Sketches of General History

Part I. The Patriarchal Age

. . . . 1 II. THE EARLY MONARCHIES 19 III. THE EARLY REPUBLICS, .... 82 IV. THE ROMAN REPUBLIC, .... 104 V. THE EMPIRE OF ROME, 215 VI. THE BARBARIANS, 237 VII. THE SARACENS, ...... 24ti VIII. THE TURKS, . . . . . .263 IX. THE GOTHIC KINGDOMS OF THE AVEST, . . % 272 X. THE DEMOCRACY OF THE MIDDLE AGES, . . 2S5 XI. CHANGES IN EUROPEAN GOArERNMENT, . . 299 NOTES; 3,1

ADVERTISEMENT.

. The following pages were written at intervals about the years 1832-3, and part delivered as lectures in a country village. The Author was never satisfied with their fitness for publication, and they were never revised for the press by himself. Had he done so, the increased information now available might have led him to modify a few statements, and to fill up several deficiencies of detail. Still, the general scope of the work seems likely to commend itself to those who have appreciated his former writings. No title having been given to the manuscript, that of Sketches of General History has seemed to the Editors to give the best idea of its contents.

Introduction

. The following discourses on History Avere com menced in connexion with an Outline of the Spirit of Prophecy. History and Prophecy Avere at first united ; but Avhen God separated Abraham to Him self, Prophecy no longer embraced the history of the world, but only that portion of it, sometimes smaller, .sometimes larger, which was in anywise connected with God's chosen people. At last Prophecy and History shall be again re-united, when the fulness of the Gentiles are added to the Church, and all the ends of the earth have seen the Divine salvation. Even noAv Prophecy and History in all cases reflect much light upon each other. The same Hand that upholds the Church directs the events of the world ; there is the same analogy between Prophecy and general History as between Nature and Grace. Tin? same laws are operative in each, and both are beset by similar difficulties. The rise and diffusion of pro-

INTRODUCTION.

. Vlll fane knowledge is very similar to that of religious knowledge. The same long winter of the Dark Ages checked the progress of both, after they had enjoyed the sunshine of prosperity for a time ; and both have been revisited by the same awakening spring. The same changes are hastening the development of both, and Avhen Prophecy shall receive its accom plishment in the fulfilment of the promises, the revolutions of History will also terminate in the peaceful and spiritual dominion of that just King, Avhose influence over the earth, in the latter days, shall be as the clear shining of the sun after rain. . . .

PART I. THE PATRIARCHAL AGE.

The events and monuments of a former world, except the few fragments retained in Genesis, perished in the Flood. The Deluge then is the era from which history begins. And here the traditions of many distant nations are in accordance with the Books of Moses. They trace the renovation of mankind to the preservation of a single family in the midst of a universal calamity. Not that the Deluge entirely separated the Post diluvians from the memory of their ancestors. They spoke the same language, and retained the remembrance of many of the same arts. The greatest of all discoveries the Antediluvians had not reached, — the noble art of transmitting and perpetuating thoughts by permanent signs. No system of hieroglyphics had existed, othervAdse these characters would have been common to the descendants of Noah ; nor would the Egyptians, the Tyrians, and the Chaldeans, have had to invent each an inde- A SKETCHES OF HISTORY. pendent and different series of symbols.

Yet it is eAddent from the writings of Moses that the discoveries of the Antediluvians Avere considerable, though handed down by practice and tradition alone ; and that they had attained some eminence in agriculture, in architecture, and metallurgy ; in poetry, and in the invention of musical instruments. It is also evident that these arts were transmitted to the Postdiluvians. Noah from the first culti vated the vine. His prediction is uttered in the same measure as the antediluvian fragment of Lamech addressed to his wives Adah and ZiUah. The descendants of Noah laid no claim to invention. The art of working in metals they ascribed to remote antiquity. Their musical instruments had the same name and the same form as the harp and organ, or rather the lyre and pipe, of Jubal, the earliest musician, and the son of the earliest recorded poet.

