The Historians' History of the World in Twenty-Five Volumes, Volume 02, Henry Smith Williams

 

 

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THE HISTORIANS’ HISTORY OF THE WORLD

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THE HISTORIANS’
HISTORY
OF THE WORLD

A comprehensive narrative of the rise and development of nations
as recorded by over two thousand of the great writers of
all ages: edited, with the assistance of a distinguished
board of advisers and contributors,
by

HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, LL.D.

IN TWENTY-FIVE VOLUMES
VOLUME II—ISRAEL, INDIA, PERSIA, PHOENICIA,
MINOR NATIONS OF WESTERN ASIA

1905

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Copyright, 1904,
By HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.

All rights reserved.

THE TROW PRESS
201-213 E. 12TH ST.
NEW YORK
U. S. A.

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Contributors, and Editorial Revisers.

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CONTENTS

VOLUME II
PART IV. ISRAEL
	PAGE
Introductory Essay. Israel as a World Influence. By Bernhard Stade	1
A Critical Survey of the Scope and Sources of Israelitic History to the Destruction of Jerusalem	4
Hebrew History in Outline (1180 B.C.-70 A.D.)	30
CHAPTER I
Land and People	45
The land, 46. The people, 48.
CHAPTER II
Origin and Early History (2300-1200 B.C.)	56
The age of the patriarchs, 57. Early movements of the Israelites, 57. The Egyptian sojourn, 58. Biblical account of Moses and the Exodus, 61. Israel’s early neighbours, 63. The conquest of Canaan, 66.
CHAPTER III
The Judges (1200-1020 B.C.)	72
CHAPTER IV
Samuel and Saul (1020 B.C.-1002 B.C.)	77
Samuel and Saul, 78. The rise of David, 79. David in revolt against Saul, 80. The death of Saul and the struggle for the succession, 83. David secures the crown, 85.
CHAPTER V
David’s Reign (1002-970 B.C.)	86
David’s greatness in time of peace, 89. Further wars break out, 91. David and [viii]Absalom, 93. Renan’s estimate of David, 98.
CHAPTER VI
Solomon in his Glory (970-930 B.C.)	99
The early years of Solomon’s reign, 100.
CHAPTER VII
Decay and Captivity (930-586 B.C.)	106
The schism of the Ten Tribes, 106. The Moabite stone, 109. Destruction of the two kingdoms, 113. The Babylonian Captivity, 118.
CHAPTER VIII
The Return from Captivity (586-415 B.C.)	122
The prophecy of the return, 122. The condition of the exiles, 125. The coming of Cyrus, 126. The return to Jerusalem, 127. The walls upraised again, 130.
CHAPTER IX
From Nehemiah to Antiochus (415-166 B.C.)	133
Under Persian rule, 133. Persian influences on Jewish religion, 134. Alexander the Great, 134. Under the Seleucids, 135. The Syrian dominion; Antiochus the Great, 138. Antiochus Epiphanes, 139. Jason and Antiochus torment the people, 140.
CHAPTER X
The Maccabæan War (166-142 B.C.)	147
Independence, 156.
CHAPTER XI
From the Maccabees to the Romans (135-4 B.C.)	159
The warring sects, 160. Antipater, 163. Herod, 164.
CHAPTER XII
The Rise of Christianity (4 B.C.-62 A.D.)	168
A critical view of Christ and other messiahs, 168. The development of the messianic idea, 169.
CHAPTER XIII
The Revolt against Rome (62-68 A.D.)	177
[ix]The defence of Jotapata described by Josephus, 180.
CHAPTER XIV
The Fall of Jerusalem (68-73 A.D.)	190
Josephus’ account of the famine, 193. The close of Jewish history, 199.
CHAPTER XV
Hebrew Civilisation	203
The life and customs of the Israelites, 205. Hebrew art, architecture: the temple tombs, etc., 209.
CHAPTER XVI
The Prophets and the History of Semitic Style. By Dr. D. H. Müller	213
Brief Reference-List of Authorities by Chapters	227
A General Bibliography of the History of Israel	229
PART V. PHŒNICIA
Introductory Essay. Individuality of Phœnician History, and Origin of the Name. By Richard Pietschmann	243
Phœnician History in Outline (3800 B.C.-1516 A.D.)	246
Carthaginian History in Outline (813 B.C.-697 A.D.)	251
CHAPTER I
Land and People	255
Origin of the Phœnicians, 259.
CHAPTER II
Early History and Influences	263
Beginnings of the history and civilisation of Phœnicia, 263. The colonies, 270. Voyages and trading-stations, 274.
CHAPTER III
The Phœnician Time of Power (980-532 B.C.)	279
The reign of Hiram I, 279. The successors of Hiram, 283.
[x]CHAPTER IV
Phœnicia under the Persians (525-323 B.C.)	289
CHAPTER V
Phœnicia under the Greeks, the Romans, and the Saracens (301 B.C.-1516 A.D.)	301
CHAPTER VI
The Story of Carthage (813 B.C.-697 A.D.)	308
The site and early history of Carthage, 310. Mommsen’s account of Carthage, 312. War in Sicily between Rome and Carthage, 319. Rome and Carthage, 321. Last days of Carthage, 325.
CHAPTER VII
Phœnician Commerce	329
Sea trade, 330. Manufactures and land trade of the Phœnicians, 334. Silver and gold in antiquity as money, 339. The slave trade of Phœnicia, 342.
CHAPTER VIII
Phœnician Civilisation	346
The Phœnicians and the alphabet, 347. Manners and customs; religion, 348. Culture; art, 352. The Phœnician influence on history, 353.
APPENDIX A
Classical Traditions	356
“The voyage of Hanno, beyond the pillars of Hercules, which he deposited in the temple of Saturn,” 356. Himilco’s voyage of discovery, 358. Pomponius Mela on the Phœnicians, 359. Appianus Alexandrinus on the founding of Carthage by Dido, 360.
Brief Reference-List of Authorities by Chapters	361
A General Bibliography of Phœnician History	363
PART VI. WESTERN ASIA
Introductory Essay. The Position of Asia Minor in History. By William J. Hamilton	373
History in Outline of the Minor Kingdoms of Western Asia (1528-546 B.C.)	380
CHAPTER I
The Hittites	391
Recent Hittite research, 393. The Hittites and the Egyptians, 394. The Hittites [xi]and the Hebrews, 395. Hittite art, 396. Hittite monuments in Asia Minor, 397.
CHAPTER II
Scythians and Cimmerians	400
The Scythians, 400. Scythian influences in Asia Minor, 400. Scythian movements, 401. Herodotus on the customs of the Scythians, 404. The Cimmerians, 410.
CHAPTER III
Some Peoples of Syria, Asia Minor, and Armenia	413
The Aramæans, 413. Phrygia, 413. The Cappadocians, 415. The Cilicians, 416. Pamphylia and Pisidia, 416. The Carians, 417. The Lycians, 417. The Mysians, 419. The Bithynians and the Paphlagonians, 419. Armenia, 420.
CHAPTER IV
The Lydians	421
The land, 422. The people, 423. Sardis and the name of Asia, 424. Early history of Lydia, 426. Ardys, 427. Early dynasties, 429. Gyges, 430. The triumph of Persia, 431. Lydian civilisation, 433. A picture of life in Lydia, 434.
APPENDIX A
Classical Traditions	438
Justin’s account of the Scythians and the Amazons, 438. Pomponius Mela on the Scythians and other tribes, 441. Diodorus on the Amazons and the Hyperboreans, 444. Herodotus on the legendary Gyges, 446. The story of Crœsus as told by Herodotus, 448. Crœsus and Solon, 449. The vision of Crœsus, 451. Crœsus loses his son, 453. Crœsus consults the oracles, 454. The reply of the oracles, 455. Crœsus makes an alliance with Sparta, 456. Crœsus invades Cappadocia, 457. Crœsus in conflict with Cyrus, 458. The siege of Sardis, 460. The fate of Crœsus, 460.
Brief Reference-List of Authorities by Chapters	464
A General Bibliography of the History of the Minor Nations of Western Asia	465
PART VII. ANCIENT INDIA
Indian History in Outline (2000 B.C.-1556 A.D.)	475
Græco-Bactrian dominion in the Indus region, 480.
CHAPTER I
Land and People	482
[xii]The land, 484. The early peoples of India, 488.
CHAPTER II
Indian History—Legend and Reality	493
Chronology and ancient history of the Hindus, 493. The authority of the Vedas, 496. Monumental records, 496. Legends of the early heroes, 498. An inscription of Asoka, 499. Traditional kings, 500. Brahmanic learning, 501. The epochs of Indian history, 502. Vedic period, 503. The Buddhist period, 503. Chandra Gupta, 504. Twelve centuries of obscurity, 505.
CHAPTER III
Manners and Customs of the Ancient Hindus	508
Division and employment of classes, 508. The property of the Brahman, 510. The despised Sudra, 511. Mixture of classes, 513. The administration of justice, 515. Criminal law, 516. Civil law, 517. Hindu commerce, 519. Precious metals, 520. Coinage; precious stones; weaving, 520. Intoxicants; spices; perfumery, 521. Commercial routes, 523.
CHAPTER IV
Brahmanism and Buddhism	525
The origin and development of Brahmanism, 525. The Vedas, 529. Soul transmigration, 533. Buddhism, 535. Disappearance of Buddhism in India, 538. New light on Buddhism, 542. The actual piety of the Hindus and the Hindu separation of religion from fine morals, 545.
Brief Reference-List of Authorities by Chapters	549
A General Bibliography of Indian History	550
PART VIII. ANCIENT PERSIA
Persian History in Outline (700-330 B.C.)	559
CHAPTER I
Land and People	565
Racial and dynastic origins, 567. The land, 568. The people, 569. Character of the empire of the Achæmenides, 570.
CHAPTER II
The Median or Scythian Empire (700-550 B.C.)	573
The rise and fall of the Median Empire according to Herodotus, 573. The [xiii]Median Empire: a modern interpretation, 580. New light on the Medes, 583.
CHAPTER III
The Early Achæmenians and the Elamites, Cyrus and Cambyses (836-522 B.C.)	587
The death of Cyrus, 593. Character and influence of Cyrus, 596. Xenophon’s estimate of Cyrus, 596. A modern estimate of the character and importance of Cyrus, 597. Cambyses, 600.
CHAPTER IV
The Persian Dynasty: Darius I to Darius III (521-330 B.C.)	605
Darius I, 605. Organisation of Darius’ empire, 607. Later conquests of Darius, 609. Affairs in Egypt since the Persian conquest, 611. Xerxes I, 614. The successors of Xerxes, 615. Darius II, 618. Artaxerxes II, 619. Artaxerxes III, 626. The fall of the empire, 630. The old Orient at the end of the Persian Empire, 631.
CHAPTER V
Persian Civilisation	634
Religion and social orders, 635. Organisation of the Persian court, 641. Administration of the provinces; financial system; satraps, 645. Military methods, 652. The fine arts, 657.
Brief Reference-List of Authorities by Chapters	662
A General Bibliography of Persian History	663

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PART IV

THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL

BASED CHIEFLY UPON THE FOLLOWING AUTHORITIES

ERNEST BABELON, THE HOLY BIBLE, T. K. CHEYNE, MAX DUNCKER,
G. H. A. EWALD, EDWARD GIBBON, F. HITZIG, J. JAHN,
FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS, RUDOLF KITTEL, E. LEDRAIN,
MAX LÖHR, L. MÉNARD, H. H. MILMAN, D. H.
MÜLLER, SALOMON MUNK, F. W. NEWMAN,
E. RENAN, A. H. SAYCE, GEORGE
SMITH, BERNHARD STADE

TOGETHER WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY ON

ISRAEL AS A WORLD INFLUENCE

BY

BERNHARD STADE

A CRITICAL SURVEY OF THE SCOPE AND SOURCES OF
ISRAELITIC HISTORY

BY

THOMAS KELLY CHEYNE

AND A STUDY OF

THE PROPHETS AND THE HISTORY OF SEMITIC STYLE

BY

DAVID HEINRICH MÜLLER

AND WITH ADDITIONAL CITATIONS FROM

THE APOCRYPHA, DAVID CASSEL, DION CASSIUS, J. G. EICHHORN, G. W. F.
HEGEL, JUSTIN, F. R. LAMENNAIS, GASTON C. C. MASPERO, FELIX
PERLES, T. G. PINCHES, POLYBIUS, EDUARD REUSS, CLEMENS
ROMANUS, ASARJA DE ROSSI, BARUCH SPINOZA,
STRABO, SUETONIUS, CORNELIUS TACITUS,
COMTE DE VOLNEY, GEORG WEBER,
R. T. M. WEHOFER,
J. ZENNER

Copyright, 1904,
By HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.

All rights reserved.

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PART IV.—ISRAEL

ISRAEL AS A WORLD INFLUENCE

By BERNHARD STADE

Translated for the present work from Geschichte des Volks Israel.

Many a nation has walked God’s earth, has long enjoyed its good things, has come into being and passed away, without our knowing anything of its history, or even whether it had a history at all. For no nation has a history except one that makes history, that is to say, that influences the course of human development. It is with races as with individuals; none is kept in mind by posterity save those who have distinguished themselves by ideas that have modified the life of mankind, or (which comes to the same thing) have been pioneers in fresh fields of action. The greater the spiritual gain a nation has brought to the rest of the world, the longer and more steadily its life has flowed in the channels it was the first to make, the longer is its history told among them. The nations of history are those which have put forward, in one fashion or another, their claim to the dominion of the world.

Thus we may fitly ask what claim it is that is made upon our interest by the history of the Jewish nation. And the answer will be, that nothing which excites our attention, or stirs us to admiration or imitation in the history of other nations, is here present in any large measure. Israel was always a small, nay, a petty nation, settled in a narrow space, never of any considerable importance in the political history of the East; it never brought forth a Ramses II, a Sargon, an Esarhaddon, an Asshurbanapal, a Nebuchadrezzar, or a Cyrus to bear its banner into distant lands. Yet, for all this, the history of Israel has, for us, an interest quite different from that of those other nations of antiquity.

And if, as we see, Israel is far surpassed in martial glory by the peoples of the great empires, and by the Romans in their influence on the development of law, there are yet other points in which it must yield unquestioned precedence to other nations of antiquity. We do not find in Israel the same feeling for beauty as among the Greeks, who, like no nation before them or after, showed forth the laws of beauty in every sphere of intellectual life, and to this day, in such matters, stand forth in a perfection which has never again been attained, far less excelled. Among the Hebrews there is nothing analogous, nothing comparable to what we admire in the Hellenic people. It has no epic, nothing that can be compared with the Iliad and the Odyssey, against which the Germans set the Nibelungen Lied, and the Finns the Kalewala; it has not the slightest rudiments of a drama—the Song of Songs and Job are not dramas. There is a school of lyrical poetry unsurpassed for all time, and the music that corresponds to it. But the bent towards science, which actuates the Greeks, is wholly lacking—wholly lacking the bent towards[2] philosophy. Nor was it ever eminent in ancient days, in the walks of commerce, enterprise and invention, by which, also, a nation may conquer the world; its intellectual life is absolutely one-sided, a one-sidedness that produces on us the effect of extreme singularity.

But the attraction it has for us does not lie in this singularity. It is due, rather, to the circumstance that this small nation has exerted a far greater influence over the course of the history of the whole human race than the Greeks or Romans, that to us it has become typical in many more respects than they. Our present modes of thought and feeling, our lives and actions, are far more profoundly influenced by the world of thought and feeling which Israel brought to the birth, than by that of Greece or Rome. Our whole civilisation to-day is saturated with tendencies and impulses which have their origin in Israel.

The reason for this is that in Israel one side of human nature had developed to a very high perfection, a side which is of far greater consequence to mankind in general than art or science, law or philosophy. While in Hellas, philosophy first, and then, indirectly, science, developed out of mythology, in Israel the age of mythology was succeeded by that of religion. And we may say that the religion of Israel is still the active religion of mankind in a far higher degree than the philosophy of the Greeks is still its active philosophy. What Israel did in the sphere of religion is without a doubt far more epoch-making, unique, and effective than what the Romans did in the sphere of politics, or the Greeks in that of art or science. As Israel assumed the leadership of the human race in religion, so Rome did in matters of government, and Greece in questions of philosophy; but while the civilised nations which adopted Roman law strove with increasing energy to free themselves from the band of Roman legal conceptions; while the relics of Greek art and science only roused the enthusiasm of a chosen few, and the philosophy which the Greeks had created was confined within ever-narrowing limits by religion on the one hand, and the ever-widening field of science on the other; religion embraces all classes of the people, from the king to the beggar, and strives more and more to embrace all the nations upon earth. Moreover, however men may shut their eyes to the fact, among ourselves to-day religion is a subject of far more universal interest than art, science, or any political institution whatsoever. Disputed questions of religion shake kingdoms and kindle the most sanguinary wars. By this means it changes the character of nations and brings forth new national types. The spiritual features of mankind at the present time, under Mohammedan and European civilisation alike, are substantially the product of the monotheistic religion that arose in Israel.

We cannot find a more striking example of the effect of Israelitish ideas on mankind nowadays than by recalling the importance of the religious figures of ancient Israel in the eyes of our own people. For the bulk of the nation, Biblical history stands for all the history there is. The populace knows more about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, about Saul, David, and Solomon, about Samuel and Elijah, than about the heroes of its own history, and feels them (in marked contrast with its sentiments towards their posterity, which it beholds with the eyes of the body and not with the eyes of the spirit) to be flesh of its flesh and bone of its bone. In this respect our own nation is thoroughly Hebraised, or, if you prefer it, Semiticised.

And this is even more strikingly the case with nations which have adopted the creed of Islam. In the eyes of Mohammedans, Abraham was a Mohammedan; through Ishmael, his first-born and rightful heir, he is the[3] progenitor of the People of the Revelation; in their eyes all the religious figures of Israel of old are Mohammedan saints.

Thus the importance of Israel in the history of mankind, and, consequently, our interest in its own history, is due to the leading part it took in the sphere of religion. In Israel, indeed, religion—or, as most people prefer to express it, monotheism—first came into being. Let not the reader misunderstand the latter word. The monotheism of Israel is not the acknowledgment that there is but one Supreme Being. That is not a religious but a philosophical idea. The God of the Israel of old is not to be defined as the sole, supreme, and absolutely perfect being, but as the Not-World, or, better still, as the sum of all forces present and active in the world conceived of apart from the substratum through which they are manifest in phenomena. Hence the God of Israel of old is simply the Mighty One. But in the eyes of the Israelite of old the world was no wider than the land that nourished him. For this reason the God of ancient Israel is the God of the Land of Israel, and the actual existence of the gods of other nations is not denied. They exercise in the lands of other nations the same sway as Israel’s God in the world of Israel.

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A CRITICAL SURVEY OF THE SCOPE AND SOURCES OF ISRAELITIC HISTORY TO THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM

Written Specially for the Present Work

By Rev. THOMAS KELLY CHEYNE, D. Litt., D. D.

Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Scripture, Oxford; Joint Editor of the Encyclopædia Biblica

DOUBTFUL TRADITIONS EXAMINED; MOSES

The difficulty of sketching the outlines of the history of Israel in pre-Maccabean times is unusually great. Historical curiosity was denied to this people, and the Captivities were literary as well as political disasters. The record of events which may have been kept, partly in the royal archives, partly perhaps in the temples, had disappeared; nor have any royal inscriptions as yet been discovered. It is only the land of Moab which has yielded up an historical inscription, to which we shall refer in due course as an illustration of contemporary Israelitish history. It is probable that the disciples of the prophets kept some record of interesting events in the lives of their masters—and the greater prophets were personages of political as well as religious importance—but the inveterate tendency of such history to become hagiology, compels us to read the fragments of prophetic narrative literature which have survived, even more critically than the passages of narrative which may, perhaps, have been derived from royal annals.

There were also, however, collections of popular traditions which, though suffused with imagination, were doubtless more precious to the early Israelites than the dry facts of contemporary or nearly contemporary history. They were the imaginative vesture of vague and distorted recollections of long-past events. In the form in which they have reached us, they must have lost much of the original spirit and of the primitive phraseology; on the other hand, the narrators, some of whom were gifted writers as well as religiously progressive men, have contributed original elements which, for many of us, must outweigh the most interesting folklore, because we find in them the germs of Jewish monotheism. The historian, however, must constantly remember the consciously or unconsciously didactic object of these narrators, or rather schools of narrators. Five of them are specially well known, and of these it is only the so-called Elohist who is comparatively free from preoccupation with definite ethical and religious principles. The[5] Yahvist is very distinctly on the side of the greater prophets; the Deuteronomist, the Priestly Narrator, and the Chronicler have for their chief object the direct or indirect enforcement of the religious principles of the earlier or the later law, to which in the Chronicler’s case we may add the glorification of the temple at Jerusalem, its various classes of ministers, and its ritual.

The composition of these works ranges over a long period, extending at any rate from the eighth to the third century B.C.; the upper limit is not certain. It is the task of the critic to extract the passages belonging to the first four of these narrators (or rather sometimes schools of narrators) from the composite works in which they are found, and also to investigate the sources from which they may have been drawn. On the first part of this task much skill has been lavished by a long succession of critics, but the second part is still very far behindhand. And it must regretfully be said that owing to the backward condition of the criticism of the text of the Old Testament, there is some uncertainty in the basis of all constructive treatment of the political and religious history. The scantiness of outside material, which is peculiarly needed as a check on the subjective Hebrew writers, is also no slight hindrance to the formation of thoroughly trustworthy conclusions.

Tradition tells that the founder of the Israelitish nation first saw the light in Egypt, where a number of Hebrew tribes were sojourning. A change in the sentiments of the court towards the Hebrews had brought about a cruel oppression. According to the Elohist (one of the narrators mentioned above, fragments of whose work are preserved in the Pentateuch), Moses, the child of a Hebrew man and woman of a tribe called Levi, was hidden in an “ark of bulrushes” by the Nile, on account of a royal edict that all male children of the Hebrews should be put to death. Pharaoh’s daughter saw the child, had compassion on him, and finally adopted him as her son. This, however, is by no means a contemporary account, and the details would never have been thought of, but for the existence in popular Hebrew tradition of a mythic tale of the setting adrift of a divine or at least heroic infant on water.

The earliest traditions respecting Moses knew nothing of this. They place the cradle of the national existence of the Israelites, and must consequently have placed the cradle of the deliverer Moses, not in Mizraim or Egypt, but in a region of northern Arabia called Mizrim, the border of which on one side adjoined Egypt.

THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT

The whole story of the Exodus from Egypt appears to be due to a confusion between Mizraim and Mizrim—a confusion which is presupposed by what remains of the Yahvist’s and the Elohist’s narratives in their present form, but which was probably not made by these narratives in their original form, and cannot be shown indisputably to have been made by the earliest prophets (Amos ii. 10; iii. 1; v. 25; ix. 7; Hosea ii. 15; viii. 13; ix. 3; xi. 1, 5; xii. 9, 13; xiii. 4).

The residence of Moses in Egypt constitutes, in fact, a considerable difficulty. Had Moses been reared as an Egyptian prince, he would have received an Egyptian name, an Egyptian office and an Egyptian wife. We are told, however, that he married one of the seven daughters of Hobab, the[6] priest of a tribe of Midianites (or Kenites) which dwelt not far from Yahveh’s sacred mountain, Horeb. Her name is Zipporah, and, in accordance with the undoubtedly true theory that the relations of tribes were expressed by the Hebrews under the form of genealogies, we may assume that the seven daughters of Hobab were the tribes occupying seven districts in Arabia, in the neighbourhood of Horeb. Where Horeb or Sinai was, is disputed; it is even doubted whether the Old Testament is entirely consistent with itself on this point. The traditional view, however, which comes down to us from Christian antiquity, that the mountain of the giving of the Law was on the western side of the Sinaitic peninsula, is sufficiently refuted by this one historical fact, that in the days when the Exodus from Egypt (if Egypt was really the temporary abode of the primitive Israelites) may be conceived to have taken place, a portion of the peninsula was occupied by Egyptian officials and miners, and garrisoned by Egyptian troops. The student may well be perplexed by the divergent views as to the situation of Horeb (which in the original tradition was probably a synonym for Sinai), nor can we digress to relieve his perplexity. All that we can say is that, if he accepts our guidance, he will have provisionally to adopt the view (strongly opposed to the later tradition) that Horeb or Sinai was near the sacred town of Kadesh, better known as Kadesh-Barnea, on the northern Arabian border, and also to assume that Zipporah (the name of the traditional wife of Moses) is connected with Zarephath (the vowels of this name are uncertain), a place which Moses (i.e., the Moses-clan) may be supposed to have acquired, either by cession or by conquest.

MOSES PROBABLY A CLAN NAME

To couple this with the traditional belief that there was once a person called Moses, would be to misconceive the possible range of oral tradition, and to forget the universal tendency to imagine the ancestors or founders of tribes and races. That there was a clan bearing a name like Mosheh or Moses; that, owing to a close connection with a Yahveh-worshipping tribe of Kenites, this clan became ardently devoted to the service of Yahveh; and that its chief centre was at Zarephath [Sarepta] (whence, be it noted, another prophetic hero of tradition, Elijah, probably sprung), may, however, be admitted as probable. Other kindred clans must have gathered round that which bore the name of Moses, and we find that when the northward migration of those whom we know as Israelites took place, the number of the emigrants was increased by the adhesion of other North Arabians. All who were thus brought together must have had the link of a common worship—the worship of the god called Yahveh, a name which must originally have expressed a physical relation or phenomenon, but which in course of time came to be explained by some as meaning the truly existent or the self-manifesting One.

This God was believed to be specially present on Mount Sinai, whence it is natural that the Yahveh-worshipping tribes of Israel conceived themselves to have derived laws and institutions which were really of late origin. The Israelites in Arabia were nomads, but the three great annual festivals referred to in the Pentateuch are those of an agricultural people, and must have been adopted by the Israelites after they had passed into a settled mode of life. One portion of the first of these feasts, however—the so-called Passover—is really a monument of the nomadic life of the Israelites; it corresponds to a[7] similar spring-festival which we know to have been observed by the ancient Arabians. The festival of the New Moon, which was entirely unconnected with agriculture, and that of sheep-shearing, may have been retained by the Israelites from their nomadic period.

The city of Zarephath seems to have been regarded as on the border-line between the country known as Mizrim or Muzri, and the pastoral country called in Hebrew the Negeb, though there are some Old Testament passages which indicate that in later times a more southerly limit was fixed, viz., at Kadesh. It is possible that among the pre-Israelitish inhabitants of the Negeb were the “sons of Anak” or Anakites, and that these Anakites (whose terribleness was magnified by legend) were identical with, or closely related to, the “Rephaim” or Rephaites, whose king, called Og, is commonly, by a very early error of the text, transferred to the country on the east of the Jordan, and who were really Amalekites, i.e., Jerahmeelites (the leading race of northern Arabia in primitive times, including Edomites). In fact, Og and Agag (the latter a traditional Amalekite name) are names which could only, for some strong philological or historical reason, be separated.

