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(The Greek Victory of Salamis)
A celebrated painting by William Kaulbach, the noted German artist of the middle nineteenth century
We gaze here upon of the most stupendous moments of history, a battle which was to decide the fate of all the future ages. Greece overthrew Persia. Europe snatched from Asia that rulership of the world which Europe has held ever since. Asia had been the first home of all wealth and splendor and empire; but Asia had surrendered itself to the power of one man, the Persian tyrant Xerxes. His people were his servants, almost his slaves. Had he conquered the Greeks also, mankind might have continued slaves forever.
But the Greeks, though few in number, were free men and strong of soul, and they defied the tyrant. Xerxes sent his whole mighty navy to crush them. So sure was he of victory that he had a throne erected on the sea-shore in order that he might watch, like a theatrical performance, the downfall of the Greeks. He also brought with him the lords and ladies of his court to enjoy the spectacle. But the ships of the Greeks, with their sharp prows, crushed the Persian vessels. The Greeks said their gods fought for them, and in our picture these visionary gods hover in the air directing the strife, while a priest offers sacrifice to them, and the Greek commander, Themistocles, stands above his men with folded arms, in triumph. Xerxes, in despair and fury, beholds the unforeseen destruction of his navy. He fled back to Persia, and shutting himself in his palace spent the rest of his life in idle pleasure, Never again did he appear in battle.
TO PRESENT the “Story” of history in so simple a form that every one, young and old, may understand and also enjoy it, is no easy matter. Yet the story is of profound importance for us all to know. Our every action in the present is formed upon our knowledge of the past. Hence, the fuller our understanding of that Past, which is History, the wiser will be our actions in the Present, and the keener our judgments of the Future.
This “Story of the Past” has moments of intensest interest, situations more pathetic than those of our most brilliant novels, climaxes more dramatic than those of our strongest plays, scenes more dramatic than those of our strongest plays, scenes more poetic than any of our grandest poems. How are these priceless jewels to be rescued from the more or less tedious and uninteresting details that surround them? How are you, reader, to gather the wheat without the chaff? How are you to learn of the parts that are “worth while” to you, of the knowledge which you will treasure with delight—without a weary plodding through all the dry and unnecessary dust of ages?
The present work is the effort of the authors and the publisher to answer that question. You have here a series of pictures carefully selected and arranged in chronological sequence so as to cover each great event of all the centuries. Thus the whole story of history is impressed upon the eye, the keenest of the senses. At the same time you have revealed to you, at a glance, all that is known of the surroundings, dress, countenance and action of the chief figures of history in the very moment of their triumphs.
Facing each picture is a brief description, telling its story and at the same time carrying onward the general history to the next illustration. Thus the picture descriptions form by themselves an outline account of the world, complete, yet so simple, so vivid, so emphasized by the pictures, that the merest child can follow it all with ease. Accompanying this runs the much fuller narrative of the text, told clearly, accurately, with a careful avoidance of technical phrases and labored explanations, yet with an earnest insistence on history's larger meanings, the lessons which it carries for us all.
The story begins with a general history of the most ancient nations, then traces in succession the rise and fall of each great country which in its turn dominated the world. The narrative thus passes from ancient nations to those of the present; and among these surviving states of our own day the story tells of all which hold or ever have held any special prominence in history. For each nation the narrative is continued separately down to the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. Then, in the closing chapters of all is told the tragic, terrible, yet glorious story of that war.
Thus the whole panorama of the world is made to pass in review before the reader, with the importance of every step made clear to him in its relation to the whole, and yet with each country presented separately, its story told as a unit, so that each nation may be appreciated by itself, with all its struggles and its triumphs. The record of every one of these countries is worth knowing for its own lesson. Every land has had its own romance. Each has had a glory in its past; each has a dream of its future.
[Authorities: Herodotus, “History” (ed. by Rawlinson); Berosus, “Fragments”; King, “History of Sumer and Akkad”; Rogers, “Outlines of the History of Early Babylonia”; Winckler, “History of Babylonia and Assyria”; McCurdy, “History, Prophecy, and the Monuments”; Rawlinson, “The Five Great Oriental Monarchies”; Sayce, “The Ancient Empires of the East”; “Budge, Babylonian Life and History”; Wright, “The Empire of the Hittites”; Radau, “Early Babylonian History”; Ragozin, “Chaldaea,” “Assyria,” “Media”; Sayce, “History of Sennacherib”; Budge, “History of Esarhaddon”; Smith, “History of Assurbanipal”; Layard, “Nineveh and Its Remains”; Peters, “Nippur”; Hilprecht, “Explorations in Bible Lands.”]
HISTORY begins in the Asiatic land of Babylonia. Very recent discoveries have revealed to us that there, at least five thousand years before Christ, and probably twice that long ago, man had built himself cities and organized a government. This early civilization was remarkable in itself, and double remarkable as being apparently the very first wherein man rose definitely above the savage state, and realized his own destiny as master of the earth. The time- worn records of those glowing days of Intellect's first triumphant outburst have been at last been at last recovered, at least in part, from the earth in which they had lain buried for ages. The surprising glimpses thus given of the past have revolutionized many of our ideas of ancient history. The story of the world must be told all over again, from the beginning.
That first “beginning” of man, God's marvellous and mystic act of the creation of humanity, was once supposed to have taken place barely six thousand years ago; but we know now that our human race has inhabited earth for nearer sixty thousand years than six. Scientists incline today to the belief that there was only one creation, or in other words, that all mankind sprang from a single race. But the descendants of that race had spread abroad over every continent long before they became civilized enough to leave any conscious record of their lives. In almost every land today we find traces of these early “cave-dwellers.” In caverns or in excavations we stumble upon their crude stone-headed hammers, their roughly carved spear-heads, and even upon their own fossilized skeletons, bones which have outlasted the brief life of the body by hundreds of centuries.
Slowly, very slowly, these human beings began to rear their heads above the low level of the beast world. Man ceased his dull submission to Nature, and asserted himself as the ruler rather than the slave of the conditions of land and climate that happened to environ him. Doubtless this growth took shape in many regions and in many ways; for man everywhere held in his possession the God-given forces of his brain, the power to weigh, to compare, and thus to reconstruct his world.
So varied, indeed, were the conditions of development in different lands that when, in Babylonia, we catch our earliest glimpse of civilization, we find mankind already divided not merely into tribes or nations, but even into distinct races. These were sharply separated by contrasts of language and of thought, and also by physical traits so marked that they have since persisted despite all the intermingling of men within historic times. Such firmly established characteristics can only be explained by assuming that their possessors had dwelt apart during uncountable centuries of the earlier, unrecorded ages.
The broad divisions thus separating the present human race must be understood and kept in mind by whoever would understand humanity; for most of the tragedy of history has been due to the clash of antagonistic ideals and purposes among these diverging peoples.
The earliest of these races to rise above the savage state were apparently the TURANIANS, or yellow folk, whose best-known descendants today are the Tartars and the Chinese. The Turanians were the pioneers in the slow climb towards civilization; but other peoples have pushed forward with keener energy, and the Turanians have long been left behind. It is of them that we first find clear traces in Babylonia, and also in China; and their aboriginal home lay; perhaps, midway between these two regions in the high table-lands of central Asia, north of the secret fastnesses of Thibet.
The second stock to become notable were the SEMITES, best typified today by the Arabs and the Hebrews. The Semites had their earliest traceable
It is an odd fact that the oldest history is the most recent to be written. Scientists are today digging amid the ruins of ancient cities, and from the fragments thus found we have at last learned much about days and nations long forgotten. We think of Rome as old, but before Rome began these nations were already three times as old a Rome is today.
The earliest civilization yet discovered is that of ancient Babylonia, the region along the lower course of the Euphrates River. Apparently the oldest city of all was Nippur, where scientists from our American University of Pennsylvania have been exploring for years. This city was repeatedly destroyed by fire or flood, and each time the people built above the old ruins, so that now many layers of ruin lie one above the other. The explorers have taken great care to leave as much as possible of the rediscovered ruins standing just as the spade dug them out, while further excavations have been continued to greater depths beneath them. The result is such as our picture shows. Strange pillars and fragments, raised one above the other, have been brought to the light of day and stand towering above the bottom of deep pits, as they never did in their own time. We are shown here the temple of the god En-lil, built upon an older temple of the storm goblins. The lowest level of all reveals the remains of an ancient fishing-village which lay upon the banks of the Euphrates at least ten thousand years ago.
home, and probably developed their racial characteristics, in the deserts of Arabia. They surpassed the Turanians both in science and in warfare, and, if not the first conquerors of other nations, were the first to leave definite record of their dominion.
Third came the HAMITES, among whom the Egyptians are the chief nation. The Hamites are of uncertain descent, possibly either Turanian or Semitic, or separate from both. Our scholars of the nineteenth century regarded the development of this race in Egypt as the oldest discoverable civilization. But we see now that Babylonian culture was of still earlier date, and was possibly the source of that of Egypt.
Fourth and last of these great stocks to assert themselves in building up nations and claiming dominion over earth have been the ARYANS. They spread abroad from some early home in eastern Persia, and became ancestors of the Persians, Hindus, Greeks, Romans, and most of the nations of modern Europe. Outside of these four stocks, there are still the negroes and other lesser peoples; but only these four have ever held the lead in the mighty upward climb of man.
The crash and tumult of these quarrelling races as they meet, perhaps for the first time since their original dispersal, forms the earliest of all the mighty dramas which History sets before us on her stupendous stage. Peering through the dim mists of the most distant past, we can watch all four of the races locking forces in confused conflict in the land of Babylon. Man had fought with Nature; he had fought with the beasts. Now he was to fight with men. History raises her portentous curtain. The impressive spectacle opens. Let us pause to note the settings of the stage.
Babylonia is the ancient name once given to the valley of the Euphrates River. A glance at the map of Asia will show that this region lying to the north of the Persian Gulf and environed by the three other seas, the Mediterranean, the Black, and the Caspian, forms a natural centre between the supposed homes of the earliest Turanians, Semites, and Aryans. Turanian tribes migrating westward from central Asia were led direct, by earth's own roadways, into Babylonia. In later history, we shall find horde after horde of barbaric Tartars, Huns, and Turks leaving their eastern homes by this same route to burst in fierce slaughter upon the western nations. As for the Semites and Aryans, their first homes, Arabia and Persia, constitute the highlands which rise on either side of the Euphrates. These races must long have looked with envious eyes toward its fair meadows.
Thus Babylonia was, perhaps, the earliest region of the earth to be seen by many differing peoples, and coveted by them all. It is a low-lying, semi-tropical pasture country, watered by both the Euphrates and Tigris rivers on their south- ward course to the Gulf of Persia. The region is amazingly fertile, and must in the days of its early civilization have been a veritable paradise. Indeed, its neighbors thought it a fit site for the Eden garden, which the Bible places there. Today Babylonia belongs to the Turkish Empire, and centuries of neglect and misrule have turned it into a waste of floods and marshes, a land of mud and hot, stagnant mists and tropic fevers.
The two rivers, once the blessing of the region, have become its curse. The Euphrates is one of the great rivers of the world. Far to the northward it rises amid the towering mountains of Armenia, whose highest summit, MountArarat, was regarded by the Babylonians as the apex of the world. From these mountains, the stream in its annual summer flood carries down vast masses of earth, and spreads the deposit wide over the face of the land. This fertilizing flood was in ancient days guided and regulated by canals and ditches, but these have long fallen into decay, so that the river ravages at will.
We are dealing here with a stupendous natural movement, an alteration of the face of the globe. The Euphrates has apparently undertaken the task of shifting the huge Armenian mountains and filling with their debris the entire Persian Gulf. Moreover, if the ages give it time, it will undoubtedly complete its work. It bears downward such enormous quantities of earth that not only does it build up its own valley floor higher every year, but it spreads the shoals around its mouth outward into the sea at an annual average of about ninety feet. At present the Tigris River joins the Euphrates some eighty miles from the gulf, and the two streams flow into the sea as one. We can, however, look back clearly to a time when the shore line lay above their junction, and they emptied from separate mouths.
We can gaze even farther back. Nearly one hundred and fifty miles from the present mouth of the Euphrates we find on the edge of the higher lands the ruins of the ancient city of Eridu, which was once a seaport town. Figure out for yourself the time taken by the river to build one hundred and fifty miles, and you will reach, as scientists have done, the impressive conclusion that Eridu must have been built more than seventy-five hundred years ago, or 5500 B.C.
Of course, there is no city of Eridu now. Thousands of years ago it had sunk into a heap of abandoned ruins. Sun and rain gnawed ceaselessly at the mass until it shrank into a mere hillock of clay over which Nature spread her luxuriant verdure. Today, there is nothing to distinguish this hill from hundreds of similar ones which dot the entire valley. The fate of Eridu was not peculiar to itself. Not one of the ancient towns of Babylonia is now in existence. Herodotus, the first Greek historian, who visited the land in the days of its splendor four hundred years before Christ, tells us it contained thousands of cities. Now their sites are marked only by these grass-grown hills. Some of these spread out for miles, some rise abruptly a hundred feet or more above
THE Bible tells us that in this ancient land of Babylonia occurred the early “confusion of tongues.” Scientific exploration now informs us of the same fact from another aspect. It was in Babylonia that the scattered races of men first met after perhaps thousands of years of separation, and each people must indeed have been puzzled and confused to encounter other beings, human like themselves, but with a speech so wholly different. The earliest inhabitants of Babylonia were of the black and yellow races. Then came possibly a Hamite or Egyptian race, and then the desertdwellers of Arabia, a white people but dark of hair and complexion like the Hebrews, and belonging, like them, to the Semite race. Among these many peoples, the Semites or Arabs finally dominated the others; but all worked together as masters or as slaves on the huge towers or “ziggurats” which they upraised for temples.
These ziggurats were built of bricks; for bricks were among man's very earliest inventions, the material out of which he created his first permanent structures. The greatest of these ziggurats was erected in the city of Babylon. It was seven stories high, piled like a child's cube of blocks, with each story smaller than the one below. These successive levels were connected not by steps but by a slanting roadway which rose from each story to the next, and so led finally to the uppermost where was enshrined the god of Babylon, Bel-Marduk.
the plain, others have sunk to be mere inequalities of ground scarcely distinguishable above the general level.
Thus an entire civilization was not only buried, but, until recent years, forgotten. European travellers journeying down the Euphrates guessed vaguely that some of the larger, steeper mounts might be the tombs of ancient cities. The ignorant inhabitants of the region treasured legends of one or two of the hills as being the “Tower of Babel,” or the “City of Nimrod.” Except for that, the mounds were looked upon as the home of evil spirits. The poor peasants, digging there, had come upon grim heads or arms of stone, or perhaps the figures of carved lions, and had fled from the glaring faces of the supposed demons with no suspicion that they were relics of human origin.
So Babylonia remained unknown-except for the vague account of Herodotus, which was mostly legendary, and for a few extracts preserved by the Greeks from other narratives. Some knowledge of the land could be gathered also from the Hebrew Scriptures, and something from the Egyptian hieroglyphics, where these made mention of wars between the two countries.
Yet of the real nature of the Babylonian civilization, its extreme age, remarkable development and astounding power, we had no conception until recent years, when these strange and silent tombs of cities began to yield their secrets. The first scientist to undertake with resolution the task of their exploration was a Frenchman, M. Paul Botta. In 1842, having been appointed consul in the region, he hired men to undertake a systematic digging into one of the hills. For more than two years the results were disappointing. But despite every obstacle of climate and fever, despite the extortions of Turkish officials, and the terror, treachery, and hatred of the natives, M. Botta persisted. In 1845 he laid bare the sculptured ruins of an entire ancient palace, its walls covered with inscriptions, and its doorways frescoed with strange Asiatic sphinxes, half lion and half man.
Europe was astounded and immensely impressed by the discovery. Many scientists, notably the English traveller and scholar Sir A. H. Layard, took up the work of research with eager interest. The results of these explorations were for a long time meagre; the difficulties encountered were almost insurmountable; progress was very slow. The last twenty years, however, have reaped the benefits of the earlier discouragements. Knowledge has come to us almost with a rush. Particularly impressive have been the recent elaborate excavations of the ancient cities of Lagash, Nippur, and Susa. There our scientists have dug through layer after layer of ancient ruins. Especially at Nippur they have found that the city was destroyed and re-destroyed many times in many ages, and each time a new city rose upon the debris, until now relics of the lowest town lie ninety feet below the surface structures.
Every layer of this ninety feet has been carefully explored. Tunnelling like moles in these strange “mines” of history, scholars have brought to the surface materials for much knowledge of this most ancient civilization. We now know just where Babylon stood, and its great rival Nineveh, and a score of still older cities. We have unearthed their buried temples and their palaces, their inscriptions, arts, monuments, the statues of their kings, the figures of their gods, and even the remnants of their buried dead.
Of all these discoveries, the most valuable, and certainly the most surprising, has been the recovery of the writings, the actual literature and language of this long-forgotten people. For several years Mr. Layard continued digging on the site of Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, that state which for a time defeated Babylon and succeeded to its empire. Layard's search was rewarded by the discovery of the royal library of Nineveh's king, Assur-bani-pal, which contained some forty thousand records.
Here, you will say, there lay waiting for us the whole history of Assyria, and of Babylon as well. So, doubtless, it would have been had these records been such as we could read with ease. These strange old volumes were not of paper, like our books. Each was a clay tablet like a flat stone, with both of its sides stamped full of letters. These we now know were put in with a stick, something like our pen, while the clay was soft; and then the tablet was baked in order to harden and preserve it. Assur-bani-pal's volumes had met with rough usage. His palace had evidently been burned; and though the tablets, unlike our paper books, had withstood the fire, they met misfortune from another source. Apparently they were kept in a second story; and, the floor burning underneath, they were precipitated to the ground. The fall was disastrous for clay tablets; scarcely one of all the thousands remains whole. We can only fit them together in patches and uncertain fragments. Still another obstacle to the reading of these primitive volumes was the fact that no one knew their language; and though much patient work has been expended by scholars in deciphering it, no one even yet fully comprehends the intricacies of the mysterious tongue. We call it the wedge or cuneiform language, because its signs are made of little wedges. These represent syllables or words rather than letters; indeed, each one is a substitute for a picture which took too long to draw. Many of them are found to stand for three or four different things; others remain wholly unknown to us. Thus our reading of the language is still imperfect. Other libraries have since been discovered, better preserved than that of Assur-bani-pal, and many inscriptions have been unearthed from the ruined cities. Hence we have been at last enabled to gather a fairly full idea of the story of Babylonia.
Turn now from these sources of our knowledge to listen to the history
MOST of what the early dwellers in Babylonia did was forgotten by their descendants; for this land continued to be earth's chief centre of culture and of population during six thousand years or more. The earliest man to be clearly remembered was called Sargon. Tradition has handed his fame down to us through all the ages as the founder of the great city of Babylon and as its first great king. A legend grew around him, telling that he was a prince, who was exposed to death as an infant but was found and brought up by a gardener. While he worked one day in the garden a lady came to him surrounded by a cloud of doves. She was really Ishtar or Astarte, the love goddess of the Babylonians, to whom doves were sacred. Sargon did not know her, but received her in such princely fashion that she fell in love with him. Under Ishtar's guidance the gardener's boy rose to be the king of his own little city. Then he conquered other cities, and at length held all the land of Babylonia under his rule, being the first man to unite all the little warring cities into a single state.
Recent discoveries have supplied us with a knowledge of the real career of Sargon. He was a military conqueror who lived 3,800 years before Christ, and founded a gorgeous city called Accad. But the city of Babylon had existed long before his time, he only added to its splendors; and many kings had preceded him during many centuries of the slowly developing civilization along the banks of the Euphrates.
itself. We can not make this ancient tale complete; some of it is lost forever. Of the earlier part especially we can only catch clear glimpses here and there, like dissolving pictures which loom suddenly vivid from the midst of darkness and then fade into obscurity again.
What is the very first of these spectacular pictures to appear? Dimly, through the farthest, vaguest mists, perhaps twelve thousand years ago, we see a settlement on the site of Nippur by the side of one of the many channels of the lower Euphrates. Even older may have been the settlement at Susa, the city which afterward became the capital of the Persians. Susa was from the first a hill town, a refuge of violent men who sallied forth from its shelter to hunt and plunder. Nippur, on the contrary, was the home of a peaceful people, fishermen who navigated the river in queer, perfectly round boats of skin, agriculturists who raised crops of wheat and barley on the plains, as these were left bare each season by the receding river flood.
At Nippur there were at first no walls about the town, not even a dike to defend it against the yearly rising of the river. The fishermen built a palace for their king and a temple for their god. These two were elevated on an embankment to protect them from the flood. Doubtless they served also as fortresses in case of an attack. In the temple the fishermen worshipped imaginary goblins of the storm and darkness, strange evil imps whose malignance the poor folk hoped to escape by placating them with sacrifices. Gradually Nippur came to be regarded as a holy city. Its god En-lil, originally chief of the storm spirits, was worshipped as the God of Earth, differentiated from Amu the God of the Sky. Destruction fell more than once upon this city of the storm spirits. Flood came from the hand of Nature; fire from the hand of man. But always Nippur was rebuilt, and each time the sacred temple of En-lil was raised higher and made stronger than before.
Other cities began to grow into prominence. Among the earliest was the ancient seaport Eridhu, “at the mouth of the rivers.” Eridhu had its own god, Ea, lord of the ocean. Tradition represented him as rising out of the sea, half man, half fish, and ruling over the city and teaching its people the arts of civilization. Perhaps we have here a hint of some still earlier culture borne to the shores of the Euphrates by voyagers from afar.
From these two cities their religious teachings spread over all the valley. Eridhu, the shrine of the gift-giving Ea, became the center of a bright and sunny worship, a religion of culture, joy, and progress. This kindly faith gave its characteristic tone to the more southern portion of the valley, the cities nearest the sea and the river mouth. Nippur, on the other hand, was the home of spells and incantations, a faith born of the earlier ages of darkness and fear. It lay to the northward, a hundred miles or more from the salt sea and its sunshine. The inland cities of the upper valley caught their religious spirit from sombre Nippur.
After a time there arose a third religious city, Erech, the shrine of Anu, the sky god. It became a sanctuary even more noted than the earlier ones. So sacred, indeed, was Erech that people of other cities journeyed thither to worship Anu. The ground of Erech became holy ground, and the dead were sent there for burial from all the surrounding region. This practice continued for thousands of years. The ruins of Erech today stand in a flat plain that extends for miles, and seems almost wholly composed of human remains. It is perhaps the vastest burial-ground the world has ever known.
Thus our earliest picture of the past shows us man chiefly as a religious being. As to his other characteristics the vision remains vague. None of these three ancient religious cities of the plain, Nippur, Eridhu, or Erech, seems ever to have embarked upon a career of conquest. Each, in turn, however, submitted to other cities which grew up to be their rivals and then their masters.
From these more warlike towns we catch our second kaleidoscopic picture of man and his beginnings. These riverside cities were all brick-built. Indeed, clay for making bricks was practically the only building material to be had along the lower course of the Euphrates. Each city needed walls for protection not only against man but even more against the annual floods. Every important structure had to be raised above the waters by an immense foundation or platform of bricks. The labor thus involved in every important structure was prodigious, and naturally the work of building passed mainly into the hands of the kings or chief rulers of each town. Moreover, from a fairly early period, it was the practice of each king to stamp his bricks with his signet or that of the city. Hence as we come upon these bricks in different places we have a curious means of tracing the old rulers and the growth of their spreading dominions.
The earliest city which we find dominating others was Lagash. It stood in the open plain near Nippur. Its rulers fought the highlanders of Susa, and drove them back from ravaging the river towns. Nippur had been partly destroyed and the rulers of Lagash rebuilt it. Then Lagash extended its apparently beneficent dominion over Erech. Thus several of the little separate communities were for a time drawn together under a single leader. Their united forces made them secure against invasion; and peace brought in its train prosperity, progress, and a higher civilization.
We are still dealing with a period five thousand years before the Christian era. The people of the Euphrates valley who thus rallied around Lagash were apparently still all of one race, Turanian; though some scientists have taken the legend of the fish-god Ea as evidence of the presence of a second, possibly Hamitic,
MANY of the historical portions of the Bible find confirmation and explanation from the records of Babylonia. The Bible tells how five kings from the Euphrates fought against Sodom and Gomorrah and were afterward surprised and put to flight by Abraham. The leader of these five chiefs was Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, who, we learn, did actually for a time hold sway over the other Asiatic nations. Among the dependent kings with Chedorlaomer, the Bible mentions Amtaphel or Hammurabi, whom we find recorded on the inscriptions as king of Babylon, the greatest indeed of her early rulers.
Following the unsuccessful expedition against Sodom and Gomorrah, Hammurabi rebelled against Chedorlaomer and broke his power. Babylon thus became the capital of the entire land, which was ever afterward known as Babylonia. Hammurabi built up Babylon until it was greater than Ur or any other city of its time, a rival of the most splendid capitals of to-day. He established also a code of laws which has been recently discovered. Thus altogether, as conqueror, builder, and lawmaker, Hammurabi stands out as one of antiquity's very greatest men.
In our picture Chedorlaomer sits in the centre, heavy, stolid, and massive, a type of the fighter of the older race. Hammurabi, young, eager, shrewd and Semitic of feature, argues and pleads with arm outstretched, seeking already to sway the others to follow his lead, as later he forced them all to do.
stock among the Turanians. Moreover, in the highlands of Susa we come upon traces of a yet earlier negroid people living in subjection to the dominant Turanians. All of the lowland folk were united in their enmity toward the plundering hillmen of Susa, or Elam as the Bible calls the hill country that surrounded Susa. The valley folk named their own region Kengi, or the land of reeds, since all about the marshy shallows of the river grew great reeds a dozen feet in height. The name Kengi in the course of years gradually changed in pronunciation and became Sumer, or as the Bible spells it, Shinar. So in speaking of the land and people let us henceforth call them by the accepted form of Sumer and Sumerians. It is doubtful if the Sumerian civilization extended more than two hundred miles up the river. Babylon itself had not yet been built. The upper regions of the valley held only a few nomadic tribes.
Then comes a third picture to displace that first one of religion, and the second of city sovereignty. Somewhere about 5000 B.C. the Semite hordes began their migration from the deserts of Arabia. Some of the wanderers descended into Sumer, coming apparently less as conquerors than as visitors, attracted by this civilization so superior to their own, admirers and imitators of the Sumerian culture. By degrees these Semite invaders grew to be an important force in every city, and at length became rulers of the land. Meanwhile, the bulk of the wandering Semites passed beyond Sumer to the northward and spread over the meadow lands higher up the course of the Euphrates, where in after years they erected mighty Babylon. There the invaders settled by themselves, and gradually built up kingdoms of their own. These more northern Semites seem to have despised those of their brethren who remained in the south among the Sumerians, caught in the meshes of the soft lure of their civilization. Yet even the northern Semites borrowed much from Sumer, the art of writing and preserving records of the past, the building of cities and palaces of brick, and much of the Sumerian religion-in short, all that a strong, active, intelligent but ignorant race would naturally glean from an older, more cultured, feebler one.
The Euphrates valley by this mingling of various peoples became in very truth the place of “Babel,” the confusion of tongues. The widely separated nations of earth were there drawn together, and heard, in amaze and puzzlement, languages wholly different from their own. Semites, Hamites, Turanians, and the negroid peoples must often have sought for mutual understanding, and jabbered helplessly, if not angrily, at one another in the streets of Lagash. Nor did the confusion aid them to friendship or even to respect; man has ever proved himself only too ready to despise that which he fails to understand.
From this time onward there was a constant struggle between the Sumerian cities of the south and the Semitic tribes of the north, between the ancient “lords of Kengi” and the unorganized “people of Kish,” as the early records call the northerners. The first individual name that stands out recognizably from those days of beginnings is that of a king, probably of Lagash, who in an inscription calls himself En-shag-kush-anna, “lord of Kengi.” The inscription announces that he gives gifts to the god En-lil of Nippur, and rejoices at having defeated the Semites whom he angrily denounces as “Kish, the wicked of heart.” Yet even the name En-shag-kush-anna is in itself Semitic. Sumer had apparently found a Semitic leader necessary to defend her against the Semite hordes of the north.
At a somewhat later date, perhaps 4200 B.C., our view of Lagash becomes much clearer. We begin to find sufficient records of its kings to be able to arrange them in definite order, and establish a regular chronology. But as each ruler carved inscriptions only of his triumphs, we know no more of each than that he defeated other cities. Thus these earliest names that History enshrines are preserved to us merely as fighters. The “struggle for existence” was in their days no idle phrase. Weaker men were swept aside; the stronger ones survived. It is only through many ages of battle and death and darkness that man has climbed at last to the light of fuller understanding.
As we move onward among these scattered names of long forgotten sovereigns, known only today by some scant temple inscription which they themselves perhaps forgot as soon as made, we come upon two men before whom we pause in sudden interest. The first is called Uru-ka-gina. With him we obtain a fourth more sharply outlined picture, a vision now of an individual, a single personage, strong, earnest, and full of purpose. And as we study the recovered fragments that record Uru-ka-gina's very words, we catch from them some insight into the daily life of the world around him. We learn of simpler, more homely things than temples, palaces, and savage wars.
Uru-ka-gina stands out to us as earth's first reformer. He was not the son of a preceding king, the heir of the royal house, but seems to have sprung into power in Lagash as the leader of a peasants' revolution. Think of it! A legalized aristocracy intrenched in power and oppressing the lower classes until the latter are driven to rise in successful rebellion! And this happened, not a century ago, nor two or three centuries ago, but four thousand years before the birth of Christ! Tyranny is not a modern growth.
Uru-ka-gina, once firmly in command, reorganized the entire government of the land. The system of laws, of which we catch a glimpse from this account of his reforms, is the earliest in the world concerning which we have any knowledge. These laws show that society had already become a most complex organism. Money with its accompaniment of taxes was already among the inevitable facts of life. There were hosts of regular tax-collectors, with a host of inspec-
NOT merely by the power of the sword, but chiefly by the powers of the mind, did Babylon hold that foremost place in the ancient world to which she was raised by Hammurabi. Her sway over the ruder peoples who surrounded her was the sway of the intellect; and our world of today is the product of the thought, the culture, the civilization which was there created and spread abroad.
The city of Babylon became the centre of trade not only of Babylonia but of all western Asia, the centre and the nucleus of all wealth. The conquests made by Babylon brought to her the products and the slaves of every land. Merchants journeyed to her from afar. She was the “melting pot” of old, wherein all nations mingled and each gave its best.
Hammurabi also made his city the religious centre of the land. He destroyed the older shrines, and declared Babylon's god, Marduk or Baal-Merodach, to be the greatest of all the gods. Gradually the other cities of Babylonia accepted this belief. Much of the religious thought of Babylon was adopted by the Hebrews, and traces of it have thus been enshrined forever in the Christian Bible. Babylon became not only the London, the chief market of the ancient world, but also its Rome, its venerated religious shrine, and then its Paris, the home of all its fashion and its art.
tors over these. There were slavery, and forced labor, and grinding oppression of the laborer. There were secret theft and open robbery, theft of sheep, of asses, of fish from private fish-ponds, and of water from artificial wells. There were rules for divorce, the principal of which was that those who sought to escape the marriage pledge must pay a substantial fee to the temple of the city's god. There was a priesthood of various ranks, among them being “diviners” who were in much request as foretellers of the future, and were heard with far greater faith than their successors of today. There were also long and carefully built canals, and it was already a kingly duty to keep these in repair.
Unhappily for Uru-ka-gina, he met the fate of most reformers. In seeking to rescue his people from suffering he plunged them into disaster. He must have alienated, possibly he exterminated, the host of aristocrats who had lived upon the taxation of the people. The loss of this upper class left the state weak; presumably they had been its chief fighting force, a sort of unorganized army supported by the peasantry. At any rate, under the reforming king, Lagash failed to uphold her previous military supremacy. Her dependent cities broke away from her. A rival monarch defeated her weakened forces in the field, stormed the city, and laid it waste with fire and sword. As we hear no more of Uru-ka-gina, he doubtless perished amid the flames of his ruined capital. Yet, as a priest of desolated Lagash wrote in puzzled lamentation: “Of sin on the part of Uru-ka- gina, none was.” Evidently men had already begun to dream of good deeds as deserving repayment in worldly success; and now they heard Life's grim answer to the dream—that the gods shield not their own, that earth moves not by any practical law of poetic justice.
Turn now to another portraiture, the companion picture which we can place beside that of the downfall of earth's first reformer. This other ruler whom the rediscovered records make fairly clear to us is Uru-ka-gina's conqueror, earth's earliest empire-builder. The name of this military potentate, as nearly as we can read it from the inscriptions, was Lugal-zag-gisi. He was a son of the high- priest of Umma, a city which had long struggled against Lagash but had been finally subdued. The site of Umma has not been discovered, even its name is only guessed at; but apparently it was a border city between the Semitic north and the Sumerian south. Lugal-zag-gisi, succeeding to his father's place as chief man of Umma, threw off the dominion of Lagash. Though probably himself Sumerian, he drew under his dominion all the wandering Semitic tribes, and with them invaded and conquered the south. Lagash was not the only city which he stormed and sacked. Yet both in Sumer and in the north his victories brought peace rather than war. For the first time the entire Euphrates valley was fused into a single and apparently well-ordered kingdom. As the conqueror's inscription poetically phrases it:
The Story of the Greatest Nations
“The lands in peace He caused to dwell. The world with a water of joy He watered.”
Lugal-zag-gisi selected as his capital, Erech, the chief religious centre of the south. So well did he upbuild Erech that from this time, or perhaps even earlier, it became known as “The City,” that is, the chief city of the world. He built also the city of Ur, or at least rebuilt it: “upraised Ur high as heaven,” says his inscription. The older ruling cities, Lagash and others, he humbled, leaving them helpless “as in a stockade.” Having thus established himself securely as master, he looked abroad for other worlds to conquer. The grim and ghastly game of empire-building began.
To Lugal-zag-gisi, therefore, we must attribute the dubious fame of having introduced among mankind a new poison. With him began the earth-hunger which turns to war not from necessity, but from pride, that most hideous form of human vanity which calls wholesale murder by the name of “glory.”
At the head not of a ravaging horde of savages but of a well-disciplined army, the king marched westward from the Euphrates to the coast of the Mediterranean. The region seems not to have been entirely unknown. Trade had penetrated thither before conquest. The king, however, was explorer as well as conqueror. He fought where necessary, exacted tribute everywhere, and came home extremely proud of himself. In a prayer to En-lil of Nippur he asks to be continued in his good destiny, calls himself the “great regent of the gods,” and in words most typical of the cruel passion for conquest he prays for armies, for “warriors as many as the grass in abundance.” His wish, let us note, was not for toilers to enrich the land, but for soldiers to be fed to Death.
There his scant inscription of his “glory” stops. We know no more of him, except that his boasted empire disappeared as others have, and that all his triumphs can have led him only where he led his soldiers—to the grave.
Our next glimpse into those old days shows us the beginning of that astonishing city from which the entire Euphrates valley came to be called Babylonia, which means the land belonging to Babylon.
BABYLON is fallen, is fallen, that great city.” Thus cried the prophet Jeremiah in the later days of the mighty city's splendor. “Babylon hath been a golden cup in the Lord's hand, that made all the earth drunken.. O thou that dwellest upon many waters, abundant in treasures, thine end is come.” These also are the words of the Bible. We could almost tell the whole story of Babylon in quotations from the sacred volume. The Hebrew prophets return again and again to speak of the greatness of the city, its wealth, its size, its influence upon all the peoples of the earth. Some of them had seen Babylon with their own eyes, and were astounded and almost overwhelmed by its magnificence and opulence. Only their boundless faith in the word of their God leads them to assert that such greatness can be destroyed.
In the days of the prophets, Babylon had become the most populous city the world has ever known. Twenty million inhabitants is the estimate of some authorities. Modern London would be a village beside it. Rome, “Imperial Rome,” would have been lost in one of its quarters. It stood astride the great river Euphrates, as modern cities span some little stream. Huge canals stretched through it in all directions. And its walls! They were classed by the ancients among the seven wonders of the world. Herodotus, who had seen them.
set their width at eighty-four feet and their height at over three hundred. This seemed so amazing that his own people doubted his figures, and later ages have done the same. Yet we now learn that, in part at least, he understated. The ruins of the walls have been found, and by actual measurement their width was one hundred and thirty-six and a half feet. Their height has crumbled forever; that, too, may have been greater than we think. Fifteen miles square was the space enclosed by this tremendous artificial mountain, this cliff three hundred feet in height. The suburbs of the city spread to unmeasured distances beyond.
The prophets never cease wondering about those walls. How shall foe ever surmount them, or time destroy them? Jeremiah's climax to a long list of threatened desolations is: “Yes, the wall of Babylon shall fall.” He expresses his amazement constantly in such exclamations as: “The broad walls of Babylon!” Yet, so complete was the devastation of the city that sixty years ago men could not even say where Babylon had stood.
It is of the beginnings of this world-famed metropolis that we have now to tell. It was built by those Semites whom the previous chapter showed us settling to the north of Sumer. Indeed we can gain from the splendor of Babylon some idea of those earlier Sumerian cities at which we have already glanced. Nippur and Eridu, Erech and Lagash have perished. They were desolated more than once by foreign conquerors, and their records were destroyed with them, except for the few chance fragments which, having escaped both flame and robbery, are now being rediscovered amid their ruins. Hence both the glories and the sorrows of Sumer faded from men's minds. No one of the men or cities of our previous chapter remained in the memory of later generations. But then came Babylon; and men have not forgotten her.
The foundation of Babylon was ascribed by its later inhabitants to the first among the early rulers who so impressed himself upon his fellows that he became a centre of legend, and was remembered and honored by his descendants three thousand years later. This was King Sargon, to whom we attach our earliest definite date, verified by later Babylonian annals. He was the ruler of the whole Euphrates valley in the year 3800 B.C.
With regard to Sargon our own age holds a most interesting position. For many centuries he has been known as an antique myth. Now at last we can look behind the myth. The rediscovered records tell us the facts of his career. In his day the mighty Babylon of the future was itself but a minor city of the northern Semites. Neither can we trace positively that Sargon ever dwelt there, though he enlarged the town and built a palace for it. This fact doubtless united with his fame to make the later Babylonians adopt him. Their kings claimed descent from him. Their stories proclaimed him the founder and first hero of their city.
THE RETURN OF BEL-MARDUK (The Babylonians Celebrate the Rescue of Their God from Captivity) After a painting by the noted French artist, Henri Paul Motte
THOUGH Babylon remained for over two thousand years the chief city of the Euphrates valley and, indeed, of all the world, yet Babylon was not always able to impose its military power upon the other cities. More than once the metropolis was driven to struggle desperately for mere existence. On two separate occasions it had to surrender to conquerors, who carried off its chief gods and set these up in the conqueror's own capital as tokens of triumph. In this way the great god, Bel-Marduk, was held in captivity by the Elamites, a nation who lived in the mountains of Persia overlooking the Euphrates valley, and who often rushed suddenly down upon the lowlands in plundering raids.
Nebuchadnezzar I., the king of Babylon, led a great army against Elam and compelled the restoration of Bel-Marduk. The home-coming of the idol was the occasion of the gorgeous celebration here pictured. Human victims, the captured Elamites and others, probably in large numbers, were sacrificed to the god. The Babylonians seem to have been less cruel than most of the Semitic nations in their worship of the gods, but even in Babylon our modern sense of human brotherhood and divine love was so little felt that the people thought their god found pleasure, as they did, in every agony inflicted on their foes.
Babylonia—Sargon the Conqueror
What Sargon actually did was to establish a Semitic dominion over all the cities of Sumer. He was not born a king, but won his own way, as the earlier conqueror Lugal-zag-gisi had done, to the leadership of the tribes of the north. Then in the upper Euphrates valley, a hundred miles above Nippur, not far from the site of Babylon, he built himself a splendid city, Accad. This remained for a time the capital of his successors; and from this gorgeous city the whole northern land once known as the land of Kish became to later ages the land of Accad.
Having established his authority over both Sumer and Accad, Sargon set forth, as Lugal-zag-gisi had, upon a series of journeys in search of further victories. He reduced to subjection those ever-troublesome highlanders of Elam, and burned Susa, their capital. He fought the wild tribes of the mountains around the sources of the Euphrates; and if he could scarcely be said to conquer them, he at least put them to flight. He marched, as did his predecessor, to the shores of the Mediterranean, exacting tribute all the way. He brought home among his spoils rare building-stones mined in the distant peninsula of Sinai on the borders of Africa. He even extended his exploits beyond the mainland. Ferrying his army across to the near-by island of Cyprus, he spent some time in conquering it. He seems to have invented a new title. Lugal-zag-gisi had called himself “King of the whole world.” Sargon used the more elaborate phrase “King of the Four Corners of Earth,” as if to imply that, not content with a general lordship over life, he had, in Elam, in Cyprus, in Sinai and in the mountains of the north, searched out earth's remotest corners, and made each tiny cranny proclaim his kingship.
How little did it amount to, this puerile boastfulness! How small, looked back upon through all the ages, seems this vainglory of the forgotten emperor! How evil the plundering! How futile the thousands of deaths inflicted upon friends and enemies! When Sargon returned from the years of battling abroad, he found his own land in rebellion against him. The lords of the other cities formed a league and besieged him in his capital. He was “brought nigh to death.” Accad, however, withstood the siege, and Sargon regained something of his former authority, and closed his days in peace.
This much concerning the half-mythical founder of the Babylonian empire is fact, proven by the ancient records we have unearthed. To these facts the legends of his descendants, the Babylonians of three thousand years later, added a halo of fanciful details. They told that Sargon was born to the daughter of the head man of a minor town. His father was unknown, and the mother, to hide the child's birth, lined a basket with pitch to make it water-tight, and setting the babe within, entrusted him to the current of the Euphrates. The babe was found by Akki, a peasant drawing water from the river to irrigate his fields. By him, Sargon was cared for and brought up as a gardener's lad. Here he was seen by Ishtar, the goddess of love, who devoted herself to the handsome youth, and enabled him to win his kingship. Usually Ishtar was fickle in her loves; but to Sargon she clung faithfully; and in the great rebellion, when all the rulers turned upon him and besieged him in Accad, it was Ishtar who rescued him. The awe with which this divine friendship impressed the other princes was what led them to submit again to Sargon's rule.
We have unearthed so many records of the Sargon era that we can see with some clearness the nature of his kingdom and the deg of civilization to which Sumer and Accad had now attained. We must picture the combined Turanian and Semitic race as a people very different from those fishermen and hunters who had struggled for a precarious existence at Nippur and Susa some four thousand years before. The men of Sargon's time had been accustomed to writing and had kept chronological records for at least a thousand years. They were traders who had travelled wide, seeking their gains through all western Asia and even as far as Egypt, a land which they looked on, much as we look on China today, as being at the edge of the world, curious and very far away, and half barbaric.
Thus the proud citizens of Sumer and Accad had become fully aware of their own progress above all other nations. Not only were they travellers and historians; they were financiers, bankers, passing their profits on loan from hand to hand, and keeping watchful reckoning of contracts. They were engineers who had planned and carried out a most remarkable system of dykes and canals, fertilizing and protecting from flood all their river valley. They were scientific farmers. They were artists of considerable ability and skill; poets of rather ruder vein; and, above all, they were astronomers who had attained to a really noteworthy knowledge and understanding of the movements of the heavenly bodies. Sargon is given the credit of having rearranged and finally established the signs of the zodiac as we employ them today. Our calendar, like our writing and our laws, like our religion, and like almost every branch of our civilization, dates back to the land of Sumer and Accad.
Sargon was succeeded by his son Naram-Sin, who ruled over an empire quite as vast as that of his father. Under Naram-Sin the mines of Sinai were regularly worked; building-stones were transported hundreds of miles to take the place of homelier brick in lining the walls of his temples. He was a builder who delighted in honoring the gods and enriching their shrines. He completed the work begun by his father of re-erecting the ancient temple of En-lil at Nippur. From his days there have come down to us little carved signets so beautifully executed that they tempt one to call this the “golden age” of Babylonian culture.
But immediately after this glimpse of prosperity our picture fades again. Of the centuries that followed Naram-Sin we have few records and slight knowl
THE ASSYRIAN IN PEACE (The Founder of Assyria's Foreign Empire, Tiglath-pileser, Displays His Prowess to His People) By Frederick Arthur Bridgman, the noted American artist, painted 1878
TIGLATH-PILESER I. was the founder of what we call the first Assyrian empire. The kingdom and the army which Tukulti-ninib and the other early kings had made strong, Tiglath-pileser used as a basis for foreign conquests. About eleven hundred years before Christ he extended his sway over all Babylonia and most of Syria and Armenia. Hence all the wealth and splendor which for over a thousand years had been flowing into Babylon now began to flow instead toward the Assyrian cities; and of these Nineveh grew to be the most gorgeous.
In those rare seasons when Tiglath-pileser was not at war, hunting was his favorite amusement. We find inscribed on one of his records that he had killed over nine hundred lions. Our picture shows him displaying his skill upon captured lions, before the people of his capital. Around him stand his guards ready to protect him should his skill fail and the lion leap upon him. But one beast has already fallen before the monarch's steady aim, and the other is assuredly about to join the nine hundred slain. Guarding the arena rises a statue of the Assyrian god Asshur, in whose honor the Assyrians inflicted all their hideous cruelties upon their captives.
edge. The empire of Accad disappears. War must have become more bitter. There were raids and counter-raids, burnings and counter-burnings. Elam was again in arms. Sumer rejected the dominion of the north.
Our next clear view reveals Sumer as again the centre of power. Its king is Ur- gur, who was a Semite, but whose capital was Ur, one of the ancient Sumerian cities, not far from the southern coast. Under Ur-gur and his successors Ur held supremacy over the other cities for several centuries about three thousand years before Christ. Once more the ancient temples were upraised. Ur-gur built as no king before him had attempted to. At Nippur he set up a solid mass of brick, eight feet high and covering more than five acres of ground. This gigantic mass was meant only as a foundation to raise the sanctuary above danger of flood; yet even the foundation was no mere tumbled mass of bricks; channels and drains ran through it, guiding its rain-water flow, and making it a work of art. Upon this amazingly huge artificial mound was erected a “ziggurat,” or storied tower, with inclined planes for roadways to its summit. This was the first known temple to take the ziggurat form, which afterward became characteristic of Babylonian religious shrines. Perhaps indeed this very temple was the one to which the Bible refers as the tower of Babel; for En-lil, the earth-god of Nippur, had come through the centuries to be called Bel, or Baal, which means “the chief god,” or lord of all.
To the supremacy of Ur, the last vestige of the old Sumerian power, there succeeded, about 2300 B.C., the supremacy of Babylon. This city of the north had been steadily growing in power until now, as the professed champion of the Semites against the Sumerians, it assumed the permanent leadership of the Euphrates valley, and the whole land gradually became known as Babylonia.
The immediate cause of Babylon's rise to power seems to have been the invasion, about 2500 B.C., of a new swarm of Semites, such as had overrun the Euphrates region some two or three thousand years before. The strength of the new horde was chiefly massed about Babylon. Indeed, the Babylonian king, whom we now find battling with Ur and other cities for the empire, was called Sumu-abi, which means “Shem is my father,” or “I am a Semite,” as if he sought boastfully to insist upon his desert lineage.
Sumu-abi only began the long struggle between south and north, Sumer and Accad, Turanian and Semite. It raged bitterly for many years. In the midst of it, encouraged perhaps by the increasing exhaustion of the cities of the valley, the Elamites rushed down from their hills and swept over Sumer and Accad with such destruction as they had never before inflicted. Practically the entire valley was laid waste. All the ancient records perished. Later Babylonian ages possessed no writings antedating this terrible devastation. All the temples were plundered and overthrown, except possibly the ancient shrine of the goblins at Nippur, which even the Elamites venerated. The chief gods of the ancient world, including the idols of Anu and Nana at Erech, of Ea at Eridu, and a score of others, were carried away to Elam, where, for upwards of a thousand years, they were held like state prisoners in the temples of Susa, placed in humble servitude at the feet of the Elamite gods.
Some poet of Erech, lamenting this destruction, wrote to his lost goddess Nana a plea which has been preserved to us:
Until when, oh lady, Shall the ungodly enemy ravage thy land? In thy queen city, Erech, Destruction is complete. In Eulbar, thy temple, Blood has flowed as water. O'er all thy lands the foe has poured out flame; It hangs over them like smoke.
Oh lady, it is hard for me To bend my neck to the yoke of misfortune! Oh lady, thou hast let me suffer, Thou hast plunged me in sorrow!
The mighty evil foe Broke me as a reed; I know not what to resolve; I trust not in myself. Like a thicket of waving reeds I moan low, day and night. I bow my head before thee! I am thy servant!
The king of Elam who led his people in this cyclonic raid was called Kudur- nankhundi; its date we can fix with some confidence as 2285 or 2295 B.C. Kudur- nankhundi felt that his devastation entitled him to call himself in his turn “Lord of the world”; and he exacted tribute not only from Sumer and Accad, but even from cities as far west as Palestine, the Biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, which lay by the shores of the Dead Sea.
We note here our Bible story most interestingly overlapping and supporting the records of Babylonia. The sacred volume tells us how, after paying tribute for twelve years, Sodom and the other cities by the Dead Sea finally refused further payments. Then came an army led by Kudur-lagamar, or, as the English Bible spells his name, Chedorlaomer; a successor of Kudur-nankhundi. The rebellious cities were utterly defeated by Chedorlaomer; but as the victor marched homeward with his spoils, his forces were suddenly assailed by a small band led by the patriarch Abraham, and were put to flight.
Did Abraham, who belonged by birth to the Euphrates region, perhaps to Babylon itself, know that he was striking a blow for his fellow countrymen? Whether he did or no, such was the actual, we might almost say the world-altering, result of his attack. Among the subject kings who attended Chedorlaomer was one whom the Bible calls Amraphel, and whom the Babylonian records enable us to identify with some confidence as Hammurabi, one of Babylonia's monarchs. Hammurabi took advantage of this hour of failure, or perhaps some other similar one, to rebel against Chedorlaomer. Babylon threw off the yoke of Elam, and after a long war established herself as the protector as well as the armed master of all the cities of the Euphrates valley. So thoroughly did Hammurabi consolidate his power that thereafter the entire region became known as Babylonia, the land of Babylon. The names of Sumer and Accad pass out of history. That of Babylonia takes their place.
In the story of Babylon, therefore, Hammurabi ranks as the second great figure. Sargon was venerated as the city's founder; Hammurabi as its rescuer, restorer, and second builder. Though we hear of this great monarch first as a warrior, we know him chiefly as a statesman, a wise and watchful benefactor of mankind. Instead of oppressing and terrifying his subject cities, he aimed to win their friendship. He repaired their walls and their temples as Sargon and Ur-gur had done. He built great canals, uniting the earlier ones into a single vast system which insured rich harvests to all the valley. Probably the world has never seen a land more fertile or a system of agriculture more wide-spread and complete than that of Babylonia some two thousand years before Christ.
Most notable today of all Hammurabi's work was the complete code of laws which he formulated and established throughout his domains. This code is the earliest of which we have definite knowledge; for Uru-ka-gina's earlier laws are known to us only by his comments on them. Hammurabi's code was recently discovered, engraved on a pillar which had been set up in Susa. From it we gain a full picture of the civilization of the day. The Babylonians had courts of justice; but they had also slaves. They had inns for travellers, taverns for the sale of strong drink, and prisons for delinquent debtors. They punished folk for oppression, for immorality, and even for slander. They had skilled laborers, carpenters, rope-makers, masons, potters, with some system of association and with bound apprentices. Sailors were a distinct class of society, with a code of their own for boats passing and making way for one another upon the river. Bankers transferred money by promissory notes, and trafficked by means methods, the people were deeply superstitious, and a man could be executed for “putting a spell” upon another.
The sudden yet complete and lasting subjection to Babylon on the part of all the restless cities of both Sumer and Accad would seem strange if we did not pause for a moment to realize how Babylon's intellectual and commercial supremacy had been long preparing the road for her political sway. The Babylonians have been called the Greeks of the East, because their culture, their arts, their business abilities spread their influence earlier and farther than their arms. Their capital was indeed “a golden cup,” from which all the earth had drunk. It became a centre of religion as well. It was at once the Rome, the Paris, and the London of the time. And when Babylon's empire was wrested from her by the younger and more military people of Assyria, her real power remained for centuries, even until the political sceptre was restored to her in a second period of empire. Hers was the power of mind and civilization.
It was Hammurabi who made Babylon the chief religious centre of the land. The ancient shrine of En-lil at Nippur had become so celebrated that it was spared even by the Elamite ravagers. But now, in a time of perfect peace, it appears to have been deliberately destroyed by Hammurabi's order. He proclaimed that Babylon's special “bel,” or god, Marduk, was a son of En-lil, and as such intended to assume all his father's labors of protecting and dooming mankind. While thus dutifully relieving his aged father of so much toil, Marduk had decided to relieve him also of his rank as chief god.
We can imagine the protests of the priests of En-lil at this attack upon their deity. But they were powerless. Their temple was swept away; the religious rites of Nippur sank into obscurity. After uncounted thousands of years of priestly ceremonial the shrine of En-lil lay bare and unattended. The earth goblins and the imps of storm were left unappeased to wreak their malice where they might. Thus, in this fratricidal war of gods, so quaintly engineered by men, Marduk of Babylon drove out his father. In Babylon itself the worship of Marduk was in no way new. Indeed the very name of the city means “the gate of the god,” the entrance by which worshippers might reach the deity. The splendid shrine which Hammurabi built for Marduk, or “Bel-Merodach,” became one of the wonders of the world.
Hammurabi had, in fact, to rebuild Babylon almost entirely, so destructive had been the Elamite scourge; and from this time the city grew into the marvel of legend and history of which the prophets tell. National architecture is every- where the product of the land itself. The Egyptian saw always before him solemn stone cliffs, so he quarried from them the Immense stone blocks for his obelisks and his pyramids. There was no stone in Babylonia; in that flat valley of river mud even trees were scarce; it was chiefly a land of grassy marshes. So man, with his ever-ready ingenuity, had learned to build with the earth itself, moulding and baking the clay, which hardened into bricks. Those ancient Babylonian bricks are said to be as good as the best of modern manufacture; and today, as in centuries past, a regular industry is the digging them out, not for scientific research, but for the building of modern houses. In many an Asiatic town there are recent buildings whose bricks still show the stamp and name of kings who perished and were forgotten ages ago.
The raising of the mighty walls of Babylon must have strangely resembled the work of a colony of ants, each carrying his little load of bricks, each toiling by himself, and adding his mite to the mass that slowly grew around him. Hammurabi, Ur-gur, Nebuchadnezzar, any of the great builders, could have told the Hebrew prophets how those walls must eventually fall. The kings were kept constantly busy repairing the older temples and fortifications. The soft, yielding soil, the terrific rains which saturated the bricks and widened every fissure, the stupendous weight of the towering structures themselves—all combined to destroy the foundations. These, despite every art of man, would gradually bulge outward, and threaten to give way. Only the walls of the richest palaces could afford even an outer facing of stone; for this had to be brought in slabs from great distances.
The splendid reign of Hammurabi lasted fifty-five years. After that his successors seem to have degenerated gradually in ability, until in the eighteenth century B.C., a half-savage swarm of invaders overran Babylonia. These were the Kassites, a mountain race from the northeast, seemingly the very folk whom Sargon, founder of Babylon, had harried from their homes two thousand years before when he “searched the corners of the earth.” Now the Kassite chief, Gandis, seized the throne; and his people held sway in Babylon for over three hundred years. Under them the ancient empire crumbled. The Kassite soldiery formed merely a sort of rough and turbulent aristocracy, parasites upon he almost inexhaustible wealth of commercial and agricultural Babylonia.
Of the real Babylonians of these days—the traders who spread wide the fame their great city, the priests who so successfully upheld her religious doctrines, the philosophers and scientists who shaped the future of her civilization,—of all these we know little. The inscriptions of the period which we have recovered are either business records—that is, mere lists of commercial transactions stored away for reference—or they are the barren, boastful annals of the kings. Neither kind makes interesting reading. These Kassite monarchs had no large view of their duties or their destinies. They spent their reigns in petty personal squabbling or in civil wars; real empire-building was beyond them. They never held any but a nominal sway over most of the provinces of the former Babylonian empire.
We do indeed find one of these Kassite kings, Agumkakrimi, rebuilding temples and securing from his more savage relatives who had remained in the north the restoration of some of the idols which had been plundered from Babylon. By this he won high honor from the priesthood and favor with his people. But Agumkakrimi was a diplomat who thus secured from friendship what he could not have gained by war. On the whole the Kassite rule was very weak.
Thus opportunity was left open for the growth of a new state; and a province which had begun as a mere outlying colony of the ancient Semitic land of Babylonia rose to be its rival and then its conqueror. This second establisher of empire over all the civilized world was Assyria.
ASSYRIA, a daughter land born of Babylon, thrust aside the mother city and for a brief time held control of the Euphrates valley. Assyria has long stood in history as the symbol of ferocity and brutal cruelty. This view is enforced not only by the lamentations in the Bible, the outcry of the stricken Hebrews, but also by the boastful inscriptions of the Assyrians themselves, and by the desolation which they left everywhere behind them.
The Assyrians were a Semitic race, and, like most of the Semites, they had attained to the religious idea of a single, all-controlling god. They called this god Asshur; and, as did the Hebrews with Jehovah, the Assyrians regarded themselves as their god's chosen people. Not only do they ascribe all their victories to Asshur's favor, but they attribute to his command all their hideous barbarities. In the inscriptions of their conquering kings we read constantly that they tore out the tongues of thousands of prisoners “by Asshur's bidding,” or they impaled masses of men on stakes and left them to die in agony because Asshur had ordered the extinction of “that rebellious nation.”
The rise of Assyria to power was a natural consequence of the weakness of Babylon under her foreign Kassite kings. These, being fully occupied in suppressing rebellion at home, had no time for guarding against the growing strength of neighboring nations. For several centuries between 1600 and 800 B.C., western Asia thus became the seat of various jarring powers, no one able to master the others completely. None was strong enough to overcome the difficulties which climate and distance opposed to universal conquest. Among the contenders were the Elamites, who were so sheltered in their mountain fastnesses that no Babylonian conqueror had ever succeeded in exterminating them. Another strong power was that of the Hittites of the Bible, or Khatti, as the inscriptions call them. These were a Hamitic, or possibly even an Aryan, race dwelling in Syria and Armenia, with their chief capital at Karchemish on the upper Euphrates. Such was their strength, both in numbers and valor that had they been united they might easily have been in their turn “Lords of the four corners of the earth”; but they fought among themselves, city against city, Karchemish on the Euphrates, against Kadesh, or Hamath, or Damascus in Syria.
More notable than either Hittites or Elamites were the Egyptians, who now came forth from their sheltered African home. Some Asiatic tribes, the “Hyksos,” had once conquered Egypt; now the Pharaohs sought revenge. Somewhere about 1500 B.C., the Egyptian monarch Thothmes III. made fifteen great raids into Asia,— fifteen raids in eighteen years—sweeping everything before him and bearing home enormous loads of plunder and tribute. None of the people of Palestine could withstand him. He defeated the Hittites at Megiddo, at Kadesh, at Karchemish; and having thus reached the Euphrates valley, he received tribute from both Babylon and Assyria. The Euphrates region was, however, too distant for permanent Egyptian conquest, nor does Thothmes seem to have striven for any more lasting purpose than plunder. Hence the ravaged and exhausted lands were left almost helpless to the ruthless, newly growing might of the Assyrians.
Assyria occupied originally the hill country along the middle course of the Tigris River, and gradually spread its power throughout the upper Euphrates valley, and thence southward over the whole of ancient Sumer and Accad. The Assyrians were a younger tribe of the Semites; and in their distant borderland, far removed from the excesses of Babylon, they had retained their freedom, their vigor of body, and also their purity of race. The first historical mention we find of them is when Thothmes III., in his boastful inscription of conquest, enumerates among the lesser princes who sent him tribute the “Chief of Assur.”
