahmans regained their power, and by the eighth century after Christ, the faith of Buddha was driven out of almost every part of India. But Buddhism has a profound missionary spirit, like that of Christianity, Buddha having commanded his disciples to make known to all men the way to Nirvana and consequently during the very period when India was being lost, the missionaries of the reformed creed were spreading the teachings of their master among the peoples of all the countries of Eastern Asia, so that to-day Buddhism is the religion of almost one third of the human race. Buddha has probably nearly as many followers as both Christ and Mohammed together.
During its long conflict with Buddhism, Brahmanism was greatly modified, and caught much of the gentler spirit of the new faith, so that modern Brahmanism is a very different religion from that of the ancient system; hence it is usually given a new name, being known as Hinduism. [Footnote: Among the customs introduced into Brahmanism during this period was the rite of Suttee, or the voluntary burning of the widow on the funeral pyre of her husband.]
ALEXANDER'S INVASION OF INDIA (327 B.C.).--Although we find obscure notices of India in the records of the early historic peoples of Western Asia, yet it is not until the invasion of the peninsula by Alexander the Great in 327 B.C. that the history of the Indian Aryans comes in significant contact with that of the progressive nations of the West. From that day to our own its systems of philosophy, its wealth, and its commerce have been more or less important factors in universal history. Greece carried on an intellectual commerce with this country; Rome, and the Italian republics of the Middle Ages, a more material but not less important trade. Columbus was seeking a short all-sea route to this country when he found the New World. And in the upbuilding of the imperial greatness of the England of to-day, the wealth and trade of India have played no inconsiderable part.
2. CHINA
GENERAL REMARKS: THE BEGINNING.--China is the seat of a very old civilization, older perhaps than that of any other land save Egypt; yet Chinese affairs have not until recently exerted any appreciable influence upon the general current of history. All through ancient and mediæval times the country lay, vague and mysterious, in the haze of the world's horizon. During the Middle Ages the land was known to Europe under the name of Cathay.
The beginning of the Chinese nation was a band of Turanian wanderers who came into the basin of the Yellow River, from the West, probably prior to 3000 B.C. These immigrants gradually pushed out the aborigines whom they found in the land, and laid the basis of institutions that have endured to the present day.
DYNASTIC HISTORY.--The government of China since the remotest times has been a parental monarchy. The Emperor is the father of his people. But though an absolute prince, still he dare not rule tyrannically: he must rule justly, and in accordance with the ancient customs and laws.
The Chinese have books that purport to give the history of the different dynasties that have ruled in the land from a vast antiquity; but these records are largely mythical and legendary. Everything is confused and uncertain until we reach the eighth or seventh century before our era; and even then we meet with little of interest in the dynastic history of the country until we come to the reign of Che Hwang-te (246-210 B.C.). This energetic ruler strengthened and consolidated the imperial power, and executed great works of internal improvement, such as roads and canals. As a barrier against the incursions of the Huns, he began the erection of the celebrated Chinese Wall, a great rampart extending for about 1500 miles along the northern frontier of the country. [Footnote: The Great Wall is one of the most remarkable works of man. "It is," says Dr. Williams, "the only artificial structure which would arrest attention in a hasty survey of the globe." It has been estimated that there is more than seventy times as much material in the wall as there is in the Great Pyramid of Cheops, and that it represents more labor than 100,000 miles of ordinary railroad. It was begun in 214(?) and finished in 204(?) B.C. It is twenty-five feet wide at base, and from fifteen to thirty feet high. Towers forty feet high rise at irregular intervals. In some places it is a mere earthen rampart; in others it is faced with brick; and then again it is composed of stone throughout.]
From the strong reign of Che Hwang-te to the end of the period covered by ancient history, Chinese dynastic records present no matters of universal interest that need here occupy our attention.
CHINESE WRITING.--It is nearly certain that the art of writing was known among the Chinese as early as 2000 B.C. The system employed is curiously cumbrous. In the absence of an alphabet, each word of the language is represented upon the written page by means of a symbol, or combination of symbols; this, of course, requires that there be as many symbols, or characters, as there are words in the language. The number sanctioned by good use is about 25,000; but counting obsolete characters, the number amounts to over 50,000. A knowledge of 5000 or 6000 characters, however, enables one to read and write without difficulty. The task of learning even this number might well be hopeless, were it not that many of the characters bear a remote resemblance to the objects for which they stand, and when once explained, readily suggest the thing or idea represented. The nature of the characters shows conclusively that the Chinese system of writing, like that of all others with which we are acquainted, was at first purely hieroglyphical, that is, the characters were originally simply rude outline pictures of material objects. Time and use have worn them to their present form.
This Chinese system of representing thought, cumbrous and inconvenient as it is, is employed at the present time by one third of the human race.
Printing from blocks was practised in China as early as the sixth century of our era, and printing from movable types as early as the tenth or eleventh century, that is to say, about four hundred years before the same art was invented in Europe.
CHINESE LITERATURE: CONFUCIUS AND MENCIUS.--The most highly prized portion of Chinese literature is embraced in what is known as the Five Classics and the Four Books, called collectively the Nine Classics. The Five Classics are among the oldest books in the world. For some of the books an antiquity of 3000 years is claimed. The books embrace chronicles, political and ethical maxims, and numerous odes. One of the most important of the Classics is the so-called Book of Rites, said to date from 1200 B.C.
The Four Books are of later origin than the Five Classics, having been written about the fifth and fourth centuries before the Christian era; yet they hardly yield to them in sacredness in the eyes of the Chinese. The first three of the series are by the pupils of the great sage and moralist Confucius (551-478 B.C.), and the fourth is by Mencius (371-288 B.C.), a disciple of Confucius, and a scarcely less revered philosopher and ethical teacher. The teachings of the Four Books may be summed up in the simple precept, "Walk in the Trodden Paths." Confucius was not a prophet, or revealer; he laid no claims to a supernatural knowledge of God or of the hereafter; he said nothing of an Infinite Spirit, and but little of a future life. His cardinal precepts were obedience to superiors, reverence for the ancients, and imitation of their virtues. He himself walked in the old paths, and thus added the force of example to that of precept. He gave the Chinese the Golden Rule, stated negatively: "What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others."
During the reign of Che Hwang-te (see p. 13), Chinese literature suffered a great disaster. That despot, for the reason that the teachers in their opposition to him were constantly quoting the ancient writings against his innovations, ordered the chief historical books to be destroyed, and sentenced to death any one who should presume to talk about the proscribed writings, or even allude to the virtues of the ancients in such a way as to reflect upon his reforms. The contumacious he sent to work upon the Great Wall. But the people concealed the books in the walls of their houses, or better still hid them away in their memories; and in this way the priceless inheritance of antiquity was preserved until the storm had passed.
INFLUENCE OF THIS LITERATURE AND OF THE SAGE CONFUCIUS.--It would be impossible to exaggerate the influence which the Nine Classics have had upon the Chinese nation. For more than 2000 years these writings have been the Chinese Bible. And as all of the Four Books, though they were not written by Confucius, yet bear the impress of his mind and thought, just as the Gospels teach the mind of Christ, a large part of this influence must be attributed to the life and teachings of that great Sage. His influence has been greater than that of any other teacher, excepting Christ and perhaps Buddha. His precepts, implicitly followed by his countrymen, have shaped their lives from his day to the present.
The moral system of Confucius, making, as it does, filial obedience and a conformity to ancient customs primary virtues, has exalted the family life among the Chinese and given a wonderful stability to Chinese society. Chinese children are the most obedient and reverential to parents of any children in the world, and the Chinese Empire is the only one in all history that has prolonged its existence from ancient times to the present.
But along with much good, one great evil has resulted from this blind, servile following of the past. The Chinese in strictly obeying the injunction to walk in the old ways, to conform to the customs of the ancients, have failed to mark out any new footpaths for themselves. Hence their lack of originality, their habit of imitation: hence the unchanging, unprogressive character of Chinese civilization.
EDUCATION AND CIVIL SERVICE COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS.--China has a very ancient educational system. The land was filled with schools, academies, and colleges more than a thousand years before our era, and education is to-day more general among the Chinese than among any other pagan people. A knowledge of the sacred books is the sole passport to civil office and public employment. All candidates for places in the government must pass a competitive examination in the Nine Classics. This system is practically the same in principle as that which we, with great difficulty, are trying to establish in connection with our own civil service.
THE THREE RELIGIONS,--CONFUCIANISM, TAOISM, AND BUDDHISM.--There are three leading religions in China,--Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. The great Sage Confucius is reverenced and worshipped throughout the Empire. He holds somewhat the same relation to the system that bears his name that Christ holds to that of Christianity. Taoism takes its name from Tao, which is made, like Brahma in Brahmanism, the beginning of all things. It is a very curious system of mystical ideas and superstitious practices. Buddhism was introduced into China about the opening of the Christian era, and soon became widely spread.
There is one element common to all these religions, and that is the worship of ancestors. Every Chinese, whether he be a Confucianist, a Taoist, or a Buddhist, reverences his ancestors, and prays and makes offerings to their spirits.
POLICY OF NON-INTERCOURSE.--The Chinese have always been a very self- satisfied and exclusive people. They have jealously excluded foreigners and outside influence from their country. The Great Wall with which they have hedged in their country on the north, is the symbol of their policy of isolation. Doubtless this characteristic of the Chinese has been fostered by their geographical isolation; for great mountain barriers and wide deserts cut the country off from communication with the rest of the Asiatic continent. And then their reverence for antiquity has rendered them intolerant of innovation and change. Hence, in part, the unwillingness of the Chinese to admit into their country railroads, telegraphs, and other modern improvements. For them to adopt these new- fangled inventions, would be like our adopting a new religion. Such a departure from the ways and customs of the past has in it, to their way of thinking, something akin to disrespect and irreverence for ancestors.
II. EGYPT
1. POLITICAL HISTORY.
EGYPT AND THE NILE.--Egypt comprises the delta of the Nile and the flood- plains of its lower course. The whole land is formed of the deposits of the river; hence Herodotus, in happy phrase, called the country "the gift of the Nile." The delta country was known to the ancients as Lower Egypt; while the valley proper, reaching from the head of the delta to the First Cataract, a distance of six hundred miles, was called Upper Egypt. [Footnote: About seven hundred miles from the Mediterranean a low ledge of rocks, stretching across the Nile, forms the first obstruction to navigation in passing up the river. The rapids found at this point are termed the First Cataract. Six other cataracts occur in the next seven hundred miles of the river's course.]
Through the same means by which Egypt was originally created, is the land each year still renewed and fertilized. The Nile, swollen by the heavy tropical rains about its sources, begins to rise in its lower parts late in June, and by October, when the inundation has attained its greatest height, the country presents the appearance of an inland sea.
By the end of November the river has returned to its bed, and the fields, over which has been spread a film of rich earth, [Footnote: The rate of the fluviatile deposit is from three to five inches in a century. The surface of the valley at Thebes, as shown by the accumulations about the monuments, has been raised seven feet during the last seventeen hundred years.] present the appearance of black mud-flats. Usually the plow is run lightly over the soft surface, but in some cases the grain is sown upon the undisturbed deposit, and simply trampled in by flocks of sheep and goats driven over it. In a few weeks the entire land, so recently a flooded plain, is overspread with a sea of verdure, which forms a striking contrast to the desert sands and barren hills that rim the valley.
CLIMATE.--In Lower Egypt, near the sea, the rainfall in the winter is abundant; but the climate of Upper Egypt is all but rainless, only a few slight showers falling throughout the year. This dryness of the Egyptian air is what has preserved through so many thousand years, in such wonderful freshness of color and with such sharpness of outline, the numerous paintings and sculptures of the monuments of the Pharaohs.
The southern line of Egypt only just touches the tropics; still the climate, influenced by the wide and hot deserts that hem the valley, is semi-tropical in character. The fruits of the tropics and the cereals of the temperate zone grow luxuriantly. Thus favored in climate as well as in the matter of irrigation, Egypt became in early times the granary of the East. To it less favored countries, when stricken by famine,--a calamity so common in the East in regions dependent upon the rainfall,--looked for food, as did the families of Israel during drought and failure of crops in Palestine.
DYNASTIES AND CHRONOLOGY.--The kings, or Pharaohs, that reigned in Egypt from the earliest times till the conquest of the country by Alexander the Great (332 B.C.), are grouped into thirty-one dynasties. Thirty of these we find in the lists of Manetho, an Egyptian priest who lived in the third century B.C., and who compiled a chronicle of the kings of the country from the manuscripts kept in the Egyptian temples.
We cannot assign a positive date to the beginning of the First Dynasty, chiefly because Egyptologists are at a loss to know whether to consider all the dynasties of Manetho's list as successive or in part contemporaneous. Thus, it is held by some scholars that several of these families were reigning at the same time in the different cities of Upper and Lower Egypt; while others think that they all reigned at different epochs, and that the sum of the lengths of the several dynasties gives us the true date of the beginning of the political history of the country. Accordingly, some place the beginning of the First Dynasty at about 5000 B.C., while others put it at about 3000 B.C. The constantly growing evidence of the monuments is in favor of the higher figures.
MENES, THE FIRST OF THE PHARAOHS.--Menes is the first kingly personage, shadowy and indistinct in form, that we discover in the early dawn of Egyptian history. Tradition makes him the founder of Memphis, near the head of the Delta, the site of which capital he secured against the inundations of the Nile by vast dikes and various engineering works. To him is ascribed the achievement of first consolidating the numerous petty principalities of Lower Egypt into a single state.
THE FOURTH DYNASTY: THE PYRAMID KINGS (about 2700 B.C.).--The kings of the Fourth Dynasty, who reigned at Memphis, are called the Pyramid builders. Kufu I., the Cheops of the Greeks, was the first great builder. To him we can now positively ascribe the building of the Great Pyramid, the largest of the Gizeh group, near Cairo; for his name has been found upon some of the stones,--painted on them by his workmen before the blocks were taken from the quarries.
The mountains of stone heaped together by the Pyramid kings are proof that they were cruel oppressors of their people, and burdened them with useless labor upon these monuments of their ambition. Tradition tells how the very memory of these monarchs was hated by the people. Herodotus says that the Egyptians did not like even to speak the names of the builders of the two largest pyramids.
THE TWELFTH DYNASTY (about 2300 B.C.).--After the Sixth Dynasty, Egypt, for several centuries, is almost lost from view. When finally the valley emerges from the obscurity of this period, the old capital Memphis has receded into the background, and the city of Thebes has taken its place as the seat of the royal power.
The period of the Twelfth Dynasty, a line of Theban kings, is one of the brightest in Egyptian hhistory. Many monuments scattered throughout the country perpetuate the fame of the sovereigns of this illustrious house. Egyptian civilization is regarded by many as having during this period reached the highest perfection to which it ever attained.
THE HYSKOS, OR SHEPHERD KINGS (from about 2100 to 1650 B.C.).--Soon after the bright period of the Twelfth Dynasty, Egypt again suffered a great eclipse. Nomadic tribes from Syria crossed the eastern frontier of Egypt, took possession of the inviting pasture-lands of the Delta, and established there the empire of the Shepherd Kings.
These Asiatic intruders were violent and barbarous, and destroyed or mutilated the monuments of the country. But gradually they were transformed by the civilization with which they were in contact, and in time they adopted the manners and culture of the Egyptians. It was probably during the supremacy of the Hyksos that the families of Israel found a refuge in Lower Egypt. They received a kind reception from the Shepherd Kings, not only because they had the same pastoral habits, but also, probably, because of near kinship in race.
At last these intruders, after they had ruled in the valley four or five hundred years, were expelled by the Theban kings, and driven back into Asia. This occurred about 1650 B.C. The episode of the Shepherd Kings in Egypt derives great importance from the fact that these Asiatic conquerors were one of the mediums through which Egyptian civilization was transmitted to the Phoenicians, who, through their wide commercial relations, spread the same among all the early nations of the Mediterranean area.
And further, the Hyksos conquest was an advantage to Egypt itself. The conquerors possessed political capacity, and gave the country a strong centralized government. They made Egypt in fact a great monarchy, and laid the basis of the power and glory of the mighty Pharaohs of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties.
THE EIGHTEENTH DYNASTY (about 1650-1400 B.C.).--The revolt which drove the Hyksos from the country was led by Amosis, or Ahmes, a descendant of the Theban kings. He was the first king of what is known as the Eighteenth Dynasty, probably the greatest race of kings, it has been said, that ever reigned upon the earth.
The most eventful period of Egyptian history, covered by what is called the New Empire, now opens. Architecture and learning seem to have recovered at a bound from their long depression under the domination of the Shepherd Kings. To free his empire from the danger of another invasion from Asia, Amosis determined to subdue the Syrian and Mesopotamian tribes. This foreign policy, followed out by his successors, shaped many of the events of their reigns.
Thothmes III., one of the greatest kings of this Eighteenth Dynasty, has been called "the Alexander of Egyptian history." During his reign the frontiers of the empire reached their greatest expansion. His authority extended from the oases of the Libyan desert to the Tigris and the Euphrates.
Thothmes was also a magnificent builder. His architectural works in the valley of the Nile were almost numberless. He built a great part of the temple of Karnak, at Thebes, the remains of which form the most majestic ruin in the world. His obelisks stand to-day in Constantinople, in Rome, in London, and in New York.
The name of Amunoph III. stands next after that of Thothmes III. as one of the great rulers and builders of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
THE NINETEENTH DYNASTY (about 1400-1280 B.C.).--The Pharaohs of the Nineteenth Dynasty rival those of the Eighteenth in their fame as conquerors and builders. It is their deeds and works, in connection with those of the preceding dynasty, that have given Egypt such a name and place in history. The two great names of the house are Seti I. and Rameses II.
One of the most important of Seti's wars was that against the Hittites (Khita, in the inscriptions) and their allies. The Hittites were a powerful non-Semitic people, whose capital was Carchemish, on the Euphrates, and whose strength and influence were now so great as to be a threat to Egypt.
But Seti's deeds as a warrior are eclipsed by his achievements as a builder. He constructed the main part of what is perhaps the most impressive edifice ever raised by man,--the world-renowned "Hall of Columns," in the Temple of Karnak, at Thebes (see illustration, p. 32). He also cut for himself in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, at the same place, the most beautiful and elaborate of all the rock-sepulchres of the Pharaohs (see p. 31). In addition to these and numerous other works, he began a canal to unite the Red Sea and the Nile,--an undertaking which was completed by his son and successor, Rameses II.
Rameses II., surnamed the Great, was the Sesostris of the Greeks. His is the most prominent name of the Nineteenth Dynasty. Ancient writers, in fact, accorded him the first place among all the Egyptian sovereigns, and made him the hero of innumerable stories. His long reign, embracing sixty- seven years, was, in truth, well occupied with military expeditions and the superintendence of great architectural works.
His chief wars were those against the Hittites. Time and again is Rameses found with his host of war-chariots in their country, but he evidently fails to break their power; for we find him at last concluding with them a celebrated treaty, in which the chief of the Hittites is called "The Great King of the Khita" (Hittites), and is formally recognized as in every respect the equal of the king of Egypt. Later, Rameses marries a daughter of the Hittite king. All this means that the Pharaohs had met their peers in the princes of the Hittites, and that they could no longer hope to become masters of Western Asia.