These simple arts had no need of being en graved on the rock, or preserved in emblems, in order to be perpetuated ; ministering either to the first wants, or to the simplest pleasures of man, they Avere certain not to be forgotten. Thus the early pastoral tribes carried along Avith them the seeds of future civilisation. They preferred the easier life of shepherds, wandering Avith their flocks under serene skies, to more fixed habitations. But if one of those Edens of the East, as the Mohammedans are wont to describe them, like Damascus with its Avell-watered valley, invited them to make it their permanent abode, the tran sition from pasturage to agriculture Avas easy ; for they could find no difficulty, while they herded their flocks amidst its unfailing; verdure, to cover its slopes with the vine which they well kneAV how to cultivate ; or to commit their bread to the Avaters, and entrust their seed-corn to the rich and irrigated soil, from which it so immediately sprang, and ripened with so little labour and with so abundant an increase.

The pastoral life was the earliest. The domestic animals were always tame. In theory avc may ex patiate on the difficulty of passing from the con dition of hunters to that of herdsmen. We may enlarge on the irksomeness which the careless savage Avould feel in rearing animals tame, for a supply, Avhile want was yet at a distance. But the Post diluvians had not this difficult transition to make ; they were always pastoral. They had the domestic animals within the Ark, and never suffered the greatest number of them to become wild. We are apt to draw too broad and definite a line of distinction between the condition of hunters, of shepherds, and of cultivators. Even the savages SKETCHES OP HISTORY. of America, though deprived of the intermediate pastoral state by the want of cattle, united, in a small degree, agriculture to the chase.

The early tribes of mankind both followed the chase and practised agriculture, though they drew their principal sub sistence from their flocks. Thus notwithstanding Isaac's numerous herds and uncertain habitation, he sowed in that land of his pilgrimage, and received in the same year an hundredfold. But the earth was open before them, and disclosed new scenes of beauty and new sources of riches to their advancing footsteps. The delight of the patriarchs was in fresh fountains and greener pastures. Their flocks Avere their portable wealth and subsistence, which they could easily transport along with them. After reaping the treasures of the virgin and hitherto un tilled soil, they left the ground, from which they had gathered their harvest, again to the wildness of nature ; and were sure of an equally abundant re turn wherever they found pasture sufficient for then cattle, and fountains still continuing to flow through the dry and sultry summers of the East.

This was the cause of the earliest movements of mankind. Like the pastoral tribes in the same country at the present day, they had their summer and their winter stations. They were confined for a century or two after the Deluge betAveen the broad rivers of the Tigris and the Euphrates. There " they journeyed eastAvard," or rather " in the East." The rich and level plains of Shinar would afford them a mild climate and a rich pasturage in winter ; but Avhen the scorching heats of summer began, they would retire, like the Persian kings, to the elevated table-land of the north ; to that mountain ous region towards the higher course of the Tigris and the Euphrates, to Avhich the patriarchs and Moses gave the name of Ararat, or the land of Hills upon Hills. There the patriarchs were surrounded by the same herds which still attend the marches of the migra tory tribes.

The camel traversed the sands of Meso potamia, and browsed on the prickly herbage of the Desert. The ass shared in bearing the burdens, and attained its full strength and vigour in so congenial a climate. The cow furnished them Avith milk, and the rock with wild honey, those delicacies of the early ages. The ox even then submitted to labour, and supplied them by its toil with the fat kidneys of wheat, from a soil which may be considered as the original region from which corn has been derived to the rest of the Avorld. Immense flocks of sheep and goats were driven to the mountains in summer, and pastured the plains in winter ; like the merino sheep of the Spaniards, Avhich pass, according to the season, from the Pyrenees to Estremadura. While horses, fewer in number, and undebased by servile labour, were reserved, first for the chase, and after wards for war.