THE FIRST MIGRATION FROM KADESH

It is too true that the Hebrew texts are often sadly corrupt, but among other things we can still see, underneath the corruption, that the first migration of the Israelites from Kadesh (near Horeb or Sinai) was neither to the western nor to the eastern part of Canaan, but to the country on the south of Palestine (the Negeb) where the inhabitants had passed (as probably those of Mizrim had also passed) into a settled mode of life and were flourishing agriculturists; their vineyards were especially renowned in ancient legend. This region, in consequence, became the scene of a large number of Hebrew legends, and the sacred spots in it continued to draw reverent pilgrims as late as the fall of the kingdom of Judah. (This follows from a critical examination of Jeremiah xli.) Among these legends are those of the patriarchs in their earlier form, and perhaps even those of the so-called Judges. The period when the Israelitish centre was still in the Negeb was one in which very little unity of action was possible, and the first attempts to introduce personal sovereignty appear to have had full success only within the sphere of single tribes (see especially the stories of Jephthah and Gideon). It need hardly be added that regal government presupposes the possession of cities, towns, and villages.

The most trustworthy record that we possess of the transitional pre-regal period is the so-called Song of Deborah (Judges v.) which celebrates the successful war of a number of Hebrew clans, confederated for the present occasion, against the common enemy, who, according to the corrupt text of Judges iv. (compare also v. 19, also corrupt), was king of Canaan; but according to a more trustworthy reading, derived by methodical criticism from the corrupt text, was king of Kenaz (a widely spread tribe related to Edom). The Song appears to represent tradition at a point when it may still be called historical. It shows that in times of great need it was possible for the clans to unite, and a parallel case, which we could easily believe to be historical, is mentioned in Judges iii. 8-11: the oppression of the Israelites by a Jerahmeelite king called Cushan (properly a race name), which was closed by the intervention of a friendly clan of Kenizzite origin called Othniel (Ethan?). This Othniel-clan must have had a leader of more[8] than common heroism, who induced the other clans to follow him. Such occurrences, renewed, perhaps, at frequent intervals, must have prepared the way for regal government.

The adversaries of Israel evidently derived their power not merely from their superior armour and experience in warfare, but from their union. It was possible for nomads, by the fierceness and suddenness of their attacks, to effect conquests in settled and civilised territories; it was not so easy to maintain these conquests against the assaults of determined, united and well-equipped foes. To what extent the Israelite clans had settled themselves in Canaan, as distinct from the Negeb, we can hardly be said to know, but we find a territory known as Benjamin in the hands of Israelite clans at the close of the transitional period, and we cannot doubt that between Benjamin and the Negeb there must have been settlements of Israelite clans interspersed with the older populations; and we may venture to assert that one of the most important of these clans was called Judah and another Caleb. That the Israelites were also established in the centre and to some extent in the north of Palestine is, of course, not to be questioned. But then, no very certain Hebrew traditions on this point have been preserved, and the supposition that the tribe of Asher was so called because its seats were in the once important land of Asaru (mentioned in Egyptian inscriptions) in what became western Galilee, and may, indeed, at one time have possessed all Galilee, is less probable than the theory that the name is a modification of Ashkhur, derived from a time when this tribe dwelt in the neighbourhood of a Tekoa in Calebite territory far away to the south (1 Chronicles ii. 24, iv. 5). We cannot, therefore, say anything about the Israelitish occupation of central and northern Palestine, nor can we venture to assume that the Israelites of this region were in any sense, however limited, subjects of King Saul.

HELP FROM MENEPTAH AND TEL-EL-AMARNA LETTERS

As to the chronology of the events of the pre-regal period, great uncertainty prevails. We are not, indeed, without some light from external sources, but this light leads us in an unexpected and undesired direction. In 1896 Professor Flinders Petrie discovered an inscription of the Pharaoh Meneptah in which that king speaks of having conquered not only Askalon, Gezer, and Yenuam, but Israel. Kharu (a land) is also mentioned, the exact position of which is uncertain. The situation of Askalon and Gezer is well known. The former is a Philistine city, the site of the latter is on the right of the railway from Joppa to Jerusalem, south of Lydda. The position of Yenuam is less certain. A city called Janoah is mentioned in 2 Kings xv. 29 between Abel-beth-maacah and Kadesh, in connection with Gilead, Galilee, and Naphtali, but the correctness of the received geographical view of the reference of these old names cannot be implicitly relied upon. Naville thinks that we may identify Yenuam with Jabneel or Jamnia, but the names can hardly be connected philologically. We do know, however, that Naamah is a clan name of southern Palestine and northern Arabia, and there being in 2 Kings xv. 29 probably a confusion between Asshur (Assyria) and Ashkhur (a northern Arabian kingdom, perhaps Melukhkha, often mentioned in Assyrian inscriptions), it appears most critical to assume that Meneptah’s Yenuam was in the south of Palestine. It thus becomes a plausible view that clans of Israelites existed in the south of Palestine about 1273 B.C.[9]

Let us go a step further. From the treaty of peace between Ramses II (father of Meneptah) and the king of the Kheta or Hittites (about 1300 B.C.) we seem to gather that the south of Palestine was at that time garrisoned by Egyptian troops. Only the south was Egyptian; the north continued to be under the control of the Hittites. Even Seti I (father of Ramses II), who had a course of unbroken success in northern Arabia and southern Palestine, could occupy permanently no fortress in Canaan to the north of Megiddo. From these facts we may conclude that one section of Israelites may perhaps have penetrated from Kadesh into southern Palestine before the reign of the Pharaoh Seti I, during the period of the decline of the Egyptian authority in Asia. And it so happens that we have in the famous Tel-el-Amarna correspondence unimpeachable statements of the trouble caused in southern Palestine in the century preceding Ramses II by certain people called Khabiri, whom some have identified with the Israelites; and it is Abd-khiba, king or at least governor of Urusalim or Jerusalem, who complains to his liege lord the king of Egypt that the king’s dominion is being lost to the Khabiri.

These Khabiri were apparently plundering nomad tribes, which were on the way to adopt a settled mode of life. It is not improbable that the name is equivalent to Ibrim (Hebrews); only if we adopt this equation, we must not confine the application of the term “Hebrews” to the Israelites, but extend it to “all the sons of Eber” (Genesis x. 24), a Biblical phrase which shows that the Israelites themselves were by no means narrow in the use of the term. Sooner than identify the Khabiri with the Israelites, who probably became to a large extent agriculturists in the Negeb, one would suppose the chieftain of Jerusalem to refer to those whom we know as the Amalekites. Still one cannot deny the bare possibility that the people in southern Canaan called “Israel” by the Pharaoh Meneptah may have been partly derived from some of the plundering clans called Khabiri.

The facts of importance for the history of Israel to be gained from the Tel-el-Amarna letters are these:

1. The continuance of the Babylonian language and the cuneiform characters—a proof of the intensity of the early Babylonian influence over Syria and Palestine.

2. The semi-independence of the cities—a consequence of the disintegration of the Egyptian empire in Asia.

3. The existence of names (Milkili, Abd-Milki) pointing to a Jerahmeelite element in the settled population of Palestine.

4. The name Urusalim (Jerusalem), and the importance of the city so-called.

5. The name Khabiri, possibly connected with Ibrim, “Hebrews.”

6. The importance of the Hittites in northern Palestine (including the later kingdom of Israel).

7. The restless activity of warlike nomads, some of whom entered the service of kings and chiefs.

8. The favour shown to natives of Palestine at the Egyptian court, reminding us of the story of Joseph.

We cannot pause to comment on each of these facts, but may point out that the story of Joseph, as it now stands, certainly has a more historical appearance than any other of the early Hebrew legends. The Egyptian functionary who superintends the magazines of grain in the land of Yarimuta, according to the Amarna tablets, reminds us of Joseph in a similar office; and the question arises whether at the root of the story of Joseph there may[10] not be a tradition of some gifted member of one of the clans of Jacob or Israel who found favour and employment at the court of Amenhotep IV (one of the Pharaohs of the Amarna tablets).

Still, the story of Joseph may, like the other ancient Hebrew legends, have had an earlier form, in which the scene of the events was in the wide region to the south of Palestine, and the king spoken of was a North Arabian. And though there may have been an “Israel” in South Palestine in the thirteenth century B.C., yet the same authority which appears to state this as a fact also says that the victorious Egyptian king laid Israel waste, leaving no fruits of the field, and the context suggests that the male population had been carried captive, or slain.

SAUL AND DAVID

We return to Saul, whom the legend represents as the first king of Israel, but who, if his story be critically regarded, was no more than the dictator of the South Israelitish tribes in a time of continually renewed warfare. His foes, according to our present texts, were the Ammonites, the Philistines, and the Amalekites, but in the original legends, only one great foe was referred to—those whom the Amarna tablets called the Khabiri, i.e., North Arabian tribes, sometimes called Jerahmeelites (whence the name “Amalekites”), sometimes Zarephathites (whence probably “Pelethites” and “Pelishtim” or Philistines). The notice in 1 Samuel xiv. 47, 48, that Saul had wars with other foreign foes besides these here mentioned, viz., the northern Aramæans, is not to be relied upon; it is evident that there has been both interpolation and confusion of names. It is only the latter part that concerns the historian, for it gives the achievement of the reign of Saul in a nutshell, “He smote Amalek, and delivered Israel out of the hand of his spoiler.” Another pithy and truthful saying is, “There was sore war against the Philistines (Zarephathites) all the days of Saul” (1 Samuel xiv. 52).

It is probable, however, that Saul had another foe. This is not expressly indicated in our texts, but the language of 1 Samuel xvi. 28; xviii. 8 acquires a new force when regarded as an echo of this deliberately suppressed fact. That foe was the man who became Saul’s successor—David. It is important to know where this opponent of Saul came from. He was a native of one of several places called (originally) Beth-jerahmeel: a later editor made a geographical mistake and supposed that it was a Beth-jerahmeel better known as “Beth-lehem of Judah,” whereas really it was a Beth-jerahmeel in the “Negeb” or steppe-country. It is a significant fact that David’s sister Abigail married a man of Jezreel (near Carmel in Judah, whence came David’s favourite wife Abigail), and that David himself took his first wife from that place. All this points to a place nearer than Beth-lehem to northern Arabia; probably it was not far from Maon and Carmel. Nominally this district of the Negeb was a part of Saul’s dominion. This we infer from 2 Samuel ii. 9, which states (rightly interpreted) that Saul’s son (and consequently Saul, himself, before him) was king over (the southern Gilead) Asshur, Jezreel and Ephraim, as well as over Benjamin. Judah is not mentioned, because, according to the legend, David had lately been made king over the “house of Judah” in Hebron. But to hold so many semi-independent clans in check was beyond Saul’s power, and David, a member of one of them, conceived the idea of carving out a principality for himself in the[11] south till such time as the ripe fruit of a larger kingdom should drop into his mouth. His political rôle began when he gathered round him a band of freebooters, consisting partly of his own kinsmen, partly of desperate outlaws. Among his haunts are especially mentioned Adullam, Keilah, Carmel and Ziklag—all places in the “Negeb.” The last-named place is represented to us as belonging to Achish, king of Gath. But a Philistine suzerain of an Israelite free-lance is inconceivable, and again and again in the Hebrew narratives we find that the name Gath has sprung by corruption out of a mutilated fragment of “Rehoboth.” A little to the northeast of the site of Rehoboth (Ruhaibeh), in the direction of Beersheba, stand the ruins of Halasa, the Elusa of the early Christian age, famous in that period for its peculiar heathen cult. This is not improbably David’s Ziklag. While David was prince of Ziklag, the fatal contest between Saul and the Zarephathites (Philistines) took place, the scene of which was not Mount Gilboa in the north (as textual criticism shows), but Mount Jerahmeel in the south. Whether the traditional narrative is right in asserting David’s abstention from the battle, no one can tell.

That David all this time had acted with consummate craft, we need not doubt. At the time of the death of Saul, he was not only lord of Ziklag, but had become by marriage chief of a powerful clan settled in the neighbourhood of the southern Carmel, i.e., probably near his own home. His object must have been to detach the clans of the Negeb from Saul, and to prepare them to receive himself as their lord, or, where Saul had not even won the nominal allegiance of a clan, to bring the clans into personal relation to himself by doing them some service. At last David was strong enough to have himself proclaimed king. This implies that a number of clans dwelling near together (compare 1 Samuel xxx. 27-31) trusted or feared him enough to promise him obedience. What was the centre of his dominion? and was he really independent, or was he the vassal of a more powerful king?

DAVID RECOGNISED AS KING

The capital of David’s earlier realm was Hebron, that is, he had succeeded in winning allegiance where Saul had failed. The clan of Judah (not as yet a “tribe”), and with it other clans which had common interests with Judah, joined together, and recognised David as their king. After this David carried out another great stroke of policy. He was scheming for a larger kingdom than that of Judah, and at once selected and fought for his capital. This capital was a Jebusite (Ishmaelite, i.e., Jerahmeelite) city, which had succeeded thus far in preserving its independence—Jerusalem. Its geographical position and natural strength, and the circumstance that it was unconnected with any Israelite clan or tribe, made it admirably suited for the capital of an extensive Palestinian kingdom. But before he could proceed further he had to cope with foes. The Rehobothites and Zarephathites, who had been not unfriendly to David, regarding him as the foe of Saul, now saw that he had stepped into the position of Saul, and would carry on that king’s patriotic work. In the neighbourhood of “Gob” or “Gath” or rather Rehoboth (of which both names are a corruption), and also in the valley of Rephaim, David and his warriors fought with and conquered the Zarephathites, and it is a reasonable conjecture that the “Cherethites and Pelethites,” who, according to the present text, became David’s bodyguard, were men of Rehoboth and Zarephath, who, seeing that it was hopeless to[12] fight against David, chose the next best part—that of fighting with him. It must have been this victory which enabled David to bring back the sacred ark of Yahveh from its place of captivity among the Jerahmeelites.

DAVID’S CONQUESTS

David’s next task was to put down Saul’s successor, Eshbaal or Ishbosheth, and to conquer what remained to this weakling of Saul’s realm. That more blood was shed than our texts allow, may be assumed. The legend-makers idealised David, but the historian is bound to go behind the legend. The epithets hurled at David by Shimei, according to 2 Samuel xvi. 7, must have something more for their justification than the concession professedly made by David to the vengeance of the Gibeonites (2 Samuel xxi. 1-14); and the strange legend of the destruction of Benjamin in Judges xx., xxi., is probably a disguise of an historical fact which took place later than the period assumed in the legend. Both Benjamin and parts of the Negeb had to be won by force, and from the nature of the case, as well as from the fact that Saul’s general and relative, Abner, took the side of Eshbaal, we may assume that this war lasted for some time. What took place in the large part of Palestine, which did not, so far as we can be said to know, enter into the dominion of Saul, we would gladly be able to tell, but the traditions have faded away. That David had statecraft as well as great ability in war, may be accepted from the tradition, and the advantages of unity may have been patent to tribes which had a fertile territory, and were liable to be swept by Midianite and Aramæan invasions. Still, fear of David, as well as a regard for self-interest, may have contributed to the annexation, as we may fairly call it, of central and northern Israel to the empire of the adventurer from the Negeb. Probably, however, this event did not take place as soon as the present form of our texts suggests; probably, too, the union of north and south was never as close as that which came to exist between Judah, and part, at least, of Benjamin. Further investigation may throw some rays of light on this subject.

REVOLT FROM DAVID

Two revolts are recorded as having occurred in the latter part of David’s reign. In both cases the narratives have to be closely and critically examined. At the present stage of the inquiry it appears that the rebellion of Sheba is wrongly connected with the revolt of Absalom, and occurred at an earlier part of David’s reign. David had probably not as yet succeeded in crushing the independent spirit of the Benjamites, and Sheba, who was sheikh of the important clan (it was Saul’s clan) of the Bicrites, raised the standard of revolt supported not only by the Bicrites, but to some extent by the Israelitish inhabitants of Maacah in the Negeb (2 Samuel xx. 14). What he aimed at was probably a revival of the kingdom of Saul, and a definite renunciation of the ambitious scheme of a Palestinian empire. His attempt, however, failed. The revolt of Absalom was similar, but its chief supporters were not in Benjamin (which, indeed, had most probably by this time been subjugated), but in Judah. This tribe was, no doubt, the creation of David, but the elements which had been combined with the old clan of Judah, being Calebite or Jerahmeelite, still felt the keenest interest in the country to the south of Palestine called the Negeb, and when Absalom, the child of a northern[13] Arabian mother, adopted their aspirations as his own, the whole Israelitish population of the Negeb flocked to his standard. This well-conceived plan, however, which probably presupposes further successful warfare of David against the southern Aram (i.e., the Jerahmeelites in and near the Negeb), was also doomed to failure.

SOLOMON AND JEROBOAM

David’s successor, Solomon, reached the throne by a coup d’état. His success was largely due to the energy of the Jerusalem priest, Zadok, who was devoted to the service of David’s new sanctuary on Mount Zion. The friendship of the priestly party had important results both for Solomon (whom the priests of Jerusalem naturally idealised in legend) and for the state, which now possessed a sanctuary officially recognised as supreme. The erection of a temple required a large supply both of timber and of stone, and our texts represent that the timber and the stone came from Lebanon by the friendly offices of the king of Tyre, to whose territory Lebanon is supposed to have belonged. Underneath the present texts, however, we can discern a different and much more probable form of text, in which the king whose help is requested is the king of Mizzur (the North Arabian land of Muzri), and it is also presumably the same king (called in this case the king of Muzri) whose daughter became Solomon’s wife.

SOLOMON AND HIRAM

Afterwards, however, the relations between the two kings, Solomon and Hiram, appear to have changed for the worse. Twenty cities are recorded to have been ceded by Solomon to Hiram, and (in the original text) a large sum of money to have been paid. We can hardly doubt that this was the price of peace; hostilities must have broken out between the two kings, whose territories adjoined each other. It is possible that the war was occasioned, not only by the memories of wrongs done to Mizrim by David, but also by the desire on Hiram’s part for commercial advantages. Solomon was bent on enriching himself by commercial voyages, and Hiram would not be behind him. Ezion-geber, at the head of the Gulf of Akabah, formed part of Solomon’s dominion. Hiram can have had no mariners of his own, but was resolved not to allow all the profits of the voyages which started from Ezion-geber to go to his rival. So he sent his own “servants,” i.e., probably commissioners and merchants, to carry on traffic for him at the different ports touched at, the chief of which was doubtless Ophir, the port of the great Arabian or East African gold-land. Nor was the King of Mizrim the only North Arabian prince who made Solomon’s position a difficult one. For a time the region adjoining the Negeb, called Cusham, had received Israelite garrisons, but an adventurer named Rezon expelled the Israelites, and founded a new line of kings of Cusham, which was destined to cause infinite trouble to future Israelite kings.

SOLOMON’S OPPONENTS

Another bitter opponent of Solomon was the once fugitive Edomite or rather Aramite prince, Hadad, who returned to his own country (the southern Aram or Jerahmeel) and distressed Israel. And a third was Jeroboam,[14] son of Nebat, an Ephrathite of mixed parentage (his mother was a Mizrite). That he belonged to the northern tribe of Ephraim, cannot be safely argued; Ephrath was the name of a district in the Negeb, and it was the district to which Jeroboam belonged. His home was at Zeredah, otherwise called Tirzah, and seeing that he was “industrious” and specially interested in the Negeb, Solomon “put him in charge over all the burden of the house of Ishmael,” i.e., over the compulsory work (the corvée) of the northern Arabian subject population. This position of trust Jeroboam used for his own ambitious ends. Naturally, he incurred Solomon’s resentment, and had to flee for his life to his mother’s country, Mizrim.

The suppression of Jeroboam’s revolt left behind it angry feelings towards the Davidic family. When, therefore, the fugitive returned after Solomon’s death, the Israelites in the Negeb were prepared to espouse his claims to sovereignty. What line was taken by the Israelites of Ephraim and the other northern tribes, was not expressly stated in the original narrative. We may be sure, however, that they took no interest in Solomon’s temple, but the greatest possible interest in the sanctuaries of the Negeb. They had to support Jeroboam because they loved the land in which the patriarchs had dwelt. Its sanctuaries were to them the holiest spots upon earth; Canaan without the Negeb would have been like a temple without its altar. Consequently, whether the northern tribes sent representatives, or not, on the death of Solomon, to the national assembly at the venerable city of Cusham-Jerahmeel (later scribes, and hardly by mere accident, wrote “Shechem”), the voice of the nation was adequately expressed, and the doom pronounced on the house of David, in the name of the northern Israelites and the kindred clans in the Negeb, was final.

THE DIVIDED KINGDOM

Most probably, however, the story of the national assembly is a legend, and Jeroboam and his party at once appealed to the arbitrament of war. There may have been fighting on the northern border, but the field of battle was no doubt chiefly in the Negeb, which, henceforth, according to several indications in our texts, was partly Israelite, partly Judahite, at least when Aramite or Jerahmeelite invaders did not take advantage of some temporary relaxation of vigilance on the part of Israel and Judah. So Jeroboam, not unaided perhaps by his Mizrite friends, became the king of the northern, and Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, of the southern part of Israel.

All the Israelite tribes from Asher to Ephraim adhered to Jeroboam; Judah and Benjamin to Rehoboam. The Holy Land of the Negeb appears to have been claimed by both, but especially by northern Israel. Jeroboam, we are assured, occupied Beth-el, and if we may venture to hold that this means the southern Bethel (in the Negeb), a new light is thrown on many Old Testament passages of great importance for the history of religion. In the Bethel sanctuary Jeroboam is said to have placed an image of a bull overlaid with gold. This bull must have represented the Jerahmeelite Baal, whom Jeroboam identified with the Yahveh, whose worship the ancient Israelites adopted from the Kenites of Kadesh (on the border of the Jerahmeelite Negeb), who conducted them in their migration. To this cultus Jeroboam was naturally devoted. We cannot, indeed, suppose that there was no such image of Baal at Bethel till he placed one there, but at least by making Bethel the “king’s sanctuary” (Amos vi. 13) he gave fresh prestige to the cultus.

[15]

We cannot, therefore, be surprised if in northern Israel the Jerahmeelite Baal more and more threw Yahveh into the shade, so that men swore, not by Yahveh, but by the Baal of Beth-el, and shut themselves entirely off from the forces, so active in Judah, which made for religious progress. Meantime the outward condition both of Israel and of Judah was so prosperous, that even a king of Egypt (Shashanq) thought it worth while to raid both territories. Sculptures on the south wall of the great temple at Karnak (Egyptian Thebes) appear to record this.

JEROBOAM’S SUCCESSORS

The new dynasty did not long maintain itself. Jeroboam’s son, Nadab, was slain by Baasha, of the tribe of Issachar, while he was besieging (so our text says) Gibbethon in Philistia. It was a military revolution such as became frequent in northern Israel. Baasha energetically resumed the war with Judah, whose king Asa, however, paralysed Baasha by invoking the help of Ben-Hadad (probably Bir-dadda), king of Cusham in northern Arabia, who sent an army against the cities of Israel (in the Negeb). It is remarkable to see the two kings, who jointly represent Israel, contending with one another for the favour and protection of a northern Arabian power. Presumably, Asa offered a larger payment than Baasha. Elah, Baasha’s son, quickly suffered the fate of Nadab, before the Philistine fortress of Gibbethon. Whether the singularly exact correspondence between the circumstances of the first two northern Israelite dynasties is historical, has not unnaturally been questioned.

Zimri, “who slew his master,” did not live many days in the enjoyment of royalty. The majority of the warriors were not on his side, but favoured the commander-in-chief Omri. The late king had been murdered in Tirzah. From Gibbethon, therefore, Omri and the army moved to Tirzah, and besieged the city. Zimri met his death in his burning palace.

But Omri had yet to fight for his crown. Another party of the people favoured the claims of Tibni; after a civil war, the party of Omri finally prevailed. The result was for the good of northern Israel. Omri, though not always fortunate in war (1 Kings xx. 34), was a highly capable ruler. This appears from three particulars which have come down to us; (1) the subjugation of Moab by northern Israel in his reign, (2) his foundation of the city of Shomeron, or, rather, Shimron, better known as Samaria, and we may perhaps add, (3) the respect given to his name by the Assyrians, who after his death designated the kingdom of northern Israel mat Khumri or Bit Khumri, “land” or “house of Omri.”

THE MOABITE STONE

The first of these facts is recorded in the famous “Moabite Stone,” which tells how Omri afflicted Moab and took possession of the land of Medeba, and how Israel dwelt therein, during his days, and half his son’s days—forty years. The second, if correctly reported, is equally interesting; for Omri’s predecessors, and Omri himself for the first six years of his reign, held their court at Tirzah, which appears to have been a strong city in the Negeb. If Omri really built the northern Shimron, he not improbably named it after a city called Shimron in the Negeb, not far from Beth-el.[16] The resolution to place his capital in central Palestine, if it be a fact, was a most judicious one, considering the increasing danger from Assyria and from the northern Aram. Perhaps, some day, the spade of the excavator may remove the slight doubt which seems to exist on this point.

HEBREW RELATIONS WITH ASSYRIA AND ARAM

The misfortune is that the fragments of Hebrew historical tradition, critically regarded, tell us very little that can be trusted respecting the contact of the northern Israelites with these two powers at this period. Shalmaneser II tells us in an inscription that (in 854 B.C.) he was victorious at Qarqar, near Hamath, over a league of kings, the first of whom was Dad-idri, or Bir-idri, of Damascus, the second Irkhulina of Hamath, and the third Akhabbu of Israel (?). Of this important fact not a hint is given in 1 Kings; indeed, the Hebrew account of the last campaign of Ahab is not strictly reconcilable with the Assyrian inscription. The same Assyrian king records that (in 842) Yaua, son of Khumri, together with the Tyrians and Sidonians, paid him tribute. Not a word of this in 1 Kings. Similar records of the northern Aramæans are, unhappily, not extant. The final editor of the narratives in 1 Kings must have believed that the Israelites had serious conflicts with northern Aram, but underneath the traditional Hebrew text, lie narratives, which can still be approximately restored, in which the contending powers were not Israel and Aram-Damascus, but Israel and Aram-Cusham. The Shimron and the Jezreel spoken of in these narratives are not Samaria and the northern Jezreel, but places bearing those names in the “Negeb.”