It was probably the fear of an invasion by the tribes of Syria that led Rameses to reduce to a position of grinding servitude the Semitic peoples that under former dynasties had been permitted to settle in Lower Egypt; for this Nineteenth Dynasty, to which Rameses II. belongs, was the new king (dynasty) that arose "which knew not Joseph" (Ex. i. 8), and oppressed the children of Israel. It was during the reign of his son Menephtha that the Exodus took place (about 1300 B.C.).
THE TWENTY-SIXTH DYNASTY (666-527 B.C.).--We pass without comment a long period of several centuries, marked, indeed, by great vicissitudes in the fortunes of the Egyptian monarchs, yet characterized throughout by a sure and rapid decline in the power and splendor of their empire.
During the latter part of this period Egypt was tributary to Assyria. But about 666 B.C., a native prince, Psammetichus I. (666-612 B.C.), with the aid of Greek mercenaries from Asia Minor, succeeded in expelling the Assyrian garrisons. Psammetichus thus became the founder of the Twenty- sixth Dynasty.
The reign of this monarch marks a new era in Egyptian history. Hitherto Egypt had secluded herself from the world, behind barriers of jealousy, race, and pride. But Psammetichus being himself, it seems, of non-Egyptian origin, and owing his throne chiefly to the swords of Greek soldiers, was led to reverse the policy of the past, and to throw the valley open to the commerce and influences of the world. His capital, Sais, on the Canopic branch of the Nile, forty miles from the Mediterranean, was filled with Greek citizens; and Greek mercenaries were employed in his armies.
This change of policy, occurring at just the period when the rising states of Greece and Rome were shaping their institutions, was a most significant event. Egypt became the University of the Mediterranean nations. From this time forward Greek philosophers, as in the case of Pythagoras and of Plato, are represented as becoming pupils of the Egyptian priests; and without question the learning and philosophy of the ancient Egyptians exerted a profound influence upon the quick, susceptible mind of the Hellenic race, that was, in its turn, to become the teacher of the world.
The liberal policy of Psammetichus, while resulting in a great advantage to foreign nations, brought a heavy misfortune upon his own. Displeased with the position assigned Greek mercenaries in the army, the native Egyptian soldiers revolted, and two hundred thousand of the troops seceding in a body, emigrated to Ethiopia, whence no inducement that Psammetichus offered could persuade them to return.
The son of Psammetichus, Necho II. (612-596 B.C.), the Pharaoh-Necho of the Bible, followed the liberal policy marked out by his father. To facilitate commerce, he attempted to reopen the old canal dug by Seti I. and his son, which had become unnavigable. After the loss of one hundred and twenty thousand workmen in the prosecution of the undertaking, Necho was constrained to abandon it; Herodotus says, on account of an unfavorable oracle.
Necho then fitted out an exploring expedition for the circumnavigation of Africa, in hope of finding a possible passage for his fleets from the Red Sea to the Nile by a water channel already opened by nature, and to which the priests and oracles could interpose no objections. The expedition, we have reason to believe, actually accomplished the feat of sailing around the continent; for Herodotus, in his account of the enterprise, says that the voyagers upon their return reported that, when they were rounding the cape, the sun was on their right hand (to the north). This feature of the report, which led Herodotus to disbelieve it, is to us the very strongest evidence possible that the voyage was really performed.
THE LAST OF THE PHARAOHS.--Before the close of his reign, Necho had come into collision with the king of Babylon, and was forced to acknowledge his supremacy. A little later, Babylon having yielded to the rising power of Persia, Egypt also passed under Persian authority (see p. 77). The Egyptians, however, were restive under this foreign yoke, and, after a little more than a century, succeeded in throwing it off; but the country was again subjugated by the Persian king Artaxerxes III. (about 340 B.C.), and from that time until our own day no native prince has ever sat upon the throne of the Pharaohs. Long before the Persian conquest, the Prophet Ezekiel, foretelling the debasement of Egypt, had declared, "There shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt." [Footnote: Ezek. xxx. 13.]
Upon the extension of the power of the Macedonians over the East (333 B.C.), Egypt willingly exchanged masters; and for three centuries the valley was the seat of the renowned Græco-Egyptian Empire of the Ptolemies, which lasted until the Romans annexed the region to their all- absorbing empire (30 B.C.).
"The mission of Egypt among the nations was fulfilled; it had lit the torch of civilization in ages inconceivably remote, and had passed it on to other peoples of the West."
2. RELIGION, ARTS, AND GENERAL CULTURE.
CLASSES OF SOCIETY.--Egyptian society was divided into three great classes, or orders,--priests, soldiers, and common people; the last embracing shepherds, husbandmen, and artisans.
The sacerdotal order consisted of high-priests, prophets, scribes, keepers of the sacred robes and animals, sacred sculptors, masons, and embalmers. They enjoyed freedom from taxation, and met the expenses of the temple services with the income of the sacred lands, which embraced one third of the soil of the country.
The priests were extremely scrupulous in the care of their persons. They bathed twice by day and twice by night, and shaved the entire body every third day. Their inner clothing was linen, woollen garments being thought unclean; their diet was plain and even abstemious, in order that, as Plutarch says, "their bodies might sit light as possible about their souls."
Next to the priesthood in rank and honor stood the military order. Like the priests, the soldiers formed a landed class. They held one third of the soil of Egypt. To each soldier was given a tract of about eight acres, exempt from all taxes. They were carefully trained in their profession, and there was no more effective soldiery in ancient times than that which marched beneath the standard of the Pharaohs.
THE CHIEF DEITIES.--Attached to the chief temples of the Egyptians were colleges for the training of the sacerdotal order. These institutions were the repositories of the wisdom of the Egyptians. This learning was open only to the initiated few.
The unity of God was the central doctrine in this private system. They gave to this Supreme Being the very same name by which he was known to the Hebrews--Nuk Pu Nuk, "I am that I am." [Footnote: "It is evident what a new light this discovery throws on the sublime passage in Exodus iii. 14; where Moses, whom we may suppose to have been initiated into this formula, is sent both to his people and to Pharaoh to proclaim the true God by this very title, and to declare that the God of the highest Egyptian theology was also the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. The case is parallel to that of Paul at Athens."--Smith's Ancient History of the East, p. 196, note.] The sacred manuscripts say, "He is the one living and true God,... who has made all things, and was not himself made."
The Egyptian divinities of the popular mythology were frequently grouped in triads. First in importance among these groups was that formed by Osiris, Isis (his wife and sister), and Horus, their son. The members of this triad were worshipped throughout Egypt.
The god Set (called Typhon by the Greek writers), the principle of evil, was the Satan of Egyptian mythology. While the good and beneficent Osiris was symbolized by the life-giving Nile, the malignant Typhon was emblemized by the terrors and barrenness of the desert.
ANIMAL-WORSHIP.--The Egyptians regarded certain animals as emblems of the gods, and hence worshipped them. To kill one of these sacred animals was adjudged the greatest impiety. Persons so unfortunate as to harm one through accident were sometimes murdered by the infuriated people. The destruction of a cat in a burning building was lamented more than the loss of the property. Upon the death of a dog, every member of the family shaved his head. The scarabæus, or beetle, was especially sacred, being considered an emblem of the sun, or of life.
Not only were various animals held sacred, as being the emblems of certain deities, but some were thought to be real gods. Thus the soul of Osiris, it was imagined, animated the body of some bull, which might be known from certain spots and markings.
Upon the death of the sacred bull, or Apis, as he was called, a great search, accompanied with loud lamentation, was made throughout the land for his successor: for, the moment the soul of Osiris departed from the dying bull, it entered a calf that moment born. The calf was always found with the proper markings; but, as Wilkinson says, the young animal had probably been put to "much inconvenience and pain to make the marks and hair conform to his description."
The body of the deceased Apis was carefully embalmed, and, amid funeral ceremonies of great expense and magnificence, deposited in the tomb of his predecessors. In 1851, Mariette discovered this sepulchral chamber of the sacred bulls. It is a narrow gallery, two thousand feet in length, cut in the limestone cliffs just opposite the site of ancient Memphis. A large number of the immense granite coffins, fifteen feet long and eight wide and high, have been brought to light.
Many explanations have been given to account for the existence of such a debased form of worship among so cultured a people as were the ancient Egyptians. Probably the sacred animals in the later worship represent an earlier stage of the Egyptian religion, just as many superstitious beliefs and observances among ourselves are simply survivals from earlier and ruder times.
JUDGMENT OF THE DEAD.--Death was a great equalizer among the Egyptians. King and peasant alike must stand before the judgment-seat of Osiris and his forty-two assessors.
This judgment of the soul in the other world was prefigured by a peculiar ordeal to which the body was subjected here. Between each chief city and the burial-place on the western edge of the valley was a sacred lake, across which the body was borne in a barge. But, before admittance to the boat, it must pass the ordeal called "the judgment of the dead." This was a trial before a tribunal of forty-two judges, assembled upon the shore of the lake. Any person could bring accusations against the deceased, false charges being guarded against by the most dreadful penalties. If it appeared that the life of the deceased had been evil, passage to the boat was denied; and the body was either carried home in dishonor, or, in case of the poor who could not afford to care for the mummy, was interred on the shores of the lake. Many mummies of those refused admission to the tombs of their fathers have been dug up along these "Stygian banks."
But this ordeal of the body was only a faint symbol of the dread tribunal of Osiris before which the soul must appear in the lower world. In one scale of a balance was placed the heart of the deceased; in the other scale, an image of Justice, or Truth. The soul stands by watching the result, and, as the beam inclines, is either welcomed to the companionship of the good Osiris, or consigned to oblivion in the jaws of a frightful hippopotamus-headed monster, "the devourer of evil souls." This annihilation, however, is only the fate of those inveterately wicked. Those respecting whom hopes of reformation may be entertained are condemned to return to earth and do penance in long cycles of lives in the bodies of various animals. This is what is known as the transmigration of souls. The kind of animals the soul should animate, and the length of its transmigrations, were determined by the nature of its sins.
TOMBS.--The Egyptians bestowed little care upon the temporary residences of the living, but the "eternal homes" of the dead were fitted up with the most lavish expenditure of labor. These were chambers, sometimes built of brick or stone, but more usually cut in the limestone cliffs that form the western rim of the Nile valley; for that, as the land of the sunset, was conceived to be the realm of darkness and of death. The cliffs opposite the ancient Egyptian capitals are honeycombed with sepulchral cells.
In the hills back of Thebes is the so-called Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, the "Westminster Abbey of Egypt." Here are twenty-five magnificent sepulchres. These consist of extensive rock-cut passages and chambers richly sculptured and painted.
The subjects of the decorations of many of the tombs, particularly of the oldest, are drawn from the life and manners of the times. Thus the artist has converted for us the Egyptian necropolis into a city of the living, where the Egypt of four thousand years ago seems to pass before our eyes.
THE PYRAMIDS.--The Egyptian pyramids, the tombs of the earlier Pharaohs, are the most venerable monuments that have been preserved to us from the early world. They were almost all erected before the Twelfth Dynasty. Although thus standing away back in the earliest twilight of the historic morning, nevertheless they mark, not the beginning, but the perfection of Egyptian art. They speak of long periods of growth in art and science lying beyond the era they represent. It is this vast and mysterious background that astonishes us even more than these giant forms cast up against it.
Being sepulchral monuments, the pyramids are confined to the western side of the Nile valley (see p. 31). There are over thirty still standing, with traces of about forty more.
The Pyramid of Cheops, the largest of the Gizeh group, near Cairo, rises from a base covering thirteen acres, to a height of four hundred and fifty feet. According to Herodotus, Cheops employed one hundred thousand men for twenty years in its erection.
PALACES AND TEMPLES.---The earlier Memphian kings built great unadorned pyramids, but the later Theban monarchs constructed splendid palaces and temples. Two of the most prominent masses of buildings on the site of Thebes are called, the one the Temple of Karnak, and the other the Temple of Luxor, from the names of two native villages built near or within the ruined enclosures. The former was more than five hundred years in building. As an adjunct of the temple at Karnak was a Hall of Columns, which consisted of a phalanx of one hundred and sixty-four gigantic pillars. Some of these columns measure over seventy feet in height, with capitals sixty-five feet in circumference.
In Nubia, beyond the First Cataract, is the renowned rock-hewn temple of Ipsambul, the front of which is adorned with four gigantic portrait- statues of Rameses II., seventy feet in height. This temple has been pronounced the greatest and grandest achievement of Egyptian art.
SCULPTURE: SPHINXES AND COLOSSI.--A strange immobility, due to the influence of religion, attached itself, at an early period, to Egyptian art. The artist, in the portrayal of the figures of the gods, was not allowed to change a single line in the conventional form. Hence the impossibility of improvement in sacred sculpture. Wilkinson says that Menes would have recognized the statue of Osiris in the Temple of Amasis. Plato complained that the pictures and statues in the temples in his day were no better than those made "ten thousand years" before.
The heroic, or colossal size of many of the Egyptian statues excites our admiration. The two colossi at Thebes, known as the "Statues of Memnon," are forty-seven feet high, and are hewn each from a single block of granite. The appearance of these time-worn, gigantic figures, upon the solitary plain, is singularly impressive. "There they sit together, yet apart, in the midst of the plain, serene and vigilant, still keeping their untired watch over the lapse of ages and the eclipse of Egypt."
One of these statues acquired a wide reputation among the Greeks and Romans, under the name of the "Vocal Memnon." When the rays of the rising sun fell upon the colossus, it emitted low musical tones, which the Egyptians believed to be the greeting of the statue to the mother-sun. [Footnote: It is probable that the musical notes were produced by the action of the sun upon the surface of the rock while wet with dew. The phenomenon was observed only while the upper part of the colossus, which was broken off by an earthquake, remained upon the ground. When the statue was restored, the music ceased.]
The Egyptian sphinxes were figures having a human head and the body of a lion, symbolizing intelligence and power. The most famous of the sphinxes of Egypt is the colossal figure at the base of the Great Pyramid, at Gizeh, sculptured, some think, by Menes, and others, by one of the kings of the Fourth Dynasty. The immense statue, cut out of the native rock, save the fore-legs, which are built of masonry, is ninety feet long and seventy feet high. "This huge, mutilated figure has an astonishing effect; it seems like an eternal spectre. The stone phantom seems attentive; one would say that it hears and sees. Its great ear appears to collect the sounds of the past; its eyes, directed to the east, gaze, as it were, into the future; its aspect has a depth, a truth of expression, irresistibly fascinating to the spectator. In this figure--half statue, half mountain-- we see a wonderful majesty, a grand serenity, and even a sort of sweetness of expression."
GLASS MANUFACTURE.--The manufacture of glass, a discovery usually attributed to the Phoenicians, [Footnote: The Phoenicians, being the carriers of antiquity, often received credit among the peoples with whom they traded, for various inventions and discoveries of which they were simply the disseminators.] was carried on in Egypt more than four thousand years ago. The paintings of the monuments represent glass-blowers moulding all manner of articles. Glass bottles, and various other objects of the same material, are found in great numbers in the tombs. Some of these objects show that the ancient Egyptians were acquainted with processes of coloring glass that secured results which we have not yet been able to equal. The Egyptian artists imitated, with marvellous success, the variegated hues of insects and stones. The manufacture of precious gems, so like the natural stone as to defy detection, was a lucrative profession.
THE PAPYRUS PAPER.--The chief writing material used by the ancient Egyptians was the noted papyrus paper, manufactured from a reed which grew in the marshes and along the water-channels of the Nile. From the Greek names of this Egyptian plant, byblos and papyrus, come our words "Bible" and "paper." The plant has now entirely disappeared from Egypt, and is found only on the Anapus, in the island of Sicily, and on a small stream near Jaffa, in Palestine. Long before the plant became extinct in Egypt an ancient prophecy had declared, "The paper reeds by the brooks ... shall wither, be driven away, and be no more." (Isa. xix. 7.) The costly nature of the papyrus paper led to the use of many substitutes for writing purposes--as leather, broken pottery, tiles, stones, and wooden tablets.
FORMS OF WRITING.--The Egyptians employed three forms of writing: the hieroglyphical, consisting of rude pictures of material objects, usually employed in monumental inscriptions; the hieratic, an abbreviated or rather simplified form of the hieroglyphical, adapted to writing, and forming the greater part of the papyrus manuscripts; and the demotic, or encorial, a still simpler form than the hieratic. The last did not come into use till about the seventh century B.C., and was then used for all ordinary documents, both of a civil and commercial nature. It could be written eight or ten times as fast as the hieroglyphical form.
KEY TO EGYPTIAN WRITING.--The key to the Egyptian writing was discovered by means of the Rosetta Stone. This valuable relic, a heavy block of black basalt, is now in the British Museum. It holds an inscription, written in hieroglyphic, in demotic, and in Greek characters. Champollion, a French scholar, by comparing the characters composing the words Ptolemy, Alexander, and other names in the parallel inscriptions, discovered the value of several of the symbols; and thus were opened the vast libraries of Egyptian learning.
We have now the Ritual, or Book, of the Dead, a sort of guide to the soul in its journey through the underworld; romances, and fairy tales, among which is "Cinderella and the Glass Slipper"; autobiographies, letters, fables, and epics; treatises on medicine, astronomy, and various other scientific subjects; and books on history--in prose and verse--which fully justify the declaration of the Egyptian priests to Solon: "You Greeks are mere children, talkative and vain; you know nothing at all of the past."
ASTRONOMY, GEOGRAPHY AND ARITHMETIC.--The cloudless and brilliant skies of Egypt invited the inhabitants of the Nile valley to the study of the heavenly bodies. And another circumstance closely related to their very existence, the inundation of the Nile, following the changing cycles of the stars, could not but have incited them to the watching and predicting of astronomical movements. Their observations led them to discover the length, very nearly, of the sidereal year, which they made to consist of 365 days, every fourth year adding one day, making the number for that year 366. They also divided the year into twelve months of thirty days each, adding five days to complete the year. This was the calendar that Julius Cæsar introduced into the Roman Empire, and which, slightly reformed by Pope Gregory XIII. in 1582, has been the system employed by almost all the civilized world up to the present day.
The Greeks accounted for the early rise of the science of geometry among the Egyptians by reference to the necessity they were under each year of re-establishing the boundaries of their fields--the inundation obliterating old landmarks and divisions. The science thus forced upon their attention was cultivated with zeal and success. A single papyrus has been discovered that holds twelve geometrical theorems.
Arithmetic was necessarily brought into requisition in solving astronomical and geometrical problems. We ourselves are debtors to the ancient Egyptians for much of our mathematical knowledge, which has come to us from the banks of the Nile, through the Greeks and the Saracens.
MEDICINE AND THE ART OF EMBALMING.--The custom of embalming the dead, affording opportunities for the examination of the body, without doubt had a great influence upon the development of the sciences of anatomy and medicine among the Egyptians. That the embalmers were physicians, we know from various testimonies. Thus we are told in the Bible that Joseph "commanded the physicians to embalm his father." The Egyptian doctors had a very great reputation among the ancients.
Every doctor was a specialist, and was not allowed to take charge of cases outside of his own branch. As the artist was forbidden to change the lines of the sacred statues, so the physician was not permitted to treat cases save in the manner prescribed by the customs of the past; and if he were so presumptuous as to depart from the established mode of treatment, and the patient died, he was adjudged guilty of murder. Many drugs and medicines were used; the ciphers, or characters, employed by modern apothecaries to designate grains and drams are of Egyptian invention.