By 1450 B.C., Assur, the mother city of Assyria, had so grown in power that we find its ruler warring with the great metropolis Babylon, and making a treaty on equal terms. A little later, however, a soured Babylonian king complained bitterly to the Egyptians because they had failed to recognize his ancient authority over his neighbor and had despatched a direct kingly message to the
BABYLON'S PRAYER AGAINST SENNACHERIB (The Priests of Babylon Make Sacrifice to Their God to Help Them Against Sennacherib) By the contemporary German artist, E. Sturtevant
SENNACHERIB, even in his own records, looms before us as the most ferocious and terrible of all the tiger kings of Assyria. He boasts that in his ravaging of Palestine he carried off as prisoners two hundred thousand of the people. Often after storming a city he hanged every inhabitant or put them all to torture. Yet, on the whole, he was not a successful ruler. Perhaps the very savagery of his punishments drove men to a frenzy of defiance; for he faced constant rebellions. The Babylonian priests were particularly bitter against Sennacherib and roused Babylon to revolt. They declared that their great “baal” or god, Marduk, would never accept him as king. Babylonian revolts had been frequent, but had always before been softened by a peace party, which, when the city surrendered, took control under Assyrian protection. But now there was no peace party. The priests stirred the people to fury; and in the temples of Marduk huge sacrifices were offered to secure the active protection of the god.
Marduk, however, failed to uphold his adherents. Sennacherib stormed and captured Babylon; and, resolving this time to put an end to its rebellions forever, he destroyed the city utterly (B.C. 689). He tore down the walls and temples, set fire to the mass of ruins, and then turned the waters of the Euphrates so that they flowed over the spot where the great city had stood. The first and oldest Babylon, which Hammurabi had built fifteen hundred years before, disappeared completely.
Assyrian. This ancient letter of protest is one of a most interesting batch of documents recently found in Egypt, and called from their place of discovery the Tel-el-Amarna letters. They represent the state correspondence between Egypt and Asia at about this period, and from them we learn that the Babylonian tongue was used for communication between different governments, just as Latin was in mediaeval Europe, or French during the mighty sovereignty of Louis XIV.
About 1360 B.C., the ever-turbulent Kassite soldiery of Babylon, in a sudden revolt, slew their king, and placed on the throne “a man of low parentage,” as the later monarchs scornfully called him. The murdered king had been connected by marriage with the ruler of Assur; so we find the latter promptly marching up to Babylon, where he restored by force the rightful heir, his own grandson.
From this time Assyria seems rather the stronger power of the two. With the exception of an occasional Elamite raid in the south, or an expedition by the Assyrians against the less civilized nations to the north, the history of the two rival capitals becomes, for centuries, merely a tedious chronicle of wars between them. They drained each other's life-blood. Again and again they fought until they sank exhausted, unable longer to supply soldiers for their armies. Then for a generation or so the lesser neighboring states would flourish and grow insolent, till the two lions again roused themselves. Slowly Assyria's predominance increased. One king advanced her frontier to the suburbs of Babylon. Another, Tukulti-ninib, captured the metropolis itself, looted the palaces and temples, and appointed governors to rule there.
Seven years later the Babylonians successfully revolted and the struggle recommenced. The real reason and object of these endless wars is scarcely clear to us. Probably they arose from far deeper causes than the mere ambition of monarchs or the cupidity of soldiers. Famine and religious faith have been suggested as seeming to be their ultimate sources. We must remember that back of these kings whose inscriptions have survived there stood millions of ordinary mortals who have left us little trace, yet who shaped the destinies of their times. We get glimpses of failing harvests, of powerful officials driving weak kings this way or that, of oratorical priests swaying a frenzied multitude. We must not think of these old kingdoms as being each the mere plaything of an absolute monarch, but as being what all such governments have been called, “despotism tempered by assassination.” An unjust and cruel king seldom long survived the rancors he aroused.
One Babylonian ruler of these days towers for a time above the rest, the most notable man of all this tumulatuous period. This was Nebuchadnezzar I., a worthy predecessor of the famous Nebuchadnezzar of later date. The line of the Kassite kings of Babylon had died out, and Nebuchadnezzar was a native Babylonian, chosen as king by the people themselves. He defeated the Assyrians repeatedly, and threatened Assur with siege. Then he turned upon Elam. The Elamites had recently been victorious over Babylon, plundering the city and carrying off the statues of its gods to Susa, the Elamite capital, there to be held in bondage to their god. Nebuchadnezzar invaded Elam, suddenly, in midsummer; and though his army almost perished from heat and thirst, the unexpected raid carried them without opposition up to the very walls of Susa. There a tremendous battle was fought amid storm and whirlwind, wherein “no man could see the face of his neighbor.” Nebuchadnezzar, charging at the head of his army, was separated from his followers and almost paid for his daring with his life; he was encircled by foes and would have perished but for a devoted chieftain who broke through the threatening ring and rescued him.
This battle was so decisive that the Elamites sued for peace and restored to Nebuchadnezzar the statue of the chief Babylonian god, Bel-Marduk. During Bel- Marduk's captivity the Assyrians had also made a prisoner of the statue of a second or substitute Bel, leaving Babylon in a peculiarly godless state. The restoration of Marduk was therefore a source of great joy to the Babylonians, as well as of encouragement. It was a symbol of the god's renewed favor and of their restoration to power. Hence Nebuchadnezzar was long held in highest honor by his people.
Out of this tragic welter of conflicting nations, one finally rose supreme. This was Assyria, whose throne, about 1120 B.C., passed to a sovereign called Tiglath-pileser I. He was a great military genius, or perhaps we might better say a mighty maniac, whose one passion in life was for hunting and slaughtering, whether beasts or men. Among his favorite sports was the organizing of prodigious elephant hunts in which thousands of his soldiers were employed to surround the beasts and drive them toward the king. He was so proud of his exploits that at an early period of his reign he had carved on his inscriptions that he himself, either on foot or from his chariot, had slain over nine hundred lions. Moreover, when in his conquests he reached the Mediterranean, he proudly records that he sailed out on the sea in a Phoenician ship and with his own hand killed a “sea-monster,” probably a porpoise.
But the chief business of Tiglath-pileser's life was war. Every year he regularly marshalled his armies, and led them on raids farther and farther afield. No foe could stand before him. His troops penetrated to the sources of the Euphrates in the north, where he pursued the mountaineers through wild passes hitherto unknown, and, according to his inscriptions, “across cloud- capped mountains whose peaks were as the point of a dagger.”
To the south he conquered the whole of Babylonia, even to the Persian Gulf;
THE VENGEANCE UPON SENNACHERIB (Sennacherib is Slain by His Own Sons) By A. Murch, a recent English artist. From the Dalziel Gallery
THE tyrant Sennacherib was slain by his own sons eight years after he destroyed Babylon. Thus his cruelties availed him nothing; they reacted upon himself. His sons attacked him suddenly in a temple, “while he was worshipping in the house of his god.” Possibly the attack was part of another priestly revolt such as that of Babylon; for the priesthood of the empire seem to have been always set against Sennacherib, and his death resulted in a civil war, at the end of which not the sons who had killed him but another son, Esar-haddon, succeeded to the throne. This new king was a favorite of the priests, who aided him in making his reign one of splendor and of peace.
Esar-haddon proved the best as well as the most successful among the monarchs of Assyria's magnificence. He began his reign by rebuilding Babylon, seeking even to enhance its former greatness. The Babylonian leaders were everywhere freed from captivity, the former inhabitants were invited back to their city, and supported there. We even find it recorded that, as the corner-stones of the great buildings were laid, Esar-haddon himself assumed the dress of the masons, and conducted the religious rites of the ceremony. All through the land of Babylonia Esar-haddon restored the shrines of the gods. There were thirty-six temples in all, which we are told that he “lined with shining sheets of gold and silver.” He built palaces as well, encouraged all the arts of peace, and restored religion to its earlier dignity and influence.
and in the west he pierced to the Mediterranean, the first Euphrates sovereign since the almost forgotten Hammurabi, over a thousand years before, to extend his dominion to that sea. Even the King of Egypt sent him presents, which the Assyrian naturally regarded as tribute. Toward the close of his reign, however, he seems to have met a sudden and serious defeat from the Babylonians; and we hear no more of him. His carven records of triumph cease abruptly; and the empire became much weaker after his death.
From about this time dates the splendor of Nineveh, the gorgeous Assyrian capital which rivalled Babylon. Nineveh, from its favorable situation, gradually became the greatest of the four chief cities of Assyria, wholly supplanting the older capital, Assur. Later ages attributed the origin of Nineveh to a mythical king, Ninus, and his goddess wife, Semiramis, who, they said, made herself queen of all Asia. But the story is a mere romantic fancy. There is more truth in the legend of another Assyrian monarch of these days, Assur-dain-pal, the Sardanapalus of the Greeks. The records show that he rebelled against his father, Shalmaneser, and ruled as king over several Assyrian cities for seven years. Two years after the old king had died Sardanapalus was overthrown by the armies of his brother (822 B.C.). According to legend, Sardanapalus was besieged in Nineveh, and when he saw capture was inevitable he massed his treasures, his wives, and his soldiers in one appalling funeral pyre, seated himself at the top, and, having set fire to the whole, perished.
What is known as the “Second Assyrian Empire,” the period of the nation's real supremacy and permanent dominion over most of western Asia and even over Egypt, belongs to a later era, a time well within historic knowledge. This Second Empire had its origin in the year 763 B.C., when an eclipse of the sun started a religious rebellion in Nineveh. This eclipse seems to have been accepted as evidence that the god Asshur had turned his back upon the ancient race of kings, who traced their origin into the forgotten beginnings of Assyria. So there were nearly twenty years of tumult and civil war, at the end of which a new man, Pul, the son of a common gardener, had forced his way to the front as a successful general, and become king. Pul took the title of the great conqueror of the past and called himself Tiglath-pileser, being the third monarch of that name.
Pul, or Tiglath-pileser III., was a king of much more modern type than the earlier Assyrians. His victories over surrounding countries were not mere raids for the purpose of plundering or exacting tribute. The territory of each conquered land was annexed permanently to his own. The method by which this was accomplished was crude but effective. Such of the defeated natives as were not slain were marched away in masses to some other portion of the Assyrian domain and there colonized, while the loyal subjects and soldiers of Assyria were rewarded with the vacant lands of the conquered district. It was these wholesale deportations by Pul and his successors that swept the people of Samaria, the “lost tribes” of Israel, out of Palestine.
Moreover, the Assyrian kings began to see that there were other means than war of making a kingdom great. They sought to control the trade of Asia by taking possession of the cities along the chief trade-routes, and garrisoning them with Assyrian troops. Thus Assyria became the real master of the Euphrates valley as no nation had ever been before. She united her influence to that of the still powerful trading metropolis, Babylon, and appeared for a time in the role of benefactor, since any policeman, however savage in himself, is a benefactor to those whom he protects from a swarm of other plunderers.
On Pul's death, a second and then a third Assyrian general seized the throne. The last of these called himself Sargon II., after the famous King of Accad. He was a rough but shrewd old warrior, who established himself and his empire so firmly that his family retained the throne for the one last and most gorgeous century that remained to Assyria before its final downfall.
Sargon II. was murdered suddenly, we do not know why, by a foreign soldier; and his son Sennacherib succeeded him. Let us remember this series of the five tremendously powerful kings who ruled Assyria in the time of her widest dominion. They were Pul, Sargon II., Sennacherib, and after these, Esar-haddon and Assur-bani-pal. We have seen many previous chieftains making raids into far lands and compelling a temporary submission to their arms, but these mighty Assyrian sovereigns were the first whose word was permanently accepted as law throughout an empire almost as large as our own United States.
Of Sennacherib you have heard in the Bible. He seems to have been weak and cruel, false and boastful. His father's splendid army enabled him to defeat the Egyptians and to overrun Judea. Two hundred thousand Jews were sent captive to Assyria. But the Jewish king, Hezekiah, shut up in Jerusalem, defied the tyrant; and then occurred that strange destruction of the foe of which the Bible tells us. Sudden death, perhaps in the form of a pestilence, swept through the camp, and Sennacherib fled. Contrary to all Assyrian precedent, he failed to return to the attack. Hezekiah remained independent and defiant.
Meanwhile, Babylon had been in constant turmoil with Assyria, yielding, rebelling, intriguing, struggling, surrendering. Pul, Sargon, and Sennacherib had each in succession seized the city by force. But her bitterest opposition seems to have been reserved for Sennacherib; for he strove to destroy the religious and commercial supremacy which meant to Babylon far more than military dominion. Of all her conquerors, Sennacherib is the only one whom the priests persistently refused to acknowledge as their king; and now under priestly lead the Babylonians expelled his troops from their city.
In 689 B.C., Sennacherib captured by storm the famous old metropolis of
THE COMING OF THE SCYTHIANS (Hordes of Unknown Barbarians Invade Assyria and Are Defeated by Esar-haddon) After Henry H. Armstead, R.A., the English artist, died 1905
THE military records of Esar-haddon's reign may be classed under three great triumphs. Most important of these in the light of future events was his defeat of the barbarian hordes of the north. These finally destroyed Assyria's empire; but on their first invasion they were met and hurled back by Esar-haddon. From what race of mankind these first hordes sprang, or whence they came, we do not know. Out of the darkness of the north they burst, ravaging and plundering; and into that chaos Esar-haddon swept them back again, crushed and despairing. They were an unorganized mass of fighters, formidable only through ferocity and numbers. But such was the Assyrian terror of them that the priests held a great sacrifice lasting a hundred days, to secure the help of the gods against the devastation.
Esar-haddon's other two achievements were, first, the invasion and subjugation of the Arabian desert, which by its barren menace had hitherto protected its tribes from every foe; and, second, the conquest of Egypt. This final victory over Asia's most distant and most persistent rival for the leadership of civilization made Assyria the acknowledged ruler of all the known world. Her power seemed assured forever. All civilization bowed at last before a single lord.
the world and wreaked brutal vengeance on it. For days his soldiers were turned loose in its streets with orders to kill every one they found. The walls and buildings were torn down; the canals were choked with ruins; and for eight years the stubborn priests, refusing even then to acknowledge the conqueror, record the desolation in the tragic phrase “there were no kings.”
We cannot but be impressed and awed by the tremendous power which we now find centred in one man. Sennacherib, by a word, made a desolation of the largest city in the world; but a greater than he did a greater thing. Within another eight years the next king rebuilt Babylon on a scale grander even than before.
This king was Esar-haddon, whom the Greeks called Sarchedon, the last celebrated warrior king of Assyria. Sennacherib had been murdered by two of his sons; but Esar-haddon, who was another favorite son, defeated and punished both of the murderers, and succeeded to the kingdom. He is the one Assyrian king to whom we can turn with any real liking; the others seem to us ruthless, snarling tigers, bent only on devouring the nations.
Esar-haddon's policy throughout his empire was one of kindness and conciliation. He set about the rebuilding of Babylon, the holy city, with real religious fervor; and the priests gladly hailed him as their rightful ruler. He brought Manasseh, King of Jerusalem, in chains to his feet, and then forgave him. Before the end of his reign he did the same with the great King of Egypt. He repelled from his borders the Kimmerians, the first of those successive waves of ferocious barbarians who, throughout the ages, have burst upon the world from the wilds of Central Asia. He penetrated the very heart of the Arabian desert, venturing with his troops across the burning sands where no army had ever marched before. Even the wandering Arab tribes acknowledged his supremacy. As the last and proudest triumph of the Assyrian power, Esar-haddon conquered Egypt. He divided the land of the Pharaohs into twenty dependent provinces. They rose in revolt; and it was while quelling this uprising that he died.
To Esar-haddon, the last warrior king, succeeded his son Assur-bani-pal. The new monarch was a man of peace, who sent his generals to the field, while he himself remained in ease and comfort in his palace. He was a patron of literature, and before his death gathered at Nineveh the great library from which we have learned so much of his country. At first his generals were successful. The Egyptian revolt was crushed and the old Egyptian capital, Thebes, was destroyed.
Assyrian arms were then turned against the one independent nation remaining in their world, the Elamites. Stubborn and bitter was the resistance of these ancient mountaineers, and when at last Susa, their capital, was taken and destroyed, the captured land lay empty, swept wholly clear of men and of all their possessions. The Elamites, with their civilization as old as that of Sumer, ceased to exist. When next we read of their land, it is as the residence of the Persians, a new race who had taken unchallenged possession of its ruined homes.
Assyria herself was drained of soldiers by this bloody Elamite struggle. She was almost at the point of exhaustion. Outwardly she was at the zenith of her power. No foe was left to face her. Embassies came even from the borders of Europe to honor her and entreat her favor. But the Babylonians and the Arabians and the Egyptians knew her real weakness. Presently all three rebelled; and though the first two were painfully reconquered after years of feeble effort, Egypt had escaped forever.
There was not even an attempt to hold her, for a new and appalling danger threatened. A second horde of savages, the Scyths, coming from the great plains beyond the Caspian Sea, had burst like a cyclone into the land; and there was no Esar-haddon now to check them. When Assur-bani-pal's long reign of over forty years ended, the doom of Assyria had already sounded.
There are no writings, no carefully carved inscriptions to guide us through the few terrible years that remained. There was no time for such arts of peace; the people were struggling for life against the barbarians. Among the ruins of the great royal enclosure in one of the Assyrian capitals there has been uncovered in one corner a little, poorly built, crumbling shanty of a palace, looking queer enough in the company of the majestic ruins around it. It was the work of a shadowy king, otherwise almost unknown, who must have ruled during those last years of terror. It typifies well the falling nation.
Assyria's provinces deserted her. One of her generals, Nabopolassar, being sent to govern Babylon, usurped supreme power there. He strengthened the city, ingratiated himself with the people, and then led them back in an assault against Nineveh. It was the death-struggle, and the Assyrians knew it. They rose grandly in the might of despair. Again and again they beat back their ancient foes. Nabopolassar began to look anxiously around for assistance. Egypt, which had seized on Palestine and Syria in the confusion, promised help; but it was slow in coming. A nearer and more eager ally was found in the barbarian king who had seized the mountainous region of Media. He gave his daughter to be the wife of Nabopolassar's son; and the wild Scyths and Medes joined the Babylonians in the final siege of Nineveh.
Civilization and barbarism were arrayed together against the royal city; and even the elements joined in the assault; for, according to legend, after a two years' siege the river rose in the night and carried away a portion of the walls. The assailants entered at the breach, and the city fell (607 B.C.).
Babylon was triumphant at last; and her people took full-revenge on their ancient foe. Nineveh was destroyed so completely that men forgot even where
ASSYRIA'S FALL (Nineveh is Stormed by the Scyths and Babylonians) By the noted English artist, John Martin, K.L.B., died 1854
DESPITE all the splendor and power of Assyria, never perhaps has any other empire perished so suddenly, so completely, and so unexpectedly. Esar-haddon was succeeded quietly by his son Assur-bani-pal, who ruled in much the same wise way, cultivating the arts of peace, and gathering a great library which has come down to us. He held his vast empire firmly together and quickly suppressed rebellion where-ever it appeared.
But after Assur-bani-pal's death the storm clouds gathered fast. Babylon reasserted its independence, and carried most of the lesser cities with it in revolt. In the midst of the resulting struggle, another horde of barbarians burst upon the country, similar to that which Esar-haddon had destroyed two generations before. Assyria's plains were ravaged from end to end by these barbarians, whom we know as the Scyths or Medes.
Meanwhile, the Babylonians continued their attacks and finally besieged the Assyrians within their great city of Nineveh. Finding Nineveh still too powerful to be overthrown, the Babylonians made an alliance with the barbarians. Earth's oldest and most cultured people united with her newest and most reckless children in the assault upon the hated tyrant of the nations. Legend says that even Nature turned against Nineveh in that last hour. The river undermined a portion of the huge insurmountable wall, and through this unexpected breach the foe rushed into victory (B.C. 607).
it had stood. The very completeness of its desolation left the apparently worthless ruins untouched through all the centuries; and it is at Nineveh that modern investigation has reaped its richest harvest of relics for the study of the past.
Glancing back for a moment over the history of these two ancient states, we can see that it forms a curious parallel to that other history which we commonly call ancient, the tale of Greece and Rome. Greece, which became the European heir of all this Asiatic civilization, was like Babylon, an intellectual power. The Grecian rule was older than that of Rome, and when the Romans, strong like the Assyrians in youth and brute force, conquered Greece, the older power's culture established its sway over them, as did that of Babylon upon the ruder Assyrians. Assyria was overwhelmed by barbarians, even as Rome was; and over these second conquerors also did Babylon extend a temporary influence, as did the Greek-Roman empire of Constantinople after Rome had fallen. History has thus strikingly repeated itself.
After the fall of Nineveh, a second Babylonian Empire rose on the ruins of its rival. The conqueror Nabopolassar maintained his friendship with the wild tribes of Scyths and Medes. He quarrelled with the Egyptians who had failed to aid him, and wrested from them their newly seized Asiatic possessions. From Media to the sea Babylon was again the queen of Western Asia.
It is here that the name Chaldaea came into history. You remember the land which the Euphrates kept building at its mouth. Through all these thousands of years that we have passed over in an easy half-hour, this land had been growing to the south of Sumer. An Arabian tribe, called kaldees, or Chaldees, had established themselves amid the sandbars and marshes of the new region, and their people gradually spread among the Babylonians. The new monarch, Nabopolassar, is reputed to have been a Chaldee; and as members of the race became more and more prominent in the new empire which he now built up, it was often called the Chaldaean empire. The name Chaldaea, especially with the Greek and Latin writers, gradually came to mean the same as Babylonia.
Nabopolassar was succeeded by that son who had married the Median princess, and who is known to us as the mighty Nebuchadnezzar of history and the Bible. He had already gained fame as a general in his father's lifetime; and that fame he increased by repeatedly defeating the Egyptians, by twice taking Jerusalem, and by subduing the hitherto invincible Phoenician city of Tyre, after a grim, unrelenting, thirteen-year siege.
His chief fame, however, is as a builder. He made Babylon a marvel whose fame will never die. It was for this labor of building that he tore the Jews and thousands of other poor captives from their homes. It was Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon that so impressed the unhappy prophet Jeremiah, when he compared its colossal structures with his own ruined Jerusalem. In addition to the famous walls, which were only partly his, Nebuchadnezzar built a stupendous palace, and greatly enlarged and improved the canal system. By means of locks he was able at will to turn the entire Euphrates into these canals; and he seems to have lined the whole bed of the river with brick, where it flowed through his city. Then he built for his Median queen Amyitis, perhaps because she longed for her native mountains, the famous hanging gardens, placed on arches seventy feet high, with all manner of strange plants and great trees growing on the summit.
The heart of the proud monarch was in his work; and when it was all finished he asked the prophet Daniel: “Is not this great Babylon that I have built . . . for the honor of my majesty.” Then a strange madness overtook him, and for four gloomy years he took no active interest in his empire. The Bible tells us that during this period he was insane; “he was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen.”
Nebuchadnezzar was the last important King of Babylon. A few years after his death his line died out; and the priests raised a weak tool of their own, Nabonidos, to the throne. He caused all the idols from the other cities of his empire to be brought to Babylon, thinking, apparently, to make it the one great religious centre of the land. But the step proved unfortunate. Its real result was to produce heart-burnings, jealousies, and secret treasons which finally overthrew him.
The Persians under Cyrus captured the city in 538 B.C. Nabonidos had an army in the field against them under his son Belshazzar, but it was out-generaled and defeated. The impregnable city seems to have made no defense; its gates were opened, surely by treachery, to the conqueror. We have found Cyrus' own record of his entry, and we must accept its declaration that “without combat or battle” did he enter Babylon. Nabonidos was made prisoner, and soon died. The Babylonian Empire had vanished forever. Babylon sank again to the secondary position it had held under Assyrian rule.
Several times the city rebelled, under leaders who claimed to be descendants of Nebuchadnezzar or sons of Nabonidos; but in each instance the revolt was put down, with more or less injury to the city. Somewhere amid this confusion must be placed the Hebrew account of Belshazzar, though with our present uncertain knowledge it is difficult to say precisely where.
The Babylonian inscriptions tell us that this Belshazzar was the eldest son of Nabonidos and general of all his armies; very probably he had even been made king with his father and the two shared a united rule. Belshazzar was by far the more vigorous man of the two. Whatever there had been of brave resistance against the Persians was from him. Later, while he feasted and revelled with his comrades in Babylon, there came that supernatural hand-
SARDANAPALUS (The Legendary King of Nineveh Destroys Himself at the Downfall of His City) A celebrated painting by Louis Chalon, a modern Parisian artist
So complete was the destruction of Nineveh that later ages forgot even where it had stood. The true history of its monarchs disappeared; and legend preserved only their names, in connection with distorted and confused tales of their exploits. Most celebrated of these tales was that of Sardanapalus, the name representing the form adopted by later Greek historians for spelling that of either the last great sovereign, Assur-bani-pal, or perhaps an earlier king, Assur-dain-pal. The legend is that Sardanapalus was the last king of Nineveh, and that he wasted his life in pleasure and effeminate pursuits within his palace walls. When his kingdom was attacked by the barbarians, he roused himself suddenly to an able and vigorous resistance. And when at last his city was stormed, he built a vast funeral pile of all his treasures, his servants, and his wives, seated himself upon the summit, had the whole mass set on fire, and so perished.
The only true connection this tale has with the great Assur-bani-pal is his interest in the arts of peace rather than of war. The earlier Assur-dain-pal was a rebel sovereign, who was besieged in one of the Assyrian cities by an elder brother, and the city was stormed and Assur-dain-pal perished Possibly he killed himself in the fashion described; for that was not an uncommon ending, by which Asiatic chieftains sought to foil the rapacity of the conqueror and escape the hideous vengeance which awaited them upon capture.
writing on the wall. You will find the account in the fifth chapter of the Book of Daniel.
Of Belshazzar and his feasting companions it says, “They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.” “In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king's palace; and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.”
Belshazzar was terrified, and asked his soothsayers what this fiery writing meant: “MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.” Merely as words, these were probably plain to all present. Their sense in English seems to be, “a mina, a mina, a shekel, to the Persians,” the mina being the most valuable gold coin of the times, and the shekel a comparatively worthless piece. But what did the words signify when thus placed together and flaming upon the wall? No man knew; or, if any guessed, they dared not tell the fierce king. Then Daniel, the Lord's prophet, was brought into the hall, and saw clearly the true meaning and menace of the words. Unflinchingly he denounced the haughty monarch and revealed the approaching doom. “This is the interpretation of the thing:
“MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it.
“TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.
“PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.”
In that night, says the Bible, dramatically closing its account, was Belshazzar slain.
Herodotus tells us that at one time the Persians seized the city by turning aside the Euphrates from its course, during the night, and entering along the bare bed of the river. The unsuspecting defenders were found helpless in drunken revelry. Perhaps this was the occasion of Belshazzar's sudden death.
The later history of Babylon is soon traced. Some of the Persian kings lived much in the city; it was a sort of second capital to them; but already its decline had begun. Xerxes punished it severely for a rebellion in 481 B.C. The great seven-story temple of Bel, with many other of the finest buildings, was overthrown; and a portion of the city was given up to pillage. Greek travellers, like Herodotus, saw many traces of decay within the walls, in some places whole quarters lying in ruins or turned into fields.
The city surrendered easily to the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great in 331 B.C. Its magnificence so impressed Alexander that he planned to make it his capital, but death prevented. It was the Greek princes who succeeded him in Asia, the Seleucidae, who finally accomplished the ruin of Babylon. They built a new capital of their own, Seleucia, within a few miles of it. Gradually all the wealthy inhabitants removed to the newer, gayer city; the poor soon followed them, leaving fallen Babylon alone with its great memories.
The Parthians captured and burned it about 140 B.C. In the time of Christ there was only a little village in the midst of the ruins; and the Christian father Jerome, writing in the fourth century A.D., tells us it had become an enclosed forest wherein the Persian kings hunted. Fallen Babylon had indeed become what Isaiah and Jeremiah predicted, “a burnt mountain.” “But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there.”
NEBUCHADNEZZAR CONQUERS JERUSALEM (The Jewish Captives Carried Away to Babylon)
A noted painting by Eduard Bendemann, Head of the Dusseldorf Academy, died 1889
THE overthrow of Assyria enabled Babylon to regain much of her former control of western Asia. Her most celebrated ruler during this, her second period of empire, was Nebuchadnezzar II. He did what Sennacherib had failed to do, conquered the mountain fortress of Jerusalem. Hence Nebuchadnezzar's name also stands black and terrible in the records of the Hebrews. They resisted the Babylonian army in two sieges. The first of these Nebuchadnezzar conducted in person; and after the city had surrendered he carried away all the chief men, the nobles, the warriors and the builders. This is the moment of his triumph shown in Bendemann's celebrated picture. Jeremiah the prophet, who had warned the Jews not to attempt resistance, is shown as he was left, mourning amid the remnant of his country folk.
The second siege was an unimportant affair from the Babylonian viewpoint, a brief outbreak easily subdued by one of the generals of the king. But Nebuchadnezzar was now convinced that there would be no real submission in Palestine as long as Jerusalem remained. So he ordered the city destroyed and all the remnant of the people carried into captivity. How thoroughly this work of destruction was done we learn from the Biblical book of the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Indeed, from all Jeremiah's prophecies we gather how tremendous was the impression made upon the minds of his contemporaries by the power of Babylon and of this, her last great king.
CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE
OF BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN HISTORY.
B.C.8000 (?)—Early settlements at Nippur and Susa. 6000 (?)—Eridu, Lagash, and other cities in existence. 5000(?)-Semitic migration from Arabia. 4500 (?)— En-shag-kushanna, king of Sumer, defeats the Semite tribes of the north. 4200 (?)—The city of Lagash rules Sumer under a regular line of kings whose inscriptions have been found. 4000 (?)—A revolution of the lower classes in Lagash headed by Uru-ka-gina, the first reformer. Lugal-zag-gisi conquers Lagash and founds the earliest empire. 38000 (This date seems fairly established by later records, so that all the later dates are probably correct within a century or so.)—Sargon founds the kingdom of Accad and rules over most of western Asia. 3750—His son Naram-Sin succeeds him. The many tablets recovered prove this to have been an age of high civilization, the “golden age” of Babylonia. 3700— After Naram-Sin the empire of Accad fades. 3200—Ur becomes the chief city under its king Urgur, a mighty builder. 2500—Another Semitic incursion. 2450—Sumu-abi makes Babylon the capital of a Semitic kingdom. 2285—The Elamites in a frightful raid almost wipe out all the kingdoms of the Euphrates. 2265—Abraham repels the Elamites from Palestine. Hammurabi defeats them and makes Babylon the permanent capital of Babylonia. He is a great builder and lawgiver. 1830— Ishmedagan and his son, the first known rulers or high priests of Assyria, build a temple in Asshur. 1750—The Kassites conquer Babylon and become its kings. 1700—Bel-kapkapu of Asshur declares his independency of Babylon. 1530—The Egyptians under Thothmes III. ravage Asia to the borders of Assyria and Babylonia and receive tribute from both states. 1400—Period of the “Tel-el- Amarna,” letters of diplomacy between Egypt and Babylon showing that Babylonian was the state language of Asia. 1278—Tukulti-ninib of Assyria captures and plunders Babylon. 1270—Babylon regains her freedom. 1135—Nebuchadnezzar I. of Babylon defeats the Elamites, regains the image of his god, Marduk, and restores Babylon's power. 1120—Tiglath-pileser I. begins the building of Assyria's first great empire. 1110—He conquers Babylon. 1050—His empire grows weak under his successors. 885—The mighty “second empire" of Assyria begins under Assur-nazir- pal. 854—The conquest of Syria and wars with the Hebrews begun. 840—The prophet Jonah preaches in Nineveh. 834—Jehu, king of Israel, in alliance with Assyria against Damascus. 827—Assur-dain-pal rebels against his father, and civil war divides Assyria. 822—Assur-dain-pal is besieged in his capital and slain, giving rise to the Sardanapalus legend. 796—Babylonian religion established in Assyria. 763—An eclipse of the sun, civil war rages in Assyria until—745—Pul wins the throne and as Tiglath-pileser III. establishes a new line of kings. 738—He holds a splendid celebration and receives homage from all the kings of western Asia. 729—He is declared ruler of the old Babylonian empire. 727—He dies. 722—Sargon II. completes the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel. He wins the battle of Raphia, completing the subjugation of Syria and Palestine. 705-681—Reign of the terrible Sennacherib. 701—He defeats the Egyptians in Palestine, besieges Jerusalem, his army stricken by pestilence. 691—He defeats the Elamites and Babylonians in a great battle at Khalule. 689— He destroys Babylon. 681—He is slain by his sons, who are defeated by another son, Esar-haddon. 680—Esar-haddon, a good king, rebuilds Babylon. 675—He invades Arabia. 670—He conquers Egypt. 668—He dies and is succeeded by his son Assur-bani-pal, the peaceful king. 655—Egypt frees herself. 650—A long war with Elam ends in its complete destruction. 626—Death of Assur-bani-pal, the last great Assyrian king. 625—The Scyths invade Assyria. Babylon rebels under Nabopolassar. 609—He unites with the Medes and besieges Nineveh. 607—Nineveh stormed and destroyed. Babylon's empire renewed. 605—Egyptian invasion repulsed by Nebuchadnezzar in a great battle at Karchemish. 604—562—Reign of Nebuchadnezzar the Great over Babylonia. 597—He storms Jerusalem. 585—He begins the great thirteen-year siege of Tyre. 568—He builds the “Hanging Gardens” of Babylon. 567—He invades Egypt. 555—Nabonidos, the last king of Babylonia, begins his reign. 538—Babylon captured by the Persians, becomes a Persian province. 514—
THE MADNESS OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR (The Great King Grovels in Madness Before His Court) Painted in 1886 by George Rochegrosse, the noted French artist
No one of the points in which the Bible story has been corroborated by the recently discovered records is more impressive than that of the madness which afflicted the great king Nebuchadnezzar. His inscriptions could of course not be expected to make a positive statement that he was insane, but in the midst of his proud account of his building in Babylon—he was probably the greatest builder of all these ancient kings—there occurs abruptly the following significant passage: “For four years the capital of my kingdom did not rejoice my heart. In all my dominions I built no high place of magnificence, nor did I gather any treasure. In Babylon I erected no building for myself nor for the glory of my empire. In the worship of Bel-Marduk, my Lord, the joy of my heart, in Babylon, the city of his worship, I did not sing his praise. I did not sacrifice victims on his altar. In four years I did not repair the canals.”
Those four years of joyless, unreligious idleness, the Bible tells us, were years of divine punishment. King Nebuchadnezzar had boasted to the prophet Daniel, “Is not this great Babylon, that I have built?” And straightway, that he might known how small he was, he was afflicted with the dread disease which doctors call lycanthropy, in which the victim thinks himself a beast. So that the king “did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws.”
Darius, the Persian king, destroys the walls of Babylon to prevent its frequent revolts. 487-Xerxes sacks Babylon after a revolt. 331—Babylon taken by Alexander the Great, who dies there, 323. 312—Seleucus, one of Alexander's generals, becomes king of an empire, including Babylon, and builds a new capital, Seleucia, so that Babylon decays. 140—Babylonia seized by the Parthians. 63—Seized by the Romans.
A.D. 750—The Babylonian city of Baghdad made the capital of the Mahometan caliphs. 1637—Babylonia conquered by the Turks. 1842—Modern excavations begun by M. Botta. 1848—Layard excavated Nineveh. 1866-George Smith started the reading of the Babylonian writing. 1877—M. de Sarzec began the excavations at Lagash. 1900—Discovery of the law code of Hammurabi.
RULERS OF BABYLONIA
B.C. 4500 (?)—En-shag-kush-anna, probably of Lagash. 4400 (?)—Mesilim, a Semite victor.
KINGS OF LAGASH 4250 (?)—Ur-nina Akurgal, his son. E-anna-tum, his son, a conqueror. En-anna-tum, his brother. En-teme-na, his son. En-anna-tum II., his son. Uru-ka-gina, the reformer. 4000—Lugal-zag-gisi, a foreign conqueror.
****
KINGS OF ACCAD 3800—Sargon. 3750—Naram-Sin, his son. Bingani-sar-ali, his son. Ellat-gula, a queen. ****
KINGS OF UR 3200—Ur-gur, the builder.
B.C. 3150—Dungi I., his son. ****
2800-Gungunu, a conqueror. Ur-gur II. ****
KINGS OF BABYLON 2450—Sumu-abi. 2440—Sumu-la-ilu, his son. 2405—Zabu, his son. 2360—Abil-sin, his son. 2320—Sin-muballit, his son. 2285—Hammurabi. ****
KASSITE DYNASTY OF BABYLON 1750—Gandis. ****
1700—Agum-kak-rime, a conqueror. ****
1450—Kara-indas. 1420—Burna-buryas, his son. 1410—Kuri-galzu I., his son. 1400—Kadashman bel.
B.C. 1390—Burna-buryas II. 1370—Kara-khardash. 1360—Kadashman-kharbe.
ASSYRIAN CONQUERORS 1330—Shalmaneser I. 1290—Tukulti-ninib I., his son. 1280—Assur-nazir-pal, his son. (Period of Tumult.)
FIRST ASSYRIAN EMPIRE 1120—Tiglath-pileser I. 1090—Assur-bel-kala, his son. 1080—Shamshi-adad, his son. (Period of Weakness.)
950—Tiglath-pileser II. 930—Assur-dan, his son. 911—Adad-nirari II., his son. 890—Tukulti-ninib II., his son.
SECOND ASSYRIAN EMPIRE 885—Assur-nazir-pal. 860—Shalmaneser II., his son. 827—Assur-dain-pal, his son.
B.C. 823—Shamsi-adad, his brother. 811—Adad-nirari III., his son. 782—Shalmaneser III. 772—Assur-dan III. 754—Assur-nirari II.
THE GREAT ASSYRIAN EMPIRE 745—Tiglath-pileser III (Pul). 726—Shalmaneser IV. 722—Sargon II. 705—Sennacherib, his son. 681—Esar-haddon, his son. 668—Assur-bani-pal, his son. 626—Assur-etil-ili-ukinni. 609—Sin-shar-ishkum (Saracos).
THE SECOND BABYLONIAN EMPIRE 625-Nabopolassar. 604—Nebuchadnezzar II., his son. 562—Evil-merodach, his son. 560—Nergal-shar-usur. 556—Labashi-marduk. 555—Nabonidos.
CYRUS CAPTURES BABYLON (The Babylonian Revellers Receive Daniel's Warning of Destruction) By the recent French artist, Paul Chenavard
THE influence, both military and intellectual, by which Babylon had dominated the world for two thousand years or more was destroyed when Cyrus and his Persians captured the city over five hundred years before Christ's time. The Persians belonged to a new race of people, the Aryans, very different in many ways from the Semitic Babylonians, and worshipping other gods than the Baal or Lord Marduk. So even as a religious centre Babylon lost its importance. The Persians built a new capital of their own.
The story of the downfall which comes to us from the Hebrew prophets is naturally a deeply shadowed one. Their race had suffered terribly at Babylon's hands, and, looking upon her fall as a vengeance and a triumph, they tell of the revelry which preceded it, and of the divine warning which Daniel interpreted to the heedless roisterers. Thus the modern world has come to think of the Babylon civilization as a mass of drunkenness and corruption. But while recognizing and regretting the evil side of that ancient splendor, we must realize that on the whole Babylon was the greatest influence for good the world had yet known. She substituted intellect for mere brute force, as the ruling power among mankind.
Cyrus did not storm the city. He probably had friends within who opened the gates to him. Hence only the king and his revelling courtiers suffered from the assault. The mass of the people welcomed Cyrus as a deliverer. Babylon's downfall freed all the subjugated nations.
(Authorities: Josephus, “History of the Jews”; Sayce, “Early History of the Hebrews”; Ottley, “A Short History of the Hebrews”; Hosmer, “The Story of the Jews”; Milman, “History of the Jews”; Jahn, “The Hebrew Commonwealth”; Kent, “History of the Jewish People”; Menard, “History of the Israelites”; Mears, “From Exile to Overthrow”; Abrahams,” Judas Maccabeus”; Morrison, “The Jews under Rome”; Strange, “Palestine under the Moslems”; Daly, “Settlement of the Jews in North America.”)
IN at least one branch of their descendants the Semitic peoples of Babylonia still live. Ancient Babylon has disappeared, and its land has become a waste, inhabited by a feeble folk bearing little or no kinship to the mighty race of earth's first empire builders. But the Hebrews of today are the living tree that has sprung from that marvellous root of Babylonian culture, character, and religion.
To the Hebrews, our modern world is indebted for the germ of its religious thought, the realization of the one almighty Power enfolding the universe, “the all-wise and the all-loving too.” This thought, though not in its full clearness, the Hebrews carried with them in their departure from Babylonia. They carried also the Babylonian shrewdness at trade, and keenness at figures, and, as a less valuable inheritance, an instinctive leaning towards the unclean ritual of Ishtar, the nature goddess, or love goddess, of ancient Summer.
Abraham, the founder of the Hebrew race, was a Semite, dwelling, as the Bible tells us, in the city of “Ur of the Chaldees.” This may mean either the great Sumerian city of Ur, or a particular suburb of Babylon which had the same name. In the latter case, which is the one that recent research makes more probable, Abraham's own eyes and those of his kinsfolk rested often and familiarly on the sights of the great metropolis in the days of Sumu-abi and the first powerful Semitic kings. Amid these surroundings there came to the patriarch the impulse, God-given as are all high impulses, to leave the oppressive civilization for a freer, purer life.
Under what material influence Abraham set out on his wanderings, we do not know; but his migration corresponds closely in time with the tremendously destructive Elamite invasion of Babylonia by Kudur-nankhundi. Those ravaging hordes of Elamites must have driven forth many a desolated Babylonian household in search of some more quiet dwelling place. The influence of the devastation would be specially strong with the nomadic tribes, like that of Abraham. These, gathering the rescued fragments of their flocks and herds, wandered onward until they could find rest in less dangerous pasture lands. Abraham's tribe journeyed first to Haran, which was probably the city of that name near the upper Euphrates, and thence Abraham led his own particular following into Canaan, which we know as Palestine. He found this land most charming to his taste, perfectly fitted to his pastoral household. It was sparsely inhabited, fertile with many meadows, and of a pleasant climate. Here, when he learned that the Elamite forces were again at hand, persecuting him even in this distant realm, he turned upon them suddenly and fiercely, as we know, and defeated the army of Chedorlaomer. Or, if we are not justified in terming that sudden nigh-attack a defeat, the patriarch at least wrested from the invaders such portions of their prisoners and spoils as specially concerned him.
The name “Hebrew” means people “from the other bank of the river,” that is, of the Euphrates; and it may well be that Abraham's tribe was only one small portion of the many Semites from the Euphrates who drifted into Canaan. It is certain that “Hebrew” in its widest significance was applied not only to the Israelites but to many of their immediate neighbors, the Moabites, Ammonites, and others. Apparently, also, it was only after some centuries that Abraham's special descendants, the Israelites, separated wholly from these kindred tribes and in a period of famine undertook that further migration which brought them into Egypt.
In Egypt they were welcomed by the Hyksos, or “Shepherd Kings,” Asiatic invaders like themselves, perhaps of their own kindred, who had conquered the land of the Nile. Under these Hyksos, the Israelite Joseph rose to be the chief man of the kingdom, the deputy of the king. Generations later, when the Hyksos had been expelled by a native Egyptian uprising, the descendants of Israel sank to be little better than slaves; and hence, under their wondrous leader
ISRAEL PRESENTED TO PHARAOH (The Wandering Children of Israel Find a Settled Home in Egypt) Drawn by the noted English artist, Edward J. Poynter, R.A.
GREATEST of the legacies which Babylon gave the world was that of the worship of a single all-powerful god. The Hebrews were descendants of the Babylonians, and brought with them in their migration from their ancient home the germ of their noble religious thought. Thus not only our intellectual and material culture, but some spark of our spiritual faith as well, dates back to Babylon. The mighty city has lived on in that wonderful race of her children, the Israelites.
Wandering forth from Babylonia in its early days, more than two thousand years before the time of Christ, the Hebrews spent centuries as a nomadic tribe, until one of their number, the lad Joseph, entered Egypt as a slave. He won notice as an interpreter of dreams. Magic was accepted with full faith in those days, and played an important part in the ordering of life. So Joseph rose to power as one of the “magi,” or wise men, of the court of the Pharaohs, and became finally the regent or chief vizier of the king. He then sent for his people to join him in Egypt; and our picture shows the moment when he presents to Pharaoh his father, the aged patriarch Jacob. Thus the family of Jacob or Israel, as he was called, settled in Egypt. Their descendants dwelt there for several centuries, and increased in numbers until from a small tribe they had become a nation.
and prophet Moses, they left Egypt to seek once more a land of freedom and of peace.
We have no means of setting exact dates to these wanderings of Abraham and his descendants. If we make the first migration from Ur coincident with the Elamite conquest, the time would be about 2285 B.C. Joseph's period of rule in Egypt must have been not far from the year 1720 B.C.; and the exodus under Moses may have occurred about 1300 B.C.
For the forty years following, the exiles led a nomadic life, as their fathers had done of old. They pastured their scanty flocks on the herbage of Sinai, a barren land, but by no means so desolate as the earlier home of their Semite ancestors in Arabia. Finally, feeling themselves strong enough, the wanderers advanced northward into Palestine. They found it no longer the thinly peopled country it had been in Abraham's day. Under Joshua they waged battle after battle against its Canaanite cities before becoming masters of the land. Indeed they never did win complete possession of it all.
During all their wanderings the Israelites had been mere tribes, but gradually their experiences in Palestine molded them into a compact nation, sharply separated from the other Semites. They became, in fact, the most clearly differentiated race and apparently the most enduring in type among all the nations of the world. This amazing persistence and power of race, which has so often aroused the comment of the historian, seems to have had its origin in two sources. The first was their religion. Like the Assyrians and most of the other Semites, they regarded themselves as the chosen people of their god. When, in addition to this, they came to think of theirs as the only real God, all- powerful over other races of men, then naturally the Israelites acquired not only a tremendous self-confidence, but also a scorn of all less favored people, a scorn which made them anxious to dwell apart. Their other source of racial strength was the moral law established by Moses, which forbade them to intermarry with the Canaanites among whom they settled. Thus, refusing steadily to mix with other races, they became more and more a typical and homogeneous people.
Their nation did not attain political importance until about the year 1000 B.C., in the days of their great chieftain David. In David's childhood the Israelites were only one among three or more separate peoples dwelling in Palestine. They were the country folk, still pastoral, counting their wealth in flocks and herds, and quite definitely subject to the Philistines, a Semitic people like themselves, who dwelt in walled cities along the Palestine coast. As yet the Israelites were bound together only by their sense of a common kinship and religion. They had chief priests and prophets, but no organized rule. Then Saul, a sturdy giant of a man and a great fighter, led a rebellion against the Philistines. Being temporarily successful, he set himself up as Israel's first king. He established a capital, and organized a government. When Saul was finally defeated and slain by the Philistines, his place was taken by his son- in-law David.
David had been exiled by Saul on suspicion of plotting to seize the throne. In this exile, David had set himself up as chief of a robber band; he had even taken service under the Philistines. Now, however, he deserted them to lead his own people. At first he was merely king of Judah, his native tribe among the Israelites; and only after a bloody civil war did the other tribes accept his rule. There was thus, from the very beginning of their national life, a division among the Israelites. Judah, as the chief tribe, from which sprang King David and his successors, assumed a superiority. Gradually it became more and more widely separated from the mass of the other tribes, to whom the name of Israel came to be applied as distinct from that of Judah.
As king of the united nation, David defeated the Philistines. He then stormed Jerusalem, the chief fortified city of the mountains, which was still in possession of its original inhabitants, the Jebusites. Having made Jerusalem his capital, David embarked on a care of conquest over outside nations. His chief victory was that of Helam, where he defeated the confederated forces of Syria, probably the Hittites. He extended his rule, though doubtless feebly and vaguely, from the borders of Egypt, over all Palestine and Syria, and as far eastward as the Euphrates valley. For a moment Israel, in the sudden recognition of her strength, promised to become the world power that should supplant ancient Babylonia and the temporarily exhausted Assyria.
This kingdom, which Saul had founded and David had made strong, reached the zenith of its power under David's son, Solomon, whose reign of forty years was peculiarly tranquil for those turbulent days, wherein the overcrowded nations found themselves at constant war. The new king's peace was the reward of the reputation his father had won. The Pharaohs of Egypt, risen by this time to the height of their splendor, treated with Solomon apparently as an equal, something which, in the safety of their isolated position, they had refused to do with any earlier Asiatic monarch. An Egyptian princess was sent to Jerusalem as Solomon's bride. Indeed one can imagine a shrewd Babylonian trader of that day as he journeyed from land to land, reckoning the four chief kingdoms of the world in the order of their weakness, as follows: lowest of the four, the Hittites, too disunited to have any chance of empire; next to these, the Assyrians, enfeebled by local wars and fast losing their ancient strength; third, Egypt, mighty but too far off to be able to exert her power in Asia; and fourth and highest, Israel, a united people, numerous, victorious, strong, and eager for war.
These were the days of Jerusalem's beautifying and splendor. Solomon built himself palaces and aqueducts and stately bridges, and, chief of his constructions, his celebrated temple. This was erected on the highest hill of the
MOSES URGES THE EXODUS (Moses Pleads with the Hebrews to Abandon Their Settled Life in Egypt) From the celebrated Biblical series by J. James Tissot
TO understand the treatment of the Hebrews in Egypt, we must understand something of the political conditions in the land itself. In Joseph's day Egypt was ruled by foreigners, a horde of Asiatic nomads who had invaded the land and conquered it. Hence the support of other Asiatic wanderers, such as the Hebrews, was very welcome to the conquerors; but after a time these foreign tyrants were expelled by the Egyptians, and the native Pharaohs, who regained the throne, regarded the Hebrews very differently. They were looked on with suspicion, hatred, and something of fear. The unfortunate Israelites, reduced almost to the position of slaves, resolved to leave the country in a body.
The great leader of this migration was Moses. We have no mention of him outside of the Bible; but the migration is an established historical fact, and the remarkable laws of the Hebrews are in themselves evidence of the existence of some such wonderful leader and law-giver. When Moses first urged his countrymen to leave Egypt they gave him little heed. Their life was, indeed, hard; but they had well-nigh forgotten any other, were quite unfitted to maintain themselves in the old, wild nomadic existence. Only after repeated pleadings by Moses did his people follow him back to the hard freedom of the desert.
great mountain city, the summit of the hill being leveled and its edges raised by huge understructures, which remain even to this day. The temple was renowned for its richness rather than its size, though one report represents its chief tower as rising 210 feet above the temple court. Two pillars, celebrated for their beauty, rose before the doorway, and within was the “Holy of Holies,” the most sacred shrine of all. This was an empty chamber wherein God Himself was believed to have made His presence manifest to the most devoted of His followers.
The days of the nation's worldly glory were, however, of brief duration. Solomon was succeeded by his son Rehoboam; and the new king forgot that his own great- grandfather Saul had been, only a short time before, one of the common peasantry, selected by his fellows to champion them against oppression. Rehoboam thought himself the master of his people and tried to rule as haughtily and with the same crushing brutality as the Assyrian monster-kings. The result was a rebellion. The other tribes broke away from the yoke of Judah, and set up a state of their own with its capital at Samaria. This was known thenceforth as the Kingdom of Israel, in contradistinction to that of Judah. Between the two sister states ensued constant war; and from that time onward each sapped the life-blood of the other. Like Assyria and Babylonia, they turned away from feebler foes, and, in fratricidal strife exhausted each other's power. Thus all the dreams of empire which illumined the days of David and Solomon were brought to naught.
The empire of the Hebrews was not to be of this world. Today they are a people without a country, a nation without a state. But they were slow to realize their destiny, slow to recognize their own peculiar strength or to acknowledge their peculiar weakness. They fought furiously for their little corner of earth. Moreover, they abandoned the religious unity which had made them strong. Even King Solomon had “turned his heart after other gods.” The old Babylonian worship of Ishtar was revived. Ishtar, or as the Greeks called her, Astrate, was the goddess of love and of all the reproducing forces of nature. Temples were erected to her on the hill-tops, and she was adored with unclean rites. The northern tribes of Israel broke away entirely from obedience to their own ancient God, our Biblical “Jehovah,” whose worship was too closely associated with Jerusalem and Judah to please the northern rebels. Even in Judah there was religious division, and the splendid temple of Solomon came to enclose within its sacred precincts the shrines of many idols.
Then followed the political downfall. King Shishak of Egypt attacked Jerusalem in the days of Rehoboam, Solomon's son, and carried off all the riches of the temple. Still darker days ensued, during which one Assyrian conqueror after another ground the hopelessly divided Hebrews beneath his savage heel. Tiglath- pileser III., or Pul, who established Assyria's second period of power, overian Syria and Palestine. The King of Judah, Ahaz, confederated with him, or even, as the Bible tells us, entreated him to enter the land to protect Judah from Israel and other foes. Hence Judah escaped the ravages of Pul; but Israel fought him and was overwhelmingly defeated. A large portion, probably the majority of the northern Israelites who survived, were carried off by Pul about 740 B.C. and colonized in Assyria. There, in the destruction which later overtook that unhappy land, they wholly disappeared.
A decade later Israel was again in arms against an Assyrian tyrant, Shalmaneser IV. He besieged Israel's capital, Samaria, for several years before it finally fell, not to him but to his successor, that adventurer who sized upon Assyria's throne and called himself Sargon II. This leader completed the destruction of Israel, which Pul, the earlier conqueror, had begun. In the year 721 B.C. Sargon expelled the last exhausted remnant of the northern Hebrews from their kingdom, and marched them across all the weary width of his broad empire to its other extremity, the far eastern land of Media. So completely has every trace of these bands of exiles disappeared that we speak of them today as the ten lost tribes of Israel. Of the twelve tribes that had followed Moses out of Egypt, only two, that of Judah and the little allied tribe of Benjamin, remained in Palestine.
Nor did the kingdom of Judah long outlast that of Israel. Hezekiah, king of Judah, rebelled against Sargon's son and successor Sennacherib, and sought the protection of Egypt, Assyria's chief rival. Of the strange destruction of Sennacherib's army before Jerusalem, we know from many different traditions. The startling event impressed itself deeply upon the ancient world. The Greek historian Herodotus, when he visited Egypt, was shown a statue of an Egyptian king holding a rat in his hand, and was told that when Sennacherib's army was intending to attack Egypt, the god Ptah sent myriads of rodents into the Assyrian camp. These gnawed through every bow-string, and through all the cords for binding on armor and shields. The Assyrian host, disarmed and helpless, fled in panic, and many were slain. Hence the Egyptians credited Sennacherib's downfall to the piety of their own king, to the greatness of their god Ptah, and to the teeth of his rats. But this little animal was the symbol, in ancient Egypt of just what our modern science has taught us it now chiefly symbolizes— the plague. Hence this story seems to point, as does that of the Bible, to the destruction of Sennacherib's forces by a sudden plague, some such awful visitation as our own day has again seen attending upon the recklessly gathered and closely horded armies of the east.
Hezekiah's escape prolonged Judah's independence only a little time. The next Assyrian king was the great conqueror Esarhaddon. He reduced all Pales.
DAVID STORMS JERUSALEM (The Hebrews Capture Jerusalem and Make It Their Capital) From a painting by J. Steeple Davis, a contemporary American artist
MANY of the Hebrews perished under the hardships of their renewed nomadic life. But those who survived grew strong. Their flocks and herds became numerous, and, when, many years afterward, a later generation of the wanderers came to Palestine, they were able to drive out most of its inhabitants and take possession of this fair “promised land.” In Palestine their chief wealth still consisted of their flocks and herds, and they began to live more settled agricultural lives. They continued, however, a scattered folk with no central organization, a people but not a state. Most of the cities of Palestine remained in the hands of the older inhabitants for yet another three hundred years—until the time of David.
David drew the scattered farmer race together into a united and powerful nation; he made strong the bonds of ancient brotherhood. There had been many alien races remaining in Palestine; he conquered them and made of it a single Israelite kingdom. Chief of his warlike exploits was the storming of Jerusalem, the ancient city of the Jebusites. So high were the walls of this mountain fortress that its people mocked the Hebrews, declaring that the blind and lame could hold it safe against them. But David's warriors pushed forward their wooden towers and reached the summit by a sudden rush. The Hebrews thus won for themselves a capital, and became a nation. It was David who made Jerusalem what it has ever since remained, the home city of the Jews.
tine, and even Egypt itself, to the position of submissive provinces within his empire. Judah's king, Manasseh, was made prisoner, carried before Esarhaddon in chains, and afterward restored to his throne as a dependent vassal king.
In the terrible days that followed Esarhaddon, when those wild barbarian tribes from the unknown north were ravaging Palestine as well as Assyria, when Nineveh and Babylon were at death-grips, and Nineveh was finally overthrown, Judah reasserted its independence. Its king Josiah not only fought successfully against his neighbors and fellow sufferers in desolation, but organized a great religious revival. The ancient law-books of Moses had vanished, destroyed perhaps or carried off as booty by one of the Assyrian conquerors. Now, in clearing out from the temple the accumulations of many generations, there was rediscovered a copy of at least a part of the Law. Reading this, Josiah and his people realized with horror how far they had departed from the pure worship of the one God, Jehovah.
A complete reformation followed. The shrines of Ishtar and other foreign gods were destroyed; and grim abominations were performed upon these temple spots to prevent their ever being regarded again as holy. Next the religious ceremonials dedicated to Jehovah Himself were much altered and simplified. And when at length all was completed, a feast of purification was held so solemn that, in the words of the Bible, “there was not holden such a passover from the days of the judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel, nor of the kings of Judah.” The wording suggests that the Law must have been lost from view even before the Assyrian era, before David and before Saul, perhaps in those early days of the Judges when the Philistines held in bondage the “ark of the covenant.”
Again, however, was that lesson to be taught which the Hebrews refused so long to learn, that God offers no earthly splendor in payment to his followers. King Josiah ventured to fight against Egypt. Assyria had finally perished; Babylon reigned in the east, and Egypt, once more independent, was at war with her. The Egyptians sent word to Josiah asking him only to keep out of the strife on either side. But Josiah defied the Egyptians, and was slain by them in a great battle at Megiddo. His defeat compelled Judah to become subject to Egypt.
That subjection soon brought about the Hebrew kingdom's downfall. Egypt was defeated by the Babylonians; and her allied and subject cities were captured one after the other, Jerusalem among them. The Babylonian monarch Nebuchadnezzar stormed the Hebrew citadel, plundered its temple and carried off its king Jeconiah and all his chief people into captivity in Babylonia. Those who remained in Judah rebelled a few years later, and Nebuchadnezzar determined to make an end of them. One of his generals overran the land and besieged its capital for the last time. Under Zedekiah, the last of its ancient kings, Jerusalem withstood this final siege for three years. Then famine conquered her. Her armed men were slain in a last desperate sortie. Her king was captured and killed, and the starving survivors were carried off, as the upper classes had been before, to Babylonian servitude. The sacred city was deliberately destroyed, blotted out of existence (586 B.C.).
Only a few fugitives from the surrounding country remained to gather in misery around the sacred shrine of desolated Jerusalem. These were ruled by a governor approved by Babylonia. But even this remnant rebelled once more, slew their governor, and then, helpless to defend themselves, fled to Egypt for protection. An avenging force from Babylonia scraped up a few poor miserable survivors among the ruins and carried them also into captivity. The kingdom of Judah vanished; its land lay an empty waste. But the spiritual faith of its people survived. The true mission of the descendants of Abraham, that first historic believer in one God, was not finished; it was only just begun.