The dispersion of mankind does not appear in general to be well understood. The law of population, as laid down by Malthus and exemplified in the United States and other new countries, well ex plains the occasion of it. The dispersion of mankind is placed by most writers too early ; at about one hundred years after the Deluge. The numbers then living could scarcely have amounted to above a few hundred individuals. " The confusion of tongues," says Dwight, " I place four hundred and eleven years after the Deluge." This is probably in the other extreme, and certainly affects too great accuracy. Nothing is so uncertain as ancient numbers, OAving to the almost impossibility of accurately transcribing them. But two or three hundred years after the Deluge, the patriarchal tribes would no longer find room for their increasing numbers (if they continued the pastoral life) between the Tigris and the Eu phrates.

The only alternative that they had was either to become agriculturists, and to betake themselves to permanent abodes by building towns ; or to clear the river boundaries, and to spread their flocks over the Avorld Avhich lay unoccupied beyond them. Their first intention Avas to avoid separating, and to build a city, " lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." And this city Avas to have a tOAver whose top was to reach to the heavens ; dedicated also, it is probable, to the heavens, that early idolatry which then began to prevail ; and whose height, seen far over the level plains of Shinar, might serve as a rallying-point and centre of civil and religious union to the various tribes, who, settling in the neighbour hood, would find an additional bond of fraternity in this new and erroneous worship.

At this time the whole earth Avas of one language and one speech, having always lived in intercommunity till the building of the toAver. But God confounded their language and their design. They Avere unable to carry on any undertaking in common. Their numbers pressed upon the means of subsistence, their purpose of settling and cultivating the earth together was abandoned : " so the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth : and they left off to build the city." In Avhat that confusion of languages consisted has not been satisfactorily discovered. There are sufficient evidences of original identity in all languages that have been thoroughly examined. But the manner in which they suddenly diverged from each other, and assumed a new and strange aspect, could only be found out, if it is even discoverable, by a much more accurate analysis of these languages into their elements than the world is likely to see for some time to come.

The manner of the dispersion has been sufficiently marked by Moses. The descendants of Shem chiefly remained in the original seats of mankind, or passed to no great distance on the other side of the Tigris and the Euphrates ; except where the tribes sprung from Joctan pressed forward to the extremities of the Happy Arabia. The sons of Japhet passed through the defiles of Ararat, crossed the Euphrates and the Tigris towards their sources, and entered upon the unoccupied and boundless regions that lay untenanted before them ; thus taking gradual pos session of perhaps more than two-thirds of the earth, and early accomplishing the prediction that God should enlarge Japhet. The descendants of Ham advanced upon Africa in two directions ; the great body of them moving by the Isthmus of Suez, and leaving behind the Canaan ites, who retained possession of Canaan, while the Misraim occupied Egypt ; the Cushites spreading themselves from the mouth of the Euphrates to the coasts of the Red Sea, and subsequently as far as the mountains of Abyssinia.

As the advance of each division of the human race was gradual, and they made a temporary stop at various points of their progress, they bequeathed their name in succession to these transitory abodes. Thus the land of Cush first denoted the country to the mouth of the Euphrates, which still retains the name of Kuzistan ; then was applied to the shores of the Red Sea ; more lately to the banks of the Nile above Egypt ; and lastly to the distant country of Abyssinia. Neither did the tribes move Avith the same velo city forwards. Some plunged at once into the wil derness, and were thinly scattered over a desert region. Others remained more thickly congregated together for a time ; and, though afterwards widely separated, must, if Ave judge from the affinity of their dialects, have lived in a state of close intercom munity for many ages.

All these migrations Avere accompanied with frequent wars, as is evident from the early prevalence of slavery. Abraham had three hundred and eighteen slaves born in his OAvn house. To how many various contests must their ancestors have OAved their loss of liberty ! The same law of population which drove them from their original seats, impelled with increasing violence the advancing waves of the migratory tribes against each other. Their cattle, so easily carried off, formed always a tempting object of plunder ; and the commencing trade in slaves spread still further the violence of war. The pastoral tribes have obtained very unmerited praise, from Homer downwards, for their peaceable and inoffensive life. They are continually engaged in hostilities. The plundering expeditions for cattle and for slaves have occupied their leisure from the time of Abraham and Job to the present, and have spread devastation and misery from the sea of China to the farthest coasts of the Atlantic.