The Egyptians believed that after a long lapse of time, several thousand years, the departed soul would return to earth and reanimate its former body; hence their custom of preserving the body by means of embalmment. In the processes of embalming, the physicians made use of oils, resin, bitumen, and various aromatic gums. The body was swathed in bandages of linen, while the face was sometimes gilded, or covered with a gold mask. As this, which was the "most approved method" of embalming, was very costly, the expense being equivalent probably to $1000 of our money, the bodies of the poorer classes were simply "salted and dried," wrapped in coarse mats, and laid in tiers in great trenches in the desert sands.
Only a few years ago (in 1881) the mummies of Thothmes III., Seti I., and Rameses II., together with those of nearly all of the other Pharaohs of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, Twentieth, and Twenty-first Dynasties, were found in a secret cave near Thebes. It seems that, some time in the 12th century B.C., a sudden alarm caused these bodies to be taken hastily from the royal tombs of which we have spoken (see p. 31), and secreted in this hidden chamber. When the danger had passed, the place of concealment had evidently been forgotten; so the bodies were never restored to their ancient tombs, but remained in this secret cavern to be discovered in our own day.
The mummies were taken to the Boulak Museum, at Cairo, where they were identified by means of the inscriptions upon the cases and wrappings. Among others the body of Seti I. and that of Rameses II. were unbandaged (1886), so that now we may look upon the faces of the greatest and most renowned of the Pharaohs. The faces of both Seti and Rameses are so remarkably preserved, that "were their subjects to return to earth to-day they could not fail to recognize their old sovereigns." Both are strong faces, of Semitic cast, that of Rameses bearing a striking resemblance to that of his father Seti, and both closely resembling their portrait statues and profiles. Professor Maspero, the director-general of the excavations and antiquities of Egypt, in his official report of the uncovering of the mummies, writes as follows of the appearance of the face of Rameses: "The face of the mummy gives a fair idea of the face of the living king. The expression is unintellectual, perhaps slightly animal; but even under the somewhat grotesque disguise of mummification, there is plainly to be seen an air of sovereign majesty, of resolve, and of pride." [Footnote: On the finding and identification of the Pharaohs, consult two excellent articles in The Century Magazine for May, 1887.]
III. CHALDÆA
1. POLITICAL HISTORY.
BASIN OF THE TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES.-The northern part of the Tigris and Euphrates valley, the portion that comprised ancient Assyria, consists of undulating plains, broken in places by considerable mountain ridges.
But all the southern portion of the basin, the part known as Chaldæa, or Babylonia, having been formed by the gradual encroachment of the deposits of the Tigris and Euphrates upon the waters of the Persian Gulf, is as level as the sea. During a large part of the year, rains are infrequent; hence agriculture is dependent mainly upon artificial irrigation. The distribution of the waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates was secured, in ancient times, by a stupendous system of canals and irrigants, which, at the present day, in a sand-choked and ruined condition, spread like a perfect network over the face of the country (see cut, p. 41).
The productions of Babylonia are very like those of the Nile valley. The luxuriant growth of grain upon these alluvial flats excited the wonder of all the Greek travellers who visited the East. Herodotus will not tell the whole truth, for fear his veracity may be doubted. The soil is as fertile now as in the time of the historian; but owing to the neglect of the ancient canals, the greater part of this once populous district has been converted into alternating areas of marsh and desert.
THE THREE GREAT MONARCHIES.--Within the Tigris-Euphrates basin, three great empires--the Chaldæan, the Assyrian, and the Babylonian-- successively rose to prominence and dominion. Each, in turn, not only extended its authority over the valley, but also made the power of its arms felt throughout the adjoining regions. We shall now trace the rise and the varied fortunes of these empires, and the slow growth of the arts and sciences from rude beginnings among the early Chaldæans to their fuller and richer development under the Assyrian and Babylonian monarchies.
THE CHALDÆANS A MIXED PEOPLE.--In the earliest times Lower Chaldæa was known as Shumir, the Shinar of the Bible, while Upper Chaldæa bore the name of Accad. The original inhabitants were conjecturally of Turanian race, and are called Accadians.
These people laid the basis of civilization in the Euphrates valley, so that with them the history of Asian culture begins. They brought with them into the valley the art of hieroglyphical writing, which later developed into the well-known cuneiform system. They also had quite an extensive literature, and had made considerable advance in the art of building.
The civilization of the Accadians was given a great impulse by the arrival of a Semitic people. These foreigners were nomadic in habits, and altogether much less cultured than the Accadians. Gradually, however, they adopted the arts and literature of the people among whom they had settled; yet they retained their own language, which in the course of time superseded the less perfect Turanian speech of the original inhabitants; consequently the mixed people, known later as Chaldæans, that arose from the blending of the two races, spoke a language essentially the same as that used by their northern neighbors, the Semitic Assyrians.
SARGON (SHARRUKIN) I. (3800? B.C.).--We know scarcely anything about the political affairs of the Accadians until after the arrival of the Semites. Then, powerful kings, sometimes of Semitic and then again of Turanian, or Accadian origin, appear ruling in the cities of Accad and Shumir, and the political history of Chaldæa begins.
The first prominent monarch is called Sargon I. (Sharrukin), a Semitic king of Agade, one of the great early cities. An inscription recently deciphered makes this king to have reigned as early as 3800 B.C. He appears to have been the first great organizer of the peoples of the Chaldæan plains.
Yet not as a warrior, but as a patron and protector of letters, is Sargon's name destined to a sure place in history. He classified and translated into the Semitic, or Assyrian tongue the religious, mythological, and astronomical literature of the Accadians, and deposited the books in great libraries, which he established or enlarged,--the oldest and most valuable libraries of the ancient world. The scholar Sayce calls him the Chaldæan Solomon.
CONQUEST OF CHALDÆA BY THE ELAMITES (2286 B.C.).--While the Chaldæan kings were ruling in the great cities of Lower Babylonia, the princes of the Elamites, a people of Turanian race, were setting up a rival kingdom to the northeast, just at the foot of the hills of Persia.
In the year 2286 B.C., a king of Elam, Kudur-Nakhunta by name, overran Chaldæa, took all the cities founded by Sargon and his successors, and from the temples bore off in triumph to his capital, Susa, the statues of the Chaldæan gods, and set up in these lowland regions what is known as the Elamite Dynasty.
More than sixteen hundred years after this despoiling of the Chaldæan sanctuaries, a king of Nineveh captured the city of Susa, and finding there these stolen statues, caused them to be restored to their original temples.
The Chedorlaomer of Genesis, whose contact with the history of the Jewish patriarch Abraham has caused his name to be handed down to our own times in the records of the Hebrew people, is believed to have been the son and successor of Kudur-Nakhunta.
CHALDÆA ECLIPSED BY ASSYRIA.--After the Elamite princes had maintained a more or less perfect dominion over the cities of Chaldæa for two or three centuries, their power seems to have declined; and then for several centuries longer, down to about 1300 B.C., dynasties and kings of which we know very little as yet, ruled the country.
During this period, Babylon, gradually rising into prominence, overshadowed the more ancient Accadian cities, and became the leading city of the land. From it the whole country was destined, later, to draw the name by which it is best known--Babylonia.
Meanwhile a Semitic power had been slowly developing in the north. This was the Assyrian empire, the later heart and centre of which was the great city of Nineveh. For a long time Assyria was simply a province or dependency of the lower kingdom; but about 1300 B.C., the Assyrian monarch Tiglathi-nin conquered Babylonia, and Assyria assumed the place that had been so long held by Chaldæa. From this time on to the fall of Nineveh in 606 B.C., the monarchs of this country virtually controlled the affairs of Western Asia.
2. ARTS AND GENERAL CULTURE
TOWER-TEMPLES.--In the art of building, the Chaldæans, though their edifices fall far short of attaining the perfection exhibited by the earliest Egyptian structures, displayed no inconsiderable architectural knowledge and skill.
The most important of their constructions were their tower-temples. These were simple in plan, consisting of two or three terraces, or stages, placed one upon another so as to form a sort of rude pyramid. The material used in their construction was chiefly sun-dried brick. The edifice was sometimes protected by outer courses of burnt brick. The temple proper surmounted the upper platform.
All these tower-temples have crumbled into vast mounds, with only here and there a projecting mass of masonry to distinguish them from natural hills, for which they were at first mistaken.
CUNEIFORM WRITING.--We have already mentioned the fact that the Accadians, when they entered the Euphrates valley, were in possession of a system of writing. This was a simple pictorial, or hieroglyphical system, which they gradually developed into the cuneiform.
In the cuneiform system, the characters, instead of being formed of unbroken lines, are composed of wedge-like marks; hence the name (from cuneus, a wedge). This form, according to the scholar Sayce, arose when the Accadians, having entered the low country, substituted tablets of clay for the papyrus or other similar material which they had formerly used. The characters were impressed upon the soft tablet by means of a triangular writing-instrument, which gave them their peculiar wedge-shaped form.
The cuneiform mode of writing, improved and simplified by the Assyrians and the Persians, was in use about two thousand years, being employed by the nations in and near the Euphrates basin, down to the time of the conquest of the East by the Macedonians.
BOOKS AND LIBRARIES.--The books of the Chaldæans were in general clay tablets, varying in length from one inch to twelve inches, and being about one inch thick. Those holding records of special importance, after having been once written over and baked, were covered with a thin coating of clay, and then the matter was written in duplicate and the tablets again baked. If the outer writing were defaced by accident or altered by design, the removal of the outer coating would at once show the true text.
The tablets were carefully preserved in great public libraries. Even during the Turanian period, before the Semites had entered the land, one or more of these collections existed in each of the chief cities of Accad and Shumir. "Accad," says Sayce, "was the China of Asia. Almost every one could read and write." Erech was especially renowned for its great library, and was known as "the City of Books."
THE RELIGION.--The Accadian religion, as revealed by the tablets, was essentially the same as that held today by the nomadic Turanian tribes of Northern Asia--what is known as Shamanism. It consisted in a belief in good and evil spirits, of which the latter held by far the most prominent place. To avert the malign influence of these wicked spirits, the Accadians had resort to charms and magic rites. The religion of the Semites was a form of Sabæanism,--that is, a worship of the heavenly bodies,--in which the sun was naturally the central object of adoration.
When the Accadians and the Semites intermingled, their religious systems blended to form one of the most influential religions of the world--one which spread far and wide under the form of Baal worship. There were in the perfected system twelve primary gods, at whose head stood Il, or Ra. Besides these great divinities, there were numerous lesser and local deities.
There were features of this old Chaldæan religion which were destined to exert a wide-spread and potent influence upon the minds of men. Out of the Sabæan Semitic element grew astrology, the pretended art of forecasting events by the aspect of the stars, which was most elaborately and ingeniously developed, until the fame of the Chaldæan astrologers was spread throughout the ancient world, while the spell of that art held in thraldom the mind of mediæval Europe.
Out of the Shamanistic element contributed by the Turanian Accadians, grew a system of magic and divination which had a most profound influence not only upon all the Eastern nations, including the Jews, but also upon the later peoples of the West. mediæval magic and witchcraft were, in large part, an unchanged inheritance from Chaldæa.
THE CHALDÆAN GENESIS.--The cosmological myths of the Chaldæans, that is, their stories of the origin of things, are remarkably like the first chapters of Genesis.
The discoveries and patient labors of various scholars have reproduced, in a more or less perfect form, from the legendary tablets, the Chaldæan account of the Creation of the World, of an ancestral Paradise and the Tree of Life with its angel guardians, of the Deluge, and of the Tower of Babel. [Footnote: Consult especially George Smith's The Chaldæan Account of Genesis; see also Records of the Past, Vol. VII. pp. 127, 131.]
THE CHALDÆAN EPIC OF IZDUBAR.--Beside their cosmological myths, the Chaldæans had a vast number of so-called heroic and nature myths. The most noted of these form what is known as the Epic of Izdubar (Nimrod?), which is doubtless the oldest epic of the race. This is in twelve parts, and is really a solar myth, which recounts the twelve labors of the sun in his yearly passage through the twelve signs of the Chaldæan zodiac.
This epic was carried to the West, by the way of Phoenicia and Asia Minor, and played a great part in the mythology of the Greeks and Romans. "The twelve labors of Heracles may be traced back to the adventures of Gisdhubar [Izdubar] as recorded in the twelve books of the great epic of Chaldæa." (Sayce.)
SCIENCE.--In astronomy and arithmetic the Chaldæans made substantial progress. The clear sky and unbroken horizon of the Chaldæan plains, lending an unusually brilliant aspect to the heavens, naturally led the Chaldæans to the study of the stars. They early divided the zodiac into twelve signs, and named the zodiacal constellations, a memorial of their astronomical attainments which will remain forever inscribed upon the great circle of the heavens; they foretold eclipses, constructed sun-dials of various patterns, divided the year into twelve months, and the day and night into twelve hours each, and invented or devised the week of seven days, the number of days in the week being determined by the course of the moon. "The 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th days of the lunar month were kept like the Jewish Sabbath, and were actually so named in Assyria."
In arithmetic, also, the Chaldæans made considerable advance. A tablet has been found which contains the squares and cubes of the numbers from one to sixty.
CONCLUSION.-This hasty glance at the beginnings of civilization among the primitive peoples of the Euphrates valley, will serve to give us at least some little idea of how much modern culture owes to the old Chaldæans. We may say that Chaldæa was one of the main sources--Egypt was the other--of the stream of universal history.
IV. ASSYRIA
1. POLITICAL HISTORY.
TIGLATH-PILESER I. (1130-1110 B.C.).--It is not until about two centuries after the conquest of Chaldæa by the Assyrian prince Tiglathi-Nin (see p. 43), that we find a sovereign of renown at the head of Assyrian affairs. This was Tiglath-Pileser I., who came to the throne about 1130 B.C. The royal records detail at great length his numerous war expeditions, and describe minutely the great temples which he constructed.
For the two centuries following the reign of Tiglath-Pileser, Assyria is quite lost to history; then it is again raised into prominence by two or three strong kings; after which it once more almost "drops below the historical horizon."
TIGLATH-PILESER II. (745-727 B.C.).--With this king, who was a usurper, begins what is known as the Second Empire. He was a man of great energy and of undoubted military talent,--for by him the Assyrian power was once more extended over the greater part of Southwestern Asia.
But what renders the reign of this king a landmark in Assyrian history, is the fact that he was not a mere conqueror like his predecessors, but a political organizer of great capacity. He laid the basis of the power and glory of the great kings who followed him upon the Assyrian throne.
SARGON (722-705 B.C.).--Sargon was one of the greatest conquerors and builders of the Second Empire. In 722 B.C., he took Samaria and carried away the Ten Tribes into captivity beyond the Tigris. The larger part of the captives were scattered among the Median towns, where they became so mingled with the native population as to be inquired after even to this day as the "lost tribes."
During this reign the Egyptians and their allies, in the first encounter (the battle of Raphia, 720 B.C.) between the empires of the Euphrates and the Nile valley, suffered a severe defeat, and the ancient kingdom of the Pharaohs became tributary to Assyria.
Sargon was a famous builder. Near the foot of the Persian hills he founded a large city, which he named for himself; and there he erected a royal residence, described in the inscriptions as "a palace of incomparable magnificence," the site of which is now preserved by the vast mounds of Khorsabad.
SENNACHERIB (705-681 B.C.).--Sennacherib, the son of Sargon, came to the throne 705 B.C. We must accord to him the first place of renown among all the great names of the Assyrian Empire. His name, connected as it is with the story of the Jews, and with many of the most wonderful discoveries among the ruined palaces of Nineveh, has become as familiar to the ear as that of Nebuchadnezzar in the story of Babylon.
The fulness of the royal inscriptions of this reign enables us to permit Sennacherib to tell us in his own words of his great works and military expeditions. Respecting the decoration of Nineveh, he says: "I raised again all the edifices of Nineveh, my royal city; I reconstructed all its old streets, and widened those that were too narrow. I have made the whole town a city shining like the sun."
Concerning an expedition against Hezekiah, king of Judah, he says: "I took forty-six of his strong fenced cities; and of the smaller towns which were scattered about I took and plundered a countless number. And from these places I captured and carried off as spoil 200,150 people, old and young, male and female, together with horses and mares, asses and camels, oxen and sheep, a countless multitude. And Hezekiah himself I shut up in Jerusalem, his capital city, like a bird in a cage, building towers round the city to hem him in, and raising banks of earth against the gates, so as to prevent escape." [Footnote: Rawlinson's Ancient Monarchies, Vol. II. p. 161.]
While Sennacherib was besieging Jerusalem, the king of Egypt appeared in the field in the south with aid for Hezekiah. This caused Sennacherib to draw off his forces from the siege to meet the new enemy; but near the frontiers of Egypt the Assyrian host, according to the Hebrew account, was smitten by "the angel of the Lord," [Footnote: This expression is a Hebraism, meaning often any physical cause of destruction, as a plague or storm. In the present case, the destroying agency was probably a pestilence. ] and the king returned with a shattered army and without glory to his capital, Nineveh.
Sennacherib employed the closing years of his reign in the digging of canals, and in the erection of a splendid palace at Nineveh. He was finally murdered by his own sons.
ASSHUR-BANI-PAL (668-626? B.C.).--This king, the Sardanapalus of the Greeks, is distinguished for his magnificent patronage of art and literature. During his reign Assyria enjoyed her Augustan age.
But Asshur-bani-pal was also possessed of a warlike spirit. He broke to pieces, with terrible energy, in swift campaigns, the enemies of his empire. All the scenes of his sieges and battles he caused to be sculptured on the walls of his palace at Nineveh. These pictured panels are now in the British Museum. They are a perfect Iliad in stone.
SARACUS OR ESARHADDON II. (?-606 B.C.).--Saracus was the last of the long line of Assyrian kings. His reign was filled with misfortunes for himself and his kingdom. For nearly or quite seven centuries the Ninevite kings had lorded it over the East. There was scarcely a state in all Western Asia that had not, during this time, felt the weight of their conquering arms; scarcely a people that had not suffered their cruel punishments, or tasted the bitterness of their servitude.
But now swift misfortunes were bearing down upon the oppressor from every quarter. The Scythian hordes, breaking through the mountain gates on the north, spread a new terror throughout the upper Assyrian provinces; from the mountain defiles on the east issued the armies of the recent-grown empire of the Aryan Medes, led by the renowned Cyaxares; from the southern lowlands, anxious to aid in the overthrow of the hated oppressor, the Babylonians, led by the youthful Nebuchadnezzar, the son of the traitor viceroy Nabopolassar, joined, it appears, the Medes as allies, and together they laid close siege to the Assyrian capital.
The operations of the besiegers seem to have been aided by an unusual inundation of the Tigris, which undermined a section of the city walls. At all events the place was taken, and dominion passed away forever from the proud capital [Footnote: Saracus, in his despair, is said to have erected a funeral pyre within one of the courts of his palace, and, mounting the pile with the members of his family, to have perished with them in the flames; but this is doubtless a poetical embellishment of the story.] (606 B.C.). Two hundred years later, when Xenophon with his Ten Thousand Greeks, in his memorable retreat (see p. 156), passed the spot, the once great city was a crumbling mass of ruins, of which he could not even learn the name.
2. RELIGION, ARTS, AND GENERAL CULTURE
RELIGION.--The Assyrians were Semites, and as such they possessed the deep religious spirit that has always distinguished the peoples of this family. In this respect they were very much like the Hebrews. The wars which the Assyrian monarchs waged were not alone wars of conquest, but were, in a certain sense, crusades made for the purpose of extending the worship and authority of the gods of Assyria. They have been likened to the wars of the Hebrew kings, and again to the conquests of the Saracens.