This new era dawned for Judea and the Jews, as the ancient land and people of Judah came to be called, when Babylon was in its turn conquered by another conqueror. He was the Persian monarch Cyrus. Cyrus assumed the role of friend and deliverer of all the races whom the Babylonians had crushed. He therefore permitted the various transported colonists throughout the empire to return to their native homes, if they so wished. The captive Jews gladly seized upon this privilege, and in vast caravans under various leaders, Zerubbabel, Ezra, Nehemiah, they journeyed back to Judea and rebuilt Jerusalem. Their city was of course nothing like the gorgeous capital of wealth and beauty it had been before. Neither did it again pretend to independence or to any political importance. The exiled Jews in Babylonia had been held together by their priests and their religion; and it was these potent forces that had led them back to Judea. Their state became a “theocracy,” a nation ruled wholly by its priesthood. This was the time of most of the Hebrew religious writings. The faith of the people waxed stronger, purer, nobler. It prepared itself to teach its most exalted doctrines to all mankind.
Politically Judea remained in quiet subjection to Persia, and then to the Greeks, who, under Alexander the Great, conquered Persia and divided its empire into four kingdoms (323 B.C.). Judea fell at first to the share of the Egyptian kingdom, but in 204 B.C. was seized and added to the Syrian kingdom by the monarch Antiochus III., called the Great.
During these centuries the Jews as an earnest, obedient, unrebellious people, were in special favor with their various sovereigns. They became numerous and prosperous. Antiochus the Great even used the Jews as a bulwark against other rebels by sending colonies of them to disaffected regions, offering them lands, exemptions from taxation, and similar favors, to induce them to settle at the seat of turbulence and restrain their neighbors. No one dreamed of the Jews as types of frenzy and self-immolation—rather were they types of submissive wisdom and of peace.
TO THE earlier races of history it was a thing unthinkable that men should so devote themselves to one deity as to refuse to do homage to any other. Each race, on hearing their neighbors tell of other gods, seem usually to have accepted these as being quite as real as their own. The Romans adopted into their “pantheon,” or temple of all deities, whatever gods they heard of in their conquest of the world. But now at last in Judea, the mighty central thought of all true religion had grown into clearer understanding. The Jews realized that earth and all its forces are a unit, owing their existence to only one creative Power, that other “gods” are impossible in the superhuman presence of the one god. This strong faith, with its pervading confidence, shut out utterly from the Jewish mind the possibility of worshipping, or even admitting the existence of any other God.
From their faith came their sufferings. The throne of Syria passed to Antiochus IV., a weak and cruel tyrant ever in need of money, to secure which he set various creatures of his own over Jerusalem, as High Priests. These tools of oppression deliberately strove to destroy the religion they were supposed to guide. Not only did they plunder the Temple of its treasures for their master; they introduced the figures of the Greek gods into its sanctuaries, and murdered.
THE UPRISING OF THE MACCABEES (The Priest Mattathias Defends the Sanctity of His Altar by Slaying One Who Would Pollute It) By the recent great French artist, Gustave Dore
THE Jews were the first people, of whom we know, who were so devoted to their own religion as to refuse to worship or even admit the existence of other gods. This brought down upon them the first religious persecution. About a century and a half before Christ, their political masters, no longer Persians, but Greeks, sought to compel them to worship the Greek gods. At once these hitherto submissive subjects became the most resolute of rebels. Martyr after martyr suffered death by torture sooner than surrender the faith. An aged village priest, Mattathias, slew upon the alter the first of his parishioners who attempted to obey the hated command to sacrifice to the Grecian gods. Then Mattathias led his little community into the depths of the hills and defied the government. Many of the refugees died from hunger and exposure, as did their aged leader; but his sons took command of the devoted little band of survivors and defeated an army that was sent against them.
This was the beginning of the wars of the “Maccabees,” as the sons of Mattathias were called. After many battles and a display of most devoted heroism the Maccabees succeeded in making the Jews once more free. They set up a second “Kingdom of Judaea,” which lasted until Rome took forcible possession of the country almost a century later.
all who dared protest. Civil war broke out in Jerusalem. Antiochus attacked the city with an army. The citizens, untrained and unprepared, resisted valiantly, but in vain. Their walls were stormed and many thousands of them were slain in the streets.
Then began the earliest religious persecution of which we have definite record (170 B.C.). Antiochus was determined to break the religious unity of the Jews, that obedience to their priesthood which he regarded as a danger to his own dominion. Throughout Syria he commanded all his subjects to do homage to the Greek gods. Only in Judea was the royal order disobeyed. Hitherto, conquered peoples had readily bowed the knee to whatever symbol of power was held over them, whether of sword or king or deity. Neither had it occurred to any victor to forbid a people to pray to whom or what they liked, so long as they were submissive. But the deepened religious spirit of the Jews led them to refuse honor to the idols of the king. Antiochus in his turn forbade them to continue their ceremonies of worship to Jehovah. This mandate was enforced by massacres, by gross profanations of the Temple, and by every extreme of bodily torture that hatred could devise or brutality inflict.
Then came the war of the Maccabees. An aged priest, Mattathias, not from Jerusalem itself but from one of the lesser Judean towns, headed a furious revolt, which gathered numbers as it continued. Soon all Judea was in arms. Mattathias died in the early days of the struggle, but bequeathed his leadership to his sons. Of these, the chief was Judas, called for his fighting powers Maccabeus, which means the “hammerer.” The name was later applied to the entire family who became “the Maccabees.”
Judas repeatedly defeated the armies sent against him, and within a year had driven the Syrians out of Judea, except the garrison which held the castle or citadel within Jerusalem. The main part of the city, however, was in the hands of Judas, and he restored the worship of Jehovah in the temple.
The king Antiochus IV. was slain in a war with Persia, and Judas continued master of Judea for five years. Then the new Syrian king sent such a powerful army that Judas and his people were compelled to give way before it, and after withstanding a long siege in Jerusalem, they came to terms with the king, who allowed them to continue to worship according to their own religion. The peace lasted only a year. Then religious persecution recommenced, and the Maccabees were again in arms. Judas defeated another large army under the king's general Nicanor, the battle remaining long celebrated in Jewish annals as “the day of Nicanor.” Then came the downfall of the great Hebrew champion. He was surrounded by another armed host while he himself had but eight hundred men. Scorning flight, he attacked the foe, and after a desperate fight was surrounded and slain with almost all his band.
Two of the heroic Maccabee brothers still survived, the eldest, Simon, and the youngest, Jonathan. Simon had ever been the counsellor of his brothers rather than a fighter, and now the active leadership fell to Jonathan. With their few remaining followers the brothers fell back into the wilderness, whence repeated forces of their enemies failed to dislodge them. Then civil war broke out between rival aspirants to the Syrian crown; and Judea being left almost wholly to itself, Jonathan regained control of the country. By adroitly lending aid now to one, now to another of the warring generals, he finally secured recognition as the legitimate high priest and ruler of Judea. His policy of changing alliances finally brought him to death at the hands of his foes. But Simon, the last remaining brother, drove back the invaders, who would have seized the land on Jonathan's death; and from the king who now succeeded to the weakened Syrian throne, Simon forced the recognition of Judea's complete liberation. The final battle of the great Jewish “war of independence” was fought in 139 B.C., at Ashdod, where Simon's son John overthrew the last Syrian army ever sent against the Maccabees.
After Ashdod, kings of the Maccabean line ruled over Judea for nearly eighty years, engaging in no wars except those of their own choosing. Those who followed John upon the throne proved anything but religious rulers. Family quarrels and every form of family murder disgraced their reigns and horrified their people. Civil wars or wars of conquest were almost incessant, until at length when the Romans entered the land, their general, the celebrated Pompey, needed scarcely more than to reach out his hand to Jerusalem, and it surrendered. There was a siege, but it was as nothing compared to the savage sieges of earlier days. The struggle was neither long nor sanguinary, and Judea became a submissive and by no means dissatisfied Roman province (63 B.C.).
As a Roman province Judea remained in peace for over a century; and it was during this period that Jesus, our Lord, was born there and fulfilled his earthly mission. Ten years after His death the Roman emperor Caligula commanded that all peoples throughout the empire should worship Caligula as a god. This placed the Jews again in opposition to authority, since they were the one race who saw in religion so solemn and indeed so superhuman a meaning that they would not obey the silly mandate of Caligula. Wherever the Jews had spread throughout the empire they were slain, till the total of dead reached many thousands.
Caligula died, and the persecution stopped, but everywhere the Roman governors began to look upon the Jews as a stubborn and dangerous people. It was beyond the humanity of that day to give them honor for their religious strength, or even to believe in its existence. To the Romans they seemed simply obstinate, ferocious, and rebellious. Matters in Judea grew steadily worse, until
THE FINAL DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM (The Romans Destroy Jerusalem Utterly and Carry Off All Who Escape Death) From the painting in the Royal Academy of Venice by the Italian artist, Francesco Hayez, 1791-1882
ONCE the religious issue had been raised, the Jews met it with intense earnestness, or what their enemies called fanaticism. Just as they had defied the power of their Greek rulers, so later they defied that of Rome, but with less success. The Emperor Caligula commanded everyone throughout his empire to worship him as a god. The Jews were the one nation which refused obedience. Hence there arose more religious persecutions, one succeeding another. The Emperor Vespasian stormed and sacked Jerusalem. And then, a little more than a century after Christ, there came the final dispersal of the Jewish people, which reduced them to what they have been ever since—a nation without a country.
This final destruction of Jerusalem was the work of the Roman general Severus. The Jews had risen in rebellion under a leader who claimed to be their Messiah. So resolute was their resistance and so repeated had been their outbreaks, that Severus resolved to exterminate the race. He destroyed each town and village as his army captured it; and so, coming at last to Jerusalem, he sacked and burned it, his soldiers slaying all who resisted and making slaves of the survivors, who were carried off to other lands. The Kingdom of Judaea ended in a whirlwind of flame and slaughter.
in 66 A.D. the lower classes of the Jews, the ignorant and blinded “zealots,” as they were called, burst into frenzied revolt. The calmer and more learned Jews tried to restrain their brethren. They saw clearly the hopelessness of this blind warfare against the universal might of Rome. But the flame spread like wild-fire. Roman governors and garrisons were everywhere slain, and for one intoxicated moment Judea stood forth—free.
Then came the inevitable. The great Roman general Vespasian, after-ward emperor, led his legions into Judea. City after city fell amid horrible carnage. The pardon which Vespasian offered was rejected with defiance. The maddened Jews would accept no compromise. They fought to the death, and often when defeated slew themselves rather than surrender. The historian Josephus, who has left us an account of this fearful war, was one of its chief Jewish leaders.
Vespasian was called away to Rome, so that the completion of the destruction fell to his son Titus. He besieged Jerusalem, and, like his father, repeatedly urged the Jews to surrender, but without avail. Finally, when famine rather than Roman arms had conquered, Titus stormed the holy city. His soldiers, infuriated by the deadly resistance they had met, burned Jerusalem to the ground. Over a million Jews perished in the war; and probably as many more were, at its conclusion, driven into exile or sold as slaves. Jewish slaves became common through all the Roman empire.
Even this tragic extirpation did not, however, wholly destroy the nation of the Jews. The remnant left in the desolated land gathered themselves together. Once more they increased in number, and after a time rebuilt Jerusalem. Heavily oppressed, they revolted thrice in various portions of the Roman empire between 115 and 118 A.D. Then at last, in 130 A.D., they began their last rebellion, their last deed as a nation. They found an able leader in Simon, called Bar- cochba, which means “Son of the Star.” He claimed to be their Messiah and led them to victory after victory. The Jews in other parts of the empire joined the revolt, but were quickly suppressed. In Judea, however, Simon was triumphant. He drove the Romans from Jerusalem, and almost out of Palestine. He set himself up as king, the last of all the kings of Judea. Only after five years did the celebrated Roman general Severus suppress this tremendous uprising. His cruel and resolute annihilation left the land a desert. He meant to make sure there should be no more rebellions. A thousand towns and villages were destroyed. Every Jew who could be found was sold into slavery. As for Jerusalem itself, the very name was changed. A foreign colony, called AElia Capitolina, was planted on the spot. Every Jew from whatsoever land was forever debarred from residing in this new town, or even from entering it.
Since that day the scattered Hebrews have been only a race of people, never a nation united under a single government or in a single land. Only as fugitives or slaves did they survive the destruction by Severus, or in a few cases as distant colonists who, having taken no part in the war, escaped its punishment. The martyrdoms of the Christians under Roman rule were but the natural outcome of the earlier martyrdoms and rebellions of the Jews. The Christians were looked on by their persecutors merely as Jews of a particularly resolute and fanatical faith, and therefore particularly dangerous to tranquil government.
Jews and Christians soon became more clearly separated in the Roman world. The teachers of the later faith spread their doctrine until Christians were of every race, and Christianity could no longer be confounded with Judaism. Meanwhile the leaders of the older religion made no effort at proselyting strangers, but held to their proud isolation as the “chosen people.” Gradually Jewish energy and subtle ability raised many of their race to positions of wealth and prominence under Rome. But another darkness was approaching them. In 330 A.D. Christianity became the established religion of the Roman empire, and afterwards of the modern European world. Then at last did the Jews sink to their final and lowest period of tribulation. Official barbarism and vulgar ignorance united to visit upon the entire innocent race the tragedy of the death of Jesus at the hands of their ancestors centuries before. Christian persecutors singled out these unfortunates repeatedly and cruelly for attack.
This was not so much the case during the cultured Roman days as during the period of semi-barbarism which followed the downfall of Rome. Appalling were the tortures and massacres of Jews in the various kingdoms which the Teutonic tribes set up throughout the Roman world. During the “dark ages” of mediaeval Europe, any fanatic in almost any city could by a single outcry start a riot of plundering and outrage against the unhappy Jews. They fared best in Mahometan Spain and later in free-thinking Amsterdam or liberty-seeking America.
In Spain under the Moors, the Jews were trusted and honored. They rose to high office as the councillors of kings, or as their secretaries or physicians. This was indeed the brightest land for the Jews during all the middle ages. Spain saw the golden days of Jewish literature. The Spanish Jews were poets, orators, philosophers. So long as the country was divided between Moorish and Christian rulers, the Christians also tolerated and even admired the Jews. The moment, however, that the Christians won the entire land, the Jews were persecuted in Spain as they had been in other countries, and their sudden downfall plunged them into misery most awful.
Very, very slowly has Europe outgrown this particular form of fanaticism and barbarity. Only after the great French Revolution of 1789 did Jews begin to be accepted as human brothers in France and England, the leaders of the civilization of the day. In 1790, the new statesmen of France admitted the Jews to full citizenship, giving them the technical name of Israelites. Other European nations have since followed this example. But even the twentieth century has seen Jewish massacres in Russia as cruel as those of Western Europe in the earlier ages. The long and hideous night of Judaism is not yet wholly passed, but the downtrodden race begins to feel the mighty and beneficent generosity of modern religious toleration. It is again expanding and progressing with much of its ancient power—though with its savagery, perhaps, some-what softened by the experiences of two thousand years of suffering.
CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE OF JEWISH HISTORY
B.C. 2285 (?)—Abraham leaves his Babylonian home. 2265 (?)—Abraham and his followers enter Palestine. 1720 (?)—Joseph serves in Egypt. 1700 (?)—The Israelites settle in Egypt. 1325 (?)—Moses leads the Exodus. 1285 (?)—Joshua conquers part of Palestine, and the twelve tribes settle there. 1040—Samuel is chief prophet, and the Ark of the Covenant is restored by the Philistines. 1020-—Samuel anoints Saul as Israel's first king. 1010—Saul battles against the Philistines and is slain at Mount Gilboa; David becomes king of the tribe of Judah. 1002—Saul's last son is slain and David becomes king of the united nation; he captures Jerusalem and makes it the chief city of his race. By conquest he builds up a powerful kingdom. 970—Solomon becomes king. 966-959—He builds the Temple. 930—Rehoboam succeeds Solomonas, King of Judah; the ten northern tribes rebel and found the Kingdom of Israel. 925—Shashank of Egypt sacks Jerusalem. 890—Omri wins the throne of the Kingdom of Israel and builds Samaria as his capital. 875—Ahab is king of Israel, and weds Jezebel, a princess of Tyre, who introduces Baal worship. 854—The Assyrian raids and conquests begin. 725—Hoshea. King of Israel, revolts against Assyria; Samaria besieged. 722—The Kingdom of Israel destroyed; and its people carried captive to Assyria. 701—Hezekiah. King of Judah, revolts against Sennacherib of Assyria, whose army is destroyed by a plague. 621—Discovery of “The Book of the Law,” and religious revival under King Josiah. 608—Josiah defeated and slain by the Egyptians at Megiddo. Judah becomes an Egyptian province. 601—Judah surrenders to Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. 597—Jehoiakim heads a rebellion, and Jerusalem is stormed and its chief people carried away in “the first captivity.” 588—Zedekiah heads a rebellion. 586—Jerusalem destroyed and most of its remaining people carried away in “the second captivity.” 538—Cyrus the Persian permits the Jews to return to Jerusalem, a caravan does so under Zerubbabel. 520—The new Temple is finished and dedicated. 483—Ezra leads a second migration of Jews back to Jerusalem. 445—Nehemiah made governor of Jerusalem, aids Ezra to establish the theocratic rule. 415—An hereditary high priesthood established. 204—Judea becomes part of the Syrian empire of Antiochus the Great. 170—Antiochus IV begins the religious persecution of the Jews. 167— Mattathias starts the Maccabean wars. 161—The “day of Nicanor,” great Maccabean victory. 141—Simon, the last of the Maccabee brothers, everywhere accepted as high priest or king of Judea. 63—Judea seized as a Roman province. 40—Herod, a Maccabean, made “king of the Jews” under Rome; he rebuilds the Temple.
A.D. 38—The Jews refuse to worship Caligula. 67—Vespasian begins a great war against the Jews. 70—Titus storms Jerusalem. 130—Last great outbreak of the Jews under Bar-cochba. 135—Final destruction of Jerusalem and dispersal of the Jews as slaves. 418—The Jews excluded from military service under the Roman Empire; their degradation becomes severe. 1290—They are excluded from England. 1588—The Pope Sixtus V takes the first step in rehabilitating the Jews, allowing them freedom of religion and equality of taxation in the Papal States. 1790—The French republicans give the Jews full equality and citizenship in France; other countries follow. 1881—Violent persecutions renewed in Russia.
THE HEBREW KINGS
B.C. 1020—Saul. 10100—Ishbosbeth, his son.
THE KINGS OF JUDAH 1010—David. 970—Solomon, his son.
B.C.
930—Rehoboam, his son. 920—Abijam, his son. 917—Asa, his son. 874—Jehoshaphat, his son. 849—Jehoram, his son. 844—Ahaziah, his son.
B.C.
842—Queen Athaliah, his mother. 836—Joash, her grandson. 797—Amaziah, his son. 778—Uzziah, his son. 740—Jotham, his son. 736—Ahaz, his son. 727—Hezekiah, his son. 695—Manasseh, his son. 641—Amon, his son. 639—Josiah, his son. 608—Jehoahaz, his son. 607—Jehoiakim, his brother. 597—Jehoiachin, his son. 597—Zedekiah, his uncle. 586—The Captivity.
MACCABEAN CHIEFTAINS B.C.
166—Judas Maccabeus. 161—Jonathan, his brother. 142—Simon, his brother. 135—John Hyrcanus, his son.
MACCABEAN KINGS
105—Aristobulus, his son 104—Alexander, his brother. 79—Hyrcanus VI, his son. 69—Aristobulus II, his brother. 63—Rome seizes Judea. 40—Herod, a dependent king. 4—Herod Antipas, his son.
A.D. 6—Roman governors appointed.
[Authorities: Phylo Biblius, “Sanchoniathon”; Hanno, “Periplus” (ed. by Falconer); Rawlinson, “History of Phoenicia”; Kenrick, “History and Antiquities of Phoenicia”; Movers, “Die Phonizier”; Renan, “Mission de Phenicie”; Church, “Carthage”; Davis, “Carthage and her Remains”; Morris, “Hannibal”; Williams, “The History of the Art of Writing.”]
THE third people of the remarkable Semitic race to achieve world-renown were the Phoenicians. They were earth's first-known sailormen and explorers. With them awoke the Spirit of Adventure. The sea became home to them. As searchers, merchants, pirates, all in one, they ventured in their tiny barks from headland to headland along the Mediterranean shore, until they knew the whole of that vast inland sea as their own country. They had circumnavigated it ages before the Greeks, and then the Romans, followed in their path. They even ventured out beyond its limits through the Gibraltar strait and explored the tempestuous waters of the Atlantic, both north and south, for unknown distances.
The romance of the Phoenicians' earliest days, of their migrations and settlements through western Asia, are even dimmer to our vision than those of the early Babylonians and Hebrews. They have not, like the Hebrews, left us their own written record of their past; nor have we, as with the Babylonians, discovered long inscriptions and extensive libraries amid the remnants of their ancient cities. Hence we know of the Phoenicians chiefly from their enemies, from what was said of them in the writings of later Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. Even the name by which we call them is not their own. It was the Greeks who first spoke of the beautiful semi-tropical territory as “Phoenicia,” which means the land of palms.
This lovely “land of palms,” Phoenicia, lies along the middle of the Mediterranean's eastern shore. To the south of it is Palestine, and to the north, Syria, of which it is today a part. Phoenicia is only a long, narrow strip of coast, thirty miles at its greatest width, with the sea washing it upon the west, and the giant mountains of Lebanon shutting it off like a rampart to the east, towering so high above the palm-strewn plain that eternal snow glistens on their crests, a mighty beacon light to guide the home-bound mariner of old.
When it was that these so-called Phoenicians took possession of this fair coast, we are not sure. They were there at least as early as the year 2000 B.C., and may well have been another band of Semitic wanderers driven from the Babylonian valley at the same time as were Abraham and his followers by the great Elamite conquest of Kudur-nankhundi. They may have reached the Mediterranean at a still earlier date. The Egyptian monuments of as long ago as the year 3000 B.C. make mention of numerous seamen, mysterious “Kafiti,” who entered the mouths of the Nile from a foreign shore. But whether these were Phoenicians or a yet earlier, wholly forgotten sailor race we can not say. Tradition vaguely hints that the Phoenicians came originally from the eastern coast of Arabia and had there learned the rudiments of seamanship on the quieter waters of the Persian Gulf, ages before they saw the broader Mediterranean. At any rate, they proved the one Semitic tribe who welcomed the sea with open arms, who looked upon its waters not as an abrupt and absolute barrier to their wanderings, but only as an easier pathway luring them on into immeasurable, unknown space.
The earliest city built by these Phoenicians in their palm-land paradise was probably Gublu, the Biblical “Gebal,” or as the Greeks called it, Byblos. Atleast Phoenician tradition represented Byblos as the oldest city of the world, and it held the most ancient shrine of their chief “baal” or god, El. This god, two-faced, six-winged, was sometimes described as having been the first king of Byblos, a mighty conqueror who held all the known world in his bondage. Once in a time of danger in war, El was said to have turned fate against his foes by burning his own little son as a sacrifice. This was the origin, or at least the mythical origin, of the terrible Phoenician custom of slaughtering children as an offering to their gods in time of danger.
THE FIRST EXPLORERS (The Phoenicians Venture Forth Upon the Oceans, and Control the Commerce of Earth) From a painting by J. James Tissot
ANOTHER great race of people descended from the Babylonian or Semitic stock were the Phoenicians. They inherited the intellectual and adventurous side of Babylonian life, and through them the use of the alphabet, or written language, was spread abroad over all the world.
The Phoenicians were earth's first-known sailors and explorers. In tiny barks, such as we of today would think scarcely safe for navigating a river, they coasted the entire Mediterranean Sea and even ventured far along the shores of the tempestuous Atlantic. They went not as traders in the ordinary sense, but as bold adventurers, eager to see new things, resolute to confront and conquer whatever sudden, unknown danger leaped upon them.
Their home lay along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, adjoining Palestine, the home of the Hebrews. There they built mighty cities—Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, celebrated in song and story, the richest, most strongly guarded towns of their day. From these, the daring little ships sped forth ready to traffic or to plunder—for the Phoenicians were ever pirates where piracy seemed most profitable—ready to turn miners and dig in the tin mines of England, or become herders and raise flocks in the fertile valleys of Spain. They were, as the Greeks called them, a “red people,” ruddy of face and probably of hair. The whole world knew and liked and feared these red Phoenicians, these first ready- witted searchers of the globe.
Byblos was also the seat of the ancient Adonis legend, which the Greeks borrowed and attributed to their own love goddess. Ishtar, or Astarte, known in Byblos simply as “Baalim-Gublu,” the goddess of Byblos, loved the beautiful youth Adonis, who typified the freshness of the springtime. He was slain by a savage boar, which represented the blighting tropic heat of summer. Then the tears of Ishtar brought him back to life in autumn. Close by Byblos the shrine of this legend may still be seen, a tiny cavern, rudely smoothed by the hand of man in immeasurable ages past. It lies in the heart of one of the most beautiful vales of the world. From the cavern flows a stream, the River Adonis, which falls swiftly to the sea a few miles away. In spring and autumn the muddy stream runs red, and the waves of the Mediterranean beat back this turbid water on the nearby coast in a red foam, which the Phoenicians called “the blood of Adonis.” Its appearance was greeted each year by the wailing of women who ran hysterically about shrieking that Adonis was dead. Then the priests performed a solemn incantation and promised that Adonis should be restored to the world again, that is, that the youthful green of trees and grasses would return with the returning year.
The Phoenician leadership held by Byblos passed before historical times to Sidon, which had at first been a mere fishing village, since that is the meaning of its name. Sidon, “the fish town,” became “Sidon the Great,” known as the “mother” city, the first sender out of colonies, the builder and protector of lesser towns. Sidon's territory bordered upon Palestine, and hence the city was well known to the early Israelites, who called all these northern neighbors in a general way Sidonians.
The men of Sidon were especially noted as metal-workers. They had also a way of making particularly pure glass, which was famed throughout the ancient world. For trade with the ruder races, they stained this glass with colors and made it into bead necklaces. All around the shores of the Mediterranean, and even in more distant lands, when ancient tombs are opened, we often find among the most treasured ornaments of the dead these bright-hued necklaces of Sidonian glass.
Before the year 1000 B.C. the leadership among the Phoenician cities had once more shifted, passing from Sidon to Tyre, that mighty city whose name became the old world's symbol of opulence and wide-spread commerce. Tradition tells us that Sidon's fall was due to a war, about 1252 B.C., with the Philistine cities. In this war the Sidonians were defeated and their city captured, its citizens escaping by taking to their ships and transferring bodily all their wealth and families to Tyre. It seems hardly likely that such a migration took place. More probably the wealth of Sidon brought with it arrogance and idleness and slow decay, which enabled the more energetic Tyrians to come gradually to the front. We have no evidence of an ancient siege or destruction of Sidon; she merely sank to the second rank among the Phoenician cities.
The foremost place thus gained by Tyre was retained until the final downfall of the Phoenician cities. Tyre became to the other towns almost what Rome was to Italy. At least, she was their acknowledged leader, and her name was extended by the Greeks to all the region around. Our modern name Syria is probably only a softened form of Tyria, or the lands of Tyre. The worship of Tyre's special deity, Melkarth, and Phoenician Hercules, became the most wide-spread religion in the ancient world. His shrines dotted the Mediterranean and were planted by colonists even beyond the Straits of Gibraltar. The mountains on either side of Gibraltar were named the Pillars of Melkarth, or, as the Greeks called them, the Pillars of Hercules; for the legends of Melkarth, his labors, and his wanderings, were ascribed by the Greeks to Hercules, their own similar deity.
Tyre had originally been, like Sidon and Byblos, a city of the mainland. It was built on the shore behind a row of little islands which made a natural harbor or roadstead for the tiny ships. But before 1200 B.C. some Tyrian leader had seen the advantage of shifting the city to the islands themselves. Thus Tyre became a double city. On the shore was “Old Tyre,” girded round with massive walls over a hundred feet in height. On the island, half a mile from land. was “New Tyre,” protected by the waves. Another Phoenician city, Arvad, sheltered itself in similar fashion by building out in the sea; and thus these two were enabled to defy invaders. They retained their independence and power when Sidon and Byblos could no longer do so.
In the absence of any complete Phoenician history, the first ruler of Tyre of whom we have definite knowledge is that Hiram, or Huram, of whom the Bible tells as a contemporary of David and Solomon. From other sources we learn that Hiram came to the throne about 980 B.C. as a youth of nineteen, and ruled for nearly forty years. We should not think of him merely as the ally of the Hebrew kings, sending them cedars from Lebanon for the construction of their temple and palaces. It seems clear that the Hebrews looked up to Hiram and his Phoenicians with admiration as a more cultured race. Hiram despatched to Jerusalem a numerous body of Phoenician artists and overseers, who directed almost every step of Solomon's buildings. Hence, both the art and architecture of the Hebrews were chiefly Tyrian.
Moreover, King Hiram was himself a builder. He enlarged the island portion of Tyre by filling in the shallower regions of the sea around, and this new land he laid out in squares of palaces and temples. He constructed also an open plaza like those of Italian cities, whereon his people might stroll in the sun or gather for important occasions.
KING HIRAM AIDS THE HEBREWS (The Men of Tyre and of Israel Work Together to Get the Giant Trees for Solomon's Temple) By the great French artist, Gustave Dore
THE Phoenicians cared nothing for fame; they have left behind them no histories to tell of their great men and their greater deeds. We only learn of them by the records of the other races whom they encountered in their roving. Hence we know nothing definite of any man among them until the Bible tells us of that Hiram, King of Tyre, who was the ally of King Solomon.
At that time—about 950 B.C.—Tyre seems to have held a sort of rulership over the other Phoenicians, being the chief city of a confederated league. Hiram thus exercised a power equal to that of Solomon, and over a people far wealtheir than the Hebrews and more advanced in material culture. Solomon sought the aid of Phoenician artists and artisans to direct all his building work. He also arranged to have Hiram supply him with the celebrated cedar wood which the Phoenicians gathered from the forests of their huge mountain, Lebanon. Thousands of Tyrian slaves toiled in company with thousands of Hebrews in felling these giant trees and transporting them to the seashore to be carried thence to Palestine. Solomon repaid Hiram for all his aid with provisions, the products of the fields and flocks of the agricultural Hebrews. He paid also by giving twenty “cities” to Hiram, who so little admired the ceded land that he contemptuously gave it the name of “Cabul,” which means rubbish.
Indeed Tyre, and to some extent its sister towns, must have been more like modern cities than were any other places of antiquity. Not only did Tyre have its open plaza and its squares of public buildings, it had also some approach to “sky-scrapers.” The limited ground space of all the Phoenician cities had caused the inhabitants to build their houses high. In Tyre especially these reached to “many stories.” Then there were the wharves, the ships, the clerks counting and making written tally of cargoes, the constant coming and going of hustling merchants, the air of enterprise, of eagerness for adventure. Truly an inhabitant of any one of our American seaport cities would have found himself much at home in ancient Tyre.
King Hiram was, like all his people, a trader. His alliance with Solomon included an agreement by which Hiram was permitted to build ships and make voyages from Solomon's port upon the Red Sea. This opened to Tyre the new regions of the Indian Ocean; and the profits of one single expedition sent out jointly by the two kings netted them an amount equal to four million dollars each. Even our merchant princes of today can scarcely match these princely traders of the past.
While the splendor of Solomon's kingdom faded with tragic swiftness, that of Tyre lasted through many centuries. The Biblical book of Ezekiel has a long and eloquently poetic passage in which the prophet paints this wealth and gorgeousness of the celebrated seaport, “that dwellest at the entry of the sea, which art the merchant of the peoples into many isles..... Thou, O Tyre, hast said, I am perfect in beauty.” The prophet sketches in detail the marvellous multitude of commodities which Tyre gathers in trade from each of all the lands, summing up with the cry, “When thy wares went forth out of the seas, thou filledst many peoples; Thou didst enrich the kings of the earth with thy merchandise and thy riches.”
Yet Tyre was not without internal troubles of her own. King Hiram seems to have ruled with a strong and steady hand. But his grandson, who became king soon after him, was murdered by turbulent conspirators, apparently from the lower classes of the citizens. The rebels seized the reins of government and blindly misdirected affairs amid wild turbulence and riot. The patricians fought their way again to power. One ruler succeeded another in rapid succession. At length there was a priestly revolution. Eth-baal, a high-priest of Astarte, slew the reigning king and seized in his turn upon the throne.
In the days of Eth-baal, the story of Tyre touches again upon that of the Hebrews. Eth-baal's daughter was that Jezebel who wedded Ahab, the powerful King of Israel. Jezebel, like her father, was devoted to the Phoenician religion. She introduced the worship of Baal into Israel; and her daughter Athaliah, wedding the king of Judah, carried their faith into that second Hebrew kingdom. The tragedy of these two queens of an alien faith, Jezebel and Athaliah, is fully told in the Bible.
A few decades later Tyre found herself involved, like Israel and Judah, in the fierce Assyrian wars. The early conquests of Babylon and Assyria seem to have passed the Phoenician cities by. These were so sheltered from the east by the mighty cliffs of Mount Lebanon as to be almost inaccessible. Thus none of the earlier ravaging expeditions attacked or plundered them. We find them paying tribute to the Egyptians about 1300 B.C. But this seems not to have been compulsory; it was rather a friendly commercial arrangement, a tax which was one chief source of the Phoenicians' wealth, since in exchange for this payment they were given a freedom, perhaps a monopoly, of foreign trade throughout Egypt.
Similarly they paid tribute to Pul, or Tiglath-pileser III., of Assyria when he conquered Syria. There was no warfare involved; Phoenician traders were given freedom of traffic in the Euphrates valley, as they had been in Egypt, and doubtless they were very glad to pay for this form of security and police protection. For nearly a century and a half, from 870 to 727 B.C., the Assyrian monarchs make regular record of their tribute from the kings of “Tyre, Sidon, Byblus, and Arvad.” The four names mark evidently the four chief cities, or rather the four little principalities, into which Phoenicia was at the time divided, though Tyre held already a sort of lordship over them all.
The year 727 B.C. brought a tragic change. These were the days of the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians. Shalma-eser IV. ascended the Assyrian throne and determined to reduce Palestine completely and to bring the hitherto unconquered Phoenicia to a real, rather than a nominal, submission. King Luliya, the reigning prince of Tyre, evidently regarded himself as a wholly independent monarch, for he refused to obey the Assyrian's commands. Then Shalmaneser's ever ready armies forced the passes of the mountains and ravaged the mainland of Phoenicia from end to end (725 B.C.). Only the island cities of Tyre and Arvad escaped the desolation. These two from their security on the breast of ocean defied all the Assyrian's power. Shalmaneser then prepared a second campaign. This time the mainland cities, Sidon and the others, were compelled to act as his allies and furnish him with ships.
This brought about the first great naval battle of history. Sixty of these Phoenician vessels, bearing Assyrian soldiers, crossed the narrow strait to attack the island Tyre. The Tyrians met them with only a dozen craft. Perhaps the main fleet of the Tyrians was away, and they were desperate; or possibly their ships were so powerful that they despised the lighter boats of the foe. On the other hand, it may well be that a secret arrangement existed between them and the other Phoenicians. At any rate, the battle ended strikingly in the com-
ETH-BAAL'S SACRIFICE (The King of Tyre Offers Up Children to Stop the Terrible Drought) By Andre Castaigne, reproduced by permission from the Century Magazine
THE other most well-known ruler of Tyre was Ithobal or Eth-Baal, the priest king. After King Hiram's death his descendants fell into trouble; for these hardy, reckless Phoenicians were not easy people to rule. Each city was, like the Italian cities of the middle ages, a community wherein every man thought for himself. Each merchant adventurer had learned self-reliance of body and of mind, and valued his independence as his dearest possession. Hence there were constant tumults. Kings were recognized as very necessary leaders and defenders of the city, but many a king was slain in civic quarrels. Eth-Baal, gained the throne by slaying his predecessor, who had in his turn slain an earlier king only eight months before. Eth-Baal, who had been high-priest of the city, stopped the tumults by adding his religious influence to his kingly power. His reign was long and important. He built cities, and checked the advance of the Assyrians. He entered into alliance with the Kingdom of Israel, and his daughter Jezebel married the Israelite king and brought her father's Phoenician religion, “Baal worship,” into Palestine.
The prolonged drought, which the Bible tells us afflicted Israel in Jezebel's day, was felt in Phoenicia also. King Eth-Baal performed a great religious ceremonial to escape the drought, leading his people in procession about Tyre and offering up the terrible Phoenician sacrifice of living children, to avert the wrath of the gods.
plete defeat of the sixty ships by the twelve, and in the capture or many of the Assyrians. “Because of this, great fame was won by all the dwellers in Tyre.”
Shalmaneser returned home in anger, leaving an army to besiege Tyre from the land, shut off her intercourse with the country so far as possible, and bar her from her water supply, which lay upon the mainland. Though inconvenienced, the Tyrians were not seriously distressed. The sea was open to them; water, though brackish, could be had from afar. They withstood the feeble siege for five years; then it was abandoned. Assyrian attention was directed elsewhere, and for twenty years King Luliya was left to reign in peace. He easily renewed his suzerainty over Sidon and the other Phoenician cities.
Then came another Assyrian conqueror, Sennacherib, who overran Phoenicia with so great an army that Luliya despaired of resistance. He adopted the other course, always open to his people, of sailing away and leaving his cities to the enemy. The submission of the land to Sennacherib seems to have been complete. He appointed as its ruler a king of his own choice, though a Tyrian, and the country remained in submissive vassalage for a generation.
After this, as Assyrian power decreased, or as its exactions grew unbearable, there were repeated revolts, sieges, ravages, moments of triumph and of failure. The power of Babylon succeeded to that of Assyria; and Tyre withstood a thirteen-year siege from the great Nebuchadnezzar, who was forced to compromise for her submission at last.
With the dominion of Persia over western Asia, the Phoenician cities entered upon days of renewed prosperity. The yoke of Persia was a light one, and Tyre and Sidon submitted voluntarily, as they had to other monarchs in earlier days, securing freedom of trade in return for a small tribute and some naval service. Indeed, such was their freedom of action that when the Persian Cambyses planned to attack the Phoenician colony of Carthage, his Phoenician fleet refused to obey him, explaining that it would be impious of them to assail their kinsmen. And this Persian despot, who at other times raged like a madman when opposed, accepted without protest this defiant ultimatum of his sailors. Carthage was not attacked.
The Greek conquest of Asia by Alexander the Great brings us to the last of the many memorable and tremendous sieges which the island Tyre withstood. “Old Tyre,” on the mainland, had been completely destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, and remained in ruins. But “New Tyre” was still the most prosperous of the Phoenician cities. The others submitted to Alexander without protest; and Tyre would have done the same but that Alexander announced to her ambassadors his intention of honoring the city by doing homage at the shrine of its god Melkarth. This was apparently an effort on Alexander's part to be particularly gracious, for Melkarth, as the Greek Hercules, was Alexander's reputed ancestor. The Tyrians, however, feared this devotion was only a ruse to secure entrance within their walls; and while quite ready to pay tribute, they had no intent of surrendering their actual freedom, any more than they had done with the Persians. They therefore declined, as politely as possible, the honor Alexander offered them. He, roused as always by opposition, promptly besieged the city (332 B.C.).
This final and most tremendous siege of Tyre, the unconquered citadel of over a thousand years, lasted seven months. Alexander had no idea of sitting down like other besiegers and waiting to starve the unapproachable city. He built a huge mole out from shore across the half-mile channel. Stupendous were the deeds of valor done by the Tyrians in attacking, by the Greeks in defending, this prodigious engineering work. Again and again the Tyrians, aided by the sea, swept away the advancing continent. Once they set fire to the mole, annihilated the force defending it, tore out the piles that upheld it, and destroyed it utterly. Alexander began all over again from the beginning. The ships of the other Phoenician cities aided him; the mole was completed at last; the Greek army encamped beneath the city's walls; and these were battered down. Tyre had at length to undergo that which she had never known before, the final desolation of storm and sack. There is no island to-day where Tyre stood; there is only a peninsula, Alexander's peninsula, reaching out boldly into the sea and terminating in the ancient rock.
From this time the Phoenician cities were no more than minor towns, subject like other vassals to the capricious kindness of their tyrannous overlords of Greece or Rome. Tyre was still their leader; for she rose phoenix-like from the destruction caused by Alexander. Only eighteen years after his successful assault we read of the stubborn Tyrians enduring another siege from one of the Greek generals who succeeded to his empire. This time Tyre made profitable terms of peace after holding back the besiegers for fourteen months.
Danger came to her from a more subtle source. Her arch-enemy Alexander had founded in Egypt the city of Alexandria, and this wisely located metropolis became Phoenicia's successful rival for the trade of the East. Whenever in Greek and Roman days we find Alexandria espousing one side of a quarrel, Tyre and Sidon are sure to be upon the other. The days of the “Roman peace” brought prosperity enough for all the merchants. In the fourth century A.D. St. Jerome speaks of Tyre as having become once more the richest and most splendid trading city of the East.
Then came the days of Mahometan conquest and of the European crusade against these “infidel” possessors of the Holy Land. Tyre, the port of all this region, was besieged by Saracens and Crusaders in turn. More than once it was captured; for it was no longer an island inaccessible to foes. The Turks finally became masters of all this land of “Asiatic Turkey” in the sixteenth century. To their barbaric robbery and neglect has been due the final downfall of the Phoenician cities. Says the historian Kendrick, “Neither sieges nor earthquakes have done so much as Turkish oppression and misrule to make Tyre what the traveller now sees,” in the words of the Bible, “a rock for fishermen to spread their nets on.”
WHILE the culture and commercial genius of the cities of Phoenicia enabled them to preserve their independence through many centuries, in a sort of scornful supremacy over earth's military conquerors, they never themselves attained, nor did they seem to aspire to, the physical dominion over the world. A far nearer approach to this was made by their celebrated colony, Carthage.
Phoenicia, foremost in so many things, was also the world's first planter of colonies. Her mission, in the mighty scheme of Providence, was the spreading of civilization broadcast over the earth. Later ages have recognized this by ascribing to the Phoenicians the beginning of letters, of literature, the invention of the alphabet. Recent research disproves this tradition in its broader form; for both Egyptians and Babylonians had a written language long before we hear of the Phoenicians. And while these earlier forms of writing used many word-signs-that is, symbols representing not letters, but entire words-they had also some genuine letters, that is, signs for a single sound of the lips, ready for combination into many words. The only credit attaching to the Phoenicians is that they recognized the immensely superior convenience of the sound-signs over the word-signs. They saw that word-signs require
THE FOUNDING OF CARTHAGE (The Wealthiest Citizens of Tyre Migrate and Build the Splendid City of Carthage) From the painting by the celebrated English artist, Joseph Turner, 1775-1851
IN political power, though not in daring or in intellect, the Tyrians were finally outranked by their own colonists, the people of Carthage, the great city state which fought against Rome for the sovereignty of the world. The Phoenicians were the first nation to start on that career of colonization which our modern European powers have carried to such length. Phoenician cities were planted all around the Mediterranean, though many of them were abandoned when the current of commerce shifted, and towns proved more profitable elsewhere.
Most notable of all these colonies was Carthage. It was founded about eight hundred years before Christ by a large number of Tyrians who left their native city in a body under the leadership of a Tyrian princess. Many legends have been told of that first Queen of Carthage. The Romans called her Dido, and said that she outwitted the natives whose ground she needed for her city, trading with them in true Phoenician spirit for as much land as a bullock's hide would enclose. Then she cut the hide into strips as thin as hairs, and encircled an entire hill and seaport. The Romans said she had brought vast treasures with her from Tyre, and so built her city as a place of splendor from the start, and that she was wooed there by the Roman hero AEneas. When he left her, she was in such despair that she built a funeral pyre of all her possessions, set it aflame, and thus committed suicide.
writer and reader to learn separately and remember as many thousand signs as there are words, whereas sound-signs can, by twenty or thirty letters, express every word. Accordingly the Phoenicians, for purposes of trade, simplified the many signs they gathered from Babylon or Egypt, and reduced the elaborate system to our modern alphabet. This alphabet they carried with them to every coast, and the entire civilized world uses it, almost unchanged, today.
The earliest Phoenician colonies seem to have been sent out by Sidon, the “mother city.” They were trading-stations, intended to gather for Sidonian ships the merchandise of their neighborhood. They served also as a shelter for those same ships in time of need; for we must not think of the Phoenicians as modern traders. They were not averse to plunder of the frankest and most savage kind. Many legends have come down to us of these ruddy-faced marauders coaxing simple folk down to trade upon the shore, and then seizing the unfortunates suddenly and carrying them off to slavery. Slavers, tricksters, pirates, murderers, or peaceful colonists, it was all one to these world-defying Phoenicians in the way of business. Hence a wrecked Phoenician crew could hope for little kindness in a foreign land. They had grave need of sheltering “daughter” cities of their own.
With the rise of Tyre, about 1200 B.C., Phoenician colonization took a new and bolder impetus. As early as 1100 B.C. the Tyrians had not only one colony, but many, out beyond the Strait of Gibraltar, along the Atlantic coasts of Spain and Africa. Southern Spain, the whole fertile valley of the river Guadalquivir, with Cadiz as its capital, was the “Tarshish” of the Phoenicians, the source of their chief cargoes of precious metals and of grain. The settlers of Cadiz became in their turn explorers, and knew the whole Atlantic coast as far as England, where they worked in mines of their own. Probably they even penetrated the cold and distant waters of the Baltic.
Starting similarly from Utica or Carthage on the African shore, these earliest explorers searched the entire coast of western Africa. Tradition tells us of their strange “silent trade” with the negroes there. A Phoenician ship-captain would land and spread his goods upon the shore. Then he would light a big fire to notify the savages of his presence and would withdraw to his ship so that they might not fear to approach. The negroes would then, without touching the goods, place beside them on the beach as much gold as they were willing to offer in exchange, and would retire so that the ship-captain might in his turn approach without danger. If he thought the gold sufficient, he took it and went his way, leaving the merchandise to the negroes. If he did not, he returned again to his ship, leaving both gold and goods untouched, whereupon the savages would increase their offering for what they wanted, until the “silent trade” was completed.
Most impressive of all the Phoenician explorations was the complete circumnavigation of Africa by King Hanno of Carthage. The account of this has come down to us, and though long doubted and derided by a world that knew little of Africa, the voyage of Hanno is now generally accepted as an actual fact. He met gorillas whom his men mistook for human savages and tried to carry into slavery; but found them wholly untamable. He planted colonies. He sailed past rivers and mountains of fire, and lands of almost insupportable heat. In the end he reached Arabia, or so at least the Roman writer Pliny tells us, and came thence to Egypt, having accomplished, about the year 500 B.C., the remarkable voyage which was not duplicated for two thousand years, not until the days of Vasco da Gama, in 1498 A.D.
Carthage, the chief of all the Phoenician colonies, was founded by the Tyrians in 813 B.C. It was no ordinary little town planted for purposes of trade. A queen of Tyre herself went thither, accompanied by most of the chief people of her city, an aristocracy leaving their ancient homes to the lesser folks of Tyre and seeking a haughty isolation among newer and more congenial surroundings. They called their new home Kirjath-Hadeshath, “the new town,” which later ages have corrupted into Carthage.
This remarkable migration from Tyre took place in the days when Pygmalion was its king. He was a grandson of that Eth-baal who had seized the throne as high priest and had spread the worship of Baal to Israel by his daughter's marriage. Pygmalion ascended the throne as a child, and the real power remained in the hands of his elder sister Elissa and her husband, who was the high priest. Pygmalion, supported apparently by the ruder classes of the populace, asserted his power, and the high priest was slain. Thereupon the widowed Elissa and her adherents, including many of the wealthier citizens, both priests and merchants, abandoned the city.
This fairly trustworthy story has been woven about with legends, often self- contradictory. Pygmalion slew his brother-in-law, the priest, upon the high altar before all the people; or, again, he murdered him secretly while hunting, and the ghost of the slain man appeared to Elissa to accuse the king. Pygmalion plotted to get the vast wealth of his widowed sister; and she, pretending to believe his assurances of affection, asked him for ships to transport her treasure to his palace. He sent the ships in charge of men ordered to make sure of the treasure; but Elissa deceived them by suddenly throwing from the ships various bags of sand. These she told them were her treasures, which in her grief she had determined to sacrifice to the gods. Convinced that the treasure had escaped them, and not daring to return to the king without it, the shipmasters agreed to sail with Elissa and her attendants to seek new homes.
Amid all these fanciful details the central fact stands clear. A princess of
GREECE AND CARTHAGE MEET (The Carthaginians Surprised and Defeated at Himera) From the painting by Giuseppe Scinti, a recent Roman artist
AGAIN we gather from Phoenicia's enemies a fragment of her history. The Carthaginians planted colonies of their own in the island of Sicily. The rising nation of the Greeks did the same, and so about 500 B.C. the two peoples clashed. A Greek historian tells us that his countrymen in Sicily attacked a huge invading force of three hundred thousand Carthaginians. The first contest was indecisive. Then the Greeks prepared a stratagem. A band of them pretended to be traitors and so secured admission among the enemy. The Carthaginians held a religious ceremonial to pledge faith with these supposed allies, and in the midst of it the little Greek band turned with sudden slaughter on their entertainers. The outside army of the Greeks attacked at the same moment, and the whole host of Carthage was put to flight.
The story of what followed is as tragic as that of the battle. The Carthaginian ships were destroyed, so that the masses of fugitives could not escape from Sicily, and were driven to flee from mountain to mountain in the barren interior of the island. They perished by thousands from the sword and from starvation. They entreated the Greeks to take them as slaves, and so numerous were these slaves that they could scarcely be fed and were treated like cattle. This Grecian story of triumph is doubtless exaggerated; for Carthage continued to divide with Greece the control of Sicily, and in the course of a couple of centuries conquered the entire island and expelled the Greeks.
Tyre, head of the aristocratic party, led her adherents from the city because of the ascendency of those same wilder forces which had once before seized the rule in the days preceding her grandfather, Eth-baal. This aristocratic band of colonists founded Carthage, the most aristocratic of republics or oligarchies, a city of mighty merchants, wherein severest laws held the “many” of the lower classes in helpless subjection to the wealthy few.
Roman legend changed the name of Carthage's first queen to Dido, and linked her fate with that of Rome's own ancestor AEneas. He said the Romans visited Carthage and there wooed and deserted Dido, who killed herself for sorrow; and hence arose the eternal enmity between the two cities. The enmity was a tragic fact of Roman history, but its causes were, as we shall see, far more practical than a vengeance many centuries old.
Carthage, situated in Africa on the southern shore of the Mediterranean about midway between its two extremes, grew rapidly in wealth and fame. As the cities of native Phoenicia crumbled beneath the repeated assaults of Assyrians, Babylonians, and Greeks, Carthage, secure in her distance and solitude, rose to be the chief trading-city of the world. By deg, though the details are lost to us, she became mistress of all north Africa west of Egypt. The other Phoenician colonies became her subjects; their walls were torn down and they were made incapable of resistance. The merchant princes of Carthage were as cruel, as merciless, as they were powerful. Their fields were tilled by slaves in chains, sometimes one merchant held twenty thousand of the joyless wretches in this miserable bondage.
We first gain a clear view of Carthage when, in the fifth century before Christ, she came in conflict with the Greeks in Sicily. The Greeks, successors to the Phoenicians as the chief maritime nation of antiquity, had quite won the upper hand of exhausted Sidon and Tyre in the eastern Mediterranean. Now their colonies were spreading toward the west. Carthage stopped them. The island of Sicily was the dividing line, the chief battle-ground of the contending nations. The Greeks tell us in triumph that on the same day on which they defeated the Persians at Salamis they also defeated the Carthaginians in an equally decisive battle at Himera, in Sicily (480 B.C.). We do not find, however, that the Greeks succeeded in extending their colonies beyond Sicily, or even in driving their rivals from that island. If the Carthaginians made little effort at conquest in their turn, we must remember that they remained to the last a merchant community, seeking dominion only where it could be exercised with profit, never where it meant continued and expensive war. Let us be thankful that at least one human race, the Phoenicians, were never seized with the mad earth-hunger for universal empire.
For two centuries Sicily continued the centre of conflict between Greece and Carthage. Finally, in the year 310 B.C., Agathocles, king of Syracuse, the chief Greek city of the island, finding himself close pressed by the Carthaginian forces, boldly crossed from Sicily and besieged Carthage itself. Great was the terror of the merchant city, and we are told that a holocaust of a hundred children of the richest families was sacrificed to their grim god Moloch to avert the peril. Rebellion in Syracuse forced Agathocles to abandon his siege; but the Carthaginians now felt the full danger of their laxity, and set themselves determinedly to clearing Sicily of their enemies. This work was almost, but not quite, completed when Rome entered the field of strife.
In speaking of Carthage we are constantly confronted by the difficulty that we know of her only through her enemies. Like all the Phoenicians, her people seem to have cared as little for renown as for dominion. They have left neither history nor justification, either of themselves or of their deeds. The Romans have given us as an expression of contempt the words “Punic faith,” which means false Phoenician faith. But it is open to question whether the Romans were in any way more trustworthy than their “Punic” rivals in Carthage. These, as they had opposed the spread of Greek dominion, now endeavored also to check that of Rome, but with less success.
Carthage and Rome, the two most powerful fighting forces of their age, the one mistress of the seas, the other monarch of the land, met for the first time in clash of battle in 264 B.C. Rome had taken possession of a Greek city in Sicily. The city did not belong to Carthage, but she would not brook this intrusion into her field of power. She demanded that the Romans return to Italy; they refused, and war followed. For a time the Carthaginians were successful; Rome could not make her strength felt beyond Italy, while the Phoenician ships ravaged her shores in triumph. But the Romans built fleets of their own; they devised new tactics of naval warfare; and by defeating their enemy in three great sea fights, at Mylae, Ecnomus, and AEgates, they overthrew forever the boasted naval supremacy of the Phoenicians.
Oddly enough, as the Romans had been successful on Carthage's own element, the sea, so were the Carthaginians successful on land. The earlier of Carthage's two great military heroes, Hamilcar Barca, with a mere handful of troops, resisted all the efforts of the Roman armies to drive him out of Sicily. The last crushing defeat of his country's fleet at AEgates found him still unconquered and defiant. But Carthage hastened to make peace; the war had become too unprofitable. She surrendered Sicily to Rome and paid a war indemnity, which she could easily afford.
A more serious difficulty followed. Carthage had carried on the war by means of mercenaries, or hired soldiers. This was her usual practice, her own citizens serving only as officers. These mercenaries, left without employment
HAMILCAR CRUSHES THE BARBARIANS (The Barbarians Awed by the Elephants of Carthage) From the painting by the recent artist, G. Surand
HAVING conquered Sicily, Carthage became mistress of all the western Mediterranean, the chief maritime nation of her day, “the ruler of the waves.” She then came into conflict with Rome for the mastery of the world. But here ambition overreached itself; the effort was beyond her strength. In the first war between the two powers, the naval supremacy of Carthage was destroyed. On land, however, arose the remarkable Carthaginian general Hamilcar, first of a famous family of generals. Hamilcar proved himself more than a match for any of the Roman leaders who fought against him; and when his country made peace with Rome it was against his wishes and advice. Later he became almost dictator of his country and devoted his life to a plan of vengeance against Rome. He set to work to build up a Carthaginian empire and army in Spain, so that he might turn the power of these against the hated foe.
There had for centuries been wealthy Phoenician cities in Southern Spain; but these had made little effort to extend their dominion over the wild Keltic tribes around them. When Hamilcar came with all the power of the Carthaginian army and its mighty elephants, the barbarian tribes were stunned. They knew not how to fight against these huge beasts, and knelt before them in despair. Later, however, they regained their courage, and only after a long struggle was Hamilcar able to subjugate them. He ultimately won their devoted allegiance to his rule.
by the establishment of peace, and little in love at best with the harsh methods of the merchants who hired and despised them, burst into revolt. The first general sent against them was decisively defeated; and it took the great Hamilcar himself three years to overthrow them and destroy their power.
With his long list of triumphs to enforce his words, Hamilcar persuaded the Carthaginian senate to approve the stupendous plan which he had formed for ultimately defeating Rome. He went as governor to Cadiz and the other Phoenician colonies in Spain, and here for seven years he devoted himself to consolidating the Carthaginian strength and building up an army which he meant to hurl against Rome. He died before his work was completed, but he left it to his son-in-law Hasdrubal, perhaps an even abler statesman than himself. He left behind also a son, as yet only a child, from whom he had exacted a vow of eternal enmity to Rome. This boy was the mighty Hannibal.
Hasdrubal extended and perfected his power over almost all the Spanish peninsula. It was his personal power, not that of Carthage—so much so, indeed, that a treaty marking out the territorial limits there was signed not between Rome and Carthage, but between Rome and “Hasdrubal.” Finally, Hasdrubal also died, assassinated by a vengeful native, and his army, without waiting for assent from Carthage, promptly named as his successor Hamilcar's young son, Hannibal.
At last the weapon which had been so long in forging seemed to Hannibal fully ready. He deliberately defied Rome to combat. The remarkable war that followed will be described in the Story of Rome. The naval supremacy of Carthage being gone, Hannibal marched his devoted troops from Spain to Italy, achieving his celebrated passage of the Alps. For fifteen years he maintained himself in Italy, defeating army after army of the Romans. The senate of Carthage, already suspicious of the independent action of this great family of its generals, gave Hannibal no help. Spain, the last independent seat of Phoenician cities, was crushed by a Roman force. A Roman army invaded Africa. Then at last the Carthaginians awoke, but only to summon Hannibal home to protect them. Heading their raw mercenary levies, he was defeated by Scipio at Zama (202 B.C.). Carthage promptly sued for peace, and the war closed under conditions that made her a helpless dependent upon Rome.
The third and final war with Rome, if this last one-sided struggle can be called a war, took place more than fifty years later. As the great commercial metropolis renewed her fortunes the Romans became increasingly fearful and suspicious of her. At length she was deliberately goaded into desperation. Her people were commanded to leave their city forever in a body, and to settle inland. This would have left them a helpless farming people, surrounded by savage tribes who hated them. Rather then obey this mandate, which meant death, they defied the Romans and withstood one last terrible siege. The struggle was hopeless from the start. Only the frenzy of despair had driven the Carthaginians to attempt it. Their weapons had been taken from them, so they forged new ones. The women gave their hair for cords and bow-strings, and their jewels to buy supplies. For two years the city withstood the siege. Then it was taken by storm, and the few surviving inhabitants perished or were sold into slavery (146 B.C.). Carthage was levelled to the ground by the vengeful Romans, and the spot where it had stood was sown with salt, that it might remain a desert forever.
Many years later another city of Carthage was built upon the same site. But this was wholly a Roman city. The last flash of the old Semitic genius for conquest had blazed and faded with the fall of Hannibal. The Semitic peoples lost their last grip upon the leadership of the world, and gave place and empire to the advancing Aryans.
HANNIBAL'S OATH (The Child Hannibal Vows Eternal Enmity to Rome) From the painting by the first celebrated American artist, Benjamin West, 1738- 1817
HAMILCAR died in a battle against some of the Spanish barbarians; but he left behind him a son even mightier than he, and equally bitter against Rome. This was the celebrated Hannibal.
Before Hamilcar left Carthage on his great project of building up an empire in Spain, he took his little nine-year-old son, Hannibal, before the sacrificial altar of the Carthaginian god, Moloch. There the father consecrated the child to his vengeance, bidding the lad swear eternal enmity to Rome. Hannibal swore, and kept his oath; he became the most terrible and relentless foe the Romans ever faced.