The patriarchal tribes, as they were never ignorant of working in metal, appear never to have been unprovided with warlike weapons, though used at first for the chase rather than for mutual hostility. Some rude dagger or knife used equally for domestic or hostile purposes ; the sword, Avhich is but a lengthened dagger, and the spear, Avhich is a dagger attached to the end of a pole ; the javelin, which is a shortened spear, and the arroAV, which is a con tracted javelin, with the art of giving it a sure and sufficient impetus when projected from a bow, — seem always to have been known to the Post diluvians, as derived to them from their ancestors, and to have been early and necessarily employed by them in defending their cattle and in thinning the beasts of prey. Though armies in these ages were small, and fitted rather for plundering expeditions than for permanent conquests, yet from there being few fortified toAvns, and the Aveaker tribes haA-inono strongholds to fly to, these invading forces were able to overrun a considerable extent of country.

Thus the four kings in the time of Abraham raised tribute or collected spoils from the banks of the Euphrates to those of the Jordan ; and the Chal deans, in the days of Job, extended their incursions along the edge of the Syrian desert. Aristotle was certainly right when he considered the patriarchal to have been the original form of government. For though the rights and authority of a father cannot be transmitted to an elder brother, still the eldest of the family has been con sidered by all aboriginal tribes as the representative of their common progenitor, and has been looked up to with a feeling of filial veneration. This affords a mark Avhether or not particular races of men have been the first occupants of the soil. The Celtic race, by the patriarchal condition of their tribes, prove that they Avere the first comers into Europe.1 The Gothic race, by their greater 1 Had these pages been revised for the press by the author, this sentence would doubtless have undergone some modification.

Not only was he satisfied of the high antiquity of the Basque and Finnish equality and their elective as well as hereditary dignities, sufficiently show, if other proof were wanting, that they were the subsequent invaders of the soil, and that they entered the west of Europe in the independent character of military adventurers. The patriarchal government, as it exists in simple tribes, has no relation to despotism. Like every natural form of government, it is composed of the three primitive elements, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. The chief, who is the father of the tribe, is guided by the counsel of the fathers of the principal families, who hold the place of the senate or of the nobility ; and whatever is agreed upon is executed with the free consent of the whole tribe, who reverence their chief, but also respect them selves as the independent and voluntary members of the same social family.

The pastoral state in which the primitive tribes of mankind lived must always present a considerable degree of uniformity. One of their ancient encampments would not differ greatly from those tribes, but he thought that Dr. Daniel Wilson, in his Archæology of Scotland, had shown strong reasons for believing that more than one race unknown to history had preceded the Celtic in the British Isles. But this does not affect the obvious meaning of the passage ; that the Celtic races are shown to have entered Europe earlier than the Gothic. of the modern Arabs or Tartars. The large and fierce dogs Avhich give the nightly traveller notice that he is approaching an assemblage of tents, were even then trained for the chase by day, and em ployed as a guard at night. The same domestic animals would be found engaged in or trained for the same employments ; the horse prepared for the battle or the chase, the camel resting from its burden, the flocks assembling from their different pastures towards the well, or the herds reclining beside the water-courses.

Within the tents the same employment would be going on ; the weaving the wool into garments, that art which has ever existed amongst the pas toral tribes, and has formed the great occupation of their women. And though skins in the earliest ages Avere one of the most common coAerings, according to the punning proverb in Job, " skin for skin " (a maxim often in use among the robbers of the Desert), meaning that all that a man has he Avill part with, even to his garment, to save his life ; still garments of wool seem to have been in general use also, and the art of dyeing as well as Aveaving to have been derived from the times before the Flood. A trade was carried on in the precious stones as well as the precious metals. Moses expressly specifies the places from Avhich these, the most valuable of commodities, were brought.