As with the wars, so was it with the architectural works of these sovereigns. Greater attention, indeed, was paid to the palace in Assyria than in Babylonia; yet the inscriptions, as well as the ruins, of the upper country attest that the erection and adornment of the temples of the gods were matters of anxious and constant care on the part of the Assyrian monarchs. Their accounts of the construction and dedication of temples for their gods afford striking parallels to the Bible account of the building of the temple at Jerusalem by King Solomon.
Not less prominently manifested is the religious spirit of these kings in what we may call their sacred literature, which is filled with prayers singularly like those of the Old Testament.
As to the Assyrian deities and their worship, these were in all their essential characteristics so similar to those of the later Chaldæan system, already described (see p. 45), that any detailed account of them here is unnecessary. One difference, however, in the two systems should be noted. The place occupied by Il, or Ra, as the head of the Chaldæan deities, is in Assyria given to the national god Asshur, whose emblem was a winged circle with the figure of a man within, the whole perhaps symbolizing, according to Rawlinson, eternity, omnipresence, and wisdom.
CRUELTY OF THE ASSYRIANS.--The Assyrians have been called the "Romans of Asia." They were a proud, martial, cruel, and unrelenting race. Although possessing, as we have just noticed, a deep and genuine religious feeling, still the Assyrian monarchs often displayed in their treatment of prisoners the disposition of savages. In common with most Asiatics, they had no respect for the body, but subjected captives to the most terrible mutilations. The sculptured marbles taken from the palaces exhibit the cruel tortures inflicted upon prisoners; kings are being led before their conqueror by means of hooks thrust through one or both lips; [Footnote: See 2 Chron. xxxiii. 10-13 (Revised Version).] other prisoners are being flayed alive; the eyes of some are being bored out with the point of a spear; and still others are having their tongues torn out.
An inscription by Asshur-nazir-pal, found in one of the palaces at Nimrud, runs as follows: "Their men, young and old, I took prisoners. Of some I cut off the feet and hands; of others I cut off the noses, ears, and lips; of the young men's ears I made a heap; of the old men's heads I built a tower. I exposed their heads as a trophy in front of their city. The male children and the female children I burned in the flames."
ROYAL SPORTS.--The Assyrian king gloried in being, like the great Nimrod, "a mighty hunter before the Lord." The monuments are covered with sculptures that represent the king engaged in the favorite royal sport. Asshur-nazir-pal had at Nineveh a menagerie, or hunting-park, filled with various animals, many of which were sent him as tribute by vassal princes.
REMAINS OF ASSYRIAN CITIES.--Enormous grass-grown mounds, enclosed by crumbled ramparts, alone mark the sites of the great cities of the Assyrian kings. The character of the remains arises from the nature of the building material. City walls, palaces, and temples were constructed chiefly of sun-dried bricks, so that the generation that raised them had scarcely passed away before they began to sink down into heaps of rubbish. The rains of many centuries have beaten down and deeply furrowed these mounds, while the grass has crept over them and made green alike the palaces of the kings and the temples of the gods. [Footnote: Lying upon the left bank of the Upper Tigris are two enormous mounds surrounded by heavy earthen ramparts, about eight miles in circuit. This is the site of ancient Nineveh, the immense enclosing ridges being the ruined city walls. These ramparts are still, in their crumbled condition, about fifty feet high, and average about one hundred and fifty in width. The lower part of the wall was constructed of solid stone masonry; the upper portion of dried brick. This upper and frailer part, crumbling into earth, has completely buried the stone basement. The Turks of to-day quarry the stone from these old walls for their buildings.]
PALACE-MOUNDS AND PALACES.--In order to give a certain dignity to the royal residence, to secure the fresh breezes, and to render them more easily defended, the Assyrians, as well as the Babylonians and the Persians, built their palaces upon lofty artificial terraces, or platforms. These eminences, which appear like natural, flat-topped hills, were constructed with an almost incredible expenditure of human labor. The great palace-mound at Nineveh, called by the natives Koyunjik, covers an area of one hundred acres, and is from seventy to ninety feet high. Out of the material composing it could be built four pyramids as large as that of Cheops. Upon this mound stood several of the most splendid palaces of the Ninevite kings.
The group of buildings constituting the royal residence was often of enormous extent; the various courts, halls, corridors, and chambers of the Palace of Sennacherib, which surmounted the great platform at Nineveh, covered an area of over ten acres. The palaces were usually one-storied. The walls, constructed chiefly of dried brick, were immensely thick and heavy. The rooms and galleries were plastered with stucco, or panelled with precious woods, or lined with enamelled bricks. The main halls, however, and the great open courts were faced with slabs of alabaster, covered with sculptures and inscriptions, the illustrated narrative of the wars and labors of the monarch. There were two miles of such sculptured panelling at Koyunjik. At the portals of the palace, to guard the approach, were stationed the colossal human-headed bulls.
An important adjunct of the palace was the temple, a copy of the tower- temples of the Chaldæans. Its position is marked at present by a lofty conical mound rising amidst and overlooking the palace ruins.
Upon the decay of the Assyrian palaces, the material forming the upper part of the thick walls completely buried and protected all the lower portion of the structure. In this way their sculptures and inscriptions have been preserved through so many centuries, till brought to light by the recent excavations of French and English antiquarians.
THE ROYAL LIBRARY AT NINEVEH.--Within the palace of Asshur-bani-pal at Nineveh, Layard discovered what is known as the Royal Library. There were two chambers, the floors of which were heaped with books, like the Chaldæan tablets already described, The number of books in the collection has been estimated at ten thousand. The writing upon some of the tablets is so minute that it cannot be read without the aid of a magnifying glass. We learn from the inscriptions that a librarian had charge of the collection. Catalogues of the books have been found, made out on clay tablets. The library was open to the public, for an inscription says, "I [Asshur-bani-pal] wrote upon the tablets; I placed them in my palace for the instruction of my people."
Asshur-bani-pal, as we have already learned, was the Augustus of Assyria. It was under his patronage and direction that most of the books were prepared and placed in the Ninevite collection. The greater part of these were copies of older Chaldæan tablets; for the literature of the Assyrians, as well as their arts and sciences, was borrowed almost in a body from the Chaldæans. All the old libraries of the low country were ransacked, and copies of their tablets made for the Royal Library at Nineveh. Rare treasures were secured from the libraries founded or enlarged by Sargon of Agade (see p. 42). In this way was preserved the most valuable portion of the early Chaldæan literature, which would otherwise have been lost to the world.
The tablets embrace a great variety of subjects; the larger part, however, are lexicons and treatises on grammar, and various other works intended as text-books for scholars. Perhaps the most curious of the tablets yet found are notes issued by the government, and made redeemable in gold and silver on presentation at the king's treasury.
From one part of the library, which seems to have been the archives proper, were taken copies of treaties, reports of officers of the government, deeds, wills, mortgages, and contracts. One tablet, known as "the Will of Sennacherib," conveys to certain priests some personal property to be held in trust for one of his sons. This is the oldest will in existence.
V. BABYLONIA
BABYLONIAN AFFAIRS FROM 1300 TO 625 B.C.--During the six centuries and more that intervened between the conquest of the old Chaldæan monarchy by the Assyrian king Tiglathi-Nin and the successful revolt of the low countries under Nabopolassar (see pp. 43, 51), the Babylonian peoples bore the Assyrian yoke very impatiently. Again and again they made violent efforts to throw it off; and in several instances they succeeded, and for a time enjoyed home rulers. But for the most part the whole country as far as the "Sea," as the Persian Gulf is called in the inscriptions, was a dependency of the great overshadowing empire of the north.
NABOPOLASSAR (625-604 B.C.).--Nabopolassar was the first king of what is called the New Babylonian Monarchy. When troubles and misfortunes began to thicken about the last Assyrian king, Saracus, he intrusted to the care of Nabopolassar, as his viceroy, the towns and provinces of the South. The chance now presented of obtaining a crown proved too great a temptation for the satrap's fidelity to his master. He revolted and became independent (625 B.C.). Later, he entered into an alliance with the Median king, Cyaxares, against his former sovereign (see p. 51). Through the overthrow of Nineveh and the break-up of the Assyrian Empire, the new Babylonian kingdom received large accessions of territory.
NEBUCHADNEZZAR (604-561 B.C.).--Nabopolassar was followed by his renowned son Nebuchadnezzar, whose oppressive wars and gigantic architectural works rendered Babylon at once the scourge and the wonder of the ancient world.
Jerusalem, having repeatedly revolted, was finally taken and sacked. The temple was stripped of its sacred vessels of silver and gold, which were carried away to Babylon, and the temple itself with the adjoining palace was given to the flames; the people, save a miserable remnant, were also borne away into the "Great Captivity" (586 B.C.).
With Jerusalem subdued, Nebuchadnezzar pushed with all his forces the siege of the Phoenician city of Tyre, whose investment had been commenced several years before. In striking language the prophet Ezekiel (ch. xxix. 18) describes the length and hardness of the siege: "Every head was made bald, and every shoulder was peeled." After a siege of thirteen years, the city seems to have fallen into the hands of the Babylonian king, and his authority was now undisputed from the Zagros Mountains to the Mediterranean.
The numerous captives of his many wars, embracing peoples of almost every nation in Western Asia, enabled Nebuchadnezzar to rival even the Pharaohs in the execution of enormous works requiring an immense expenditure of human labor: Among his works were the Great Palace in the royal quarter of the city; the celebrated Hanging Gardens; and gigantic reservoirs, canals, and various engineering works, embracing a vast system of irrigation that reached every part of Babylonia.
In addition to all these works, the indefatigable monarch seems to have either rebuilt or repaired almost every city and temple throughout the entire country. There are said to be at least a hundred sites in the tract immediately about Babylon which give evidence, by inscribed bricks bearing his legend, of the marvellous activity and energy of this monarch.
In the midst of all these gigantic undertakings, surrounded by a brilliant court of councillors and flatterers, the reason of the king was suddenly and mysteriously clouded. [Footnote: "Nebuchadnezzar fell a victim to that mental aberration which has often proved the penalty of despotism, but in the strange and degrading form to which physicians have given the name of lycanthropy; in which the patient, fancying himself a beast, rejects clothing and ordinary food, and even (as in this case) the shelter of a roof, ceases to use articulate speech, and sometimes persists in going on all-fours."--Smith's Ancient History of the East, p. 357.] After a period the cloud passed away, "the glory of his kingdom, his honor, and brightness returned unto him." But it was the splendor of the evening; for the old monarch soon after died at the age of eighty, worn out by the toils and cares of a reign of forty-three years, the longest, most memorable, and instructive in the annals of the Babylonian or Assyrian kings.
THE FALL OF BABYLON.--In 555 B.C., Nabonadius, the last king of Babylon, began his reign. He seems to have associated with himself in the government his son Belshazzar, who shared with his father the duties and honors of royalty, apparently on terms of equal co-sovereignty.
To the east of the valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates, beyond the ranges of the Zagros, there had been growing up an Aryan kingdom, the Medo-Persian, which, at the time now reached by us, had excited by its aggressive spirit the alarm of all the nations of Western Asia. For purposes of mutual defence, the king of Babylon, and Croesus, the well- known monarch of Lydia, a state of Asia Minor, formed an alliance against Cyrus, the strong and ambitious sovereign of the Medes and Persians. This league awakened the resentment of Cyrus, and, after punishing Croesus and depriving him of his kingdom (see p. 75), he collected his forces to chastise the Babylonian king.
Anticipating the attack, Nabonadius had strengthened the defences of Babylon, and stationed around it supporting armies. But he was able to avert the fatal blow for only a few years. Risking a battle in the open field, his army was defeated, and the gates of the capital were thrown open to the Persians (538 B.C.). [Footnote: The device of turning the Euphrates, which Herodotus makes an incident of the siege, was not resorted to by Cyrus; but it seems that a little later (in 521-519 B.C.), the city, having revolted, was actually taken in this way by the Persian king Darius. Herodotus confused the two events.]
With the fall of Babylon, the sceptre of dominion, borne for so many years by Semitic princes, was given into the hands of the Aryan peoples, who were destined, from this time forward, to shape the course of events, and control the affairs of civilization.
THE GREAT EDIFICES OF BABYLON.--The deep impression which Babylon produced upon the early Greek travellers was made chiefly by her vast architectural works,--her temples, palaces, elevated gardens, and great walls. The Hanging Gardens of Nebuchadnezzar and the walls of the city were reckoned among the wonders of the world.
The Babylonians, like their predecessors the Chaldæans, accorded to the sacred edifice the place of pre-eminence among their architectural works. Sacred architecture in the time of Nebuchadnezzar had changed but little from the early Chaldæan models (see p. 44); save that the temples were now larger and more splendid, being made, in the language of the inscriptions, "to shine like the sun." The celebrated Temple of the Seven Spheres, at Borsippa, a suburb of Babylon, may serve as a representative of the later Babylonian temples. This structure was a vast pyramid, rising in seven consecutive stages, or platforms, to a height of over one hundred and fifty feet. Each of the stages was dedicated to one of the seven planets, or spheres. (The sun and moon were reckoned as planets.) The stages sacred to the sun and moon were covered respectively with plates of gold and silver. The chapel, or shrine proper, surmounted the uppermost stage. An inscribed cylinder discovered under the corner of one of the stages (the Babylonians always buried records beneath the corners of their public edifices), informs us that this temple was a restoration by Nebuchadnezzar of a very ancient one, which in his day had become, from "extreme old age," a heap of rubbish. This edifice in its decay has left one of the grandest and most impressive ruins in all the East.
The Babylonian palaces and palace-mounds, in all essential features, were like those of the Assyrians, already described.
The so-called Hanging Gardens excited the greatest admiration of the ancient Greek visitors to Babylon. They were constructed by Nebuchadnezzar, to please his wife Amytis, who, tired of the monotony of the Babylonian plains, longed for the mountain scenery of her native Media. The gardens were probably built somewhat in the form of the tower- temples, the successive stages being covered with earth, and beautified with rare plants and trees, so as to simulate the appearance of a mountain rising in cultivated terraces towards the sky.
Under the later kings, Babylon was surrounded with stupendous walls. Herodotus affirms that these defences enclosed an area just fourteen miles square. A recently discovered inscription corroborates the statement of the historian. The object in enclosing such an enormous district seems to have been to bring sufficient arable ground within the defences to support the inhabitants in case of a protracted siege. No certain traces of these great ramparts can now be found.
VI. THE HEBREWS
THE PATRIARCHAL AGE.--Hebrew history begins with the departure of Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees, about 2000 B.C. The story of Abraham and his nephew Lot, of Isaac and his sons Jacob and Esau, of the sojourn of the descendants of Jacob in Egypt, of the Exodus, of the conquest of Canaan and the apportionment of the land among the twelve tribes of Israel,--all this marvellous story is told in the Hebrew Scriptures with a charm and simplicity that have made it the familiar possession of childhood.
THE JUDGES (from about 1300 to 1095 B.C.).--Along period of anarchy and dissension followed the conquest and settlement of Canaan by the Hebrews. "There was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes." During this time there arose a line of national heroes, such as Gideon, Jephthah, and Samson, whose deeds of valor and daring, and the timely deliverance they wrought for the tribes of Israel from their foes, caused their names to be handed down with grateful remembrance to following ages.
These popular leaders were called Judges because they usually exercised judicial functions, acting as arbiters between the different tribes, as well as between man and man. Their exploits are narrated in the Book of Judges, which is a collection of the fragmentary, yet always interesting, traditions of this early and heroic period of the nation's life. The last of the Judges was Samuel, whose life embraces the close of the anarchical age and the beginning of the monarchy.
FOUNDING OF THE HEBREW MONARCHY (about 1095 B.C.).--During the period of the Judges, the tribes of Israel were united by no central government. Their union was nothing more than a league, or confederation, which has been compared to the Saxon Heptarchy in England. But the common dangers to which they were exposed from the attacks of the half-subdued Canaanitish tribes about them, and the example of the great kingdoms of Egypt and Assyria, led the people to begin to think of the advantages of a closer union and a stronger government. Consequently the republic, or confederation, was changed into a kingdom, and Saul, of the tribe of Benjamin, a man chosen in part because of his commanding stature and royal aspect, was made king of the new monarchy (about 1095 B.C.).
The king was successful in subduing the enemies of the Hebrews, and consolidated the tribes and settled the affairs of the new state. But towards the close of his reign, his reason became disturbed: fits of gloom and despondency passed into actual insanity, which clouded the closing years of his life. At last he and his three sons fell in battle with the Philistines upon Mount Gilboa (about 1055 B.C.).
THE REIGN OF DAVID (about 1055-1015 B.C.).--Upon the death of Saul, David, son of Jesse, of the tribe of Judah, who had been previously anointed and encouraged to expect the crown by the prophet Samuel, assumed the sceptre. This warlike king transformed the pastoral and half-civilized tribes into a conquering people, and, in imitation of the monarchs of the Nile and the Euphrates, extended the limits of his empire in every direction, and waged wars of extermination against the troublesome tribes of Moab and Edom.
Poet as well as warrior, David enriched the literature of his own nation and of the world with lyric songs that breathe such a spirit of devotion and trust that they have been ever since his day the source of comfort and inspiration to thousands. [Footnote: The authorship of the different psalms is a matter of debate, yet critics are very nearly agreed in ascribing the composition of at least a considerable number of them to David.] He had in mind to build at Jerusalem, his capital city, a magnificent temple, and spent the latter years of his life in collecting material for this purpose. In dying, he left the crown to Solomon, his youngest son, his eldest, Absalom, having been slain in a revolt against his father, and the second, Adonijah, having been excluded from the succession for a similar crime.
THE REIGN OF SOLOMON (about 1015-975 B.C.).--Solomon did not possess his father's talent for military affairs, but was a liberal patron of architecture, commerce, and learning. He erected, with the utmost magnificence of adornment, the temple at Jerusalem, planned by his father David. King Hiram of Tyre, who was a close friend of the Hebrew monarch, aided him in this undertaking by supplying him with the celebrated cedar of Lebanon, and with Tyrian architects, the most skilled workmen at that time in the world. The dedication ceremonies upon the completion of the building were most imposing and impressive. Thenceforth this temple was the centre of the Jewish worship and of the national life.
For the purpose of extending his commerce, Solomon built fleets upon the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. The most remote regions of Asia and Africa were visited by his ships, and their rich and wonderful products made to contribute to the wealth and glory of his kingdom.
Solomon maintained one of the most magnificent courts ever held by an oriental sovereign. When the Queen of Sheba, attracted by the reports of his glory, came from Southern Arabia to visit the monarch, she exclaimed, "The half was not told me." He was the wisest king of the East. His proverbs are famous specimens of sententious wisdom. He was versed, too, in botany, being acquainted with plants and trees "from the hyssop upon the wall to the cedar of Lebanon."
But wise as was Solomon in his words, his life was far from being either admirable or prudent. In conformity with Asiatic custom, he had many wives--seven hundred, we are told--of different nationalities and religions. Through their persuasion the old monarch himself fell into idolatry, which turned from him the affections of his best subjects, and prepared the way for the dissensions and wars that followed his death.