The name Ben-Hadad, given in 1 Kings to the king of Aram, corresponds not to Bir-idri (the name of a contemporary king of Damascus), but to Bir-dadda, the possibility of which, as the name of a North Arabian king, is shown by its occurrence in the inscriptions. Hazael, too, is equally possible on similar grounds, as the name of a king of the northern Arabian land of Cusham. Elijah and Elisha, too, in the original Hebrew narratives, were certainly represented (according to recent criticism) as prophets of the Negeb. The appearances and disappearances of Elijah now cease to be meteoric; he has not so very far to go either to Shimron to meet the king, or to Horeb to revive his spiritual energies by communion with the God who specially dwelt on the summit of that mountain.

THE WORSHIP OF BAAL

The whole religious history of northern Israel now becomes a good deal more intelligible. It is the Jerahmeelite Baal whom the Israelites worship, identifying him with the God of the Exodus; and the unprogressive character of his cultus, which addressed itself largely to the senses, was the reason why the prophets of Judah used such vehement language in denouncing its votaries. Elijah, we may be sure, that is, the school of prophets whom he represents (i.e., Amos), never entered a Jerahmeelite temple. But the sanctity of Horeb, in so far as it was not impaired by a corrupt cultus and its buildings, was not denied by these successors of Moses.

It is commonly held that Ahab was the husband of a Tyrian wife and the promoter of a newly imported Tyrian variety of Baal-worship. The[17] analogous history of Solomon, however, warns us to caution, and a critical view of the text shows that Ahab’s wife was a northern Arabian princess from Mizrim, and his offence, from the point of view of Elijah, was in giving a fresh official sanction to what we may call Jerahmeelitism. Jeroboam had given his royal favour to the sanctuary of Bethel; Ahab conferred a similar distinction on the new sanctuary at Shimron. It was this southern city of Shimron, and not its northern namesake, that Ben-Hadad (Bir-dadda?) of Cusham besieged. The ultimate result of the siege, of which we have probably two accounts (1 Kings xxi. 22 and 2 Kings vi. 24-vii.), was fortunate for Ahab. On the other hand, Ramoth (or Ramath), in the southern Gilead, still had to be fought for by Ahab, and the brave king met his death by a chance shot from an Aramite bow. It was also before Ramoth in Gilead that Jehoram, son of Ahab, who succeeded his elder brother Ahaziah, received those wounds of which we hear in the story of the rebellion of Jehu.

REHOBOAM AND HIS SUCCESSORS

Turning to the southern kingdom, we notice that it was some time before the Davidic king made an effort to obtain foreign protection. In Jeroboam’s time, indeed, it would have been useless. In Rehoboam’s fifth year the king of Mizrim proved his regard for Jeroboam and for his own selfish advantage by invading the Jewish dominion. Resistance was hopeless; Jerusalem itself was taken, and the departure of Cushi (the name is corrupted in our own texts into Shishak) was only purchased at a great price. It was the third king, Asa, who, finding himself in danger of becoming the vassal of Baasha, became virtually the vassal of the king of Cusham; the story of his having defeated an army of Cushite invaders (at Zephath, or Zarephath?) must surely be apocryphal. Asa and his son Jehoshaphat are both praised for their fidelity to Yahveh. The latter king, however, managed to exchange a Cushite for an Israelite suzerain, and according to the (late) Chronicler gained a victory over the (southern) Aramites or Jerahmeelites in the Negeb (the text of 2 Chronicles xx. has suffered, as regards the geographical setting).

In the war against Moab, Jehoshaphat did a vassal’s service to Ahab, and we may suppose that there was a Judahite contingent in the force of ten thousand men sent by Ahab to the battle of Qarqar. We are also told that he sought to open once more direct communication by sea with the gold-country Ophir. His son Jehoram continued loyal to the northern Israelitish king. Asa had found it impossible to oppose a marriage between the crown-prince and Athaliah, the daughter of Jezebel. So, officially at any rate, there was religious as well as political union between northern and southern Israel; Jehoram, we are told, “walked in the way (i.e., practised the cultus) of the house of Ahab.”

The revolt of the Edomites, who had hitherto recognised the supremacy of Judah, marks the reign of Jehoram. His son Ahaziah continued his policy, and just after he had performed a vassal’s duty before Ramoth in the southern Gilead (still fought for by the Aramites), he fell a victim with his uncle and suzerain, Jehoram of Israel, to the machinations of the ambitious general, Jehu. The name of Jehu (as it seems, an Israelite of the Negeb) is attached to a revolution which had different results from those which had been contemplated. We have only the account of it which was given by the prophetic school of narrators. According to this, the revolution was planned by a[18] prophet named Elisha, and received the sanction of the sheikh of a subdivision of the Kenites, called Rechabites. Certainly it is probable enough that the prophets of the Negeb interfered with politics, and that that portion of the Kenites which had not adopted a settled mode of life was greatly agitated by the continuance of that sensuous form of cultus which was favoured by the house of Omri.

JEHU AND FOLLOWING KINGS

Jehu, too, may have been widely known as an energetic and unscrupulous man whose ambition could be used in the interests of religious reformation. At any rate the Baal-worship of the court, which, as we are assured, had become aggressive, was violently put down by Jehu, and this bold adventurer now began to scheme for a united kingdom of Israel, like David’s of old. With this object, he massacred not only Jehoram of Israel, but Ahaziah of Judah, though, as the event proved, he reckoned without his host, for Athaliah, the queen-mother in Judah, on her side, massacred all the children of the other wives of Jehoram of Judah, and, in intention, also the son of Ahaziah (he escaped, however), and usurped the throne. The consequence was that north and south Israel, for the present, went each its own way.

In 842 B.C. Jehu found it expedient to send rich presents to Shalmaneser II, which this king denominated “tribute.” Here we are painfully conscious of the meagreness of our information. What was the policy of the queen of Judah during the six years of her reign? Did she intrigue with Cusham against northern Israel? We know that Hazael, the Cushamite king, renewed the war in the Negeb with double fury. Next, what was the policy of the other Hazael—the king of Damascus—towards northern Israel? The editor of Kings seems to have thought that this Hazael was an opponent of Jehu. This might account for the “present” sent by Jehu to Shalmaneser, who waged war with Hazael. On the other hand, Jehu does not appear to have sent any gifts in 839 B.C., when Shalmaneser had his second encounter with Hazael, and Tyre, Sidon, and Gebal again sent tribute. Had Jehu in the interval been obliged to become a vassal of the king of Damascus, who was still able to withstand the repeated attacks of the Assyrians?

The furious onslaught of Hazael of Cusham continued after Jehu’s death. So large a part of the Negeb was taken either by Hazael or by his successor Ben-Hadad, i.e., Bir-dadda, and so many of its Israelite inhabitants had been either slain in battle or carried away into slavery, that the most valued jewel in the crown of Israel’s kings seemed to have been lost. A turn for the better in Israel’s fortunes took place under Joash. Probably this was mainly due to the victories of the Assyrian king, Adad-nirari III, who claims to have received tribute from Tyre, Sidon, Khumri (Israel), Edom, and Philistia, and who humbled, though he did not destroy, Mari, the brave king of Damascus. If, as one may plausibly suppose, the latter king punished Jehoahaz for his father’s Assyrian proclivities, we can understand that when Damascus ceased to be dangerous, the son of Jehoahaz, stimulated by prophets like Elisha, might make a supreme, successful effort against invaders of the Negeb.

The work of liberation, however, had still to be completed; this was the achievement of Jeroboam II. It was he who reconquered the venerable city of Cusham-jerahmeel, and recovered the region of Maacath (or[19] Jerahmeel) for Israel. This period, as criticism is able to show, receives vivid illustration from the work of Amos, the account of whose conflict with Amaziah, the priest of the southern Bethel, refers to Jeroboam by name. The war was still going on, however, when this prophet of evil tidings wrote. It is probable that for some part of the reigns of Joash and Jeroboam the king of Judah was once more in vassalage to the king of Israel.

DECLINE AND FALL OF SAMARIA

The death of Jeroboam was the beginning of the end for the northern realm. Murders and revolutions succeeded each other with fearful rapidity. Of Zechariah and Shallum there is nothing to be said. Menahem’s reign, however, marks an epoch. Tiglathpileser III states in his Annals that he received tribute from Kushtashpi of Kummukh, Rasunnu of Damascus and Minihimi of Samirina. It is plausible to identify the third king with Menahem of Samaria. The identification, however, is not certain; some other city may perhaps have been meant. Moreover, the Hebrew record speaks of an invasion of the northern kingdom, and calls the invader Pul (a Greek reading is Paloch) king of Asshur. Now there is good evidence in the Book of Hosea that the Israelites at this period were suing for the favour of the North Arabian kings of Mizrim and of Asshur. Mizrim we know to be the land otherwise called Muzri; Asshur (Ashkhur) we may suspect to be the land called by the Assyrians Melukhkha. Probably, therefore, it is the king of Melukhkha, the greatest of the North Arabian kings, who invaded Menahem’s realm, and exacted tribute from Menahem. In this case it was not central Palestine which he invaded, but the Negeb. In the next reign but one—that of Pekah—the same king of Asshur (called this time, not Pul, but by the equally inaccurate name Tiglath pileser or Tilgath pilneser) returned to the Negeb, a part of which he conquered, deporting its Israelite inhabitants into northern Arabia.

ASSYRIAN OPPRESSION

Probably he was displeased because the impoverished kingdom of Israel could not pay its tribute. The North Arabian king, however, must have had some additional reason for his activity. The true Assyrian Tiglathpileser tells us of the queen of Aribi and of the minor Arabian sheikhs who paid him tribute, and we may well suppose that, knowing the ambitious projects and the intrigues of Assyria, the greatest North Arabian potentate sought to strengthen the North Arabian border by introducing colonists on whom he could depend. Shortly afterwards he treated Cusham in a similar manner, deporting its inhabitants to Kir. Again we must regret the paucity of external information illustrating this period. The Hebrew text as it stands speaks of Pekah of Israel as joining the king of the northern Aram in an invasion of Judah. This, as we shall see, is highly doubtful. There is also much besides in the traditional history of this period which is liable to revision. The confusion between the two Shimrons and the two Asshurs is as troublesome as the confusion between the two Arams and the two Muzurs. But, have the Assyrian inscriptions no facts to communicate? On the contrary, they mention both Pekah and Hoshea. The former they present to us as a member of the anti-Assyrian party which existed in Samaria,[20] as elsewhere, and we gather from the Annals that, as a punishment for this, the inhabitants of a large part of Bit-Khumri (Samaria) were deported by the Assyrians, and that when Pekah had been assassinated, Tiglathpileser ratified the appointment of Hoshea as king of the scanty remnant of North Israel (733 B.C.).

From the same source we learn that early in Sargon’s reign (722 B.C.?) that king besieged and captured Samirina (Samaria), carried away 27,290 of its inhabitants, reserved fifty of their chariots, placed a governor over the remnant of the people, and imposed upon them the tribute of the former king. This is all that we know about the doings of the Assyrians; for those of the Asshurites we must turn to the prophet Hosea and to the second Book of Kings. The former, writing probably when the doom of the southern Shimron was already sealed, prophesies not only that it will be taken, but that the king of Israel will meet his death through Asshur. He also probably gives the name of the Asshurite king who succeeded Pul or Paloch as Shalman (Hosea xi. 14), referring to some typical barbarities of which this king had been guilty.

Shalman appears incorrectly in 2 Kings as Shalmaneser. We learn that for some years Hoshea paid tribute to Shalman (eser), but that after this, relying upon the help of the king of Mizrim, he withheld it; the Asshurite king therefore cast him into prison. If the letter of 2 Kings xvii. 4, 5, is correct, this preceded an Asshurite invasion of the land (i.e., the Negeb), which ended with a siege of Shimron. The siege lasted three years, at the end of which the king of Asshur took Shimron, and deported a large part of the remaining Israelite population of the Negeb into his own land, filling their place in the Negeb with North Arabian colonists. These new Shimronites are the people who caused the Jews so much trouble in the days of Nehemiah.

Thus the two sections of that large part of Israel which had rejected the Davidic Dynasty were all but annihilated, for history can take no further account of the remnants which survived both in northern Israel and in the Negeb, remnants which, though they retained the divine name Yahveh, in their cultus, were in no essential respect different from the non-Israelites with whom they mingled. We do, indeed, gather from 2 Kings xvii. 25-33 that the North Arabian colonists in the Negeb combined the ritual worship of Yahveh with that of their own gods, and we may assume that they learned the “manner” or ceremonial prescriptions of Yahveh, not from a single priest—the sole representative of Israel in the wide land of the Negeb—but from a scanty remnant of Israelites left by the conqueror (compare 2 Kings xxiii. 20). But of what value or significance for the history of Israel or of Israel’s history, is this poor and uninteresting fact? Henceforth the world-historical mission of Israel was confined to that portion of the people which was loyal to the Davidic Dynasty, and in which, thanks to prophets largely drawn from the Negeb (a land of opposites in religion), the elements of progress were still active in spite of great hindrances.

LATER FORTUNES OF JUDAH

We return to Athaliah, and her bold attempt to naturalise more fully the sensuous religious developments of North Arabia in Judah. After six years, both she and her movement came to a sudden end. The only surviving male representative of David was set upon the throne. The priest Jehoiada[21] won over the “prætorian guard” on which Athaliah had relied; the usurper was slain and the house of Baal broken down. The new king Jehoash conformed to the directions of the priests. This did not, however, avert a serious calamity. A Cushamite invasion took place, and the retirement of Hazael had to be bought at a high price. Jehoash was succeeded by his foolhardy son Amaziah, who seems to have had a dream of throwing off the suzerainty of North Israel. As the first step to this, he tried his martial prowess on the Jerahmeelites, whom he encountered in a valley in the Negeb, but when Joash of Israel, who had no mind to let Judah become predominant in that region, came down upon him with his army, the result was disastrous for Judah. Jerusalem was taken, so that the suzerainty of northern Israel was secured, and the king, Amaziah, met with a violent death. His son and successor, Azariah (or Uzziah), is to some extent a mystery; we have two narratives respecting him, one of which surprises us as much by its brevity as the other (2 Chronicles xxvi.) by its particularity. The probability, however, is that the account in 2 Kings xv. 1-7 omits all detailed reference to Azariah’s wars in the south because of a great humiliation which he received in the course of them. That heavy blow was probably nothing less than captivity in Mizrim, from the record of which, accidentally or deliberately, the later tradition extracted the statement that Azariah was smitten with leprosy. During his father’s enforced absence, Jotham acted as regent. We can hardly believe that the period of these two reigns was in any sense a prosperous one for Judah. No special misfortune, indeed, is put down to Jotham, but we are informed that the king of Aram or Cusham began those incursions into Judah which became such a serious danger in the next reign. Whether either Azariah or Jotham succeeded in becoming independent of Israel, we cannot say.

AHAZ AND ISAIAH

It was Ahaz, so well known to us from the prophet Isaiah, who succeeded Jotham. The editors of the Books of Kings and of Isaiah believed that the “Aram,” which became so troublesome to Ahaz, was the North Aramæan kingdom of Damascus, and that the ruler of this state in conjunction with Pekah, king of Israel, fearing the aggressions of Assyria, sought to force Judah into alliance with them. It was notorious that Ahaz favoured a different policy, but the allies thought themselves strong enough to capture Jerusalem and to place a nominee of their own upon the throne of Judah.

It is probable, however, that here, as elsewhere, the editors have adjusted the narratives and prophecies to historical and geographical ideas which were not those of the narrators. In reality, it was the king of Aram (i.e., Cusham) and the king of Ishmael (i.e., some other North Arabian principality) who sought the humiliation of Judah. The object, as the experience of the past had shown, was not unattainable, but since the time when the king of Mizrim humiliated Rehoboam, the suzerain of all the smaller kings—the great “Arabian king” (Asshur)—had become more jealous of the ambitious activity of his lieges. Hence, as soon as Ahaz sent an importunate message to the king wrongly called Tiglathpileser, deliverance came to him, and ruin to Cusham through an Asshurite intervention. The prophet Isaiah, however, took a different position. According to him, trust in the true Yahveh and obedience to his righteous law (of which Isaiah and those like him were the exponents) was the sure, the only sure, defence against human foes, while[22] for Ahaz to send for the Asshurite king was to put his head into the mouth of a lion. But how could such trust and obedience be expected of Judah? Ever since Solomon’s time this little country had hankered after a worldly prosperity which was inconsistent, as the most high-minded prophets believed, with the worship of the true Yahveh. Consequently both Isaiah and Micah, like Amos and Hosea, saw nothing for their people to expect but ruin.

In the next reign it appeared as if this prophecy were about to be fulfilled. Two invasions took place—one of the Assyrians, the other of the Asshurites of northern Arabia—which have been confounded by the editors who brought the Books of Kings and of Isaiah into their present form. The difficulties which have been found in reconciling the Hebrew narratives with the inscription of Sennacherib are partly due to this confusion. We may suppose that the Asshurite invasion, which ended in the hurried departure of the invaders, came first; it is this which is referred to in the prophetic utterances of Isaiah. Whether or no Isaiah lived to see the second invasion (which took place in 701) is a problem for critics. The prophet has at any rate given us a vivid picture of the alarm of Judah and the neighbouring countries in the Asshurite crisis, and we can venture to supplement this to some extent with facts from the late narratives in 2 Kings xviii. 13; xix. 37 (Isaiah xxxvi. 1-xxxvii. 38), provided that a methodical criticism has first been applied to the text.

INVASION OF SENNACHERIB

From Sennacherib himself we have particulars respecting his operations in Judah. He asserts that he took 46 towns and carried off 200,150 persons; that he shut up Hezekiah like a cage-bird in Jerusalem, made him deliver up a captive Ekronite king, imposed a heavy fine upon him and curtailed his territory. We can easily believe that Judah was not in a position to resist a second invasion, even though the first was not quite so calamitous as it might have been. It is also plausible to suppose that the misfortune arising from Sennacherib’s invasion may have led Hezekiah to put himself under the tuition of the priests of Jerusalem, and begin a movement for the centralisation of the cultus. If so, his son and successor Manasseh revised his policy, and initiated a reaction in the direction of North Arabian heathenism. Worshippers of the true Yahveh found in the king’s subsequent career a divine judgment upon such wickedness. The generals of the king of the North Arabian Asshur (such is the most tenable explanation of 2 Chronicles xxxiii. 11) brought him as captive to the capital of that country, but he was afterwards restored. It must be confessed, however, that we do not know to what North Arabian people the Hebrew compiler applies the old name of Asshur; the kingdom of Melukhkha appears not to have recovered from the blow dealt to it by the Arabian invasion of Esarhaddon. One thing is certain from the Assyrian inscriptions—that Manasseh gave no cause of complaint to the northern Asshur. Among the vassals who paid them homage, both Esarhaddon and Asshurbanapal mention Manasseh king of Judah.

JOSIAH; HIS RELATIONS TO NORTH ARABIA

Manasseh’s son Amon continued to promote the religious reaction. After two years he was murdered, but the “people of the land,” who appear to have sympathised with Amon’s views, punished the murderers.[23] This was about 636 B.C., noteworthy as the date of the accession of the young Josiah. Assyria was still powerful, and few could have foreseen its impending decline and fall. But it was not Assyria to which the prophet Jeremiah pointed as the executor of Yahveh’s judgment, nor yet (as many have supposed) the hordes of Scythian nomads, but a people or peoples of northern Arabia. Josiah, however, did not lose his composure. He had thrown himself into the arms of the priests, and the priests and prophets (not Jeremiah) combined to produce a law-book (our Deuteronomy has grown out of it), obedience to which might be expected to insure prosperity.

The reform of the cultus, and the prohibition of more than the one sanctuary, were far-reaching measures which affected the daily life of every Israelite. We are even told (2 Kings xxiii. 15-20) that the reformation extended to Beth-el and the cities of Shimron, i.e., to the Negeb. This view of the narrator’s meaning is a solid result of criticism, and certainly the detail has no slight verisimilitude. The realm of Judah needed expansion, and what region could Josiah more reasonably covet than the Negeb, so dear to Israelite tradition? Events proved, however, that a greater potentate also had designs upon it, viz., the king of Mizrim. We do not know what race predominated at this time in the ancient Muzri, but we can hardly doubt the fact that the king of a territory adjoining the Negeb, who was at any rate more powerful than Josiah, went upon an expedition against Kidsham (i.e., Kadesh), or perhaps Cusham (i.e., Cusham-jerahmeel), and found his passage barred by Josiah. A battle took place in Maacath-migdol (if we rightly read the name), and the king of Judah was mortally wounded. All Judah mourned. The people had lost a king, and were in danger of losing a faith. For the religious law book promising prosperity to the obedient, which they had accepted in deference to the king and the priests, seemed to have been proved a delusion and a snare.

JOSIAH’S SUCCESSORS AND THE KING OF MIZRAIM

Thus the power most dreaded by Judah is once more the North Arabian Mizrim, though the race which now predominated in Mizrim had, perhaps, only lately arrived there. The late editor of Kings, however, confounded Mizrim with Mizraim (Egypt), and represented the king whom Josiah encountered as Neku of Egypt; he also confounded the place-name Migdol with Megiddo. It is not impossible that the enterprising Neku of Egypt really did interfere with the affairs of Syria, but, if so, it was hardly Josiah whom he had to deal with. It appears to be clear from the Hebrew narratives, critically interpreted, that it was first the Mizrites and then the Babelites or Jerahmeelites (i.e., the peoples to which the Hebrew writers, archaising, apply these names) who interfered with southern Palestine. The Mizrite king is said to have deposed Josiah’s successor, Jehoahaz, after a reign of three months, and nominated a brother of Jehoahaz named Eliakim or Jehoiakim, as king (608 or 607 B.C.?). It was a short-lived suzerainty; another king, miscalled by the later editor the king of Babel (the name should be “Jerahmeel”), appeared, and asserted his claim to the Negeb. Jehoiakim became his vassal, but after three years rebelled, preferring the old vassalage to the new. Apparently he died before a fresh invasion took place; it was his son Jehoiachin who, yielding to necessity, surrendered to the Jerahmeelite army, and together with the principal citizens of Jerusalem, including the[24] prophet Ezekiel, was deported. A third son of Josiah, named Mattaniah or Zedekiah, was appointed king by the conqueror. The early part of his reign was quiet, but the unenlightened war party, which trusted in the oracles of its own prophets and in the promises of the king of Mizrim, forced the king to revolt, thus involving his people in the fate long foreseen by the prophet Jeremiah. The destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, and a second captivity, followed. The sons of Zedekiah were slain; he himself was blinded.

OPERATIONS OF NEBUCHADREZZAR

It is true, the possibility must be allowed for, that the Arabians were but the helpers of the (true) Babylonians in their destructive operations, and that captives were carried away, partly to Babylon, partly into northern Arabia. It is at any rate difficult to believe that no captives of Judah at all went to Babylon. It is stated by the late Babylonian historian Berosus (if we may trust Josephus) that Nebuchadrezzar, who succeeded his father Nabopolassar after the destruction of Nineveh, conquered Egypt, Syria, Phœnicia and Arabia, from which countries he carried away captives. Egypt, however, Nebuchadrezzar cannot, apparently, be shown to have conquered, and the statement made by Berosus in another quotation of Josephus relative to the destruction of Jerusalem may not contain the whole truth. Inscriptions of Nebuchadrezzar are urgently wanted. At any rate, so far as we can learn from the evidence producible by criticism from the Hebrew writings, the bulk of the captives went into northern Arabia, and the oppression of the Jews in Judah, wherever this is referred to, appears to have proceeded from Arabians.

FALL OF JUDAH; RISE OF A NEW JEWISH PEOPLE

The events of the following period, however, are only known in a legendary form. The disciples of Jeremiah appear to have remembered that a Judahite was the first governor set up in the land of Judah, by which is probably meant the cities occupied by Judahites in the Negeb. Also that numerous fugitives escaped for a time into the land still known as Mizrim. Ezekiel was hardly in Babylonia, but in a northern Arabian territory; the text of Ezekiel which refers to “the land of Chaldea” has been manipulated. This prophet was one of the heroes of the monotheistic movement, but he did not confine himself, like Jeremiah, to denouncing the corrupt popular religion; he saw that only by a strict organisation of the ritual could the people be trained to a pure worship of the one true God. His successors, nameless but influential men, carried on his work, the description of which, however, belongs rather to a history of the literature of Judaism than to a history of the Jews.

The facts relating to the revival of the Jewish people in their own land are difficult to ascertain. Our most trustworthy records are the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah (i.-viii.). From these we learn that Zerubbabel (this form of the name is hardly original), the civil head of the Judahite community, laid the foundation of the temple, and with him we hear of the high priest Jeshua as stirring up the people to the work of rebuilding. There are also traces of ambitious hopes of the recovery of the national independence through Zerubbabel. Whether the chronological[25] statements of these books in their present forms can be relied upon is more doubtful, while to restore to some extent the original forms of the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah requires a keen criticism such as has only lately been begun. So much, however, is plain that our ideas of this period require not a little reconstruction. The chief opponents of the Jews in Judah were not “Samaritans,” but Shimronites (i.e., the mixed population of the Negeb) and Arabians, and there is reason to suspect that the historical and geographical framework of both books was originally such as we should expect from the prominence of the northern Arabians in the destruction of Jerusalem.

CYRUS; AND THE LIBERATION

That the liberator of the Jewish captives was Cyrus, is at first sight plausible, but no mention occurs in the extant inscriptions of Cyrus of any restoration of exiles to their native land, nor do the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah appear to presuppose any such restoration on a large scale. It is very possible, however, that some Jewish exiles had returned from northern Arabia before the surrender of Babylon to Cyrus, and, indeed, that Haggai and Zechariah exercised their ministry before that event. Ezekiel (vi. 4) expects the captivity of Judah to last only forty years, and part of his book is occupied by a kind of programme for the restored theocracy. There is also a tradition (2 Kings xxv. 27) that a Babelite (Jerahmeelite) king signalised his accession by releasing Jehoiachin from prison in the thirty-seventh year of his captivity.

That by degrees more and more Babylonian Jews returned, is also a probable conjecture, and even those who stayed behind were doubtless serviceable both by pecuniary and by intellectual contributions. The intellectual help of the Jews of Babylon must, indeed, have been considerable; the highly developed literary and religious cultus of Babylon cannot have been altogether lost upon them, nor must we underrate the religious influence of Persia. It would seem, however, that though Judah doubtless became part of the Persian empire, it continued to groan under Arabian oppression. The expansion of the northern Arabian races was irresistible, and the Persian rulers do not seem to have interfered in behalf of the Jews. As time went on, these rulers themselves appear to have altered for the worse.