He did not succeed to the command immediately on his father's death, for he was not yet of age. Thus for a while the extension of Carthage's rule in Spain was entrusted to Hamilcar's son-in-law, Hasdrubal. The subjugation of the barbarians, which Hamilcar had begun by force, Hasdrubal completed by kindness. Most of Spain became devoted to his rule and his plans. Then he, too, perished in the work the family had undertaken; he was stabbed by a Keltic warrior. His troops, without waiting for orders from Carthage, made young Hannibal their chief. Thus at length a devoted army had been built up and a leader had been created, one trained from earliest youth for the task of avenging his country upon Rome.
CHRONOLOGY OF THE PHOENICIANS
B.C.2750—Founding of Tyre, according to Herodotus. 1590—The Phoenicians are spoken of as battling against the Egyptians. 1500 (?)—The Phoenicians settle Cyprus. 1300—They make commercial treaties with Egypt. 1252—War of Sidon against the Philistines, and possible devastation of Sidon. 1200—Tyre becomes the chief Phoenician city. 1100—Cadiz and other colonies planted on the Atlantic shores. 1020—Abibal, the earliest known king of Tyre. 980—Hiram succeeds him, forms alliance with David, builds up Tyre, forms alliance with Solomon, sends out rich trading expeditions. 887—Eth-baal, the priest-king, seizes the throne, marries his daughter Jezebel to the prince of Israel, Ahab. 876—The Phoenician cities pay tribute to Assyria. 854—Phoenicians and other Syrians defeated by the Assyrians. 813—Carthage founded. 727-Luliya of Tyre asserts his independence and Phoenicia is ravaged by the Assyrians. 725—Tyre wins against the Assyrians the first naval battle of history, and withstands a five years' siege. 701—Luliya abandons his city to Assyria. 695—Spain becomes an independent Phoenician kingdom. 678—Sidon besieged for three years and captured by the Assyrians. 636—The Phoenician cities escape from the weakened Assyrian empire. 587—Nebuchadnezzar begins his great thirteen-year siege of Tyre. The city finally capitulates. 538—Phoenicia becomes a Persian province; Carthage asserts its independence. 536—The Carthaginians drive the Greeks from Corsica. 509—Carthage acknowledged by Rome as ruler of the western seas. 500 (?)—Hanno circumnavigates Africa. 480—The Phoenician ships under Persian rule defeated by the Greeks at Salamis and the Carthaginians defeated at Himera. 397-—An African revolt against Carthage suppressed. 332—Tyre besieged by Alexander the Great and stormed after a remarkable contest. 310—Carthage besieged by the Greeks of Sicily. 276—Carthage finally conquers Sicily. 264—Carthage begins her first war with the Romans. 260—Her fleet defeated at Mylae. 256—Second great naval defeat at Ecnomus; the Romans invade Africa, but are defeated and their army perishes. 248—Hamilcar repeatedly defeats the Romans in small battles in Sicily. 241—Carthage sues for peace; terrible war of her mercenary soldiers against Carthage. 237—Hamilcar crushes the mercenaries. 236—Hamilcar begins the building of an empire among the Phoenician cities in Spain. 228— Hasdrubal succeeds Hamilcar and continues his work in Spain. 219—Hannibal succeeds Hasdrubal and defies the Romans. 218—Hannibal crosses the Alps into Italy and wins repeated victories. 216—Hannibal's chief victory at Cannae; the Romans no longer dare meet him in the field. 211—Hannibal besieges Rome, but abandons the siege as hopeless. 209—The Romans victorious in Spain. 207—A second Carthaginian army, having crossed the Alps, is defeated at the Metaurus. 204—The Romans invade Africa. 203—Hannibal recalled to defend Carthage. 202— He is defeated at Zama. 201—Carthage submits to Rome. 183—Death of Hannibal. 149—The Carthaginians commanded to leave their city; they resist and withstand a two-years' siege. 146—Fall of Carthage. 29—A Roman colony rebuilds Carthage under Augustus Caesar; and it becomes a great city.
A.D. 697—Carthage is destroyed by the Mahometans. IIII—Tyre is unsuccessfully besieged by the Christian crusaders. 1124—Second Christian siege of Tyre; it is captured. 1187—The Christians in Tyre withstand a two years' siege by the Mahometans; but Acre is made the chief port of the Christian kingdom and all the old Phoenician cities decline. 1516—Phoenicia captured by the Turks and its cities decay utterly.
HANNIBAL CROSSING THE RHONE (Hannibal's Army Makes a Wonderful March from Spain into Italy) By Henri Paul Motte, the French historical painter
HANNIBAL soon found a pretext for the war which had been so long projected against Rome. There were a few remaining peoples of Spain who had been protected against Carthage by an alliance with Rome. Hannibal attacked these, and Rome declared war. The Romans had superseded Carthage in control of the seas, so it seemed that Rome lay secure in Italy and that an enemy must await her attack wherever she chose to direct it. But Hannibal had planned a bolder course. Since he could not cross the sea to Italy he would reach it by land, scaling the mountain passes of both the Pyrennees and the Alps.
This stupendous project, the most renowned in ancient warfare, he actually put into execution. Leaving Spain with an army of over eighty thousand men, he arrived in Italy six months later with only about thirty thousand remaining. This amazing march was conducted across an unknown wilderness. Much of the way he had to fight with barbarian tribes who opposed his passage, thinking he meant to conquer them. A Roman fleet and army was sent to intercept him at the Rhone River and prevent his crossing its broad, swift-flowing stream. But Hannibal ferried his elephants across the Rhone just three days before the Romans arrived. Snow and cold almost destroyed his army in the higher passes of the Alps, but when at last the survivors stood upon the soil of Italy, Rome had been outmatched, the impossible accomplished. The Romans raised a cry of terror, “Hannibal is at the gates.”
[Authorities: Thucydides, “History” (ed. by Bekker); Xenophon, “Cyropoedia”; Benlamin, “Persia and the Persians”; Markham, “History of Persia”; Maspero, “Passing of the Empires”; Rawlinson, “Sixth Oriental Monarchy,” “Seventh Oriental Monarchy,” “Parthia”; Goldsmid, “Persia”; Browne, “A Literary History of Persia”; Adams, “Persia by a Persian”; Watson, “History of Persia from 1800 to 1858”; Curzon, “Persia and the Persian Question”; Vambery, “Central Asia and the Anglo-Russian Frontier Question”; Wills, “Persia as It is”; Lady Shiel, “Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia”; Sykes, “Ten Thousand Miles in Persia”; Jackson, “Persia Past and Present,” “Zoroaster.”]
THUS saith Cyrus, king of Persia; All the kingdoms of the earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me.” These are the opening words, according to the Bible, of the celebrated decree which proclaimed that a new day had dawned upon earth, a more generous and more human era had begun for mankind. When Cyrus, with his Persians, conquered Babylon, the thousands of years of Semitic rulership of the world ceased, and dominion passed into the hands of the earliest of the Aryan peoples. All the leading nations of today are of Aryan stock. Let us, therefore, mark and remember that year of Cyrus's triumph and of his great decree (538 B.C.); for the decree proclaimed peace—and mercy to the conquered.
The spirit of Semitic dominion under Babylon and Assyria had been almost inconceivably cruel. The people must, argues one of our historians, have been peculiarly “unimaginative,” that is wholly unable to realize within themselves the agony of their victims, else they could never have inflicted upon entire nations such hideous pangs of bodily torture. The Persians were cruel, too, if judged by our modern views; but they were not wantonly so. Physical torture was employed by them only as a punishment for those who had been convicted of serious crimes. Moreover, the religious spirit of all the early Aryans seems to have been one of general toleration, as opposed to the narrow Semitic spirit. Almost every Semitic people had regarded themselves as the chosen people of their own particular god. They even believed themselves directly commanded by that god to destroy other nations, who had incurred his very human hatred by not knowing of his authority.
The deity of the early Persians was, on the other hand, a pure creative spirit Ahura-Mazda, “the Lord of great knowledge.” Moreover, they recognized the life of the soul of man and its continued spiritual existence in worlds of good or evil after death. Their religion, at least in its earlier stages, involved a view of life equal in nobility to that of many a modern philosopher. The creator Ahura-Mazda, whom the later Persians identified with Mithra, the sun god, had two sons, light and darkness, good and evil, Ormuzd and Ahriman. These two were always in struggle for dominion over the universe, and in their tremendous warfare they called to their banners every living thing and every force on earth. Man holds a leading part in the great strife. Every one by his own will ranges himself upon one side or the other, for he helps the cause of Ormuzd by every generous act and thought, advances that of Ahriman by every deed of shame.
This truly noble philosophy of man's moral freedom and responsibility took definite form under the teaching of the sage, Zarathushtra, or, as the Greeks called him, Zoroaster. The Persian name seems to mean, “tawny camels,” so perhaps Zoroaster was a camel-herder or camel-driver, as was the other, later teacher of the East, Mahomet. Zoroaster's doctrines, written down ages after his death, have been partly preserved in the sacred books of Persia, called the Zend-Avesta, or “comments upon wisdom.” These fragmentary records show us the teacher as living under a chieftain, named Vishtaspa, or the “horse-owner,” and as persuading his people to cease the old nomadic life of roving and of war, and to settle as peaceful farmers, in permanent homes.
We can not trace the Aryan races to anything like the antiquity of the Semites. The date of Zoroaster's life we can only guess, from the surviving records, to have been about 1500 B.C. The Aryans first come into historical view about a thousand years before Christ, when we find them invading India on the one hand and threatening Babylonia on the other. Assyrian and Babylonian records speak of these invaders vaguely as Scyths, or as the Manda or Kimmerians. We only really know that hordes of fierce, fighting nations began to press upon the Semitic civilization from the north, from the great plains of
THE DESPAIR OF CARTHAGE (The Women of Carthage Sacrifice Their Hair and Jewels to Furnish Weapons) By the English artist, Richard Linderun
FOR seventeen years Hannibal maintained his army in Italy, defeating by his wonderful generalship every force the Romans sent against him. But the capital itself he could not capture, and the Romans prevented any reinforcements reaching him from Carthage. Gradually his army grew too weak to be seriously dangerous, and the Romans were able to despatch troops into Africa to threaten Carthage in its turn. Hannibal's countrymen summoned him home in their terror. He gave battle against his will with a mere remnant of his splendid army, and was defeated at Zama. The great war closed with his banishment from Carthage.
That celebrated centre of Phoenician civilization now became almost wholly subject to Rome, and as the clever Phoenician merchants once more built up their city's depleted wealth, the Romans became afraid of them and at length resolved to break their power utterly. One Roman general who had visited the African metropolis and seen its strength and splendor, used to close every speech he made to his compatriots upon whatever subject by adding the words, “And Carthage must be destroyed.”
Finally, it was. The Romans by deliberate tyranny drove the Carthaginians to a revolt of despair. Carthage had been deprived of arms, but its women sold their jewels to purchase more and cut off their hair to supply cords for bow-strings. The city was besieged, and after two years of furious fighting was stormed and sacked and utterly destroyed.
Russia, and of central Asia. Probably not all these hordes were Aryans. They come into no clear view until the day when Nineveh was destroyed (607 B.C.) by the joint armies of Babylon and of an Aryan chief whom old historians called Cyaxeres, king of the Medes.
These Medes of Cyaxeres and the Persians seem to have been tribes of one nation, more or less united. Migrating slowly southward, warring against both Semites and Turanians by the way, the Medes and Persians had settled in what is now modern Persia, the Medes in the north, the Persians in the south. The latter, indeed, took possession not only of the mountain region, which is still called from them Farzistan, but also of the lower hill country of ancient Elam, where the Elamites, as you will remember, had been exterminated by the last efforts of the Assyrian empire.
Herodotus, that celebrated old Greek who in his travels over Asia gathered and preserved for us so much of half-legendary history, tells us that these loose tribes of Median settlers were first formed into a united kingdom by Deioces, a mere villager whose justness and wisdom led his neighbors to appeal to him voluntarily to act as judge in their disputes. When his fame had thus extended far, Deioces suddenly and craftily refused to judge any more causes, on the plea that it took his time too much from his own affairs. As a result, the region fell into great disorder; and the people, seeing that they must have some sort of government, persuaded Deioces to act as their king.
Possessed of the means of enforcing his power, the humble judge revealed himself as a strong and arbitrary monarch, who surrounded himself with elaborate power and compelled obedience from all. He established a fixed code of laws, united the Medes into a single body, and directed them in the conquest of other nations. His splendid capital city, Ecbatana, he built in a circle enclosed within a series of seven walls. The outermost was white, the next black, and so through all the colors to the innermost wall of plated gold, which enclosed the king's palace and his treasure house. Within this, Deioces remained in almost solitary state, refusing all communication with his former intimates lest they should forget in the pleasantries of friendship the reverence due to the dignity of a monarch.
Thus says Herodotus. We have more trustworthy record of the grandson of Deioces, that Cyaxares who aided in the overthrow of Nineveh. Cyaxares was the first great Aryan conqueror, extending his power from its original seat in northern Persia over most of Asia Minor and part of ancient Assyria. He came to the throne in an hour of disaster. The king his father had ventured to attack Assyria, but had been completely defeated, and perished on the field of battle. Instead of suing for peace, Cyaxares withdrew the shattered remnant of his Medes, and in a distant region drilled them in regular military manoeuvres, until instead of a confused horde they had become a disciplined army. He then returned to the attack, defeated the Assyrians, and besieged them in Nineveh, their capital.
At this moment there came a fresh invasion of wild “Scythians” from the north, and Cyaxares was forced to turn upon the intruders in self-defense. After a severe struggle he conquered them. Herodotus says he invited all the Scythian leaders to a conference, got them intoxicated, slew them, and then made an alliance with their followers. At all events, there were many of these later Scyths to be found thereafter in the armies of Cyaxares.
Then this indomitable leader returned once more to his original purpose. Again he attacked Assyria, and this time Nineveh fell. Cyaxares and his ally, the Babylonian monarch, divided the Assyrian empire between them. They even cemented their alliance by a marriage, a daughter of Cyaxares wedding the Babylonian's son, the celebrated Nebuchadnezzar; and the two kingdoms continued thereafter in mutual respect and honorable peace.
The later wars of Cyaxares were in Asia Minor, where a new power, that of Lydia, had grown up to share with Media, Babylonia, and Egypt the sovereignty of the world. A total eclipse of the sun, occurring when Lydians and Medes were preparing for a decisive battle, so terrified both armies that they agreed to a peace. Yet, on the whole, Cyaxares was successful here as he had been against the Scyths and the Assyrians. Having by these wars built up the first beginnings of Aryan empire, Cyaxares died and was succeeded by his son. Astyages, who is mainly notable as the connecting link between his father and his grandson, the celebrated conqueror, Cyrus the Great, whose decree of liberty opened our story of Persia.
Cyrus was king of the Persians, who, as the southern branch of this Aryan nation, had long been ruled by kings of their own, subordinate to the superior kings of Media. Cyrus himself boasts that he is the descendant of several kings tracing back to the Persian chieftain Achaemenes, the legendary founder of his race, who had been nursed in childhood by an eagle, which became the symbol of the royal race of Persia. Cyrus was a younger son, and as such held rule at first over the dependent Persian province of Elam. Then he succeeded to the throne of Persia, conquered that of Media, and finally mastered all the known world of Asia.
So great a figure did Cyrus become in the eyes of later generations that numerous different legends were woven about his birth. Most commonly accepted of these is the tale of Herodotus that King Astyages had a dream warning him of danger from his daughter, his only child, so he wedded her to one of his most obedient soldiers, Cambyses, a Persian, and sent the pair to rule in distant Persia. When their son Cyrus was born, Astyages ordered another of his
ZOROASTER TRIUMPHS IN DEATH (The Persian Warriors Submit Voluntarily to the Rule of Zoroaster's Wisdom) From the proposed series for the Paris Pantheon, by Paul Chenavard
WITH this picture, presenting the ancient sage Zoroaster, we enter upon a new page of history. The early dominion held over the civilized world by the great Semitic peoples of Asia, the Babylonians, Assyrians, Arabs, Hebrews, and Phoenicians, passed away. A newer race, the Aryans, began to assert the supremacy which our Aryan peoples of Europe and America still hold today. The first of these Aryan peoples to become prominent in history were the Persians. And the earliest thing we know about the Persians is the story of their great priest and teacher, Zoroaster.
He lived somewhere in Persia or Central Asia, a thousand years or more before Christ. His people were a wandering, fighting tribe, and Zoroaster insisted they must cease their nomadic life and become peaceful farmers, settling in a single spot, and only fighting to defend themselves. At first the wild Persians laughed at him, but his wisdom and earnestness finally won him the support of his King Vishtaspa, at whose command the Persians built up an agricultural community. The crucial moment of their national career thus came with Vishtaspa's death, when some of the fiercer spirits wished to abandon the life he had compelled them to adopt. Zoroaster argued and pleaded with them, and at length the warrior class resolved to accept his guidance. A very doubtful tradition says that the sage was himself slain in the tumult, but even if he perished his spirit triumphed. Strength placed itself voluntarily in submission to intellect.
soldiers, Harpagus, to slay the child; but instead Harpagus had the boy brought up in secret by a peasant. The strength and resolution of the lad Cyrus, no less than his kingly beauty, so distinguished him above all the other peasant lads that his birth was suspected, and finally Harpagus confessed it. Astyages then spared Cyrus at the entreaty of the boy's mother, but punished Harpagus by slaying the latter's son under circumstances of revolting cruelty.
Harpagus pretended a continued loyalty, but, being secretly determined on revenge, constantly urged his foster-child Cyrus to revolt against Astyages. This Cyrus did after he had succeeded his father on the subordinate throne of Persia. He summoned all the Persian men to meet him, bidding each bring a hatchet. When they were gathered in wonderment, he set them to a hard day's work at chopping trees, offering them no refreshment through all their labor. The next day he invited them to a feast, and when this reached its close, he asked them which day they had preferred. On their expressing clamorous preference for the feasting, he told them that their present lives were like the first day, but should be like the second if they would join him in overthrowing the Medes and snatching for their own race the first place in the dual empire. The Persians eagerly followed Cyrus; and Astyages, in sending an army to suppress the revolt, blindly entrusted the command to Harpagus. This was the vengeful father's moment of triumph. He urged his soldiers to desert the cruel Astyages for the noble and generous Cyrus. Many of them followed their general's counsel, and the rest were easily defeated. Then at the head of his united forces Cyrus attacked Astyages in his capital and overthrew him.
Whether Cyrus was thus really descended from the Median royal house, or whether the story of his birth and secret change in childhood was only an invention to lead the Medes to accept his kingship, it is certain that he did defeat Astyages and was accepted by both Medes and Persians as their joint king. Throughout his reign in his inscriptions and proclamations he refers to the two races always as of equal rank and loyalty. Neither did Cyrus reign over his people as the Semitic emperors of old had done, in a spirit of arbitrary and unbridled power. His hand was checked at every turn by the national laws. Whether we regard these as, indeed, the creation of his ancestor Deioces or only as the slow growth of custom, they had become the fixed form which the Bible repeatedly calls them, “the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not.” A decree once established could not be broken even by the king.
Other nations took note of the internal revolution in Media by which Cyrus had come into power. They formed a coalition to seize a portion of the territories of the disorganized empire. All the world of civilization-Egypt, Babylon, Lydia, and a new power of which we now hear mention for the first time, the Grecian state of Sparta-united in an alliance. Cyrus got word of this, and before the allies had time to combine their forces, he marched his harmonious army of Medes and Persians across the border territories of Babylon to reach Lydia, the old enemy of his race.
The Lydians, under command of their king, Croesus, offered a brave resistance. But Cyrus, in a bold and brilliant campaign, outwitted and defeated Croesus and shut him up in his capital of Sardis with a mere remnant of the Lydian forces. Cyrus is said to have overthrown the Lydians in the final battle by placing camels in front of his own troops, with the result that the strange smell so terrified the horses of the Lydian cavalry that their ranks were scattered in confusion.
Cyrus stormed the Lydian capital as suddenly and daringly as he had conducted the entire campaign. He thus became complete master of all Asia Minor, except the Greek cities along its coast. When Croesus saw his own capture was inevitable he prepared, as other Asiatic sovereigns had done, to destroy himself, his household, and his treasures in one vast blazing funeral pyre. Probably he actually perished thus, though legend represents him as making friends with Cyrus at the last moment and becoming thereafter the Persian's vassal and faithful adviser.
The allies who had planned to unite with Lydia in despoiling Cyrus were singularly backward in taking up her cause. The Egyptians had actually placed some forces in the field, but these slunk home after the first defeats. The Babylonians hurried to make a peace treaty with the bold victor. The Spartans, who had expected the siege of Croesus' city to proceed in the usual leisurely fashion of the times, had prepared a fleet to sail to its assistance; but on learning of its downfall they disbanded the fleet and contented themselves with sending an ambassador to Cyrus to warn him that if he injured the Greek cities on the coast of Asia Minor he would incur the Spartan enmity.
Cyrus asked politely who the Spartans were, and where Greece was. Then he bade the ambassador take home to the Spartans his ironical thanks for their excellent advice of peace, and his warning that he might yet give them cause to cease babbling of others' woes and think about their own. As a matter of fact. an uprising in his own imperfectly secured domain of Media compelled the conqueror to leave Asia Minor in all haste. But the generals whom he put in charge there, especially Harpagus, his legendary foster-father, attacked the Greek cities in Asia, and in the course of a year or so brought them all into submission to Persian rule. Sparta, saved by her remoteness in far-off Europe, made no effort to protect the Asiatic Greeks.
Of the great campaign of Cyrus to the east of Media we have no clear record. This seems to have been the most tremendous effort of his reign. After suppressing the Median revolt he spent six years or more marching over the unex
THE ARYAN CAREER OF WAR BEGINS (Deioces Commands the Medes to Set Forth on Their Course of Conquest) After the painting by the French artist, Louis Boulanger, 1806-1867
THE Persians and the Medes were two tribes of a single nation; and the leading tribe, the Medes, came first into history's view. The story of the founding of the Median empire is only a legend, but must have some shadow of fact behind it. According to this legend the Medes lived quiet lives of peace such as Zoroaster had taught them, dwelling in little farming villages. Even among these simple farm folk, quarrels sometimes arose, which were usually brought for decision to the wisest and most peaceful man of the community. In this capacity as umpire, Deioces, a peculiarly grave and moderate villager, became noted and honored through all the country, until finally many of the Medes urged him to act as their permanent leader or king.
At first Deioces refused; then he asked if they would give him a guard of soldiers to enforce his judgments. This being promised, he asked if they would build him a strong castle where he would be secure against the revenge of any he must punish. When he had thus obtained both soldiers and a fortress, Deioces assumed a very different, more commanding tone. He told the Medes of the weakness of other nations and bade them set out to seize by force that leadership of the world which was theirs by reason of their strength and courage. They obeyed with eagerness, and the Aryan career of victory began. Almost every prominent nation of to-day belongs to the old Aryan stock.
plored regions of Central Asia. What nations he met and conquered we do not clearly know; but whereas the ancient empires of Babylon and Assyria had planted their border but a few leagues east of their own Euphrates valley, the bounds of the growing world of civilization were now extended many hundred miles to the eastward. Cyrus fought in Chinese Turkestan, and may even have anticipated Alexander in carrying his conquests to the edge of India.
Then, as master already of the broadest empire earth had yet known, Cyrus returned home, in 539 B.C., to settle affairs with Babylon. The metropolis fell, as we have already seen, in the following year, and all its empire passed under the sway of the Persian. Most of the subject races hailed the change with joy. Cyrus had already shown within his own domain how much more gentle was to be the Persian yoke.
In all the known world, Egypt was now the only power left outside the Persian realm; for the cities of Greece yet lay, as we have seen, beyond the view of civilization, regarded as distant “islands” of the sea, the homes of barbarians set dimly on the utmost edge of the great Asiatic world. Cyrus prepared him-self for the Egyptian conquest. But before undertaking this he arranged and systematized the government of his empire. Then a revolt among the far eastern tribes summoned him thither, and in the east he died. The Greek author, Xenophon, who pictures Cyrus as the ideal monarch, tells us that he passed away in peace, engaged to the last moment in giving wise counsel to his children and expressing the utmost resignation at his end.
Herodotus had heard a wilder legend, that Cyrus on his second eastern expedition attacked a distant people ruled by Queen Tomyris. She entreated him to leave her and her nation in peace and to cease his blood-strewn march. But Cyrus entrapped her army during a drinking bout and defeated them, the Queen's son being among the slain. Then Tomyris in desperate revenge led her soldiers in person against the Persians, and Cyrus was killed in the encounter. Tomyris cut off his head and plunged it into a bath of blood, declaring that the ruthless conqueror should have his fill of what had been his favorite feast in life.
Such descriptions of the end of the famous world-ruler are obviously to be regarded as moral apologues of wisdom and of folly, rather than accepted as real history. The real lesson that Persia's story tells throughout is of the immeasurable misery which must exist under the rule of one man, the enormous power with which his heedlessness must sway multitudes whether for good or evil. It teaches us also what a whirl of almost irresistible temptations surround him who with merely human mind and heart holds in his hand unlimited and unquestioned power.
Cyrus was succeeded by his son Cambyses. Who at once took up his father's project of Egyptian conquest. Cambyses had a younger brother, Smerdis, who either headed a revolt or was suspected of planning one. So Cambyses, when setting out with his army for the Egyptian war, left Smerdis, who was the only heir to his throne, safe in imprisonment-or so the empire believed. In reality, the king, resolving that no peril of rebellion should remain behind him, had caused his brother to be slain in secret.
Burdened by this guilty shadow, Cambyses started on his glittering march. Egypt had always felt herself protected from invasion by the desert of Sinai, which lay between her land and Asia; but Cambyses made an alliance with the wandering Arab tribes, and their camels supplied all his army with water during the desert march. Within Egypt itself the resistance was brief; one tremendous battle was fought, then the great border fortress of Pelusium was stormed. After that the entire land lay helpless at the Persian's feet.
At first Cambyses, following the traditional Persian policy, tried to make friends with the defeated race. He visited their temples and did homage to their idols. Later he broke with the Egyptian priests, treating them with cruelty and their gods with contempt. Here again it becomes difficult to distinguish between fact and romance. Most of our knowledge of Cambyses comes from the Greeks, and most of theirs from the Egyptians, who hated Cambyses, and said nothing good of him. Hence to later ages the tyrant of Egypt was depicted as a monster, half insane and wholly murderous, who insulted the Egyptian gods with gross obscenity and suffered from their vengeance.
We are told that he summoned before him the sacred bull in which the spirit of the deity was supposed to reside; and after deriding the beast-god he deliberately plunged his dagger into it and wounded it to death. He then had all the bull's attendant priests scourged as impostors. In the other temples he burnt the idols and tore to pieces the mummied cats and birds which were preserved as having once sheltered the spirits of the gods. Twelve of his own Persian lords who remonstrated at his excesses were burned alive. Finally, he was cursed with madness by the insulted gods, and fled from Egypt raving, and stricken unto death.
Probably these tales do not much exaggerate; for Cambyses met disasters in Egypt such as his haughty spirit could ill endure. He made the same blunder as did Napoleon in invading Russia. Having carried conquest to the limit of human power, he attempted to extend it beyond humanity and to war against the irresistible powers of Nature. From Egypt he strove to extend his dominion over the unknown wilds of Africa. He led an army into the desert toward Abyssinia in the south, and despatched another across the sands toward Carthage in the west. Both ill-considered expeditions failed. His Abyssinian army was almost exterminated by hardship and starvation. The one sent against Carthage disappeared completely, probably overwhelmed by a sandstorm.
CYRUS PROCLAIMS FRIENDSHIP TO THE WORLD (The Persian Restores the Religious Treasures Taken by Babylon from Its Subject Peoples) By the great French artist, Gustave Dore
THE conquest of the ancient world of Asia, thus begun by Deioces, was carried onward through four or five generations, and was finally achieved under the lead of the celebrated Cyrus. Cyrus, King of the Persians, the younger branch of the Median race, fought his way to the kingship of the united nation and then continued his warfare until he was the undisputed master of western Asia. It was he and his Persians, you will remember, who achieved the final conquest of Babylon and substituted the Aryan rule of earth for that of the older, Semitic races. This alteration of the whole course of history was achieved in the year 538 B.C.
No sooner was Cyrus in undisputed possession of the civilized world of Asia than he sought to make all the subject peoples realize that a change had come, that they were to be aided and uplifted by kindness, not crushed by selfish cruelty. With this in view he restored to each city the statues of its gods, which the Babylonians had concentrated in their own capital. He also gave permission for several races, which had been held in a sort of slavery in Babylonia, to return to their homes. Most notable of the peoples thus freed were the Jews. Cyrus not only allowed them to rebuild Jerusalem, he authorized them to resume the worship of their own religion, and restored to them their sacred utensils of gold and silver. The richness of these vessels had led the Babylonians to preserve them as valued treasures. Now Cyrus gave back all this wealth to the Jewish priesthood.
Bitterly stricken in spirit, distrusted by his countrymen whose lives he had recklessly sacrificed, hated by the Egyptians, whose faith he had vindictively insulted, Cambyses turned homeward. But from home came yet more terrifying news; the Persians themselves were said to have revolted under the lead of Smerdis. Only Cambyses himself knew that this report could not be true, since Smerdis was dead; and even Cambyses, shaken by guilt and despair, wavered in his belief. Could it be that his own servants had somehow deceived him about his brother's killing? Or could that brother's ghost have returned for vengeance? Or was this leader an impostor? In a confusion and agony of mind such as we can imagine, Cambyses seems to have called his chief followers together on the army's hasty homeward march, and told them the truth about his brother's murder.
Then the conqueror died. How? We do not know. Perhaps, most fitting end to the grim tragedy, he slew himself; possibly he submitted his fate voluntarily to the judgment of his peers, his generals, to whom he had announced the truth, and they condemned him by that unchanging law of Medes and Persians. Legend has told of his ending in a dozen edifying ways.
Meanwhile, the false Smerdis, who was really a priest named Gomates, had been accepted in Persia, and the returning army also bowed to his rule. The Persian reverence for their royal race was intense; the same law which bound their king to them bound them in devoted loyalty to him. With Cambyses dead, Smerdis was to be accepted unquestioningly as king. Hence the deception of Gomates seems at first to have passed unsuspected. Smerdis had been invisible in prison for several years, the impostor closely resembled him, and moreover kept himself carefully secluded within his palace, while he hastened to make his grasp upon the empire secure. Even the generals who had heard Cambyses' confession could not be wholly sure that the pretender was not Smerdis.
His overthrow was accomplished by the chief Persian nobles with the dash and boldness characteristic of the race. In the old days before Cyrus, the Persians had been divided into seven tribes. Cyrus had become ruler of the whole, but the seven tribal chiefs had joined him as friends rather than as subjects. The families of these seven were still looked upon as the chief supports of the nation, and their heads had special, almost kingly, privileges. Among these was the right to enter the king's presence at any moment, as an equal, unannounced. These seven chiefs now met in secret and resolved to test Gomates.
With weapons hidden beneath their clothes, they presented themselves suddenly before the palace, and demanded to see their king. Gomates had specially announced that this privilege of theirs was repealed, but the Persian respect for ancient law upheld the seven. The officers who would have checked them were easily swept aside; the slaves who would have warned Gomates were stopped; and the impostor found himself suddenly encircled by seven judges. They questioned him briefly, and then, convinced of his imposture, slew him on the spot. He resisted desperately, but in vain, and no hand seems to have been raised in vengeance against the seven, so surely did the Persians trust their loyalty and judgment.
Legend represents the seven as next agreeing among themselves to decide by lot which of them should succeed to the vacant throne; the one whose horse first neighed was to be king, and by a groom's strategy the lot fell to one of them named Darius. It seems more probable, however, that Darius, who had been a general in Cambyses' army, acted as the leader of the seven throughout. Indeed, strictly speaking, he was not even by right among the seven, as his own father was still living as head of his tribe. The aged father, however, resigned the first place to his son, and remained thereafter a loyal subject and principal supporter of the new monarch.
Darius having assumed the kingship made every effort to prove himself connected with the previous royal house, the well-beloved Achaemenians. Yet, despite this appeal to the celebrated Persian loyalty, and despite the steady support of the “seven,” he had to face revolt in every quarter of his empire. Pretenders claiming to be Smerdis appeared in three separate regions, and disaffected provinces set up independent kings of their own. At one time the forces of Darius were fighting eight different civil wars at once. To a weaker sovereign defeat would have been inevitable. But Darius, with equal courage and wariness, using tact and forbearance when these seemed wisest, and inflicting the most savage punishments where he thought terror would be more effective, gradually reduced the entire empire to obedience. Then, just as Cyrus and Cambyses had done, he looked for other worlds to conquer. His earliest foreign victories were in the east, where he invaded India and must have mastered at least a portion of it, as we find its name listed among his tributary provinces.
These provinces Darius wholly reorganized, building roads, creating a sort of police force, and assigning to each province the amount of annual tribute both in money and merchandise which it was to pay into the royal coffers. The exact figures of Darius give us our first chance for accurate measurements of the wealth of the ancient world. The total imperial tax in money, which roughly equalled the tax in merchandise, was about eight thousand talents. The value of a talent approached two thousand dollars, so the money income of Darius was nearly sixteen million dollars; or if we measure by the greater purchasing power of money in those days the amount of food or clothes or service which a single piece of silver would buy, the royal income was really twenty times as
THE UNCERTAINTY OF HAPPINESS (King Croesus Loses All His Wealth and Is Brought Close to Death by Cyrus) By the recent German artist, Alexander Zick
CYRUS only won the empire of Asia after a long series of wars. The first of these was directed against Croesus, King of Lydia, a kingdom which included most of Asia Minor. That Cyrus was the victor in this contest we know; but for the details of the oft-told story of Croesus' wealth and downfall we are dependent rather on tradition than on proven history. The tale is that Croesus was so proud of all his possessions that he showed his splendors boastfully to the Greek sage Solon, asking if any other man could be so happy. Solon's answer was that no man could be accounted happy until after his death. But Croesus, secure in the strength of his kingdom and his wealth, believed himself beyond the reach of misfortune.
He realized his error when the Persians conquered his kingdom. He was finally made prisoner by Cyrus, and sentenced to be burned to death. As King Cyrus watched his victim on the flaming pile he heard him exclaim: “Solon, thou art right.” Curious to know the meaning of the cry, Cyrus stayed the execution and questioned Croesus. The story so impressed him with the uncertainty of even his own royal state, that he not only spared Croesus, but made a friend of him. Croesus thereafter accompanied the Persian monarch, remaining his chief counsellor until the death of Cyrus.
great. Local officials also collected for local use a tax about equal to that of Darius.
As to the apportionment of this tribute through the empire, the largest imperial payment of money by any single province was 1,000 talents, which was charged to Babylonia, still the wealthiest as it was the oldest home of civilization. Egypt came second with 700 talents, while some of the far eastern still half-barbaric lands paid less than a hundred talents. Each charge was so carefully outlined and so regularly exacted that the Persian nobles were wont to grumble in scorn that in Cyrus they had possessed a father, in Cambyses a master, but in Darius only a haggling tradesman.
It was this Darius who in the closing years of his reign came into conflict with the Greeks, as will be fully told in their story. Suffice it here to say that Darius, having like Cyrus extended his rule eastward to the impassable mountains and deserts of central Asia, and having seen with Cambyses the impossibility of carrying Persian arms further across the African deserts, now turned to the unexplored wilds of Europe as the only remaining corner of earth. His first campaign was against those wild northern tribes, called the Schyths, who had once ravaged civilization. Crossing the Hellespont into Europe, Darius marched northward through what are now the Balkan States. The Scyths, who dwelt there fled before him. There was no battle, but his army almost perished in the wilderness.
Experience having thus convinced Darius how little was to be gained in that direction, he returned to Persia and left to his “satrap” or governor of Asia Minor the suppression of a revolt which broke out among the distant Greek cities on the coast of Asia. These having been defeated and subdued, the satrap marched into Europe to punish the yet more distant Greek cities there for having aided their Asiatic brethren. A small part of the Persian forces were defeated by the Athenians at Marathon; and Darius, having thus had his attention called to Greece, resolved to conduct in person a campaign against those rebels at Athens who had previously acknowledged his authority.
Darius died before putting this plan into execution, and the war against distant Greece was undertaken by his far feebler successor, his son Xerxes. It resulted in the repulse of the Persians. Xerxes indeed proved a shameful contrast to the three vigorous Persian sovereigns who had preceded him. Fleeing from war after his Grecian defeat, he devoted himself to a life of idle pleasure amd palace intrigue. He was finally murdered by one of his creatures, who snatched at the throne, but was soon murdered in his turn.
A period of degeneracy had begun in the Persian court. One contemptible monarch followed another for over a century. Women and palace eunuchs became the real rulers of the empire. The last of these eunuchs, Bogoas, main tained himself in power for years by setting upon the throne one child after another of the old Achaemenian royal line. Each youth as soon as he showed signs of independence was poisoned, until at length one of them managed to poison Bogoas instead, and became really king of the empire as Darius third.
Darius III. seems to have been a noble and admirable king; but the reawakening of the royal line had come too late. The Greeks ever since Marathon had been studying the art of war with keen intelligence; the Persians, brave and daring but unguided and untrained, still fought as in the earlier centuries, or rather far more confusedly than when under Cyrus they had defeated the Greek allies of Lydia or under Darius I. had conquered the Greek cities of Asia. Greek soldiers had now become as superior to the Persians as once the Persians had been to them. Darius ascended the throne in the same year that Alexander the Great assumed power in Greece; and Alexander conquered the Persian empire.
Twice defeated by Alexander, Darius fled and was assassinated by one of his generals who sought to curry favor with the Greek victors. Alexander found his vanquished foe expiring by the roadside and soothed his dying pangs with a drink of water. The Greeks held a gorgeous feast of victory, and the poet Dryden tells that amid the feast, a minstrel reminded Alexander how utterly unreliable is fortune; how great had been the power and the empire of the Persians, and how complete was their downfall:
“He sung Darius great and good, By too severe a fate, Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen, Fallen from his high estate, And weltering in his blood; Deserted, at his utmost need, By those his former bounty fed, On the bare earth exposed he lies, With not a friend to close his eyes.”
CAMBYSES SUBDUES THE EGYPTIANS (The Persians Capture Pelusium by a Stratagem) From the painting by the contemporary French artist, P. Lenoir
THE empire of Cyrus passed to his son Cambyses, who was represented by later historians as having been as generous. The father had conquered Asia, the son undertook the conquest of Africa. Having skillfully and successfully led his army across the deserts which separate the two contients, Cambyses met and defeated the Egyptians in front of their city of Pelusium, the great border fortress which they had built as a defense against the Asiatics. Some of the fleeing Egyptians shut themselves in Pelusium and endeavored to defend the city.
Cambyses captured it by a clever stratagem. The Egyptians regarded certain animals, especially cats, as being sacred, and would not injure them on any account. Cambyses had his men carry the sacred animals in front of them to the attack. The Egyptians dared not shoot their arrows for fear of wounding the poor beasts, and so Pelusium was stormed successfully. Legend adds that on this, as on many subsequent occasions, Cambyses seized the opportunity to express his contempt and hatred of the Egyptian religion. He himself carried a cage of cats in front of him upon his horse, and hurled the unhappy pussies, with insulting taunts and laughter, in to the faces of his foes. If he did, let us hope he got well scratched.
ALEXANDER had planned to unite the Persians with his own people in one great nation; and, perhaps, it is this more than anything else which accounts for their ready submission to his sway. With his death, however, his mighty schemes fell to pieces. There was civil war among his generals, until finally one of them, Seleucus, succeeded to the strictly Persian part of the empire. He ruled the Persians as a conquered and inferior people to be domineered over by Greek troops and Greek satraps. The proud Persians mast have welcomed gladly the change of dominion, when the Parthians overthrew the Greek rule about 250 B.C.
The Parthians, though they came from the deserts of central Asia and knew little of the outer world, were a strong and shrewd people. They recognized the superior civilization of their new subjects, and treated them with much liberality and even distinction, allowing them to be ruled by their own native kings. Thus the two nations dwelt together very amicably. Through the whole period of the Parthian empire, extending over four centuries, there was no Persian revolt.
During this time Greece fell from power, and Rome became mistress of the world. The Parthians alone, trusting in their deadly deserts and their peculiar mode of warfare, maintained the independence of their domain against Roman conquest. The beginning of the Christian era came and passed; and the new religion, spreading swiftly over the world, entered Persia also. Finally the Parthian empire began to crumble to pieces. The Parthian race seems to have become weak and corrupt. Province after province asserted its freedom, and hardly an effort was made to put down the various rebellions. Persia began to dream of her ancient greatness; mere independence could not satisfy her re-aroused ambition.
There must be some deep and rare vitality in the Persian race. History knows no parallel to their case, when a nation was so stirred by the memory of its own famous history as to rise after hundreds of years of complete submission and win its place a second time among the great peoples of the world. Greece has made a similar attempt in our own times; but we all know how hopelessly she would have been crushed by the Turks in 1898 had not the generous interference of Europe saved her, and given her the shadow of a place among the nations.
The reawakening of Persia reads like the glowing fancy of some poet of romance. Artaxerxes, a descendant of Sassan, from whom the family and empire are called Sassanian, was the Persian king who, in the year 226 A.D., declared his county independent of Parthia. Then, at the head of an army of eager and enthusiastic Persians chanting their ancient war-songs, he proceeded to seize and subdue the bordering provinces. The Parthians made no move to stop him, until his army actually threatened their own country. Then Artabanus, the last Parthian king, roused himself to resistance. Apparently there was no ill-feeling between the combatants. The Persians were merely proffering a courtly challenge to their old friends, to meet them and prove which had the better right to empire.
In two great battles the Persians were victorious. The Parthians, however, refused to accept the result as decisive; so a third contest was officially appointed, to take place on the plain of Hormuz. It was the last trial of strength, and the Parthians were completely overthrown. One historian tells of a personal encounter between Artaxerxes and his rival. The daring Persian spurring far in advance of his troops, coaxed his adversary from the shelter of his shield-bearers by a pretended flight, and then sent an arrow through his heart. The Parthian king was certainly slain in the battle, and his empire disappeared.
The next step in Artaxerxes' career was even more spectacular. His actual dominion as yet extended only over the mountains and deserts of Persia and Parthia; but he calmly announced that the Persians resumed all the territory of their ancient empire; and he sent notice of this in stately terms to Rome Four hundred youths, selected from the handsomest in Persia, gorgeously
CAMBYSES' POWER IS DESTROYED (The Persians Invade the African Desert and Their Army Is Overwhelmed by a Sandstorm) By the great French artist, Gustave Dore
CAMBYSES completed the conquest of Egypt and then resolved to vanquish the rest of Africa. To do this he had to march his troops out over unknown regions across the great Sahara desert. Here nature proved too powerful a foe for the fierce tyrant. He himself led an expedition to the southward; and its members almost all perished of starvation and thirst. Only a miserable remnant escaped the horrors of the sandy waste, struggling back exhausted to the Nile in the train of their raging sovereign.
Disaster even more complete awaited another army which Cambyses despatched westward over the sands toward Carthage. No survivor of the expedition ever reappeared. No trace of it was ever discovered. The Egyptian peasants reported that it had been overwhelmed by one of the terrific sand storms of the desert. The bewildered troops crouched helpless before the blinding hurricane of sand, until it drifted over the obstruction of their bodies and their camels, and piled above them enormous burial mounds-an army entombed beneath the desert.
Cambyses left Egypt in despair, and died facing a rebellion among his own exasperated Persians. But so deep was the fear he had impressed upon the Egyptians that they made no effort to break the Persian rule; and so bitter was their hatred that they wrote in their books every possible form of evil and of cursing against Cambyses.
dressed and mounted, presented to the Emperor Severus their master's “order” to withdraw the Roman troops from the different Asian provinces, since all Asia belonged to the Persians.
The astonished Severus tried to argue the matter; but you can guess how much effect argument had on the proud and fiery Artaxerxes. He marched his army down from the mountains and seized the whole Roman territory along the Euphrates. Severus gathered an immense force to punish this insolence. Roman dignity was not hurt when the Parthians escaped her by scurrying into the deserts; but here was a regular army established on Roman territory, and actually besieging and capturing Roman cities.
Artaxerxes retreated before the advancing foe. Despite his boastful message, he was far too wise a general to risk his new empire on the chances of a decisive Lattle between his raw troops and these splendidly armed and trained legions. He withdrew into the Persian mountains, leading his adversary along as he had led the Parthian king; and when Severus followed with his great army in three, widely separated divisions, Artaxerxes fell suddenly upon one section. It was overwhelmed and utterly destroyed by the deadly arrows of the Persian bowmen.
Severus made haste to withdraw the remainder of his troops; but privation, disease, and the fierce attacks of the pursuing Persian cavalry so reduced their numbers, that he reached the Mediterranean with scarcely a third of his original army. It was one of the most terrible disasters the Roman arms ever encountered.
The terms of the peace that followed are not clear. Artaxerxes certainly did not get all the territory he had so extravagantly claimed. Probably he contented himself with some small concessions, fully aware that, despite his success, Roman power was greater than his own. Besides, he had an enemy nearer at hand, and one easier to subdue. The King of Armenia had joined forces with the Romans, and was now abandoned by them to his fate. His punishment and subjugation were to Artaxerxes a far more immediate and important matter than the Roman war. It was several years before Armenia was wholly conquered, and the ambitious Artaxerxes was growing old. Some further record we find of wars and conquests in the far East, in Scythia, and in India; and then, quite suddenly, Artaxerxes gave up his throne. He had always been a religious man; his first rebellion against Parthia was partly religious; and it seems probable that he spent his old age in religious retirement and meditation. His mission was accomplished: Persia was again at the head of a great empire.
Sapor, the son of Artaxerxes, succeeded to the abandoned throne, and ruled Persia for over thirty years (240-272 A.D.). He was the worthy son of a great father. Fired with the same dream of Persian glory, he deliberately reopened the war with the Romans. At first he met reverses, but, having taken several years to strengthen his forces, he renewed the attack. His cavalry spread over Mesopotamia and Syria with such rapidity that he had captured the great city of Antioch, the Roman capital in the East, before the inhabitants knew of his approach. An actor in the theatre was the first to inform the astonished audience that the Persians held possession of the city.
The Roman emperor, Valerian, hurried in person to defend his kingdom against this formidable foe. He was a veteran commander; and the Persians, who had defied and defeated his lesser generals, retreated before him. He eagerly followed them toward the Euphrates. His provisions ran short; Roman treachery conspired against him; then suddenly the Persians turned and surrounded his troops. It was a trap. For a second time, an entire Roman army was annihilated by Persian generalship. Few or none of Valerian's soldiers escaped, and he himself was made a prisoner.
On the pages of Roman historians, Sapor's name looms large and terrible. Immediately on his great victory, his troops swept like a devouring flame over all Roman Asia. We are told that, recapturing Antioch, he killed or sold into slavery its entire population; that he filled the ravines of Cappadocia with dead bodies, so that his cavalry might ride across; that his prisoners were left to starve, and for drink were driven to the river once a day like horses. These stories may be exaggerated, but they show the terror in which the Romans held him. Never before had their empire suffered such a frightful humiliation. At last, laden with plunder and sated with blood, Sapor withdrew half-unwillingly to Persia.
The Romans never made any serious attempt to avenge this fearful raid, or to rescue their captured emperor. Sapor is said to have used the aged and broken man as a block to mount his horse; and whenever poet or historian seeks a tremendous illustration of fallen fortunes, he quotes the tragic fate of the Emperor Valerian. There must have been a savage taint in all the Persian monarchs. Irresponsible and unlimited power is always beset by strange temptations and grossly debasing influences. Nebuchadnezzar is not the only well-meaning despot who has sunk to the level of a beast of the field. The story of Valerian may be, and probably is, exaggerated; for we must remember how intensely the Romans hated Sapor. Still it seems established that, after Valerian's death, his body was flayed, and his stuffed skin hung in a public temple, where it was left to dance in horrible mockery over the heads of Roman ambassadors of later days.
It was this ferocious brutality that was one of the main causes of the weakness of the Persian state. The tyranny of the kings seems to grow more and more intolerable. Rebellions, palace-plots, and murders make up most of the
DARIUS RECEIVES THE PERSIAN CROWN (The Tomb of Darius, Carved by His Own Orders with a Symbolic Picture of His Crowning by the Persian God) From a photograph showing the present condition of the carving, with the scaffolding by which scientists have climbed to study it
THE ruler who succeeded Cambyses in the vast empire of Persia was the able and honored Darius I. Cambyses left no heirs, and Darius, one of his generals, fought his way to sovereignty against many rivals. At one time he had eight revolts upon his hands at once. The native Persians were, however, his supporters throughout; and in the days of his established sovereignty he claimed to be of the royal family of Cyrus and to have been chosen by the Persian god of all good, Ormuzd, as the ruler of the empire.
Darius governed the world wisely, and, for the most part, peacefully. He established post-roads everywhere, and a postal service. He had officers of justice in every land, a police force, and a regular system of taxation. He was also a great builder, the founder of the Persian capital, Persepolis; and his tomb near Persepolis is, perhaps, the most impressive remaining monument of Persian civilization. The face of a frowning precipice has been smoothed in the form of a cross, with the entrance to the tomb in the centre. All around this, the rock face has been carved with inscriptions and sculptures, the chief of which give Darius' own idea of his crowning by Ormuzd, the welcome given him by the true Persians, and his triumph over all the other pretenders to the throne.
Darius founded the line of emperors who ruled Persia until its conquest by Alexander the Great.
story that follows. More than one king celebrated his accession to the throne by slaying all possible rivals.
Occasionally there are heroic deeds to tell; the nation flashes out into sudden, splendid war against the hereditary enemy. A third Roman army was almost destroyed, and its leader, the Emperor Julian, slain during the reign of Sapor II., a monarch who, being born after his father's death, found a throne awaiting his birth, and ruled for seventy-two years, from infancy to beyond the allotted age of man. Chosroes II. in 615 wrested Egypt from the falling empire of Rome, and by 620 held all Asia, realizing for a few brief years the dream of Artaxerxes. Europe was again threatened by a Persian army, for the first time since the Greeks had defeated Xerxes, more than eleven centuries before.
We moderns, with China and India in our thoughts, are apt to speak scornfully of the fighting ability of Asian races. So it is well to understand what these Persians did. No one has ever questioned the prowess of the Roman legions. Only one people ever met them on equal terms in open fight. These were the Persians. They first challenged Rome in the very height of her power; and throughout four centuries the greatest forces the mistress of the world could gather were repeatedly and vainly hurled against Persia. Not one Persian army was destroyed; not one Persian king was led captive in a Roman triumph. Battles were won as often by one nation as by the other; but Rome suffered the great disasters of which we have told; and Rome paid Persia large sums of money for peace so often that the Roman populace complained bitterly, declaring they were become mere tributaries of Persia.
The defense of Petra, one of the most famous sieges in history, established Persian courage and endurance forever. Petra was a rock-hewn fortress on the shores of the Black Sea. The Persians had taken it from Rome, and she sent a powerful army to recapture it. The garrison repelled for months so persistent an attack that, when a rescuing army drove away the assailants, less than one- fourth of the heroic defenders were alive, and the fortress was tumbling to pieces around them. The garrison was increased to three thousand, the fort hastily repaired, and the Persian army withdrew, leaving the new defenders to meet a second siege more savage and bloody than the first. The fort was at last carried by an assault from every side, the Persians having become too reduced to guard all their walls at once. Of the prisoners captured by the Romans, only eighteen were found unwounded, while the remaining Persians, five hundred in number, threw themselves into a central tower, and, refusing all proposals to surrender, fought until every one of them had perished by fire or the sword.
Chosroes II., who spread the Sassanian empire to its widest extent, saw also the beginning of its decline. His plans of European conquest were checked by the genius of the Emperor Heraclius; and in the year 628 he was deposed and killed by his son, Kobad II.
To the crime of parricide, the infamous Kobad soon added that of fratricide, thinking thus, perhaps, to be secure from retributive justice. All the possible heirs to the throne, his brothers and other male relatives, over thirty in number, were slain by his orders. His two sisters were allowed to survive; and, frantic with grief, the unhappy women rushed from the scene of the murder, and denounced the incredible wretch to his face. They cried out that he had swept away Persia's best defense, and all would perish now in a general ruin. They cursed him as the destroyer of his own royal line, and of his country. Remorse seems to have stricken the monster; he hung his head without answer; he remained brooding in his seat, and grew ill. Four days later, he followed his victims to the realm of death and judgment.
There was no one to succeed him. The land plunged headlong into anarchy. Rivals, eager to be king, strove to win by treachery or by brute force, and they struggled fiercely with one another. Kobad's two sisters sat in turn for a little while on the throne, the first queens to reign in Persia. But one died and one was slain. War was everywhere in the land. Famine and pestilence followed in its train. The population of Persia is said to have been reduced one-half during that period of horror. Think what it would mean to you if just one-half of those nearest and dearest, and half of all you know, and half of all those you pass upon the street were taken away forever.
The people unearthed at last one surviving descendant of the old royal line, a boy of fifteen, whose very existence had been kept secret by his parents, lest he, too, should be slain. The exhausted factions gladly united in raising him to the throne, as Isdigerd III.; but it was too late to save Persia.
The Arabs had started on their remarkable career of conquest under Mahomet and his successors: and they now burst like a cyclone upon the enfeebled country. There were years of tremendous fighting. There was one great four-days' battle at Cadesia; but Mahometan fanaticism triumphed. The Persian capital was captured in 639; and so enormous was the wealth of the city that every private soldier in the Arab army had a sum equal almost to two thousand dollars allotted to him as his share of the spoils.
Isdigerd established a new capital in the north near the modern one of Teheran. He continued the war for years in the face of repeated reverses, proving himself a worthy scion of his fierce race. Finally he was able to maintain only a mere guerilla warfare in the mountains; and then a servant stabbed him for the poor reward of his clothes and jewels. The Persian empire sank in blood and the blackness of night.
Persia has remained Mahometan ever since. During the centuries of Arab
XERXES SCOURGES THE SEA (Angered by a Storm, the Persian King Displays the Folly to which Persian Rule Had Sunk)
Painted by the contemporary American artist, J. Steeple Davis
THE reign of Darius had been mainly peaceful. Just at its close one of his generals was defeated by the Greeks of Athens at Marathon. This battle, which meant so much to Europe, seemed very unimportant to the Persians; it was a mere frontier reverse of a small force. Darius was, however, succeeded by his son Xerxes, under whom the was with Greece was carried to a disastrous climax. Xerxes was accounted the handsomest man of his time, but proved also the most feeble; he was as idle and foolish as his father had been active and wise.
Inexperienced in warfare, Xerxes planned an expedition of numbers so vast that he expected them completely to overwhelm the rebellious Greeks. It was not easy for a Persian army to travel all the way to far-off Greece, and Xerxes was weary of the march before it was well begun. When at length his forces reached the strait which separates Asia from Europe, a bridge of ships was built from shore to shore. A storm swept this away, and Xerxes showed his petty wrath by commanding his soldiers to give the sea three hundred lashes with whips, as if it had been a human slave. He also had a set of fetters thrown into the water as a symbol of its bondage to him. After this punishment, though possibly not because of it, the sea behaved better; the bridge of ships held firm, and Xerxes entered Europe.
rule, the Persians gradually forgot their old fire-worshipping religion and became true believers in Mahomet; but they never forgot their old national glory and their unity as a nation. Persia's greatest poets belong to this period of her depression. It was not until 1499 that Persia regained political independence under a native ruler. A religious quarrel between opposing Mahometan sects brought Ismail, a Persian lad of eighteen, to the front as leader of one faction. A couple of boldly planned campaigns and battles placed him on the throne as Shah or Emperor of Persia; and the Persians, seeing in him their nationality revived, rallied eagerly to his support.
The country was seized by the Afghans in 1722; but a brigand chief, Nadir Kuli, a sort of Persian Robin Hood, gradually gathered strength in the northern mountains, fought the Afghans in many battles, and at last drove them from the country. He patriotically replaced the rightful monarch on the throne; but, growing disgusted with the dull inactivity of the court, he deposed his sovereign again, and assumed the royal authority himself. The old Persian dream of empire got hold of him. He conquered all the adjoining independent districts, and then seized Afghanistan and marched into India. Its capital, Delhi, was taken amid immense slaughter. The spoils included the famous “peacock throne,” which is valued at thirteen million dollars, and is still preserved among the treasures of the Shah at Teheran. The great Mogul of India was compelled to purchase peace by a marriage between his daughter and the brigand's son.
Personally, Nadir was a big, handsome, athletic man, and his youthful adventures form a most interesting story, though the Persian's great love of romance has probably thrown a good deal of glamour around his robber life. In his old age an attempt was apparently made to assassinate him. A shot from among his own soldiers struck him as he was leading them in a brilliant battle. He became gloomy, suspicious, cruel, and was finally murdered by his subjects. There was no strong man to take his place; and the country fell into a state of confusion and civil war, which lasted until the establishment of the present Kazar or Turcoman dynasty by Aga-Mohammed, in 1794.
Aga-Mohammed had been a sub-king of the Turcomans in the north of Persia. In his youth he was maltreated and cruelly mutilated by Nadir Kuli; and throughout his long life he revenged himself on all mankind. He passed from one atrocity to another, until he degenerated into one of the most horrible monsters of crime and brutality that have polluted history. He had always been one of the contestants for the royal authority; but it was not until he was very aged that, in 1794, he overthrew the last of his rivals, and was generally acknowledged as Shah of Persia. Two or three years later, he was murdered by some of his servants, made desperate by fear for their own lives.
The date of Aga-Mohammed's accession may be considered as the beginning of modern Persia. He made his own northern city of Teheran capital of the entire country; and he and his successors have done much in the way of decorating it and adding to its beauty. It was in his time, too, that Persia first came in direct contact with the modern European nations.
The province of Georgia, famous in Eastern romance for the beauty of its women and the courage of its men, lay at the northern extremity of Persia, between the Caspian and the Black Sea. In 1783 its ruler, taking advantage of the general anarchy, declared himself independent of Persia, and appealed to Russia to protect him. There was no one to interfere at the moment, and he passed quietly under the Russian protectorate. As soon as Aga-Mohammed was firmly seated on the throne, he attempted to reclaim his rebellious vassal. War with Russia followed, and it was while on a campaign in this district that Mohammed was killed.
The Persians fought with valor and resolution; but they were no match for Russian numbers, aided as these were by modern discipline and cannon. The war was hopeless from the first; yet, in spite of repeated defeats, the Persians refused to make peace. They would not give up what they felt to be their just claim to Georgia, and year after year made incursions into the unhappy province. They yielded at last in 1813, but made a desperate attempt to regain the province in 1825. This second war ended in 1827, with a further loss of territory to them, the northern boundary becoming practically what it is today.
Against Turkey the Persians have been more fortunate. There was a short war between the countries in 1821, and the Persians won an important and bravely contested battle. They came in contact with England through their claims to Afghanistan, which was under a British protectorate. The Shahs could not forget that this wild district had been part of the domain of Nadir Kuli, and they made repeated efforts to reclaim it. In 1837 its capital, Herat, withstood their arms during a ten months' siege, its people being much helped by a few Englishmen within the walls.
This siege was chiefly notable for the part played in it by European diplomacy. A Russian envoy was constantly in the Shah's camp, urging him to continue the assault; while a British envoy was equally active in persuading him to desist. Finally, John Bull gained the best of the queer contest, and the siege was abandoned. In 1856 Herat was assailed again, and this time England actually declared war against Persia. A peace was patched up, however, before there was any serious fighting.
Since then Persia has been the centre of a constant diplomatic strife between English and Russian officials, each seeking to secure the ascendancy of his own nation. Gradually Persia has sunk to be a mere “buffer” state dividing the
THE GREEKS DESPISE PERSIA (Hippocrates, the Great Physician, Refuses All Offers to Go to the Persian Court) After a painting by the German artist, Henry Schopin
THE fleet of Xerxes was crushed, as we have seen, by the Greeks at Salamis. They also defeated his forces on land; and Xerxes, abandoning war forever, lived out his days in idle pleasure in his palace at Persepolis. With him began the decline of the Persian empire and the Persian royal race. His sons, who succeeded him, were feeble, effeminate creatures like himself. The Persian rule only continued because the Greeks, the only other military power left in the world, fought among themselves.