THE DIVISION OF THE KINGDOM (about 975 B.C.).--The reign of Solomon was brilliant, yet disastrous in the end to the Hebrew monarchy. In order to carry on his vast undertakings, he had laid most oppressive taxes upon his people. When Rehoboam, his son, succeeded to his father's place, the people entreated him to lighten the taxes that were making their very lives a burden. Influenced by young and unwise counsellors, he replied to the petition with haste and insolence: "My father," said he, "chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions." Immediately all the tribes, save Judah and Benjamin, rose in revolt, and succeeded in setting up, to the north of Jerusalem, a rival kingdom, with Jeroboam as its first king. This northern state, with Samaria as its capital, became known as the Kingdom of Israel; the southern, of which Jerusalem remained the capital, was called the Kingdom of Judah.
Thus was torn in twain the empire of David and Solomon. United, the tribes might have maintained an empire capable of offering successful resistance to the encroachments of the powerful and ambitious monarchs about them. But now the land becomes an easy prey to the spoiler. It is henceforth the pathway of the conquering armies of the Nile and the Euphrates. Between the powerful monarchies of these regions, as between an upper and nether millstone, the little kingdoms are destined, one after the other, to be ground to pieces.
THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL (975?-722 B.C.).--The kingdom of the Ten Tribes maintained an existence for about two hundred and fifty years. Its story is instructive and sad. Many passages of its history are recitals of the struggles between the pure worship of Jehovah and the idolatrous service of the deities introduced from the surrounding nations. The cause of the religion of Jehovah, as the tribes of Israel had received it from the patriarch Abraham and the lawgiver Moses, was boldly espoused and upheld by a line of the most remarkable teachers and prophets produced by the Hebrew race, among whom Elijah and Elisha stand preeminent.
The little kingdom was at last overwhelmed by the Assyrian power. This happened 722 B.C., when Samaria, as we have already narrated in the history of Assyria, was captured by Sargon, king of Nineveh, and the Ten Tribes were carried away into captivity beyond the Euphrates (see p. 48). From this time they are quite lost to history.
The country, left nearly vacant by this wholesale deportation of its inhabitants, was filled with other subjects or captives of the Assyrian king. The descendants of these, mingled with the few Jews of the poorer class that were still left in the country, formed the Samaritans of the time of Christ.
THE KINGDOM OF JUDAH (975?-586 B.C.).--This little kingdom, torn by internal religious dissensions, as was its rival kingdom of the north, and often on the very verge of ruin from Egyptian or Assyrian armies, maintained an independent existence for about four centuries. During this period, a line of eighteen kings, of most diverse character, sat upon the throne. Upon the extension of the power of Babylon to the west, Jerusalem was forced to acknowledge the suzerainty of the Babylonian kings.
The kingdom at last shared the fate of its northern rival. Nebuchadnezzar, in revenge for an uprising of the Jews, besieged and captured Jerusalem, and carried away a large part of the people, and their king Zedekiah, into captivity at Babylon (see p. 58). This event virtually ended the separate and political life of the Hebrew race (586 B.C.). Henceforth Judah constituted simply a province of the empires--Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman--which successively held sway over the regions of Western Asia, with, however, just one flicker of national life under the Maccabees, during a part of the two centuries preceding the birth of Christ.
It only remains to mention those succeeding events which belong rather to the story of the Jews as a people than as a nation. Upon the capture of Babylon by the Persian king Cyrus (see p. 60), that monarch, who was kindly disposed towards the Jews that he there found captives, permitted them to return to Jerusalem and restore the temple. Jerusalem thus became again the centre of the old Hebrew worship, and, although shorn of national glory, continued to be the sacred centre of the ancient faith till the second generation after Christ. Then, in chastisement for repeated revolts, the city was laid in ruins by the Romans; while vast numbers of the inhabitants--some authorities say over one million--were slain, or perished by famine, and the remnant were driven into exile to different lands.
Thus, by a series of unparalleled calamities and persecutions, the descendants of Abraham were "sifted among all nations"; but to this day they cling with a strange devotion and loyalty to the simple faith of their fathers.
HEBREW RELIGION AND LITERATURE.
The ancient Hebrews made little or no contribution to science. They produced no new order of architecture. In sculpture they did nothing: their religion forbade their making "graven images." Their mission was to teach religion. Here they have been the instructors of the world. Their literature is a religious one; for literature with them was simply a medium for the conveyance of religious instruction and the awakening of devotional feeling.
The Hebrew religion, a pure monotheism, the teachings of a long line of holy men--patriarchs, lawgivers, prophets, and priests--stretching from Abraham down to the fifth century B.C., is contained in the sacred books of the Old Testament Scriptures. In these ancient writings, patriarchal traditions, histories, dramas, poems, prophecies, and personal narratives blend in a wonderful mosaic, which pictures with vivid and grand effect the various migrations, the deliverances, the calamities--all the events and religious experiences in the checkered life of the Chosen People.
Out of this old exclusive, formal Hebrew religion, transformed and spiritualized by the Great Teacher, grew the Christian faith. Out of the Old Testament arose the New, which we should think of as a part of Hebrew literature: for although written in the Greek language, and long after the close of the political life of the Jewish nation, still it is essentially Hebrew in thought and doctrine, and the supplement and crown of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Besides the Sacred Scriptures, called collectively, by way of pre- eminence, the Bible (The Book), it remains to mention especially the Apocrypha, embracing a number of books that were composed after the decline of the prophetic spirit, and which show traces, as indeed do several of the later books of the Bible, of the influence of Persian and Greek thought. These books are generally regarded by the Jews and Protestants as uncanonical, but in the main are considered by the Roman Catholics as possessing equal authority with the other books of the Bible.
Neither should we fail to mention the Talmud, a collection of Hebrew customs and traditions, with the comments thereupon of the rabbis, a work held by most Jews next in sacredness to the Holy Book; the writings of Philo, an illustrious rabbi who lived at Alexandria just before the birth of Christ; and the Antiquities of the Jews and the Jewish Wars by the historian Josephus, who lived and wrote about the time of the taking of Jerusalem by Titus; that is, during the latter part of the first century after Christ.
VII. THE PHOENICIANS
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE.--Ancient Phoenicia embraced a little strip of broken sea-coast lying between the Mediterranean and the ranges of Mount Lebanon. One of the most noted productions of the country was the fine fir-timber cut from the forests that crowned the lofty ranges of the Lebanon Mountains. The "cedar of Lebanon" holds a prominent place both in the history and the poetry of the East.
Another celebrated product of the country was the Tyrian purple, which was obtained from several varieties of the murex, a species of shell-fish, secured at first along the Phoenician coast, but later sought in distant waters, especially in the Grecian seas.
The Phoenicians were of Semitic race, and of close kin to most of the so- called Canaanitish tribes. They were a maritime and trading people.
TYRE AND SIDON.--The various Phoenician cities never coalesced to form a true nation. They simply constituted a sort of league, or confederacy, the petty states of which generally acknowledged the leadership of Tyre or of Sidon, the two chief cities. The place of supremacy in the confederation was at first held by Sidon, but later by Tyre.
From the 11th to the 4th century B.C., Tyre controlled, almost without dispute on the part of Sidon, the affairs of Phoenicia. During this time the maritime enterprise and energy of her merchants spread the fame of the little island-capital throughout the world. She was queen and mistress of the Mediterranean.
During all the last centuries of her existence, Phoenicia was, for the most part, tributary to one or another of the great monarchies about her. She acknowledged in turn the suzerainty of the Assyrian, the Egyptian, the Babylonian, the Persian, and the Macedonian kings. Alexander the Great, after a most memorable siege, captured the city of Tyre--which alone of all the Phoenician cities closed her gates against the conqueror--and reduced it to ruins (332 B.C.). The city never recovered from this blow. The larger part of the site of the once brilliant maritime capital is now "bare as the top of a rock,"--a place where the fishermen that still frequent the spot spread their nets to dry.
PHOENICIAN COMMERCE.--When we catch our first glimpse of the Mediterranean, about 1500 B.C., it is dotted with the sails of Phoenician navigators. It was natural that the people of the Phoenician coast should have been led to a seafaring life. The lofty mountains that back the little strip of shore seemed to shut them out from a career of conquest and to prohibit an extension of their land domains. At the same time, the Mediterranean in front invited them to maritime enterprise; while the forests of Lebanon in the rear offered timber in abundance for their ships. The Phoenicians, indeed, were the first navigators who pushed out boldly from the shore and made real sea voyages.
The longest voyages were made to procure tin, which was in great demand for the manufacture of articles in bronze. The nearest region where this metal was found was the Caucasus, on the eastern shore of the Euxine. The Phoenician sailors boldly threaded the Aegean Archipelago, passed through the Hellespont, braved the unknown terrors of the Black Sea, and from the land of Colchis brought back to the manufacturers of Asia the coveted article.
Towards the close of the 11th century B.C., the jealousy of the Pelasgic states of Greece and of the Archipelago, that were now growing into maritime power, closed the Aegean Sea against the Phoenician navigators. They then pushed out into the Western Mediterranean, and opened the tin- mines of the Iberian (Spanish) peninsula. When these began to fail, these bold sailors passed the Pillars of Hercules, faced the dangers of the Atlantic, and brought back from those distant seas the tin gathered in the mines of Britain.
PHOENICIAN COLONIES.--Along the different routes pursued by their ships, and upon the coasts visited by them, the Phoenicians established naval stations and trading-posts. Settlements were made in Cyprus, in Rhodes, and on other islands of the Aegean Sea, as well as in Greece itself. The shores of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica were fringed with colonies; while the coast of North Africa was dotted with such great cities as Utica, Hippo, and Carthage. Colonies were even planted beyond the Pillars of Hercules, upon the Atlantic seaboard. The Phoenician settlement of Gades, upon the western coast of Spain, is still preserved in the modern Cadiz.
ARTS DISSEMINATED BY THE PHOENICIANS.--We can scarcely overrate the influence of Phoenician maritime enterprise upon the distribution of the arts and the spread of culture among the early peoples of the Mediterranean area. "Egypt and Assyria," says Lenormant, "were the birthplace of material civilization; the Canaanites [Phoenicians] were its missionaries." Most prominent of the arts which they introduced among all the nations with whom they traded was that of alphabetical writing.
Before or during the rule of the Hyksos in Egypt, the Phoenician settlers in the Delta borrowed from the Egyptians twenty-two hieratic characters, which they passed on to their Asiatic kinsmen. These characters received new names, and became the Phoenician alphabet. Now, wherever the Phoenicians went, they carried this alphabet as "one of their exports." It was through them, probably, that the Greeks received it; the Greeks passed it on to the Romans, and the Romans gave it to the German peoples. In this way did our alphabet come to us from Old Egypt.
The introduction of letters among the different nations, vast as was the benefit which the gift conferred upon peoples just beginning to make advances in civilization, was only one of the many advantages which resulted to the early civilization of Europe from the commercial enterprise of the Phoenicians. It is probable that they first introduced among the semi-civilized tribes of that continent the use of bronze, which marks an epoch in their growing culture. Articles of Phoenician workmanship are found in the earliest tombs of the Greeks, the Etruscans, and the Romans; and in very many of the manufactures of these peoples may be traced the influence of Phoenician art.
GREAT ENTERPRISES AIDED BY THE PHOENICIANS.--While scattering the germs of civilization and culture broadcast over the entire Mediterranean area, the enterprising Phoenicians were also lending aid to almost every great undertaking of antiquity.
King Hiram of Tyre furnished Solomon with artisans and skilled workmen, and with great rafts of timber from Lebanon, for building the splendid temple at Jerusalem. The Phoenicians also provided timber from their fine forests for the construction of the great palaces and temples of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Egyptians. They built for the Persian king Xerxes the Hellespontine bridges over which he marched his immense army into Greece (see p. 81). They furnished contingents of ships to the kings of Nineveh and Babylon for naval operations both upon the Mediterranean and the Persian and Arabian gulfs. Their fleets served as transports and convoys to the expeditions of the Persian monarchs aiming at conquest in Asia Minor or in Europe. They formed, too, the naval branch of the armaments of the Pharaohs; for the Egyptians hated the sea, and never had a native fleet. And it was Phoenician sailors that, under the orders of Pharaoh-Necho, circumnavigated Africa (see p. 26)--an undertaking which, although attended perhaps with less advantage to the world, still is reckoned quite as remarkable, considering the remote age in which it was accomplished, as the circumnavigation of the globe by the Portuguese navigator Magellan, more than two thousand years later.
VIII. THE PERSIAN EMPIRE
1. POLITICAL HISTORY.
KINSHIP OF THE MEDES AND PERSIANS.--It was in very remote times, that some Aryan tribes, separating themselves from the other members of the Aryan family, sought new abodes on the plateau of Iran. The tribes that settled in the south became known as the Persians; while those that took possession of the mountain regions of the northwest were called Medes. The Medes, through mingling with native non-Aryan tribes, became quite different from the Persians; but notwithstanding this, the names of the two peoples were always very closely associated, as in the familiar legend, "The law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not."
THE MEDES AT FIRST THE LEADING RACE.--Although the Persians were destined to become the dominant tribe of all the Iranian Aryans, still the Medes were at first the leading people. Cyaxares (625-585 B.C.) was their first prominent leader and king. We have already seen how, aided by the Babylonians, he overthrew the last king of Nineveh, and burned that capital (see p. 51).
Cyaxares was followed by his son Astyages (585-558 B.C.), during whose reign the Persians, whom Cyaxares had brought into at least partial subjection to the Median crown, revolted, overthrew the Median power, and thenceforth held the place of leadership and authority.
REIGN OF CYRUS THE GREAT (558-529 B.C.).--The leader of the revolt against the Medes was Cyrus, the tributary king of the Persians. Through his energy and soldierly genius, he soon built up an empire more extended than any over which the sceptre had yet been swayed by an Oriental monarch, or indeed, so far as we know, by any ruler before his time. It stretched from the Indus to the farthest limits of Asia Minor, and from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf, thus embracing not only the territories of the Median kingdom, but also those of the allied kingdoms of Lydia and Babylonia. The subjugation of Babylonia to the Persian authority has already been narrated (see p. 60). We will now tell how Cyrus gained the kingdom of Lydia.
Lydia was a country in the western part of Asia Minor. It was a land highly favored by nature. It embraced two rich river valleys,--the plains of the Hermus and the Cayster,--which, from the mountains inland, slope gently to the island-dotted Aegean. The Pactolus, and other tributaries of the streams we have named, rolled down "golden sands," while the mountains were rich in the precious metals. The coast region did not at first belong to Lydia; it was held by the Greeks, who had fringed it with cities. The capital of the country was Sardis, whose citadel was set on a lofty and precipitous rock.
The Lydians were a mixed people, formed, it is thought, by the mingling, in prehistoric times, of Aryan tribes that crossed the Aegean from Europe, with the original non-Aryan population of the country.
The last and most renowned of the Lydian kings was Croesus. Under him the Lydian empire attained its greatest extension, embracing all the states of Asia Minor west of the Halys, save Lycia. The tribute Croesus collected from the Greek cities, which he subjugated, and the revenues he derived from his gold mines, rendered him the richest monarch of his times, so that his name has passed into the proverb "Rich as Croesus."
Now Astyages, whom Cyrus had just overthrown, was the brother-in-law of this Croesus. When Croesus heard of his relative's misfortune, he resolved to avenge his wrongs. The Delphian oracle (see p. 104), to which he sent to learn the issue of a war upon Cyrus, told him that he "would destroy a great kingdom." Interpreting this favorably, he sent again to inquire whether the empire he should establish would prove permanent, and received this oracle: "Flee and tarry not when a mule [Footnote: The allusion is to the (traditional) mixed Persian and Median descent of Cyrus.] shall be king of the Medes." Deeming the accession of a mule to the Persian throne altogether impossible, he inferred the oracle to mean that his empire should last forever.
Thus encouraged in his purpose, Croesus prepared to make war upon Persia. But he had miscalculated the strength and activity of his enemy. Cyrus marched across the Halys, defeated the Lydian army in the field, and after a short siege captured Sardis; and Lydia became a province of the new Persian empire.
There is a story which tells how Cyrus had caused a pyre to be erected on which to burn Croesus, but at the last moment was struck by hearing the unfortunate monarch repeatedly call the name of Solon. Seeking the meaning of this, he was told that Croesus in his prosperous years was visited by the Greek sage Solon, who, in answer to the inquiry of Croesus as to whether he did not deem him a happy man, replied, "Count no man happy until he is dead." Cyrus was so impressed with the story, so the legend tells, that he released the captive king, and treated him with the greatest kindness.
This war between Croesus and Cyrus derives a special importance from the fact that it brought the Persian empire into contact with the Greek cities of Asia, and thus led on directly to that memorable struggle between Greece and Persia known as the Græco-Persian War.
Tradition says that Cyrus lost his life while leading an expedition against some Scythian tribes in the north. He was buried at Pasargadæ, the old Persian capital, and there his tomb stands to-day, surrounded by the ruins of the magnificent buildings with which he adorned that city. The following cuneiform inscription may still be read upon a pillar near the sepulchre: "I am Cyrus, the king, the Akhæmenian."
Cyrus, notwithstanding his seeming love for war and conquest, possessed a kindly and generous disposition. Almost universal testimony has ascribed to him the purest and most beneficent character of any Eastern monarch.
REIGN OF CAMBYSES (529-522 B.C.).--Cyrus the Great left two sons, Cambyses and Smerdis: the former, as the oldest, inherited the sceptre, and the title of king. He began a despotic and unfortunate reign by causing his brother, whose influence he feared, to be secretly put to death.
With far less ability than his father for their execution, Cambyses conceived even vaster projects of conquest and dominion. Asia had hitherto usually afforded a sufficient field for the ambition of Oriental despots. Cambyses determined to add the country of Africa to the vast inheritance received from his father. Upon some slight pretext, he invaded Egypt, captured Memphis, and ascended the Nile to Thebes. From here he sent an army of fifty thousand men to subdue the oasis of Ammon, in the Libyan desert. Of the vast host not a man returned from the expedition. It is thought that the army was overwhelmed and buried by one of those fatal storms, called simooms, that so frequently sweep over those dreary wastes of sand.
After a short, unsatisfactory stay in Egypt, Cambyses set out on his return to Persia. While on his way home, news was brought to him that his brother Smerdis had usurped the throne. A Magian [Footnote: There were at this time two opposing religions in Persia: Zoroastrianism, which taught the simple worship of God under the name of Ormazd; and Magianism, a less pure faith, whose professors were fire-worshippers. The former was the religion of the Aryans; the latter, that of the non-Aryan portion of the population. The usurpation which placed Smerdis on the throne was planned by the Magi, Smerdis himself being a fire-priest.] impostor, Gomates by name, who resembled the murdered Smerdis, had personated him, and actually grasped the sceptre. Entirely disheartened by this startling intelligence, Cambyses in despair took his own life.
REIGN OF DARIUS I. (521-486 B.C.).--The Persian nobles soon rescued the sceptre from the grasp of the false Smerdis, and their leader, Darius, took the throne. The first act of Darius was to punish, by a general massacre, the Magian priests for the part they had taken in the usurpation of Smerdis.
With quiet and submission secured throughout the empire, Darius gave himself, for a time, to the arts of peace. He built a palace at Susa, and erected magnificent structures at Persepolis; reformed the administration of the government (see p. 82), making such wise and lasting changes that he has been called "the second founder of the Persian empire"; established post-roads, instituted a coinage for the realm, and upon the great rock of Behistun, a lofty smooth-faced cliff on the western frontier of Persia, caused to be inscribed a record of all his achievements. [Footnote: This important inscription is written in the cuneiform characters, and in three languages, Aryan, Turanian, and Semitic. It is the Rosetta Stone of the cuneiform writings, the key to their treasures having been obtained from its parallel columns.]