THE PTOLEMIES AND SELEUCIDÆ AS LORDS OF PALESTINE; THE MACCABEES

Hence, like other nations, the Jews were ready to welcome Alexander the Great as a God-sent deliverer. Long before his arrival a more developed law-book, carrying out Ezekiel’s ideas, had been introduced at Jerusalem, in spite of considerable opposition. It is said to have been brought by the scribe Ezra from Babel, but whether Babylon or the land of Jerahmeel was originally meant, is disputed.

For the following period we are mainly dependent on Josephus and on the Book of Maccabees. The former is not very trustworthy; the first, and, to some extent, the second Book of Maccabees, however, repay the student. Under the first three Ptolemies (306-221) the Jews were well off, but during the struggle between the Ptolemies and the Seleucidæ, they became not disinclined for a change of masters. From 198-197 B.C. onwards Judea[26] formed part of the Syrian kingdom, and in this period we meet with a movement among the Jews towards Greek culture. This was favoured by the ruling power; the Seleucidæ were favourable, as the Ptolemies now were, to a Hellenising of the subject nationalities. Antiochus Epiphanes went further than his predecessors, and dreamed of a universal adoption of Greek culture and of the recognition by all races of the Olympian Zeus as supreme God. Other Syrian peoples complied with his demands. If the Jews refused, it was obstinacy which deserved punishment.

The priestly aristocracy of Jerusalem brought themselves to yield; Yahveh and Zeus could be regarded as identical. But there were Jews who saw the inherent weakness of compromise, and valued their ideals more than life, so successful had been the movement towards strict legal orthodoxy, connected with the name of Ezra. It was a country priest named Mattathias, who, with his sons, set an example of heroic resistance. The supreme command of the revolters was taken by the third of the brothers, Judas Maccabæus (166 B.C.), and such was his success that exactly three years after the temple had been profaned, the signs of heathenism were removed and the legal cultus restored. This was the main object of the struggle. Judas, however, was not content with the concession, which was offered to the Jews, of religious liberty. We need not deny that earthly ambition had to do with his refusal, but, no doubt, he also thought that without political independence the freedom of the pious community was insecure. And it so happened that the disputes between the various claimants of the Syrian throne made it easy for Jonathan—a diplomatist not less than a general—to gain more and more advantages. In 143-142 B.C., Jonathan’s successor, Simon, concluded formal peace with Demetrius II, and in the following year the Syrian garrison evacuated the Acra at Jerusalem. Simon himself was, by a popular decree, made hereditary high priest and ethnarch. He was succeeded by his son, John Hyrcanus, who extended his comparatively narrow territory by conquest; Shechem, Samaria and Edom became Jewish.

JUDAS ARISTOBULUS; END OF THE ASMONÆAN MONARCHY

Of Judas Aristobulus, according to Josephus, not much good can be said (105-104 B.C.). All considerations of piety were sacrificed to political expediency. Strabo, however, in the name of Timagenes, speaks favourably of him. As a Sadducee and a “philhellen” it is possible that he was calumniously misrepresented by the Pharisees. He was the first of his family to assume the title of king. The eldest of his three brothers, Alexander Jannæus (104-78 B.C.), came to the throne by the favour of Alexandra, or Salome, his deceased brother’s widow, who also gave him her hand. His aim was to extend the limits of his kingdom, so that he was almost always conducting military operations. At home his struggle with the Pharisees and their friends (inevitable in the first instance, no doubt) was carried on with a cruelty worthy of a heathen. On one occasion six hundred Jews were massacred for insulting him while he was discharging his priestly office. He was succeeded by his widow, Alexandra, who nominated her eldest son, Hyrcanus II, high priest. By the advice, it is said, of Jannæus, she made peace with the Pharisees; indeed, as the same authority (Josephus) assures us, “she had indeed the name of royalty, but the Pharisees had the power.” In fact, there was a Pharisean reaction, and the Talmud represents the age of Simon ben Shetach (a celebrated Pharisee) and Queen Salome as a[27] golden age, in which even the grains of corn attained a miraculous size. Externally, the queen showed both energy and prudence. A serious danger from Tigranes of Armenia was arrested, partly by bribes, partly by a diversion caused by the Romans under Lucullus (69 B.C.).

No sooner was the queen dead than a war broke out between the brothers, Aristobulus II and Hyrcanus II, the one able and daring, the other easy-going and indolent, which was destined to close with the extinction of Jewish liberty. Hyrcanus, being the eldest son, had the right of succession, but ill success in war induced him to abdicate the royal and high-priestly dignities in favour of Aristobulus, on condition that he was left in the enjoyment of his property. But this arrangement did not last long. The younger Antipater, governor of Idumæa, and himself an Idumæan, saw clearly that he could do better for himself under the weakling Hyrcanus than under the warlike Aristobulus. Taking Hyrcanus’ side, he persuaded him that his life was in danger, and that he must flee to the Nabatæan prince Aretas III. This he did, and Aretas took the field against Jerusalem to redress his wrongs. Aristobulus defended himself in the temple, and the siege promised to be a long one, when Pompey, who was then in Asia, sent his legate Scaurus into Syria (65 B.C.), who at first decided for Aristobulus. In the spring of 63 B.C. Pompey himself appeared, and finally decided for Hyrcanus, who was therefore again installed as high priest. Aristobulus was arrested; his adherents defended themselves in the temple, which was at length captured by the Romans. The Asmonæan monarchy was at an end. All the succeeding high priests were vassals of the Romans.

ROMAN RULE; DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM

Judea now became a subdivision of the Roman province of Syria. The religious institutions, however, which antedated the Maccabæan rising still continued; liberty of worship was guaranteed by Pompey. But so strong was the attachment of the people to the Asmonæan family that a succession of revolts broke out. Meantime, the power of Antipater went on increasing; Hyrcanus was too weak to oppose him; from Rome, too, he received signal marks of favour, being even made governor of Judea. A rival, however, gained over the cupbearer of Hyrcanus, who put Antipater to death by poison as he was one day dining with Hyrcanus (43 B.C.).

Thus Antipater had fallen, but the power of his family was not diminished thereby. One of his sons, Herod, had already shown his energy as governor of Galilee; he now displayed his craft in adapting himself to the vicissitudes of the supreme Roman power. A closing struggle between Herod and Antigonus—the last representative of the Asmonæan family—terminated in Herod’s favour. Antigonus was beheaded at Antioch by order of Mark Antony, “supposing he could in no other way bend the minds of the Jews so as to receive Herod whom he had made king in his stead” (Josephus).

On the news of the battle of Actium (31 B.C.), Herod lost no time in passing over to the winning side. Though aware of his loyalty to Antony, Octavian confirmed him in his kingship. It is an eternal blot upon Herod’s character that he swept away the last representatives of the Asmonæan family. It is true, he considered this indispensable to the security of his throne. By princely gifts he kept the Romans on his side, though the concessions of Cæsar and the senate were sufficiently justified by the proof of[28] his capacity as a governor. He put down Arabian robbers, created magnificent cities, and helped his people in times of famine. Yet the Jews were never drawn to his person; he was after all only an Edomite, and he curried favour with a heathen power. Herod died 4 B.C. Mommsen, the historian of the Roman Empire, has said that there is no royal house of any age in which such bloody domestic quarrels raged.

His dominions were apportioned among his sons Archelaus, Antipas and Philip. Archelaus became ethnarch of Idumæa, Judea, and Samaria, with the exception of certain cities; Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and Peræa; Philip, tetrarch of Trachonitis, Batanæa, Gaulanitis and Paneas. This arrangement soon came to an end, so far as the government of Archelaus was concerned. He was deposed by Augustus, and his dominions were incorporated in the province of Syria, but specially entrusted to a procurator. The vicissitudes of the other governments we cannot here follow. Herod Agrippa had for a time the realm of his grandfather, but after his death (44 A.D.) the whole of Palestine came under the direct authority of Rome, and was ruled by procurators (Pontius Pilate, 26-36 A.D.) under the supervision of the governor of Syria.

The Jews had wished this, but the oppressiveness of the new rule was powerfully felt. Discontent became rife. At length Gessius Florus disregarded justice to such an extent that war became inevitable. In Jerusalem the war party obtained the predominance. Preparation was made for the defence of the country, which was mapped out into districts, each with its own commander. The man responsible for Galilee was Josephus, a Pharisee, but destined to become a friend of the Romans, and the historian of the war. Nero, when informed of the threatening state of affairs, summoned the general, Vespasian, and entrusted him with the conduct of the war against the revolters. Vespasian’s son, Titus, brought two legions from Alexandria; he himself proceeded to Antioch, and took command of another legion together with auxiliary troops. The scene of war was at first in Galilee.

The Jews met with great misfortunes, but this only intensified the fanatical excitement of the party of zealots, which obtained the upper hand in Jerusalem. Vespasian adopted a waiting attitude, and was at length precluded from taking a decisive step by grave news from Rome. Vitellius had followed Otho as emperor, but the legions in the East disapproved, and in July, 67, Vespasian was acclaimed emperor. He hastened to Rome, leaving the siege of Jerusalem to his son Titus. For two years party strife had raged in the city. The priestly aristocrats were accused of treachery; the zealots were too obviously careful for nothing but the intoxication of an otherworldly enthusiasm.

Many false prophets arose and led many astray, as an apocalyptic passage in the Gospel says; Josephus asserts that they were suborned by the tyrants (i.e. by the dominant faction) to keep the people from deserting. At length the end came. The city and temple were destroyed. The golden altar of incense, the golden candlestick and the Book of the Law were taken to Rome and exhibited to the populace in the triumph of Vespasian and Titus.

Still, though the temple was destroyed, the Jewish religion remained, and the wonder is that the Pharisees and teachers of the Law should have been able so skilfully to adjust the religious and social systems to the altered circumstances. Could the Jews have put aside the hope of a sudden divine intervention, and devoted themselves to the task of witnessing for righteousness within the wide limits of the Roman world, the Jewish people would[29] yet have recovered from even such a great humiliation. But the transcendentalism which pervades so much of the later Jewish literature was too deeply seated to be expelled from the national mind. And the command of the emperor Hadrian that Jerusalem should be rebuilt as a Roman colony, was the spark which rekindled the flame of revolt.

Again the Jews in Palestine flew to arms with the sympathy of the entire Jewish world. Their leader was a certain Simon, surnamed Bar Kosiba, or Bar Kocheba, who claimed to be the Messiah, and was recognised as such even by Rabbi Alciba. His coins bear the legend “Simon, Prince of Israel.” He actually succeeded in “liberating” Jerusalem; the sacrificial system, too, was probably restored. Julius Severus had to be brought from Britain to crush the rebellion. The closing struggle took place at Bether, now Bittir, to the southwest of Jerusalem. After a heroic resistance the fortress was taken, Bar Kocheba having been already slain. The war had probably lasted three and a half years (132-135 A.D.).

The history of the expansion of Judaism from a national to a universal religion has too many lacunæ for us to attempt it here. We have but given the outward history of the people which was the appointed bearer of the monotheistic idea. These facts are themselves highly significant. They show the wonderful receptivity of the Jewish race; they also show that there was, at least, in certain heroes of the race, a moral enthusiasm which converted all experiences, as well as all intellectual acquisitions, into the basis of an ever higher and nobler faith in God. The evolution, however, of pure spiritual religion was far from complete when the old Jerusalem passed away forever, and the name of Israel had become little more than a rhetorical archaism.

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[30]

HEBREW HISTORY IN OUTLINE

A PRELIMINARY SURVEY COMPRISING A CURSORY VIEW OF THE SOURCES OF HEBREW HISTORY, THE SWEEP OF EVENTS, AND A TABLE OF CHRONOLOGY

The modern historian knows as little of the origin of the Hebrews as he knows of the beginnings of the racial history of any other nation. The Hebrew traditions, according to which the race originated in Chaldea, and migrated thence under Father Abraham, are familiar to every one through the Bible records. There is no reason to doubt that here, as elsewhere, the national tradition represents at least a general outline of the historical truth. But the scientific historian of to-day looks askance at all unverified traditions of antiquity, and it is becoming more and more common to begin the history of Israel with the Egyptian sojourn, or at least to treat the prior history of the race as merely traditional.

There are ethnologists, indeed, who regard the Hebrews as primarily of Egyptian origin; but such a theory is only tenable on the assumption that the entire Semitic race came originally from the valley of the Nile. For it is not at all in question that the Hebrews were closely related ethnically to the Semitic races of Mesopotamia. Whatever the ultimate origin of the Semites, it need not be doubted that the Hebrews were the offshoot of that portion of the race which had settled at an early day in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates. It must be admitted, however, that the present day historian has no such tangible records of the pre-Egyptian history of the Hebrews as have been discovered for the early period of Babylonian history.

Even as regards the Egyptian sojourn of the Hebrews, our records are by no means so secure as could be wished. Despite patient searching, the monuments of Egypt fail to reveal any traces of the Jewish captivity. A few years ago it was thought that a monument discovered by Professor Flinders Petrie, in the tomb of Meneptah at Thebes, had at last furnished the long looked for mention of the people of Israel. As Meneptah, the son and successor of Ramses II, was believed to be the Pharaoh of the Exodus, this inscription naturally excited the widest curiosity and the most eager expectations. But when fully elucidated, the record was found to contain merely a somewhat doubtful reference to the Hebrews as a people existing at the time of Meneptah, throwing no light whatever on the vexed question of the Exodus. No other reference to the people of Israel has been found in the Egyptian records. Of course, such a record may exist as yet undiscovered; but as the task of searching the Egyptian monuments goes on, this becomes increasingly improbable. It would appear that national egoism,[31] which is the birthright of every people, gave to the Egyptian sojourn an importance in the eyes of the Hebrews themselves, which it did not possess for their captors. There is little reason, therefore, to suppose that the Hebrews made any important impression on the course of Egyptian history.

It is quite otherwise, however, when we consider the probable influence of the Egyptian residence upon the Hebrews themselves. What they may have been, before going to Egypt, is only inferential; but there is no reason to suppose that they were other than an uncultivated, partially civilised, nomadic race. The contact with the high civilisation of the Egyptians may have had upon them some such effect as the contact with the Romans had in later times upon the barbaric German hordes. In any event it is notable that the Hebrews after their migration, and throughout the period of their subsequent history, were firmly imbued with some essentially Egyptian ideas. They alone, of ancient people other than the Egyptians, practised a circumcision. It is at least an open question whether the Hebrew belief in the immortality of the soul was not gained through contact with the people of the Nile. This entire subject, however, is too new and too deeply hedged in by prejudice and preconception, to be susceptible of full and satisfactory handling at the present time. Fortunately, the main facts of Hebrew political history may be discussed with greater certitude.

After leaving Egypt, the Hebrews settled in the region of the Jordan, and entered upon a localised national existence. But for several centuries they made too small a mark to be remembered otherwise than by vague tradition; and even at their best, they cut no very large figure in the scheme of political news in the ancient world. There was but one period when they attempted, with any measure of success, to rival their powerful neighbours. This was the brief period when David and his son Solomon occupied the throne. The wars of David, if not so extensive as those of some of his contemporaries, have left no less sanguinary records of pillage and plunder than the records of other oriental conquests; and Solomon, under whose government the kingdom reached its apex of political glory, so far succeeded in vying with other kings, that his name became a byword of magnificence to later generations, though it probably did not dazzle his contemporaries. If the national tendency toward exaggeration has not played false to the facts, Solomon established a record, in one regard at least, that has not been equalled to this day: his harem of a thousand wives and concubines has no historical counterpart.

Yet after all the Hebrew monarchy, in its golden age, must have seemed a petty state as viewed from the contemporary standpoint of the Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and, perhaps, even the Hittites. The absence of contemporary references is sufficient evidence of this fact. And after the death of Solomon almost every vestige of world-historical importance vanished from the divided Hebrew nation. The weak and senescent people, whose whole time of glory had compassed but two brief generations, was from this time on to struggle for national existence, with no thought of conquest; it asked only that it might be allowed to live. And this boon was vouchsafed, despite vicissitudes of fortune that would have pressed out the very life of almost any other nation.

The Assyrians and the Babylonians repeatedly put the Israelites to the sword; yet that conquered people maintained its integrity long after these persecutors had ceased to have national existence. In one sense, this time of decline had greater importance than any other period that preceded it, because its vicissitudes gave rise to that impassioned poetry of denunciation[32] which remained, and will always remain, the chief glory of Hebrew history. Thanks largely to this poetry, the Hebrews first began to have a truly world-historical importance some centuries after the Romans effected their final dispersion. All through their life as an autonomist nation they vainly strove to vie with their neighbours in royal power, looking out upon other peoples jealously, and accepting their own insignificance with angry protest. Yet by a strange irony of fortune the despised Hebrew was to be chiefly responsible for preserving the memory of his more glorious contemporaries. For two thousand years the swords of the Assyrians and Babylonians were remembered chiefly because the stylus of the Hebrew scribe had told of their prowess.

OUR SOURCES

A little over half a century ago James Ferguson, the historian of architecture, commented on the lack of Hebrew records as follows:

“It is one of the peculiarities of the Jewish history, and certainly not one of the least singular, that all we know of them is derived from their written books. Not one monument, not one sculptured stone, not one letter of an inscription, not even a potsherd, remains to witness by a material fact the existence of the Jewish kingdom. No museum ever possessed a Jewish antiquity, while Egypt, Assyria, Greece, and all the surrounding countries teem with material evidence of former greatness, and of the people that once inhabited them.”

Half a century of investigation has altered somewhat the aspect of Hebrew archæology. It is no longer quite true that there are no Hebrew antiquities in any museum. But the number of these antiquities is so small, and their importance so slight from an historical standpoint, that Ferguson’s criticism remains true in spirit if not in letter. The most patient researches in Palestine, beginning with the famous tour of Ernest Renan, have failed to bring to light more than two or three Hebrew inscriptions, as against the tens of thousands of records from Mesopotamia. Nor is it at all probable that any startling finds will ever be excavated. In all probability the ancient records of the Hebrews have almost utterly perished, whereas in Mesopotamia there are doubtless myriads of inscribed tablets to reward the future searcher. In Palestine it is almost certain there are no such stores of buried treasure undiscovered. Nor is the reason for this paucity of antiquities hard to find. The explanation is found in the seemingly paradoxical fact that the cities of the Israelites were not destroyed in ancient times, and continued to be inhabited far into the Middle Ages, or, as in the case of Jerusalem, until the present day. It will be recalled that the Babylonian and Assyrian tablets were preserved beneath the ruins of destroyed cities, and the most important collections have come from Nineveh, the city that was overthrown in the most cataclysmic manner. It requires but a moment’s consideration to make it clear that all of the tablets that were preserved beneath the ruins of Nineveh would long since have been scattered or broken had they continued to be accessible to successive generations of that destructive animal, man. Making the application to the case of the Hebrews it is clear that their antiquities were in fact scattered and destroyed in the course of time as those of Nineveh would have been under those circumstances.

It should be added, however, that it is doubtful whether the Hebrews produced inscriptions on relatively imperishable materials in such relative[33] abundance as did the Mesopotamians. The Hebrews came upon the historical field at a comparatively late day. It has been doubted whether any of their records were written much before the eighth or ninth century B.C.; and it is probable that they largely employed such perishable materials as the papyrus and animal skins to receive their writings. Doubtless the clay tablet of Babylonia was well known to them; indeed, they cannot have failed to be familiar with this document through the experiences of the Babylonian captivity. But it does not follow that they largely adopted the customs of their Mesopotamian cousins. There is, then, perhaps, a double reason for the paucity of ancient Hebrew inscriptions: the destructive agency of time acting upon a supply which was relatively meagre in the beginning.

All this applies to original inscriptions comparable to those which have come down to us from Egypt and Mesopotamia. But as every one knows, the story is quite different when we consider the Hebrew records that have come down to us through the efforts of successive generations of copyists. Here again we find that the case of the Israelites is sharply contrasted with that of the Assyrio-Babylonians. The records of the latter, produced in such abundance, and preserved by burial, were soon forgotten, because no lineal descendants of the people who made them were at hand to interest themselves in their preservation. The Hebrew records were passed down from one generation to another through a never ending series of copies: so that, curiously enough, the same agency which resulted in the destruction of the original documents themselves effected at the same time a permanent preservation of their contents. Thus it has happened that the oriental nation which has left us the fewest antiquities has sent down to us the most voluminous and complete literature.

It is to this literature of the Hebrews themselves that we must chiefly look for the history of that people. Contemporary nations paid but little attention to the Israelites, and the historians of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome have left us only random references, which in the aggregate suffice to give only the barest glimpses of Hebrew history. Aside from the Bible, including the apocryphal books, the only considerable texts that have come down to us, even from classical times, is the work of Josephus; and that author, it will be recalled, was himself a Jew, though he wrote in the Greek language. But for that matter the oldest existing texts of the Bible itself are also in the Greek language. No Hebrew text is known from earlier than the ninth century A.D.; whereas three reasonably complete Greek codices date from the fourth century A.D.

The authenticity of the various texts of the Hebrew writings need not be discussed here. It is estimated that the various manuscripts in the Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and other languages that are to-day preserved, present, when their texts are critically compared, about one hundred and fifty thousand discrepancies. Under these circumstances there must obviously be certain doubts about the exact reading of many texts; but it is held that the discrepancies as a whole are of minor importance; and doubtless in most instances it may safely be assumed that such is the case. In the main, the chief substance of the original text has probably been preserved, even where details have been consciously or unconsciously altered.

As to the reliability of the original records thus preserved, opinions differ widely. It seems to be generally conceded that the Hebrews were somewhat lacking in the true historical sense, being in this regard comparable rather to the Egyptians, than to their relatives the Babylonians.[34] But on the other hand, what has already been said about the general reliability of national traditions may be applied with full force here. The most sceptical historian will hardly deny that in their broad outlines the books of the Old Testament give expression to the actual facts of Hebrew history, however prejudiced the point of view, and however lacking the sense of chronology. In any event, whatever doubt may be cast upon the authenticity of any particular Bible record, the fact remains that, generally speaking, the Bible records as a whole constitute practically our sole source for ancient Hebrew history. As has been said, the references made here and there by other nations, by which the Bible records may be checked, have abundant interest, but can hardly be said to be truly consequential. There is, indeed, but a single inscription known to us in the original which makes direct reference to a specific event mentioned in the Bible. This unique monument is the famous Moabite stone, which bears an inscription in which King Mesha refers to an encounter with the Hebrews, which is told of from the other standpoint in the Bible reference. For all practical purposes, then, it is to the Bible alone that the historian must turn in attempting to reconstruct the history of Israel. No one need be reminded with what zeal this source has been investigated.

The attitude of the modern critic towards the Hebrew texts has changed very radically within the past few generations. As long ago as the year 1753 Dr. Astruc, court physician to Louis XV, pointed out that the earlier books of the Old Testament were not homogeneous. The suggestion was at that time regarded as most iconoclastic, and it had little influence. But in the nineteenth century a new school of scientific criticism arose which went back virtually to the position of Dr. Astruc, then forged ahead to still more iconoclastic conclusions. It was pointed out that two different sources had been used in the compilation of the first two chapters of Genesis. A further analysis placed the heterogeneous nature of the Pentateuch, or as one school of critics would prefer, the Hexateuch, seemingly beyond question. The upshot of the matter, so far as this can be phrased in a few words, is that many books of the Old Testament, once regarded as of undisputed authorship, are now considered by the dominant school of critics to be anonymous. Indeed, this remark applies, according to Professor Ewald, to the narrative books of the Old Testament without exception. Ewald’s views on the subject are worth quoting in extenso as showing the opinion of a recognised leader of this new school of criticism.

“There is one general token by which, in spite of its apparent insignificance, we can at once recognise with tolerable certainty the whole distinctive character of Hebrew historiography in relation to a special science of history. This token is the anonymous character of the historical books.

[35]

“The historian did not mention himself as the author nor do the readers make much inquiry after his name; this custom is persistent throughout and was only gradually changed in the last centuries, as may be concluded from the book of Ezra and Nehemiah, and from the Chronicles which question more particularly as to the names of the authors of more ancient histories. Moreover, it is only in these last days of the ancient people that names like ‘Book of Moses’ or ‘Books of Samuel’ appear, as will be shown presently. We must say that the practice of writing anonymously was established for the historical works from the very first, and that in the most flourishing times of historiography it was retained unaltered; it was just this that constituted the fundamental distinction between the writing of Hebrew history and that of both Greek and Arab (especially Mohammedan), and here was a failing from which it never properly freed itself even in later times. Much as, amongst the Indians, little inquiry has from ancient times been made concerning the author of a Purana, and the individual himself did not usually mention his own name.”

This estimate may doubtless be regarded as fairly representative of the opinions of such modern authorities as Wellhausen, Stade, Kittel, and Cheyne. It would be far afield from the present purpose to enter into a discussion of this subject in detail. Needless to say, there is scarcely any other topic that has excited more general interest or more acrimonious controversy. But for the purposes of the general historian it suffices to know that the historical writings of the Hebrews are now subjected to the same kind of analysis that is applied to the other writings of antiquity, and that, making the usual allowances for the ambiguities of an unscientific age, for the national prejudice of a peculiarly stubborn and egotistical people, and for the chronological inaccuracies of a race somewhat deficient in the historical sense, the Hebrew writings, like the writings of the old Greek historians, may be said to have stood fairly well the test of modern criticism.

Overlooking, for the present purpose, the traditional early wanderings of the race, the history of Israel as a nation properly begins with the occupation of the land of Canaan. The tribes practically occupy the territories subsequently called after them, and become consolidated into a nation. But the Philistines and Phœnicians still hold the coast land, and the Canaanites some of their central strongholds.

THE AGE OF THE JUDGES (1180-1020 B.C.)

