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.
[Illustration: ASSYRIANS FLAYING THEIR PRISONERS ALIVE.]
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.
[Illustration: LION HUNT. (From Nineveh.)]
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.
[Illustration: RESTORATION OF A COURT IN SARGON’S PALACE AT KHORSABAD. (After Fergusson.)]
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.
[Illustration: SCULPTURES FROM A GATEWAY AT KHORSABAD.]
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.
CHAPTER 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.
[Illustration: BIRS-NIMRUD. (Ruins of the great Temple of the Seven Spheres, near Babylon.)]
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.
CHAPTER 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.
[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON. (A Restoration.)]
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.
CHAPTER 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.
CHAPTER 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.
[Illustration: KINGDOMS OF LYDIA, MEDIA, AND BABYLONIA. C. B.C. 550]
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.
[Illustration: TOMB OF CYRUS THE GREAT. (Present Condition.)]
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.
[Illustration: CAPTIVE INSURGENTS BROUGHT BEFORE DARIUS. Beneath his foot is the Magus Gomates, the false Smerdis. (From the great Behistun Rock.)]
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.
[Illustration: THE KING IN COMBAT WITH A MONSTER. (From Persepolis.)]
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.
[Illustration: THE RUINS OF PERSEPOLIS.]
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
CHAPTER 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.
[Illustration: PREHISTORIC WALLS AT MYCENÆ. (The Lions’ Gate.)]
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.
[Illustration: FORTY-OARED GREEK BOAT. (After a Vase Painting.)]
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.
CHAPTER 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.
[Illustration: THE WORLD ACCORDING TO HOMER.]
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