And now the Great King, Lord of Western Asia and of Egypt, conceived and entered upon the execution of vast designs of conquest, the far-reaching effects of which were destined to live long after he had passed away. Inhospitable steppes on the north, and burning deserts on the south, whose shifting sands within a period yet fresh in memory had been the grave of a Persian army, seemed to be the barriers which Nature herself had set for the limits of empire in these directions. But on the eastern flank of the kingdom the rich and crowded plains of India invited the conqueror with promises of endless spoils and revenues; while on the west a new continent, full of unknown mysteries, presented virgin fields never yet traversed by the army of an Eastern despot. Darius determined to extend the frontiers of his empire in both these directions.
At one blow the region of northwestern India known as the Punjab, was brought under Persian authority; and thus with a single effort were the eastern limits of the empire pushed out so as to include one of the richest countries of Asia--one which henceforth returned to the Great King an annual revenue vastly larger than that of any other province hitherto acquired, not even excepting the rich district of Babylonia.
With an army numbering, it is said, more than 700,000 men, Darius now crossed the Bosphorus by means of a sort of pontoon bridge, constructed by Grecian architects, and passing the Danube by means of a similar bridge, penetrated far into what is now Russia, which was then occupied by Scythian hordes. The results of the expedition were the addition of Thrace to the Persian empire, and the making of Macedonia a tributary kingdom. Thus the Persian kings secured their first foothold upon the European continent.
The most significant campaign in Europe was yet to follow. In 500 B.C., the Ionian cities in Asia Minor subject to the Persian authority revolted. The Greeks of Europe lent aid to their sister states. Sardis was sacked and burned by the insurgents. With the revolt crushed and punished with great severity, Darius determined to chastise the European Greeks, and particularly the Athenians, for their insolence in giving aid to his rebellious subjects. Herodotus tells us that he appointed a person whose sole duty it was daily to stir up the purpose of the king with the words, "Master, remember the Athenians."
A large land and naval armament was fitted out and placed under the command of Mardonius, a son-in-law of Darius. The land forces suffered severe losses at the hands of the barbarians of Thrace, and the fleet was wrecked by a violent storm off Mount Athos, three hundred ships being lost (492 B.C.).
Two years after this disaster, another expedition, consisting of 120,000 men, was borne by ships across the AEgean to the plains of Marathon. The details of the significant encounter that there took place between the Persians and the Athenians will be given when we come to narrate the history of Greece. We need now simply note the result,--the complete overthrow of the Persian forces by the Greeks under Miltiades (490 B.C.).
Darius, angered beyond measure by the failure of the expedition, stirred up all the provinces of his vast empire, and called for new levies from far and near, resolved upon leading in person such an army into Greece that the insolent Athenians should be crushed at a single blow, and the tarnished glory of the Persian arms restored. In the midst of these preparations, with the Egyptians in revolt, the king suddenly died, in the year 486 B.C.
REIGN OF XERXES I. (486-465 B.C.).--The successor of Darius, his son Xerxes, though more inclined to indulge in the ease and luxury of the palace than to subject himself to the hardship and discipline of the camp, was urged by those about him to an active prosecution of the plans of his father.
After crushing the Egyptian revolt and another insurrection in Babylonia, the Great King was free to devote his attention to the distant Greeks. Mustering the contingents of the different provinces of his empire, Xerxes led his vast army over the bridges he had caused to be thrown across the Hellespont, crushed the Spartan guards at the Pass of Thermopylæ, pushed on into Attica, and laid Athens in ruins. But there fortune forsook him. At the naval battle of Salamis, his fleet was cut to pieces by the Grecian ships; and the king, making a precipitate retreat into Asia, hastened to his capital, Susa. Here, in the pleasures of the harem, he sought solace for his wounded pride and broken hopes. He at last fell a victim to palace intrigue, being slain in his own chamber (465 B.C.).
END OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE.--The power and supremacy of the Persian monarchy passed away with the reign of Xerxes. The last one hundred and forty years of the existence of the empire was a time of weakness and anarchy. This period was spanned by the reigns of eight kings. It was in the reign of Artaxerxes II., called Mnemon for his remarkable memory, that took place the well-known expedition of the Ten Thousand Greeks under Cyrus, the brother of Artaxerxes, an account of which will be given in connection with Grecian history (see chap. XV.).
The march of the Ten Thousand through the very heart of the dominions of the Great King demonstrated the amazing internal weakness of the empire. Marathon and Salamis had shown the immense superiority of the free soldiery of Greece over the splendid but servile armies of Persia, that were often driven to battle with the lash. These disclosures invited the Macedonians to the invasion and conquest of the empire.
In the year 334 B.C., Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia, led a small army of thirty-five thousand Greeks and Macedonians across the Hellespont. Three great battles--that of the Granicus, that of Issus, and that of Arbela--decided the fate of the Persian Empire. Darius III., the last of the Persian kings, fled from the field of Arbela, on the plains of Assyria, only to be treacherously assassinated by one of his own generals.
The succeeding movements of Alexander, and the establishment by him of the short-lived Macedonian monarchy upon the ruins of the Persian state, are matters that properly belong to Grecian history, and will be related in a following chapter.
2. GOVERNMENT, RELIGION, AND ARTS
THE GOVERNMENT.--Before the reign of Darius I., the government of the Persian Empire was like that of all the great monarchies that had preceded it; that is, it consisted of a great number of subject states, which were allowed to retain their own kings and manage their own affairs, only paying tribute and homage, and furnishing contingents in time of war, to the Great King.
We have seen how weak was this rude and primitive type of government. Darius I., who possessed rare ability as an organizer, remodelled the system of his predecessors, and actually realized for the Persian monarchy what Tiglath-Pileser II. had long before attempted, but only with partial and temporary success, to accomplish for the Assyrian.
The system of government which Darius I. thus first made a real fact in the world, is known as the satrapal, a form represented to-day by the government of the Turkish Sultan. The entire kingdom was divided into twenty or more provinces, over each of which was placed a governor, called a satrap, appointed by the king. These officials held their position at the pleasure of the sovereign, and were thus rendered his subservient creatures. Each province contributed to the income of the king a stated revenue.
There were provisions in the system by which the king might be apprised of the disloyalty of his satraps. Thus the whole dominion was firmly cemented together, and the facility with which almost sovereign states--which was the real character of the different parts of the empire under the old system--could plan and execute revolt, was removed.
LITERATURE AND RELIGION: ZOROASTRIANISM.--The literature of the ancient Persians was mostly religious. Their sacred book is called the Zendavesta. The oldest part is named the Vendidad. This consists of laws, incantations, and mythical tales.
The religious system of the Persians, as taught in the Zendavesta, is known as Zoroastrianism, from Zoroaster, its founder. This great reformer and teacher is now generally supposed to have lived and taught about 1000 B.C.
Zoroastrianism was a system of belief known as dualism. Opposed to the "good spirit," Ormazd (Ahura Mazda), there was a "dark spirit," Ahriman (Angro-Mainyus), who was constantly striving to destroy the good creations of Ormazd by creating all evil things--storm, drought, pestilence, noxious animals, weeds and thorns in the world without, and evil in the heart of man within. From all eternity these two powers had been contending for the mastery; in the present neither had the decided advantage; but in the near future Ormazd would triumph over Ahriman, and evil be forever destroyed.
The duty of man was to aid Ormazd by working with him against the evil- loving Ahriman. He must labor to eradicate every evil and vice in his own bosom; to reclaim the earth from barrenness; and to kill all bad animals-- frogs, toads, snakes, lizards--which Ahriman had created. Herodotus saw with amazement the Magian priests armed with weapons and engaged in slaying these animals as a "pious pastime." Agriculture was a sacred calling, for the husbandman was reclaiming the ground from the curse of the Dark Spirit. Thus men might become co-workers with Ormazd in the mighty work of overthrowing and destroying the kingdom of the wicked Ahriman.
The evil man was he who allowed vice and degrading passions to find a place in his own soul, and neglected to exterminate noxious animals and weeds, and to help redeem the earth from the barrenness and sterility created by the enemy of Ormazd. [Footnote: The belief of the Zoroastrians in the sacredness of the elements,--earth, water, fire, and air,--created a difficulty in regard to the disposal of dead bodies. They could neither be burned, buried, thrown into the water, nor left to decay in a sepulchral chamber or in the open air, without polluting one or another of the sacred elements. So they were given to the birds and wild beasts, being exposed on lofty towers or in desert places. Those whose feelings would not allow them thus to dispose of their dead, were permitted to bury them, provided they first encased the body in wax, to preserve the ground from contamination. The modern Parsees, or Fire-Worshippers, give their dead to the birds.]
After death the souls of the good and the bad alike must pass over a narrow bridge: the good soul crosses in safety, and is admitted to the presence of Ahura Mazda; while the evil soul is sure to fall from the path, sharp as the edge of a scimitar, into a pit of woe, the dwelling- place of Ahriman.
ARCHITECTURE.--The simple religious faith of the Persians discouraged, though it did not prohibit, the erection of temples: their sacred architecture scarcely included more than an altar and pedestal. The palace of the monarch was the structure that absorbed the best efforts of the Persian artist.
In imitation of the inhabitants of the valley of the Euphrates, the Persian kings raised their palaces upon lofty terraces, or platforms. But upon the table-lands they used stone instead of adobe or brick, and at Persepolis, raised, for the substruction of their palaces, an immense platform of massive masonry, which is one of the most wonderful monuments of the world's ancient builders. This terrace, which is uninjured by the 2300 years that have passed since its erection, is about 1500 feet long, 1000 feet wide, and 40 feet high. The summit is reached by broad stairways of stone, pronounced by competent judges the finest work of the kind that the ancient or even the modern world can boast.
Surmounting this platform are the ruins of the palaces of several of the Persian monarchs, from Cyrus the Great to Artaxerxes Ochus. These ruins consist chiefly of walls, columns, and great monolithic door- and window- frames. Colossal winged bulls, copied from the Assyrians, stand as wardens at the gateway of the ruined palaces.
Numerous sculptures in bas-relief decorate the faces of the walls, and these throw much light upon the manners and customs of the ancient Persian kings. The successive palaces increase, not only in size, but in sumptuousness of adornment, thus registering those changes which we have been tracing in the national history. The residence of Cyrus was small and modest, while that of Artaxerxes Ochus equalled in size the great palace of the Assyrian Sargon.
TABLE OF KINGS OF MEDIA AND PERSIA.
Kings of Media Phraortes. . . . . . . . . . . . ? -625 Cyaxares . . . . . . . . . . . . 625-585 Astyages . . . . . . . . . . . . 585-558
Kings of Persia Cyrus . . . . . . . . . . . . . 558-529 Cambyses . . . . . . . . . . . . 529-522 Pseudo-Smerdis . . . . . . . . . 522-521 Darius I. . . . . . . . . . . . 521-486 Xerxes I. . . . . . . . . . . . 486-465 Artaxerxes I. (Longimanus) . . . 465-425 Xerxes II. . . . . . . . . . . . 425 Sogdianus . . . . . . . . . . . 425-424 Darius II. (Nothus) . . . . . . 424-405 Artaxerxes II. (Mnemon) . . . . 405-359 Artaxerxes III. (Ochus) . . . . 359-338 Arses . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338-336 Darius III. (Codomannus) . . . . 336-330
SECTION II.--GRECIAN HISTORY
IX. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE
DIVISIONS OF GREECE.--Long arms of the sea divide the Grecian peninsula into three parts, called Northern, Central, and Southern Greece.
Northern Greece included the ancient districts of Thessaly and Epirus. Thessaly consists mainly of a large and beautiful valley, walled in on all sides by rugged mountains. It was celebrated far and wide for the variety and beauty of its scenery. On its northern edge, lay a beautiful glen, called the Vale of Tempe, the only pass by which the plain of Thessaly could be entered from the north. The district of Epirus stretched along the Ionian Sea on the west. In the gloomy recesses of its forests of oak was situated the renowned Dodonean oracle of Zeus.
Central Greece was divided into eleven districts, among which were Phocis, Boeotia, and Attica. In Phocis was the city of Delphi, famous for its oracle and temple; in Boeotia, the city of Thebes; and in Attica, the brilliant Athens.
Southern Greece, or the Peloponnesus, was also divided into eleven provinces, of which the more important were Arcadia, embracing the central part of the peninsula; Achaia, the northern part; Argolis, the eastern; and Messenia and Laconia, the southern. The last district was ruled by the city of Sparta, the great rival of Athens.
MOUNTAINS.--The Cambunian Mountains form a lofty wall along a considerable reach of the northern frontier of Greece, shutting out at once the cold winds and hostile races from the north. Branching off at right angles to these mountains is the Pindus range, which runs south into Central Greece.
In Northern Thessaly is Mount Olympus, the most celebrated mountain of the peninsula. The ancient Greeks thought it the highest mountain in the world (it is 9700 feet in height), and believed that its cloudy summit was the abode of the celestials.
South of Olympus, close by the sea, are Ossa and Pelion, celebrated in fable as the mountains which the giants, in their war against the gods, piled one upon another, in order to scale Olympus.
Parnassus and Helicon, in Central Greece,--beautiful mountains clad with trees and vines and filled with fountains,--were believed to be the favorite haunts of the Muses. Near Athens are Hymettus, praised for its honey, and Pentelicus, renowned for its marbles.
The Peloponnesus is rugged with mountains that radiate in all directions from the central country of Arcadia,--"the Switzerland of Greece."
ISLANDS ABOUT GREECE.--Very much of the history of Greece is intertwined with the islands that lie about the mainland. On the east, in the Aegean Sea, are the Cyclades, so called because they form an irregular circle about the sacred isle of Delos, where was a very celebrated shrine of Apollo. Between the Cyclades and Asia Minor lie the Sporades, which islands, as the name implies, are sown irregularly over that portion of the Aegean.
Just off the coast of Attica is a large island called by the ancients Euboea, but known to us as Negropont. Close to the Asian shores are the large islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, and Rhodes.
To the west of Greece lie the Ionian Islands, the largest of which was called Corcyra, now Corfu. The rugged island of Ithaca was the birthplace of Odysseus, or Ulysses, the hero of the Odyssey. Cythera, just south of the Peloponnesus, was sacred to Aphrodite (Venus), as it was here fable said she rose from the sea-foam. Beyond Cythera, in the Mediterranean, midway between Greece and Egypt, is the large island of Crete, noted in legend for its labyrinth and its legislator Minos.
INFLUENCE OF COUNTRY.--The physical features of a country have much to do with the moulding of the character and the shaping of the history of its people. Mountains, isolating neighboring communities and shutting out conquering races, foster the spirit of local patriotism and preserve freedom; the sea, inviting abroad, and rendering intercourse with distant countries easy, awakens the spirit of adventure and develops commercial enterprise.
Now, Greece is at once a mountainous and a maritime country. Abrupt mountain-walls fence it off into a great number of isolated districts, each of which in ancient times became the seat of a distinct community, or state. Hence the fragmentary character of its political history. The Hellenic states never coalesced to form a single nation.
The peninsula is, moreover, by deep arms and bays of the sea, converted into what is in effect an archipelago. (No spot in Greece is forty miles from the sea.) Hence its people were early tempted to a sea-faring life. The shores of the Mediterranean and the Euxine were dotted with Hellenic colonies. Intercourse with the old civilizations of Egypt and Phoenicia stirred the naturally quick and versatile Greek intellect to early and vigorous thought. The islands strewn with seeming carelessness through the AEgean Sea were "stepping-stones," which invited the earliest settlers of Greece to the delightful coast countries of Asia Minor, and thus blended the life and history of the opposite shores.
Again, the beauty of Grecian scenery inspired many of the most striking passages of her poets; and it is thought that the exhilarating atmosphere and brilliant skies of Attica were not unrelated to the lofty achievements of the Athenian intellect.
THE PELASGIANS.--The historic inhabitants of the land we have described were called by the Romans Greeks, but they called themselves Hellenes, from their fabled ancestor Hellen.
But the Hellenes, according to their own account, were not the original inhabitants of the country. They were preceded by a people whom they called Pelasgians. Who these folk were is a matter of debate. Some think that the Pelasgians and Hellenes were kindred tribes, but that the Hellenes, possessing superior qualities, gradually acquired ascendency over the Pelasgians and finally absorbed them.
The Pelasgians were somewhat advanced beyond the savage state. They cultivated the ground, and protected their cities with walls. Remnants of their rude but massive masonry still encumber in places the soil of Greece.
THE HELLENES.--The Hellenes were divided into four tribes; namely, the Ionians, the Dorians, the Achæans, and the Æolians. The Ionians were a many-sided, imaginative people. They developed every part of their nature, and attained unsurpassed excellence in art, literature, and philosophy. The most noted Ionian city was Athens, whose story is a large part of the history of Hellas.
The Dorians were a practical, unimaginative race. Their speech and their art were both alike without ornament. They developed the body rather than the mind. Their education was almost wholly gymnastic and military. They were unexcelled as warriors. The most important city founded by them was Sparta, the rival of Athens.
These two great Hellenic families divided Hellas [Footnote: Under the name Hellas the ancient Greeks included not only Greece proper and the islands of the adjoining seas, but also the Hellenic cities in Asia Minor, Southern Italy, Sicily, and elsewhere. "Wherever were Hellenes, there was Hellas."] into two rival parties, which through their mutual jealousies and contentions finally brought all the bright hopes and promises of the Hellenic race to utter ruin.
The Achæans are represented by the Greek legends as being the predominant race in the Peloponnesus during the Heroic Age. The Æolians formed a rather ill-defined division. In historic times the name is often made to include all Hellenes not enumerated as Ionians or Dorians.
These several tribes, united by bonds of language and religion, always regarded themselves as members of a single family. They were proud of their ancestry, and as exclusive almost as the Hebrews. All non-Hellenic people they called Barbarians [Footnote: At first, this term meant scarcely more than "unintelligible folk"; but later, it came to express aversion and contempt.].
When the mists of antiquity are first lifted from Greece, about the beginning of the eighth century B.C., we discover the several families of the Hellenic race in possession of Greece proper, of the islands of the Ægean, and of the western coasts of Asia Minor. Respecting their prehistoric migrations and settlements, we have little or no certain knowledge.
ORIENTAL IMMIGRANTS.--According to their own traditions the early growth of civilization among the European Hellenes was promoted by the settlement among them of Oriental immigrants, who brought with them the arts and culture of the different countries of the East.
From Egypt, legend affirms, came Cecrops, bringing with him the arts, learning, and priestly wisdom of the Nile valley. He is represented as the builder of the citadel (the Cecropia) of what was afterwards the illustrious city of Athens. From Phoenicia Cadmus brought the letters of the alphabet, and founded the city of Thebes. The Phrygian Pelops, the progenitor of the renowned heroes Agamemnon and Menelaus, settled in the southern peninsula, which was called after him the Peloponnesus (the Island of Pelops).
The nucleus of fact in all these legends is probably this,--that the European Greeks received the primary elements of their culture from the East through their Asiatic kinsmen.
LOCAL PATRIOTISM OF THE GREEKS: THE CITY THE POLITICAL UNIT.--The narrow political sympathies of the ancient Greeks prevented their ever uniting to form a single nation. The city was with them the political unit. It was regarded as a distinct, self-governing state, just like a modern nation. A citizen of one city was an alien in any other: he could not marry a woman of a city not his own, nor hold property in houses or lands within its territory.