THE DIVIDED KINGDOM

Judah (930-586 B.C.) (Judah and Benjamin)		Israel (930-722 B.C.) (The Ten Northern Tribes)
930	Rehoboam attempts to win back the ten tribes; finally prevented by the prophet Shemaiah.	930	Jeroboam I becomes leader of a democratic movement looking to the abolishment of the elective monarchy. Makes Dan and Bethel the chief centres of religion, where Yahveh is worshipped in the form of a bull. A new non-Levitical priesthood started. Ahijah, the prophet, denounces these reactionary measures.
925	Invasion of Judah by Shashanq I of Egypt.
	Capture and sack of Jerusalem.
920	Abijam, king of Judah.
917	Asa, king of Judah. Wars with Israel continue. Asa allies himself with Ben-Hadad I of Damascus.	917	Nadab succeeds his father, is murdered after two years by
		915	Baasha, a captain of the army, while besieging Gibbethon. Baasha makes himself king, and is denounced by the prophet Jehu. Ben-Hadad invades Israel.
		892	Elah, Baasha’s son succeeds him, and is slain in conspiracy by
		890	Zimri, one of his officers, who, usurping the throne for seven days, is killed by
			Omri, the commander of the Israelites, who takes the throne after slaying another pretender, Tibni. The capital of the kingdom is transferred from Sechem to Samaria, built by Omri. He founds the first secure dynasty in Israel—makes the Moabites pay tribute, but is hard pressed by the growing power of Damascus.
874	Jehoshaphat, king of Israel. Alliance of Judah and Israel through marriage of Jehoram and Athaliah, daughter of Ahab.	875	Ahab, king of Israel. Defeats the Syrians twice, and then, to the offence of the prophets, allies himself with them, probably to resist Assyria.[38]
		854	Shalmaneser II of Assyria invades Syria, and defeats Israelites and Syrians at Qarqar. The alliance comes to an end, and Ahab is killed the following year in attempting to recover Ramoth-gilead from Ben-Hadad. Ahab marries Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal of Tyre, and the worship of Baal is instituted at Tyre. The prophet Elijah vigorously denounces this course. Contest between Baal and Yahveh, after which the latter is rehabilitated. Elijah flees.
		853	Ahaziah, king of Israel. Elijah rebukes him for calling on Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron.
		851	Jehoram succeeds his brother with help of Jehoshaphat. Attempts to recover allegiance of Moabites, but fails.
849	Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat, succeeds his father. Athaliah attempts to introduce the heathenism and profligacy of Israel into Judah. The Edomites successfully revolt. The Philistines invade and pillage Jerusalem.		Elisha, servant and successor of Elijah, comes into prominence, and makes fierce war upon Baal worship, and in the course of this anoints Jehu, an officer of the army, king. Jehu in revolt at once attacks Jehoram and Ahaziah, who are visiting him, and slays them both.
844	Ahaziah succeeds his father. Is killed by Jehu.	843	Jehu. Roots out Baal worship by fire and sword. The house of Omri is entirely exterminated. Comes to terms and pays tribute to Shalmaneser II, to protect his kingdom from Syria.
842	Athaliah usurps throne. Kills all the royal house except Joash, who is concealed by the high priest Jehoiada. The cult of Baal established in Jerusalem.
836	Jehoiada organises an insurrection. Athaliah is murdered and Joash made king. Reaction against Baal worship, although the cult still continues. Prophecies of Zechariah. Hazael of Damascus invades Judah.
		815	Jehoahaz, Jehu’s son, succeeds him. Ben-Hadad III of Damascus besieges Samaria, but withdraws on approach of Assyrian army.
[39]		802	Jehoash. Defeats Syrians and recovers lost cities. Israel delivered from the Syrian yoke. Death of Elisha. Defeat and capture of Amaziah at Beth-shemesh. Enters Jerusalem.
797	Amaziah. The Edomites defeated in the valley of Salt. Declares war upon Israel and is badly defeated. Assassinated at Lachish in a conspiracy.
		782	Jeroboam II, his son, succeeds. Recovers all of lost territory from Syria, reduced to impotency by Assyria, and Israel extends once more from “the entering in of Hamath unto the sea of the Arabah.”
778	Azariah (Uzziah). Builds harbour of Elath. Era of commercial prosperity. Kingdom made secure against the Philistines. Uzziah dies a leper.		An era of peace and prosperity begins, although the attitude of Assyria is threatening.
			Prophecies of Amos and Hosea. They denounce the corruption and heathenism of the people, and predict the fall of the kingdom.
		741	Zechariah, king of Israel.
740	Jotham, his son, becomes king, after a short regency.	740	Shallum, a conspirator, murders the king and takes the throne.
		738	Menahem, a soldier, kills and replaces Shallum. Levies an immense tax to purchase Tiglathpileser III’s support to his claim on the throne.
		737	Pekahiah, his son, succeeds.
736	Ahaz, a man of weak character, succeeds his father. In spite of the prophet Isaiah’s warnings, calls upon Tiglathpileser III to help resist Pekah and Rezin. Religion is in a state of corrupt decay. Prophecies of Isaiah and Micah. Isaiah preaches against the consequences of the Assyrian alliance to the nation and religion of Judah, and advises a policy of quietness; Micah against the condition of the poor.	736	Pekah, an officer at the head of a military plot, slays the king and seizes the throne. Allies himself with Rezin of Damascus to attack Judah.
		734	Hoshea, supported by Tiglathpileser, slays Pekah, and becomes an Assyrian vassal.
727	Hezekiah. Carries out moderate religious reforms in early years of reign. The religion centralised at Jerusalem. Many administrative improvements in the kingdom.
		725	Hoshea, on Shabak’s advice, withholds tribute from Shalmaneser IV, who at once lays siege to Samaria.
		722	Capture of Samaria by Shalmaneser’s successor Sargon II. The population is deported beyond the Euphrates, and replaced by Assyrio-Babylonian settlers. Absorption of the northern kingdom by Assyria.

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CHAPTER I. LAND AND PEOPLE

It is difficult nowadays to realise how unimportant the people of Israel seemed in their own time, as viewed by contemporaries. Thanks to their traditions, which the Western world accepted almost unchallenged for many centuries, the Hebrews came to be thought of as occupying a central position in the Oriental world. In point of fact they had no such position. They were quite overshadowed by numerous competitors. Except for a brief period under David and Solomon, they were never a conquering people, or of political consequence. They could not compete in culture with the Egyptians on the one hand, or with the Assyrians on the other. They were not great traders like their neighbours, the Phœnicians. We shall see that they even turned to the latter for aid in building their famous temple which, after all, as it appears, was but an insignificant structure compared with the great pyramids and temples of their neighbours.

Nevertheless, the importance which the Hebrews attained in the eyes of subsequent generations through their literature, gives them a world-historical status fully on a plane with that of any other oriental nation. The smallness of the land, and the relative feebleness of the people, only serve to emphasise the contrast between material prosperity and possible intellectual influence. It is curious, however, looking back from a modern standpoint, to realise how little influence the Hebrews had in their own day. One can never escape this thought; it returns to one constantly as one scans the history of the inhabitants of the tiny land of Palestine.

We have already seen that the Hebrews were a Semitic race, closely allied to the Mesopotamians. We shall come across many Semitic traits in dealing with the Israelites, that are familiar through our studies of the Babylonians and Assyrians. Despite the contention of some modern ethnologists, most readers will probably feel that the Semite was a peculiarly cruel and relentless victor when fortune favoured his arms; but it must be admitted that he was a stubborn, heroic sufferer under reverses. The persistence of the Hebrew race, scarcely modified to the present day—the most extraordinary case of racial preservation in all history—may be traced directly to the dominant ideas which the people entertained from the earliest times, and which they never relinquished.

A word should be said as to the names “Hebrew,” “Israelite,” and “Jew,” which are so often used synonymously. Etymologically, a Hebrew is a descendant of Heber, a great grandson of Shem; an Israelite is a descendant of Israel, a name given to Jacob after he had proved himself what the name implies, a “warrior of God”; while a Jew is a descendant of[46] the kingdom of Judah. The fact that the northern branch of the divided kingdom took the specific name of Israel, in contradistinction to the kingdom of Judah, has led to the restricted application of the name Israel. Nevertheless, it is customary to apply the word in its wider or original sense, and the more recent historians generally make the name “Israelite” synonymous with “Hebrew,” as applying to the entire race from earliest times. It is customary, however, for careful writers to use the name “Jew” only in reference to the later period of racial history, as it was the descendants of the kingdom of Judah alone that maintained racial existence after the Babylonian captivity.a

THE LAND

Palestine is the southern portion of Syria. It extends from Mount Hermon to the desert of Arabia Petræa, between the thirty-first and thirty-second degree north latitude. The inhabitants of the country called it Canaan, and its borders are thus defined in the Book of Genesis: “The border of the Canaanites was from Sidon as thou camest to Gerar, unto Gaza; as thou goest unto Sodom, and Gomorrah, and Admah, and Zeboim, even unto Lasha.” Its eastern boundary, of which Genesis makes no mention, was probably the Jordan. To the seacoast the Greeks gave the name of Phœnicia; as for that of Palestine, it originally denoted only the southwestern part, which was inhabited by the Pelesheth or Philistines. After the Hebrew conquest, the country of Canaan, now become the land of Israel, stretched beyond the right bank of Jordan towards the desert. After the division of the Israelite tribes into two kingdoms, the southern portion, west of the Dead Sea, became the land of Judah, whence comes the name of Judea. Under the Maccabees, the name of Judea included the whole region which, in earlier days, had been the land of Israel. The Romans divided the country into four provinces; the first three, on the western bank of Jordan, being—Galilee, in the north, next Samaria, and then Judea; the fourth, Peræa, was on the eastern bank. This division corresponds roughly with the character of the country; and is that which we meet with in Greek and Latin authors, in the New Testament, and in the Fathers of the Church.

Two ranges of mountains, with the Jordan flowing between, traverse Palestine from north to south and connect Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon with Horeb and Sinai. They are intersected by valleys and plains, and the principal peaks bear names hallowed by historical associations or mythological traditions. The most famous are the hills about Jerusalem—Zion, Moriah, and the Mount of Olives. Proceeding northwards, we come to Mount Gerizim, where stood a rival sanctuary to that at Jerusalem; Carmel, the abode of Elijah the prophet; Tabor, where St. Jerome places the scene of the Transfiguration; and, east of Jordan, to Mount Nebo, whence Moses viewed the Promised Land before he died. To the north the mountains are clothed with trees and vegetation; to the south, in Judea proper, they are barren rocks; even the plains on the shore of the Dead Sea are untilled and waste. The contrast becomes even more marked when we pass beyond the borders of Palestine; to the south, rugged Idumæa, the country of Job, and beyond it the sandy deserts where reigns the burning simoon, the wrath whereof is a devouring fire; and the holy mountain of Sinai, where the One God revealed himself in tempest and lightnings. To the north, the deep gorges of Lebanon, whence spring the sources of the Jordan; and those gardens of God, the hollow of Syria and the plain of Damascus; and[47] the snowy peaks of Mount Hermon, whence the sons of God came down to join themselves, under the shade of the great cedars, with the daughters of men. After the lapse of many centuries, this marriage of heaven and earth was destined to be renewed in a chaster form, and Eden and Galilee to see bloom, like a lily under green palm trees, the new Eve, the Virgin who should bear a God.

The Jordan first traverses a small lake, which is almost dry in summer, and then flows into the lake of Gennesareth or Tiberias, also called the Sea of Galilee, and famous in Christian tradition. The shape of this lake is an irregular oval, twenty kilometres in length by about nine in breadth. The water is fresh and fit for drinking, but the volcanic nature of the soil is indicated by springs of hot water in the vicinity, and by the basaltic rocks that cover its shores. Its level is two hundred and thirty metres below that of the sea. This low level has been found constant throughout the whole valley of the Jordan, which, leaving the lake of Gennesareth, continues its course southwards, and, at a distance of twenty-five leagues from it, falls into the Dead Sea. The mouth is four hundred metres below the level of the Mediterranean. The Dead Sea, also called Lake Asphaltites, because of the bitumen which floats upon its surface, is a lake with no outlet, and loses by evaporation about the same amount of water that it receives from the Jordan and its other affluents. It is sixty-four kilometres in length, its breadth varies from eight to thirteen kilometres, its greatest depth is about four hundred metres. Its basin is the bottom of the great valley which extends from Mount Hermon to the Gulf of Akabah on the Red Sea. This basin is in all likelihood due to the giving way of a vast crater formed by the great volcanic eruption which swallowed up the cities of Pentapolis. Genesis has preserved the memory of this cataclysm, which it calls a rain of fire and brimstone. In the neighbourhood we find deposits of lava, pumice-stone, sulphur, and bitumen. The saltness and causticity of the water of the Dead Sea explain why no fish nor any sort of animal can live in it; it contains twenty-four to twenty-six and a quarter per cent. of saline matter, in place of the four per cent. of other seas. Its specific gravity is greater by a fifth than that of the water of the ocean, and it is consequently impossible to drown in it. The saline concretions met with in such regions as this may have given rise to the fable of Lot’s wife, who was changed into a pillar of salt.

The sacred writers frequently extol the fertility of Palestine, “a country of wheat, of barley, of vines, of fig trees, and pomegranate trees, a country of olive trees, of oil, and of honey.” It is true that the soil about Jerusalem is barren and stony, a fact which caused Strabo to say that the people led by Moses had had no trouble in conquering a country that did not deserve to be defended; but the whole of Palestine is not like the environs of Jerusalem. Latin authors confirm the testimony of the Bible as to the fertility of Judea. “The soil,” says Tacitus, “yields in abundance the products of our country, and balm and the palm tree beside.” According to Justin, the balm of Judea, which was grown chiefly in the plain of Jericho, was the principal source of the wealth of the country. Ammianus Marcellinus speaks in the same way of the rich husbandry of Palestine. To this day, in spite of Turkish misgovernment and Arab raids, it retains—in the north more especially—many traces of its ancient fertility. The valley of Jordan is rich in pastures. The olives of Palestine are said to be preferable to those of Provence. Judea itself, though on the whole barren, has some districts which yield good harvests, and, above all, excellent wine. But the scourge of the country, according to the Turks and Arabs, is locusts.[48] “The number of these insects,” says Volney, “is incredible to any one who has not seen it with his own eyes: the ground is covered with them for the space of several leagues. The noise they make, browsing on the trees and herbs, can be heard from afar, like an army pillaging by stealth. It is better to have to do with Tartars than with these destructive little creatures, it is as though fire followed in their wake. Wherever their legions repair, verdure disappears from the land like a curtain rolled up; trees and plants, stripped of their leaves and reduced to mere branches and stalks, make the hideous aspect of winter succeed, in the twinkling of an eye, to the bounteous scenes of spring. When these clouds of locusts rise on the wing, to surmount some obstacle or to cross some desert place more rapidly, it is literally true to say that they darken the sky.”b

THE PEOPLE

The inhabitants of the country just described have each and all (with exceptions so small as to count for nothing in the mass) belonged to a race which we are in the habit of calling “Semitic,” or the “nations of the Semitic tongue.” The term has been so much abused, in scientific works no less than in public life, that we must first determine its real significance. The name of “Semite” is derived from “Shem,” who appears in the tenth chapter of Genesis (in the language of the genealogising historiographer) as the ancestor of the Hebrews and a number of neighbouring tribes.

Because most of the nations whose descent is traced from Shem, in Genesis x., speak languages alike in structure and entirely different from other languages, we have accustomed ourselves, ever since the days of Eichhorn, to call these nations and languages Semitic. And because peoples who speak analogous languages are always, to a certain extent, connected by similarity of descent, and consequently, by physical and mental resemblances, we likewise speak of a Semitic race. Under this heading we class all the nations that speak languages of the Hebrew type, and these are the Aramæans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Canaanites, Phœnicians, Arabs, and a large proportion of the Abyssinians. Hence the phrase Semitic peoples or languages is, like so many that are used in science, merely a conventional term.

As far back as history goes, the inhabitants of Palestine have always been people of Semitic speech, i.e. of a language of the Hebrew type. In the very earliest times to which historical research can give us any clew, the period before the immigration of the Israelites into the land west of Jordan,[49] the population of Palestine varied, exactly as it does now, according to the character of the various parts of the country. Moreover, then as now, the Jordan and the Jordan Valley constituted the main barrier between these Semitic peoples. To the west of Jordan dwells an agricultural population, divided up into numerous small tribes, which we are in the habit of calling Canaanite. The collective term Canaanite had of course been extended from a single district or tribe named Canaan to the whole body of cognate peoples. The inhabitants of the Phœnician maritime cities are of the same race, and so are those of the kingdom of the Hittites, which lies to the north of Palestine.

On the farther side of Jordan, however, dwell Semitic tribes, in many cases still nomadic, speaking the same language as the rest, but inferior to them in civilisation, who are each and all styled “Ibrim” (Hebrews), i.e. “those beyond” or those that dwell beyond Jordan.

But along the southern, no less than on the eastern, frontier of the land west of Jordan, wandered nomadic tribes (intermingled to a great extent with Canaanite and Hebrew tribes), who are classed, according to common opinion, under the general heading of Arab, a view to which the few remains in the shape of proper names which have come down to us, offers no contradiction.

This order of things was disturbed when one of the aforesaid Hebrew tribes began to migrate by degrees into the country west of Jordan, to settle there, and ultimately to take possession of it more and more completely. During the process it mingled freely with the original Canaanite population, whose civilisation it gradually assimilated, while at the same time some other Hebrew and Arabian tribes were merged in it.

The product of this intermixture is the people of Israel. It first came into being by the immigration into the country west of the Jordan, which consequently has a perfect title to pass in legend for the Promised Land. It did not come out of Egypt as an organised nation, and arrive on the west of Jordan after many wanderings to and fro. It was as little a nation of pure blood as any on earth, for it admitted persons of Aramæan and Egyptian descent as well as the Canaanite, Hebrew and Arabic elements already mentioned.

The people of Israel never succeeded in possessing themselves of the whole country west of Jordan. And only on that condition could it have grown into one of the greater nations and established a homogeneous state of commanding importance. Nay, it could not so much as permanently hold its own in its old territory east of Jordan. That would only have been possible if it had been able to occupy the regions northwards from the plain of Megiddo to Lebanon and the opposite districts on the east of Jordan with a dense population of settlers. There no obstacle interferes with intercourse between the two halves of the country. There a compact population could have developed, a unit in customs and interests; and by this means the southern portions of the country, divided by the river Jordan, would have been held together. But in those parts of the country west of the river, which lie to the north of the plain of Megiddo, the Israelite population was never numerous in the days of the kingdom of Israel. It had always a strong intermixture of Canaanite elements which it was unable to assimilate. Hence many of the Israelite families which settled there were early lost to the nation.

But since the people of Israel were not numerically strong enough to win these regions for Israelite nationality, and since a compact body of Israelitish[50] inhabitants existed on the highlands south of the plain of Megiddo to the southern margin of the Dead Sea, and these parts accordingly became the nucleus of the kingdom of Israel; the latter bore the seeds of destruction within itself from the beginning. And there was another factor to add to the difficulties of the situation: before the regions which afterwards formed the nucleus of the Israelite state had passed into the whole possession of the immigrants, before the fusion of Canaanite, Hebrew, and Arabian families with the tribes of Israel was everywhere complete, before, that is, they could contemplate the conquest of the coast, two other claimants of the land west of Jordan appeared on the scene. From the northeast, Aramæan tribes pressed forward as far as Anti-Lebanon, from the southwest came the warlike nation of the Philistines. Like the Israelites, they both amalgamated with the original Canaanite population of the territory they conquered. They, and not the Canaanite population of the coast, were for centuries the real adversaries of the state of Israel. Nay, the nation was first called into being by the danger that menaced it from the Philistines.

Thus the strength of the Israelite nation was exhausted in the struggle for the possession of the land west of Jordan. A people less tenacious, less valiant, less persevering, would never have maintained its national existence so long under the circumstances. By holding its own against Philistines and Aramæans, and succumbing only to the onset of the great Asiatic empires, Israel gave proof of its high capacities in the sphere of politics.

But how did an Israelite state come into being at all under such circumstances? Why did not the Hebrews who migrated to the west of Jordan join themselves to the original Canaanite population which spoke the same language and was ethnologically so closely akin to them? Why did not a Canaanite state arise, seeing that in all points of civilisation the Canaanites were the instructors of the Hebrew immigrants? The answer to this question is to be found in the fact that the immigrant Hebrew clans who gave the first impulse to the creation of the nation of Israel, were prevented from so doing by the difference between their religion and that of the Canaanites. Before their migration across the Jordan they had separated from the rest of the Hebrew tribes and adopted a religion of a far higher type than that of the original Canaanite dwellers west of Jordan. By this means they had already become one people. Concerning the process by which it came to pass we have nothing but myth and legend. But if we compare these with the observations we have been able to make in the case of religion, civilisation, and customs of other Hebrew tribes, we can at all events draw general conclusions as to the course of the movements which led to this result. Let us therefore next consider the relation in which the children of Israel stand to other Hebrew peoples. According to what has been said in the foregoing pages, there are three things which distinguish the children of Israel from the rest of the Hebrews. Firstly, the large intermixture of Canaanite blood—in one, at least, of the latter races there was a larger measure of Arab blood than in the children of Israel. Secondly, their adoption of Canaanite civilisation, and, as a consequence, a more complete transition to agricultural life. Thirdly, the worship of Jehovah as their national god.

Israel represents that section of the Hebrew race which, on the one hand, was most strongly influenced by Canaanite civilisation, and on the other, had advanced farthest in religious development, and was most largely permeated with foreign elements. Generally speaking, the other nations of the same class are of purer Hebrew blood and have remained partly nomadic, and therefore—with the exception of the Moabites—they have remained more[51] barbarous in a lower stage of development. In the earliest times, more particularly, the differences between the Israelites and the Hebrews proper were vague and undefined. Several Hebrew clans found admittance into Judah, a tribe which is not even mentioned among those of Israel in the Song of Deborah, and at that time when Numbers xxv. 1-5 was composed, a licentious worship of Baal of Peor was in vogue in that neighbourhood. But all the Old Testament records prove that the Moabites worshipped one god only, the divinity Chemosh. Hence, since such a narrative as the Yahvistic text is absolutely trustworthy in such matters, we are forced to conclude that it was Chemosh who was thus worshipped in that neighbourhood as the Baal (i.e. Lord) of Peor. The conduct of the Moabite men and women is in no way different from that of Israel of old in the lament of Hosea iv. 13-15. That the Moabites, like the Israelites, gave their god the name of Baal, i.e. Lord, may be deduced from the two Moabite local names of Baal Meon and Bamoth Baal. It is therefore unnecessary to have recourse to the theory that the phrase “Baal Peor” may have been coined by the Israelites.

The language of the Moabites is merely a dialect of that in which the Old Testament scriptures are written, and which we usually call Hebrew, though Israelitish would be the better word. The affinity of the two languages is not only evident from Moabitish proper names that have come down to us; it is raised above the reach of doubt by Mesha’s inscription. From this inscription it is plain that Moabitish presents some points of contact with Arabic, a fact that can be explained by the contiguity of the two languages.

The idea that the Israelites conquered the country north of Arnon as early as the days of Moses must be given up as unhistorical. It is derived from an uncritical application of Numbers ii. From this chapter the inference is usually drawn that an Amorite invasion of Moab had taken place shortly before the time of Moses. They are supposed to have conquered all the northern half of Moab and the farther side of Jordan and then to have been defeated and destroyed by Moses. The groundwork of the passage in Numbers xxi. is a narrative taken from the Elohistic text xxi. 4-9, 12-18, 21-25, 27, 30. According to this, there existed in the time of Moses a kingdom of the Amorites (i.e. Canaanites) under a king named Sihon, to the north of Arnon, between that river and the Jabbok, and bordered on the east by the land of the Ammonites. Verse 26 is warrant that this king Sihon had taken his country from the Moabites. But this verse is an interpolation which interrupts the continuity of vv. 25 and 27, and is intended to bring the view of the Elohistic text into line with that which prevailed elsewhere, and according to which these districts belonged to Moab.

In support of the opinion that this district was invested from the Moabites in the time of Moses, the Elohistic text refers to an ancient song, probably taken from the Book of the Wars of Jehovah. In vv. 27-30 he says, “wherefore they that speak in proverbs say:

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But this song contradicts at all points the statement which the Elohistic text brings it forward to verify. King Sihon, who was conquered according to the song, is rather a king of the Moabites, and his conquerors, who in the introduction are invited to settle in conquered cities, are obviously Israelites, since the invitation comes in an Israelite song. The “Sihon, king of the Amorites” put in brackets above, is proved by its incompatibility with the whole tenor of the song to be a gloss, interpolated for the purpose of bringing it into harmony with the presuppositions of v. 26. The song is a poem, composed on the occasion of such an inroad from the north into Moabite territory north of the Arnon, as the inscription of Mesha describes.

Hence it is out of the question that Israel should have settled in northern Moab after the conquest of an Amorite king, Sihon by name, at a period anterior to the migration into the land west of Jordan. The settlement took place much later, and Sihon, king of the Amorites, whom Moses is supposed to have conquered, came into being by a misinterpretation of the song just quoted.

This same settlement of Israel in the northern half of Moab was temporary only. According to Isaiah xv.-xvi. the whole region north of Arnon, which Numbers xxi. represents to us as having been conquered by Moses and which the Fundamental Writing gives to Reuben, is part of the kingdom of Moab. Jeremiah xlviii. also names the cities north of Arnon as Moabite. Hence, in the region between the northern margin of the Dead Sea and the Arnon, the conflict between the two cognate nations of Moab and Israel surged to and fro for centuries. And probably the immediate object of each was the possession of the walled cities. They must have been held first by one nation and then by the other. The country population may have changed less; it fled before the invading foe and submitted to the victor. A large proportion of it was probably Moabite even while Israel was in temporary possession of the cities. And this was, of course, even more the case when the whole of Moab was tributary to Israel.

All the hatred of Israel for the kindred tribe of Moab that defended its territory and won back their conquests from them finds expression in the legend that Moab and the people of Ammon took their rise from the incestuous intercourse of Lot with his daughters (Genesis xix. 30 seq.). The bias of the whole legend is betrayed by its ignorance of the names of the daughters. It is obviously nothing but a malicious travesty of the view that made the Moabites sons of Lot (Deuteronomy ii., ix., xix.).

The figure of Lot, on the other hand, is not an invention of Jewish legend or an interpretation of some physical phenomena observed on the Dead Sea, but the name of a Hebrew or Moabitish clan. The figure of Lot’s wife (who is also anonymous) alone is a nature-myth. It is the interpretation given to a block of rock-salt, exposed by the action of water, on the shore of the Dead Sea, in which the beholders fancied they saw the figure of a woman, an idea found repeatedly in the legendary lore of the most diverse races. A pillar of salt of this kind is shown at the present day. The ethnological origin of Lot, on the contrary, can be maintained with the more assurance since we meet with the adjective “Lotan,” derived from Lot as the name of an Edomite clan in Genesis xxxvi. 20, 29.

The second Hebrew people with which we have to do, the Bene-Ammon, the sons of Ammon or Ammonites, of whose putative descent from Lot’s younger daughter we have already spoken, seems to have been a genuine desert race. The land east of Jordan being occupied by Moab in the south and Israel in the north, there certainly were but few districts fit for tillage[53] left for them. Nevertheless, attempts were not wanting on their part to gain possession of the east side of Jordan.