The merchants, even as early as the time of Abraham, had their stamped bars or pieces of silver, which passed current among the different tribes. And the pro ductions of Arabia Felix, probably also of the opposite African coast, and perhaps even of India, were carried across the Arabian desert by the camels of the Ishmaelites and the Midianites, for the purpose of embalming the Egyptian kings, or of offering incense to the idols of Egypt. The Book of Job bears witness to the extent to which mining Avas pursued ; to the long chambers Avhich they carried on beneath the earth, and to the difficulties which they experienced from the burst ing out of internal springs of water. They had not only gold, but gold from different quarters, and of different values. Silver was plentiful, and copper was in abundance, which they seem early to have formed into a sort of brass.

The use of iron was known, but less frequently employed, whether from fewer mines of it being discovered is uncertain. The art of engraving was invented, and signets marked with a peculiar character, and rings with stars or talismans were used. Skins supplied the place of vessels for liquids, and by their sizes formed the original liquid measures. Yet the art of pottery was discovered, and the employment of earthemvare was so frequent, that its brittle fragments formed around their dAvellings a heap along Avith the ashes, where Job sat doAvn to scrape himself with a pot sherd. There was not only the commencement of the arts, but even the rudiments of the sciences were in ex istence. In Job, considerable acquaintance is shown with the natural history both of Arabia and of Egypt ; and an equally graphic picture is given of the hippopotamus and the crocodile of the Nile, as of the Avild ass and the ostrich of the Desert.

In Job also we perceive the first beginnings of astronomy, and the formation of the earliest con stellations. Though there have been considerable disputes as to the meaning of the terms, our trans lators Avere probably not mistaken as to the band of Orion, or the SAveet influences of the Pleiades, the northern Arcturus, or the Chambers of the South ; since these Avere the portions of the heavens most likely to engage the earliest attention of the Chal dean or Arabian she}:>herds. Their simple music appears the same with which Jubal delighted their antediluvian ancestors — the tabor, the pipe, and the lyre, in the rudest and simplest forms. And their poetry, symmetrical in thought rather than in sound, compensated for the poverty of the language by its magnificent bursts of imagery and feeling.

The whole of life was poetical. The song, with the tabor and pipe, accompanied the arrival and the departure— the event of joy or of grief. The victory of the chief, or the opening of a well, received a tribute from the early muses; always ready, like the ancient chorus, to unite their voices with every passing event. This, then, was the primitive condition of man kind. The pastoral tribes were in movement to the east and to the west of Mesopotamia ; they were climbing in the north from hill to hill, or painfully pressing on through the southern Desert from well to well. Part of them remained stationary within the walls of the early Babylon, or in the neighbour ing towns that arose in imitation and riAralry of it on the banks of the Euphrates. Others " Avent forth Avith Asshur," and laid the foundations of the con quering Nineveh, or contributed to the early popu lousness of the great city of Resen.

Others halted by the banks of Abana and Pharpar, and raised the ancient walls of Damascus. While others, like Lot, overlooking from the hills the fertile vale of Siddim, beheld it " even as the garden of the Lord," and left the pastoral life to cultivate its abundant fertility. All these new towns were raised by the banks of rivers, where the neighbouring grounds, irrigated by the overflowing streams, only needed to be scratched by the first rude plough or mattock, Avorked only by the hand, to return a hundredfold the precious seed that Avas so carelessly confided to it. In a new and different situation arose the towers of Sidon, and afterwards of Tyre, upon the rock which overlooked the waAres. Instead of the harvests Avhich Damascus or Babylon drew from their Avell-watered fields and gardens, their poorer fisher men received at first but a scanty tribute from the sea ; but their fragile barks were soon to spread broader sails, and to bring back from the barren waste of waters greater treasures than were accumulated by the kings of Damascus or the potent con querors of Babylon.

The pastoral state, though it spread far and Avide, in a few ages was passing away from the fairer climes of the East. Whatever situation was most favoured by nature, was soon subdued by the plough. The flocks had to retire from the Avell-watered valley, and to seek a wider range upon sun-burnt hills ; Avhere the vine-dresser was soon to follow them, and to expel them again to the wild pastures of the out lying mountains. That golden age of the pastoral state was soon over, during which the shepherd could choose his dwelling and pitch his tent in the B loveliest spot of the solitude around him. These Edens of the shepherds were rapidly occupied by cities and enclosures, and the pastoral life has been driven from one wilderness to another, till it has found its last retreats in deserts incapable of culti vation — in the burning sands of Arabia or the bleak steppes of Tartary.