A Greek city-state usually embraced, besides the walled town, a more or less extensive border of gardens and farms, a strip of sea-coast, or perhaps a considerable mountain-hemmed valley or plain. The model city (or state, as we should say) must not be over large. In this, as in everything else, the ancient Greeks applied the Delphian rule-- "Measure in all things." "A small city," says one of their poets, "set upon a rock and well governed, is better than all foolish Nineveh." Aristotle thought that the ideal city should not have more than ten thousand citizens.
Chapter X
THE LEGENDARY, OR HEROIC AGE. (From the earliest times to 776 B.C.)
CHARACTER OF THE LEGENDARY AGE.--The real history of the Greeks does not begin before the eighth century B.C. All that lies back of that date is an inseparable mixture of myth, legend, and fact. Yet this shadowy period forms the background of Grecian history, and we cannot understand the ideas and acts of the Greeks of historic times without at least some knowledge of what they believed their ancestors did and experienced in those prehistoric ages.
So, as a sort of prelude to the story we have to tell, we shall repeat some of the legends of the Greeks respecting their national heroes and their great labors and undertakings. But it must be carefully borne in mind that these legends are not history, though some of them may be confused remembrances of actual events.
THE HEROES: HERACLES, THESEUS, AND MINOS.--The Greeks believed that their ancestors were a race of heroes of divine or semi-divine lineage. Every tribe, district, city, and village even, preserved traditions of its heroes, whose wonderful exploits were commemorated in song and story. Many of these personages acquired national renown, and became the revered heroes of the whole Greek race.
Heracles was the greatest of the national heroes of the Greeks. He is represented as performing, besides various other exploits, twelve superhuman labors, and as being at last translated from a blazing pyre to a place among the immortal gods. The myth of Heracles, who was at first a solar divinity, is made up mainly of the very same fables that were told of the Chaldæan solar hero Izdubar (see p. 46). Through the Phoenicians, these stories found their way to the Greeks, who ascribed to their own Heracles the deeds of the Chaldæan sun-god.
Theseus, a descendant of Cecrops, was the favorite hero of the Athenians, being one of their legendary kings. Among his great exploits was the slaying of the Minotaur,--a monster which Minos, king of Crete, kept in a labyrinth, and fed upon youths and maidens sent from Athens as a forced tribute.
Minos, king of Crete, was one of the greatest tribal heroes of the Dorians. Legend makes him a legislator of divine wisdom, the suppressor of piracy in the Grecian seas, and the founder of the first great maritime state of Hellas.
THE ARGONAUTIC EXPEDITION.--Besides the labors and exploits of single heroes, the legends of the Greeks tell of several memorable enterprises conducted by bands of heroes. Among these were the Argonautic Expedition and the Siege of Troy.
The tale of the Argonautic Expedition is told with many variations in the legends of the Greeks. Jason, a prince of Thessaly, with fifty companion heroes, among whom were Heracles, Theseus, and Orpheus, the latter a musician of superhuman skill, the music of whose lyre moved brutes and stones, set sail in "a fifty-oared galley," called the Argo (hence the name Argonauts, given to the heroes), in search of a "golden fleece" which was fabled to be nailed to a tree and watched by a dragon, in the Grove of Ares, on the eastern shores of the Euxine, an inhospitable region of unknown terrors. The expedition is successful, and, after many wonderful adventures, the heroes return in triumph with the sacred relic.
Different meanings have been given to this tale. In its primitive form it was doubtless a pure myth of the rain-clouds; but in its later forms we may believe it to symbolize the maritime explorations in the eastern seas, of some of the tribes of Pelasgian Greece.
THE TROJAN WAR (legendary date 1194-1184 B.C.).--The Trojan War was an event about which gathered a great circle of tales and poems, all full of an undying interest and fascination.
Ilios, or Troy, was the capital of a strong empire, represented as Grecian in race and language, which had grown up in Asia Minor, along the shores of the Hellespont. The traditions tell how Paris, son of Priam, king of Troy, visited the Spartan king Menelaus, and ungenerously requited his hospitality by secretly bearing away to Troy his wife Helen, famous for her rare beauty.
All the heroes of Greece flew to arms to avenge the wrong. A host of one hundred thousand warriors was speedily gathered. Agamemnon, brother of Menelaus and "king of men," was chosen leader of the expedition. Under him were the "lion-hearted Achilles," of Thessaly, the "crafty Ulysses" (Odysseus), king of Ithaca, Ajax, "the swift son of Oileus," the Telamonian Ajax, the aged Nestor, and many more--the most valiant heroes of all Hellas. Twelve hundred galleys bore the gathered clans from Aulis in Greece, across the Ægean to the Trojan shores.
For ten years the Greeks and their allies hold in close siege the city of Priam. On the plains beneath the walls of the capital, the warriors of the two armies fight in general battle, or contend in single encounter. At first, Achilles is foremost in every fight; but a fair-faced maiden, who fell to him as a prize, having been taken from him by his chief, Agamemnon, he is filled with wrath, and sulks in his tent. Though the Greeks are often sorely pressed, still the angered hero refuses them his aid. At last, however, his friend Patroclus is killed by Hector, eldest son of Priam, and then Achilles goes forth to avenge his death. In a fierce combat he slays Hector, fastens his body to his chariot wheels, and drags it thrice around the walls of Troy.
The city is at last taken through a device of the "crafty Ulysses." Upon the plain in sight of the walls is built a wooden statue of a horse, in the body of which are hidden several Grecian warriors. Then the Greeks retire to their ships, as though about to abandon the siege. The Trojans issue from the gates and gather in wondering crowds about the image. They believe it to be an offering sacred to Athena, and so dare not destroy it; but, on the other hand, misled by certain omens and by a lying Greek named Sinon, they level a place in the walls of their city, and drag the statue within. At night the concealed warriors issue from the horse, open the gates of the city to the Grecians, and Troy is sacked, and burned to the ground. The aged Priam is slain, after having seen his sons and many of his warriors perish before his face. Æneas, with his aged father, Anchises, and a few devoted followers, escapes, and, after long wanderings, becomes the fabled founder of the Roman race in Italy.
It is a matter of difficulty to point out the nucleus of fact in this the most elaborate and interesting of the Grecian legends. Some believe it to be the dim recollection of a prehistoric conflict between the Greeks and the natives of Asia Minor, arising from the attempt of the former to secure a foothold upon the coast. That there really existed in prehistoric times such a city as Troy, has been placed beyond doubt by the excavations and discoveries of Dr. Schliemann.
RETURN OF THE GRECIAN CHIEFTAINS.--After the fall of Troy, the Grecian chieftains and princes returned home. The poets represent the gods as withdrawing their protection from the hitherto favored heroes, because they had not respected the altars of the Trojans. So, many of them were driven in endless wanderings over sea and land. Homer's Odyssey portrays the sufferings of the "much-enduring" Odysseus (Ulysses), impelled by divine wrath to long journeyings through strange seas.
In some cases, according to the tradition, advantage had been taken of the absence of the princes, and their thrones had been usurped. Thus at Argos, Ægisthus had won the unholy love of Clytemnestra, wife and queen of Agamemnon, who on his return was murdered by the guilty couple. In pleasing contrast with this we have exhibited to us the constancy of Penelope, although sought by many suitors during the absence of her husband Ulysses.
THE DORIAN INVASION, OR THE RETURN OF THE HERACLIDÆ (legendary date 1104 B.C.).--We set the tradition of the return of the Heraclidæ apart from the legends of the enterprises just detailed, for the reason that it undoubtedly contains quite a large historical element. The legend tells how Heracles, an Achæan, in the times before the Trojan War, ruled over the Peloponnesian Achæans. Just before that event his children were driven from the land. Eighty years after the war, the hundred years of exile appointed by the Fates having expired, the descendants of the hero, at the head of the Dorians from Northern Greece, returned, and with their aid effected the conquest of the greater part of the Peloponnesus, and established themselves as conquerors and masters in the land that had formerly been ruled by their semi-divine ancestor.
This legend seems to be a dim remembrance of a prehistoric invasion of the Peloponnesus by the Dorians from the north of Greece, and the expulsion or subjugation of the native inhabitants of the peninsula.
Some of the dispossessed Achæans, crowding towards the north of the Peloponnesus, drove out the Ionians who occupied the southern shore of the Corinthian Gulf, and settling there, gave the name Achaia to all that region.
Arcadia, in the centre of the Peloponnesus, was another district which did not fall into the hands of the Dorians. The people here, even down to the latest times, retained their primitive customs and country mode of life; hence Arcadian came to mean rustic and artless.
MIGRATIONS TO ASIA MINOR.--The Greek legends represent that the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnesus resulted in three distinct migrations from the mother-land to the shores of Asia Minor and the adjoining islands.
The northwestern shore of Asia Minor was settled, mainly, by Aeolian emigrants from Boeotia. The neighboring island of Lesbos became the home and centre of Æolian culture in poetry and music.
The coast to the south of the Æolians was occupied by Ionian emigrants, who, uniting with their Ionian kinsmen already settled upon that shore, built up twelve splendid cities (Ephesus, Miletus, etc.), which finally united to form the celebrated Ionian confederacy.
South of the Ionians, all along the southwestern shore of Asia Minor, the Dorians established their colonies. They also settled the important islands of Cos and Rhodes, and conquered and colonized Crete.
The traditions of these various settlements represent them as having been effected in a very short period; but it is probable that the movement embraced several centuries,--possibly a longer time than has been occupied by the English race in colonizing the different lands of the Western World.
With these migrations to the Asiatic shores, the Legendary Age of Greece comes to an end. From this time forward we tread upon fairly firm historic ground.
SOCIETY IN THE HEROIC AGE.--In Homeric times the Greeks were ruled by hereditary kings, who were believed to be of divine or superhuman lineage. The king was at once the lawgiver, the judge, and the military leader of his people. He was expected to prove his divine right to rule, by his courage, strength, wisdom, and eloquence. When he ceased to display these qualities, "the sceptre departed from him."
The king was surrounded by an advisory council of chiefs or nobles. The king listened to what the nobles had to say upon any measure he might propose, and then acted according to his own will or judgment, restrained only by the time-honored customs of the community.
Next to the council of chiefs, there was a general assembly, called the Agora, made up of all the common freemen. The members of this body could not take part in any debate, nor could they vote upon any question. This body, so devoid seemingly of all authority in the Homeric age, was destined to become the all-powerful popular assembly in the democratic cities of historic Greece.
Of the condition of the common freemen we know but little; the legendary tales were concerned chiefly with the kings and nobles. Slavery existed, but the slaves did not constitute as numerous a class as they became in historic times.
In the family, the wife held a much more honored position than she occupied in later times. The charming story of the constant Penelope, which we find in the Odyssey, assures us that the Homeric age cherished a chivalric feeling for woman.
In all ranks of society, life was marked by a sort of patriarchal simplicity. Manual labor was not yet thought to be degrading. Ulysses constructs his own house and raft, and boasts of his skill in swinging the scythe and guiding the plow. Spinning and weaving were the chief occupations of the women of all classes.
One pleasing and prominent virtue of the age was hospitality. There were no public inns in those times, hence a sort of gentle necessity compelled the entertainment of wayfarers. The hospitality accorded was the same free and impulsive welcome that the Arab sheik of to-day extends to the traveller whom chance brings to his tent. But while hospitable, the nobles of the heroic age were often cruel, violent, and treacherous. Homer represents his heroes as committing without a blush all sorts of fraud and villanies. Piracy was considered an honorable occupation.
Art and architecture were in a rudimentary state. Yet some advance had been made. The cities were walled, and the palaces of the kings possessed a certain barbaric splendor. Coined money was unknown; wealth was reckoned chiefly in flocks and herds, and in uncoined metals. The art of writing was probably unknown, at least there is no certain mention of it; and sculpture could not have been in an advanced state, as the Homeric poems make no mention of statues. The state of literature is shown by the poems of the Iliad and Odyssey: before the close of the age, epic poetry had reached a perfection beyond which it has never been carried.
Commerce was yet in its infancy. Although the Greeks were to become a great maritime people, still in the Homeric age they had evidently explored the sea but little. The Phoenicians then ruled the waves. The Greeks in those early times knew scarcely anything of the world beyond Greece proper and the neighboring islands and shores. Scarcely an echo of the din of life from the then ancient and mighty cities of Egypt and Chaldæa seems to have reached their ears.
XI. RELIGION OF THE GREEKS
INTRODUCTORY.--Without at least some little knowledge of the religious ideas and institutions of the ancient Greeks, we should find very many passages of their history wholly unintelligible. Hence a few remarks upon these matters will be in place here.
COSMOGRAPHY OF THE GREEKS.--The Greeks supposed the earth to be, as it appears, a plane, circular in form like a shield. Around it flowed the "mighty strength of the ocean river," a stream broad and deep, beyond which on all sides lay realms of Cimmerian darkness and terror. The heavens were a solid vault, or dome, whose edge shut down close upon the earth. Beneath the earth, reached by subterranean passages, was Hades, a vast region, the realm of departed souls. Still beneath this was the prison Tartarus, a pit deep and dark, made fast by strong gates of brass and iron. Sometimes the poets represent the gloomy regions beyond the ocean stream as the cheerless abode of the dead.
The sun was an archer-god, borne in a fiery chariot up and down the steep pathway of the skies. Naturally it was imagined that the regions in the extreme east and west, which were bathed in the near splendors of the sunrise and sunset, were lands of delight and plenty. The eastern was the favored country of the Ethiopians [Footnote: There was also a western division of these people.], a land which even Zeus himself so loved to visit that often he was found absent from Olympus when sought by suppliants. The western region, adjoining the ocean stream, formed the Elysian Fields, the abodes of the souls of heroes and of poets. [Footnote: These conceptions, it will be understood, belong to the early period of Greek mythology. As the geographical knowledge of the Greeks became more extended, they modified considerably the topography not only of the upper- world, but also of the nether-world.]
THE OLYMPIC COUNCIL.--There were twelve members of the celestial council, six gods and as many goddesses. The male deities were Zeus, the father of gods and men; Poseidon, ruler of the sea; Apollo, or Phoebus, the god of light, of music, and of prophecy; Ares, the god of war; Hephæstus, the deformed god of fire, and the forger of the thunderbolts of Zeus; Hermes, the wing-footed herald of the celestials, the god of invention and commerce, himself a thief and the patron of thieves.
The female divinities were Hera, the proud and jealous queen of Zeus; Athena, or Pallas,--who sprang full-grown from the forehead of Zeus,--the goddess of wisdom, and the patroness of the domestic arts; Artemis, the goddess of the chase; Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, born of the sea-foam; Hestia, the goddess of the hearth; Demeter, the earth- mother, the goddess of grains and harvests. [Footnote: The Latin names of these divinities are as follows: Zeus = Jupiter; Poseidon = Neptune; Apollo = Apollo; Ares = Mars; Hephæstus = Vulcan; Hermes = Mercury; Hera = Juno; Athena = Minerva; Artemis = Diana; Aphrodite = Venus; Hestia = Vesta; Demeter = Ceres.
These Latin names, however, are not the equivalents of the Greek names, and should not be used as such. The mythologies of the Hellenes and Romans were as distinct as their languages. Consult Rawlinson's Religions of the Ancient World.]
These great deities were simply magnified human beings, possessing all their virtues, and often their weaknesses. They give way to fits of anger and jealousy. "Zeus deceives, and Hera is constantly practising her wiles." All the celestial council, at the sight of Hephæstus limping across the palace floor, burst into "inextinguishable laughter"; and Aphrodite, weeping, moves all to tears. They surpass mortals rather in power, than in size of body. They can render themselves visible or invisible to human eyes. Their food is ambrosia and nectar; their movements are swift as light. They may suffer pain; but death can never come to them, for they are immortal. Their abode is Mount Olympus and the airy regions above the earth.
LESSER DEITIES AND MONSTERS.--Besides the great gods and goddesses that constituted the Olympian council there was an almost infinite number of other deities, celestial personages, and monsters neither human nor divine.
Hades (Pluto) ruled over the lower realms; Dionysus (Bacchus) was the god of wine; the goddess Nemesis was the punisher of crime, and particularly the queller of the proud and arrogant; Æolus was the ruler of the winds, which he confined in a cave secured by mighty gates.
There were nine Muses, inspirers of art and song. The Nymphs were beautiful maidens, who peopled the woods, the fields, the rivers, the lakes, and the ocean. Three Fates allotted life and death, and three Furies (Eumenides or Erinnyes) avenged crime, especially murder and unnatural crimes. The Gorgons were three sisters, with hair entwined with serpents. A single gaze upon them chilled the beholder to stone. Besides these there were Scylla and Charybdis, sea-monsters that made perilous the passage of the Sicilian Straits, the Centaurs, the Cyclops, Cerberus, the watch-dog of Hades, and a thousand others.
Many at least of these monsters were simply personifications of the human passions or of the malign and destructive forces of nature. Thus, the Furies were the embodiment of an aroused and accusing conscience; the Gorgons were tempests, which lash the sea into a fury that paralyzes the affrighted sailor; Scylla and Charybdis were dangerous whirlpools off the coast of Sicily. To the common people at least, however, they were real creatures, with all the parts and habits given them by the poets.
MODES OF DIVINE COMMUNICATION.--In the early ages the gods were wont, it was believed, to visit the earth and mingle with men. But even in Homer's time this familiar intercourse was a thing of the past--a tradition of a golden age that had passed away. Their forms were no longer seen, their voices no longer heard. In these later and more degenerate times the recognized modes of divine communication with men were by oracles, and by casual and unusual sights and sounds, as thunder and lightning, a sudden tempest, an eclipse, a flight of birds,--particularly of birds that mount to a great height, as these were supposed to know the secrets of the heavens,--the appearance or action of the sacrificial victims, or any strange coincidence. The art of interpreting these signs or omens was called the art of divination.
ORACLES.--But though the gods might reveal their will and intentions through signs and portents, still they granted a more special communication of counsel through what were known as oracles. These communications, it was believed, were made by Zeus, and especially by Apollo, who was the god of prophecy, the Revealer.
Not everywhere, but only in chosen places, did these gods manifest their presence and communicate the divine will. These favored spots were called oracles, as were also the responses there received. There were twenty-two oracles of Apollo in different parts of the Grecian world, but a much smaller number of those of Zeus. These were usually situated in wild and desolate spots--in dark forests or among gloomy mountains.
The most renowned of the oracles was that of the Pelasgian Zeus at Dodona, in Epirus, and that of Apollo at Delphi, in Phocis. At Dodona the priests listened in the dark forests for the voice of Zeus in the rustling leaves of the sacred oak. At Delphi there was a deep fissure in the ground, which emitted stupefying vapors, that were thought to be the inspiring breath of Apollo. Over the spot was erected a splendid temple, in honor of the oracle. The revelation was generally received by the Pythia, or priestess, seated upon a tripod placed over the orifice. As she became overpowered by the influence of the prophetic exhalations, she uttered the message of the god. These mutterings of the Pythia were taken down by attendant priests, interpreted, and written in hexameter verse. Sometimes the will of Zeus was communicated to the pious seeker by dreams and visions granted to him while sleeping in the temple of the oracle.
The oracle of Delphi gained a celebrity wide as the world: it was often consulted by the monarchs of Asia and the people of Rome in times of extreme danger and perplexity. Among the Greeks scarcely any undertaking was entered upon without the will and sanction of the oracle being first sought.