The Edomites, the third of these Hebrew peoples, were those with whom Israel came most into contact. The close relations and frequent intermixtures which took place between Edomite and Israelite clans find expression in the legend that makes Esau, the progenitor of the tribe, the brother of Jacob and, like him, the son of Isaac of Beersheba. Esau is really the name of a god, and we meet with it again in Phœnician mythology in its Hellenised form of Usoos. The divine nature of Esau is also betrayed in the fact that in the Elohistic text it is he, while in the Yahvistic text, it is God, who meets Jacob at Penuel (Genesis xxxii. 31, 33, seq.). The name of this divinity was probably in old times the name of the clan that worshipped him. At any rate, we never meet with Esau as the collective name of this people; it is invariably Edom. But Edom itself is the name of a half-forgotten god, as is evident from the proper name Obed-Edom.

The Edomites were no more a nation of pure Hebrew blood than the Israelites. They sprang from the fusion of Hebrew immigrants with the population that already occupied the country, on the one hand, and with Arab tribes, on the other. And these two elements which the Edomite race absorbed must have retained their distinctive character to a comparatively late period, for on no other supposition can we explain the extent and definiteness of the information which has come down to us on the subject. In the west, the Edomites spread from the southern margin of the Dead Sea and from the Nachal ha ’Arabum (Brook of the Arab Bushes, now the Wady Alachsi) to the Gulf of Akabah. In the west and north they forfeited much of their nationality. For at one time they occupied the whole of what was afterwards southern Judah, though intermixed with Arab clans. The Edomites united with Judah later—probably constrained to do so by their geographical situation—and possessed the hegemony in the time of David. The capital of this Edomite district was the ancient city of Hebron.

Its union with Judah was naturally accompanied by a corresponding loss to Edom, which from that time forward passed for less powerful than Israel in those parts, whereas, in earlier times, being united under the rule of kings, it had been superior to the kingless state of Israel, divided up into tribes, each eager in pursuit of its personal ends. The national monarchy of Israel is no sooner consolidated than it is strong enough to subdue Edom.

This is expressed in legend by making Esau the elder brother of Jacob, but only the elder of twins, with whom the younger strives even in the womb and tries to prevent him from being the first to issue forth. Ultimately, Esau is cheated of his birthright by Jacob or sells it to him for a mess of pottage. Edom, on the other hand, always maintained his dominions, although for a while under the suzerainty of Israel or Judah, in the wild and barren mountain tract of Seir, which rises to the south of the mountains of Judah. But this is precisely where the aboriginal inhabitants whom the Edomites had found in possession held their ground longest, protected by the unfertility of their country, which made agriculture impossible and compelled its inhabitants to adopt the rude life of shepherds and hunters.

These aboriginal inhabitants were called Horites, i.e. cave-dwellers. There may have been Horite elements even in the Edomite population of southern Judah, for we still find cave-dwellings at Beit-Jibrin (Bethogabris) and meet with Horite clan-names amongst those of Judah.

It may also be conjectured that a very primitive state of civilisation had survived among them, for a great many of these little clans are called by[54] the names of animals. But neither from this circumstance nor from the form of their names can we deduce any conclusion as to the branch of the Semitic race to which these Horites belonged. For the names of animals are found as tribal names among all Semites, and the form of these names—even supposing it to have been handed down accurately—would allow of their being considered either Hebrew or Arabic.

In the course of Jewish history the vicissitudes of the fortune of the Edomite nation occupy us again and again. Just such a Hebrew tribe, or coalition of Hebrew tribes, as they were, amalgamating with the Semitic population already in possession to form the nations of the Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites, was the stock from which, by amalgamation with Canaanite and other elements, the people of Israel sprang. Israel, Men of Israel, Children of Israel, was in historic times the title of honour which it bestowed upon itself and its members. But even after its migration and settlement in the land west of Jordan, the non-Israelite inhabitants of the country called it by the collective name of the Hebrews, and thus it comes about that to this day it bears that name in the speech of all nations, and its language is spoken of as Hebrew.

What, then, is the origin of the national name of Israel? It must have become the name of the nation in the same way as the names of other nations come into being; by extension from one tribe to the whole body of those who belong to the same national coalition. Accordingly, there must once have been a tribe of Israel which distinguished itself in some way and won fame, and whose name was then assumed by others. Nothing of the sort has ever taken place in historic times. But this fact does not affect the correctness of the conclusion that tribal names are very liable to alteration by the division of old tribes and the rise of new ones. This forgotten tribe of Israel, which gave its name to the whole people, may have its dwelling-place in the land east of Jordan, on both banks of the Jabbok, and at the spot where Mahanaim, a city of the highest importance in the earliest period of the monarchy, was situated. For the memories of Israel that survive in legend centre about the land east of Jordan, Mahanaim, and Penuel more particularly. At Mahanaim Jacob sees the army (machane) of angels; or, according to another etymological legend, he there divides his army into two parts (machanajin); at the Jabbok he wrestles with God, or meets with Esau. There he receives the name of Israel.

The double name of Jacob-Israel may be explained by the identification and amalgamation of two mythological figures revered as eponymous heroes. Israel is attested as such by his wrestling with God. The figure of Jacob, on the other hand, belongs to the west of Jordan. This is proved by the association of his name with Bethel. If Jacob-Israel had been a single figure from the beginning, we should expect to find reminiscences of Israel west of Jordan.

A hypothesis has recently been started to the effect that this tribe of Israel was not Hebrew at all, but Arab, i.e. that it belonged not to the Canaanite group of northern Semites, but to the southern Semitic group.

Two arguments have been advanced in support of this contention with some show of reason. One of these is the borrowing of the religion of Jehovah from the Kenites; the other the name of Israel. But religions are equally likely to pass from one nation to kindred or alien peoples. The determining factor is not the greater or less degree of consanguinity, but the circumstance that they are at the same stage of civilisation. Religion, the most universal of all phenomena common to the human race, has everywhere[55] something of an international character. The second argument is even less to the purpose. It is true that the word Israel is formed like Ishmael, Jerahmeel, Abdeel. But on the other hand we find Jiphtah-el as the name of a valley in northern Palestine, called after some forgotten nation that was certainly Canaanite. Nay, we find identical tribal names among Semitic nations of different descent, e.g. among Edomites, Hebrews, Canaanites and Arabs.

If the clan which bore the name of Israel was Arab by origin, it must have been merged in a Hebrew majority. For the nation of Israel that arose spoke a Hebrew language, that is, one that belonged to the north Semitic group, nay, actually to the Canaanite division of it.

From the foregoing considerations it is clear how the second title of honour, the name of Jacob, must be explained. This, too, was in the first instance the name of a clan and of the eponymous hero from whom it claimed descent. He was worshipped in various places west of Jordan, more particularly at Bethel. But the use of the name Jacob to denote the whole nation of Israel is confined to prophets and poets, no historical document ever applies it to Israel. Possibly the name of Israel had become the name of the nation before the migration west of Jordan. Moreover, we cannot even assert that the figure of Jacob is of necessity Hebrew. It may have been associated with Bethel before the immigration and transmitted to the Hebrews by the original Canaanite inhabitants.

Even before its migration west of Jordan, Israel was distinguished from all other Hebrews by the worship of Jehovah as the national divinity. It is a right instinct, therefore, which makes the rise of Israelite nationality and the rise of the religion of Jehovah coincide in the mythical reminiscences of the people of Israel. Legend alone, and no historic document, records the rise of this worship. But legend, rightly interrogated, gives us hints as to how we should suppose it to have come to pass. And legend connects it with the immigration into the Holy Land and more particularly with the conquest of the land east of Jordan.c

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CHAPTER II. ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY

It is a matter of some delicacy to speak of the origin of the Hebrews. But whatever the historian’s individual bias, he has no resource but to treat the early history of this race exactly as he treats the early history of other races. It has already been pointed out again and again, that history knows nothing of racial beginnings.

We have noted that modern historians are disposed to begin their accounts of the history of the Israelites with the Egyptian sojourn. It is impossible, however, to avoid questioning as to the home of the people prior to that period, and at least a brief reference must be made to the traditional wanderings of the race in the earlier epoch. Whoever is disposed to feel that the modern historian in his iconoclastic treatment of the Hebrew records is passing beyond justifiable bounds, may be reminded that some of the greatest of living scholars are able to separate their ideas as to it into two classes, and to entertain two seemingly antagonistic sets of judgments regarding the entire subject of Hebrew history. As archæologists and historians they study the Hebrew records as human documents, to be judged by ordinary historical standards; while as theologians, they view the same documents through a prism of faith that gives them an altogether altered position. Perhaps this attitude of a certain school cannot be better expressed than in the words of the Rev. A. H. Sayce, Professor of Assyriology at Oxford, who is recognised everywhere as one of the highest authorities on oriental archæology.

In the preface to his Early History of the Hebrews Professor Sayce points out that “There is no infallible history any more than there is infallible philology; and if we are to understand the history of the Hebrews aright, we must deal with it as we should with the history of any other ancient people. The Old Testament writers were human; and in so far as they were historians, their conceptions and manner of writing history were the same as those of their oriental contemporaries. They were not European historians of the nineteenth century, and to treat them as such would be not only to pursue a radically false method, but to falsify the history they have recorded. No human history is, or can be, inerrant, and to claim inerrancy for the history of Israel is to introduce into Christianity the Hindu doctrine of the inerrancy of the Veda. For the historian, at any rate, the questions involved in a theological treatment of the Old Testament do not exist.” But after making these statements, Professor Sayce continues:[57] “The present writer, accordingly, must be understood to speak throughout simply as an archæologist and historian. Theologically he accepts unreservedly whatever doctrine has been laid down by the Church as an article of the faith. But among these doctrines he fails to find any which forbids a free and impartial handling of Old Testament history.”

If so great an authority finds this attitude justifiable, surely it is open to every one to read the history of the Hebrews as interpreted according to modern ideas, and then to apply to it whatever prism of faith may suit his own fancy.a

THE AGE OF THE PATRIARCHS

The age of the patriarchs, according to Max Löhr, belongs to the prehistoric period of Israel, to the childhood of the nation; and nations, in their childhood, are like children, colouring everything with the brilliant hues of their imaginations and transforming the commonplace events of the beginnings of their national existence into marvellous fairy tales, narrating the deeds of the founders of the nation. This is as true of Israel as of other nations; and it is in this light that the modern historian reads the accounts of the patriarchs as recorded in Genesis, almost our only source of information, and endeavours to extract the small kernels of historic truth, which nearly all of them contain, from the surrounding mass of the legendary shells.

Abraham is the central figure in the record of the patriarchs. Some historians would take from him his historical personality. They believe that he was originally a local deity of Hebron, or other place; and that in the course of time he was transformed, through legendary alchemy, into one of the fathers of his race. But the chief value of Abraham’s character is not historical; it is religious. The Old Testament makes him the hero of faith, whose confidence in the goodness and justice of God cannot be shaken. The words of Goethe, in his fourth book of Poetry and Truth, concerning the patriarch can be applied especially to Abraham, and they indicate the source of his lofty religion:

“Their mode of life on the sea, the desert, and the pasture land, gave breadth and freedom to their convictions. The star-sown vault of heaven, under which they lived, ennobled their emotions; they were more than active and skilful hunters, more than industrious home-loving husbandmen; they believed that God was confiding in them, visiting them, taking an interest in them, leading and saving them.”

Even at the beginning, religion was the motive power in the history of Israel. Unshaken faith in God was the characteristic of all the patriarchs; and even if their knowledge of God was crude and imperfect, their faith in him was sublime.

If we consider the patriarchs as nomadic chiefs, at the head of one or more pastoral races, who willingly submitted to the command of men of superior wealth, courage, and energy, then we must look upon the wanderings of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and their successors, as a series of great racial migrations, extending over centuries, and resulting in frequent changes and reorganisations, with its final culmination into the historic nation of Israel.c

EARLY MOVEMENTS OF THE ISRAELITES

The eminent historian, Bernhard Stade, takes a view of Israelitish traditions far less confiding than that of Max Löhr. According to the oldest tradition, he says, the people of Israel came from northern Mesopotamia; and Kharran (Haran), the city of Nachor (the Carrhæ of the Greeks[58] and Romans on the south of the Armenian Mountains), was, according to the Yahvist and Elohist texts, the home of Abraham. Also Jacob’s two wives, Leah and Rachel, i.e. the Hebraic families of those names which early became extinct, came out of Kharran. There seems accordingly to have been an old tradition that certain Hebraic clans migrated from those districts to Palestine. Moreover, one can suppose that they there found family connections with whom they amalgamated; and this would be the interpretation of the marriage of Jacob with Leah and Rachel.

This tradition would not be at all incredible in itself, but another reason also can be cited for the emigration of Hebraic tribes from the district lying south of the Armenian Mountains. After the Hebrews, the Aramæan tribes came from the northwest into Syria, pushing on and absorbing parts of the Hebrew population, as the Hebrews drove on the Canaanites. The pressure of these Aramæan people may have already burdened the Hebrews and have driven them to migrate towards the southwest. But after all there is no historical certainty about these things, on account of the fragmentary character of the traditions and their complete mixture with mythological elements.

According to the sacred legend, the fathers of Israel (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), who were of Mesopotamian origin, dwelt for three generations in the country west of Jordan, settling in different places; but the third generation emigrated to Egypt, where Joseph, the great-grandson of Abraham, had already reached a high position. But the Hebrew legend tells us no more of the history of the emigrants while in Egypt until the time of their departure from the country, than do the Egyptian accounts thus far found.

THE EGYPTIAN SOJOURN

Israel comes to Egypt a single family, and leaves the country a populous nation. Tradition connects the migration from Egypt into the land east of Jordan with the Levites, Moses and his brother Aaron, the forerunners and founders of the Israelitish priesthood. Moreover, the oldest form of the legend, as the Yahvistic text gives it, mentions only Moses. He is in it the liberator, leader, and priest of Israel. Neither the residence of the Patriarchs in the country west of Jordan, nor the stay of the Israelites in Egypt, have been historically proved, and the former is quite improbable.

Joseph, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham are heroes of the race, the first two being at the same time tribal names. The last three have been revered at celebrated sanctuaries; and it must not be overlooked that the sanctuary of the first ancestor is the least important one. Moreover, it is a fact, proved by the history of different sanctuaries of the land, that those of Israel were considered sacred by the original inhabitants. This is the case at Sichem and Gibeon; Bethel was likewise a Canaanitish town in earlier times. Hebron was Edomitish, probably in the first place Horitish, and the very name of Beersheba shows its Canaanitish origin.

If the ancient Israelites took over the sanctuaries from the original Canaanitish inhabitants, as we know definitely concerning some and must surmise in the case of others, and if they nevertheless maintain that these sanctuaries were founded by their fathers, the object of this assertion is merely to gain a legal title to the possession of these pre-Israelitic sacred spots, and to obliterate the fact of their non-Israelitish origin. We shall have to go even farther and say that the Israelites either adopted from the[59] Canaanites the hero that was honoured in those places, or that they there localised a certain Hebraic hero. But in both cases there is no evidence of a pre-Egyptian sojourn of Israelitish families in the land west of Jordan. Moreover, the comparatively recent origin of the patriarchical tradition must be borne in mind.

It is not quite so bad, though not essentially better, with the question of the residence of Israel in Egypt before its migration to the land east of Jordan. That, in spite of the most anxious search of apologetic Egyptologists and theologians, no trace of Moses and the Hebrews has been found in the Egyptian records is just as suspicious as the fact that the Hebrew account says nothing about all that happened between the time of Joseph and that of Moses.

It seems as if the flight of story-spinning imagination had been sufficient to transpose both the historical personage of Moses and the eponymous hero, Joseph, together with the eponyms of the two tribes descended from him, to Egypt, but not to fill out the intervening period. Egypt has, however, been too often for longer or shorter periods the residence of Semitic families for one to dare to deny the possibility that some Hebrew tribes or families stayed in Egypt. But that the Hebrew people, to say nothing of the race of Israel, did not do so, follows necessarily from the origin of these terms.

So it is easily seen why the search of the Egyptologists for traces of the residence of the Children of Israel or the Hebrews in Egypt must be fruitless. If any Hebrew clan did stay there, its name is unknown, and the Egyptologists would not recognise it, even if they understood more of Hebraic antiquity. But in any case the search for the Pharaohs, under whom Israel entered and left Egypt, is a useless jugglery with dates and names; and it is also useless to attempt to discover the route by which Israel left Egypt.

Tradition makes the institution of the Jewish religion on Mount Sinai contemporaneous with the emigration from Egypt; and it has been often surmised, especially by Egyptologists, that Moses imposed upon Israel elements of Egyptian theology. But there is no basis in fact for this theory. It is not known what the Hebrews may have borrowed from the Egyptians. Part of that which has been put under that category is entirely foreign to the old Jewish religion, and was gradually and spontaneously evolved, and the rest plays no part in it at all. It is especially absurd to attribute the idea of the unity of God to Egyptian influences.

However, the worship of God which the Jews adopted at Sinai certainly was originally foreign to them. It is an error to suppose from the story that Moses represented himself to Israel as the ambassador of the God of their fathers, that he must have found among the people the faith of this one God. This theory would lessen the importance of Moses for the Old Testament religion. Like all founders of religion he endowed the people with a new creative idea which gave a fresh turn to their life, and this new idea was the worship of Jehovah as their ancestral God. For if we take away all that the worship of Israel gained upon the path it travelled in historical times, then, supposing such antiquity for the worship of Jehovah in Israel, there is left no fresh idea, from the adoption of which by the people a new epoch could date. Moses, then, would in the most favourable light be only a restorer or a reformer of the old Israelitish religion, and not the founder of a religion as he is rightly considered by priestly tradition.

Two further points must be noted in this connection. In the first place, we know nothing of Israel’s worship before the time of Moses; not a single tradition exists of it. But this cannot be wondered at; and it may be[60] observed elsewhere also that after the adoption of a higher religion, all recollection of an earlier form of worship not only dies out, but is designedly destroyed. Secondly, however, it should be noted that the worship of Jehovah may have been in a more imperfect and undeveloped form among the people from whom Moses borrowed it, than that in which he imposed it on his race.

Many features of the sacred tradition show that the worship of Jehovah was originally foreign to Israel. To ancient Israel Jehovah dwells on Sinai, which, therefore, is the original seat of his worship. Moreover, confused as the accounts may seem in some particulars, the old tradition explicitly states that Moses, who imposes the worship of Jehovah upon Israel, is the son-in-law of the priest of an Arabian race; that is, that the priesthood of Moses and Levi is connected with an older non-Israelitish Jehovah priesthood.

This father-in-law of Moses is called in Exodus iii. 1, Jethro the priest of the Midianites, and in Exodus ii. 18, Reuel. Exodus xviii. contains a fairly authentic account of Jethro by the Elohist, and yet it is questionable whether this account really refers to him. It is, however, probable. In Numbers x. 29, his name appears as Hobab. And in Judges i. 16, the Kenites are brought into connection with the father-in-law of Moses; Judges iv. 2 likewise calls Hobab, Moses’ father-in-law, a Kenite; he, therefore, should rather have been called a priest of the Kenites.

That the Arabic or nomadic race, from which Moses borrowed the worship of Jehovah, was the tribe of the Kenites, is proved by the later history of this people, who henceforth are closely interwoven with the worship of Jehovah.

According to Numbers x. 29, and Judges i. 16, the Kenites joined the children of Israel in their journey to the land west of Jordan, and according to the latter passage “they went up out of the city of palm trees (Jericho), with the children of Judah into the wilderness of Judah.” In the south of the district of Judah, we meet in the earliest ages of the Kings a nomadic Kenite race, which was in friendly relations with Judah (1 Samuel xxx.), although dwelling among the Amalekites (1 Samuel xv. 6).

It is questionable whether, after such a definite proof as the latter passages, it can be maintained that the Kenites were in alliance with the Midianites, especially as the land of Midian lies on the east of the Persian Gulf, and the Midianites at the time of the birth of the Jewish kingdom lived on the east of Jordan.

In this connection may be cited the fact that a single Kenite clan was nomadic in the north, and that Ephraim was, according to Judges v. 14, of partly Amalekitish origin. Nevertheless these are all only surmises. The scarcity of the records deprives us of any clear light on the ancient ethnological relations.

The people of Israel, then, strengthened by Kenitish elements, migrated from the Sinaitic peninsula into the land east of Jordan. But we know neither by what route they went, the time when it happened, nor how long the journey took. To be sure, in Amos v. 25, it is stated that the people were in the wilderness for forty years. This round number is, however, not only doubtful in itself; it is still more so because it rests upon the assumption, proceeding from theological hypotheses, that the whole of the people which emigrated from Egypt, with the exception of Moses, Joshua, and Caleb, died in the desert for their unbelief and never saw the Holy Land.

The most ancient source of the Pentateuch probably knows nothing of this forty years’ wandering. The accuracy of the mention of the places,[61] which were the stations of the wandering in the desert, cannot, however, be brought forward as historical proof of this time in the desert. These places, it goes without saying, have all, within historical times, been desert stations. But that Israel repaired to them is supported solely by the tradition of later times which, on the hypothesis that Israel came from the Sinaitic peninsula and, on the other hand, on the basis of its knowledge of the roads through the desert, constructed a picture of the way which the Israelites might have taken. Moreover, it is evident that the veneration by neighbouring peoples of some of the places in the doubtful territory influenced the tradition. Hence the choice of Kadesh-Barnea as a chief station, of Mount Horeb as the place of Aaron’s death, and of the mountains in the north of Moab, as the abode of Moses in his last days.

It is then of little import for us to verify the route which Israel is said to have taken in its journey from the peninsula of Sinai to the land east of Jordan. We have already shown that there is no historical tradition concerning the conquest of the land east of Jordan, and that what is related about the conquest of the kingdom of Sichem by the Israelites under Moses is based upon conclusions as to the primitive condition of the country which are drawn from its condition at the time of the early Kings, but which are not free from misunderstanding.e

Before continuing with the critical narrative it may be well to glance over the biography of Moses as given in the Bible, Exodus and Deuteronomy.

BIBLICAL ACCOUNT OF MOSES AND THE EXODUS

And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive.—Exodus i. 22.

And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi.

And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months.

And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink.

And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him.

And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river’s side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it.

And when she had opened it, she saw the child: and, behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews’ children.

Then said his sister to Pharaoh’s daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee?

And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called the child’s mother.

And Pharaoh’s daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages. And the woman took the child, and nursed it.

And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.

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And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren.

And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.

And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together: and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow?

And he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian? And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known.

Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to slay Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian: and he sat down by a well.—Exodus ii. 1-15.

Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel, and said unto them, Draw out and take you a lamb according to your families, and kill the passover.

And ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the bason, and strike the lintel and the two side posts with the blood that is in the bason; and none of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning.

For the Lord will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when he seeth the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side posts, the Lord will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you.

And ye shall observe this thing for an ordinance to thee and to thy sons for ever.

And it shall come to pass, when ye be come to the land which the Lord will give you, according as he hath promised, that ye shall keep this service.

And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service?

That ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses. And the people bowed the head and worshipped.

And the children of Israel went away, and did as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so did they.

And it came to pass, that at midnight the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle.

And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead.

And he called for Moses and Aaron by night, and said, Rise up, and get you forth from among my people, both ye and the children of Israel; and go, serve the Lord, as ye have said.

Also take your flocks and your herds, as ye have said, and be gone; and bless me also.

And the Egyptians were urgent upon the people, that they might send them out of the land in haste; for they said, We be all dead men.

And the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading-troughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders.

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And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses; and they borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment:

And the Lord gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them such things as they required. And they spoiled the Egyptians.

And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand on foot that were men, beside children.

And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, even very much cattle.

And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough which they brought forth out of Egypt, for it was not leavened; because they were thrust out of Egypt, and could not tarry, neither had they prepared for themselves any victual.

Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years.

And it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, even the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt.—Exodus xii. 21-41.

And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho. And the Lord shewed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan,

And all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim, and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, unto the utmost sea,

And the south, and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, unto Zoar.

And the Lord said unto him, This is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed: I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither.

So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord.

And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.

And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.

And the children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days: so the days of weeping and mourning for Moses were ended.

And Joshua the son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom; for Moses had laid his hands upon him: and the children of Israel hearkened unto him, and did as the Lord commanded Moses.

And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face,

In all the signs and the wonders, which the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land,

And in all that mighty hand, and in all the great terror which Moses shewed in the sight of all Israel.—Deuteronomy xxxiv.

ISRAEL’S EARLY NEIGHBOURS

To return to modern analytic accounts, it is noted by Stade that Israel never mastered the whole country west of the Jordan. The coast, with the exception of a few places, remained in the possession of the Canaanites, who,[64] at the period of the Hebrew immigration, had long been organised into the prosperous and powerful commercial states known to us under the name of Phœnician. Nay, the influence, intellectual and material, of Akko, Sor (Tyre), and Sidon on the inland country was so great that it prevented the absorption of the original Canaanite population by the immigrant Israelites, and consequently the formation of compact Israelite tribes in the north.

As far as we know, the Israelites were always on a friendly footing with these Phœnician states. They could not avoid trading with one another, and commerce only thrives in time of peace. The Phœnician cities disposed of the produce of Palestine, the wheat of the land west of Jordan, the balsam of the Jordan lowlands, the male and female slaves taken in war, and they offered an ever ready market for the produce of the flocks. The Israelites, on the other hand, procured from them, in ancient times, all products of handicraft and art which could not be made by the inmates of each farm for themselves. Thus it comes about that to the Israelite, Canaanite and trader were synonymous terms.

This commerce, no less than the fact that the Phœnician cities were impregnable to their unpretentious strategy, obliged them to keep the peace. Furthermore, from the very moment the Philistines embarked on a career of conquest in Palestine, the interests of the Phœnician cities had been directed towards forming the inhabitants of the southern part of Syria, which they exploited commercially, into a strong political structure. For against the former the Israelites were the only allies to be had.

Of all the neighbours of the people of Israel, these Philistines were farthest removed from them in manners and customs. However, we must not conclude from this circumstance that no intermixture took place between the two. The legend of Samson is sufficient proof to the contrary. In the time of the first monarchy, in particular, numerous Philistines came to Israel to serve in the army and then continued to dwell in the land. Obed-Edom the Gittite, in whose house David left the Ark of the Covenant (1 Samuel vi. 19 seq.), was a Philistine.

According to Amos ix. 7; Deuteronomy ii. 23; Jeremiah xlvii. 4, the Philistines had migrated into Syria from Caphtor. Caphtor has often been conjectured to be the island of Crete. This may very well be the case, especially as—to judge from 1 Samuel xxx. 14—part of the territory of the Philistines was called the South of the Cretans [Cherethites], to distinguish it from the south of Judah and Caleb. In that case we should here have to do with a migration of Semites back from Crete, from which they may have been ousted by immigrant Hellenes. It is well known that in the description of Crete in the Odyssey XIX, 172-177, the statement occurs that various languages were spoken and five different races dwelt there, among whom were the Eteocretans (real Cretans), as well as Achæans, Cydonians, Dorians, and Pelasgians. The presence of Semites among the inhabitants of the island is proved by the name of one of its rivers, the Jardanus. And the names of the Philistines, their cities and institutions, prove them to have been Semites.