They defeated the Persians several times, and learned to think so little of them and their wealth that the story of Hippocrates is characteristic of both races. He was a very noted physician, called “the father of medicine,” and celebrated for having saved several Greek cities from the ravages of plague. Artaxerxes, king of Persia, sent for him to perform a similar work in Persepolis. Hippocrates refused to go. The envoys, astonished, increased their offers of reward until they promised him the revenues of an entire province. Hippocrates told them that Greek life and freedom gave him all he wanted. Artaxerxes then sent word that if Hippocrates continued to refuse, the Persians would destroy the Greek cities. The sage answered that there was little danger of any Persian venturing to war with Greece; nor did Artaxerxes attempt to make good his threat.
Physicians today, on entering their profession, still take the “Oath of Hippocrates,” vowing to live with the same self-sacrifice and purity of purpose as he did.
Asiatic empire of Russia from the “Indian Empire” of England to the south. The two great powers have even agreed to a division of the still nominally independent country into so-called “spheres of influence,” the Russians assuming to direct affairs through all the northern half of Persia, and the English “advising” in most of what was left.
Then in 1905 Persia once more attracted the attention of the world. The Persians re-asserted their ancient love of liberty and arose in revolt against their own feeble government. The odd course of this revolution was largely shaped by the unofficial “influence” of the two European powers. The Persian Shah, Muzaffir- al-din, had been ruling solely in the interest of a few favored courtiers, who plundered the people with impunity. The robbery grew unbearable, and many of the Mahometan priests, or “Mollahs,” in Teheran resorted to an ancient and peculiarly Persian form of protest called the “bast.” They took refuge in a sacred shrine where religion would not permit the Shah's officers to seize them; and from there they vehemently voiced their protests. The Shah and his friends coaxed the priests into an abandonment of the “bast” by promising reforms. But these royal pledges proved empty words, and the revolt was renewed.
This time the bast took more serious form. Trusting no longer to the protection of their shrines, the protestors chose as their place of refuge the gardens of the English legation at Teheran. Hundreds of them gathered there, chief priests, prominent merchants, and influential citizens of every type. The refugees were supplied with food by friends, and the bast continued for several weeks. Probably this strange revolt would only have resulted in the execution of the protestors had they chosen any other shelter than the English legation; but the government dared not drag them thence, so at length the Shah's chief adviser, his grand vizier, or “Atabeg,” again promised reforms. His assurances were derided by the rebels, until both the English and the Russian governments guaranteed that they would see that the pledges were kept. Then the bast ended, and in the fall of 1906 an assembly was convened and a Persian constitution was prepared.
On January 1, 1907, this constitution was accepted and proclaimed by the Shah. Persia ceased to be an absolute monarchy, a government controlled only by the conscience of its ruler and the loyalty of his subjects. The country had been thus governed ever since the days of Cyrus and Cambyses; now it became, in name at least, a limited or constitutional monarchy.
Unhappily this proved not the end, but only the beginning of the conflict and the tumult. A few days after the proclamation of the constitution the old Shah died, broken-hearted, said some, at having lost the loyalty of his people; poisoned, whispered others, by the reactionaries who made up his court. He was succeeded by his son, Mohammed Ali, who had no intention of submitting to the constitutional concessions of his father.
Indeed, from this point onward the Persian revolution reminds one most interestingly of the great French Revolution of 1789. We can trace the parallel step by step, in the moves of the reactionary monarch, the selfish aristocrats intrenched in power, the wavering, untried parliament, and the embittered people urged on by their local “committees” of patriots like the Paris Jacobin clubs of old. Every reform attempted by the new and unpractised parliament, or “medjliss,” as it was called, was nullified by Mohammed Ali. The country was bankrupt, but every effort to tax the rich nobles of the court was defeated by them. Newspapers sprang up everywhere voicing the protest of the people in this struggle for liberty. The Medjliss itself proved powerless against the Shah, but throughout the country there sprang up secret “committees” whose members undertook the direction of the patriots.
In August, 1907, the Atabeg, or vizier, Azim, suspected of being the chief opponent of reform, was assassinated. So bitter did the people become against the Shah that his own partisans visited him in a body and warned him that he must obey the constitution or they also would desert him.
Mohammed Ali then resolved on a “coup d'etat.” He had a police force in Teheran consisting of a brigade of wild cossacks whose faithfulness, or rather on whose antagonism to the citizens, he felt he could rely. In June, 1908, the cossacks arrested some of the patriots; there was armed resistance, men were slain on both sides, and the Shah promptly declared the parliament dissolved. The armed cossacks expelled the members from the meeting chamber, and many of the chief patriots were arrested. There was confused fighting in the streets; the parliament house was burned, and some two thousand lives sacrificed in blood. But the unready citizens proved no match for the cossack brigade, and the capital soon lay helpless in the grasp of its ruler.
In his restored power the Shah appealed to the religious prejudices of his people. One of the most difficult problems which had distracted the Medjliss was that of religious toleration, of allowing others than mahometans to vote. The franchise had finally been granted to all. This the Shah now declared to be an infringement of the law of Allah; “unbelievers” could not be permitted to rule believers. The entire revolt was asserted to be the work of the Babites a religious sect opposed to Mahometanism. Allah was said to disapprove of any plan for limiting the will of His divinely-appointed rulers. And finally the Shah announced that the whole constitution was irreligious, and was therefore cancelled.
Rebellion flew to arms. The capital was helpless, but the great northern city of Tabriz was seized by the revolutionists. The Shah's cossacks attacked it,
THE FALL OF DARIUS (Alexander the Great Mourns over the Death of His Noble Rival, Darius) From a drawing by Gustave Dore
As Persia grew weak, the cities Greece grew strong. Finally, Phillip of Macedon gathered the power of all the little Greek states under his leadership, and Phillip's son, Alexander the Great, led the Grecian forces on his celebrated invasion of the Persian empire. A young and energetic emperor, Darius III., sat upon the Persian throne. He has just broken the control of his palace officials and made himself the real master of his realm. Hence he left to his satraps in Asia Minor the repulse of these intruding Greeks. Not until Alexander had conquered Asia Minor did the Persians rouse themselves to realize the seriousness of their danger. Then Darius gathered all the forces of his empire and met Alexander bravely but unsuccessfully in two tremendous battles at Issus and Arbela.
The defeat at Arbela was final and irretrievable. Darius fled hopeless, with only a small band of followers; and the leader of these slew him treacherously to win favor with the Greeks. Alexander, pursuing Darius in hot haste, came upon the dying monarch, abandoned by the roadside. Tradition says that Alexander was deeply touched, that with his own hand he helped Darius to a glass of water, and that he vowed vengeance on the slayer. He seems not to have realized his own deeper criminality, the thousand of deaths which lay directly to his charge and the destruction of an entire nationality. The Persian empire was no more.
and it withstood a regular siege for almost a year, from June, 1908, to April, 1909. Just as starvation seemed about to compel the surrender of the city, the Russian government interfered and sent troops to protect the citizens. Then the cossacks withdrew.
Russia's attitude encouraged other revolutionists. Most notable of these were a strong semi-independent tribe, the Bakhtiaris, who now declared against the Shah, and an energetic guerilla official, commonly known as the Sipahdar. The Sipahdar led a strong force of revolutionists against the capital, defeated the cossack brigade beneath its walls, and entered the city in triumph as a deliverer (July, 1999)
The constitutional monarchy was restored; the Sipahdar became Minister of Ward under the new government; the Shah abdicated and was driven into exile, and his little son, seven years old, was proclaimed Shah as Ahmed Mirza. The child king did not want to leave his father and mother and cried drearily over his elevation in rank. When he was taken to the Russian consulate for protection, the officials there warned him with mock severity that nobody was allowed to cry within those walls. The unhappy little monarch checked his tears, and with his baby mind thus roused to self-control he has since solemnly accepted whatever came to him.
The new government has not found its pathway easy. The first regent appointed to govern in the name of the child Shah died, and was succeeded by a noted patriot Nasr-el-Mulk, who had been banished, and who was now with difficulty persuaded to leave his comfortable exile in Paris and return to troubleridden Persia. The financial problems confronting the government were enormous; jangling political parties found it impossible to agree; the guerilla bands which has everywhere sprung up in rebellion against the old Shah refused to disperse. England warned the government that if trade and travel were not made safe along the roads, she would have to interfere and enforce order within her “sphere”. Finally, to cap the climax, the banished Shah, Mohammed Ali, landed suddenly in northern Persia with a fore of cossacks and attempted to regain his throne (July, 1911).
This invasion and counter-revolution resulted in the most vigorous fighting the upheaval had yet caused. Mohammed Ali's forces were met by the Bakhtiaris, the powerful nomadic tribe who were upholding the new government. Trustworthy details of the struggle never reached the outside world, but probably about a thousand cossacks faced some three thousand Bakhtiari warriors in several fierce battles. Finally Mohammed Ali was completely defeated, and led almost alone to safety in Russia.
The Persians accused Russia of having inspired this invasion. Indeed, many Persians began to suspect both Russia and England of deliberately fomenting all the confusion of the distracted country, so as to have excuse for taking forcible possession of the land. Persia appealed to the United States government to send her a financial advisor; and Mr. Morgan Shuster, recommended by President Taft, undertook the work in 1910.
His energetic handling of the Persian treasury soon placed the country in a far better monetary position; but he came into sharp conflict with the Russian interests. The American view of the matter can not but be one of sympathy with Mr. Shuster, though we must remember that he was in Persia as a private citizen and in no way officially representing or upheld by the United States. After the repulse of Mohammed Ali's invasion the ex-Shah's property and that of his chief supporters was confiscated by the Persian government. In one of the palaces some Russian officials claimed that the property had been mortgaged to their country, and they refused to surrender possession of the palace. To American views, this defiance of the order of a sovereign government, this assertion of personal physical force rather than submission and presentation of the matter to the courts of justice, seems wholly wrong. So thought Mr. Shuster, and he had the government police take forcible possession of the disputed property. Russia. Long dissatisfied with Shuster's regime, made this the reason for demanding his dismissal.
The Persians believed in Shuster. They were a unit in refusing Russia's demand. They were still, said they, an independent nation and would not have their officials appointed or dismissed by foreign powers. Russia backed her command by armed force, by an invasion. The Persians appealed to England to protect their independence, but Russia promised solemnly not to seize Persian territory, and England refused to interfere. The Persian parliament, or “Medjliss,” repeatedly declared they would not sign away their country's freedom by obeying Russia's dictation. Persian soldiers resisted Russia's advance desperately, but helplessly. The regent and his cabinet urged submission. Finally they sent troops who expelled the parliament members from their chamber amid more bloodshed.
Constitutional government was thus a second time overthrown by irresponsible power. The regent announced Persia's full acceptance of Russia's dictates and dismissed Shuster from office and from the country. Even this did not check the advance of the Russian troops. They insisted on vengeance for the losses they had suffered from the Persians who had resisted their invasion. They seized the western capital, Tiflis, and slew several hundred people there. The leader of the troops who had resisted them, they hanged. Early in 1912 Russian troops took entire possession of two of the northern Persian provinces including the “holy city” Meshed. The Russian government still issues assurances that this occupation is only temporary.
Persia-Present Condition 101
England seemed acting in harmony with Russia. Two powers united in 1912 in compelling Persia to acknowledge their “sphere of influence,” and to dismiss the irregular forces, the Bakhtiaris and other similar tribes which have done all of Persia's effective fighting for her. She was even compelled to pay a pension to the Shah whom she expelled. Russia and England began discussing plans for constructing a railway from end to end of Persia, from Russian territory of India. The unhappy land lies helpless, still nominally an independent kingdom, but really a province helpless in the grip of the European powers, which are struggling over her helpless body.
CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE OF PERSIAN HISTORY
B.C. 1500 (?)-Teachings of Zoroaster. 1000 (?)-The Persians and Medes enter Persia from the north and gradually take possession of it. 750 (?)-Possible rule of Achaemenes in Persia, the first Persian king. 700 (?)-Deioces said to have gathered the Medes into a single kingdom. 647 (?)-Phraortes, the Median leader, rules also over Persia and Elam; the attacks the Assyrians and is slain. 625- Cyaxares, son of Phraortes, rallies the Medes after his father's defeat; he attacks Nineveh. He defeats the Scyths. 610-He unites with Babylon in a third war on Assyria. 607-He destroys Nineveh, and establishes a Median Empire. 593-He wars against Lydia. 585-Astyages succeeds Cyaxares as the Median monarch. 553- Cyrus, the vassal king of Persia. revolts against Astyages. 550-Cyrus conquers Ecbatana, the Median capital, and becomes ruler of the united Medes and Persians. The Persian Empire begins. 548-Lydia, Egypt, Babylon, and Sparta unite against Cyrus; he attacks Lydia. 546-He storms Sardis, the Lydian capital, and conquers Croesus, its king. 545-Cyrus completely subjugates Asia Minor and begins the conquest of central Asia. 539-Returning from his eastern victories, he attacks Babylon. 538-Cyrus conquers Babylon. 529-Death of Cyrus; his son Cambyses slays his other son Smerdis, and sets out to conquer Egypt. 525-Battle of Pelusium and overthrow of Egypt. 524-loses his armies in the desert. 522- Revolt of the false Smerdis; Cambyses commits suicide. 521-Darius overthrows the false Smerdis and reconquers the revolted provinces. 515-Darius organizes the Persian empire; he invades European Scythia. 490-The Greeks repel the Persians at Marathon. 485-Darius is succeeded by Xerxes. 480-The great invasion of Greece by Xerxes repelled at Salamis; Xerxes retires to Persepolis. 479-The Persians driven from Greece by the defeats of Plataea and Mycale. 470-Repeated naval defeats at the hands of Greeks. 465-Xerxes assassinated; the rule of the palace officials begins. 460-Egypt rebels, but is reconquered after six years of war. 405-Egypt wins independence. 401-Cyrus, a Persian prince, fights for the empire by the aid of Greek mercenaries; he is defeated; retreat of the “ten thousand" Greeks under Xenophon. 365-Asia Minor revolts from Persia. 340-Artaxerxes III. reconquers Egypt. 336-Philip of Macedon invades the Persian empire; he dies. 334-Alexander of Macedon invades the Persian empire, wins Asia Minor by the battle of Granicus. 333-Alexander defeats the Persian king Darius at Issus, and captures Tyre. 331-Final overthrow of the Persians by Alexander at Arbela; Persepolis captured and burned. 323-Alexander dies at Babylon and his generals struggle for his empire. 312-The general Seleucus secures Persia and establishes the Greek-Persian kingdom of the Seleucidae. 250-The Parthians conquer Persia.
A.D. 226-The Persians under Artaxerxes revolt against Parthia. 227-Artaxerxes overthrows the Parthians at Hormuz and establishes the Second Persian Empire. He restores the religion of Zoroaster and persecutes Christianity. 232-He annihilates a Roman army led by the Emperor Severus. 240-Artaxerxes resigns his throne and is succeeded by Sapor I. 258-Sapor conquers Mesopotamia. 260-He defeats the Romans and captures the Emperor Valerian. 273-Varaharan I. Persecutes the Manichees and the Christians. 277-Varahran II. is defeated by the Emperor Probus, and makes peace. 298-The Emperor Galerius conquers Mesopotamia; peace with Diocletian. 326-Sapor II. proscribes Christianity. 337-He makes war successfully with Rome for the lost provinces. 363-The Emperor Julian invades Persia and is slain; his successor, Jovian, purchases his retreat by surrendering provinces. 365-Sapor annexes Armenia. 420-Varahran V. persecutes Christians. 421-He conquers Arabia Felix. 422-He makes peace with the Eastern Empire for 100 years. 430-32-Wars with Huns, Turks, etc. 531-d79-Choroes I. king; long wars with Justinian and his successors. 541-Belisarius meets the first defeat of his career from the Persians; defeats them in turn. 550-Siege of Petra. 603-Chosroes II. renews the war with success. 614-16-Egypt and Asia Minor subdued. 627-Chosroes defeated by the Emperor Heraclius; put to death by his own son. 628-Kobad II. king; murders all his male relatives. 630-The daughters of Chosroes, reign; terrible pestilence. 632-Isdigerd III., a child, the last of the Persian emperors. 633-The empire assailed by the Arabs. 636-Four day's battle at Kadisiyeh. 641-Final destruction of Persian power in the battle of Nehavend, called by the Arabs the “victory of Victories.” 651-Death of Isdigerd. 661-Persian becomes the seat of the Shiite or Fatimite Mahometans. 1038-Persian subdued by Togrul Beg and the Seljukian Turks. 1194-The Turks are expelled. 1223-Persia subdued by Genghis Khan and the Mongols. 1345-Bagdad made the capital. 1399-Persia ravaged by Timur. 1468-Persia conquered by the Turcomans. 1499-Ismail, a native Persian, expels the Turcomans, and establishes the Sophi dynasty of Shiite Mahometans. 1586—1628-Reign of Shah Abbass, the Great. 1590- Ispahan made the capital. 1638-The Turks take Bagdad; dreadful massacre. 1722- The Afghans seize Persia. 1727-Nadir Kuli drives them out. 1732-He assumes the throne, conquers Afghanistan and invades India. 1747-Nadir assassinated. 1783- Georgia revolts to Russia. 1794-The present dynasty established by Aga-Mohammed; war with Russia. 1796-Teheran made the capital. 1813-Georgia given up to Russia. 1825-27-War with Russia. 1837-Siege of Herat. 1856-Rupture with England through the Persians taking Herat; war declared; Persians yield. 1857-Peace ratified at Teheran. 1858-The Shah reorganizes the government; strong British influence in Persia. 1867-Electric telegraph introduced. 1888-First railway constructed in Persia, from Teheran to Shah-Abdul-Azim, opened. The river Karun decreed open to all nations by the intervention of England. 1893-Revolt of the Barharloos suppressed; great earthquake at Kuchan, 12,000 deaths. 1895-Kuchan rebuilt, and again destroyed by earthquake, 11,000 lives lost. 1896-The Shah shot by an assassin; succeeded by prince Muzaffir-al-Din, his son. 1900-The Shah visits the European capitals; an attempt to assassinate him made, near Paris.
1905-The Persians revolt against the corruption of Muzaffir's officials and demand a constitutional government. 1906-An assembly convened. 1907-A constitution established; the Shah dies; his successor Mohammed Ali opposes the constitution; his vizier assassinated. 1908-Mohammed Ali drives out the parliament and abolishes the constitution; Tabriz and other cities revolt; Tabriz besieged. 1909-Revolutionists capture Teheran, restore the constitution and drive the Shah into exile. His little son Ahmed is made Shah under a regent. 1910-Morgan Shuster, an American, undertakes the financial reform of Persia. 1911-The ex-Shah Mohammed Ali invades the country; he is driven out after several battles. The Russians demand the expulsion of Mr. Shuster; the Persian parliament refuses; the Russians invade Persia and seize Tabriz after sharp fighting; many Persians slain. The Persian cabinet dismisses the parliament and submits to Russia. 1912-Mr. Shuster, driven from his post, returns to America. 1913-England and Russia consolidate their power over Persia.
SHAHS OF PERSIA A.D. 1499-Ismail, or Ishmael. 1523-Tamasp or Thamas I. 1576-Ismail II. Murza 1577-Mahommed Murza. 1586-Abbass I. the Great. 1628-Sophi I. 1641-Abbas II. 1666-Sophi II. 1694-Hussein. 17722-Mahmoud, and Afghan chief. 1725-Ashraff, the Usurper. 1727-Tamasp or Thamas II. 1732-Abbas III. 1736-Nadir Kuli. A.D. 1747-Shah Rokh. 1751-(Interregnum). 1759-KUreem Khan. 1779-Many competitors for the throne, and assassinations, till- 1974-Aga-Mohammed obtained the power, and founded the reigning (Turcoman) dynasty. 1797-Futteh Ali Shah. 1834-Mahommed Shah. 1848-Nasr-il-Deen. 1896-Muzaffer-al-Din. 1907-Mohammed Ali. 1909-Ahmed.
[Authorities: Petrie, “History of Egypt”; Maspero, “Dawn of Civilization,” “Struggle of the Nations,” and “The Passing of the Empires”; Newberry, “Short History of Ancient Egypt”; Birch, “Egypt from the Earliest Times to B.C. 300”; Rawlinson, “History of Ancient Egypt",; Brugsch, “History of Egypt under the Pharaohs”; Mahaffy, “Empire of the Ptolemies” Lanoye, “Rameses the Great; or Egypt 3300 Years Ago”; Erman, “Life in Ancient Egypt”; Massey, “Book of the Beginnings”; Sayce, “Egypt of the Hebrews and Herodotus”; Muir; “Mameluke or Slave Dynasty of Egypt, 1260-1517 A.D.”; Bakon, “Syria and Egypt under the Last Five Sultans of Turkey”; Vogt, “Egyptian War of 1882”; DeLeon, “Egypt under its Khedives”; Bowen, “Conflict of East and West in Egypt”; Sharpe, “History of Egypt”; Lane, “Modern Egyptians”; McCoan, “Egypt as It Is.”]
EGYPT has always been a land of wonder and of mystery. We of today look on it with reverence for its age, amazement for its giant statues and stupendous pyramids, awe for its strange civilization and secret priesthoods. And these same emotions toward the ancient land were already in the heart of man in old Phoenician days, before either Persia or Greece had written a name in history, before Abraham walked with angles in the fields of Palestine.
Indeed, that sense of mystery must have touched even the earliest. Babylonian traders when, three thousand years or more before the birth of Christ they first penetrated into the valley of the Nile, coming after months of journeying across dreary wildernesses and amid barbaric tribes, to study with their shrewdly watchful eyes a people almost their equals. For in this distant valley they encountered a civilization unlike yet nearly as advanced as that which they themselves had built up in Babylonia.
In the story we have so far followed, we have seen that the chief movements of man's growth, the tale of his slowly rising culture and political power, continued to centre in the valley of the Euphrates from the very earliest beginnings down to the time of the decay of the first Persian empire. But meanwhile, strangely enough, there was growing up in this other similar river valley of the Nile another wholly independent and oddly contrasting civilization. Egypt, lying far off in Africa, apart from the main highroad of migrating nations, and protected from invasion by the surrounding deserts, was not, like Babylonia, a great “melting pot” wherein many races mixed, uniting many languages and many differing modes of thought. Instead, a single race, the Hamites, built up along the Nile by natural development a culture and philosophy wholly their own, peculiar, powerful, unique. The possessed wonderful mechanical appliances which even our scientists of today can not explain, and beautiful decorative arts whose secrets we may never know.
Many ages must have passed while they were discovering and perfecting their wide knowledge. Yet behind them we are beginning to catch glimpses of a different and older people who lived along the Nile before even the Egyptians came there. It may well be that race after race of mankind has grown to power and old age, and has perished in this same silent, secret, mysterious land. Today the Hamitic Egyptians would be almost as forgotten as earlier peoples, had they not erected those remarkable monuments, which time has been unable to destroy.
Little by little the story of this extraordinary race, the battles of their mighty kings, the arts of their patient workmen, the secrets of their subtle priests, are being unfolded to us by the researches of science. And each new marvel that we learn suggests other and greater marvels behind. Let us look into these.
Egypt has been well called the “Gift of the Nile.” What the land is, the Nile has made it. In the geographies, Egypt is an oblong tract, filling the whole corner of Africa, five hundred miles broad and over a thousand long. But nine- tenths of this is mere waste space, uninhabitable, burning desert. The Egypt of history is simply the Nile valley, one long narrow strip through the middle of this desert.
A strange river, the Nile! It has its mysteries as striking as the country's own. During all these ages, the delta at the mouth has been a centre of civilization, yet the other end of the stream, its source, remains unknown. “It rises in heaven,” the old Egyptian priests told Herodotus, the Greek historian, who came among them seeking information; and, though we have discarded that explanation of the priests, yet even in this twentieth century we can only say a little less vaguely that it rises somewhere in the unexplored wilderness of Central Africa. The river, which perhaps in all the world has been longest known, has not even yet been traced to its farthest streamlet.
You can best picture the Nile to yourself by imagining it as a palm-tree. The many streams which join far back in Africa to form it are the roots, tremendously big, old roots, which, as we follow them toward their source, gradually divide and subdivide into the tiniest thread-like filaments, each coaxing its single drop of moisture from the ground. Then there is the great trunk of the river itself, flowing northward sixteen hundred miles without a tributary. Then, less than a hundred miles from the Mediterranean, it suddenly spreads out like a fan into a beautiful green delta, a network of branches and canals, amid a land famous for its enormous produce and its luxuriant vegetation.
This delta in the old days was “Lower Egypt”; and just where the branches spread from the trunk stood its capital city, the famous Memphis. “Upper Egypt” was the narrow valley of the Nile, reaching from Memphis six hundred miles as the river flowed, to where a low ledge of rock stretching from bank to bank formed the first cataract, the boundary of Egypt proper. Beyond lay Nubia and the Soudan. Through all this distance Egypt is but a cleft in the desert; the Nile flows through a deep valley, which it has been tunnelling for ages from the surrounding cliffs. These red sandstone cliffs rise abruptly at an average distance of about three miles from the stream's bank; and all along, under them, or carved from them, or reared on their summit, stand thousands of tombs and statues and pyramids. The ancient Egyptian was very anxious to preserve his memory after death; and nature here supplied him a site which has kept his graveyard visible to all the world.
Beyond these cliffs on each side lies the high plateau of the desert; between them, the greenest, richest, most productive land the world can boast. That narrow valley has supported a population of uncounted millions. Herodotus tells us there were twenty thousand cities in Egypt in his day.
The wonderful fertility of this soil is, like everything good in Egypt, the gift of the Nile. Every July, without excitement, without visible cause, the river slowly begins to rise. There are marks in many places along the banks, and anxious natives watch these, hour by hour, calling to each other in joy, “It rises!” or in fear and prayer, “It does not rise!” for this means life and death to them. Once or twice in the last half century the river did not rise, and then there was a famine in the land. But usually it rises, day by day, week by week, until by September it has flooded all the valley. At the first cataract it is about forty feet above its ordinary level; at Thebes, the capital
THE REVIVAL OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE (Artaxerxes Celebrates His Establishment of the “Second Persian Empire")
From a painting by the recent Roman artist, A Riva
AFTER the Persian empire had been crushed by Alexander the Great, the Persian people remained during five hundred years subject to one nation of conquerors after another. The Greeks, the Romans, and then the parthians dominated the land. Yet the brave-hearted Persians through all this period never ceased to dream of their independence and ancient greatness. Then, at length, their power was suddenly restored by the romance and heroism of a single man, Artaxerxes. He was one of their ancient nobility who revolted against Parthia, raised the standard of Persia's traditional glory, and summoned his people to resume their dominion. They responded eagerly. Their romantic young leader sent a challenge to the Parthians to meet his followers in even battle and decide which nation should rule the other. The challenge was accepted and the Parthians to meet his followers in even battle and decide which nation should rule the other. The challenge was accepted and the Persians were victorious in the tremendous two- days' battle of Hormuz. Artaxerxes next, in similar fashion, sent defiance to the Romans, and defeated them also.
This gorgeous and dashing prince then set himself to revive the shadowy splendor of the former Persian court. The dances and games of earlier days were displayed before him, and the fiercer sport of dalliance with dangerous beasts. Artaxerxes, however, soon wearied of these spectacles. Religion and love of country had urged him to his work. Now that his aim was accomplished he resolved to withdraw to a life of religious meditation. He abandoned his throne to his son.
Egypt-Menes Founds the Kingdom
of upper Egypt, it is thirty-six, Memphis twenty-five, and there, spreading out over the lowlands of the Delta, it drops to only four feet at the Mediterranean. The country is a sea; the villages, little mounds peeping above the waters.
Then the waters retreat as silently and mysteriously as they have risen. By November the river is back within its old banks, leaving the land covered inches deep with a film of mud, from which all plant life springs as if by magic.
No wonder the old Egyptians said their god made the river rise, and worshipped him. What better can we say today? We discuss learnedly the superficial means by which it is done; we call it the result of storms in Central Africa, of melting snows of Abyssinian mountains; but the central fact remains unchanged. God makes the river rise, that His People may be fed.
In this marvellous valley there lived, in days so remote that we cannot even guess when, a people of whose history we know nothing, except that they were conquered by another race who came from the East, that is, from Asia. The latter were the Egyptians of whom we know, a Hamitic race, perhaps closely associated with the early people of the Euphrates, for the very crude civilization they brought with them had touches that remind us of the canal-making and brick- building of Babylonia.
The Egyptians themselves said that they were children of the god Osiris, and that they had gods for their kings in Egypt during a period of 449,000 years. This is, of course, the mere babble of romance. Kings they had, of whose tombs we are beginning to find traces; but we know little historically until we come to Menes, the king who, as-Herodotus was told, brought all the little kingdoms of the land into a single great one, and built his capital at Memphis.
For a long time, Menes was considered as imaginary as the god-kings who preceded him. Learned men called him an eponym, an ugly name which means that the people of Memphis, having forgotten who built their city, invented a builder from the city's name, and declared it the work of king named “Memphes” or “Menes.” But in this case, at least, the learned men were wrong, for lately, in that stupendous graveyard along the Nile of which I told you, the tomb of Menes has been found with many interesting relics, both of him and of his ancestors.
Just recently too, scientists have talked of the possibility of a passage leading inside the sphinx, that most rugged and ancient of all the Egyptian monuments. They believe the sphinx may be a religious memorial erected by Menes' orders. So Menes was as real flesh-and-blood a person as you an I, even if there are some six or seven thousand years between him and us.
Before telling you further of Menes and the kings that follow him, let me explain how we come to know Egyptian history, and how learned men are beset with difficulties in its study. Herodotus, the Greek, went to Egypt about the year 418 B.C.; and the Egyptian priests laughed at him, as belonging to a nation that “had no history,” that is to say, whose history only extended back in rather hazy outlines some seven centuries. So Herodotus, like an abashed child, sat himself down at the feet of these men to learn something; and they obligingly filled him full of their own history; and he wrote it all down as they told it. What was true and that false probably the priests themselves did not know; but it was certainly impressive to a stranger.
Only one writer added much to Herodotus. This was Manetho, an Egyptian priest of the third century B.C. He wrote a history of his country, but only a few fragments of it have been preserved to us. So at the beginning of the nineteenth century we knew little of ancient Egypt beyond the uncertain tale of Herodotus. The land itself was covered with stone carvings, hieroglyphics meant to tell its story; but no man could read them.
When, a little more than a hundred years ago, Napoleon Bonaparte led a great military expedition into Egypt, one of his engineers, while digging the foundation of a fort near the Rosetta mouth of the Nile, came upon a stone tablet some three feet in length, on which was an inscription in three different characters. The lowest of the inscriptions was in Greek, and of course there was no difficulty in translating it. It was found to be an ordinance of the priests ordering certain honors to an Egyptian sovereign on the occasion of his coronation, 196 B.C. It commanded that the decree should be inscribed in three languages, in the sacred letters, or hieroglyphics, in the letters of the country or demotic, and in Greek letters. This was for the convenience of the mixed population.
Now, you will see how valuable a find this was to scholars, who after a time succeeded in unravelling the alphabet of the hieroglyphics, and since then have read with ease the carvings, which throw a flood of light on the ancient history of Egypt.
One unfortunate difficulty remains. The Egyptians see to have had no regular system of chronology. That is to say, they did not date all their history from one great event, as we do from the birth of Christ. Under each new king, apparently in compliment to him, they began counting again, and dated events only as happenings in such and such a year of his reign. We have a fairly complete list of their kings, and it looks, of course, as though it would be an easy matter just to average all the reigns together, and so learn the dates of the earlier ones. But Herodotus, trying some such plan, placed Menes in the year 12,000 B.C., and another writer carried the enormous total back to 16.402 B.C. The fragments of Manetho, and later the hieroglyphics themselves, showed.
THE SISTER QUEENS (The Sisters, Helpless in Their Palace, Await Destruction)
From the painting by the recent German artist, M. Bredt
MOST pathetic, perhaps, of all Persian tales is that of the two queens who ruled the land for a brief moment in the days of its downfall. The savage spirit displayed by Sapor Continued typical of the Persian royal house for centuries. At length a king, Kobad, having gained the throne by the assassination of his own father, attempted to murder all his relatives that he might be secure from being assassinated in his turn. Six months later he died of the plague. In the Persian capital, Ctesiphon, there were plague, civil war, robbery, and every form of terror. Then the Arab followers of Mahomet burst into the land.
The last survivors of the royal house, two young sisters, were placed upon the throne. They had no real power. Savage generals fought blindly among themselves, while the enemy ravaged the provinces, and the two young queens in the seclusion of the palace courts awaited their turn for death. Boran, the elder sister, perished within a year. Azarmidot, the younger, then made a more determined fight for herself. She overthrew one pretender who had seized the throne. She secured the death of another rebel, the grand-marshal of Khorasan. But the son of the latter, a noted Persian warrior named Rustam, dethroned her and cast her into a loathsome prison. He then met the Mahometan invaders. But the Persians were completely defeated, and their land has remained Mahometan ever since.
us that these dates were absurd. But even very lately scientists have disagreed to the extent of over three thousand years, one authority placing Menes' date at 5702 B.C., while another brought it down to 2691. The difficulty is that many of these kings, and even whole families of them, appear to have been contemporaneous. A father would associate his son with him on the throne or one family might rule in Memphis while another was ruling at Thebes. We are gradually approaching the truth, getting light in the dark places. Within the last decade, the date of 2700 B.C. has been abandoned as obviously far too late, and we can say with reasonable security that 4000 or even 5000 B.C. is not too ancient a date to set for the establishment of the empire of Menes.
Recent exploration among the tombs enables us now to look back even a step beyond Menes. We can see that before his time upper Egypt must have been divided into a number of petty states, city states such as existed in early Babylonia. The ruler of one of these, who is known to us only by his totem or family sign, the scorpion, and whose tribe bore the sign of the hawk, made himself master of four confederated states and with this power attacked the little states lying nearer the mouth of the Nile. Returning home in triumph after a contest which his inscription declares ended in victory, the Scorpion assumed a crown and called himself monarch of upper Egypt. The white crown of the “Scorpion” became thereafter the symbol of upper Egyptian sovereignty.
The Scorpion was succeeded by another king whose name we read doubtfully from his inscriptions as Narmer or Be-zau, or perhaps even as Menes; for either he or his son was this same Menes of whom Herodotus had heard. Narmer continued the invasion of lower Egypt, which seems to have been a land more settled and advanced than his own. Led by the god or symbol of his people, the hawk, he slew thousands of his opponents, made captives of “a hundred and twenty thousand,” and proudly adds on his inscriptions the exact figures of half a million oxen and a million and a half of goats which he also subjected to his rule, leading them into the rigors of captivity not wholly strange to them.
From his conquests Narmer brought back to his capital, Hierakonpolis, many artisans from lower Egypt, who were capable of erecting artistic monuments to his triumph. In fact, we have here on a smaller, narrower scale just what happened in the Euphrates region when the wild Semites of the upper valley defeated the more cultured Sumerians and appropriated their arts.
We can not clearly make out whether Narmer and Menes are really one person or two, a father and his son. But it was Narmer who won these victories and who now assumed the red crown of lower Egypt in addition to the white crown of his own domain. He wedded a princess. Neithhetep, apparently from the lower Egyptian capital, which was at Sais, and he thus united the two reigning houses. It may be that Menes was the child rather than the husband in this marriage which united all Egypt into a single state; and thus Menes the son was reckoned as the first legitimate ruler of the whole land.
With Menes the story told by Herodotus unites Egypt, with the vague data of the earliest monuments. Menes dwelt chiefly in lower Egypt, the more civilized portion of his dominion, and built Memphis there to be his capital. But his tomb lies in his older home of upper Egypt, near Abydos. This tomb is not at all like the stone sepulchres of the later kings. Wall after wall of bricks was built around and above his body, and then a great wood fire was set burning over the whole structure, perhaps to harden it. Encased within this unyielding shell the mortal remains of the first Pharaoh reposed untouched by life or death for upwards of six thousand years.
This tomb of Menes, his construction of Memphis as his capital, and other relics all show him to have been a great builder. Even before his time the science of engineering must have been far advanced, for to secure the place that pleased him for his capital he first erected a monster dam, and changed the entire course of the lower Nile. The old channel of the river can still be traced close under the western cliffs of the valley, some miles from where it now flows. Menes reigned, according to the priestly legends, for sixty-two years, and then fell in combat with a hippopotamus. Whether the hippopotamus is to be taken literally we hardly know. One would like to think that, in the extreme age this fine old king had reached, he had more sense than to risk himself in such youthful sports. The hippopotamus was the Egyptian symbol for a foreign foe. Perhaps Menes died defending the empire he had created.
The second king of his dynasty was Athothis, who is believed to have built the citadel and palace of Memphis. Discoveries lately made warrant the belief that Athothis was physician, for fragments of a work on anatomy by him have been brought to light. Much better known is the fourth king of the dynasty, Uenestes, or Den, whose tomb has also been discovered at Abydos. He led an army from the Nile into the wilderness of Sinai, to chastise the tribes there who had annoyed his people. It was he who, by way of Sinai, opened his land to commerce with Asia. In his tomb we find exquisitely carved vessels of marble and crystal and alabaster, but no evidence that his people knew as yet of gold or of any metal more difficult to mine than copper. Legend attributes to Uenestes the glory of building, at Kochome, the oldest of the pyramids.
The period of the building of the pyramids was the first brilliant era in the history of Egypt. By this time the government of the Pharaohs had become consolidated and powerful. Moreover, the peculiar conditions of the Nile's overflow barred the peasants from their agricultural work during all the months.
THE LAST BLOW FOR INDEPENDENCE (The Persians at Tabriz Resist the Russian Advance upon the City in 1911)
Reproduced by permission from a photograph by Underwood and Underwood
RUSSIA and England have for a generation past held Persia almost wholly under their control; and Russia in particular has looked with little approval on the recent Persian effort at self-government. Hence the latest important step in the tragic drama being enacted in modern Persia has been Russia's forceful overthrow of the Persian constitution. The Persian “Medjliss” or parliament entrusted Persian finances to an American, Mr. Morgan Shuster. Russia demanded his dismissal. The Medjliss refused. A Russian army invaded Persia.
The invaders were met desperately but hopelessly. As they advanced on Tabriz, the chief Persian city of the north, the patriots, untrained, unorganized, gathered on the edge of the surrounding sand dunes to repel them. The Russians swept aside the Persian resistance with small loss and took possession of Tabriz. The Persian officer who had commanded the little band of patriots-shown on horseback at the left of the picture-was hanged the day after this photograph was taken, as were many of his followers. Here, and at another city, Recht, a total of over five hundred Persians perished as victims of the Russian desire for “peace and civilization”; and the helpless country has now submitted to all the Russian demands.
of the river's flood. The population had so increased that thousands of workmen were thus left idle, subject to the whim of the ruler, who, with that vanity which is a part of human nature, devoted an army of his subjects to building those colossal pyramids, which will probably last through all the coming ages. On the plateau west of Memphis nearly seventy of these stupendous monuments were erected. The three most prominent, because of their prodigious size, are known as the pyramids of Ghizeh, near which city they stand.
The greatest of all is the pyramid of Khufu or Cheops, founder of the fourth dynasty of Egyptian kings. Khufu's pyramid was four hundred and eighty feet high, but the breaking away of its apex has reduced it some thirty feet. Each side of the base is 764 feet in length, and the vast pile contains about 90,000,000 cubic feet of masonry, covering thirteen acres, twice the extent of any other building in the world. This pyramid is notable for several things besides its unprecedented size. It stands exactly on the thirteenth parallel of latitude, and the four sides face with geometric accuracy the cardinal points of the compass. On the north side, in the very middle, fifty-two feet above the original ground level, a door is cut leading into a passage three feet wide and four feet high. This passes downward to a chamber hewn in the rock of the foundation, a hundred feet below the ground level of the base. This chamber is directly under the apex of the pyramid and fully six hundred feet below. Two other chambers lie exactly over the first. Within these sombre graves were placed the stone coffins of the kings, who, despite their greatness and power, were compelled to lie down and share the common fate of mortality. There the royal mummies were put to sleep for centuries, and above them on the walls was graven the story of their deeds when in the flesh. The door of the passage was sealed with a stone and the name of dead monarch was added to the list of gods in the temple.
The pyramids form one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and their building is a problem which even in these latter days it is hard to solve. There is no machine or apparatus in existence today powerful enough to raise those colossal stones to their places in the stupendous pile. It has been suggested that they were moulded in their position by chemical means from the sands of the desert, but the marks of the machinery employed are still distinctly visible, so that the construction of the engines by which the stones were placed is another of the lost arts. It is said that 360,000 men were employed for twenty years in building the Great Pyramid.
Six dynasties of these early kings ruled Egypt in direct descent from Menes. To the last of these dynasties belongs the legend of Queen Nitokris, which our search among the monuments confirms at least to the extent that there was a sovereign of that name, probably a woman, and the first of her sex to rule as an independent sovereign. She, or he, was buried in the third great pyramid, the most expensive of them all, covered with slabs of a costly stone called syenite. Within it we have found a queen's body encased in a beautiful and delicate sarcophagus of soft blue stone.
The legend which later ages told of Nitokris was that she was a queen called for her beauty “the rosy-cheeked.” Her husband the king, after only a year of marriage, was slain by an uprising of his nobles. Nitokris then seized the power for herself and pretended to forgive the assassins. Secretly, however, she built a subterranean chamber connected by a passage with the waters of the Nile. When the work was finished she invited all the guilty nobles to a feast in the new hall, and drowned them by letting in the Nile. After this she committed suicide by deliberately plunging into a great bin of feathers which suffocated her. Such was the legend in its barest form. Further fantastic additions to the tale declared Nitokris had been originally a courtesan, Rhodope, the name being a Greek translation of her established epithet, rosy-cheeked. While Rhodope was bathing, a vulture carried off her slipper and dropped it in the presence of the king. He, in true Cinderella-story fashion, vowed to find and wed the owner of the dainty slipper. Thus the courtesan became a queen, and afterward an independent sovereign. The modern Egyptian peasants say that the spirit of Nitokris still haunts her pyramid. The light-souled and uneasy ghost still lures people to destruction by her wooing. Those who meet her go insane in adoration of her beauty.
Returning to the more trustworthy records of the monuments, the sixth dynasty did certainly end in a period of strife between kings and nobles. The ancient royal line disappears, and late sovereigns claim only a doubtful and uncertain relation to it. The general nature of the change which Egypt here passed through, about 3300 B.C., is that the power of the lesser chiefs or nobles ruling in each little province gradually increased and the kings sank to be mere figureheads. Then the nobles fought each other in little private wars, until presently there was anarchy. Comparing those days with the similar days of Europe in the middle ages, scientists call that the “feudal age” of Egypt. One noble after another, as he extended his possessions and his power, assumed kingly dignities. The old united and peaceful empire was superseded by a medley of petty principalities, amid whose quarrels the ancient wealth and prosperity of the valley were almost completely destroyed. Order was not restored, the arts of peace did not regain their former height, until the twelfth dynasty of kings, about six hundred years later.
Thus we may well compare the history of Egypt with that of Europe, the early Egyptians through the sixth dynasty representing for us the ancient days like those of Greece and Rome. This early civilization was separated by cen-
EARTH'S FIRST COLOSSUS (Cheops, Inaugurator of the Most Ancient Period of Egyptian Splendor, Builds the Great Pyramid) From the painting by Gustav Richter, a contemporary German artist
EGYPTIAN history is only less ancient than that of Babylon and western Asia, which we have just traced from its beginning to the present day. The first clear fact that stands out from the mists enwrapping the earliest Egyptian story is the event shown in our picture here. Nearly four thousand years before Christ a king or “Pharaoh,” by the name of Khufu, or, as we more commonly call him, Cheops, ruled over Egypt with great splendor. During three months of every year all the fertile lands of Egypt are overflowed by the Nile, so that the peasantry cannot work upon their farms. Through these three months Cheops compelled the people to work for him. Probably in return he fed them from the vast stores of grain which he had previously made them surrender to him as tribute.
With this army of laborers Cheops constructed the great pyramid which still, after nearly six thousand years, remains the heaviest and most solidly constructed of all man's buildings upon earth. We have structures here in America covering as much ground; we have them of far greater height; but there is no one that presses down on earth with such stupendous weight-and no one of such little practical use. All this tremendous labor was expended simply to make a tomb wherein the single body of the proud Cheops could repose in mummified state until, as his religion taught him, his spirit should come to occupy it again.
turies of darkness and feudalism from the renaissance which began under the twelfth dynasty and led on as in Europe, though only after a period of suffering and shame, to the splendor and world victory of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties. These we can compare to our modern days.
The ruler who secured a firm hold over the lesser princes and started the twelfth dynasty was Amenemhat I. How he won the throne, we do not know; but of the happy changes which his strong rule caused he tells in his own inscriptions: “Perpetual fighting was no longer witnessed, whereas before my coming they fought together as bulls heedless of yesterday, and no man's welfare was safe whether he was ignorant or learned.” In another place he says: “I spread joy throughout the country, even to the marshes of the delta. At my prayer the Nile granted its overflow to the field. No man was hungry under me; no man thirsted with desire; for everywhere man obeyed my commands, and every command was such as to win their love.”
The nobles, crowded out of power, plotted against Amenemhat. He tells us: “The evening meal was past and night came, I gave myself up to pleasure for a time, then I lay down on the soft coverlets in my palace, I gave myself to repose, and my heart began to sink into slumber; when behold! they gathered in arms to revolt against me.” Rousing himself he fought against the assailants hand to hand. “Strength forsook them; and nothing evil could they achieve against me.” It is a brief record of the last impotent upheaval of the forces of disorder.
The great capital of Amenemhat and his successors was Thebes in upper Egypt. There they built temples and palaces so solid that the mighty structures still survive, and so splendid that we still gaze on them with admiration. Most impressive of all the twelfth-dynasty buildings was perhaps the so-called “Labyrinth,” which was erected near the lake of Fayoum by Usertesen III. Herodotus, who examined it, was astounded, and declared that all the temples of the Greeks put together did not equal it in cost and splendor. It contained twelve roofed courts, joining one another, with opposite entrances, six facing the north and six the south, the whole being enclosed by an immense wall. One- half the temple was above and one-half below ground, and each division contained fifteen hundred apartments. Those below ground were the sepulchres of the kings and the halls of the sacred crocodiles. No wonder it was called the Labyrinth, for any one who attempted to pass through its winding and almost innumerable divisions was certain to lose his way, unless he was in charge of an experienced guide.
Herodotus was allowed to visit the apartments above ground, but not the subterranean ones. Regarding the former he said: “I pronounce them among the grandest efforts of human industry and art. The almost infinite number of winding passages through the different courts excited my highest admiration: from spacious halls I passed through smaller chambers, and from them again to large and magnificent saloons, almost without end. The walls and ceilings are of marble, the latter embellished with the most exquisite sculpture; around each court, pillars of the richest and most polished marble are arranged; and at the termination of the Labyrinth stands a pyramid one hundred and sixty cubits high, approached by a subterranean passage, and with its exterior enriched by huge figures of animals.”
After the next dynasty, the thirteenth, the power of the kingdom dwindled again. Foreign invaders entered Egypt from Asia and succeeded in capturing the throne. Who these invaders were or by what means of marriage or of conquest they became rulers of Egypt, we do not know. The later Egyptians hated them and never willingly spoke of them. If they erected monuments, later generations destroyed these. The invaders were never referred to except by a contemptuous name, the “Hyksos,” which implied that they were ignorant and savage.
These Hyksos, or “shepherd kings,” came from Syria, and were probably a wandering nomadic tribe like that of Abraham. They were admitted into lower Egypt, perhaps peacefully, gradually acquired an ascendancy there, stormed Memphis, the ancient capital, and then by conquest won control of Thebes and upper Egypt. One theory is that they defeated the Egyptians by the use of horses and war-chariots in battle, the horse having been unknown in Egypt before that time, but being in common use in Asiatic warfare. Says the Egyptian historian Manetho: “I know not wherefore, the gods caused to blow on us an evil wind, and in the face of all probability bands from the East ignoble people, came upon us unawares, attacked the country and subdued it easily, without fighting.” This last phrase, we know, is not true; there was long and bitter fighting extending over generations. But at last the Hyksos obtained control of the land and held it in subjection for over four hundred years, though perhaps they never wholly subdued the princes farthest up the Nile.
It was under these Hyksos that Joseph rose to power in Egypt, and the Israelites established themselves there, presumably as welcome allies of these Asiatic kindred. There were several successive dynasties of the “shepherd kings,” and then they were finally expelled from Egypt about 1600 B.C. by the armies of the upper valley, led by a prince of Thebes named Aahmes. He defeated the Hyksos in battle and besieged them in their great fortress camp Avaris. Perhaps he also carried Avaris by assault, but more probably he came to a peaceful agreement with its defenders; for we find them quietly leaving Egypt as they had entered it, at the head of their endless flocks and herds.
Aahmes I., the liberator, was hailed by his delighted countrymen as “Pharaoh” of Egypt, and founded the eighteenth dynasty. With this the “modern
THE HYKSOS RULE IN EGYPT (Joseph, the Hebrew Soothsayer, Is Exalted over the Egyptian Magi)
From the realistic production of “Joseph and His Brethren” on the stage of the Century Theatre, New York
ABOUT two thousand years before Christ, Egypt was conquered by the invasion of a nomadic horde from Asia, whom the native Egyptians afterward called in hate and derision the Hyksos or “shepherd kings.” These Hyksos ruled for four centuries without ever becoming really united with the Egyptians. The power of the invaders was constantly recruited by the coming of other Asiatic nomads, whom they naturally welcomed as allies. Most celebrated of these additions to their number was that of the “children of Israel.”
Perhaps the Hyksos sovereign-in whose time the Hebrew shepherd lad, Joseph, was brought as a slave into Egypt-was the Set-ah-peti of whom a later monarch speaks as ruling about this time, and being a mighty king favored by the gods. We cannot, however, speak fully of those days; for in after years the Egyptians destroyed every record they could find of the hated Hyksos. Hence the Biblical account stands as the only narrative of the time. It shows us just such a condition of affairs as we would expect. The native Egyptian soothsayers are little trusted by the foreign king. When they and the priests seek to explain his dreams of the seven cows and seven ears of corn, Pharaoh turns from their interpretations contemptuously and seeks instead the divinations of the young Asiatic slave of whom he has heard, and whom he releases from captivity to become his chief councillor.
Egypt-The Zenith of Empire age” of Egypt began, the period of her greatest wealth and triumph during which, in imitation of the Asiatic nations, she also set out to be mistress of the world.
Thothmes III., the greatest of the rulers of the eighteenth dynasty, has been called “the Alexander of Egypt.” He overran the whole of the civilized world, as he knew it, making repeated raids into Asia, reaching even to the Euphrates river, and carrying back to Egypt vast quantities of plunder.
In the first year of his reign he won a decisive battle over the confederated kings of Palestine and Syria at Megiddo, or Armageddon, that town celebrated in the Bible as the site of so many desperate battles. The fleeing kings clamored for entrance into the city, but the people within dared not open the gates, and only let down ropes by which some of the fugitives clambered up to safety. This battle reduced Palestine and Syria to temporary obedience.
Later they rebelled against the exactions of the Egyptians, and Thothmes harried the land again and again. The powerful King of Kadesh defied the oppressor and withstood a siege behind the walls of Kadesh. When the Egyptian chariots dashed to the attack the besieged let loose a mare, which ran among the chariot horses and so distracted them that the chariots were thrown into confusion. The besieged rushed out to attack them and the Egyptians would have been defeated but for a valiant officer who leaped from his chariot and slew the mare, and then stormed the city. For this action he was given high honor by the Pharaoh.
Egypt grew rich with the spoils of so many campaigns. Even the kings of Babylon and Assyria sent Thothmes tribute. His people celebrated his greatness in legend and in song. His court poet wrote of him a chant of praise that has been preserved to us, and which served as a model for future generations of Egyptian poets. It says, in part:
“I give thee, said the god, the rebels That they may fall beneath thy sandals, That thou mayst crush the defiant. I grant thee, by my command, The earth in its length and breadth.
“The tribes of the West and of the East Are placed under the power of thy countenance. Thou goest over all strange lands with a gay heart; For there is none who will withstand thy Majesty, I am thy guide and thou tramplest them underfoot.
“Thou hast crossed the water of the great Euphrates, They have heard thy roars echoing in their dens, By thy strength I have deprived them of life. I have granted thee that thy deeds shall sear their hearts, My symbol which is on thy crown shall burn them.”
The Story of the Greatest Nations
But trampled Asia revenged itself upon the conqueror's race, after he had passed away. His great-grandson, Amenhotep IV., fascinated by Babylonian culture and art, sought to introduce it into Egypt. He aimed to overthrow the old religion and break the enormous power of the priests. With this object he introduced sun- worship, changed his own name to one meaning “Glory of the Solar Disk”; and, deserting his old capital Thebes, built a new city, in which he started a completely new civilization, differing widely from the Egyptian. What followed is very obscure. It may have been purposely made so by the priests. There was a revolution; the new city was destroyed; Amenhotep's mummy was torn to pieces; and the stones of the new god's temple were carried to Thebes to be used in the service of the old god Amon. The eighteenth dynasty disappeared, and the nineteenth reigned in its stead.
Before entering upon this last great period in Egyptian history, it will be interesting to consider the civilization of that remarkable people. The population of ancient Egypt was five millions and probably more. You have learned of the land's amazing fertility, where the ground was covered by the rich film from the annual overflow of the Nile. Since food was cheap and abundant, the population increased rapidly. Think of the statement of a Greek visitor to Egypt a short time before the birth of the Saviour, to the effect that to bring up a child to manhood cost hardly four dollars of our money, or at the rate, say, of less than a cent a week!
A much larger percentage of the Egyptian population could read and write than of any other ancient nation. The most ancient monuments and pyramids show inscriptions, and nearly every article for use or adornment was marked. The best of writing-material was made from the leaves of the papyrus plant, of which we have manuscripts two thousand years old. It is from the word papyrus that we derive “paper.”
There were many excellent mechanics among the Egyptians. They could polish and engrave precious stones to perfection, while in glass manufacture, porcelain- making, and dyeing none could surpass them. Linen was their usual article of dress, and they made it from a fine kind of flax which they cultivated. They worked in metals, and their walls and ceilings afford exquisite patterns for us in these days. While they had a knowledge of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and medicine, yet in these sciences they were crude, and the Babylonians were scientifically their superiors.
The religion of the Egyptians embodies a conception of the immortality of the soul and the existence of one supreme Being, but his attributes and manifestations were shown in various forms. While the learned accepted these as merely symbols, the ignorant looked upon them as divinities and objects of worship. Thus it came about that the Egyptians had gods almost without
THE HEIGHT OF PHARAOH'S POWER (Thothmes III. Hears of the Revolt of Asia) From the painting by the recent French artist, Le Conte du Nouy
THE most powerful of all the Pharaohs was Thothmes III., who has been called the Egyptian Alexander the Great. When Egypt threw off the yoke of the Hyksos, its native sovereigns burned to avenge upon Asia the injuries suffered from the Asiatic invaders. Hence one Pharaoh after another led his army into Palestine. Thothmes III. won a great battle at Megiddo, completely conquered Palestine and Syria, and extended his frontier to the Euphrates River, threatening Assyria and Babylonia.
Returning home after a series of victorious campaigns, Thothmes heard with amaze that a widespread rebellion had sprung up behind him, so that instead of resting in peace he must again take the field. Doubtless he expressed his anger in some such fashion as our picture shows him. Legend represents Thothmes as a savage tyrant born of peasant race, the son of a slave-woman in the Pharaoh's harem; and Egyptian monarchs were commonly supposed to slay whoever brought them evil tidings, as Thothmes does here.
The rebellion, however, brought Thothmes to the height of his power; for, hastily returning with his forces into Asia, he completely crushed the confederate kings of Syria at Aruna. After that no Asiatics dared oppose him. Even the king of Babylon sent him tribute, and besought the honor of wedding one of his daughters. Thothmes contemptuously refused.
Egypt-The Loss of Progress number-sufficient for every day in the year. The most general worship was of the great god Osiris and the beautiful goddess Isis. The lovely Nile island of Philae, at the extreme limit of the kingdom, was one of the centres of her worship, and the ruins of her temple there still survive.
The universal belief was that at the resurrection, the soul and body would reunite. To this belief was due the practice of embalming the dead bodies, the art reaching a remarkable degree of skill. It impresses us strangely to look in our museums upon one of those mummies, which has preserved even the color of the hair about the base of the head, and the cast of the features, while we know that thirty centuries or more have swept over the world since the immortal spirit fled from the body.
A striking feature of the Egyptian religion was the adoration paid to brutes. The ibis, the dog, and the cat were held in special honor everywhere, while other beasts were worshipped only in certain districts. The bull Apis, at Memphis, and the calf Mnevis, at Heliopolis, received the highest of all honors. The animals thus worshiped were kept with the utmost care in the temples and were embalmed at death. If any one killed an ibis or hawk, even by accident, he was immediately put to death. Such mental debasement is certain to bring woful results to a people, as was proven in the subsequent history of Egypt.
We find that from the time of the nineteenth dynasty the people made little progress. Their religion dominated their art. Every picture which an artist drew, indeed, every act of life was guided by religion and strictly regulated by custom. Hence originality declined. In the words of Professor Swinton: “The greatest characteristic of Egyptian institutions was their unchangeableness. This stationary character is seen in Egyptian government, society, religion, art, learning. Egypt herself was a mummy.”
MANY and varied have been the lessons which poets and philosophers have sought to draw from the tale of Egypt's greatness and her decay. The most usual view has been that her increasing weakness was caused by the dominance of a repressive and aristocratic priesthood. More recently it has been urged that her downfall was but the natural consequence of the dominance of a brutal militarism which seized upon a peacefully minded people and drove them into an incessant and needless warfare which resulted in exhaustion.
The power of the Egyptian priests is certainly shown in the change from the eighteenth dynasty of the Pharaohs to the celebrated nineteenth. This was the result of the struggle to eradicate the new Asiatic religion which Amenhotep IV. had introduced. A successful general, Horem-heb, or as the Greek called him, Armais, was made king, and aided the priests in restoring the ancient worship of Amon.
This return to the former gods was popular with the mass of the people who had not yet accepted the new Asiatic faith, and Horem-heb, “the restorer,” became a noted figure in Egyptian legend. We are told that he was the son of the god Amon whose worship he restored, that he was di
THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION RESTORED (Horem-heb Revives the Worship of the Sacred Bull Apis) From the painting by the noted American artist, Frederick Arthur Bridgman
AS one result of the Egyptian victories in Asia, Babylonian customs were brought into Egypt, and the worship of Babylonian gods. For a time even the reigning Pharaohs deserted the ancient national religion. The enraged Egyptian priests encouraged a rebellion; and a successful general, Horem-heb, seized the throne and re-established the Egyptian faith. In this the most prominent ceremonial, or at least the strangest feature to modern eyes, was the worship of the sacred bull Apis.