Still the memory of the primitive state of mankind is preserved by tradition, and celebrated by song ; though it has left no other dur able monuments behind it than the cairn of loose stones heaped over the body of some patriarchal chieftain, and the green mound round wdiich the ancient herdsmen assembled for council or for war.

Part II. The Early Monarchies

The Antediluvians spoke but one tongue, and consequently formed but one nation ; for the tendency in men to originate new dialects can only be overcome by close intercommunity, and constant intercourse. The PostdiluA-ians had nearly folloAved in the same course. Had they betaken themselves to agriculture in the plains of Shinar, they would have spread over the earth with a sIoav and regular progress, and with a dense population, carrying along Avith them the arts and the conveniences of life ; like the colonists which Greece in ancient, and Europe in modern times, have sent forth to people neAV lands. But the Antediluvians had exhibited what effects result from our fallen nature ; when men congregated together, having no invasions to fear from Avithout, and no renovation to expect from a neAV people taking possession of their territory, and in fusing a new life into them, are left undisturbed, except by civil convulsions, to run the career of prosperity and vice.

God was now about to display human nature under different circumstances, and in a new aspect. He drove asunder the nations, and confounded their language. They no longer lived in intercommunity, but were separated aUke by moral and physical barriers. They each had an independent and different course before them, chequered with all the varieties of fortune, and all the diversities of climate. The difference of language prevented the communication of thought, and se cured to each tribe originality in its literature, and in the improvement, if not in the rise of its arts. The progress of vdce and degeneracy was also in terrupted. Sin met with a speedier punishment ; Avealthy and luxurious cities soon ran the round of prosperity, corruption, and decay. The avengers Avere near at hand in the warlike and Avanderino tribes that surrounded them.

The earth, from being civilized only in detached portions, never became totally corrupt ; there Avas always a scourge and a renovator in the poverty and the hardihood of the pastoral wilderness. The first period of history embraces the early and pastoral condition of mankind. The second period of history and advancement is the duration of the ancient monarchies. The pastoral state, however, includes a wider extent of influence. It spread from the plains of Babylon to the frontiers of Siberia, and through the range of the great Sahara. Beyond these a new mode of life commenced, which was scarcely known to the ancient writers. The great monarchies had much narrower geo graphical limits to their influence. They extended in a line from the Nile to the Yellow River of China, and formed a zone, which was bounded by the Southern Ocean, and by the mountains of Central Asia.

These empires Avere the offspring of the mighty and overflowing floods, on whose banks they Avere established. Nineveh owed its greatness, as well as the soil which it cultivated, to the Tigris. The Euphrates defended and enriched Babylon ; Egypt Avas the creation of the Nile ; and the empires farther to the east were equally indebted to the Avaters Avhich afforded them security, intercourse, and plenty. The greatness of the ancient monarchies is referred to too early a date. The primitive nations had neither chronology nor history. They take no note of time, and keep but a scanty record of events. The chief authorities to Avhich they appeal are fictions of their poets, and legends of their priests. The nations are already arrived at maturity before they think of shaping out to themselves a regular history.

When they first begin seriously to inquire into their origin, by a deception Avhich is almost universal, they see all things double. Thus we have two empires of Nineveh, and two Zoroasters. Thus all the personages of antiquity are multiplied. The real personage occupies the foreground, and beyond him stretches vast and undefined the shadowy image. The origin of this deception is easily pointed out. Tradition, like mist, increases the magnitude and apparent distance of every object. Inquiry, on the other hand, brings them nearer to their real dimen sions and situation. History and fable present such dissimilar appearances of the same individual, that his existence appears divided and doubled. Thus Ave have two Herculeses : the pirate and sea-king of History, and the monster-queller of Mythology ; the heroic shade in Elysium, and the deified Hercules in heaven.