The Philistines dwelt in the tract of country southward from Jaffa to Gaza. But their settlements were by no means confined to the coast; on the contrary, they stretched inland to the mountains of Judah on the frontier of which Gath and Timnath lie. Only the seaboard population, at most, can have been of pure Philistine blood.

The Philistines, like the Israelites, gradually absorbed the autochthonous Canaanite population they found in possession. In the earliest days of the[65] monarchy Judah and the Philistines are not neighbours along the whole eastern frontier of the latter, remnants of the Canaanite population lay between and were not amalgamated with Judah till later. Nor did the frontier afterwards always remain the same, as is well seen in the case of Libnah.

Philistine territory was divided into the territory of the five cities of Gaza, Ashdod, Askalon, Gath, and Ekron, the so-called Philistine Pentapolis. Each of these districts was ruled by a prince, and these rulers were the five princes of the Philistines (sarne pelischim). They were the leaders in war.

The Philistines proved themselves to be a people of great military capacity. They possessed an organised army—chariots, horsemen, and foot-soldiers—who fought in regular battle array. Hence it came to pass that for a time they ruled over Israel.

In the very earliest times Israel’s neighbours on the northern frontier were also Canaanites. Northwards from Hermon stretched the kingdom of the Hittites, a Canaanite race, whose capital was Kadesh, situate on an artificial lake on the Orontes which is called the lake of Kedesh to this day. This kingdom of the Hittites was tributary to David. We find a Hittite in David’s bodyguard, Uriah, who had Bathsheba, an Israelite woman of good family, to wife. The connubium therefore existed between the Hittites and Israelites.

In the age of the XVIIIth, XIXth, and XXth Egyptian Dynasties this kingdom of the Hittites (or Kheta, as the Egyptians called them) was the mightiest in Anterior Asia. It engaged in fierce warfare with the Pharaohs of these dynasties. But the state of affairs in the north was gradually altered by the arrival of Aramæan tribes on the scene.

These last seem to have come from the Euphrates and the mountain regions of the north, and, like the Israelites, to have been pastoral tribes originally. Remnants of this race, speaking a group of northern Semitic dialects closely akin to Canaanite languages, are still to be found in these parts. They make their first appearance in Palestine in the north of the land east of Jordan. They founded the kingdoms of Damascus, Geshur, Ishtob, Maacah, and Zobah, against which David had to fight. They pressed steadily westwards rather than southwards. Like the Hebrews, they amalgamated with themselves the original Canaanite population they found in possession, and thus the Hittite nation was gradually merged into them.

But the Aramæans were no more capable of gaining the mastery over the emporiums of trade on the coast than the Hebrews had been. To the east of Jordan, Gilead was long the frontier province of the Hebrews. Hence arises the legend that Jacob and Laban set up a pillar there to witness the peace concluded between them (Genesis xxxi). They were the arch-enemies of Israel before the rise of the Assyrians. Under Assyrian, Persian, and even Greek rule, their language continued to make conquests in Palestine. By the time of the birth of Christ it had superseded all Semitic languages there and divided the ground with Greek alone. In later days a like fate befell the Aramæan language and nationality from the spread of Arabic.

The space between the southwestern border of Judah and the Philistines and the wall of Egypt had been occupied from time immemorial by nomadic tribes, which we are accustomed to call “Arabic,” a name that only came into use at a comparatively late period.

These desert tribes were the Amalekites, the Kenites, and the Ishmaelites. Of the Kenites and their relations with the Amalekites and Midianites we[66] have already spoken. The Amalekites seem to have lived in a state of open hostility to the Israelites, and to have harassed them by predatory raids. Saul and David both fought against them. One body of the Amalekites appears afterwards to have joined itself to Edom; another to have been absorbed in Ephraim (Judges v. 14). The Ishmaelites and Israelites may, on the other hand, have been on friendly terms, although the divergence of their respective interests would naturally make the ungovernable nomads, who acknowledged a political authority, troublesome neighbours to husbandmen.

Thus the admirable description of her future son given by the angel of the Lord to Hagar at the well of Lahai-roi in Genesis xvi. 12, “He will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren,” is drawn straight from the life. The more friendly relations in which Ishmael and Israel stand with one another finds expression in the mythical genealogy which makes Ishmael half brother to Isaac and traces his descent from Hagar, the Egyptian, Abraham’s concubine. Hagar is, of course, the name of an Ishmaelite clan. We meet with another expression of the same relation when Keturah is given to Abraham as a concubine. This must likewise be understood as the name of an Ishmaelite clan. This mode of expression took its rise in the holy places of Beersheba, Beer-lahai-roi, and Hebron, which were probably visited by Israelites and Ishmaelites alike. One proof that the connubium existed between Israelites and Ishmaelites is the fact that Abigail, a sister of David, had an Ishmaelite husband, Ithra by name.

The name of Ishmaelite speedily disappears from history. We hear nothing of any catastrophe that overwhelmed the nation, and consequently it seems possible that Ishmael, like Israel, was in historic times merely the name of a confederation of distinct tribes. The confederation dissolved, and the name of Ishmael vanished with it, as the name of Israel would have vanished after the catastrophe of 722 had it not acquired a spiritual significance which rendered its transference to Judah possible. The post-Exilic Jews acquired the habit of calling all Arabs by the name of Ishmael. From the Jews the name and the idea passed over to the Arabs themselves. This explains why the name of Ishmael has been made by Arab genealogists the basis of every kind of speculation. The application of the term Ishmaelites to the Mohammedans is also to be referred to Jewish usage.e

THE CONQUEST OF CANAAN

On their departure from Egypt the Israelites might have entered Canaan direct by the route that skirted the Mediterranean, but there they would have been in danger of attack from the garrisons which occupied the Egyptian fortresses or from the Philistines. They therefore chose a much longer route, and betook themselves to the desert. The kings of Egypt possessed, or had possessed, important metallurgical works in the peninsula of Sinai. Perhaps the fugitives wished to seize upon them. The Bible does not say so, but some of the legends it relates might well incline us to believe it; the fashioning of the golden calf, the brazen serpent, and the ornaments of the tabernacle presuppose a settled position and a command of material ill compatible with the wandering life of a caravan, and easier to explain by an Israelite occupation of the copper mines of Sinai.

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The transition from nomadic to sedentary life must of necessity have been slow and gradual, and there is nothing that obliges us to say with Goethe that the Bible exaggerates the length of the sojourn in the wilderness. Israel dreamed of a land flowing with milk and honey, but, pending its arrival there, led its flocks where they could find pasture, and settled as best it could in the lands of which it could possess itself. It endeavoured to conclude alliances with the inhabitants of the desert, who were of the same race; with the Midianites, for example, that they might serve “as eyes,” that is, as guides to the tribes. This alliance with the Midianites is indicated in the Bible by the visit of Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, who, when he hears of the passage of the Red Sea, proclaims Jehovah the greatest of all gods. But alien tribes did not always exhibit the same good will; witness the struggle against Amalek. It is probable that, on leaving Sinai, the Israelites bent their steps towards the frontiers of Canaan, and that, repulsed in that direction, they once more took the southern road and skirted the mountains of the land of the Edomites, so to turn towards the east. In Deuteronomy, Jehovah commands his people not to molest the Edomites, who had already been seized with dread of them, and even to pay for the food and water of which they should have need, because Jehovah had given Seir to Edom for an inheritance. The same admonition is given with regard to the Moabites and the Ammonites, for these peoples also had received their land from Jehovah.

The children of Lot, that is, the Ammonites and Moabites, were settled in the country east of the Dead Sea and the Jordan; but the Amorites, having crossed the Jordan, took part of the territory of the Moabites from them. The Israelites, who were then wandering in the deserts that lay to the east of the land of Moab, defeated the Amorites, probably with the help of the Moabites. The tribes of Reuben and Gad, who had doubtless borne the brunt of the conflict, occupied the land between the Arnon and the Jabbok, promising to co-operate later with the rest of the children of Israel. All the cities of the conquered country were “devoted,” that is to say, all the inhabitants were massacred, men, women and children; “there was none left remaining.” Immediately after this conquest the Bible places that of the land of Bashan, whose king, Og, was the last of the race of Giants (Rephaïm). All the inhabitants of Bashan were likewise massacred, according to Deuteronomy, and in the Bible these two wars are placed before the death of Moses. There are, however, several passages in the Book of Judges from which it must be inferred that the land of Bashan or Gilead was not conquered till later. As for the legend of Balaam, related in the Book of Numbers immediately after the conquest of Bashan, it is now acknowledged that it must have been composed during the last days of the kingdom of Israel, probably in the reign of Jeroboam II. It was inspired by hatred of Moab and contains allusions to Assyria. At the period of this conquest the Israelites had no reason to fear the Assyrians, of whose existence they were not even aware, and to them the Moabites, far from being enemies, were natural allies and auxiliaries, as were the Ammonites and the Edomites.

The conquest of Canaan is related in the Book of Joshua, which appears to have been written at the time of the Babylonian captivity. The thesis of political unity guaranteed by religious unity is supported, as in the Pentateuch, by a series of miracles. The miracle of the passage of the Red Sea is repeated at the passage of the Jordan. Joshua then besieges Jericho.[68] “And it came to pass on the seventh day that they rose early at the dawning of the day, and compassed the city after the same manner seven times. And it came to pass at the seventh time, when the priests blew with the trumpets, Joshua said unto the people, Shout: for Jehovah hath given you the city. So the people shouted, and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. And they devoted all that was in the city, both man and woman, both young and old, and ox and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.” Only Rahab, the harlot, who had betrayed her country by hiding the spies sent out by Joshua, was spared with her family and all her house. “And they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein.” And Joshua pronounced a curse upon the man that should build it again.

The Israelites then besieged the city of Ai, near Bethel, and, having taken it by a stratagem, treated it as they had treated Jericho. “And all that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand.… So Joshua burnt Ai, and made it an heap for ever, even a desolation, unto this day. And the king of Ai he hanged on a tree until the eventide: and at the going down of the sun Joshua commanded, and they took his carcase from the tree, and cast it at the entering of the gate of the city, and raised thereon a great heap of stones, unto this day.” At the news of the destruction of Ai and Jericho, Adoni-zedek, king of Jerusalem, forms a coalition with the kings of Hebron, of Jarmuth, of Lachish, and of Eglon, and, hearing that Gibeon has treated with the enemy, they lay siege to the city which has betrayed their common cause. The Gibeonites call Joshua to their aid, and he departs from Gilgal with his army and comes up with the allied kings. “And Jehovah discomfited them before Israel, and he slew them with a great slaughter at Gibeon, and chased them by the way of the ascent of Beth-horon, and smote them unto Azekah and unto Makkedah. And it came to pass, as they fled from before Israel, while they were in the going down of Beth-horon, that Jehovah cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died: they were more which died with the hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword. Then Joshua spake to Jehovah in the day when Jehovah delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel; and he said in the sight of Israel, ‘Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.’ And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the nation had avenged themselves of their enemies. Is not this written in the book of the Upright? And the sun stayed in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day. And there was no day like that before it or after it, that Jehovah hearkened to the voice of a man, for Jehovah fought for Israel.”

The five kings, having taken refuge in a cave at Makkedah, are discovered, and when the people return to the camp after the extermination of the defeated army, they are brought before Joshua. All the chiefs of the men of war that had marched with him put their feet upon the necks of the kings, then Joshua causes them to be hanged on five trees, and in the evening their corpses are cast into the cave and great stones are rolled to the mouth of it. “And Joshua took Makkedah on that day and smote it with the edge of the sword, and the king thereof he devoted and all the souls that were therein, he left none remaining.” The same formula is repeated in the Bible with melancholy monotony, in the case of the cities of Libnah and Lachish; the king of Gezer having attempted to help Lachish, “Joshua smote him and his people, until he had left none remaining.” And the Bible resumes the tale of massacres, Eglon, Hebron, and Debir are devoted with all their inhabitants, not one of whom is spared.[69] “So Joshua smote all the land, the hill country, and the south, and the lowland, and all their kings; he left none remaining, but he devoted all that breathed, as Jehovah, the God of Israel, commanded.” Then it is the turn of the kings of the north; the king of Hazor and the other Canaanite kings take the field with a large army, “even as the sand that is upon the sea shore in multitude, with horses and chariots very many.” Joshua attacks them near the waters of Merom, pursues them to Zidon, and destroys them, “until he left none remaining”; he houghs their horses and burns their chariots with fire. Then he returns upon his footsteps and seizes Hazor, the chief city of all these kingdoms, and slays its king with the sword. “And they smote all the souls that were therein with the edge of the sword, having devoted them; there was none left that breathed: and he burnt Hazor with fire. And the cities of those kings and all the kings of them did Joshua take, and he smote them with the edge of the sword and devoted them, as Moses the servant of Jehovah commanded.… So Joshua took all that land, the hill country, and all the south, and all the land of Goshen, and the lowland, and the plain of Israel, from the bare mountain that goeth up unto Seir, even unto Baal-gad in the valley of Lebanon under Mount Hermon: and all their kings he took, and smote them and put them to death.… For it was of Jehovah to harden their hearts, to come against Israel in battle, that he might devote them, that they might have no favour, but that he might destroy them, as Jehovah commanded Moses.”

Such is the summary of the legend of the conquest as related in the Book of Joshua. The usual way of extracting from it such historical fact as it may contain is to suppress the miraculous circumstances, or to explain them, as well as may be, by natural causes. Serious criticism cannot rest satisfied with this method. Unfortunately, in the case of Jewish history, we have no such invaluable aid as the study of inscriptions supplies to the history of Egypt and Assyria. We have no other source of information than a book compiled several centuries after the event, from popular traditions more or less wrested for political ends. Nevertheless Biblical exegesis, by collecting a certain amount of scattered testimony, has succeeded in discovering the facts of the case. This is not the place to recapitulate this work of analysis, a summary of it may be found in the introduction to the Bible written by Professor Reuss, of the University of Strassburg. A comparison of all these materials for research leads scholars to the conclusion that the surest means of gaining a totally false impression of the conquest of Canaan is to abide by the view of it conveyed in the Book of Joshua.

That which this book tells us was accomplished in five years was as a matter of fact, very gradually accomplished in the course of two centuries and a half, for the conquest of the country and the complete subjugation of the Canaanites were not finally achieved until the reign of Solomon. It is precisely the same thing that happened in the conquest of the Peloponnesus by the Dorians, and of Roman Gaul by the Franks. From this we may infer, for the honour of the Israelites, that the frightful massacres related in the Book of Joshua have been greatly exaggerated by the compilers of the Bible, who regarded the extermination of the vanquished as among their ancestors’ titles to fame, and as a proof of their obedience to the commands of the national God of Israel. “We must not,” say the Dutch authors of The Family Bible,[70] “imagine all the children of Israel gathered together in a single camp at Gilgal and all acting in concert. It would be much nearer the truth to imagine the Israelite tribes indulging in local and intermittent raids into the land of the Canaanites, who were perhaps enfeebled in consequence of a war with Ramses III, king of Egypt.”

The partition of the lands conquered or still to be conquered is given in the concluding chapters of the Book of Joshua, which are not by the same hand as the narrative of the conquest. The region to the east of the Dead Sea and the Jordan, afterwards known as Peræa, had been occupied ever since the time of Moses by the tribes of Reuben, Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh. Judah took the southern part of the land of Canaan, west of the Dead Sea. The small tribes of Simeon, Dan, and Benjamin grouped themselves about Judah, the first-named on the west, the other two on the north. These four tribes afterwards constituted the kingdom of Judah. Many portions of the territory assigned to them in this partition long remained in the occupation of alien peoples. Thus the Jebusites were first subjugated by David, who seized upon their city, thereafter called Jerusalem; the Philistines, whom Joshua had not ventured to attack, kept the five cities which they occupied on the Mediterranean coast, and these served as a refuge for the Anakim. At the period when the monarchy was instituted in Israel the sway of the Philistines extended over almost all the territory of Judah.

The powerful tribe of Ephraim, to which Joshua belonged, established itself in the middle of the land of Canaan, between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. The Ark of the Covenant, first set up at Gilgal, was afterwards carried to Shiloh, which became the common sanctuary of all the Israelite tribes. The tribe of Issachar settled to the north of the territory of Ephraim, along the Jordan, and the half-tribe of Manasseh farther to the west. Lastly, the tribes of Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali settled in the northern region, afterwards called Galilee; Asher spread abroad on the seacoast north of Carmel, but was not able to gain possession of the Phœnician cities within the border assigned to it; Zebulun encamped in the plain of Jezreel, northwest of Issachar, and Naphtali along the Upper Jordan, between the waters of Merom and the lake of Gennesareth. The tribe of Levi had no territory of its own, for, as the Bible frequently repeats, Jehovah was its inheritance. The Levites received forty-eight cities, scattered over the territory of the other tribes. Some of these cities were intended to serve as places of shelter for involuntary homicides; these were called cities of refuge.

The genealogies which take up so much space in the Bible show clearly the importance which the tribes of Israel attached to the descent from Abraham and Jacob. Nevertheless they were far from being a race of pure blood. Before their sojourn in Egypt they had allied themselves with the women of the country, as their own legends testify; of the sons of Jacob four are the issue of female slaves of whose descent we know nothing. Joseph weds the daughter of an Egyptian priest, Moses a Midianitess and an Ethiopian woman, and when his sister Miriam upbraids him for this mésalliance, Jehovah smites her with leprosy. On their departure from Egypt the Children of Israel are accompanied by “a mixed multitude,” who must have been incorporated into the tribes, for there is no subsequent mention of them. During the half-century which lies between the going forth out of Egypt and the conquest of Canaan there must have been unions with Edomites, Ammonites, and Moabites. At the time of the invasion, wandering hordes of Arabs, too weak to make their way into Palestine by themselves, may have taken advantage of this opportunity to join the Israelite tribes; such were the children of Keni, the father-in-law of Moses, who accompanied the Children of Judah as far as the city of palm trees (Jericho). These Kenites or Kenizzites settled among the men of Judah[71] and were ultimately merged in them; it was impossible to hold aloof from allies who had contributed their share towards victory.

After the conquest, unions with the indigenous peoples became very numerous. “The Children of Israel,” says the Book of Judges, “dwelt among the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites: and they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods. And the Children of Israel did that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah, and forgot Jehovah their God, and served the Baalim and the Ashtaroth.” It was not the first time that they had been unfaithful to Jehovah; in the wilderness, for forty years, according to the prophet Amos, they had borne before them the image of Moloch and the star of their idols.

The position of the Israelites settled in the midst of the Canaanites was not everywhere the same; in some districts the earlier inhabitants had been exterminated or reduced to slavery, but in others they had remained in possession of the land, and the new-comers had only been able to take up their abode there on payment of tribute. Oftenest of all, the old inhabitants and the new lived side by side on a footing of armed neutrality, frequently disturbed by feuds, each on the watch for an opportunity of subjugating or expelling the other. After the Israelites had settled in various parts of the country, the Canaanites, the Amorites, and the Philistines took their revenge, and made them pay by instalments for the outrages of the invasion. The stronger tribes did not succour the weaker, for the tie that bound them together was religious, not political, and was growing weaker and weaker; hence the Bible invariably attributes the defeats of the Israelites to their neglect of the national religion.

“And the anger of Jehovah was kindled against Israel, and he delivered them into the hand of spoilers that spoiled them, and he sold them into the hands of their enemies round about. Whithersoever they went out, the hand of Jehovah was against them for evil, as Jehovah had sworn unto them; and they were sore distressed. And Jehovah raised up judges, which saved them out of the hand of those that spoiled them. And when Jehovah raised them up judges, then Jehovah was with the judge, and saved them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge: for it repented Jehovah because of their groaning by reason of them that oppressed them and vexed them. But it came to pass, when the judge was dead, that they turned back and dealt more corruptly than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them, and to bow down unto them; they ceased not from their doings, nor from their stubborn way.”g

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CHAPTER III. THE JUDGES

The Bible gives the title of Judges (Sophetim) to those “deliverers” whom Jehovah raised up from time to time; but they were not elective magistrates, like the Suffetes of Carthage, who bore the same name; they were valiant chieftains who placed themselves at the head of a band of patriots to free their own tribes. Some successful exploit would give them a kind of moral authority for the remainder of their lives, but they were not invested with regular powers recognised by the whole nation. Though the Bible is careful to state the duration of the government of each one, these figures cannot serve as the basis of a sound chronology, for it is probable that many of the judges were contemporary and belonged to different tribes. We are given details concerning three or four of them; others are merely named. The first of whom mention is made is Othniel, the nephew of Caleb, who delivers the tribes of the north from the dominion of the king of Mesopotamia. Then a king of Moab takes possession of Jericho and oppresses Israel for eighteen years; Ehud the Benjamite slays him by treachery and delivers the land. The Bible next names Shamgar, the son of Anath, who slew six hundred Philistines with an ox goad. The much longer narrative of the expedition of Barak and Deborah seems to be historical in character. It tells of the defeat of Sisera and his death at the hands of Jael (Judges iv.). On this occasion Deborah composed a savage and spirited canticle, the oldest piece of Hebrew poetry that has come down to us.

The invasion of Canaan by the Israelites was not an unexampled occurrence; in all ages the nomadic Bedouins of the desert had cast covetous glances at the fertile cultivated plains of Palestine. When the tribes of Israel had succeeded in establishing themselves there, they, in their turn, were forced to defend themselves against fresh hordes of invaders. “Because of Midian the Children of Israel made them the dens which are in the mountains, and in the caves, and the strongholds. And so it was, when Israel had sown, that the Midianites came up, and the Amalekites, and the Children of the East; they came up against them and destroyed the increase of the earth, till thou come unto Gaza, and left no sustenance in Israel, neither sheep, nor ox, nor ass.”

A peasant of the tribe of Manasseh placed himself at the head of a few resolute men and delivered Israel. His name was Jerubbaal, and he was[73] surnamed Gideon, that is, the Sword, just as Judas, the Asmonæan was surnamed Maccabæus, that is, the Hammer. The little band, with torches and trumpets, made a night attack on the camp of the Midianites, who were seized with panic and slew one another. Gideon sent messengers to the men of Ephraim who hastened up to cut off the retreat of the fugitives at the ford of the Jordan.

The Children of Israel said to Gideon, “Rule thou over us, both thou and thy son, and thy son’s son also: for thou hast saved us out of the hand of Midian.” He answered, “I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you, Jehovah shall rule over you.” After his death one of his seventy sons, Abimelech, had himself proclaimed king at Shechem, and had himself proclaimed king by the oak of Shechem. Civil war broke out. Shechem was destroyed and its ruins sown with salt. Abimelech set fire to the tower of the temple of Baal-berith, where the principal inhabitants of the city had taken refuge; a thousand souls perished in it. He next besieged the city of Thebez; the inhabitants shut themselves up in the citadel; and as he drew near to set it on fire, a woman cast a millstone on his head, and he commanded his armour bearer to kill him, that he might not die by the hand of a woman.

After repulsing the invasion of the Midianites, the tribe of Manasseh, whose territory lay on both banks of the Jordan, were desirous of enlarging their borders to the east, and completed the conquest of the land of Bashan. The Ammonites, however, laid claim to the country, which had formerly belonged to them. They gathered together and encamped at Gilead. “And it was so, that when the children of Ammon made war against Israel, the elders of Gilead went to fetch Jephthah out of the land of Tob; and they said unto Jephthah, Come and be our chief, that we may fight with the Children of Ammon. And Jephthah vowed a vow unto Jehovah, and said, If thou wilt indeed deliver the children of Ammon into mine hand, then shall it be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, it shall be Jehovah’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering. So Jephthah passed over unto the Children of Ammon to fight against them, and Jehovah delivered them into his hand. And Jephthah came to Mizpah unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and dances; and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter. And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me: for I have opened my mouth unto Jehovah, and I cannot go back. And she said unto him, My father, thou hast opened thy mouth unto Jehovah; do unto me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as Jehovah hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies. And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may depart and go down upon the mountains and bewail my virginity, I and my companions. And he said, Go. And he sent her away for two months: and she departed, she and her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains. And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed: and she had not known man. And it was a custom in Israel, that the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.”

There is so great a resemblance between this tradition and the Greek legend of the sacrifice of Iphigenia that we may well believe that one was[74] borrowed from the other. It may be that Phœnician mariners, or even Israelite prisoners sold into slavery on the coast of Asia Minor, recounted the tragic story of a general who gained the victory at the price of the sacrifice of his daughter. The very name of Iphigenia seems to be no more than a Greek translation of the words “daughter of Jephthah.” The legend is unknown to Homer. Euripides borrowed it from a cyclic poem, the Cypria. According to this poem the sacrifice was not consummated; the goddess substituted a hind for the maiden. Some theologians have tried to extenuate the sacrifice of Jephthah in the same way, and have maintained that his daughter was vowed to perpetual celibacy. This explanation, however, has failed to win acceptance. “The text,” says M. Munk, “leaves no room to doubt that Jephthah did actually offer up his daughter as a burnt offering, and Josephus expressly says so” (Antiq., V, 7, 10).

While the tribes of the north were striving with the Canaanites, and those of the east with the Midianites and Ammonites, the tribes of the south were not always successful in defending their independence against the Philistines. The isolated position of the Israelite tribes made it possible for the Philistines to subjugate those in their immediate neighbourhood. The resistance of Israel to this suppression is personified in Samson, the hero of the tribe of Dan, the Israelitish Hercules.

Samson cannot be considered an historical figure. He appears to bear a strong resemblance to Samdan, the Assyrian Hercules, and, generally speaking, to all solar divinities. Like Apollo, his hair has never been cut; like Hercules he subdues lions and is himself subdued by women. The metamorphosis of an ancient divinity into a local hero is of common occurrence in all mythologies. The existence of a city of the sun, Beth-shemesh, within the borders of the tribe of Dan, leads us to suppose that the oldest inhabitants paid peculiar honours to the sun; it is natural that the Israelites, who held a different religion, should graft the legend of a hero on the fables current in the locality.

As a sequel to the legend of Samson, we find two narratives which form, as it were, an appendix to the Book of Judges. The first seems to refer to the actual period of the conquest, for the tribe of Dan had no territory as yet, and sought an inheritance to dwell in. Five men were sent out to explore the land. “And they came unto their brethren to Zorah and Eshtaol; and said unto them, Arise, and let us go up against them; for we have seen the land, and, behold, it is very good: but keep ye silence, be not slothful to go and to enter in to possess the land.”