Especially true was this in the founding of colonies. Apollo was believed "to take delight in the foundation of new cities." No colony could prosper that had not been established under the superintendence of the Delphian god.
Some of the responses of the oracle contained plain and wholesome advice; but very many of them, particularly those that implied a knowledge of the future, were obscure and ingeniously ambiguous, so that they might correspond with the event however affairs should turn. Thus, Croesus is told that, if he undertake an expedition against Persia, he will destroy a great empire. He did, indeed;--but the empire was his own.
The Delphian oracle was at the height of its fame before the Persian War; in that crisis it did not take a bold or patriotic stand, and its reputation was sensibly impaired.
IDEAS OF THE FUTURE.--To the Greeks life was so bright and joyous a thing that they looked upon death as a great calamity. They therefore pictured life after death, except in the case of a favored few, as being hopeless and aimless. [Footnote: Homer makes the shade of the great Achilles in Hades to say:-- "I would be A laborer on earth, and serve for hire Some man of mean estate, who makes scant cheer, Rather than reign o'er all who have gone down To death."--Od. XI. 489-90 [Bryant's Trans.].] The Elysian Fields, away in the land of sunset, were, indeed, filled with every delight; but these were the abode only of the great heroes and benefactors of the race. So long as the body remained unburied, the soul wandered restless in Hades; hence the sacredness of the rites of sepulture.
THE SACRED GAMES.--The celebrated games of the Greeks had their origin in the belief of their Aryan ancestors that the souls of the dead were gratified by such spectacles as delighted them during their earthly life. During the Heroic Age these festivals were simply sacrifices or games performed at the tomb, or about the pyre of the dead. Gradually these grew into religious festivals observed by an entire city or community, and were celebrated near the oracle or shrine of the god in whose honor they were instituted; the idea now being that the gods were present at the festival, and took delight in the various contests and exercises.
Among these festivals, four acquired a world-wide celebrity. These were the Olympian, celebrated in honor of Zeus, at Olympia, in the Peloponnesus; the Pythian, in honor of Apollo, near his shrine and oracle at Delphi; the Nemean, in honor of Zeus, at Nemea; and the Isthmian, held in honor of Poseidon, on the isthmus of Corinth.
THE OLYMPIAN GAMES.--Of these four festivals the Olympian secured the greatest renown. In 776 B.C. Coroebus was victor in the foot-race at Olympia, and as from that time the names of the victors were carefully registered, that year came to be used by the Greeks as the starting-point in their chronology. The games were held every fourth year, and the interval between two successive festivals was known as an Olympiad.
The contests consisted of foot-races, boxing, wrestling, and other athletic games. Later, chariot-racing was introduced, and became the most popular of all the contests. The competitors must be of the Hellenic race; and must, moreover, be unblemished by any crime against the state or sin against the gods. Spectators from all parts of the world crowded to the festival.
The victor was crowned with a garland of wild olive; heralds proclaimed his name abroad; his native city received him as a conqueror, sometimes through a breach made in the city walls; his statues, executed by eminent artists, were erected at Olympia and in his own city; sometimes even divine honor and worship were accorded to him; and poets and orators vied with the artist in perpetuating the name and deeds of him who had reflected undying honor upon his native state.
INFLUENCE OF THE GRECIAN GAMES.--For more than a thousand years these national festivals exerted an immense influence upon the literary, social, and religious life of Hellas. They enkindled among the widely scattered Hellenic states and colonies a common literary taste and enthusiasm; for into all the four great festivals, excepting the Olympian, were introduced, sooner or later, contests in poetry, oratory, and history. During the festivals, poets and historians read their choicest productions, and artists exhibited their masterpieces. The extraordinary honors accorded to the victors stimulated the contestants to the utmost, and strung to the highest tension every power of body and mind. To this fact we owe some of the grandest productions of the Greek race.
They moreover promoted intercourse and trade; for the festivals became great centres of traffic and exchange during the continuance of the games. They softened, too, the manners of the people, turning their thoughts from martial exploits and giving the states respite from war; for during the month in which the religious games were held it was sacrilegious to engage in military expeditions. In all these ways, though they never drew the states into a common political union, still they did impress a common character upon their social, intellectual, and religious life.
THE AMPHICTYONIC COUNCIL.--Closely connected with the religious festivals were the so-called Amphictyonies, or "leagues of neighbors." These were associations of a number of cities or tribes for the celebration of religious rites at some shrine, or for the protection of some particular temple.
Pre-eminent among all such unions was that known as the Delphic Amphictyony, or simply The Amphictyony. This was a league of twelve of the sub-tribes of Hellas, whose main object was the protection of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Another of its purposes was, by humane regulations, to mitigate the cruelties of war.
The so-called First Sacred War (600-590 B.C.) was a crusade of ten years carried on by the Amphictyons against the cities of Crissa and Cirrha for their robbery of the treasures of the Delphian temple. The cities were finally taken, levelled to the ground, and the wrath of the gods invoked upon any one who should dare to rebuild them. The spoils of the war were devoted to the establishment of musical contests in honor of the Delphian Apollo. Thus originated the renowned Pythian festivals, to which allusion has just been made.
Chapter XII
AGE OF THE TYRANTS AND OF COLONIZATION: THE EARLY GROWTH OF SPARTA AND OF ATHENS. (776-500 B.C.)
1. AGE OF THE TYRANTS AND OF COLONIZATION
THE TYRANTS.--In the Heroic Age the preferred form of government was a patriarchal monarchy. The Iliad says, "The rule of many is not a good thing: let us have one ruler only,--one king,--him to whom Zeus has given the sceptre." But by the dawn of the historic period, the patriarchal monarchies of the Achæan age had given place, in almost all the Grecian cities, to oligarchies or aristocracies.
THE OLIGARCHIES GIVE WAY TO TYRANNIES.--The nobles into whose hands the ancient royal authority thus passed were often divided among themselves, and invariably opposed by the common freemen, who, as they grew in intelligence and wealth, naturally aspired to a place in the government. The issue of long contentions was the overthrow almost everywhere of oligarchical government and the establishment of the rule of a single person.
Usually this person was one of the nobility, who held himself out as the champion of the people, and who with their help usurped the government. One who had thus seized the government was called a tyrant. By this term the Greeks did not mean one who rules harshly, but simply one who holds the supreme authority in the state illegally. Some of the Greek Tyrants were mild and beneficent rulers, though too often they were all that the name implies among us.
But the Greeks always had an inextinguishable hatred of arbitrary rule; consequently the Tyrannies were, as a rule, short-lived, rarely lasting longer than three generations. They were usually violently overthrown, and the old oligarchies re-established, or democracies set up in their place. As a rule, the Dorian cities preferred oligarchical, and the Ionian cities democratical, government. The so-called Age of the Tyrants lasted from 650 to 500 B.C.
Among the most noted of the Tyrants were the Pisistratidæ, at Athens, of whom we shall speak hereafter; Periander at Corinth (625-585 B.C.), who was a most cruel ruler, yet so generous a patron of artists and literary men that he was thought worthy of a place among the Seven Sages; and Polycrates, Tyrant of Samos (535-522 B.C.), who, with that island as a stronghold, and with a fleet of a hundred war-galleys, built up a sort of maritime kingdom in the AEgean, and for the space of more than a decade enjoyed such astonishing and uninterrupted prosperity, that it was believed his sudden downfall and death--he was allured to the Asian shore by a Persian satrap, and crucified--were brought about by the envy of the gods, [Footnote: Herodotus tells how Amasis of Egypt, the friend and ally of the Tyrant, becoming alarmed at his extraordinary course of good fortune, wrote him, begging him to interrupt it and disarm the envy of the gods, by sacrificing his most valued possession. Polycrates, acting upon the advice, threw into the sea a precious ring, which he highly prized; but soon afterwards the jewel was found by his servants in a fish that a fisherman had brought to the palace as a present for Polycrates. When Amasis heard of this, he at once broke off his alliance with the Tyrant, feeling sure that he was fated to suffer some terrible reverse of fortune. The event justified his worst fears.] who the Greeks thought were apt to be jealous of over-prosperous mortals.
THE FOUNDING OF COLONIES.--The Age of the Tyrants coincides very nearly with the era of greatest activity in the founding of new colonies. Thousands, driven from their homes, like the Puritans in the time of the Stuart tyranny in England, fled over the seas, and, under the direction of the Delphian Apollo, laid upon remote and widely separated shores the basis of "Dispersed Hellas." The overcrowding of population and the Greek love of adventure also contributed to swell the number of emigrants. During this colonizing era Southern Italy became so thickly set with Greek cities as to become known as Magna Græcia, "Great Greece." Here were founded during the latter part of the eighth century B.C. the important Dorian city of Tarentum; the wealthy and luxurious Achæan city of Sybaris (whence the term Sybarite, meaning a voluptuary); the Great Crotona, distinguished for its schools of philosophy and its victors in the Olympian games.
Upon the island of Sicily was planted, by the Dorian Corinth, the city of Syracuse (734 B.C.), which, before Rome had become great, waged war on equal terms with Carthage.
In the Gulf of Lyons was established about 600 B.C. the important Ionian city of Massalia (Marseilles), the radiating point of long routes of travel and trade.
On the African coast was founded the great Dorian city of Cyrene (630 B.C.), and probably about the same time was established in the Nile delta the city of Naucratis, through which the civilization of Egypt flowed into Greece.
The tide of emigration flowed not only to the west and south, but to the north as well. The northern shores of the Ægean and those of the Hellespont and the Propontis were fringed with colonies. The Argonautic terrors of the Black Sea were forgotten or unheeded, and even those remote shores received their emigrants. Many of the settlements in that quarter were established by the Ionian city of Miletus, which, swarming like a hive, became the mother of more than eighty colonies.
Through this wonderful colonizing movement, Greece came to hold somewhat the same place in the ancient Mediterranean world that England as a colonizer occupies in the world of today. Many of these colonies not only reflected honor upon the mother land through the just renown of their citizens, but through their singularly free, active, and progressive life, they exerted upon her a most healthful and stimulating influence.
2. THE GROWTH OF SPARTA
SITUATION OF SPARTA.--Sparta was one of the cities of the Peloponnesus which owed their origin or importance to the Dorian Invasion (see p. 96). It was situated in the deep valley of the Eurotas, in Laconia, and took its name Sparta (sown land) from the circumstance that it was built upon tillable ground, whereas the heart and centre of most Greek cities consisted of a lofty rock (the citadel, or acropolis). It was also called Lacedæmon, after an early legendary king.
CLASSES IN THE SPARTAN STATE.--In order to understand the social and political institutions of the Spartans, we must first notice the three classes--Spartans (Spartiatæ), Perioeci, and Helots--into which the population of Laconia was divided.
The Spartans proper were the descendants of the Dorian conquerors of the country. They composed but a small fraction of the entire population. Their relations to the conquered people were those of an army of occupation. Sparta, their capital, was simply a vast camp, unprotected by any walls until later and degenerate times. The martial valor of its citizens was thought its only proper defence.
The Perioeci (dwellers-around), who constituted the second class, were the subjugated Achæans. They were allowed to retain possession of their lands, but were forced to pay tribute, and, in times of war, to fight for the glory and interest of their Spartan masters.
The third and lowest class was composed of slaves, or serfs, called Helots. The larger number of these were laborers upon the estates of the Spartans. They were the property of the state, and not of the individual Spartan lords, among whom they were distributed by lot. Practically they had no rights which their Spartan masters felt bound to respect. It is affirmed that when they grew too numerous for the safety of the state, their numbers were thinned by a deliberate massacre of the surplus population.
THE LEGEND OF LYCURGUS.--The laws and customs of the Spartans have excited more interest, perhaps, than any similar institutions of the ancient world. A mystery and halo were thrown about them by their being attributed to the creative genius of a single lawgiver, Lycurgus.
Lycurgus, according to tradition, lived about the ninth century B.C. He is represented as acquainting himself with the laws and institutions of different lands, by converse with their priests and sages. He is said to have studied with great zeal the laws of Minos, the legendary lawgiver of the Cretans. Like the great legislator Moses, he became learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.
After much opposition, a system of laws and regulations drawn up by Lycurgus was adopted by the Spartan people. Then, binding his countrymen by a solemn oath that they would carefully observe his laws during his absence, he set out on a pilgrimage to Delphi. In response to his inquiry, the oracle assured him that Sparta would endure and prosper as long as the people obeyed the laws he had given them. Lycurgus caused this answer to be carried to his countrymen; and then, that they might remain bound by the oath they had taken, he resolved never to return. He went into an unknown exile.
THE KINGS, THE SENATE, AND THE POPULAR ASSEMBLY.--The so-called Constitution of Lycurgus provided for two joint kings, a Senate of Elders, and a Popular Assembly.
The two kings corresponded in some respects to the two consuls in the later Roman republic. One served as a check upon the other. This double sovereignty worked admirably; for five centuries there were no attempts on the part of the Spartan kings to subvert the constitution. The power of the joint kings, it should be added, was rather nominal than real (save in time of war); so that while the Spartan government was monarchical in form, it was in reality an aristocracy, the Spartans corresponding very closely to the feudal lords of mediæval Europe.
The Senate consisted of thirty elders. The powers of this body were at first almost unlimited. After a time, however, officers called ephors were elected by the Popular Assembly, and these gradually absorbed the powers and functions of the Senate, as well as the authority of the two associate kings.
The Popular Assembly was composed of all the citizens of Sparta over thirty years of age. By this body laws were made, and questions of peace and war decided. In striking contrast to what was the custom at Athens, all matters were decided without debate. The Spartans were fighters, not talkers; they hated discussion.
REGULATIONS AS TO LANDS AND MONEY.--At the time of Lycurgus the lands of Laconia had become absorbed by the rich, leaving the masses in poverty and distress. It is certain that the lawgiver did much to remedy this ruinous state of affairs. Tradition says that all the lands were redistributed, an equal portion being assigned to each of the nine thousand Spartan citizens, and a smaller and less desirable portion to each of the thirty thousand Perioeci,--but it is not probable that there was any such exact equalization of property.
The Spartans were forbidden to engage in trade; all their time must be passed in the chase, or in gymnastic and martial exercise. Iron was made the sole money of the state. This, according to Plutarch, "was of great size and weight, and of small value, so that the equivalent for ten minæ (about $140) required a great room for its stowage, and a yoke of oxen to draw it." The object of this, he tell us, was to prevent its being used for the purchase of "foreign trumpery."
THE PUBLIC TABLES.--The most peculiar, perhaps, of the Lycurgean institutions were the public meals. In order to correct the extravagance with which the tables of the rich were often spread, Lycurgus ordered that all the Spartan citizens should eat at public and common tables. Excepting the ephors, none, not even the kings, were excused from sitting at the common mess. One of the kings, returning from a long expedition, presumed to dine privately with his wife, but received therefor a severe reproof.
A luxury-loving Athenian, once visiting Sparta and seeing the coarse fare of the citizens, is reported to have declared that now he understood the Spartan disregard of life in battle. "Any one," said he, "must naturally prefer death to life on such fare as this."
EDUCATION OF THE YOUTH.--Children were considered as belonging to the state. Every infant was brought before the Council of Elders; and if it did not seem likely to become a robust and useful citizen, it was exposed in a mountain glen. At seven the education and training of the youth were committed to the charge of public officers, called boy-trainers. The aim of the entire course, as to the boys, was to make a nation of soldiers who should despise toil and danger and prefer death to military dishonor. Reading and writing were untaught, and the art of rhetoric was despised. Spartan brevity was a proverb, whence our word laconic (from Laconia), implying a concise and pithy mode of expression. Boys were taught to respond in the fewest words possible. At the public tables they were not permitted to speak until questioned: they sat "silent as statues." As Plutarch puts it, "Lycurgus was for having the money bulky, heavy, and of little value; and the language, on the contrary, very pithy and short, and a great deal of sense compressed in a few words."
But before all things else the Spartan youth was taught to bear pain unflinchingly. Often he was scourged just for the purpose of accustoming his body to pain. Frequently, it is said, boys died under the lash, without betraying their suffering by look or moan.
Another custom tended to the same end as the foregoing usage. The boys were at times compelled to forage for their food. If detected, they were severely punished for having been so unskilful as not to get safely away with their booty. This custom, as well as the fortitude of the Spartan youth, is familiar to all through the story of the boy who, having stolen a young fox and concealed it beneath his tunic, allowed the animal to tear out his vitals, without betraying himself by the movement of a muscle.
The Cryptia, which has been represented as an organization of young Spartans who were allowed, as a means of rendering themselves ready and expert in war, to hunt and kill the Helots, seems in reality to have been a sort of police institution, designed to guard against uprisings of the serfs.
ESTIMATE OF THE SPARTAN INSTITUTIONS.--That the laws and regulations of the Spartan constitution were admirably adapted to the end in view,--the rearing of a nation of skilful and resolute warriors,--the long military supremacy of Sparta among the states of Greece abundantly attests. But when we consider the aim and object of the Spartan institutions, we must pronounce them low and unworthy. The true order of things was just reversed among the Lacedæmonians. Government exists for the individual: at Sparta the individual lived for the state. The body is intended to be the instrument of the mind: the Spartans reversed this, and attended to the education of the mind only so far as its development enhanced the effectiveness of the body as a weapon in warfare.
Spartan history teaches how easy it is for a nation, like an individual, to misdirect its energies--to subordinate the higher to the lower. It illustrates, too, the fact that only those nations that labor to develop that which is best and highest in man make helpful contributions to the progress of the world. Sparta, in significant contrast to Athens, bequeathed nothing to posterity.
THE MESSENIAN WARS.--The most important event in Spartan history between the age of Lycurgus and the commencement of the Persian War was the long contest with Messenia, known as the First and Second Messenian Wars (about 750-650 B.C.). Messenia was one of the districts of the Peloponnesus which, like Laconia, had been taken possession of by the Dorians at the time of the great invasion.
It is told that the Spartans, in the second war, falling into despair, sent to Delphi for advice. The oracle directed them to ask Athens for a commander. The Athenians did not wish to aid the Lacedæmonians, yet dared not oppose the oracle. So they sent Tyrtæus, a poet-schoolmaster, who they hoped and thought would prove of but little service to Sparta. Whatever truth there may be in this part of the story, it seems indisputable that during the Second Messenian War, Tyrtæus, an Attic poet, reanimated the drooping spirits of the Spartans by the energy of his martial strains. Perhaps it would not be too much to say that Sparta owed her final victory to the inspiring songs of this martial poet.
The conquered Messenians were reduced to serfdom, and their condition made as degrading and bitter as that of the Helots of Laconia. Many, choosing exile, pushed out into the western seas in search of new homes. Some of the fugitives founded Rhegium, in Italy; others, settling in Sicily, gave name and importance to the still existing city of Messina.
GROWTH OF THE POWER OF SPARTA.--After having secured possession of Messenia, Sparta conquered the southern part of Argolis. All the southern portion of the Peloponnesus was now subject to her commands.
On the north, Sparta extended her power over many of the villages, or townships, of Arcadia; but her advance in this direction having been checked by Tegea, one of the few important Arcadian cities, Sparta entered into an alliance with that city, which ever after remained her faithful friend and helper. This alliance was one of the main sources of Spartan preponderance in Greece during the next hundred years and more.
Sparta was now the most powerful state in the Peloponnesus. Her fame was spread even beyond the limits of Hellas. Croesus, king of Lydia, sought an alliance with her in his unfortunate war with Persia, which just now was the rising power in Asia.