The Apis was not worshipped for himself, but as the living body in which for a space the spirit of the sun-god was enshrined. On the death of this sacred bull, the god was supposed to enter another, which was then sought by the priests amid the herds, and was recognized by its peculiar color and markings. When the new Apis was thus discovered, it was led with dancing and feastings to the temple, there to be kept in idleness while it lived and to be mummified at death, and have its body preserved with all the care and ceremony given to the dead Pharaohs themselves. We have here the celebration attending the installation of the restored Apis under Horem-heb.
spatched to earth especially to rescue Egypt from the false religions of Asia, and that he was distinguished even in childhood by the splendor of his face and the vigor of his limbs. The sacred animals of Egypt recognized his superhuman power and followed him about in love. Kings summoned him as a councillor even in his childhood, and his advice always showed the way to peace. When he in turn became Pharaoh, he continued to follow kindliness as his law of life. He found the peasantry helpless in the grip of unjust officials, who plundered them mercilessly; and by sternest laws and executions he suppressed the misrule and restored justice. One day in every month he held an open court, during which any person who wished might come to him unhindered and make complaint. While he sat thus in the tribunal he amused himself by tossing handfuls of gold and jewels among his supporters, who were gathered round him.
This able and popular if somewhat spectacularly minded monarch wedded a princess of the former dynasty of Pharaohs, and so, according to Egyptian view, acquired for his family a legitimate title to the throne he had usurped. He was succeeded by his son or brother Rameses I., who was thus regarded as the legitimate establisher of the new dynasty, the nineteenth, often called the Ramessides.
Rameses I. reigned for only a year or two, and was then followed by his warlike son, Seti I. or Meren-Ptah, called Sethos by the Greeks. Sethos coming in the rashness of youth to the leadership of a nation, which his predecessors had made strong, united and wealthy, turned his thoughts toward world empire, the dream which had lured the earlier conquerors of the preceding dynasty. In the very first year of his reign Sethos marched an army into Asia. The nomadic folk of Palestine were unprepared for his coming, and if we may accept the boastful account of his monuments, his army ravaged the land as far as the Phoenician cities and returned home loaded down with every form of plunder. These riches fascinated both him and his people. In the following year he returned to ravage the Asiatic lands again. No longer, however, did he meet the same easy success. The Hittite cities, Damascus, Karchemish and the others, met him with a strength that matched his own. Egypt became the acknowledged master of southern Palestine, but could get no further. Sethos made peace treaties with the Hittites on equal terms.
He next turned his attention to improving the sources of wealth within his own country. He built a great canal connecting the Nile with the Red Sea, thus making a water passage from the Mediterranean to the Far East more than three thousand years before the modern world prided itself on accomplishing the same end by means of the Suez Canal. Sethos also set his people to working the mines of Sinai and the Red Sea region. They found gold there, and an old treasure map has come down to us, the oldest map in the world, showing where the gold lay and the routes that led to it. Instead of arrow marks such as we use to show directions, the roads in this first map are dotted with foot-marks all leading toward the mines, as though many men went thither but none returned. The gold- bearing regions themselves are colored in bright red, as if to suggest at once their richness and their danger.
Sethos was also a builder. To emphasize his devotion to the ancient gods, who were his forefathers and had raised his dynasty to the throne, he erected the wonderful “hypostyle” or “hall of columns” at Karnak. It was a temple to the god Amon, and was intended to accommodate all the enormous train of priests and soldiers who surrounded Sethos in the gorgeous ceremonies of worship which were as much in honor of him as of the god, his ancestor. The Hypostyle is the vastest hall of ceremonies ever erected, and its columns are the heaviest, most solid and stupendous ever placed within a building.
To Sethos succeeded in due course his son Rameses II., called Rameses the Great, the “Sesostris” of the Greeks. He is the most celebrated of all the Pharaohs, though modern research leads us somewhat to think of him as a braggart, a thief who eased his craving for renown by stealing the fame of earlier Pharaohs. In many places throughout Egypt he had the names of preceding kings obliterated from their buildings and statues, and his own substituted. Thus everywhere that later generations turned they saw the name of Rameses. The priests told the Greek historian Herodotus with awe that this king had been the greatest builder in the world.
Rameses also managed to make much out of rather little in his warlike fame. When summoned to the throne by his father's death, he had been in the far south of Egypt, chastising Ethiopian marauders, wandering negro tribes from the heart of Africa. He at once made a triumphal military progress from end to end of his empire as a conqueror, and was crowned at Thebes, his capital, amid the plaudits of his soldiers. In the fifth year of his reign he led his forces into Palestine, and endeavored, as Sethos had done, to overcome the Hittites. The most exploited battle amid all the Egyptian monuments and inscriptions is the victory which Rameses won over the Hittites at Kadesh.
Every detail of the struggle at Kadesh was pictured on monument after monument by the king's command. Hence we can picture this battle more fully than any other in ancient history. It gives us a clear idea of Asiatic warfare. The enemy, some twenty thousand strong, concealed themselves behind the city of Kadesh. The army of Rameses came close upon the foe, but his spies failed to discover them, and some pretended deserters told the Egyptians that the Hittites were assembled at a place forty miles away. Rameses set his army in hurried march toward the spot. Fortunately two Hittite spies
THE ESCAPE OF THE HEBREWS (The Egyptians Pursue the Fleeing Hebrews and are Overwhelmed by the Sea) From a painting by the noted American artist, Frederick A. Bridgman
THE Pharaoh at the time of the Hebrew “exodus” from Egypt was probably Mer-en- ptah, a grandson of Rameses II. The Pharaohs who followed the great Rameses found troubles gathering thickly around them. The people grew discontented and even desperate under the drain of continued warfare and the weight of increasing tyranny. The Hittites and other foreign foes pressed upon the frontiers, and the “treasure cities” of Rameses had to withstand more than one serious siege.
The hand of the Pharaohs fell most heavily of all upon the helpless Hebrews, until finally, as the Bible tells us, these unfortunates demanded leave to pass the frontier fortresses and the great wall which seems to have been erected across the entire isthmus. The fugitives preferred rather to dare the sufferings of the desert than submit to the ever-increasing misery of life in Egypt. Only a single record of their departure has as yet been found upon the monuments of Mer-en-ptah. This in telling the achievements of his reign says: “The Israelites were utterly destroyed and left no seed.” That this was false we know. Probably when they fled and were pursued, such of the Egyptians as escaped from the disaster of the plunge into the Red Sea reported that the Israelites had also perished.
were captured and, on being beaten, they revealed the truth of the nearness of the Hittites. Rameses hastily ordered the recall of such of his troops as had marched on, while with the men left at hand he met a sudden attack from the Hittites.
The chief force of the Asiatics consisted of twenty-five hundred chariots, each containing three men. These charged against the Egyptian camp with its rough embankments. They broke through the defense, and Rameses met them within the camp, charging in his own chariot at the head of his household troops. Eight times, he tells us, he dashed against the Hittite chariots and broke their ranks. Once he was alone in their midst; but by the valor of his single arm, or so he assures the world, he put the whole twenty-five hundred to flight. Finally the Egyptian troops, who had marched away, got back; and the enemy, after a whole day's battling, were driven from the camp.
The next morning the Hittites attacked again. This time they were definitely overthrown. Their chariots fled and attempted to escape across the river Orontes, which flowed near. They were so closely pursued that many were drowned in the stream. The survivors were rescued by the people of a near-by town who opened their gates and by making a sudden sortie against the Egyptians, gave the fugitives time to enter the town in safety. Rameses even gives us a list of the chief Hittites who were slain, among whom, as the scribe of the present day notes with interest, was mentioned as of great importance “Khalupsaru, the writer of books,” an official historian perhaps or a royal poet, the oldest of whom we have even that empty knowledge, his name.
This victory of Kadesh was celebrated by an unknown Egyptian poet, from whose account, in connection with Rameses' picture record, we gather the details. Their substantial accuracy can scarcely be doubted; but the victory brought no permanent results. The Egyptians returned home without advancing further into Hittite territory. The spoils of war must, however, have proved attractive, for the next year Rameses returned to the attack. Fifteen times in all, he invaded Palestine; yet at the end of all this fighting he was still making treaties with the Hittites upon equal terms. The frontiers of each party remained substantially as they had been at the beginning.
What Egypt really lost in human life and happiness through all these years of warfare, what she lost in the actual exhaustion of her strength, the wasting of her resources and the stir of discontent, we can partly guess. A quaint old document of the times has come down to us in which a philosopher warns his pupil against the miseries of military life. A soldier, he says, “is beaten like a roll of papyrus.” The sicknesses and sufferings of barrack life are described and then those of the campaign: “His bread and his water are on his shoulder like an ass's burden... The joints of his spine are broken. He drinks putrid water.... He trembles like a goose without valor.... If he be ill, what relief has he? He is carted away on an ass; his clothes are stolen.... He lies on the ground and receives a hundred blows.” It was to this view of “glory” that the Egyptian common folk had come.
Rameses the Great has another and peculiar interest to us as “the Pharaoh of the oppression,” the monarch who reduced the Hebrews to slavery, forcing them to toil at the building of his “treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses,” or Pelusium and Rameses. We know now that Rameses II. did actually build these cities. He set them as fortresses on the border of Egypt nearest to Asia. Despite his so- called victories he found himself in need of protection against the Hittites. The Egyptian poets of the time sing also of this achievement of their monarch, the building of the metropolis named for him. “It is filled with food and stored goods. The sun rises and sets in it, so that men leave their villages to dwell there.” “The people of the coast pay it tribute of fish. Every day the inhabitants put on their festal garments... On the day when the king enters, joy spreads, nothing can stop it!” It was probably under the successor of Rameses, his grandson Mer-en-Ptah, that Moses led the unhappy Israelites back into the desert.
Rameses lived to be nearly a hundred years old. In his later years he confirmed a lasting peace with the Hittites by marrying one of their princesses; and the most prominent of their many “city kings” visited Egypt as a friend and ally. Thus there followed after Rameses a period of peace; but the decay of the country had already set in, and other causes carried it downward.
Not only had the people, as we have seen, lost heart and vigor for war; they were also impoverished. Most of the land and wealth had passed into the hands of the priesthood. Moreover, a foreign people from the north coast of Africa began to press into the kingdom. These were the Libyans. What caused their migrations we do not know, but gradually, sometimes by fighting, sometimes by friendly purchase or gift, they won possession of most of northwestern Egypt.
The Pharaohs gladly recruited their armies from these sturdy Libyan barbarians, who made much better fighting material than the intellectual Egyptians, who had begun to “think too much.” The monuments of the later Ramesside sovereigns still continue to be covered with boasts of victory; but the frontiers of their empire recede. They fight against Libyans in Egypt itself, and against Hittites at the gates of Pelusium and Rameses. The wandering Israelites are able to occupy Palestine, and meet no Egyptian troops to check them there.
Out of this darkness and confusion came dynastic changes. Apparently the theocratic forces gained complete control, and a line of high-priests suc-
THE ETHIOPIAN CONQUEST (The Conqueror Piankhi Receives the Welcome of the Former Pharaoh) From a drawing by the German artist, Ralph Stein
FOREIGN war and domestic tumult finally reduced Egypt to a state of anarchy, wherein dozens of petty lords ruled, each over his own little district, and fought against his neighbors. Hence there was no united resistance against a new foreign foe, the Ethiopians. These half-negro conquerors gradually pushed their way northward from the upper Nile until, in 727 B.C., their king Piankhi was appealed to by several of the princes of the lower Nile to restore order in the country and especially to protect them from one of their own number, the energetic prince Tafnakhti. Piankhi eagerly accepted the opportunity, and with his Ethiopian troops marched from end to end of Egypt, bringing peace where he could and fighting where he must. Tafnakhti was defeated again and again and at last hid himself among the marshes of the delta. The priests gladly welcomed Piankhi as the one strong man who could protect them and he was crowned as Pharaoh. The lesser princes crowded to make submission to him.
A nominal Pharaoh, Osorkon, had previously reigned at Bubastis, but had no power whatever beyond his own province. Osorkon was one of the first to wait upon the new Pharaoh, and give him cordial welcome, as our picture shows. Apparently the feeble Osorkon was glad to be able to transfer his authority to a monarch with power to enforce it. So the Ethiopians ruled over Egypt.
ceeded to the throne, so that Egypt was held by religious rather than military sovereigns. We begin to read frequently in the inscriptions of the “Libyan guard.” These barbarians became, as did the Germans in Roman days, the chief fighting force of the empire. And then as a very natural result we come upon a commander of this Libyan guard called Shashanq, who supersedes the ancient race of kings that still claimed descent from the god Amon. Shashanq, a stranger and a foreigner, becomes Pharaoh in their stead.
With Shashanq we touch once more upon Biblical history. He attempted to revive the military glory which had long departed from Egypt. Among other warlike exploits he sought to reassert his empire's claim, three centuries old, over Palestine. The Bible, which spells his name as Shishak, tells how he plundered Jerusalem in the days of Solomon's son Rehoboam.
Apparently, Shashanq stayed the disruption of Egypt for merely a moment. His rule extended over only the lower valley. The high-priests defied his power, and continued to rule over upper Egypt from the ancient religious capital Thebes. So dreadful was the misery of these days that the poorer people suffered almost constantly from famine. Terrible deeds of desperation resulted. Even the sacred tombs of the ancient kings were no longer safe. They were broken open by marauders. The mummies of Sethos and Rameses the Great and a score of other mighty kings and princesses have been discovered in modern days not in their original gorgeous mausoleums, but all huddled together in a single hiding place. There, when their own monuments had been ravished, the royal remains must have been secreted by the priesthood during these tragic days of Shashanq. In some cases even the royal mummies themselves had been torn to fragments by the eager thieves in search of any article of value. In place of the bodies thus destroyed, the priests hastily substituted old bits of straw and rubbish, and wrapped these in the regal mummy garments, whence our astonished scientists laboriously unrolled them, ignoble relics which have thus been preserved to a strange immortality in our museums.
After Shashanq's day the anarchy increased. Each petty prince of a single Egyptian district fought for himself and held independent state. Pharaohs of merely nominal power rose and passed. The arts declined, the people sank into despair.
Another foreign invader appeared, to ride in triumph over the helpless Egyptians. This new power was Ethiopia or Nubia, the state lying to the south of Egypt far up the course of the Nile. Most of the history of Ethiopia is lost. Vague glimpses that we catch of kings and temples there fill us with curiosity. They suggest an ancient civilization different from that of Egypt, an art and culture acquired only in part from the lower Nile, partly from Asiatic sources, and partly attained as the native development of an aboriginal negroid race. Thus the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia represents what was probably the highest civilization ever attained by a negro race, or rather by a mingling of negroes and Egyptians. After a while this mixed Ethiopian race seems to have lost its progressive vigor, perhaps under the influx of masses of the wild central African negroes, and sank back into decay. The Ethiopians became once more semi- barbarians, little better than savages.
About eight hundred years before Christ, the Ethiopian armies began invading Egypt. They were not powerful adversaries, but there was no united power to oppose them. Year after year they won their way further down the Nile, re- assimilating the Egyptian culture as they advanced. They became the chief rulers of upper Egypt. And at length we find the proud record of their king, Piankhi, stating that the princes of lower Egypt, who were at war among themselves, appealed to him as a protector. He assumed the title of Pharaoh, and marching from end to end of the land reduced it all to obedience (727 B.C.). Even the priesthood thankfully accepted him as the one man who could bring order out of all the turmoil. He was crowned at Thebes with all the ancient ceremonials. A Libyan captain had already sat upon the proud throne of the ancient gods; now it was held by an Ethiopian.
More than one of the Pharaohs of this Ethiopian dynasty are mentioned in Bible history. The most important of them after Piankhi was Taharqua, the Biblical Tirhakah. Neither he nor any other ruler succeeded in establishing much authority over the fighting princes, Libyan and Egyptian, who dwelt in the Nile delta, but Tirhakah did gather them all for an incursion into Palestine. There he made alliance with King Hezekiah of Judah and with King Luliya of Tyre, and defeated and plundered the cities which opposed him. He thus brought down upon himself the wrath of the conquering Assyrians, who had seized Syria and Israel, and who objected to having any one but themselves thus snatch the spoils of Asiatic war.
Of the Assyrian victory of Sennacherib over Tirhakah we have already told, and of the subsequent mysterious destruction of the Assyrian army before Jerusalem. As a result of this struggle came the invasion of Egypt by Esarhaddon, mightiest of the Assyrian monarchs. Tirhakah, unable to oppose him, was now defeated within the borders of Egypt itself, and fled up the Nile to safety in distant Ethiopia. The vassal princes transferred their easy allegiance to Esarhaddon, and he returned to Assyria. Then Tirhakah marched back with a fresh army from Ethiopia, and was again accepted as Pharaoh, in his turn.
Helpless Egypt had become a mere see-saw upon which Assyrian and Ethiopian rose in turn. The next Assyrian sovereign, Assur-bani-pal, sent his forces once more to the attack. Tirhakah was again defeated and again fled. Says Assur-bani-pal, “The might of the soldiers of Asshur, my Lord, overwhelmed
CLEOPATRA WINS CAESAR'S AID (The Egyptian Princes Secures Entry to Caesar in a Roll of Carpet)
From a painting by the noted French master, Jean Leon Gerome
AFTER the Ethiopian triumph, other conquerors, some foreign and some native, became “Pharaohs” of Egypt and ruled it until the days of Roman power.
In the first century before Christ, Rome had already assumed a fairly complete control of the civilized world. Egypt was almost the only land her legions had not conquered, and even the Egyptian kings retained their independence only by a submissive friendliness to whatever Rome demanded. One of these kings, dying before his children were grown up, left Egypt to the Roman Senate to act as trustees for his children. The oldest of these was Cleopatra, a girl of seventeen; but the Senate consented to her exclusion in favor of her younger brother. Cleopatra gathered soldiers to fight for her rights. Then there broke out the great civil war between the Roman leaders Pompey and Caesar. Pompey fled to Egypt, and perished there. Caesar pursued him.
Then came Cleopatra's first great adventure. She was still only a girl twenty years old; Caesar, the war-worn veteran, was in a camp surrounded by her enemies. She secured an interview with him, tradition says, by having herself secretly carried into his quarters wrapped in a roll of carpet. At any rate, she won the heart of the celebrated conqueror. He became her lover, espoused her cause, and after overthrowing her brother's adherents placed Cleopatra upon the Egyptian throne.
him and he fled to his place of night.” Such of the Egyptians as had been most active in supporting the Ethiopian were carried off to Assyria as prisoners.
Tirhakah died; but his son, Tanut-amen, came back in his stead from that dark and mysterious Ethiopia, “the place of night.” For a third time, he re- established his country's power over Egypt. Assur-bani-pal drove him away again. Thus the two foreign powers exhausted each other. Ethiopia sank back into feebleness; Assyria had to meet the invasion of Asia by the barbarian Scyths. Egypt was left once more to her own Egyptian and Libyan chieftains. Of these the one who ultimately seized the chief power was Psamtek, the Psammetichus of the Greeks.
With Psamtek we reach a clearly outlined historical period. The antique Egypt of darkness and mystery at whose struggles and sufferings we so dimly guess, whose splendors and conquests remain but as a shadow—all this disappears. Instead we have a succession of kings well known, a people familiar to many other races, a history recorded in written volumes. Egypt becomes merely one of the lesser countries involved in the whirl of world conquerors, Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Roman, each seeking to add her as an ordinary province to their own over- swollen dominions.
Much of the history thus written down comes to us from the Greeks, and has become interwoven with legends, curious, but not wholly to be credited. Thus of Psammetichus, who was the prince of the Libyan immigrants that held the western part of the Nile delta, the legends tell that he was one of twelve chieftains who expelled the enfeebled Assyrians and ruled in a confederacy over lower Egypt. To the twelve, an oracle predicted that he among them who should make a great public sacrifice to the god Ptah in a brazen cup should rule over all Egypt. The twelve agreed that no one of them should be allowed to make such a sacrifice and so gain precedence over the others. But once when they were all united in a ceremonial to Ptah, there were only eleven sacrificial cups prepared for them to drink from, so Psammetichus inverted his helmet and drank from that. Only afterward did it occur to him and to the others that the helmet was of brass, a “brazen cup.” The eleven discussed the need of deposing and even slaying the offender against their bond, but as his act had been performed in innocence they finally compromised by exiling him to his own border province of barbarous Libyans and fever-smitten marshes in the delta, forbidding him even to reenter the central districts of Egypt.
Psammetichus brooded for years amid his dismal wastes. Another oracle told him that he would be avenged by men of bronze who would issue from the ocean. This seemed absurd, but one day some Greek pirates clad in bronze armor landed from their ships to ravage his coast. Psammetichus recognized the invaders as the fulfilment of the augury. Instead of attacking them he made friends with them, through them secured the aid of a large body of hired Greek soldiers, and with these overthrew the other eleven princes and became master of all Egypt.
So much favor did he afterward show to these Grecian troops, that the Egyptian army became jealous, and two hundred thousand of the soldiers of upper Egypt resolved to desert the land. Psammetichus entreated them to remain but in vain. They marched away into Ethiopia and there settled, reinforcing the strength of that wild land until it became again a rival of Egypt in power and in culture.
Ignoring perhaps some portion of these fanciful details, we know clearly the central facts here gathered. Psammetichus, chief of the Egyptian Libyans, became by the aid of Greek mercenaries the Pharaoh of Egypt and founder of the twenty- sixth dynasty, in the year 655 B.C. He proved an able, energetic ruler, prompt to recognize and to meet the changed conditions of his time. He welcomed the Greeks and built for them two great fortresses guarding the Asiatic and the Libyan frontiers. From the Scythian hordes who ravaged Assyria he purchased his country's immunity by heavy gifts, as well as by resolute force. Between his possessions on the edge of Palestine and the remainder of Asia which the Scyths were plundering, stood the city of Ashdod. Legend says that Psammetichus besieged Ashdod for twenty-nine years, which is presumably merely the ancient way of saying that his troops remained near Ashdod on the frontier line, holding the Scythians in check. Psammetichus engaged in no warfare that was not defensive. He reduced the priesthood to obedience. And after a reign of over forty years he handed on to his son a country strong, united and prosperous, whereas he had found it disorganized, ravaged and helpless beneath the heel of Assyria.
The son who succeeded this truly noteworthy monarch was that “Pharaoh Necho” of whom the Bible tells us. He revived the accursed Egyptian dream of empire. Leading his forces into Palestine, he fought Josiah, the King of Judah, at Megiddo, where Josiah was slain. Palestine was at this time subject to Babylon, and the mighty monarch Nebuchadnezzar avenged his vassal by defeating Necho. It is even probable that the Babylonian invaded Egypt, but if so he made only a single successful raid and established no permanent dominion.
The Pharaoh Apries, a grandson of Necho, was dethroned by one of his own officers, Aahmes. This was a sort of native reaction against the ever-increasing power of the Greek mercenaries, who had been favored by Apries until they had grown as obnoxious and as dangerous to the Egyptians as had been the former “Libyan guard.” So Aahmes set himself at the head of a rebellion and thrice defeated the Greeks in pitched battles. In one of these he even made Apries a prisoner, so that the power of the Greeks was completely broken and Aahmes “the liberator" became king of Egypt (570 B.C.).
CLEOPATRA PREPARES FOR DEATH (The Queen Tests Different Poisons upon Her Slaves) From a painting by the noted French artist, Alex, Cabanel
CAESAR'S death plunged Rome again into civil war, and Cleopatra hesitated which of the factions to support. That of Mark Anthony finally won the upper hand, and Anthony, visiting the East to consolidate his power there, summoned the Queen of Egypt to appear before him in Asia Minor for punishment. Cleopatra came, but not in the manner of a victim. She was then twenty-eight years old, at the height of her physical beauty and intellectual power. She sailed up the river to Anthony's court in the most gorgeous barge, and arrayed in the most splendid garb that the East could furnish. Anthony was fascinated as Caesar had been. He became her devoted lover.
For ten years he and she plunged into every form of revelry together. Gradually Anthony's Roman adherents fell away from him. Augustus Caesar ruled Rome, and declared war upon him. Cleopatra arrayed the forces of Egypt upon Anthony's side; but they were both defeated. With them fell Egypt's independence; it was made a Roman province.
Tradition says that Cleopatra, finding her position hopeless, resolved on suicide. She poisoned several of her slaves to see which death seemed swiftest and most painless. After watching them, she selected the bite of an asp as the easiest method, and destroyed herself. The spirit of later Egypt, its splendor and wit, its recklessness and cruelty, was summed up in her and perished with her.
Next came the Persian conquest. Cyrus the Great of Persia marked out Egypt as part of the world he planned to master; but he died before accomplishing that portion of his designs. His son Cambyses advanced against Egypt just as the aged Aahmes died, and the Persians thus encountered a new and untried sovereign, who made little resistance against them. The story of Persia's dominion over Egypt has been already told. It is true that Cambyses and his successors took the title of Pharaoh and that the Egyptian priesthood included them among the dynasties of Egyptian sovereigns. But the Persians held the rank of Pharaoh only as one among their many honors; they dwelt in their own country and ruled Egypt by governors as a conquered country. The long line of independent monarchs who had held the throne of ancient Egypt as their chief glory and their seat of empire vanished with Aahmes.
Alexander, the famous Grecian conqueror, won Egypt when he defeated Persia. Indeed, the Egyptians hailed him as a deliverer. He worshipped their gods, accepted the title of “Pharaoh” with solemn respect, and caused Egypt to profit greatly by his favor. He founded the celebrated city of Alexandria at the western mouth of the Nile, naming the city after himself and planning to have it supersede Tyre as the commercial metropolis of all the eastern world.
In the division of Alexander's empire among his generals, which followed after his death, Egypt fell to Ptolemy, the son of Lagos. His family, the Ptolemies, ruled Egypt as independent monarchs for nearly three centuries, making of it a sort of Greek-Egyptian kingdom. Its fortunes fluctuated, without marked extremes, in the constant struggle for power which occupied the various Greek kings whom Alexander had thus left in control of all the East.
This era of the Ptolemies is to be reckoned on the whole as one of the more fortunate periods of Egyptian life. At no time was the Nile valley actually invaded, and the sovereigns were most of them thoughtful of their people's comfort and prosperity. Alexandria became not only the business centre of the world, but also the chief home of Greek learning and Greek art, outstripping the decadent cities of Greece itself.
The first Ptolemy founded the celebrated Alexandrian library, which grew to be the largest and most valuable collection of books the world had ever known. The second Ptolemy, called Philadelphos, built the colossal lighthouse of Alexandria, and reopened the ancient canal from the Nile to the Red Sea. Egypt was thus established as the intermediary of the trade between Europe and India. Alexandria grew to resemble both a great university filled with learned philosophers, and a great American trading city, her wharves thronged with merchants and strangers from every land. She was the granary of the Roman world.
Rome first interfered in Egyptian affairs when Ptolemy Epiphanes asked for help against the King of Syria, about two centuries before Christ. After that, Egypt was really a vassal kingdom of the Romans. She took part perforce in the tremendous civil war between the Roman generals Pompey and Caesar, and her young queen Cleopatra won the favor of Caesar.
Cleopatra's remarkable career belongs rather to the story of Rome than to that of Egypt. Roman intrigue brought Caesar to Alexandria, where he fought for Cleopatra; and after the great conqueror's death Roman intrigue sent Anthony to punish her. Anthony also succumbed to the thrall of this remarkable woman, and for nine years dwelt with her in Egypt. When at last he roused to defend himself against his Roman enemies it was too late. His fleet and that of Cleopatra were defeated at Actium (31 B.C.); and these two celebrated lovers both committed suicide rather than be taken as prisoners to Rome.
The Roman Emperor Augustus made Egypt a mere province of his empire. As such it became the richest of all the provinces, and in the later days a centre of disunion and discontent from which the various Roman governors planned rebellions against Rome. Most striking of these revolts was that of the famous Zenobia, queen of Palmyra. Her husband had been the friend and vassal of Rome against the Persians. But Zenobia not only declared herself independent, but also claimed sovereignty over Egypt as a descendant of Cleopatra. She seized the country (269 A.D.), defeated the Romans who marched against her, and ruled Egypt for over three years. Then she was defeated, captured, and slain.
Another notable tragedy of those days was the ravaging of Alexandria by the troops of the Emperor Caracalla. Angered by the jibes which some of the young men of the town made upon his drunkenness, he sent his soldiers out to slay every person whom they met in the streets. They continued the massacre for six days. After that, the Romans had less trouble with the chastened city. It became the seat of learning rather than of politics.
Greek philosophy, which had once guided the world, found in Alexandria its last refuge against the advancing tide of Christianity. And here occurred that brutal blow beneath which the Greek scholastic philosophers disappeared. Their last leader was the beautiful woman teacher, Hypatia, who ruled like a queen over the Alexandrian schools of philosophy in the fifth century. A horde of wild Christian monks from the monasteries of the deserts attacked Hypatia and tore her to pieces in the streets while her disciples field for their lives.
Alexandria, the chief home of trade and learning, became also the religious metropolis of the east, the strongest seat of Christianity, the fostering place of theological doctrines and disputing sects. Christianity triumphed here, as throughout the Roman world. As early as 389 A.D. the Emperor Theodosius forbade all the old pagan worships, and ordered all the temples to be closed except those of the Christians.
With this downfall of the five thousand year old religion, the native or Egyptian Egypt ceased to exist. Aryans and Semites brushed aside the last shred of Hamitic influence. Egypt had first surrendered her culture for that of the Greeks, to whom she herself had given their earliest instruction centuries before. Next she had perforce given up her empire to the Romans, a race of whom her mightier Pharaohs had never heard, even as barbarians. Now she lost also her religious faith, abandoning it for that sprung from the Hebrews who had been her despised servants, her slaves before the “exodus.” Thus, with the decree of Theodosius, the great and remarkable civilization created by the Hamitic race lost the last shadow of its national existence.
MODERN Egypt owes its reawakening life to the energies of France and England within the past half century. As part of the decaying Roman world, Egypt was conquered by the Arab followers of Mahomet in 642 A.D. Then for twelve hundred years she lay stagnant, decadent, ruled by these savage foreigners, who trampled the Egyptian peasantry under foot.
The Mahometans came, as so many conquerors had come, across the desert from Asia. They stormed the fortress of Pelusium, and thence advanced into the heart of the country. Alexandria, garrisoned by a remnant of the Roman legions, withstood a siege of fourteen months. The city was almost wholly destroyed, and the Mahometan ruler or Khalif, Omar, was long accused, though probably unjustly, of having deliberately burned the celebrated Alexandrian library, the chief repository of all the garnered learning of the ancient world.
The legend runs that Omar's lieutenant, having captured the enormous library buildings, sent to ask the Khalif what should be done with all the writings. “Burn them,” answered the unlettered Omar. On being argued with by some of his more enlightened followers, he condescended to explain his order by referring to the Koran, the Bible of the Mahometans. “If” said he, “the matter in these books is not contained in the Koran, then they are wrong and irreligious. If it is contained in the Koran, then they are unnecessary and better done away with.” An Egyptian writer tells us that the water of all the public baths of the city was kept heated for six months by the fires fed with the books of the great library.
The Mahometans founded the city of Cairo as their capital. Indeed, it is worth noting, when looking at a modern map of Egypt, that neither of its chief cities of today, Cairo and Alexandria, has any connection whatever with ancient Egyptian history. One was the capital built by the Greek conquerors, the other that erected by the Mahometans, foreign cities both, intended to dominate the native population.
After a while Egypt became the chief centre of the Mahometan power, which covered all western Asia and northern Africa, the ancient seats of civilization. The mighty Saladin, the monarch who withstood the whole force of Europe in the crusade led by King Richard the Lion-hearted, was originally the ruler of Egypt, and gradually extended his power over all the Mahometan world. Saladin's successors established a mercenary soldiery of Turkish slaves, called the Mamelukes; and these Mamelukes, like the old Libyan guard or the Greek soldiers of Apries, soon became the real masters of the country. They set up and deposed sovereigns at will, the first “sultan” appointed from among their own ranks being Beybars (1266 A.D.).
Under the Mamelukes, art and literature revived in Egypt, but the prosperity was still that of foreign rulers, Arab or Turkish, and had little effect in alleviating the degradation of the native peasantry. The Turkish sultan, Selim I., conquered the land in 1517, and thereafter it was nominally a Turkish province, though still chiefly controlled by the Mamelukes. These became the most celebrated soldiery of the world, because of their wealth and display. Each Mameluke was a sort of prince, his rank depending on his military valor.
Napoleon invaded Egypt, as we have already noted, in 1798. The Mamelukes met him with desperate valor in “the Battle of the Pyramids,” fought at the base of those silent watchers of the past. Napoleon was victorious; but the English fleet drove him from Egypt, and the Mamelukes once more resumed control under a nominal Turkish suzerainty.
In 1805 the Turkish sultan appointed as governor of Egypt, Mehemet Ali, a general as able and bold as he was treacherous and cruel. He pretended friendship for the Mamelukes, and so led all their chief members into a snare, where they were massacred. Having exterminated this celebrated force and thus made himself really master of Egypt, Mehemet Ali threw off his allegiance to the waning power of Turkey, and snatched some of her Asiatic
NAPOLEON IN EGYPT (His Scientists Unwrap for Him the Mummy of a Pharaoh)
From the painting by the French artist, K. Girardet
WE approach modern days. When, a little over a century ago, Napoleon dreamed of conquering the world, he led an expedition from France into Egypt. The youngest and newest nation was to begin its career of conquest by taking possession of the oldest. The Mamelukes met Napoleon in the noted “battle of the Pyramids,” and were defeated. Then the new conqueror paused to look about him before continuing his warfare. He had brought with his army another and equally potent force, a company of scientists. These began with eagerness the exploration of the stupendous monuments of ancient Egypt which surrounded them on every side. They discovered the “Rosetta stone,” from which we have learned to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Indeed, all our modern knowledge of the wonders of Egyptian antiquity had its beginning with the expedition of Napoleon.
His scientists exhumed for him the mummies of some of the mightiest Pharaohs, and so, as in our picture, the modern military hero found himself face to face with some of his earliest prototypes. Perchance the view of what they, despite all their power, had become, may have given him some thought of the futility of his own career.
The money which Ismail received from this transaction, some twenty million dollars, he sunk in his labors for Egypt. He built roads and bridges; he provided harbors and lighthouses for his seaports; railways and the telegraph for the interior; he established schools and honest courts of law; he extended the rule of civilization far into the Soudan, and there attempted the suppression of that greatest horror of Egypt and of Africa, the slave trade.
It is sad to record the downfall of so energetic and earnest a ruler as the Khedive Ismail. His views clashed with those of his English assistants and advisers. His financial ideas failed to harmonize with modern business methods, in so far as he was much more interested in borrowing than in repaying, in spending money for his many constructive works than in laying it up for the interest on his ever-increasing debts. Finally the financial situation became so unsatisfactory that France and England, Ismail's two chief creditors, established a “dual control” over the Egyptian treasury. Ismail still continued refractory. He insistently regarded himself as the ruler of the country. He refused to establish an Egyptian parliament; he refused a formal demand that he should abdicate his throne. He had, however, no army capable of upholding him, so he was ultimately forced to give way to Europe's will and was succeeded by his son, the Khedive Tewfik (1879).
Tewfik was, naturally enough, the mere servant of the European powers. As such he won little respect from his own people. One of these, Arabi Pasha, organized a revolution which had for its purpose the expulsion of the foreigners from the country. Arabi defied the Khedive and became a military dictator. England sent a fleet to Alexandria to overawe the followers of Arabi. There was a brief, tumultuous uprising. Alexandria was bombarded by the fleet, and Arabi was captured. France refused to join England in these vigorous measures; and the latter, after assuring protection to the French creditors, took complete practical control of Egypt, though Turkey through all these changes still retained the nominal overlordship of the land.
The English occupancy of Egypt has since continued, and has completed to a marvellous degree the regeneration which the Khedive Ismail began. Lord Dufferin was first sent out as the Khedive's “adviser,” and he prepared a constitution under which the land became a limited monarchy. Dufferin was afterward succeeded by other “advisers,” the most notable of them being Lord Cromer, who remained the real though unofficial ruler of Egypt until 1907. To his wisdom and steady devotion to duty the success of England's Egyptian occupation is most largely due.
The most serious difficulty of the government has been in the far south, the Soudan, which Mehemet Ali had added to his kingdom. The noted English officer, General Charles Gordon, had been sent there by the Khedive Ismail to suppress the slave trade. To a very considerable extent he accomplished this; and another Englishman, General Baker, extended the British-Egyptian control way back to the great lakes of equatorial Africa.
About 1880, however, a new religious faith developed among the Arabs of the Soudan. A hermit and mystic arose, calling himself El Mahdi, which means “the inspired of God.” He preached that the Turkish government was to be expelled from Egypt along with all other foreigners, and the old pure worship of Mahomet was to be reestablished by the sword. His followers defeated and utterly exterminated an Egyptian army in 1882, and a second one commanded by the English Colonel Hicks in the following year. The English Parliament took the position that England was pledged to defend Egypt itself, but not to expend precious lives in hunting out and punishing the wild, far-off fanatics of the Soudan. So an effort was made to withdraw all the Egyptian settlers and garrisons from the dangerous region. This resulted in more massacres, the most noted victim being General Gordon. He had been sent by England to Khartoum, the chief town of the Soudan, to superintend the withdrawal of the Egyptians. Here he was besieged by the Mahdi, but with the aid of the town folk and a small garrison, Gordon held the frenzied horde of fanatics at bay for ten months. A real English army under Lord Wolseley was sent to rescue him; but even this force failed to overcome the determined Arabs, or “Dervishes,” as El Mahdi's followers were called. The latter finally stormed Khartoum, killed Gordon, and compelled Lord Wolseley to abandon his attack. Egypt lost the whole of the Soudan.
The Khedive Tewfik died in 1892 and was succeeded by his son Abbas, the present Khedive. In 1896, the English officials determined to reoccupy the Soudan. The Mahdi was dead, but his successor, called the Khalifa, led the Dervishes against this new advance with equal resolution and ferocity. In several battles the Dervishes proved themselves the most terrible foes England had ever encountered among barbarians. But at Omdurman in 1898 they were finally defeated and well- nigh exterminated. The Khalifa escaped, but was slain in a petty battle the next year; and England's mastery of all this vast territory has since been peaceful and almost unopposed.
In Egypt itself there has developed a strong opposition to English rule. The native population consists of two antagonistic elements, the Copts and the Mahometans. The Copts are the native Egyptians, who through all the centuries of Mahometan sovereignty have still clung to the Christian religion. The Mahometans are of mingled Arab and Egyptian race. They are the more numerous and, during the Turkish rule, were of course the dominant race; but the Copts are proving themselves better business folk, industrious, clear-headed, and persistent. If England were to withdraw from Egypt, the Mahometan
THE MASSACRE OF THE MAMELUKES Mehemet-Ali Entraps the Mamelukes to their Destruction) From a painting by the noted French artist, Alexander Bida
NAPOLEON failed to conquer Egypt, and the Mamelukes came back into power, though under the nominal rule of the Turkish Sultan, the head of the Mahometan faith. The Sultan sent as regent of Egypt Mehemet-Ali, a Syrian slave who had risen to power in Turkey. Mehemet did what five centuries had failed to do; he broke the rule of the Mamelukes. On his first coming to Egypt he found that they thwarted him in every way. At one time they were in open rebellion. He feigned to yield to them, flattered and favored them, and finally summoned them all to visit his citadel to plan a campaign against the Arabs.
Donning their gayest uniforms, the Mamelukes, the finest body of cavalry in the world, rode into Cairo. Mehemet welcomed them warmly, and invited them to parade within the walls of the lofty citadel. Apparently with no suspicion of treachery they entered at its gate. The portcullis dropped behind them; they were in a trap. Then on every side, from the height of blank and gloomy walls, or the safety of barred windows, appeared the soldiers of Mehemet, and shot them down. Seeing there was no escape, many of the Mamelukes folded their arms and with turbaned heads bowed in prayer, calmly awaiting death. Others dashed to and fro upon their steeds waving their swords and challenging and cursing those who had betrayed them. Tradition says that only a single Mameluke escaped, by urging his horse to a tremendous leap over the battlements. The rule of this celebrated soldiery was broken forever population think their numbers would reestablish them in control; the Copts hope their ability would make them the masters. England believes there would be anarchy.
The so-called “national” party were particularly vociferous about the years 1906 to 1909. In mass-meetings and conventions they protested against England's rule; they circulated among the more ignorant folk newspapers filled with the falsest and coarsest accusations against the foreign officials; the mob grew openly mutinous. Meanwhile England had been making some actual experiments toward increasing self-government among the Egyptians, establishing a sort of restricted parliament and even allowing the appointment of a native Egyptian, a Copt named Boutros Pasha, as chief minister. In 1910 Boutros was assassinated by some of his own people.
Since then the English have adopted stricter methods, being convinced that home rule for Egypt is for the present an impossibility. Ex-President Roosevelt, visiting England in 1910, made a much discussed speech, urging the English to a vigorous policy in suppressing the Egyptian disorders. Since then the murmurs of ambitious discontent in Egypt have almost died out; the material prosperity of the land has continued.
The immense public works undertaken by the English during their rule have revolutionized industrial conditions in Egypt. Most important of these works was the vast dam at Assouan to regulate the waters of the Nile. This was completed in 1902, and has assured lower Egypt of regular harvests ever since. In 1913 Lord Kitchener, who held rule over the upper valley of the Nile, the Soudan, persuaded the English Parliament to allow fifteen million dollars for great engineering works which should equally benefit his province. Thus England continues to lead Egypt toward wealth and comfort, as a wise nurse might lead a child, despite the resentful whimpering of her discontented charge.
CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY
B.C. 5000 (?)-Egypt divided among petty kings. 4600 (?)-A prince of the hawk clan becomes king of all upper Egypt. 4500 (?)-Menes, king of upper Egypt, unites lower Egypt with his domains and becomes the first “Pharaoh of Egypt.” He founds Memphis and builds a canal to regulate the Nile. 4400 (?)-Den, the fourth king, annexes Sinai to his kingdom, and begins commercial intercourse with Asia. 3998-The chronology becomes fairly accurate and the history reliable with the accession of Sneferu, founder of the fourth dynasty of kings. 3969-Khufu, or Cheops, builds the great pyramid. 3845-Men-kau-ra, last king of the great fourth dynasty, rules in peace during an era of art and literature, the golden age of ancient Egypt. 3721-The priest Pharaohs of the fifth dynasty supersede the former military kings. 3580-The most ancient recovered manuscript which is clearly dated, the “proverbs of Ptah-hotep.” 3503-Teta, a vigorous warrior of Memphis, founds the sixth dynasty. 3347-Men-ka-ra, or Nitokris, a queen, rules Egypt in days of trouble, closing the sixth dynasty. 3300-2800-The “Dark Ages” of Egypt; foreign tribes ravage the land from Asia; a wall is built across the isthmus of Suez to hold them back. 2778-Amenemhat I., founder of the twelfth dynasty, reorganizes Egypt and makes Thebes his capital. 2660-Usertesen III. conquers Ethiopia. 2098-Invasion of the Hyksos, or shepherd kings, from Asia. They establish a fortified camp at Avaris and rule Egypt for over four centuries. 1700-The children of Israel are welcomed into Egypt by the Hyksos. 1635-Aahmes, “the liberator,” expels the Hyksos and founds the eighteenth dynasty, the “modern age” of Egypt. 1530-Thothmes III., the greatest military ruler of the dynasty, ravages western Asia in fifteen campaigns and receives tribute from Babylon and Assyria. 1520-He wins the great battle of Megiddo, subduing the Hittites. 1420-Amenhotep IV. rejects the Egyptian faith for Asiatic sun-worship and founds a new capital. 1370-Horem-heb, the “restorer,” reestablishes the old religion. 1365-Rameses I. begins the famous nineteenth dynasty. 1355-Seti I. builds a canal connecting the Nile with the Red Sea. 1345- 1285-Long reign of Rameses II., the Great, the oppressor of the Hebrews. 1340- Victory of Rameses over the Hittites at Kadesh. 1280-Mer-en-ptah II. repels a great Libyan invasion. 1276 (or possibly as early as 1325)-Exodus of the Hebrews under Moses. 1220-Rameses III. conducts a war against the Libyans; the power of Egypt slowly crumbles; the “Libyan guard” of the Pharaohs becomes all-powerful. 945-Shashanq, commander of the Libyan guard, becomes Pharaoh; the Egyptians are in dire want. 925-Shashanq plunders Jerusalem. 800-The Ethiopians begin to invade Egypt; which has broken into several independent little states. 727- Piankhi of Ethiopia subdues all the little Egyptian rulers, and is hailed as Pharaoh. 704-Tirhakah, an Ethiopian Pharaoh, aids Hezekiah of Judah against the Assyrians. 702-Tirhakah is defeated, but the Assyrian army perishes. 670- Esarhaddon of Assyria conquers Egypt. 668-Tirhakah regains Egypt. 664-The Ethiopian-Assyrian wars end with the defeat of the Ethiopian Tanut-amen. The Assyrians are summoned home by Scythian invasions, and the various Egyptian princes unite in a confederacy. 655-Psammetichus conquers the other princes by using Greek mercenaries, and founds the twenty-sixth dynasty; the Egyptian soldiers desert the country and migrate to Ethiopia. 608-Necho II. defeats Josiah, King of Judah, at Megiddo. 605-Necho is defeated by Nebuchadnezzar at Karchemish. 570-Aahmes II. leads a revolt against the Greek mercenaries, thrice defeats them, and reestablishes the supremacy of the native Egyptians. 554- Solon, the Greek law-giver, visited Egypt. 525-Cambyses the Persian conquers Egypt. 524-His armies perish in the desert. 517-His successor Darius visits Egypt and appeases the people. 488-A rebellion, the Persians expelled. 485- Xerxes reconquers Egypt. 418-Herodotus, the Greek historian, visits Egypt and writes our earliest book about it. 405-The Persians again expelled, and the independent native Pharaohs rule for over sixty years. 340-Persian supremacy reestablished.
B.C.332-Alexander the Great drives out the Persians and is hailed in Egypt as a deliverer; he founds Alexandria. 323-After the death of Alexander his general, Ptolemy Lagos, establishes the Greek-Egyptian kingdom of the Ptolemies; he founds the Alexandrian library. 320-He seizes Palestine and establishes a celebrated Jewish colony in Alexandria. 283-Ptolemy Philadelphos succeeds to the throne, reopens the canal to the Red Sea and makes Egypt a rich trading country. 198-Antiochus the Great of Syria defeats the Egyptians and takes Palestine from them. 193-Ptolemy Epiphanes appeals to Rome for aid against Syria. 171-Antiochus partly conquers Egypt. 169-He withdraws at Rome's command. 128-A pestilence destroys 800,000 of the population. 82-Capture and destruction of Thebes, which had revolted. 81-Reign and death of Ptolemy XII., who makes a will giving Egypt to the Romans. 59-Ptolemy XIII. bribes the Romans to acknowledge him king. 51- Death of Ptolemy XIII., who leaves his kingdom to Ptolemy XIV. and Cleopatra. 49-Ptolemy expels Cleopatra, and civil war follows. 48-Julius Caesar, assisting Cleopatra, besieges and burns Alexandria. 47-Ptolemy XIV. is defeated by Caesar and drowned while crossing the Nile; the Egyptian throne shared by Cleopatra and her younger brother, Ptolemy XV. 44-Cleopatra poisons her brother. 41-Mark Anthony summons Cleopatra to trial for her brother's murder; he is so overcome by her beauty that he follows her into Egypt. 36-Anthony confers Phoenicia, Cyrene, and Cyprus on Cleopatra. 35-Anthony confers all Asia, from the Mediterranean to the Indus, on Cleopatra. 31-The battle of Actium. 30-Invasion and subjugation of Egypt by Octavius, and suicide of Anthony and Cleopatra; Egypt becomes a Roman province.
A.D.24-The country is invaded by 30,000 Ethiopian subjects of Queen Candace, who are repulsed by the Romans. 171-The Egyptians revolt against the Roman government. 215-Caracalla visits Egypt and massacres the youth of Alexandria for having ridiculed him. 269-Egypt is invaded by Zenobia, queen of Palmyra. 272- Firmus makes Upper Egypt independent of Rome. 273-Aurelian regains possession. 288-Upper Egypt rebels under Achilleus. 292-The Emperor Diocletian besieges and takes Coptos and Busiris. 297-Siege and capture of Alexandria by Diocletian, who suppresses the rebellion of Achilleus; the Egyptian coinage ceases. 365-An inundation and earthquake destroys many of the inhabitants. 389-Theodosius prohibits pagan worship, in consequence of which a number of famous Egyptian temples are destroyed. 618-Egypt is conquered by Chosroes II., king of Persia. 639-The Mahometans invade Egypt. 642-They capture Alexandria and establish the Mahometan empire. 1250-The Christian Crusaders invade Egypt and
ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION OF EGYPT (The British Fleet Bombards Alexandria in 1882) From a painting by the English artist, H. C. Seppings Wright
THE descendants of Mehemet Ali are still the nominal rulers of Egypt. In reality, however, England has taken complete control of the country, and has given it the blessing of a modern government, under which it has prospered exceedingly. The new era really began in Egypt with the construction of the Suez Canal. This was finished in 1869, and England secured financial control of it in 1875. The interests of European financiers in Egypt became so large that they secured the deposition of the ruler or Khedive by his nominal overlord the Turkish sultan; and the Khedive who followed was submissive to their wishes. This caused the rise of a native Egyptian party under the lead of Arabi Pasha, who demanded that the Khedive should expel all Europeans from his councils. The Khedive was helpless against Arabi, who became the military dictator of Egypt.
The European powers consulted. England, which was mainly interested, urged the other states to join her in sending a fleet to Alexandria to overawe the followers of Arabi. Only France complied. The presence of the united fleet merely made matters worse at Alexandria, for Arabi defied Europe and began building fortifications. The French refused to advance farther than a threat, and their ships left Alexandria. Then the British fleet bombarded Alexandria and drove Arabi to retreat. Thus England assumed responsibility for the Egyptian situation.
are repulsed. 1266-The Mameluke soldiers seize possession of the government and appoint sultans of their own. 1517-Defeat of the Mamelukes by Sultan Selim I., who adds Egypt to the Turkish empire. 1770-Ali Bey, a Mameluke, rules Egypt, Arabia, and Syria. 1798-Egypt is invaded by the French, under Napoleon Bonaparte. 1801-Expulsion of the French by the English and Turks. 1806-Mehemet Ali made Pasha. 1807-The English defeated in an attempt to occupy Rosetta. 1811- Massacre of the Mamelukes at Cairo by Mehemet Ali. 1814-The Turkish army in Egypt is remodelled. 1820-Alexandria connected with the Nile by the Mahmoud canal. 1829-The first Egyptian newspaper published. 1831-Mehemet Ali, Pasha of Egypt, revolts from Turkey and invades Syria. 1834-Egypt visited by cholera. 1835-The plague ravages the country. 1839-Mehemet Ali again revolts, and claims hereditary possession of Egypt and Syria. 1840-The Egyptians defeated by the British at Beyrout, and the dispute with Turkey settled. 1848-Death of Mehemet Ali and his son Ibrahim. 1854-Said Pasha succeeds his brother Abbas. 1860-Work begun on the Suez Canal. 1863-Death of the Viceroy Said Pasha, who is succeeded by his nephew, Ismail Pasha. 1867-Firman of the Sultan of Turkey granting to Ismail Pasha the title of Khedive, or king. 1869-Opening of the Suez Canal. 1873-Firman of the Sultan of Turkey granting to the Khedive the right of maintaining armies and concluding treaties with foreign Powers. 1874- Extraordinary rise of the Nile, causing great damage; occupation of the kingdom of the Soudan by Egyptian troops. 1875-Annexation of all the Soudan to Egypt by decree of the Khedive; opening of an International Court of Appeal at Alexandria.
1875-England secures financial control of the Suez Canal. 1875-77-War with Abyssinia. 1877-Peace terms with Abyssinia accepted. 1879-Ismail deposed and his son Tewfik becomes Khedive. 1881-Decree for abolition of slavery; insurrection in the Soudan; British pacific interference. 1882-Rebellion under Arabi Pasha; Alexandria bombarded by the British. The Mahdi holds all the country south of Khartoum. His followers exterminate an Egyptian army. 1883-A second Egyptian army under Colonel Hicks wiped out by the Mahdi. 1884-The Khedive asks a loan of pounds8,000,000 to meet war expenses; conference of six great powers on Egyptian affairs meets, but adjourns without result; Egypt under England's command abandons the Soudan to the Mahdi, who besieges General Gordon in Khartoum. Lord Wolseley fights his way up the Nile with an English army to rescue Gordon. 1885- Gordon slain; Wolseley's expedition abandoned. Egypt loses the Soudan. 1889- Forced labor of the peasantry abolished. 1892-Tewfik dies and is succeeded by his son Abbas. 1894-The first Egyptian exhibition of art and industry opened at Alexandria. 1896-England and Egypt begin a joint reoccupation of the Soudan. 1898-The Mahdists, led by his successor the Khalifa, completely defeated at Omdurman. 1899-The Khalifa slain and the last opposition extinguished. The Soudan belongs to England and Egypt. France had occupied Fashoda on the upper Nile, but abandons her claim to the region. 1902-Completion of the great dam at Assouan for regulating the Nile. 1906-"National” troubles in Egypt because of the demand for independence. 1907-Lord Cromer resigns after over twenty years as head of the English government in Egypt. Sir Eldon Gorst, his chief assistant, succeeds him. 1910-The Egyptian native prime minister, Boutros Pasha, assassinated; England adopts more vigorous repressive measures; decay of the “National” party. Ex-president Roosevelt approves England's Egyptian policy in a noted speech in England. 1913-At Lord Kitchener's urgence England undertakes to finance the development of the Soudan.
THE KINGLY DYNASTIES OF EGYPT
(In the following list the dates suggested by Mr. Flinders-Petrie have been mainly followed; but the reader must bear in mind the wide divergence among the best authorities. The names of the dynasties and most important kings are given, with approximate dates.)
B.C. PRE-DYNASTIC 4600-The Scorpion rules in Upper Egypt. 4550-Narmer conquers Lower Egypt.
THE DYNASTIES 4500-First-Thinite. Menes, first universally acknowledged king, founder of Memphis. Teta or Athothis, the physician. Den or Uenestes, the conqueror. 4400-Second-Memphite. Kakau establishes worship of the sacred bull. 4200-Third-Memphite. Tosorthros begins building in stone. 3998-Fourth-Memphite. Sneferu founds the dynasty, builds a pyramid. Khufu, builder of the great pyramid. Men-kau-ra, the “golden age.” 3721-Fifth-Elephantine. User-ka-ef, priest of the sun-god, Ra. 3503-Sixth-Elephantine. Teta, a military ruler. Nitokris, the first independent queen.
THE POWER OF THE MAHDI (El Mahdi Enters Khartoum over the Bodies of His Worshippers) From a sketch made at the time
THE story of the renowned Englishman, the Christian soldier, Charles Gordon, reads like a romance. Wherever England was earnestly endeavoring to uplift civilization and stamp out barbarism, Gordon appeared in the van. He won his reputation in the Chinese service; and then in the time of England's greatest need in Egypt he was sent thither. Among the wild Arab tribes of the Soudan, which is the Egyptian frontier region far up the course of the Nile, there appeared a Mahometan prophet, El Mahdi. His fanatical followers defeated the Egyptian troops so repeatedly and completely that the Egyptians, under English advice, resolved to withdraw entirely from the impoverished Soudan. General Gordon was sent to supervise the removal of all Egyptians and Europeans from their perilous position. He succeeded with almost everybody except himself. When there was scarcely another European left, he was besieged by El Mahdi in Khartoum, the capital of the Soudan.
Training the Arabs of the town and heartening them with his own calm courage, Gordon withstood a siege of eleven months. Then when a relieving column of British soldiers was only two days distant, the town was stormed. Gordon was slain and El Mahdi entered Khartoum in triumph, riding over the bodies of his adoring followers. He had done what he had promised, expelled the last foreigner from the Soudan, and he was worshipped as divine.
Egypt-Dynasties and Chief Rulers
3322-Seventh-Memphite. Petty Kings-Eighth-Memphite. 3106-Ninth-Heracleopolite. 3249-Tenth-Heracleopolite. 2985-Eleventh-Theban. 2778-Twelfth-Theban. Amenemhat I. Usertesen I. Usertesen II. Usertesen III. 2565-Thirteenth-Theban. 2112-Fourteenth-Xoite. 2098-Fifteenth-Hyksos, or Shepherd kings.-Sixteenth-Hyksos. 1738-Seventeenth-Thebans, at first dependents of the Hyksos. 1635-Eighteenth-Theban. Aahmes I. conquers the Hyksos. Amenhotep I. Thothmes III. Amenhotep II. Thotmes IV. Amenhotep III. Amenhotep IV. Horem-heb. 1365-Nineteenth-Theban. Rameses I. Seti or Sethos. Rameses II., the legendary Sesostris. Mer-en-ptah, probably the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Seti II. 1220-Twentieth-Theban. Rameses III. 1100-Twenty-first-Tanite. History obscure. Hir-Hor, high priest of Amon, probably first of priest kings. 945-Twenty-second-Bubastite (Libyan). Shashanq. 810-Twenty-third-Tanite. 781-Twenty-fourth-Saite. 727-Twenty-fifth-Karnak (Ethiopian). Piankhi. Tarkus or Tirhakah. (Egypt subdued by Assyrians). 655-Twenty-sixth-Saite. Psammetichus I. Necho II. Psammetichus II. Apries. Amasis. 525-Twenty-seventh-Persian. (Egypt only a province). Cambyses. Darius I. Xerxes I. Artaxerxes I. Darius II. 415-Twenty-eighth-Saite (In revolt from Persia). Amyrtaeus. 408-Twenty-ninth-Mendesian. 386-Thirtieth-Sebennyte. Nectanebus I. Nectanebus II. 340-Thirty-first-Persian. Darius III. 332-Alexander the Great conquers Egypt, and the empire is divided.
DYNASTY OF THE LAGIDAE OR PTOLEMIES
B.C. 305-Ptolemy I., Soter. 285-Ptolemy II., Philadelphus. 247-Ptolemy III., Euergetes. 222-Ptolemy IV., Philopator. 205-Ptolemy V., Epiphanes. 182-Ptolemy VI. (Eupator). 182-Ptolemy VII., Philometor. 146-Ptolemy VIII. (Neos). 146-Ptolemy IX., Euergetes II. 117-Cleopatra Cocce and Ptolemy X., Soter II. 106-Cleopatra Cocce and Ptolemy XI., Alexander I. 81-Cleopatra Berenike. 81-Ptolemy XII., Alexander II. 81-Ptolemy XIII., Auletes. 51-Cleopatra, and Ptolemies XIV. XV., XVI., her brothers. 30-Egypt became a Roman province.
PRONOUNCING VOCABULARY OF NAMES USED IN THE STORY OF THE ANCIENT WORLD
Aahmes (ah mes) Abydos (a-bi dos) Abyssinia (ab es-sin i-a) Accad (ac cad) Achaemenes (a-kam en-ez) Achaemenides (ak-a-men i-dez) Achmet (ac met) Adonis (a-do nis) Afghan (af gan) Afghanistan (af-gan is-tan) Aga-Mohammed (ag ga mo-ham med) Agathocles (a-gath o-klez) Ahasuerus (a-has u-a-rus) Ahmed Mirza (ah mad mir za) Ahriman (ah ri-man) Ahura-mazda (a-hoo ra maz da) Amalekites (am a-lek-ites) Amenemhat (a-men em-hat) Amenhotep (a-men ho-tep) Ammonites (am mun-ites) Amraphel (am ra-fel) Amyitis (a-me i-tis) Antioch (an ti-ok) Anu (an oo) Apis (a pis) Ararat (ar a-rat) Armenia (ahr-me ni-a) Arsaces (ar-sa sez) Artabanus (ar-ta-ba nus) Artaxerxes (ar-tak-zerk zes) Arvad (ahr vad) Aryan (ahr yan) Ashdod (ash dod) Assouan (as-soo an) Assur (as sur) Assur-bani-pal (as sur ban i pal) Assyria (as-sir i-a) Astarte (as-tahr te) Astyages (as-ty a-jez) Atabeg (at a-beg) Athothis (a-thoth is) Avaris (a-va ris)
Baal (bale) Babylon (bab i-lon) Bactria (bac tre-a) Bakhtiaris (bak te-ar—iz) Bashi-Bazouks (bash i ba-zookz) Bedouin (bed oo-en or bed oo-in) Bel (bel) Belshazzar (bel-shaz zar) Berosus (ba-ro sus) Botta (bot a) Bubastite (bu bas-tite) Byblos (bib los)
Cadesia (ka-de ze-a) Cadiz (kah deth) Cairo (ki ro) Cambyses (kam-bi sez) Canaan (ca nan) Carthage (kahr thage) Chaldaea (kal-de a) Chedor-laomer (ked or la o-mer) Chosroes (kos ro-ez) Cleopatra (kle-o-pa tra) Croesus (kre sus) Cunaxa (ku-nax a) Cyaxares (si-ax a-rez) Cyrene (si-re ne) Cyrus (si rus)
Darius (da-ri us) Deioces (de-i o-kez) Dido (di do) Diodorus (di-o-do rus)
Ea (e a) Ecbatana (ek-bat a-na) Edomites (e dom-ites) Elam (e lam) Elamites (e lam-ites) Elissa (e-lis sa) En-lil (en lel) Epiphanes (ep i-pha nez) Erech (e rek) Eridu (er i-du) Esar-haddon (e sar had don) Eth-baal (eth ba el) Euergetes (u-ehr-ghe tez) Euphrates (yu-fra tez)
Fayoum (fi-oom')
Gaza (ga za) Gizeh (ge ze) Gomates (go-mah tez)
Hamath (ha math) Hamilcar (ha-mil kar) Hamites (ham ites) Hammurabi (ham mur-ah-be) Hannibal (han i-bal) Hanno (han o) Harpagus (hahr pa-gus) Hasdrubal (has dru-bal) Herat (her-at) Herodotus (he-rod o-tus) Hezekiah (hez-e-ki ah) Hierakonpolis (he-a-ra-kon po-lis) Himera (him er-a) Hippocrates (hip-poc ra-tez) Hiram (hi ram) Hittite (hit tite) Horem-heb (ho rem heb) Hormuz (hor muz) Hyksos (hik sos)
Isdigerd (iz di-gerd) Ishbosheth (ish-bo shethe) Ishtar (Ish tar) Isis (i sis) Ismail (is-ma-el)
Jebusites (jeb us-ites) Jehoahaz (je-hoa haz) Jeremiah (jer-e-mi ah) Jezebel (jez e-bel)
Kadesh (kad esh) Karchemish (kahr kem-ish) Karnak kar nak) Kassite (kas site) Kazar (ka-zahr) Kengi (keng i)
SCIENCE MASTERS THE NILE
(The Opening of the Flood Gates at the Completion of the Great Assuan Dam)
From a photograph taken at the time
THE generation or more during which England has held control of Egypt has witnessed the complete transformation of the country. Everywhere one meets prosperity, where before all was misery and almost starvation. Chief of the great engineering works undertaken by the English has been the building of a great dam across the mighty Nile at Assuan where the “first cataract” blocks the free navigation of the river. The purpose of this dam is to regulate the annual overflow of the Nile, so that Egypt shall neither be swamped nor left wholly without a flood, since either case means short crops the following season, with famine as the result.
The dam was completed in 1902, and opened with elaborate ceremonies. The reigning Khedive Tewfik was present with many distinguished Englishmen. The guests were wheeled in chairs across the long face of the dam, then the gates were lifted, and the waters permitted to rush through the channel they have since followed. This stupendous piece of engineering work has since fulfilled its purpose perfectly, another monument to the genius of man, and a guarantee of Egypt's future prosperity.
Khalifa (ka lif-a) Khalupsaru (ka loop-sah ru) Khartoum (kar-toom) Khedive (ka-dev) Khufu (koo foo) Kimmerians (kim-mer i-ans) Kish (kish) Kobad (ko bad) Kochome (ko-cho me) Kudur-lagamar (kud ur lag a-mar) Kudur—nankhundi kud ur nank hoon-di)
Lagash (la gash) Layard la ard) Lebanon (leb a-non) Lesseps (la sep; Eng., les eps) Libya lib e-a) Lugal-zag-gisi (lu gal zag gi si) Luliya (lu-li ya) Luxor (luks or) Lydia (lid i-a)
Magian (ma je-an) Mahdi ma de) Mamelukes (mam e-lukz) Manetho (man e-tho) Marduk (mar duk) Maroetis (ma ro-e tis) Medea (me-de a) Media (me de-a) Medjliss (medg liss) Megiddo (me-jid do) Melkarth (mel karth) Memphis (mem fis) Menes (me nes) Mer-en-ptah (mer en tah) Merenra (me-ren rah) Merodach (me-ro dak) Mesopotomia (mes o-po-ta mi-a) Moabites (mo ab-ites) Moloch (mo lok) Muzaffir-al-din (muz-af ir al din)
Nabonidos (na bo-ne dos) Nabopolassar (na bo-po-las sar) Nadirkuli (nah der-koo le) Naram-sin (nar am sin) Nasr-el-Mulk (nahs r el moolk) Nebuchadnezzar (neb u-kad-nez zar) Nectanebus (nec-ta-ne bus) Nepherites (ne-pher i-tez) Nineveh (nin e-ve) Ninus (ni nus) Nippur (nip ur) Nitokris (ni-to kris) Nothus (no thus)
Ochus (o kus) Ophir (o fer) Ormuzd (or-muzd)
Papyrus (pa-pi rus) Pasha (pa-sha) Pepy (pep i) Persepolis (per-sep o-lis) Petra (pe trah) Pharaoh (fa ro or fa ra-o) Philistines (fi-lis tines) Phoenicia (fe-nish i-a) Piankhi (pi-ank i) Psammetichus (sam-met i-kus) Ptah (tah) Ptolemy (tol e-mi) Pul (pul) Pygmalion (pig-ma li-on)
Rameses (ra-me sez) Rhodope (rod o-pe)
Saladin (sal a-din) Sapor (sa por) Sarchedon (sar-ked don) Sardanapalus (sar da-na-pa lus) Sardis (sar dis) Sargon (sar gon) Sassanian (sas-sa ne-an) Scythia (sith i-a) Seleucidae (se-leu si-da) Seleucus (se-leu kus) Semiramis (se-mir a-mis) Semite (sem it) Semites (sem ites) Sennacherib (sen-nak er-ib) Sesostris (se-sos tris) Sethos (seth os) Seti (se ti) Set-necht (set nekt) Severus (se-ve rus) Shah (shah) Shalmaneser (shal ma-ne ser) Shashanq (sha shank) Sheiks (sheks; Arabic, shak) Shinar (shi nar) Shishak (shish ak) Sidon (si don) Sinai (si ni) Sirdar (ser-dar) Smerdis (smer dis) Soter (so ter) Soudan (soo dan) Suakim (swa kim) Suez (soo-ez) Sumer (su mer) Sumu-abi (su mu ah be) Susa (soo sa) Syria (sir i-a)
Tabriz (tah-brez) Tanite (tay-nit) Tarshish (tar shish) Teheran (te-hran) Tel-el-Amarna (tel el a-mahr na) Tewfik (tu fik) Thebais (the ba-is) Thebes (thebz) Thothmes (thoth mes) Tiglath-pileser (tig lath pi-les er) Tigris (ti gris) Tirhakah (tir ha-kah) Tomyris (tom i-ris) Turanian (tu-ra ni-an) Tyre (tire)
Uenephes (u-en e-feez) Ur (er) Uru-ka-gina (oo roo kah gi na) Usertesen (u-sert e-sen) Utica (yu ti-ca)
Valerian (va-le ri-an)
Wolseley (woolz li)
Xerxes (zerk zez) Xoite (zoi teh)
Zama (zah ma) Zarathustra (za-ra-thoos tra) Zend-Avesta (zend a-ves ta) Zenobia (ze-no bi-a) Zoroaster (zo-ro-as ter)
[Authorities: Angelo Mosso, “The Dawn of Mediterranean Civilization,” “The Palaces of Crete”; Hall, “The Oldest Civilization of Greece”; Chrestos Tsountas, “The Mycenaean Age”; Schliemann, “Mycenae”; Grote, “History of Greece”; Curtius, “History of Greece”; Thirlwall, “History of Greece”; Ridgeway, “The Early Age of Greece”; Gladstone, “Studies on Homer”; Herodotus, “History”; Thucydides, “History of the Peloponnesian War”; Freeman, “History of Federal Government in Greece and Italy”; Mahaffy, “Rambles in Greece,” “Social Life of the Ancient Greeks,” etc.; Gardner, “New Chapters of Greek History”; Bartlett, “The Battlefields of Thessaly.”]
FOR many centuries the name of Greece has been surrounded with a halo of glory. When we look back upon the Greeks of the fourth and fifth centuries before Christ, we find ourselves facing a people equalling the civilized nations of today in intellectual keenness and power. The earlier nations of Babylon and Egypt we regard as having been still in the childhood of the human race; but these Greeks were men.
Spiritually, they did not reach to our modern standards of life and ethics; but artistically and intellectually they were our equals. Sculptors and architects today still study and imitate the surviving Grecian works of art. Our ablest thinkers look back with admiration to the arguments of Socrates and the philosophy of Aristotle. Moreover, it was these Greeks who first of all the world seem to have evolved republican principles. They first saw how to protect the masses of men in their freedom from the tyranny of the powerful few.
Government “by the people,” which is the theory and the glory of our own state, was first evolved and safeguarded and made sure in the little “city states” of ancient Greece. Hence the study of these Grecian people, of what they did and how they learned to do it, has always been one of the most fascinating chapters in the story of the past.
The last twenty years have greatly enlarged our knowledge, and almost wholly changed our views, of the early story of the Greeks. When Grote and Curtius wrote the great nineteenth-century histories of Greece, it was deliberately proposed to count Greek history as beginning with the first clearly dated Olympic games in 776 B.C.; everything before that was to be rejected as purely legendary. But today the researches of recent excavators, the studies of modern scientists, have revealed to us such a mass of facts and of suggestions as enables us to reconstruct quite clearly the Greece of fifteen hundred years before Christ and even to catch glimpses of a far earlier period. The historian who formerly began with Sparta and with Athens as the first mighty cities of Greece, now pushes these aside as belonging to the closing period of Greek life, and opens his account with the names of the cities of Knossus, Argos, and Mycenae.
Knossus, so far as we yet know, was the earliest seat of Grecian civilization. This ancient city stood not on the mainland of Greece, but on the largest of the Grecian islands, Crete, whose people have so recently been rescued fro.. Turkey and reunited with the kingdom of their own race. At Knossus excavations of the last few years reveal that there was a city of rich and splendid civilization at least as far back as 2500 B.C. Beyond that we can trace remnants of the earlier generations slowly developing from barbarism during many centuries. Twelve thousand years ago the site of Knossus was already inhabited by a race of fishermen who were what scientists call autochthonous, that is, we have no evidence of their coming from any other place; they seem to have grown up with the soil. They were of the aboriginal race which was spread over the whole AEgean region.
These earliest traceable people of the AEgean islands were a short dark-skinned folk, who continued, though with some admixture of other races, to be the chief stock of the Greeks whom we meet in historic times. These AEgeans seem to have progressed toward civilization in Crete more rapidly than else-where; probably because in those days every man was the enemy of every other outside his immediate tribal circle, and the Cretans were sheltered by the ocean from the invasion of other races. Gradually in their peaceful homes they learned seamanship; they established trade relations with the earlier Egyptian dynasties; and by 2500 B.C. they had become a mighty people under a king whose name has been preserved to us by later Greek legend, as Minos.
CHRONOS AND HIS CHILDREN
(Chronos, or Time, with His Daughters, the Four Seasons)
From a painting by E. Veith, a contemporary German artist
THE early history of Greece is just a mass of legends wherein history and fable blend inextricably and facts loom doubtfully. The earliest of the legends deal with the gods, and of these gods we are told that the first of all, creator of all things, was Uranus, or heaven, who had for wife Gaea, or earth. To these two were born many children, chief of whom was Saturn, or Chronos, the god of time, from whom come our words chronology, chronometer, etc.
Chronos rebelled against his father and deposed him; or, in other words, active, swift-flying time took the place of immovable eternity. During the reign of Chronos men were born and peopled the earth. Then Chronos was in his turn dethroned by his son Zeus, or Jupiter, the thunderer, the god who typifies the rule of intellect over mere earthly force. Thus Chronos in his old age was exiled from heaven, the region of the gods, and dwelt on earth among men. He made his home in Italy, where he taught men so much that they all lived in peace and wisdom and ever after looked back to the time of Chronos as “the golden age.”
Our picture shows him in his age, with the typical wings of time's flight, and the scythe with which he cuts all things short. Around him are his children, the four seasons, and their children, the tiny baby hours.
Minos, King of Crete, becomes thus the earliest Greek whose life and rank and personality we can even vaguely reconstruct. His palace at Knossus has been unearthed, and shows that he was no petty city-king, but that his sway extended over the whole broad island of “hundred-citied Crete,” as later poets called it. He was probably high-priest as well as king, ruling his people chiefly through their religion. They worshipped a female deity, the “Great Mother,” the productive force of Nature, and they symbolized this Mother by a sort of double axe which we find stamped upon their ornaments and buildings. Theirs was a cruel worship, involving public sacrifices of human beings made to savage bulls before a crowd of people; or perhaps the sacrifice was to a bull-headed idol such as the Moloch of the Phoenicians. The later Greeks who had been tributary to Crete long remembered these sacrifices; and we come upon traditions of the “Minotaur” or Minos bull in many places.
Later legend said of Minos that he was the first man to establish himself as king of Crete, and that he gave the Cretans their earliest code of laws. He also established a navy and with it conquered other islands, building up an Empire of the Sea. He was finally slain in Sicily while warring there.
Another name connected by tradition with Minos is that of Daedalus, the first great architect. At the command of the king, Daedalus built the wonderful palace whose remains we know. It was called the Labyrinth, and sheltered not only the royal court, but also the monster, the Minotaur, who could never find a way out from among its thousand winding passages. Daedalus was also the earliest sculptor and inventor. Legend said that in an effort to escape from the tyranny of Minos he built himself a pair of wings and flew on them from Crete to Sicily. It was in pursuit of him that Minos invaded Sicily. With Daedalus in his aerial flight went his young son Icarus, on a second set of wings; but Icarus, in his delight, flew too high and the sun melted the wax with which his wings were fastened on, so that he fell into the sea and was drowned. This is the earliest tale we have of man's ages of endeavor to conquer the air.
Turning again to what we really know of Crete from modern excavations, we learn that a Cretan form of civilization spread over the other islands and over the mainland of European Greece. The artistic skill of this age as shown by its pottery and sculpture was almost, if not entirely, equal to that of the later and more celebrated Greeks. The people had even a method of writing, not by letters, but by word or syllable signs, a language which we find on their inscriptions and have not yet succeeded in deciphering. They had apparently no knowledge of the strong metal iron, but had discovered and employed the softer metal copper, and had even learned to mix it with tin and so harden it into bronze. Of this they made themselves armor and ornaments and weapons.
Thus they were in what we call the “Bronze Age,” which almost everywhere preceded the “Iron Age.”
The first city of European Greece to which we know positively that the Cretan civilization spread was Argos. This celebrated town was situated on the southeast coast of Greece, facing toward Crete, just where a fertile and beautiful farming valley stretches back from the head of a deep and sheltered bay. Here, perhaps, the Cretans planted their first colony; and here at all events was erected a celebrated religious shrine, renowned among the earliest Greeks and still traceable by its ruins today. It is called the Argive Heraeum, or temple to the goddess Hera, the great mother, presumably the same Mother Nature whom the Cretans worshipped. Argos was remembered by the European Greeks as their oldest and once their greatest city. And in the list of gods whom they finally created for themselves, they represented Hera, or Juno, as we have learned from the Romans to call her, as the chief goddess, the wife of the god of heaven, Zeus or Jupiter.
We cannot trace all the details of the progress of civilization among these European Greeks. But the central fact of it is quite clear. About 1500 B.C. they were invaded and partly conquered by a foreign and much ruder race from the heart of Europe. These people are called in Grecian legend the Achaeans. Cretan civilization was almost destroyed by these semi-barbarians. They were apparently a Celtic or Gothic race. They were few in number and soon blended with and were lost amid the mass of Greeks. But they had been tall and blonde, very different from the small and dark-complexioned AEgeans; and the characteristics of the Achaeans occasionally reappeared in their descendants. They represent the magnificent physical type on which the famous Greek statues were modelled; and as we gaze on these beautiful figures we must remember that they represent not what most of the Greeks were, but only the ideal which they admired.
The Achaeans did not conquer all Greece; though they succeeded in destroying most of its Cretan culture. The Athenians, for instance, made it their boast in later years that they had never surrendered to foreigners, that they represented the pure Greek stock. And perhaps we may trace to this fact their artistic supremacy. Nevertheless, in the course of centuries the two races blended everywhere, and it is to the ensuing social organization of Achaean kings and AEgean peoples that the Greek legends refer. It is of them that Homer sings. They fought the war against Troy.
Before that celebrated war, the old Cretan supremacy had wholly disappeared. The gorgeous palace of Minos at Knossus was destroyed about 1500 B.C.—perhaps by some of these Achaean invaders. Argos also lost its early leadership to the neighboring city of Mycenae, built close beside it, but higher
THE WAR OF THE GODS AND GIANTS (Zeus, Aided by His Kindred, Overthrows the Giants of Tartarus) From a painting by the contemporary German artist, Hermann Prell
THE reign of Zeus or Jupiter, the younger god who typified the force of Intellect, was as much disturbed as that of old Chronos had been. But Jupiter had the aid and pleasure of having brothers and sisters with whom he shared Heaven and who fought by his side. In other words Intellect gathered round itself many aids in its struggle against the merely physical forces of Nature. The chief war of the younger generation of gods was against a new brood of children born to ancient Gaea, the earth. These were the race of Giants.
The Heaven of Jupiter was on Mount Olympus, a mighty peak that rises nearly two miles above the sea on the northern boundary of Greece. The Giants piled lesser mountains one above the other to reach Olympus; but when they seemed almost ready to succeed, Jupiter and his kindred rushed out from Olympus and overthrew them. Our picture shows the famous charge. Jupiter, the thunderer, hurls his lightnings from his chariot. His brother Pluto, the power of darkness, rides beside him. His son Apollo, the god of the sunshine, launches an arrow at the desperate Giants. Minerva, daughter of Zeus, holds before her the hideous gorgon shield of war which turned all beholders to stone. The eagle of Jupiter also threatens the stricken intruders.
up the valley, farther from the Argive source of strength, the sea, and occupying a more commanding hill-top. Mycenae, though not founded by the Achaeans, was adopted by them as their capital, their chief city. Excavations there reveal a civilization quite gorgeous in its way, but far below that of the earlier Cretan days.
We approach what is called the “Heroic Age” of Greece, which extends roughly from 1500 to about 900 B.C. Up to this point we have spoken chiefly of what our modern scholars have gathered from their search amid Greek ruins; but we come now to our book knowledge of the Greeks, to the legends sometimes-wholly fanciful, sometimes with considerable basis of historic truth, which we read in Homer and the other ancient poets. The Homeric songs were probably chanted in their first rude form about 1000 B.C. by minstrels who preceded Homer. The tales deal chiefly with the great war against Troy, which ended about 1184 B.C.; but they tell also of earlier events, as do the songs of other later poets. Thus, from them all, we gather a full knowledge of what the Greeks knew, or at least believed, about themselves, their ancestors, and their gods.
They called themselves Hellenes, or sons of Hellen, a name which probably came in with the Achaeans; for the earlier Greeks were called Pelasgians. The name Greeks, by the way, was never heard in ancient Greece. It is a name which the Romans first gave these people on meeting a single minor tribe who were so called. We of later years have ignorantly adopted the Roman name, To themselves the Greeks were always Hellenes.
They had invented, or gathered from other peoples in their earlier experiences, a whole family of gods, in whom the listeners to Homer quite positively and religiously believed. These gods were supposed to live on the summit of Mount Olympus, or rather, in the heaven which it upheld; for Olympus was the highest mountain known to the Greeks, towering as it does quite two miles above the sea on the northern border of Greece. Chief of these gods of Olympus was Zeus, or, to give him his later Roman name, Jupiter. Indeed, as all these gods have become much more commonly known by their Roman names, let us use these customary names, merely remembering that they are not the Greek ones. Zeus is Jupiter, the Thunderer, the king of heaven and its storms and lightnings. He was probably the chief god of the Achaeans, brought by these invaders from their northern home; for he is much the same as Odin, or Woden, the Scandinavian chief god.
Perhaps it was in the process of harmonizing Achaeans and AEgeans that Hera, the ancient “Great Mother” of Crete and Argos was represented as the wife of Jupiter, the queen of heaven. Juno is her Roman name. Jupiter had also two older brothers, the more important of whom was Neptune, the ruler of the sea. It is worth noting that Neptune was also an ancient Pelasgian or AEgean god. The AEgeans had been sailors; the Achaeans were not, so the latter readily accepted into the god-family this AEgean monarch of the ocean.
The third of the brothers was Pluto, who ruled over Hades, the world of the dead. The Greeks had learned to believe in an after-life; but they thought of the after-life as one of darkness and dreariness. There, good folk and bad were all assembled in one world. The bad suffered punishments adjudged to them by Minos, the old Cretan king, who was supposed with his brother, Rhadamanthus, to give laws to the dead, as once he had given them to the living. The souls of the good in Hades did not suffer, yet they had little joy in that idle world where they lacked all of the physical pleasures of sunshine, eating, drinking, and so on, which the Greeks most highly prized. So the Greek clung to life and its beauty and physical strength; and he dreaded old age and death, and shut them from his thoughts all that he could.
All the local deities of special places were also given places in this broad god-family. Thus the goddess Pallas Athene, or Minerva, to whom the Athenians were specially devoted, was declared to be a daughter of Jupiter. Then there was the old Pelasgian sun-deity Apollo, who had a shrine at Delphi. He was declared to be a son of Jupiter. His city, Delphi, lies on the slope of a huge mountain, Parnassus, amid the rugged chasms of which there was hidden a very ancient oracle, which prophesied the future in Apollo's name. What this oracle originally consisted of we do not know; but volcanic vapors arose from a cleft in the mountain, and a priesthood gathered round these and interpreted the meaning of the god and his promises to his worshippers. Faith in this oracle must have far antedated the Achaean invasion; for its commands were not only accepted by the leaders in the Trojan war, they were then venerated for their age and were blindly obeyed by all the Grecian people. Indeed, the worship of this oracle formed one of the main bonds of unity and nationality among the Greeks.
The great god Jupiter was supplied with ancestors as well as descendants. A whole series of legends told of his father Chronos, and his grandfather, Saturn, or Uranus, each of whom had once been the supreme god, but had been dethroned by his descendants, after bitter warfare. And back of all these generations of gods there still loomed dimly in the Grecian mind the ancient figure of Earth herself, the producer of all things, the forgotten “Great Mother” of the Cretan worship.
These tales of wholly superhuman beings formed the Greek religion. Of more immediate historic value were their stories of their own doings, their hero tales, which had undoubtedly a foundation in actual occurrences. Earliest of these, and doubtless to be regarded as purely imaginary, are the stories of the creation of man. These tell us that two of the ancient gods, or Titans,
THE RIVER OF DEATH (Mercury Leads the Dead to Their Last Home) From the recent painting by Adolf Hiremy Hirschl
THE religious belief of the Greeks was not exalted. They regarded their gods simply as men like themselves, possessed of all their evil passions, only much bigger and stronger than they and exempted from the fear of death. To the Greek, death was a horror. He had a vague idea that the souls of men persisted after death, but their eternity was one of tragedy. The souls dwelt in a dark, chill region called Hades, and there they spent their time weeping, and yearning for the bright, sunshiny earth they had left behind.
The spirits or “shades” of those who died were gathered from all lands by one of the gods, the swift-footed Mercury, known by his symbol, the staff of life with two twining serpents. Mercury guided all his wailing and despairing company to the shore of the black river Styx which marked the boundary between Earth and Hades. Here the dead were ferried across in the boat of Charon, the ancient and mysterious ferryman. He spoke no word to any of his passengers, nor did any one ever speak to him; the silence of death enveloped all from the moment they entered his boat.
It was this tragic conception of the dreary land of death which made the Greek cling so intensely to all the joys of life.
grandchildren of old Uranus, were Prometheus and Epimetheus, Forethought and Afterthought. They aided Jupiter in his war against the older gods, for Prometheus clearly foresaw its issue. When Jupiter was victorious, he set the two brothers to creating subjects for him upon earth. Epimetheus rushed eagerly into the work and made all the animals, endowing one with the greatest swiftness, another with supreme strength, and so on, till there were no superlative qualities left. Meanwhile Prometheus, going more slowly and earnestly to work, made man out of the earth itself. He copied his creature in figure after the gods, and set him upright, so that while the other animals looked down-ward and saw the earth, man looked upward and saw the heavens. Then Prometheus, finding no superlative physical qualities left to bestow upon his creature, took fire from the sun and gave that to man, so that by its use he could conquer all things for himself, force earth to give up her secrets, and find out for himself all the sciences and arts.
By means of this precious possession of fire, men became so powerful that Jupiter began to fear lest they should drive him in his turn from the throne of the universe. At first they had divided with him all the spoils of their labor, and all the beasts they slew. But Prometheus, by a clever stratagem, arranged the carcass of a bull for sacrifice so that the good meat and hide were in one small heap, and the bones, the entrails, and all the waste matter, in what seemed a far large and more valuable heap. Jupiter was then called to select which portion should always be his in a sacrifice. He chose the large and worthless mass, but he never forgave Prometheus for the trick thus put upon him.
Jupiter now began to think seriously of destroying men altogether, so powerful had they grown and so defiant. But, first, he planned a means of weakening them. Apparently as yet there had been no women, but only men. Now, calling all the gods of Olympus to help him, Jupiter framed a woman, giving her every grace and beauty. When the work was finished and had been sufficiently admired, he named her Pandora, which means the gift of all the gods, and sent her down to men. Epimetheus welcomed her most gladly, though Prometheus had warned him to accept nothing which came from Jupiter. Pandora brought with her a casket which she had been forbidden to open; but no sooner was she established among men than curiosity overcame her scruples, and she peeped into the box. Immediately, when the box was opened, there sprang out of it all the ills of human life, the sicknesses, the bodily weaknesses, the faults of character and temper. Only Hope remained within the casket to cheer mankind.
Afflicted by Pandora's box of evils, men became so feeble that Jupiter no longer feared them. He took fire away from them, and when Prometheus stole some of it from heaven again, Jupiter punished the great Titan by binding him to a rock where a vulture tears forever at his flesh. Yet Prometheus still remains the Friend of Man, and by his aid, the aid of Divine Intelligence, the Greeks still hoped that some day man would become the equal of Jupiter and all his host of gods.
Then comes the Greek story of the flood. Bereft of Prometheus' guidance, men and women grew so wicked that Jupiter sent a great flood which destroyed them all, except one good man, Deucalion, a son of Prometheus, and one good woman, Pyrrha, a daughter of Epimetheus. These two were preserved as being fit to live. The flood submerged all earth except Mount Olympus, where the gods lived, and Mount Parnassus, where Deucalion and Pyrrha found shelter. Then the waters withdrew, and from the oracle of Apollo on Parnassus came a voice commanding the two survivors to people the world anew with more worthy inhabitants. They were told to begin by casting behind them “the bones of their mother.” Deucalion shrewdly interpreted this strange oracle as referring to the stones, the bones of Mother Earth. So as he and Pyrrha left the oracle, they tossed stones over their shoulders. All that Deucalion threw took form as men, those of Pyrrha became women. She was slighter than Deucalion, and threw smaller stones, so women have ever since been less of stature than men.
The son of Deucalion was that Hellen from whom all the later Greeks claimed descent. Yet it is notable that even in their legends they retain the traces of their divided race. On Hellen's family tree there is a distinct place assigned for each Achaean hero. But the heroes of the older AEgean people are never traced from Hellen. Each one is given independent origin as the child or grandchild of some god. Thus we have a fairly positive way for deciding of each hero in the stories that follow whether he was in truth Achaean or whether the memory of him had been preserved from older non-Achaean days.
Of these non-Achaean heroes there are five so prominent in Greek story that they are worth remembering. The earliest of these is Orpheus, the fabled son of Apollo. Orpheus first brought music among men, and taught them to know the gods, whom they had forgotten.
The second hero is Cadmus, who is notable among the other figures of tradition as being the only one who was reckoned as not being of Greek race at all. He was said to be a Phoenician, who came to settle in Greece and brought with him the art of writing by means of the alphabet. The alphabet of Cadmus consisted of only sixteen letters, A, B, C, D, E, F, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T; and to these, men gradually added another ten.
Cadmus, like Deucalion, consulted Apollo's oracle on Parnassus, and was commanded to found the city of Thebes. As he went forth to do so, he encountered a monstrous dragon, or serpent, which was sacred to Mars, the god of war. The dragon slew the followers of Cadmus, whereon he attacked it, and,
SUMMER IS STOLEN FROM EARTH (The God Pluto Carries Off Earth's Daughter Proserpine) From the painting by the recent German artist, Paul Schobelt
THE Greeks personified everything in nature and explained all the conditions of life and climate that surrounded them by stories which we call “nature myths.” Thus they said that Jupiter had two brothers Neptune and Pluto, and that to secure their allegiance he divided his domain with them, keeping the land for himself, giving Neptune the sea, and assigning the dark underworld of Hades to Pluto.
Pluto, however, was so discontent with his cheerless realm that Jupiter allowed him to carry off the fairest maid on earth, Proserpine, to share his throne. Proserpine typifies the green and beautiful summertime, or perhaps more accurately the warmth and fire which are the source of life everywhere and were as necessary in Hades as on earth. Proserpine was the daughter of Ceres, the goddess of earth's vegetation and harvests; and Ceres searched the whole universe for her lost daughter, mourning and refusing comfort. While Ceres mourned, the harvests ceased; all plant life was checked in its growth, so earth was perishing. At length Jupiter revealed to her what had happened, and compelled Pluto to release Proserpine and let her return to earth every year and spend six months with Ceres. So every year earth blooms with warmth while Proserpine is here, then fades and shrivels while she spends the winter in Pluto's chill domain.
after a terrific combat, slew it. He then sowed the dragon's teeth like seed, and from them grew up a crop of armed men, who fought together until all but five were slain. Then these five helped Cadmus build his city.
In this story we have clear record that colonists of Phoenician blood came among the Greeks, who thus were not of pure race, and were themselves aware of this. If you will look on your map for Thebes, you will find it near Mount Parnassus in middle Greece; and close beside it lay another city, Orchomenos. The latter had been the old AEgean capital of the region. Thebes was a later city, whose people only very slowly won their way to be admitted and reckoned as genuine Greeks.
Cadmus became king of Thebes; but by slaying the serpent of Mars he had brought a curse upon himself and all his descendants. One after another they came to tragic ends. The most celebrated among them was CEdipus, whose story became a favorite theme among the later poets and dramatists. CEdipus was foredoomed by the Fates to slay his father and commit other awful sins. Knowing this, his father endeavored to kill the babe at birth; but the child was rescued and brought up secretly. When grown to manhood CEdipus learned of his doom, and, to avoid it, fled from the adopted father whom he supposed was his own. Meeting his real father by chance, CEdipus was attacked by him and slew him. The young adventurer then journeyed on to Thebes and there completed the catalogue of his fated sins upon his unknown family. For these unconsciously committed horrors he afterward suffered awful agonies, pursued in the name of justice by the vindictive gods.
At one time CEdipus was made king by the Thebans, and saved them from the Sphinx. This Grecian monster had no connection except in appearance with the Egyptian sphinxes. The Greek Sphinx was a living, man-eating horror, half tigress and half woman. It haunted the roads near Thebes and propounded a riddle to each person it met. No one could answer the riddle and each unfortunate who failed was promptly devoured by the Sphinx. CEpidus went out to meet the monster, to match it with his sword or with his wit. The Sphinx asked him its riddle, which is worth remembering as the very oldest known conundrum in the world: What is it that goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening? And CEdipus saw the point and answered, Man; for he crawls in childhood, walks erect in maturity, and hobbles with a cane in old age. The Sphinx, despairing at finding some one cleverer than she, killed herself; and Thebes was free.
Turning from Cadmus and his descendant, CEdipus, a fourth great hero of the old AEgeans was Perseus. He was a son of Jupiter by a daughter of the kings of Argos, the city which, you will remember, had been chief in Greece in the early Cretan days. Perseus, like CEdipus, was doomed to destroy an ancestor, his grandfather, the king of Argos. So Perseus was also exposed at birth and rescued by the charity of strangers. His adventures are, however, more mythical than those of CEdipus. As one of the very earliest of heroes he combats, as did Prometheus and Cadmus, not with men, but with gods and super-human monsters.
Perseus was sent to slay the terrible Gorgon, Medusa. There were three of these Gorgons, members of the ancient race of gods. Medusa had been beautiful, but she offended Minerva, who turned the Gorgon's hair to living snakes, twined about her head. She went mad and ravaged the world. So terrible was her frenzied stare, her beauty surrounded by the hissing serpents, that a mere glance at her turned men into stone.
To slay her Perseus borrowed the shield of Minerva and the winged sandals of Mercury. Then he visited the Graeae, three withered old crones, also of the god race, who dwelt at the edge of the underworld. They had but one eye among them, and passed it to each in turn. Perseus stole the eye and only returned it when they gave him the helmet of Pluto, god of Hades, which was in their charge and which made its wearer invisible.
With the helmet to hide him, with the winged sandals to enable him to fly through air at the speed of thought, and with the shield of Minerva to guard him, Perseus approached the Gorgon. He dared not look at her; but with head turned away he saw her in his shield, which served as a mirror. Thus he cut off her terrible head and carried it away with him.
Perseus then rescued the maid, Andromeda, from a sea-monster, and fought against her countrymen. Wherever men opposed him, he had but to hold up before them the Gorgon's head, and immediately they turned to stone. One exploit which he thus accomplished was against the giant Atlas, who was fabled to hold the heavens and all the stars upon his shoulders. Medusa's head turned Atlas into the huge mountain of that name in northern Africa, which continued with its passive bulk to uphold the sky just as the living Atlas had. Having conquered all his enemies, and killed his grandfather, Perseus became king of Argos; and his great grandson was Hercules, the most celebrated of all the ancient heroes, the great typical figure of AEgean Greece.
Hercules was also a son of Jupiter and of a princess of Argos. Before the birth of Hercules, Jupiter decreed that a descendant of Perseus born that day should be king over all the Greeks. So Juno, who presided over births, and who was from the first an enemy of Hercules, delayed his birth and hurried that of another child of the kingly line of Argos. Thus the latter, a cousin of Hercules, became king. Jupiter then decreed that if Hercules should achieve twelve great “labors,” to be imposed upon him by the king his cousin, he should, after his death, be made immortal and become one of the gods themselves.
ORPHEUS LOSES EURYDICE (Orpheus, after Winning His Wife from the World of Death, Loses Her at the Entrance) After the painting by the contemporary French artist of Lille, Eugene A. Deully
GRADUALLY the stories of the Greeks extended beyond their “nature-myths” or tales of the gods, and told of the doings of men in conflict with the gods. That is to say, man was at first regarded as helplessly submissive; later he thought of himself as daring to face the gods and match his will against theirs.
The earliest man of whom Greek story tells is Orpheus. He is said to have introduced the worship of the gods into Greece, to have taught men religion and medicine, and to have recorded his doctrines in poems. Chiefly, however, he was noted as a musician. With the strains of his golden lyre he swayed men and animals to follow him. Even trees and rocks moved under the impulse of his music. He was wedded to the nymph Eurydice and so loved her that on her death he followed her shade down into Hades. By his music he persuaded Pluto and Proserpine to let Eurydice follow him back to earth. A condition however was made, that he must not look back at her until she was safe beyond Hades. Such was his longing for his wife that at the last step he turned around too quickly; and Eurydice was carried back by the god Mercury into the darkness. Orpheus went mad, and in his ravings insulted the bacchantes, the women followers of the god of wine. They in their anger tore the musician to pieces.
We can scarce pause to tell of all the wonderful deeds of Hercules, but, briefly stated, his twelve labors were: First, he must kill the lion which haunted the forests of Nemea, and could not be hurt by the arrows of a mortal. Hercules boldly attacked the beast with a club, but his terrific blows produced no effect, whereupon he flung aside his weapon, and with his naked hands strangled it to death. From that time Hercules wore the skin of the lion as his armor.
The second labor was to destroy the Lernaean hydra, a monster whose many heads immediately grew again when they were cut off. Each head had a mouth which discharged a subtle and deadly venom. This monster was killed by Hercules with the help of his friend, Iolaus, who, with a hot iron, seared each neck as its head was cut.
The third labor was to catch the stag of Diana, famous for its fleetness, its golden horns, and brazen feet. The fourth was to bring alive to his cousin a wild boar, which ravaged the neighborhood of Erymanthus. The fifth was to cleanse the stables of Augeas, king of Elis, where three thousand cattle had been confined for many years. This was accomplished by turning the rivers Alpheus and Peneus into the stables. Since, however, Hercules had gone to the king and offered to perform the task for one-tenth of the cattle, keeping secret the fact that the labor had been imposed upon him by his cousin, the latter refused to count it among his labors.
The sixth labor was to destroy the carnivorous birds with brazen wings, beaks, and claws, which ravaged a district in Arcadia; the seventh was to bring alive to Peloponnesus a bull famous for its beauty and strength, which Neptune, at the prayer of Minos, king of Crete, had given to him in order that he might sacrifice it; but Minos refusing to do this, Neptune made the bull mad, and it ravaged the island. Hercules brought the bull on his shoulders to the king, his cousin, who set it free. This was the monster which was afterward known as the Minotaur.
The eighth labor was to obtain the mares of Diomedes, king of the Bistones, in Thrace, which fed upon human flesh. The ninth was to bring the girdle of Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons. The Amazons were a nation of warlike women, very famous in Greek legend. They killed or sent to other lands almost all their male children, and the women had everything their own way. They were the laborers, the hunters, the soldiers of their country; and a very fierce and strong race they proved themselves. Their queen received Hercules kindly and promised him the girdle; but Juno roused the Amazons against him, and a desperate struggle followed, in which Hercules took the girdle, slew Hippolyta, and made sail homeward.
The tenth labor was to kill the monster Geryon and bring his herds to Argos. The eleventh labor was to obtain the golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides. These were sisters who, assisted by a dragon, guarded the golden apples which Juno had received on her marriage with Jupiter from the old Mother goddess. Hercules slew the dragon and stole the apples, which were afterward restored to Juno. Another account, however, says that Hercules was aided by Atlas in this adventure. Atlas, whom Perseus had turned to stone, must have resumed his human shape. For he offered to get the apples if Hercules would hold up the sky while he was gone. The hero agreed and actually supported the vast burden for a moment; but, fearing Atlas might leave him there forever, he bade the giant resume the load for a moment while Hercules adjusted a shoulder pad for himself. When Atlas thus took back his task, Hercules sped away. Because of this legend, the name of Atlas was introduced into geography. A geographer in the sixteenth century gave the name atlas to a collection of maps, probably because the figure of Atlas supporting the heavens had been shown on the title- pages of many such works.
The twelfth labor was the most dangerous of all, being that of bringing the three-headed dog Cerberus from the infernal regions, where he kept guard over the entrance. Pluto, ruler of that dismal place, told Hercules that he might have Cerberus, provided he used no weapons to master him, but employed simply his own strength. Hercules made the monster captive and brought him to Argos, to his cousin, who was so terrified by the sight that he ordered the monster removed, whereupon Cerberus sank out of sight into the earth.
Hercules had now freed himself from his servitude, but he added many exploits to his “Twelve Labors,” such as his battles with the Centaurs, and with the giants; his aid of the expedition of the Argonauts, his liberation of Prometheus, and his victorious wrestling-match with Death. After many amazing adventures, Hercules, overtaken by misfortune, placed himself upon a funeral pile on Mount CEta and commanded that it should be set on fire. Suddenly the burning pile was surrounded by a dark cloud, in which, amid thunder and lightning, Hercules was carried up to heaven, where he became reconciled to Juno and married Hebe, the cup-bearer of the gods.
We turn now to the stories of the Achaean heroes, the descendants of Hellen. These tales are obviously of later date. They deal not with gods and giants, but with men. They have a flavor of real history. Most noteworthy of the earlier tales is the “Voyage of the Argonauts.” This gathers the names of almost all the former heroes and represents them as taking part in a sea expedition under an Achaean leader. Perhaps it is an echo of real conditions, of an event which must have profoundly impressed the real Achaeans. Coming from their inland home, they learned from the AEgeans the navigation of the waters, and undertook, with their new subjects, allies rather than servants, their first naval adventure. What wonder that the event impressed them and became a
THE LABORS OF HERCULES (Hercules Pursues the Stag of Cerynea) By the contemporary German artist, O. Schindler
As the ancient legends of the Greeks descend from gods to men, we come to mention of a great and very ancient city, Argos. In this city, wherever it was situated, the Greeks first dwelt, and their earliest heroes ruled. By far the most celebrated of these was Hercules, a son of the great god Jupiter and of a queen of Thebes in Greece. The goddess Juno was his enemy through life and so afflicted him that at length Jupiter decreed that if Hercules could perform twelve great labors he should be raised upon his death to be one of the gods themselves.
The fourth of these labors typical of the others was the capture of the wonderful stag of Cerynea, which had golden antlers and brazen hoofs and roamed with the speed of light among the wildest mountains of Greece. Hercules was to bring the stag unharmed into the presence of his cousin, King Eurystheus of Argos. Hercules chased the stag for a whole year over chasm and rock until at length he wore it down and captured it. Our picture shows him in full pursuit, with his lion skin streaming from his shoulder. This skin was stripped from a mighty lion whose slaying had been the first exploit of his early manhood.
After accomplishing the twelve labors, Hercules did many other deeds of value for men, and became recognized as the great national hero of Greece. After his death, Jupiter fulfilled his promise of making Hercules a god.
legend, into which were gradually introduced all the heroes of both races? The story is of Jason, a descendant of Hellen, and a prince in the Greek kingdom of Thessaly. The king, Jason's uncle, desired to be rid of him—Jason being, as usual in such tales, the rightful heir to the throne. So the king commanded the youth to bring him the “golden fleece.” This was the skin of a golden ram, which was kept as a talisman by the king of Colchis, the very farthest land of which the Greeks knew, way off at the eastern end of the Black Sea.
Realizing the magnitude of his task, Jason sent through all the cities of Greece to ask for help; and all the noted heroes of the race gathered to his call. There were fifty of them in all, including Hercules and Orpheus, the Athenian hero Theseus, and the wise Nestor, who survived to take part as an aged counsellor of a later generation in the war with Troy. Jason built a great boat, the Argo, capable of holding all his friends, the biggest ship the Greeks had ever known. From it the voyagers were called the Argonauts.
They had many dangerous adventures, as, for instance, when they sailed through the narrow strait, the Bosphorus, which opens into the Black Sea. Here there was a floating island, and so narrow was the passage that often the two rocky shores were swept together with a crash by wind and tide. Jason sent a dove through to test the passage, and the cliffs clashing just behind her, let her through with the loss of her tail feathers. So the Argonauts accepted the augury; and as the cliffs separated on the rebound, they rowed with all their might and just got through, as the bird had done, the closing shores breaking off their rudder.
They reached Colchis at last; but the conditions which its king demanded of them before giving them the golden fleece were so impossible that despite all their efforts they must have failed but for the king's daughter, Medea. She fell in love with Jason, and lent the Argonauts her aid. She was a sorceress, and by her magic art she guided Jason to the fleece and drugged the dragon which guarded it. Then she and the Argonauts fled with their prize, but so closely pursued by the Colchians that they could not turn back home, and so perforce continued their voyage eastward, into unknown waters.
The Greeks thought of the world as being flat, a sort of circular continent surrounded by water, the vast enclosing stream or river of the ocean. The Mediterranean and Black Seas they supposed cut through the middle of this island earth, communicating with the ocean on the west by the Strait of Gibraltar, and on the east through the Black Sea. About this last point we now know that they were wrong; evidently they had not thoroughly explored the Black Sea, though they knew of some of its ports, like Colchis. Hence the Argonauts were represented as sailing out into the ocean stream to the eastward and then northward around Europe, always pursued by the Colchians. So at length, after many adventures, pursuers and pursued got back into the Mediterranean Sea from the west, and the Colchians, despairing of ever finding their way home again, settled down as colonists.
The Argonauts came on past the isle of the Sirens, who, by their wondrous singing, lured all sailors to death. Here Orpheus saved the heroes by playing on his harp and singing so loudly that he drowned the Sirens' voices. And thus in the end the adventurers got back to Greece, having been the first and only men thus to sail around the outer border of the earth.
The remainder of the story of Jason is not pleasant. Medea, to enable the Argonauts to escape, had carried off her little brother; and, as her father's ships pursued them, she cut the child in pieces and threw his limbs one by one into the water, so that the father stopped to gather them. Jason began to fear rather than love her. When the pair of them got back to Thessaly, she slew Jason's aged father, and by her magic arts restored him not only to life, but to youth and vigor. She then offered to do the same for the king, Jason's usurping uncle. But when the king was dead, she refused to bring him back to life again, and so Jason was made king. His dread of Medea constantly increased, and at length he deserted her. She in revenge slew their two children, his and hers, and fled back to Colchis.
Such were the accounts which the Greeks believed of their own early days. We come now to their great story of the Siege of Troy, which in its general outlines is real history, the actions attributed in it to the gods being only such as a religious man would naturally accept as explaining the doings of the mortals. Homer begins the tale with the gods, explaining how they sowed enmity among mankind. Jupiter had decided that men were once more growing too numerous and powerful, so he resolved not only to plunge them into war, but also to involve the gods themselves in the quarrel, that it might be pursued to the bitter end. Therefore, in the counsel of the gods he introduced a golden apple to be given “to the fairest.” Naturally, his wife Juno claimed it. So also did Venus, the beautiful goddess of love, and Minerva, the sternly fair goddess of wisdom. They agreed to refer the question to the decision of a young shepherd lad, Paris, who was really a son of the king of Troy. Each of the goddesses tried to bribe their young judge with promises of gifts. Venus proffered him the fairest woman in the world to be his wife for ten years; and Paris decided in her favor. The other two goddesses determined to be avenged upon him.
Now, the most beautiful woman in the world was Helen, the daughter of the king of Sparta in Greece. All the princes of Greece were wooing her. Chief among the wooers was Agamemnon, prince of Mycenae, which you will remember was at this time the most powerful city of Greece, the main seat of the Achaean power. Then there was Menelaus, the brother of Agamemnon, and
JASON WINS THE GOLDEN FLEECE (Medea Charms the Dragon while Jason Steals the Prize) A painting by the noted contemporary French artist, A. P. R. Maignan
ALL the stories of the older heroes were finally, in the later ages, gathered into one, and became parts of the tale of the Golden Fleece. This fleece was the skin of a golden ram which hung in a sacred grove, guarded by a dragon, at the far end of the earth. The hero Jason was given the task of winning the fleece, and he entreated the aid of the other Greeks. He was helped by all the celebrated heroes of the past, including Orpheus and Hercules.
These heroes, fifty in number, were called the Argonauts, because they sailed with Jason in the ship Argo. After many adventures they reached the land of the fleece; and here Jason was aided by the king's daughter, Medea, who was a mighty sorceress. She charmed and then drugged the dragon, so that she and Jason escaped with the treasured prize. Being pursued by Medea's father and his followers, the heroes fled in the Argo and sailed onward. They kept following the coast-line, until at length they encircled the world, that is, the world of Europe as the ancients knew it, and in this manner got back to Greece, having been the first men to see all the wonders of the world.
The later fate of both Jason and Medea was tragic. He deserted her, and she in revenge slew their children. Then, according to one form of the story, she persuaded him to sleep under the shade of the old, rotting hull of the Argo, so that its timbers fell on him, and the ship which had been his glory caused his death.
a host of others. Helen chose Menelaus, who wedded her and became king of Sparta. Then Venus, in fulfilment of her promise, sent Paris to Sparta. He, the handsomest man of his time, and Helen, the most beautiful woman, fell in love with each other at sight; and she fled with him to Troy. Menelaus summoned the other Greeks to his aid. All the princes who had wooed Helen had vowed to aid her husband if any one injured him, so now all of them gathered for the war with Troy. Agamemnon, as king of Mycenae, was-chosen as their leader.
Let us pause to review the situation. Troy was not a fancy of the poets; it was a really existing city. Its remains have been discovered and explored. They lie on the coast of Asia Minor close to Europe, just across the narrow strait which we call the Hellespont, leading from the AEgean Sea toward the Black Sea. Troy, then, we know to have been a rich metropolis, which was actually plundered and destroyed about the time assigned for the Trojan war (1184 B.C.). Its people were of the old AEgean race, akin therefore to the Greeks, though possibly less touched by the Cretan culture, and with no mixture of Achaean blood. We may take for granted these chief facts, that the European Greeks attacked Troy, that they were led by Agamemnon, an Achaean, king of Mycenae, and that most of their chieftains were of Achaean race. They destroyed Troy; they laid waste all of the surrounding region; and after ten years of rapine they returned to Greece, carrying many captives, and leaving the AEgean peoples of the Asiatic coast exhausted and well-nigh exterminated.
Of the minor details of the story, we can not feel equally assured. The chief figures of the war as later Greeks knew them were those already mentioned, and the two poetical heroes, Achilles, who dominates Homer's “Iliad,” and Ulysses, or Odysseus, who is the centre of his “Odyssey.” Achilles is the only superhuman figure of the tale. He was the son of Peleus, of Thessaly, one of the Argonauts, and of Thetis, a sea-nymph. At his birth his mother held him in the fire to sear away the mortal part of him and make him all immortal like herself. Or, according to another legend, she dipped him in the River of Death, and thereby made him impervious to weapons. In either case she held him by the heel, so that his heel remained mortal or unprotected, and there alone could he be injured.
Achilles is the great fighting hero of the Greeks. While his compatriots were besieging Troy, he led his own Thessalian troops against the other Asiatic cities, the allies of Troy. These he captured and destroyed one after another, and then at last, after nine years of fighting, joined the other Greeks. Hitherto they had barely held their own against the mighty Trojans; but now, with Achilles' help, they renewed the contest, confident of victory. Achilles, however, quarrelled with King Agamemnon and remained brooding in his tent.Without him the Greeks proved no match for the Trojans and their great warrior leader, Hector. He put them to flight and slew the bosom friend of Achilles. Then at last the mighty Greek warrior roused himself, and, coming forth in fiercest anger, fought with Hector. All of the gods took part in the combat. Juno and Neptune had previously aided the Greeks. Minerva, the enemy of Paris and of Troy, now aided Achilles. Apollo sought to shield Hector. At last Jove himself enforced his decree that final victory must rest with the Greeks. Hector was slain; and with this victory of Achilles, Homer ends his song of Troy.
From other poems we gather further details. The Trojans continued to resist. Their aged king, Priam, had many sons, and, though Hector, the greatest of them all, was slain, there remained Paris, who was no mean warrior. Then there was AEneas, whom the Roman poet, Virgil, represents as the founder of Rome. These held the Greeks in check. The Ethiopians came to aid the Trojans. So also did the Amazons; and though the queen of these latter was slain by Achilles, he himself perished soon afterward. He was shot in that vulnerable heel of his by an arrow from Paris; or perhaps the fatal dart was sent by the god Apollo himself, the archer of the sun, who had befriended Hector.
The capture of Troy was at last brought about by Ulysses, the hero of Homer's second great poem. Ulysses was the wisest and shrewdest of all the Greeks. He was king of the island of Ithaca, which lies on the west coast of Greece. He had been one of the suitors of Helen, but soon withdrew from the contest for her hand, perceiving that she who was wooed by so many was likely to prove a most unsatisfactory wife for any one. Instead, Ulysses turned to Penelope, the cousin of Helen, less dazzlingly beautiful, but far more admirable.
Happy in his kingly home and his devoted wife, Ulysses had been most unwilling to leave both for the siege of Troy. When the messengers came to summon him in accordance with the oath which he and the other suitors had made to protect Helen's husband, Ulysses put them off by pretending to be insane. He yoked a horse and a bull to a plow, and began plowing up the sand of the seashore and sowing it with salt, crying out that soon he would have a fine crop of salt waves. The messengers despaired of holding this madman to his promise. But Palamedes, who, next to Ulysses, was accounted the shrewdest of all the Greeks, took the little infant son of Ulysses and Penelope and laid the babe in the path of the father's plow. Ulysses turned his team aside to save the child, and then the messengers saw that this supposed madman knew very well what he was doing. So he had to go with them; but he never forgave Palamedes, and long afterward brought about his death.
Ulysses was noted for other qualities as well as craft. In the games held at the siege of Troy, he outran the swiftest of the Greeks. After the death of Achilles he outmatched the strongest of the Greeks in battle; and the armor of Achilles was awarded to him as having achieved more than any one else against the Trojans. Finally it was Ulysses who hit upon the stratagem by which Troy was captured.
At his command the Greeks built a huge horse of wood, in which he and as many other warriors as possible concealed themselves. The rest of the Greeks pretended to give up the siege, and withdrew from the city. The exultant Trojans rushed out to explore, and roamed through the abandoned camps. Gathering round the gigantic horse, they stared at it in wonder and amazement. then a Greek, who had remained behind for that purpose, came out of his hiding-place, and declared himself a deserter from his countrymen. He told the Trojans that the colossal horse was a magic animal, and that so long as they kept it their city could not be captured. The delighted Trojans seized hold of the monstrous thing to drag it within their walls, though numerous warnings came to stay their folly.
Cassandra, one of King Priam's daughters, possessed the power of looking into the future, but unhappily she always seemed to be prophesying evil, and therefore was discredited. Sometimes you hear a person called a “Cassandra,” which is another way of saying she is a prophet of evil. When Cassandra saw the intention of her countrymen, she wrung her hands, and begged them to leave the huge structure alone; but they were so happy over the seemingly triumphant ending of the long war that they only laughed at her wailing.
Among the Trojan priests was Laocoon, who added his warnings to those of Cassandra, saying that he distrusted the Greeks always, but most when they left gifts. The priest drove his spear into the wooden horse, and all were startled by hearing a groan from within. In truth, one of the hidden Greeks had been wounded by the spear. Then Jupiter, having determined on the destruction of the city, bade Neptune send two enormous serpents, which came gliding up out of the sea, and strangled Laocoon and his two sons in their coils.
Nothing could check the infatuated Trojans. The great wooden horse was dragged into the city. The guilty Helen suspected what it contained, and, lingering near the monster in the twilight, she called to the various Greek chieftains alluringly, imitating the voices of their wives. One of them called out in answer; but meanwhile, in the darkness of the night, the Grecian army had again silently surrounded the walls. The Greeks within the wooden horse rushed out and opened the gates to their comrades, who burst into Troy. The celebrated city was thus captured and reduced to ashes.
Many and savage were the outrages committed by the ravaging Greeks upon the foes who had so long withstood them. Helen, however, whom one would have thought the worst offender, was pardoned. Varied excuses for her were offered by the later Greek poets. She had been under a spell laid on her by Venus; or she had been a helpless victim; or, most remarkable of all, she never went to Troy at all, but was carried off by Venus and kept hidden in Egypt while a magic image of her was given to Paris and deceived the Greeks. At any rate, she was restored to Menelaus, the reunited pair visited Egypt together in harmony and then returned to a peaceful life of domesticity in Sparta.
Few of the other Greek leaders were so fortunate. Almost every one of them, having been absent from his own kingdom for over ten years, returned to find tragedy of one sort or another. Agamemnon was murdered by his wife, who had found another love. As for Ulysses, the god Neptune had taken offence at him, and would not let him cross the seas at all to return to his beloved Penelope. One storm after another drove him from his course. One by one his followers succumbed to privation and disaster, until he alone returned to their native home, after an absence of twenty years. He had been in the country of the lotos-eaters, a dreamy land, where fruit fell constantly around the people for their sustenance, and none ever worked, but drowsed in idleness until old age and death ended their worthless existence. He had been among the cannibals, among the Cyclops, great giants with only a single eye. He had withstood the enchantments of Circe, a famous sorceress, who turned all men who visited her into beasts; and he had even visited the underworld of Hades.
During all this time his wife Penelope had even sadly awaited his return, watching across the waters; and her pathetic figure has become typical to us of all wives who have to watch and wait. Her friends tried to persuader her that he must be dead, and many suitors gathered in the palace. They became clamorous, insisting that she choose a husband from among them, to take Ulysses' place and rule the country. To evade them, she said she must finish a wonderful shroud she was weaving for her aged father; and on this she undid each night what they had seen her finish in the day. So that now, any work always being labored on, but never advancing, is called “Penelope's web.”
At last the suitors would not longer be put off. They declared there should be a great feast, and they would force her to wed whichever of them proved able to bend Ulysses' great bow. At the trial an old beggar-man came in; and, in drunken sport, amid sneers and taunts, they allowed him also to try the bow. The beggar was Ulysses himself, home at last, though ragged, worn, and solitary; and he, who had matched himself against giants, was not likely to be awed or overcome by these idle roisterers. He bent the bow and sent an arrow through their leader. His weeping wife recognized him. His young son, Telemachus, joined him, and together they drove the drunken mob from the palace. Ulysses was the last survivor of all the great chiefs who had fought against Troy.
WE begin to pass from the Heroic Age to a period of much clearer vision and more definite knowledge, though we can not yet account this knowledge as positive history. Let us pause, therefore, for a moment's clearer picturing of this land of Greece in which great deeds were to be done. Geographically you will understand Greece if you compare it to your own right hand, outspread back uppermost. So spread it resembles the peninsula of Greece extending southward into the sea. Only, to complete the picture, you must imagine a deep narrow cut slashed straight across the middle of the hand, severing it almost in two and reaching from beneath the little finger across toward the thumb. That cut is the Gulf of Corinth, and south of it the well-nigh severed end of the hand is the Peloponnesus, the most ancient world of Greece.
Those four fingers stretching right out into the sea are four rocky mountain ranges, and between them, watered by fair rivers, are three valleys extending well up into the land. Each of these valleys was the site of a celebrated city. The easternmost, near the forefinger, held two, Argos, the earliest of all Greek cities, and Mycenae, which for a time under the Achaeans usurped the supremacy of the valley from Argos, but lost it again in later days. The middle valley was the land of Lacedemonia, the country of Sparta. In the western valley lay Messene, Sparta's chief rival during several centuries.
The short thumb of this outstretched hand is the peninsula of Attica, and between it and the forefinger lie the Salonican Gulf and the famous island of Salamis. Facing this gulf, near the base of the thumb, stands Athens; and on the muscle joining thumb and forefinger stood Corinth, with its back to that deep slashing cut which we have called the Gulf of Corinth. North of this gulf there were other little Grecian states. Boeotia, with its capital of Thebes, occupied the root of the thumb. Beyond it, extending to the wrist, lay Thessaly, with Mount Olympus at its border to serve as the wrist bone. Between Thebes and the Gulf of Corinth rose the ridge of Mount Parnassus, with the little city of Delphi and its oracle. Further east, north of the Corinthian Gulf, lay other states, Doris, AEtolia, and Acharnania, which at first were a forest-covered wilderness barely recognized as Greek. While up above the wrist lay Macedonia, which had fairly to fight its way into the Grecian family.
From somewhere in this northern region, there came about the year 1100 B.C. another invasion of Greece not unlike that of the Achaeans. The Greeks themselves spoke of this as the “Dorian Invasion,” and that the Greeks of Doris entered Peloponnesus and conquered several of the cities there. Greek legend also calls this invasion the return of the grandchildren of Hercules, and says that the hero's race having been exiled by their jealous relatives now returned in the third generation and reconquered their rightful rank. Viewed in this light the struggle almost seems like a returning wave in which the ancient AEgeans—for Hercules, remember, was of the older stock of heroes—reconquered their Achaean conquerors.
Our scientists, however, incline to think that both of these explanations were put forward by Greek vanity; and that the “Dorian Invasion” was really a second migration, like that of the Achaeans, of non-Grecian folk from the heart of Europe. They were a race who had learned the use of iron, which had been scarcely, if at all, known to the Greeks before. And the superior armor and weapons of the new-comers enabled them to establish themselves through most of the Peloponnesus. Probably they were of ancient kin with the Achaeans, and so amalgamated with them readily enough, this kinship resulting in their being thought of as the descendants of the Greek Hercules, now returning to their own. At any rate, there was here a further infusion, though probably a small one, of Celtic or Gothic blood among the Greeks, and this Doric invasion caused wide changes in the location of the little Greek tribes or nations, changes which we can plainly trace.
So the Bronze Age ends and the Iron Age begins. And the Greeks fight with greater vigor and success. But their culture sinks even lower than the Achaeans had dragged it down. In Crete we saw how the splendid old palace of Knossus had been devastated in 1500 B.C. It was rebuilt and lived in once
ACHILLES LOSES BRISEIS (The Fair Princess Is Led from Her Lover's Tent to That of the King) From the painting by H. Handler, a contemporary German artist
CHIEF of the heroes of the siege of Troy was Achilles. He was a prince of Thessaly in Greece, and his mother was said to have been the sea-nymph Thetis. He was very young when the Greeks set out to attack Troy, so his mother, knowing that he was destined to perish in the war, hid him as a girl among the maidens of the court. Here he was found by the clever Ulysses, who was gathering the reluctant Greek princes for the war. Ulysses discovered Achilles by coming as a merchant among the court women. Each picked up such of his wares as pleased her, and young Achilles seized upon the weapons of war.
As their leader in the struggle against Troy, the Greek princes chose Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae. A jealousy sprang up at once between Agamemnon and Achilles, who could ill brook any leadership; and this enmity at length flashed into open quarrel. Each of them in the war had captured a fair princess as his prisoner. Agamemnon's prize was the daughter of a priest, and to stay a pestilence among the Greeks she was restored to her father. Agamemnon then demanded that Achilles' prize, the beautiful Briseis, should be given him instead. Achilles had been occupied in subduing all the lesser cities dependent upon Troy. In one of these he had captured Briseis and had learned to love her. When he was compelled to surrender her, he sank into such depths of despair and anger that he would no longer fight. He refused to lend any further help whatever to the Greeks.
more; but now about 1000 B.C. there came upon it another destruction, and its downfall this time was final and complete.
A Dorian state was established at Sparta, which became in its turn the chief city of Greece. Another Dorian state arose at Messene; and a third at Argos. The Achaeans, who doubtless by now were little different from the pure AEgean Greeks, were partly driven into the mountainous regions north of Sparta and Messene, along the southern coast of the Gulf of Corinth, a land which thereafter was called Achaia. Many of the earlier Greeks were crowded over into Attica, where Athens became their chief city. And, most marked result of all, many Greeks were driven out from the mainland of Greece altogether.
Thus, coincident with the Dorian invasion, began the “colonizing age” of the Greeks. The first swarm of them spread naturally into the islands and across to the Asiatic shores of the AEgean Sea, that land of Troy which they had themselves depopulated less than a century before. Probably there were two hundred years during which this migration was gradually accomplished. Slowly the Peloponnesus became the established centre of Dorian power, and a band of Dorian colonies extended from Southern Greece to Asia and included Crete. Central Greece became what was called Ionian, or Athenian; and colonies of Ionians settled the islands and the Asiatic coast north of the Dorians. Yet north of these were Asiatic colonies of Achaeans, or, as these came to be called in Asia, AEolians. For a time at least these colonial cities were more civilized and cultured than those of European Greece, though in a military sense they were less powerful.
This colonizing impulse of the Greeks did not cease with the settlement of the coast of Asia Minor. Indeed, the Asiatic colonies became themselves “mother cities,” as they were called, from which other colonies were sent out. Miletus alone is said to have established eighty colonies. The southern coast of Italy became populous with a long line of Grecian cities. The great island of Sicily became almost wholly Greek; and its metropolis, Syracuse, rivalled Athens in its splendor. Sardinia was occupied, and Corsica. The celebrated French city of Marseilles was founded as a Grecian colony, Spain was settled also; and gradually these far western colonies came in contact with those of the Phoenicians under Carthage. Thus between the years 1000 and 500 B.C. the Greeks spread all around the northern Mediterranean, forming a ring of cities which they proudly called the “Greater Greece.”
These colonies, unlike the trading cities of the Phoenicians, were most of them agricultural communities. In selecting their sites for settlement the Greeks looked for fertile fields rather than good harbors. Thus the cities were of a much more permanent character than the Phoenician towns, and most of them remain as centres of their various districts even in our own day.
For a time at least these colonizing Greeks outgrew the mother land in intellectual development. We can well image that it was the ablest Greeks who thus set forth from the Peloponnesus rather than submit to Dorian supremacy at home. That earliest of all great poets, Homer, was a native of Asiatic Greece. He was born probably about the year 1000 B.C. at Smyrna, an Achaean colony, wherein the traditions of the war with Troy, that chief triumph of the days of Achaean rulership, would be most warmly cherished and most carefully preserved. Sappho, too, the celebrated poetess of early Greece, was a native of the Achaean island of Lebos in Asia.
Among the Asiatic colonies appeared also the world-famous Greek philosophers. The earliest of these who was widely recognized was Thales, a native of the city of Miletus. He lived about 600 years before Christ, and is the first man of whom we have it definitely recorded that he travelled in search of knowledge. Naturally, these colonial Greeks were seafarers, but in their wanderings they clung to the seashore as traders, whereas Thales, a man of wealth and influence at home, left his city, his countrymen, and even his ships to spend years of study in foreign lands. The centres of culture which he thus sought were, first, Crete, which was still the traditional home of Greek civilization; second, Tyre and Sidon, the wealthy cities of the Phoenicians; and, third, Egypt, where he remained for years. Thales was an astronomer, who is said to have been the first who reckoned out the eclipses of the sun and was able to foretell them. He was also the founder of geometry, who discovered and demonstrated the first simple relations of lines and spaces and angles which geometry is teaching to this day. And, above all, in the eyes of his own times, he was a “philosopher,” that is, he advanced theories which he thought explained the world and its construction, the relations of matter and of mind.
Still more celebrated was the philosopher, Pythagoras, who lived perhaps half a century after Thales. He was also of Asiatic birth, and, like Thales, travelled everywhere to study. When he had, as he thought, solved the problems of existence, he did another thing typical of the Greeks of the time. He went from city to city of his countrymen to select which one was most attractive as a permanent home. He finally decided not upon one of the Asiatic cities nor upon one of those of European Greece, but upon one of the prosperous colonies which had been established in the sunny climate of southern Italy. He settled therefore at Crotona, and there established a “school of philosophy.”
Tradition tells us that Pythagoras was a marvellously impressive man. He spoke most beautifully, but most calmly. He wore always a long white robe, with a long white beard and flowing hair. He moved slowly, he ate no meat, and he never showed upon his serene face the trace of any passion or feeling whatsoever. Gradually his influence in Crotona became such that be
HECTOR'S FAREWELL (The Trojan Champion Rides Forth to His Last Battle) A painting by the noted contemporary French artist, A. P. R. Maignan
THE city of Troy lay in Asia Minor on the shore of the AEgean Sea. Indeed the whole story of the Trojan war implies that it was a contest between the Greeks of Europe, led by Sparta and Mycenae, and the Asiatic branch of a somewhat similar race, headed by the Trojans. Most of the war seems to have consisted not in any direct attack upon Troy, but in a siege of that city by part of the Greeks while the rest ravaged the other lands and cities allied with the Trojans. Only after destroying the last of these cities did the Greeks, in the tenth year of the war, concentrate their forces against Troy itself.
The Trojan warriors were as mighty as those of Agamemnon. The king of Troy was the aged and righteous Priam, who had nineteen children, the chief of whom were the valiant Hector and the handsome Paris, he who had stolen Helen from Sparta. Hector and Paris serve as antitheses. Paris with his wicked love for Helen was also idle, false, and slothful; though the war was waged in his defence he dallied in the bower with Helen rather than take the field. Hector on the contrary was an ideal gentleman, wedded to Andromache, a most noble wife who urged him to do battle for his country. Their last meeting was that depicted here, when she and his baby son saluted him as he went to the fight which ended in his death.
was the real ruler of the city. His doctrines spread to other places, until almost every Grecian metropolis had its school of Pythagoreans, a sort of intellectual aristocracy, who not only swayed the thought of the community, but often held political control as well.
In Crotona the followers of Pythagoras attempted at length to establish an oligarchy, that is, a government open only to a few of themselves; but they were defeated and driven out with considerable bloodshed by an uprising of the common folk, the democracy. Similar tumults occurred in other cities, and gradually this “government by philosophers” sank into obscurity. As Pythagoras never wrote down his doctrines, and forbade his followers to do so, his teachings have come down to us only in vague and distorted form, and we really know little of them. They were certainly, however, tremendously admired and influential in his own time.
While, in the world of “Greater Greece,” the pen was thus making its first effort to rule the sword, a movement widely different but equally interesting was going on in the home land of Greece itself, the peninsula of the Peloponnesus. This was the effort of the Spartans to create among themselves perfect physical bodies, the acme of bodily health and strength and vigor. Sparta gradually became the most powerful of the little states of the Greek mainland, the centre of the Dorian power, which at first had seemed to lie with Argos.
This supremacy of the Spartans was largely due to their great law-giver, Lycurgus, who lived about 885 B.C. He was a king of Sparta who succeeded his brother on the throne. A son was, however, born to the former king after the father's death, and Lycurgus, recognizing his little nephew's right to the throne, abdicated in his favor. The friends of the babe continually suspected Lycurgus of scheming to regain power, so finally this just and generous leader left Sparta and, in Grecian fashion, journeyed over the known world. He studied everywhere the system of government, seeking to find some way of preventing the outbreaks and street tumults which were so frequent among the Spartans.
When his little nephew had grown to manhood and full kingship, Lycurgus returned home, only to find his countrymen more turbulent than ever. So he planned a revolution of his own, gathering to his aid thirty of the wisest and most respected men of Sparta. The thirty appeared suddenly with drawn swords in the market place, the centre of the city's life. There they forced all the officials to submit to them. The young king, thinking he was to be slain, fled; but Lycurgus persuaded him that he was to be helped, not harmed, and he returned. A system was established by which Sparta was to have two kings and to be ruled by them and by a senate of twenty-eight advisers. These were the thirty supporters of Lycurgus, lacking two who had lost courage and deserted him at the last. Everything the kings and senate did was to be submitted for approval to a general gathering of the people, so that really this was to be a people's government at heart.
Lycurgus then established a whole system of laws, planned to make his people peaceable at home but powerful abroad. Just what these laws were we do not know; because the Spartans of after years so admired Lycurgus that they attributed all their laws to him, though some must have been of later date and some far older. At any rate, Lycurgus got his people to adopt his laws on trial. He then set out on a religious pilgrimage to the oracle at Delphi. The Spartans took a solemn oath to follow his laws until his return, and as a way of binding them to their pledge forever, he never returned. Going for the second time into voluntary exile for the sake of his country, Lycurgus died there. Thus the Spartans felt themselves pledged forever to his law code, and they obeyed this with a scrupulous fidelity which brought them not only the peace which their great law- giver had desired, but also the military prowess which made them the most successful and admired of the Greeks. “We will not change the laws of Sparta” became the regular form of answer with which the Spartan senate of later days met many a petitioner bringing every possible form of suggestion for improvement.
These Spartan laws and customs seem very curious and very harsh to us today. They forbade every form of ostentation and display. To prevent this they made all their money of iron; thus each coin was so big and yet of so little value that no one could carry much, or buy much with it, or hoard it up in secret. Any large sum would have filled an entire house.
Neither were the people allowed any pampering of their appetites. The men and boys all ate at a common table; the women and girls usually at another in another building. The food supplied was plain but wholesome, consisting chiefly of a noted black broth called the Spartan broth. Only very rarely was even the father of a family allowed to dine or sleep in his own home. His real dwelling was with his countrymen. Even among these, conversation was not encouraged. Each Spartan studied to speak only when he must, and then to compress just as much of meaning and point as possible into the fewest words. Thus the Spartan race became noted for their abruptness and their pithy sayings. Phrases in their style, since the name of the country of Sparta was Laconia, are still called “laconic” speeches.
In the community life which men thus shared together, they devoted themselves to athletic sports. Every boy was regularly trained to take part in these; and it is even said that sickly babies were deliberately put to death, lest they grow up into weakly men and women and thus pull down the physical average of the race.
The Spartans did little work except this constant training for athletics and
THE VENGEANCE OF ACHILLES (He Drags the Body of Hector at His Chariot Wheels) From the painting by the recent German artist, R. von Deutsch
DURING the period while Achilles mourned in his tent for Briseis and took no part in the war, Hector defeated the Greeks repeatedly. At length Achilles, though still refusing to fight, loaned his armor to his friend Patroclus. The mere sight of that dreaded armor put the mass of the Trojans to flight; but Hector, fresh from the encouragement of Andromache, met the supposed Achilles valiantly, and slew him.
The real Achilles, roused by the death of his friend, then came forward and met Hector in the chief combat of the war. Hector was slain. The story as Homer told it was that divine fear overcame him at thought of the supernatural nature of his foe, and that he fled, pursued by Achilles, thrice round the walls of Troy. But Virgil says that it was after Hector's fall that Achilles, still furious for his friend's death, lashed the feet of the fallen Hector to the rear of the victor's chariot and so dragged the body thrice round the walls of the city. Priam and all the Trojans, who were gathered on the city walls, beheld with unbridled despair the loss of their chief hero.
The death of Achilles followed soon after. The treacherous Paris, not daring to meet Achilles in the field, shot him from ambush with an arrow that pierced his heel and killed him for war. There dwelt among them many of the Greeks of older race, and these tilled the farms and shared the produce with their Dorian rulers. The Spartans had also one special kind of Grecian servitors whom they called “Helots.” These helots were treated as slaves, or even worse. When they grew too numerous and desperate, the Spartan youths acquired training in the art of war by going out among the helots and slaying such of them as seemed most dangerous.
The youth were also trained in self-repression. They were encouraged to steal, since the practice of thieving developed keenness, quickness, caution, and other warlike qualities. But if caught in theft they were severely punished, not for the deed, but for the blundering which had left them open to detection. Thus we have the well-known story of the Spartan lad who, having stolen a fox, concealed it beneath his cloak; and when it began to bite and tear at his body, he endured the torture without a sign until it killed him, rather than betray himself by any move or outcry.
Naturally these Spartans became celebrated as warriors. The later Athenians used to say in sarcasm that of course the Spartans fought well, because any man would sooner be slain than driven back to endure the grim and narrow life in Sparta. A Spartan mother would give her son his shield as he went forth to battle, saying in laconic fashion, “Return with it or upon it.” That is, he was not to throw away his shield in order to flee from a foe. He must keep moving forward and so preserve his shield. If he was slain his comrades carried him home upon that shield as proof that he had died fighting.
In the great national games of Greece, the Spartans were also leaders. Way back in the Trojan war days the Greeks had been very fond of athletic sports, and gradually they established one set of games after another throughout Greece. Most celebrated of these were the “Olympic Games.” These were celebrated every fourth year as a religious festival in honor of Jupiter, the great god of Mount Olympus. So important were these considered that the Greeks dated events by them, naming each four years by the victor in the chief contest, which was a running race. So ancient were the Olympic games that we cannot tell when they were first established; but the Greeks began to keep regular record of them in the year 776 B.C. Hence we call that year the “first Olympiad,” and from that time onward by noting in what “Olympiad” any event was said to occur we can count up the Olympiads and learn the real date of the event.
This leadership of Sparta both in war and in play was, you may be sure, neither easily won nor easily maintained. Wars between her and the two other great Dorian cities, Argos and Messene, were frequent. Against Messene in particular Sparta fought two celebrated wars, the first terminating in 724 B.C., and the second about 668 B.C.
Messene, you will remember, occupied the westernmost of the three large divisions of the southern Peloponnesus. The Spartans said they first attacked it because the Messenean sovereign, one of those doubtful descendants of Hercules, had been murdered by his people; and that the Spartans, being his kinsmen, were compelled to avenge him. This sounds as though the native Greek populace of Messene had rebelled against a Dorian ruler, who sought aid from the other Dorian states. At any rate, the result was a war of twenty years, during which the Messeneans abandoned all their villages and towns, and took refuge on the mighty mountain of Ithome, a natural fortress having upon its summit a plain large enough to grow crops for all the defenders. On this mountain eyrie they lived, and from it they descended to fight, year after year.
The Messeneans were finally driven even from Ithome. Many of them fled into exile, and the remainder submitted as servitors to the yoke of Sparta. Forty years later there arose among the Messenean exiles a remarkable leader, Aristomenes, who persuaded his companions to return in a body to their native land and reassert their right to it. This caused the second Messenean war.
Aristomenes was the chief national hero of Messene. We are told that he repeatedly defeated parties of the hitherto invincible Spartans, that he even dared to venture into the market-place of Sparta itself, and, as an offering to the gods, he fastened upon the temple door some of the spoils which he had taken from the Spartans themselves. At length he defeated all the hosts of Sparta in a decisive battle, and reestablished the independence of his beloved city.
The discouraged Spartans applied repeatedly to the Delphic oracle for advice against Aristomenes, and were told that to defeat him they must seek a leader from among the Athenians. Hence the Spartans most unwillingly appealed to Athens for a general. The Athenians, equally unwilling to aid Sparta or to offend her, and defy the oracle, thought to turn the prophecy to ridicule by sending to the Spartans the Athenian least fitted of all to lead in war. So they chose an old lame schoolmaster, Tyrtaeus. The Spartans received him as contemptuously as he was sent. But Tyrtaeus proved the very man they needed. He was a poet, and by his martial songs celebrating the ancient Spartan valor, he so roused the spirit of the people to shame and revenge that Aristomenes and all his army were utterly defeated.
Still the resolute Messenean continued the war, though almost without followers. Hiding amid the mountains, he continued his raids into Laconia. Thrice he was captured by the Spartans, and thrice he escaped almost miraculously. At one time, being cast as dead or dying into a pit from which there was no way of climbing out, he was saved by a fox, which dug its way by subterranean passages to feed upon the dead. Aristomenes, catching the fox's tail, was led by it up to the daylight. On another occasion, a maiden of the
THE BUILDING OF THE HORSE (The Greek Stratagem which Conquered Troy) By Giovanni-Battista Tiepolo, the noted Venetian painter, 1696-1770
ONE after another the chief warriors on either side were slain in the great siege of Troy. Paris himself perished, and the fickle Helen found another mate. And still the city remained defiant, its walls impregnable. At length the shrewd Ulysses suggested the capture of the city by stratagem. At his command the Greeks built a vast horse of wood; it was hollow and was filled with soldiers. Then the other Greeks sailed away in their ships, leaving the horse alone upon the shore. The Trojans poured out of their city to rejoice, and were told by a pretended deserter that the horse was a divine protection which would make their city unconquerable forever. At that, they dragged the unwieldy thing inside their walls. Several prophets among them warned them of their danger. One drove a spear into the side of the horse, and a wounded Greek within it groaned. Yet the Trojans were determined; the horse entered the city.
That same night the hidden soldiers crept cautiously out and opened the city gates. The Greeks who had sailed away had come back in the night. They rushed madly into Troy, and the city was conquered. It was given over to flame and slaughter. Helen was seized and given back to Menelaus. The object of the ten years' war was at length accomplished, and Troy existed no more.
city had a dream from the gods bidding her free the captive Aristomenes, and she did so and fled with him and was wedded to one of his sons.
Clearly, in such tales, we are still dealing with romance rather than with fact. The end alone is certain. Aristomenes abandoned the struggle after nearly twenty years, fought his way through the Spartan army that surrounded his mountain hiding-place, and with a handful of followers fled to Sicily. Here the remnant of the Messeneans founded the city known to this day by the name of Messina, which their patriotism led them to assign to it.
Thus Sparta became mistress of two of the three southern valleys of the Peloponnesus. But Argos, enthroned in the third valley, continued to defy and sometimes to do battle with her. In Argos, as in Messene, the Dorian kings were overthrown, and a republic was established, though probably it was a republic still under Dorian leadership. Then in 519 B.C. there came to the throne of Sparta a king, Cleomones, who won a great victory over the Argives. They fled from him, and their city was only saved from capture by the women, who, under the lead of one of their number, Telesilla, manned the walls and defied the assailants.
Cleomenes raised Sparta to the highest pinnacle of her power. Not only did he crush the strength of Argos; he also interfered in the affairs of Athens, and expelled an anti-Spartan ruler from that city. A second time he did the same, but, coming this time with but a small force, he was suddenly attacked by the Athenians, and only escaped through their voluntarily permitting him to go free. Resolved on revenge, he summoned all the forces of Greece to join him, and such was the authority of Sparta that almost all obeyed. But when the gathered allies learned that he purposed to destroy Athens, they refused him their aid, and even his colleague, the second Spartan king, rebuked him for his vindictiveness against a Grecian city.
It is evident that this incident marks a new spirit rising among the Greeks, a sense of nationality, of a bond of brotherhood, a realization that disaster to one city meant disaster to all. With the recognition of that fact, Greek history takes on a new phase, the period of union rather than of discord begins, and Greece steps forward at a bound to assume her place among the leading powers of the ancient world. She fights her remarkable battles against the huge empire of Persia.
But before approaching the story of the Persian war, we must pause to trace the rise of this new power. Athens, which had thus ventured to defy Sparta, and was soon, in the eyes of men, to rank even above that famous city in honor and in splendor.
THE city of Athens has long been held up to mankind as the crown of all that was most brilliant in the ancient world. Her citizens became foremost in art and in philosophy, in military and also in literary glory. Moreover, Athens was the greatest, if not the earliest, of the Greek “democracies,” states in which the people governed themselves directly, without having recourse to kings or priesthoods. Thus Athens stands as the source of all our modern doctrines of republican government, the type upon which our own American institutions are founded, and by whose errors and downfall we must learn the pitfalls to avoid.
Almost all of these old Greek cities seem to have gone through about the same course, the same cycle, we might call it, of experience in government. At first each was ruled by a king; gradually this king lost his power to what was called an oligarchy, a small collection of powerful aristocrats. From oligarchies the cities passed to tyrannies—that is, some one man seized authority, usually by the aid of the lower classes, and ruled the city with no obedience to any law but that of his own will, no reliance on aught but his own strength. Note that to the Greeks, therefore, this word “tyrant” did not carry the suggestion that it does to us of savagery and cruelty. It merely implied that the ruler had no legal authority. Generally speaking, the tyrant was a very able and well- intentioned man; almost always he was an attractive and agreeable one; for he held his position only by his influence over others, their trust in him. Usually he arose as the champion of the people, defending them against the really tyrannous oligarchy in which the powerful families crushed all the poor folk beneath their haughty whims. Thus these tyrants led naturally to the fourth condition of the Grecian cities, that in which the people, grown strong enough to do without the leadership of an able tyrant, took the government wholly into their own hands, and established democracies.
The history of Athens offers us a typical case of this development. The Athenians, you will remember, made it their boast that they had never been conquered. Both Achaean and Dorian invaders had passed them by, perchance because their rocky plain was far less fertile than the rich valleys of Argos and of Sparta. Thus the Athenians represented, or claimed to represent, the purest and most ancient Grecian stock, descended from the gods themselves. In other words, we may look upon them as being indeed the old autochthonous AEgean people, artists, sailors, and organizers of law, heirs of the vanished splendor of Crete and of the earliest Argos, brothers of the Asiatic Trojans whose kinship they had forgotten and whose city they had helped destroy. Thus with the fading of these older cities, Athens gradually came to be looked upon as the chief representative of the original Greek stock, the “Ionians,” as they were called, to distinguish them from the Dorians.
The Athenian legends of their own earliest days say that their city was founded about 1550 B.C. by King Cecrops, who came from Egypt and gathered the people of the neighborhood and built a city upon the steep rocky hill which we know today as the Acropolis, the sacred hill of Athens, the height which bore all of her most beautiful temples and statues. This city was called, from its founder, Cecropia.
Even in this form the tale would be unreliable, as the Egyptians were never a colonizing race; but it is also embroidered with a mass of fanciful detail in which the deities Neptune and Minerva struggle for the honor of representing the city. Cecrops gave the preference to Minerva, or Athene, as her Greek name was; and after a while the old name of Cecropia was limited to the Acropolis, while the entire settlement became known as the city of Athene, or Athens.
The next great legendary king of Athens was Theseus, who lived in the days of the Argonauts, and joined their expedition. Theseus, who lived in the days of the Argonauts, and joined their expedition. Theseus was adopted as the national hero of the Athenians, and endless legends were told of him. His father the Athenian king was without children—nay, he scarcely dared have any, for he was surrounded by a turbulent crowd of nobles who meant to snatch the crown for themselves, only that, as the king was childless, they waited for his death, expecting thus to gain the power without a struggle. So the king was united secretly to a princess in a far land, and he told her that if their little son Theseus grew up strong and shrewd she was to send him to claim his inheritance but not otherwise. The father placed under a huge stone his own sword and sandals, saying that this should be a sign to the mother. When Theseus could himself move that great stone and get the sword, it was time for him to assert his rights. Theseus, on reaching manhood, easily moved the stone, and then set out for Athens. At that time all Greece was talking of the recent deeds of Hercules; and Theseus, determining to imitate him, travelled along the mountain paths fighting every thing he met. His combats, however, are never made supernatural like those of Hercules. Theseus met robbers and wild beasts. Most noted of those he overthrew was the bandit Procrustes, who had an iron bed on which he laid his captives. If they were too tall for it, he cut them down to fit. If they were too short, he stretched them apart upon the rack. The bed of Procrustes has become noted in literature. Theseus defeated him and fastened him to his own bed.
After many such adventures the hero reached Athens. Here he was recognized by the nobles and by that grim sorceress Medea, who had aided the Argonauts and who had become his father's wife. She tried to get his father to poison him in ignorance; and the nobles sought to slay him. But the father recognized his son in time by the token of the sword, and Theseus slew his male opponents and became prince of Athens.
Then comes the story of the Minotaur. Athens was tributary to Crete, and had to send there every year a ship-load of youths and maidens to be slain as religious sacrifices, or, as the legend puts it, they were fed to the minotaur. Theseus went as one of these youths determined to free his country from the awful tribute. He slew the minotaur, which doubtless is a way of saying he defeated the Cretans. He also brought home with him the two daughters of King Minos of Crete, which is perhaps a way of implying that the tribute was reversed.
Yet, even Theseus, great hero as he was, could not retain control of the turbulent Athenians when he succeeded his father on the throne. In his old age he was driven from the city and died in exile. Then his countrymen remembered all his services and brought his body back in honor, and ranked him among the gods.
One other of the old Athenian kings is worth remembrance. This was Codrus, the last of them all. His story brings us down within the limits of real history. Codrus was king about 1060 B.C. when the first Dorian invaders attempted to conquer Attica. The oracle at Delphi predicted that if the Dorians
ULYSSES' LAST TRICK (The Crafty Warrior Rescues His Own Kingdom from its Despoilers) Drawn by the contemporary German artist, E. Limmer
FEW of the Greek victors at Troy regained a peaceful supremacy over their own kingdoms. Each had his own adventures and was driven by the Fates through strange experiences. Most world-renowned of these wanderers was Ulysses, the shrewdest and among the mightiest of the Greek chieftains. He had incurred the enmity of the sea-god Neptune, and for ten years he was buffeted by the waves and driven from land to land, unable to regain his own home, the island of Ithaca.
When at length he did reach Ithaca he came alone and beggared, and found his palace in possession of a throng of suitors each insisting that he would wed the wife of the long-lost Ulysses and so become king. Penelope, the faithful wife of the wanderer, had long kept them at bay by insisting that she must first finish a wondrous web of cloth she was weaving; and secretly each night she unwove what she had finished through the day. Ulysses disposed of the turbulent suitors by appearing among them as a beggar, and proposing that they should try to bend and string the mighty old bow of Ulysses which had hung for all these years upon the wall. When no other could string it, he himself did so; and being then recognized by his son and his few surviving old servants, he used the bow to shoot the more dangerous of the suitors. Thus he reconquered his kingdom.
killed the Athenian king they could not win the city. Thereupon Codrus resolved to sacrifice himself; and, since the Dorians avoided him in battle, he disguised himself as a common soldier, went among the enemy, and, picking a quarrel with some of them, was slain. When the Dorians realized who the victim was, they withdrew from Attica without further struggle. The Athenians declared that no other king could be noble enough to take the place of Codrus, and therefore they would have no more kings.
Without pinning too much faith to the details of this story, we know that its chief outlines are true. The Dorians were repulsed from Attica, and Athens passed from kingship to oligarchy, that is, to the rule of the turbulent aristocracy who had so often threatened to dethrone the earlier kings. These aristocrats controlled Athens for several centuries. Gradually they seized all power. They made what laws they pleased, seized upon the farmers' lands, sold children for their fathers' debts, and reduced the common people to utter misery.
Most prominent of these grasping nobles were the family called the Alcmaeonidae. Of Alcmaeonides, founder of the family's importance, the story is told that he owed his wealth to the Asiatic king Croesus, whom you will recall as having been overthrown by Cyrus of Persia. Alcmaeonides had befriended many of the subjects of Croesus who travelled through Athens on their way to consult the Delphic oracle. So Croesus invited the Athenian to his court, and one day bade him take from the treasury as much gold as he could carry. Alcmaeonides went at the matter thoroughly. He had a voluminous suit made; he put on sandals as broad as he could shuffle in; and after stuffing clothes and sandals with every atom of gold he could stagger under, he loaded down his hair and even his mouth with the precious metal, and thus literally took all the gold he could carry. As he shuffled out of the treasury he was shown to Croesus, who, instead of being angry at the Athenian's cupidity, laughed heartily at his shrewdness and at the comic figure he presented, and as a reward to Alcmaeonides for the double amusement he thus caused, gave him as much gold again as he had already won.
The son of this Alcmaeonides was called Megacles. During the days when Megacles was foremost of the nobility occurred the first effort to turn Athens from an oligarchy to a tyranny. In the year 610 B.C. a young nobleman named Cylon called all the people to aid him in overthrowing the rule of the nobles. The revolt failed; Cylon escaped in secret, and his followers clung to the shrines of the gods for protection. They were deliberately torn thence and murdered by command of Megacles. Because of this insult to the gods, the entire family of Megacles, the Alcmaeonidae, were thereafter regarded as accursed.
Even before this outbreak, the nobles had agreed that somewhat more consideration must be shown to the common folk. The rulers decided that all the cruel laws they had passed whenever the impulse seized them should be arranged in a single plainly stated system; thus, at least, the nobles could no longer twist the laws as they willed; and a poor man might know what the law really was, and so avoid breaking it unconsciously. The man who was summoned thus to “codify” the laws was Draco. So severe were many of the old half-forgotten laws that when they were all thus clearly set forth, men were horrified at their severity. Death was made the penalty for every tiny crime, even the stealing of an apple from an orchard. Draco is said to have declared that the smallest crime deserved death, and that he knew of no severer penalty to attach to greater crimes. Of this grim code of laws men said that they were “written in blood,” and the word “draconian” remains in use today as signifying a rule unflinchingly severe.
The laws of Draco did not quiet the tumults in Athens. The friends of Cylon continued to aid the common people, especially in their protests against the “accursed Alcmaeonidae.” Supernatural portents were said to betoken the anger of the gods, and threatening ghosts appeared. Disasters overtook the Athenians in a war with the city of Megara. Finally, the Alcmaeonidae were banished in a body. Even the bones of their dead ancestors were exhumed and sent from the country with solemn formalities to avert the wrath of the gods. At the same time another lawmaker, Solon, was authorized to prepare a new set of laws relieving the misery of the poorer classes.
Solon is the first of the great philosophers who made Athens famous. He was himself descended from the line of the ancient kings of Athens. The laws which he drafted were so just that ultimately they pleased nobody. The nobles thought too much was granted to the commons, who in their turn felt too much was preserved to the nobility. Solon himself said the laws were not the best that could be made, but only the best that the Athenians were ready for. In imitation of the Spartan law-giver, Lycurgus, he pledged the people to abide by his laws for ten years, and then he went into voluntary exile.
On his return he found the city still in disorder. A new leader appeared, seeking to take the place of Cylon, and ride to power on the favor of the poorer people. This was Pisistratus, a relative of Solon. One day Pisistratus appeared suddenly in the market-place covered with blood and cried out that the nobles had sought to kill him as the friend of the commons. Instantly these commons decreed that they would form a bodyguard to protect him. With this guard to help him Pisistratus gradually assumed power over everything, and became “tyrant,” the first tyrant of Athens (560 B.C.).
The career of this tyrant Pisistratus was picturesque and varied in the extreme. He seems to have been a wise and good and powerful ruler. Athens prospered under him as she had never done before. Nevertheless, the nobles
THE SONG OF HOMER (The Assembled Greeks Listen to the Inspiration of Patriotic Poetry) From the painting by the noted French artist, Baron Francois Gerard, 1770-1837
THE great song of the Siege of Troy that has come down to us was sung by Homer, the most celebrated of the poets of antiquity. Homer's song did much to cultivate a feeling of nationality among the Greeks. They felt that, since they had once all united to accomplish a great deed, they might unite again. Each city took pride in its place in the list of those which had sent ships to Troy, and chanted the praise of its own heroes in the war.
Of Homer himself we know little except that he thus sang of Troy about the year 860 B.C., some three centuries after the war itself. He was doubtless a professional singer who wandered with his harp from place to place. In those days the minstrel was not held in high repute, and though many cities have since claimed the honor of being Homer's birthplace, it is doubtful if any of them honored or even supported him when alive. On the whole, he seems most probably to have been born in Smyrna, a Greek colony in Asia Minor, and to have resided later on the island of Chios. He travelled much, and finally became blind, old, and poor.
Long after his death his poems were brought from Asia and introduced among the European Greeks. Tradition says this was done by the great Spartan law-giver Lycurgus, who wanted among other things to impress upon Greece that Sparta, as the originator of the Trojan expedition, was the legitimate leader of Greece.
were, naturally enough, always plotting against him. The Alcmaeonidae, after all the fuss of getting them out of the country, had been allowed to return. Their leader, Megacles, a grandson of that Megacles who had brought the curse upon them, headed an uprising which drove Pisistratus out of Athens. But Megacles quarrelled with his party and formed an alliance with the exiled tyrant, who married a daughter of Megacles, and so won his way to power a second time.
Again he lost his position, and yet again by a sudden invasion of the city he recaptured it. At length he made himself so powerful, and so honored also, that he ruled in peace by general consent. When he died in 528 B.C. he had started Athens on her career of wealth, opening the city to the trade of the world, and also on her career of artistic and philosophic splendor, welcoming learned men to his home and beautifying the city with many noble statues and stately buildings.
He was succeeded, as quietly as a regular king might have been, by his two sons, Hippias and Hipparchus. But they assumed a tone of regal superiority which their shrewd father had avoided. They insulted people, and became true tyrants in our modern sense of being savage and unjust. At length two men whom Hipparchus had wronged determined to avenge themselves and free the city. These men, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, planned to slay the two brothers together; but fearing that their plot was betrayed, they rushed suddenly on Hipparchus, whom they most hated, and slew him in his brother's absence. The assailants were themselves both killed. In after days the Athenians looked back to Harmodius and Aristogeiton as national heroes, the first martyrs to the cause of democracy, thinking of them as the Romans thought of the first Brutus.
After this assault, the surviving brother, Hippias, became bitter and suspicious. He slew all whom he suspected of being in the plot, and imprisoned and tortured many of the Athenians for evil reasons. Tyranny showed itself in its natural colors.
It was the Alcmaeonidae who rescued Athens from Hippias. They had withdrawn from the city in fear of Pisistratus; but they were always seeking an opportunity to return. They made friends with the Delphic oracle and so worked upon its priesthood that every time the powerful Spartans sent to consult the oracle they got but one answer: “Athens must be freed.” Seeing no other way of getting their own religious affairs attended to, and being averse to tyrants anyway as representing an illegitimate form of government, the Spartans finally sent a small force against Athens. It was defeated, and then their whole army came under their great king, Cleomenes. Of this expedition you have already heard. Many of the Athenians aided the Spartans. Hippias and his immediate followers were besieged on the Acropolis. Their children were captured by a lucky stroke; and to ransom the little ones, Hippias agreed to leave the country.
To the Spartans it seemed obvious that the overthrow of the tyrant meant the restoration of the oligarchy. But this was not the Athenian view of the situation. True, the Alcmaeonidae and other nobles returned to the city, and most of the government passed temporarily into their hands. But many of the nobility themselves now favored a democracy; and when the head of the Alcmaeonidae, Cleisthenes by name, stood forward as leader of the people's party he easily overruled the few nobles who clung to the ancient system. These reactionaries, as we would call them now, appealed to the Spartans for aid, and again Cleomenes took possession of Athens.
He came this time as a friend and adviser. He insisted that for the old religious reason the “accursed Alcmaeonidae” must be expelled. To this the Athenians agreed. But Cleomenes then went on to exile seven hundred other families pointed out to him by the reactionaries as leaders of the popular party; and he placed the nobles in control of everything.
Suddenly and desperately the Athenians rebelled. They had been too long in freedom to consent to go back to the old days of serfdom to a haughty oligarchy. Cleomenes and his small force were besieged with their Athenian friends upon the Acropolis. They were without provisions and surrendered. The Athenians let Cleomenes and his Spartans return home in peace, but his Athenian adherents they slew as traitors to the city.
In such sudden and violent manner did democracy assume the ascendant in Athens. The people expected a war with Sparta; they summoned home Cleisthenes and the other exiles. But you will recall how the vengeance of the Spartan king against Athens was checked by the growing spirit of nationality among the Greeks.
Two of the smaller Grecian states, urged on by King Cleomenes, did attack the Athenians, but were severely defeated. Athens in the new vigor of a united democracy had “found herself.” At one stride she stepped forward to a position of power in Greek affairs second only to that of Sparta. And even with Sparta she had shown herself ready to fight, if fight she must. To the Greek world a new lesson was taught—the strength which inheres in every true democracy, because its people feel that they are fighting, not for a king or a few nobles who will seize all the profit, but for themselves, their own homes and happiness. A new power was revealed, the power of patriotism.
WE have now reached a momentous period in the history of Greece. We have learned in our study of Persia of the rise of that monarchy, whose might for a time threatened to overshadow the world. This immense kingdom was founded by Cyrus, extended by Cambyses, and welded and consolidated by Darius. Croesus, king of Lydia, had succeeded in conquering the Greek cities on the coast of Asia Minor, after which he himself was subjugated by Cyrus; in this manner the Greek cities named came under the dominion of Persia.
It may be well to recall that Darius in consolidating his empire divided his vast dominions into twenty provinces, and fixed the tribute they were to pay to the royal treasury. Each province was ruled by a satrap or governor, and Darius was the first Persian king who coined money. His ambition and the aggressiveness of his people would not allow him to rest satisfied with the boundaries of his vast possessions. He determined to attack Scythia in Europe, on the wide plain between the Danube and the Don, peopled by a numerous body of fierce savage tribes. Accordingly, he collected an immense army and fleet. His ships were ordered to sail up the Danube and to throw a bridge of boats across the river, while his army marched through Thrace, crossed the Danube by this bridge, after which the fleet was to break down the structure and follow the army to Scythia. Reminded, however, of thus destroying the means of retreating, he told the Asiatic Greeks, in whose care he left it, to hold it intact
THE LAWS OF LYCURGUS PROCLAIMED (The Spartans Protest against the Severity of His Laws) From a drawing by Emil Doepler, of Berlin
AS we begin to see definitely through the mists of Greek history, we find Sparta well established about the year 800 B.C. as the foremost state of Greece. Her power was largely due to the remarkable social organization which had been established by her celebrated law-giver Lycurgus. This noted ruler was, even more positively than Homer, an actual individual. He was a member of the royal house of Sparta in a time of tumult and civil war. His father and elder brother were both slain, and as the only surviving member of his race Lycurgus seized the throne, but when a boy was born to his brother's widow he resigned in the child's favor. Being accused of seeking to slay the infant, he withdrew into voluntary exile and spent years travelling in other countries seeking to learn by what laws they evaded the tumults which distracted his own land.
Returning at length when his nephew Charilaus was grown, Lycurgus found the disorder as wild as ever, so he persuaded the chief men to unite with him in seizing the power. He was made joint king with Charilaus and at once instituted the remarkable system of laws he had planned. So successfully did these pacify the state that the people hailed him as a god. Lycurgus then prepared to start on another journey and pledged all the people to uphold his laws till he returned. Then he left Sparta and never returned, so as thus to bind them forever to his laws.
for sixty days. If he did not return at the end of that time, they could break down the bridge and sail home. Then he marched away.
The sixty days and more came and went without bringing any signs of the Persian army. Instead, a body of Scythians appeared, with news that Darius had been defeated and was in full flight before the Scythians, who would destroy him and his army if the bridge failed them. They vehemently urged the Greeks to seize this chance of annihilating the Persian host and recovering their own liberty, by breaking down the structure. Many were inclined to act upon this counsel, but it was not done, and finally Darius arrived with his weary army and safely crossed the network of boats.
The failure of this expedition did not cause Darius to abandon his plans of conquest. Although returning to Sardis himself, he left an army of eighty thousand under Megabazus, to subjugate Thrace and the Greek cities upon the Hellespont. Megabazus completed the task with little difficulty. After subduing the Thracians he crossed the Strymon and pressed his way as far as the borders of Macedonia, into which he sent heralds to demand earth and water as a sign of submission. These were granted, and thus in 510 B.C. the Persian dominions were extended to the frontiers of Thessaly.
Several years of profound peace followed, and then a tiny flame was kindled, which spread into a conflagration whose glare crimsoned the skies of Greece and Asia. It was about the year 502 B.C., that an uprising took place on the Greek island of Naxos, one of the most important of the Cyclades, and the oligarchical party were driven from the island. They applied for help to Aristagoras, Tyrant of Miletus, the leading Ionian city in Asia, and he gladly gave it, knowing that if the exiles were restored he would become master of the island. But Aristagoras speedily found he was not strong enough to carry out this plan, and he went to Sardis to secure in turn the aid of Artaphernes, the Persian satrap of Asia Minor, who was shown that he would be able to annex not only Naxos but the rest of the Cyclades; and even the important island of Euboea. When Aristagoras assured the satrap that failure was impossible, that he needed only two hundred ships with their forces, and that he himself would defray all the expenses, it is no wonder that Artaphernes did as he wished.
Everything being ready, the Naxian exiles were taken on board and Aristagoras sailed toward the Hellespont. The incidents which followed were curious and interesting. Reaching Chios, Aristagoras dropped anchor off the western coast, meaning, as soon as a fair wind arose, to sail across to Naxos. The Persian general, like a prudent commander, made a personal examination of his fleet to assure himself that all was in readiness. He was enraged to find one of the vessels without a single man on board. He ordered the captain of the ship to be brought before him, and then commanded him to be put in chains with his head thrust through one of the port-holes of his own vessel. Now it so happened that this captain was a valued friend of Aristagoras, who immediately set him free and warned the Persian general that his rank was subordinate to his own. Naturally the Persian was not soothed by this treatment, and as soon as night came he sent a message to the Naxians warning them of their danger. Until then they had had no thought that the expedition was intended to act against them. They hurriedly carried their property into the city and made preparations to withstand a long siege. The Persian fleet arrived, but was repulsed by the resolute resistance, and several months later gave up the siege and returned to Miletus.
Aristagoras was in a desperate plight. He had made a bitter enemy of the Persian general and had deceived Artaphernes, so that no favor was to be expected from the Persian government. Probably, too, he would soon be called upon to pay the expenses of the disastrous expedition. There seemed but one possible way out of his dilemma: that was to stir up his countrymen to revolt against Persia. And while he was meditating over the step, lo! a message came, urging him to do that very thing.
You could never guess the cunning way this message was sent, nor why. It came from Histiaeus, uncle of Aristagoras, and his predecessor as Tyrant of Miletus. The Persian king, fearing the power of Histiaeus as the most influential man among the Asian Greeks, had carried him, half as friend, half as prisoner, to Persia. Histiaeus' only purpose in advising a revolt was the belief that Darius would send him to put it down and thus give him the liberty for which he so ardently yearned. He shaved the head of a trusty slave, branded the few words necessary upon his shining poll, and then kept him until the hair grew out again. Then he sent him to his nephew, with the significant request to shave the head of the slave. This being done, the full meaning of the words broke upon Aristagoras, who hesitated no longer to take the exceedingly dangerous step. He called the leading citizens of Miletus before him, explained his plan, and asked their advice. All, with one exception, approved his course.
This important point being settled, the next was to persuade the other Greek cities in Asia to unite with them. Then the Grecian Tyrants, most of whom were with the fleet, were seized as they returned from Naxos, and a democratical form of government was established throughout all the Greek cities in Asia and the adjoining islands, followed by a “Declaration of Independence” from Persia. Thus the die was cast.
Aristagoras acted with vigorous promptness. Without waiting for the Persians to gather their forces to strike, he crossed to Greece to beg the help of the powerful states. First, of course, he went to Sparta, where he met with a singular experience. He told so winning a story to Cleomenes, showing how
THE VICTORY OF DEATH The Spartan, Ladas, Wins the Great Olympic Foot-Race and Falls Dead)
From a painting by F. M. Bennett, a contemporary English artist
THE beginning of authentic Greek history comes with the founding of the Olympic games. These were held every fourth year as a sort of religious festival in honor of the chief god Zeus; and so important were they considered that during their celebration a truce was proclaimed amid all the Greek cities. At other times the tiny states were continually fighting and plotting against one another; but on this great occasion the inhabitants of every city met at the shrine of Olympia in harmony as members of one religion. This was the beginning of their larger national life. They felt that they were all Greeks, all compatriots. So highly was victory in these games prized that each city devoted its best energies to training its contestants, and the various “Olympiads,” or periods of four years separating the games, were named after the winner of the long-distance foot-race, which was the chief contest.
The earliest of these races of which we have any detailed knowledge was that won by Ladas. He was a Spartan youth, Sparta being foremost in these games as in all other Grecian affairs of those days. Ladas paid for victory with his life, falling dead at the feet of the judges even as they presented him with the palm of victory. This palm and a laurel wreath were the only direct rewards ever given to the victor; but the honor in which he was held would make him thereafter a leading man in his city. In Ladas' case, Sparta and several other cities erected statues to his memory, and his name became the traditional synonym for speed.
Meanwhile, the uprising was fast growing formidable. The flames spread to the Grecian cities in Cyprus, as well as to those on the Hellespont and the Propontis, while the Carians joined in the revolt. Against the rebels Darius launched the whole prodigious power of his empire. A Phoenician fleet, carrying an immense force of Persians, brought Cyprus under submission, and the Carians and the Greek cities of Asia were relentlessly pressed to the wall. Aristagoras in his despair deserted his countrymen, and with a force of Milesians sailed for the Thracian coast, where he was killed while besieging a town.
Darius was suspicious of the part played by Histiaeus, but that wily individual not only convinced him of his innocence, but induced him to send him into Ionia to help the Persian generals in putting down the rebellion. When Histiaeus reached Sardis, Artaphernes bluntly accused him of treachery, and Histiaeus prudently fled to the island of Chios, but every one suspected him; the Milesians denied him admittance to the town, and the Ionians refused to have him for their leader. Finally, he managed to secure several galleys from Lesbos, with which he sailed toward Byzantium and turned pirate, seizing prey wherever he could find it. While making a raid on the coast of Mysia, he was captured by the Persians and carried to Sardis, where Artaphernes caused him to be crucified and sent his head to Darius, who gave it honorable burial and condemned the act of his satrap.
Previous to this, and in the sixth year of the revolt (495 B.C.), when it was partly suppressed, Artaphernes determined to attack Miletus by sea and land. That city was the key to the insurrectionary districts, and, if it could be taken, its capture was sure to be followed by the submission of the others. With this end in view, Artaphernes collected all his land forces near the city and ordered the Phoenician fleet to approach Miletus. Since the defenders were not strong enough to resist the army, they decided to leave the city to its own defences on the land side, while all their forces went on board the ships.
The fleet assembled at a small island near Miletus, the number being not much more than one-half of that belonging to the Phoenicians. But the Ionians were so noted for their nautical skill, that the enemy was afraid to attack them. The Persians ordered the Tyrants who had been expelled from the Grecian cities, and were serving in the Persian fleet, to do their utmost to persuade their countrymen to desert the common cause. The effort was made, but in every instance failed.
There was no discipline in the Ionian fleet. The men left the ships and scattered over the island, refusing to obey orders, and even going to the length of opening communication with the expelled Tyrants, to whom they promised to desert their comrades in time of battle.
Under such circumstances the Persian commanders did not hesitate to attack the vessels. Just as the battle was about to open, the Samian vessels treacherously sailed away, and directly afterward the Lesbians did the same; but the hundred ships of the Milesians fought with unsurpassable heroism until they were crushed by the overwhelming numbers of the enemy.
This was the decisive struggle of the war. Miletus was soon taken by storm. Nearly all the men were slain, and the few who were spared were carried with the women and children into slavery. Similar harshness was shown in the cases of the other Greek cities in Asia and the neighboring islands. Chios, Tenedos, and Lesbos were desolated, and the Persian fleet carried death and destruction up to the Hellespont and Propontis. At Byzantium and Chalcedon the inhabitants fled, and the distinguished Athenian Miltiades barely escaped by making all haste to Athens.
The cup of Ionia was full. The Asiatic Greeks had been conquered by Croesus of Lydia, then by Cyrus, and now they were the captives and slaves of Darius; and the last was the worst of all. Artaphernes devoted himself to establishing an orderly government, and did what he could to heal the bleeding wounds of the subject province (494 B.C.).
Darius had not yet punished Athens for what to him was her unpardonable crime against his authority. His fury was as hot as ever, and now that the Ionic revolt had been subdued, he made his preparations for striking a terrific blow against that gallant little commonwealth. Mardonius, his son-in-law, was ambitious and longed for a chance of winning glory on the field of battle. Darius removed Artaphernes from the government of the Persian provinces bordering on the AEgean, and appointed Mardonius in his place. A large armament was placed at the command of Mardonius, with orders that he should send to Susa all the Athenians and Eretrians who had insulted the Great King. The task was a congenial one to Mardonius, who crossed the Hellespont, and, marching through Thrace and Macedonia, brought under subjection such tribes as still defied Persian authority. With so powerful a force, this was easy work against the undisciplined barbarians.
But disaster was at hand. He had sent the fleet to double the promontory of Mount Athos and join the army at the head of the Gulf of Therma, when a tremendous hurricane destroyed three hundred of the ships and drowned twenty thousand of the men. While in Macedonia, Mardonius had his army almost cut to pieces in a night attack by an independent Thracian tribe, and though he stayed long enough to subdue the country, he was obliged to retreat across the Hellespont, and, shamed and humiliated, he returned to the Persian court.
This failure only roused the anger of Darius to greater intensity than before. He would not rest until he had humbled Athens to the dust, and he began his preparations on so colossal a scale that it seemed nothing short of the direct interposition of heaven could save Greece from extinction. Before beginning his fearful work, he sent heralds to the principal Grecian states, demanding from each earth and water as a symbol of submission. When the herald reached Athens, he was flung into an excavation in the earth, while the messenger who visited Sparta was tumbled into a well and told to help himself to all the earth and water he wanted. In nearly every other instance, however, the Grecian cities were so cowed by the subjugation of Ionia, that they complied with the demands of Darius. In the case of AEgina, the first maritime power in Greece, the people hated the Athenians as much as they feared Darius. They had been at war for several years with Athens, and welcomed the promise of seeing her pride humbled. The Athenians sent ambassadors to Sparta, charging the AEginetans with having betrayed the common cause of Greece by sending the symbol to the barbarians, and demanding that Sparta, as the leading state of Hellas, should punish them for the crime. The Spartans sent to AEgina, and, taking away ten of its leading citizens, placed them as hostages in the hands of the Athenians. The noteworthy fact about this is that it was the first time in Grecian history that the Greeks appear as having a common political cause, and Sparta was recognized by Athens as entitled to the leadership. It was the impending peril from the Persians that brought about this union, so fraught with momentous results.
Darius was busy all this time in completing his preparations for the invasion of Greece. In the spring of 490 B.C., he assembled an immense army in Cilicia, under the command of Datis, a Median, and Artaphernes, son of the satrap of the same name in Sardis. Their fearful resolve was to reduce the cities of Athens and Eretria to ashes, and carry off the inhabitants as slaves, while all the other cities that had not sent earth and water to the Persian king were to be brought under subjection. Thousands of fetters were taken along with which to bind the hapless people, and Darius was warranted in believing that failure was the most unlikely thing that could happen to his hosts. There were six hundred galleys, and numerous transports for horses, ready to receive the troops on board.
The army set sail for Samos, and, remembering the disaster to Mardonius, Datis decided to pass directly across the AEgean to Euboea, bringing under subjection the Cyclades on his way. The Naxians, seeing their city about to be attacked, fled to the mountains, and the invaders burnt it to the ground. The other islands of the Cyclades made haste to give their submission, for it would have been madness to resist.
The first fighting took place at Eretria, which, knowing the fate intended for it, held out bravely for six days, when it fell through the treachery of two of its citizens. The city was destroyed and the inhabitants were put in chains, as a part of the plan of Darius. Having accomplished one object of the invasion, Datis now crossed over to Attica and landed on the plam of Marathon.
Meanwhile, as may be supposed, Athens was awake to her peril, and made tremendous exertions to meet it. All her available forces had been placed under the command of her ten generals, who, it will be remembered, were yearly selected. Among these was Miltiades, who as Tyrant of the Chersonesus, had won a reputation as one of the bravest of men and the possessor of signal military ability. It was he who accompanied Darius on his invasion of Scythia, and did his utmost to persuade the Ionians to destroy the bridge of boats and thus overwhelm the Persian monarch with ruin. While the Persians were occupied in putting down the Ionic revolt, Miltiades captured Lemnos and Imbros, drove out the Persian garrisons and the Pelasgian inhabitants, and turned over the islands to the Athenians.
Knowing all this, the Persian leaders would have exchanged thousand of their men for Miltiades. None knew this better than Miltiades himself, who, upon the appearance of the Phoenician fleet in the Hellespont, after the suppression of the Ionic revolt, hurriedly sailed for Athens with five ships. The Phoenicians pursued, but were unable to overtake him, though they captured one of the vessels commanded by his son. The enemies of Miltiades brought him to trial on the charge of tyranny while ruler of the Chersonesus, but he was not only acquitted, but elected one of the ten generals who were to meet the Persian invasion.
In the very hour that Athens heard of the fall of Eretria, its swiftest runner was sent to Sparta to beg for assistance. One hundred and fifty miles separate the two cities, yet the runner covered the distance in forty-eight hours. The aid asked for was promised, but a superstition prevented giving it until the full of the moon, which was several days distant. Darius, however, did not tarry for any such cause, nor could the Athenians afford to do so.
The latter had advanced to Marathon, where they encamped on the mountains surrounding the plain. Upon receiving the answer of the Spartans, the ten generals held a council of war. Half were opposed to fighting the overwhelming army until the arrival of the Lacedaemonians, but the others, led by Miltiades, insisted upon not losing a moment in attacking them; for, by doing so, they would have the measureless advantage of the enthusiasm of their men, and would forestall any treachery among their own people. It must be admitted that with all their valor the Greeks were plentifully supplied with traitors, and more than once those in whom the fullest trust was reposed were bribed to betray their country.
Since the vote was a tie, the decision fell upon Callimachus, the Polemarch, for we have learned that down to this time the third Archon was a colleague of the ten generals. Miltiades, seconded by two other generals, Themistocles and Aristides, argued so earnestly with him that he was convinced, and voted for immediate battle. It was the practice for each general to command in rotation the army for a day, but all agreed to place their days of command in the hands of Miltiades, and it was surely a wise proceeding to have everything in the hands of a single person, whose ability had been proven.
An inspiriting occurrence took place while the Athenians were preparing for battle. They had given help to Plataea years before when she was attacked by the Thebans, and now the Plataeans sent their whole force to the help of the Athenians, consisting of one thousand heavy-armed men. Athens never forgot this favor. The whole Athenian army consisted of only ten thousand heavy armed soldiers; they had no archers or cavalry, and only a few slaves as lightarmed attendants. We have no means of knowing the strength of the Persian army, except that it was more than ten times that of the gallant body which girded up its loins and made ready to rush forward into the life-or-death struggle.
The plain of Marathon is six miles long and at its broadest part in the middle about two miles wide. It is curved like a crescent, each end of which is a promontory extending into the sea, with marshes at the northern and the southern point. There is hardly a tree on the flat plain, which is inclosed on every side toward the land by rugged mountains, which cut it off from the rest of Greece.
“The mountains look on Marathon— And Marathon looks on the sea.”
The Persian fleet was drawn up along the beach, and the army formed about a mile from shore. Gazing down upon them were the Athenians who occupied the rising ground, from end to end, so that the mountain prevented the enemy from flanking them and sending their cavalry around to attack them in the rear. This line, however, was so extensive that it could not be fully occupied, without being weakened at some portion. Miltiades met this difficulty by drawing up the troops in the centre in thin files, relying mainly upon the deeper masses at the wings. The post of honor, the extreme right, was given to the Polemarch Callimachus, while the equally difficult post, the far left, was held by the Plataeans.
It must be remembered, in the first place, that the trained army drawn up in battle array on the plain was ten or twelve times as numerous as the Greeks, and the renown of the Medes and Persians was equal to theirs. They had been engaged for centuries in sweeping dynasties and monarchies out of existence; the Median, Lydian, Babylonian, and Egyptian empires had crumbled under their tread, and since those woeful days the Asiatic Greeks had felt the iron heel of the conqueror. In truth, the Medes and Persians had never been defeated by the Greeks in battle, and their name had long filled all people with terror
Miltiades was eager to come to close quarters, and ordered his men to advance on the “double quick” over the mile of plain which separated the two armies. The Persians viewed this charge as if made by madmen, and calmly awaited the moment when they should come within reach and go down like ripe grain before the reaper. But those ardent Greeks, shouting their warcry, assailed their enemies with the fury of a cyclone. Each wing was successful and the Persians were tumbled back toward the beach and the marshes, but the weak Greek centre was broken through and put to flight. Miltiades called back the wings from the pursuit of the enemy, and hurled them upon the centre, overthrowing the Persians, who scattered in a panic and hurried after their friends that had made such desperate haste to scramble aboard the ships. The impetuous Athenians strove to burn the vessels, but succeeded in destroying only seven. The enemy were driven to the wall and fought with the energy of desperation.
In this memorable battle the Persians lost more than six thousand men, while of the Athenians only one hundred and ninety-two fell; but among them was the valiant Polemarch Callimachus and several of the most noted citizens of Athens.
As soon as the Persians were safely aboard their ships, they sailed in the direction of Cape Sunium. Suddenly a burnished shield shone out like the sun from the crest of one of the Attican mountains. The watchful Miltiades saw it, and noted the course taken by the fleet. Suspecting the meaning of the signal, he marched his army with all haste back to Athens. The signal in truth was an invitation to the Persian fleet to attack the city while the army was absent, and it set out to do so. Miltiades arrived just in time to save it from certain capture. When the Persians were about to land, they saw the very soldiers from whom they had fled at Marathon, and they had no wish to meet them again. The invasion was given up in despair, and the fleet returned to Asia.