As they pass through the hill country of Ephraim, their spies inform them that, in the house of a certain man named Micah, there is an ephod, teraphim, and a graven image, under the charge of a Levite. They represent to the Levite that it will be to his advantage to be the priest of a tribe rather than the chaplain of a private individual, and carry him off, taking the graven image, the ephod, and the teraphim with them. Micah pursues him and complains of the theft, they bid him hold his peace or they will set fire to his house. Then the Danites come to Laish: “They came unto a people quiet and secure, and smote them with the edge of the sword; and they burnt the city with fire.… And the children of Dan set up for themselves the graven image: and Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land. So they set them up Micah’s graven image which he made, all the time that the house of God was in Shiloh.” If we attribute the Decalogue, with its prohibition of graven images, to Moses, we[75] must suppose that the precepts of the lawgiver had been very quickly forgotten, even in his own family.

The story of the Levite of Ephraim throws a yet more melancholy light on the morals of the Israelites. The wife of this Levite is outraged and murdered by a band of men at Gibeah, of the tribe of Benjamin. The husband cuts the corpse into twelve pieces, which he sends to the twelve tribes of Israel. And all men, when they saw it, said, “There was no such deed done since the day when the Children of Israel came up out of Egypt.” The Benjamites are required to give up the culprits, they refuse and take up arms, to the number of twenty-six thousand men. The other tribes put four hundred thousand soldiers in the field, according to the Bible, and inquire of Jehovah who shall march first to battle. Jehovah appoints the tribe of Judah. But twice in succession the Benjamites come forth out of Gibeah and gain the advantage over the enormous army of Israel, which loses forty thousand men in two days. The people go up to Bethel, where the Ark of the Covenant then was; they fast, they offer burnt offerings, and Jehovah promises them the victory. The attacking force surrounds the enemy, and defeats them with such slaughter that only six hundred men escape and take refuge in the wilderness. The victors burn all the cities of Benjamin and put all their inhabitants to the sword.

After this vengeance, however, they regret the annihilation of a whole tribe, and offer terms of peace to the six hundred survivors of the Benjamites.

At the beginning and at the end of this narrative the Bible says that in those days there was no king in Israel, and that every man did that which was right in his own eyes. The author imagines that thus he can explain the atrocities he has related; but there was no king in the Greek cities either, and nothing of this kind took place there.

We may be astonished that a nation which “rose up as one man to punish a crime and blot out a stain from Israel” should not be able to unite to repulse a foreign foe. But this contrast is not enough to cast doubt upon the Bible narrative; it is unhappily true that an age and a country may witness at one and the same time the most merciless reprisals in civil war and the most deplorable weakness in face of the outside world. The Philistines had already subjugated the southern tribes, Dan, Judah, and Zebulun; they were now menacing those of the centre.

The Israelites remembered that after their coming forth out of Egypt the Ark of the Covenant had led them to the conquest of Canaan, and they thought that now again it would insure them the victory. The Ark was at that time at Shiloh, under the charge of the aged Eli, who combined the office of high priest with the title of Judge in Israel. So the Ark was brought from thence in charge of the two sons of Eli. But its presence was after all of no avail. “Israel was smitten, and they fled every man to his tent: and there was a very great slaughter; for there fell of Israel thirty thousand footmen. And the Ark of the God was taken; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were slain.”

Such a blow could not but daunt the spirit of the nation. As a matter of fact, the Philistines did not keep the trophy long; believing that the presence of a hostile god would bring misfortune upon them, they sent the Ark of the Covenant back to the Israelites. But to prevent any attempt at rebellion, they forbade the vanquished to bear arms and carried off all the smiths, so that no Israelite could mend his plough unless he went to the Philistines.

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The reawakening of the national sentiment took the form of a revival of religious zeal, as it does among the Arabs of this day. The initiative in this religious movement is attributed to Samuel, of the tribe of Ephraim. From his childhood he had been dedicated to the service of Jehovah, and he was early believed to receive direct communication from God. He was therefore what was called a nabi (inspired person). This word is usually translated by “prophet,” which signifies soothsayer, because such inspired persons were supposed to be gifted with the power of foreseeing the future, and themselves believed that they possessed it.

The distinction between priests and prophets is clearly marked, even in the legend of Moses; for the lawgiver, the interpreter of Jehovah, reserves the sacerdotal office, not for his own descendants, but for those of his brother Aaron. This distinction is not peculiar to the Hebrews; the Greeks also had soothsayers, who received inspiration from a god, and priests, or rather sacristans, who were charged with the maintenance of the temples and superintended the ceremonial of worship. The Hebrew priesthood became by degree an exclusive caste; prophecy which had its origin in personal inspiration, could not be hereditary, for the spirit bloweth where it listeth. There were no priestesses among the Israelites, though there were prophetesses, like Miriam the sister of Moses, or Deborah. In the same way it was a woman, the Pythia, who transmitted the oracles of Apollo at Delphi.

Samuel tried to make prophecy a permanent institution. After the death of Eli he went back to his own home, Ramah, a city of Benjamin, and there founded a college or convent of prophets (najoth). There were similar schools at Bethel, Gilgal, and Jericho. The members of these brotherhoods lived in community, for enthusiasm is contagious. Music was the means employed to call down inspiration. With the prophets of Israel, as with the Pythia of Delphi, the ecstasy was the result of a morbid excitation, a kind of intoxication, an intermittent delirium; when this phase of exaltation was over the prophet became an ordinary man once more.

But the trait that distinguishes the religious institutions of the Hebrews from anything analogous that may have existed at other times and in other countries, is their exclusively national character and their attitude of unvarying hostility towards the outer world. The religion of Israel is intolerant because it is but the ideal form of a fanatical patriotism. For this reason every awakening of public spirit among the Hebrews manifests itself by a fresh outbreak of invective against the religions of their neighbours.d

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CHAPTER IV. SAMUEL AND SAUL

We come now to the period when, for the first time, Israel as a nation attains sufficient unity to come under the control of a single monarch. Samuel, the last of the judges, causes Saul to be elected king of the united tribes. Saul is succeeded by David, and he in turn by his son Solomon. The three reigns cover a period of about ninety years, from 1020 to 930 B.C. For this brief period alone all Israel is united into a somewhat homogeneous monarchy. But even at best, it is the powerful hand of David more than any national unity of spirit that holds the various tribes together; and under Solomon, dissensions are gathering force, which are to cause the disruption of the kingdom immediately after that monarch’s death.

As the latter day Jew looked back upon this period, across an interval of centuries, it seemed to him that the kingdom of Israel, in this its time of relative might, had shone as a star of the first magnitude in the oriental firmament. But in truth it was only the eye of national prejudice that could thus magnify the mild effulgence of Hebrew glory. In reality, the kingdom of Israel, even under David, was but a petty state; and such power as it seemed to wield was due largely to the momentary weakness of surrounding nations. It chanced that the epoch of Hebrew monarchy was contemporary with the XXIst Dynasty of Egypt, during which time that land was governed simultaneously by the Tanites and high priests, whose dissensions so weakened the government that the chief authority gradually passed into the hands of the commanders of Libyan mercenaries. Torn thus by internal dissensions, Egypt had little time to think of external conquests. Meantime a condition of things not altogether dissimilar existed in Mesopotamia. Babylonia and Assyria were struggling one against the other, and mutual antagonism weakened each principality.

It was this temporary lull in the warlike activities of the really great oriental nations that enabled the Israelites to achieve a momentary position of relative consequence, which traditionalists of a later day were able, with some slight show of verisimilitude, to magnify into a period of actual glory. “Man to console himself for a destiny most frequently leaden,” says Ernest Renan,[1] speaking of the last great Hebrew monarchs,[78] “is constrained to imagine brilliant ages in the past, a kind of fireworks which did not last, but produced a charming effect. In spite of the anathemas of prophets and the disparagements of the northern tribes, Solomon left, amongst a section of the people, an admiration that expressed itself, after a lapse of two or three hundred years, in the half-legendary history which figures in the Books of the Kings. The misfortunes of the nation only served to excite these visions of a lost ideal. Solomon became the pivot of the Jewish agada, [the legendary element of the Talmud]. To the author of Ecclesiastes he is already the richest and most powerful of men. In the Gospels he is the embodiment of all human splendour. A luxuriant garden of myths grew up around him. Mohammed fed on it; then on the wings of Islamism this shower of fables, variegated with a thousand hues, spread through the whole world the magic name of Soleyman. The historic fact concealed behind these marvellous stories was roughly this: A thousand years before Christ there reigned in a petty acropolis in Syria, a petty sovereign, intelligent, and unencumbered by national prejudices, understanding nothing of the true vocation of his race, and wise according to the ideas of that time, though it cannot be said that he was superior in morality to the average Eastern monarchs of all ages. The intelligence which evidently characterised him, early won him a reputation for philosophy and learning. Each age understood this learning and philosophy according to the style which predominated. Thus Solomon was in turn parabolist, naturalist, sceptic, magician, astrologer, alchemist, cabalist.”

With these corrective views in mind, we may turn to the history of Israel in its golden epoch, with less fear of gaining an incorrect historical image. We shall be still further guarded if we recall that it is very doubtful whether any of the Hebrew writings now extant were in existence in the time of David and Solomon. By this it is not meant to deny that the Israelites of that day knew how to write. Doubtless the works of that period were drawn upon by later compilers. But by far the larger number of records ostensibly dating from this time must be ascribed to a much later period. It is held by Renan that “the only part of the Hebrew literature now preserved, which might be attributed to Solomon, is that portion of the Book of Proverbs which extends from verse one of the tenth chapter to the sixteenth verse of the twenty-second chapter.” And even this, it is alleged, cannot in all probability be the work of Solomon himself. “Not only have we no work of Solomon’s,” says Renan, “but it is probable that he did not write at all.” Even if such iconoclastic views as this are accepted, it does not follow that we have no knowledge of the true history of Israel in this period. The fact is quite the contrary; however much tradition may have befogged the view, the time of Hebrew monarchy is a truly historical epoch, the main outlines of which are clearly preserved. We turn now to the detailed examination of this interesting period.a

SAMUEL AND SAUL

It was not only the Philistines with whom Saul had to contend. The Amalekites invaded the country from the south, devastating it as they went. Saul defeated them, marched through their territory, and made their king, Agag, prisoner. All the Amalekites taken were destroyed with the edge of the sword, and the same was done to all such cattle as were useless; the captive Agag and the best of the animals were brought back in triumph to Gilgal, through the territory of the tribe of Judah.

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Samuel came from Ramah, where he had lived since the loss of the holy Ark, to offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and said to Saul: “What meaneth this bleating of the sheep in mine ears and the lowing of the oxen which I hear? Thou hast done evil in the sight of Jehovah.” He was displeased because all that lived had not been utterly destroyed, and would not offer the sacrifice. The victorious king was submissive enough to confess his fault. “I have sinned,” he said, “yet honour me now I pray thee before the elders of my people, and turn again with me that I may worship the Lord thy God.” Then Samuel demanded that the captive king of Amalek should be brought before him. This was done, and Samuel said to him, “As thy sword has made women childless, so shall thy mother be made childless among women.” And “Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal.”

King Saul, so the story continues in summary fashion, performed mighty deeds of valour, and when he saw any strong man or any valiant man, he took him unto him and fought against all the enemies of Israel on every side, against Moab and against Edom and against the kings of Zobah (in the north); and the war was sore against the Philistines so long as Saul lived, and wherever he turned he conquered. His sword never came back empty, and the daughters of Israel could clothe themselves in purple from the spoil of his victories and adorn their garments with gold. By these long and hard struggles, Saul succeeded in destroying the lordship of the Philistines over Israel and breaking the power of their arms, and “delivered Israel out of the hands of them that spoiled them.” In Saul’s hands the royal power accomplished what the Israelites had expected when they placed it there. Supported by his son Jonathan and his cousin Abner, whom as a distinguished warrior the king had made the captain of his host, Saul had become the saviour of Israel; but for him the tribes on the hither side of Jordan would have been subdued by the Philistines, those beyond Jordan by the Ammonites and Moabites, and they would probably have completely succumbed to their power. He sought also to improve the state of affairs within the country; it is reported that “in his zeal for Israel,” he brought the Hivites of Gibeon to submission and obedience; the wizards and the conjurors of the dead he had put away out of the country.

THE RISE OF DAVID

As king, Saul remained faithful to the simple manners of his early life. When not in the field, which was, however, generally the case, he lived on his own portion at Gibeah. There was no question of state, dignitaries, ceremonial, or a harem. His wife, Ahinoam, had borne Saul three sons besides Jonathan: Abinadab, Malchishua, and Ishbosheth [Eshbaal], and two daughters, Merab and Michal; the elder, Merab, was married to Adriel, the son of Barzillai.

It was the ambition, the intrigues, and the rebellion of a man whom Saul had himself raised from obscurity, which not only robbed the latter of the reward of his deeds and his house of the throne, but also deprived Israel of all the fruits of so many and such great efforts, and once more set the fate of the nation at stake.

David, the son of Jesse of Bethlehem, in the tribe of Judah, belonged “to the valiant men whom Saul had taken to himself”; he had distinguished himself in the struggle against the Philistines, and the king had made him[80] his armour bearer and sent him out frequently against them; with fortune on his side David’s expeditions succeeded better than those of other captains. Thus he was beloved in the eyes of the people and of the king’s servants, and Jonathan, the brave son of Saul, “made a covenant with David, for he loved him as his own soul.” In Saul’s house David was trusted and honoured before the other warriors. Saul made him a captain of a thousand and gave him the command of the bodyguard. After Abner, David was the first of Saul’s followers and ate at his table. Saul even went farther; he gave David his second daughter Michal to wife, because she loved him, though David had himself refused to take her. “What am I,” said David, “and what is my life or my father’s family that I should be the king’s son-in-law? But I am a poor man and lightly esteemed.”

After this, Saul was seized with a suspicion of David, fearing lest this man whom he had raised so high and had made his son-in-law, and who was the bosom friend of his son, should conspire against him and his house in alliance with Samuel and other priests who had not abandoned their unfriendly attitude towards the newly established throne and the man who filled it.

It is related that Saul thrust at David with a spear, but that the latter avoided the blow and fled to his house. Then Saul commanded that the house should be surrounded, that David might be killed the next day. But Michal let David down in the night from a window, and laid the household god in the bed in his place, covered it up with a cloth, and placed the fly-net of goat’s hair over the face of the image. Meantime David fled to Samuel at Ramah and hid with him at Naioth until Saul learned his whereabouts. Then David escaped to Nob, where the priest Ahimelech inquired of Jehovah for him and gave him provisions and a sword, and thence he fled farther to the Philistine prince, Achish, king of Gath.

Saul blamed his daughter for having helped David out of his difficulties, and said to Jonathan: “As long as the son of Jesse liveth, thou shalt not be established nor thy kingdom.” Then he held a strict trial of the priests, under the tamarisk at Gibeah. When the priests of Nob were brought before him, Saul asked Ahimelech: “Why have ye conspired against me, thou and the son of Jesse, that he should rise against me? Thou shalt surely die. Slay the priests,” he cried to his bodyguard; “their hand is with David and because they knew when he fled and did not shew it to me.” But the servants of the king would not put forth their hand to fall upon the priests of the Lord. And the king said to Doeg, “Turn thou and fall upon the priests.” And Doeg the Edomite turned and fell upon the priests, and slew on that day fourscore and five persons that did wear a linen ephod.

“And Nob, the city of the priests, smote he with the edge of the sword, both men and women, children and sucklings, and oxen, and asses, and sheep, with the edge of the sword.

“And one of the sons of Ahimelech the son of Ahitub, named Abiathar, escaped and fled after David. And Abiathar shewed David that Saul had slain the Lord’s priests.”

DAVID IN REVOLT AGAINST SAUL

We do not know exactly how far Saul’s suspicion of David was justified: from the story which has been revised and worked up with a view to prejudicing us in David’s favour, we can only perceive that the son of Jesse actually was in close alliance with the priests, and David’s own actions[81] after he had broken with Saul are evidence of far-reaching and carefully laid schemes, the means of whose execution were not too scrupulous. But whether Saul had perceived David’s ambitious intentions in good time, or had gone too far in his proceedings against him, in either case he had committed an error: David was by no means content with escaping from the king’s anger; if wrong had been done him he far outdid it by his own acts. The Philistines would neither have received in Gath a dangerous enemy like David, who had done them so much injury, nor have spared his life, if he had not agreed to support them for the future in their struggle against Saul. David also entered into relations with other enemies of his country.

His father and mother he took to the king of Moab, to secure them against Saul’s vengeance. He then threw himself into the desolate tracts of eastern Judea about the Dead Sea, and here he attempted to organise a rising; he probably counted on the adhesion of the tribe of Judah, to which he belonged, as he might reckon on their jealousy of the king from the little tribe of Benjamin, although the tribe of Judah should have been especially grateful to Saul, since it had been the one to suffer longest under the Philistine dominion. His father’s house really gathered round him, “and all the oppressed, and whosoever had a creditor and whosoever had a grievance.” They were for the most part people of the tribe of Judah, with some from Benjamin and others from Gad, beyond Jordan—four to six hundred men, who assembled round David in the cave of Adullam. This was no great result, and David found himself compelled to lead a robber existence with this band, and by so doing he ran the danger of rousing the inhabitants of the neighbourhood against him.

He therefore tried a middle course and sent to a rich man, Nabal of Carmel, who possessed three thousand sheep and one thousand goats, and who was a descendant of that Caleb who had here once founded a lordship for himself with the sword. David sent to say that he had taken nothing from Nabal’s flocks, and to ask if the latter would not, therefore, send him and his the means of subsistence. But Nabal answered David’s messenger: “Who is David and who is the son of Jesse; there be many servants nowadays that break away every man from his master.” Then David set out, by night, to fall on Nabal’s house and flocks. On the way he was met by Nabal’s wife Abigail, who, in her dread of the freebooters, had had some asses laden with slaughtered sheep, bread, jars of wine, figs, and raisin cakes, to take secretly to David’s camp. “Blessed be thy advice, woman,” said David, “for as the Lord God of Israel liveth, hadst thou not met me, surely by the morning light there had been none left of Nabal and his house.” Nabal miraculously died ten days after this incident. David reflected that so rich a possession in this region could not but be useful. Saul’s daughter was lost to him, so he sent some servants to Abigail at Carmel. They said: “David sent us unto thee, to take thee to him to wife.” And Abigail arose and bowed herself on her face to the earth and said, ‘Behold, let thine handmaid be a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord.’ Then she arose with five of her maidens, and went after the messengers of David and became his wife. In fact, this marriage seems to have been of great assistance to David’s enterprise. The southern towns of Judah—Aroer, Hormah, Ramoth, Jattir, Eshtemoa, even Hebron itself, declared for him. From here David endeavoured to press forward to the north and made himself master of the fortified city of Keilah.

When Saul was informed of this, he said:[82] “God hath delivered him into mine hand, for he is shut in by entering into a town that hath gates and bars.” As Saul approached, David bade Abiathar the priest, who had fled to him from Nob with the image of Jehovah, to bring the image. David inquired of it: “Will the men of Keilah deliver me and my men into the hands of Saul; O Lord God of Israel, I beseech thee tell thy servant.” And Jehovah said, “They will deliver thee up.” Then David despaired of holding the town and fled to Ziph and Maon in the wilderness by the Dead Sea. But Saul followed and overtook him: nothing but a mountain now divided David’s band from the king. David was already surrounded and lost—when a message reached Saul: “The Philistines have invaded the land.”

It was probably an expedition that the Philistines had undertaken in aid of the hard-pressed rebels. Saul immediately abandoned the pursuit and marched against the foreigner. But David named the rock the Rock of Escapes. After the king had beaten the Philistines he took three thousand men from the army that he might completely quell the rebellion. David had retreated farther east, on the border of the Dead Sea in the neighbourhood of Engedi, “upon the rocks of the wild goats,” and here Saul reduced him to such straits that he despaired of maintaining himself in Judah and got away to the Philistines with his following. The rising was at an end.

David’s attempt to induce the tribe of Judah to secede from Saul, had completely failed. Driven from the soil on which he had raised the standard of revolt, he no longer hesitated to formally enter the service of the Philistines, and the latter welcomed the support of a brave and clever rebel, knowing that though once their enemy, he had already given much trouble in Judah to the arms of Saul, whose force they had so often felt and who had snatched from them their dominion over Israel, and aware that his resentment against his benefactor and master might prove of the greatest service to them, King Achish of Gath, to whom David had a second time fled, declared: “He hath made his people Israel utterly to abhor him; therefore he shall be my servant forever.” And he gave him and his band of freebooters the town of Ziklag as a dwelling-place. David was now established at Ziklag as a vassal of Achish. At the latter’s command he had to march to battle and also to deliver up a share of the booty taken, and from Ziklag in the territory of the Philistines he and his small army, still recruited from the discontented of Israel who fled to David across the frontier, conducted a guerilla warfare against Saul and his native country. In these expeditions David was shrewd enough to spare his former adherents in Judah, the towns which had once declared for him, and to direct his attacks solely against the followers of Saul; he even secretly maintained relations with his party in Judah, and out of the booty derived from his warlike and plundering raids he sent presents to the elders of those towns which were well-disposed towards him.

David had dwelt some time in Ziklag when the Philistines assembled their whole force against Saul. When the princes of the Philistines reviewed the army and made the various sections pass before them, David and his men also came amongst the soldiers of Achish. Then said the other princes to Achish: “What do these Hebrews here? Let David not go down with us to battle, lest in the battle he be an adversary to us and go over to his master that he might once more gain favour with Saul with our heads.” Achish trusted David and said: “He has already been with me for some time, for years. I have found nothing against him up till now.” But the other princes insisted. When Achish informed David that he could not accompany the army, the latter answered:[83] “But what have I done and what hast thou found in thy servant so long as I have been with thee unto this day, that I may not go fight against the enemies of my king?” But in spite of his urgent wish David was sent back.

The army of the Philistines penetrated far into Israel; but north of the territory of the tribe of Ephraim, on the mountain of Gilboa, Saul encamped opposite them with the army of the Israelites. The battle was a fierce one. Abinadab and Malchishua, the sons of Saul, fell, and Jonathan himself was slain. The ranks of the Israelites gave way and the enemies’ archers attained the king.

THE DEATH OF SAUL AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SUCCESSION

Saul was determined not to survive the fall of his sons and his first defeat. He called to his armour bearer: “Draw thy sword and kill me, lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through and abuse me.” But the faithful servant refused to lay hands on his lord; then Saul fell on his own sword, and the armour bearer followed the king’s example. The army of the Israelites fled in every direction and the inhabitants of many towns escaped from the Philistines by retreating across the Jordan.

The dread which Saul had inspired in the enemies of Israel and how great a shield he had been to his own people, was shown after his death. The Israelites sang laments for him.

“The gazelle, oh Israel, is slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty fallen. Tell it not in Gath; publish it not in the streets of Askalon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph. Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let there be rain upon you, nor fields of offerings. For there the shield of the mighty is vilely cast away, the shield of Saul. From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty the bow of Jonathan turned not back and the sword of Saul returned not empty. Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided: they were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions. Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in scarlet with other delights; who put ornaments of gold upon your apparel. How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle!” The Philistines rejoiced when they found the body of Saul on Mount Gilboa. They took away the arms of the dead king and sent them round through their whole country, to convince all men that the dreaded leader of Israel was really dead. Then the arms were hung up in the temple of Astarte. The head of the corpse the Philistines hewed from the body, and hung it up in the temple of Dagon; the trunk, and the bodies of Saul’s three sons, they placed in the market at Beth-shan, in the territory of the tribe of Manasseh.

The men of Jabesh in Gilead, which Saul had once saved in its sorest need, arose and secretly stole away the corpse of Saul and the corpses of his three sons from the market-place of Beth-shan, burnt them at Jabesh and there buried them under the tamarisk; and they fasted and mourned over Saul seven days.

But the other tribes also preserved a faithful memory of the fallen king. Saul’s youngest son alone survived; he had escaped across the Jordan with Abner, Saul’s captain of the host. Although a single battle had destroyed all that Saul had won in long and painful struggles and although the Philistines were again masters of the hither side of Jordan, as in the dreary days before the reign of Saul, yet the tribes beyond Jordan recognised Ishbosheth[84] [Eshbaal] as their lawful king. He was, however, obliged to fix his seat at Mahanaim, east of Jordan. Abner’s courage and energy succeeded in gradually bringing back the fruits of the Philistine victory at Gilboa, and in freeing the territory of the northern tribes, including Ephraim and Benjamin, from the yoke of the Philistines.

Whilst Abner was doing his utmost to save the wrecks of Saul’s dominion for the king’s son, and to drive the Philistines out of the country, David had been looking after his own interests. After the defeat of Gilboa, many had hastened to him at Ziklag. David had been a notable warrior, and there was a certainty of finding protection from the Philistines’ vassal. Those towns of the tribe of Judah which had formally adhered to David, also now for the most part went over to him, and indeed the tribe of Judah was more accustomed than the others to the Philistines’ rule. David inquired of Jehovah whether he should go up from Ziklag to any of the cities of Judah, and Jehovah answered: “To Hebron.” He did so, “and the men of Judah came and there they anointed David, king over the house of Judah, for only the house of Judah followed David.” Thus David had succeeded in achieving what he had failed to accomplish in Saul’s life-time, and had founded an independent sovereignty in the territory of the tribe of Judah. At first he ruled there from Hebron in peace, as the vassal of the Philistines so long as Abner had to fight with the latter. But when Ishbosheth’s government was once more established in the north and centre of the country, Abner, to complete the liberation of Israel, was obliged to attack David as he had done the Philistines.

“There was long war between the house of Saul and the house of David,” says the tradition. It continued during several years, without any decisive issue, when a breach between Abner and Ishbosheth gave David his advantage, and finally won him the throne of Saul. Ishbosheth appears to have become distrustful of Abner, to whom he owed everything. When Abner took to himself Saul’s concubine Rizpah, Ishbosheth imagined that he intended by this means to acquire a claim to the throne, in order to be able to seize the government himself; and he did not conceal his resentment. Then Abner turned from the man whom he had raised to greatness, and opened secret negotiations with David. David responded gladly.

With characteristic cunning he first demanded the restoration of his wife, Michal, Saul’s daughter, whom, after David’s rebellion, Saul had given in marriage to another man. David had learnt to know the Israelites’ attachment to Saul, and saw that nothing would bring him nearer to the throne than a renewal of the union with Saul’s family; then, if none of Saul’s descendants remained except his daughter, he himself would be actually the rightful heir. Abner sent Michal to him, and went himself to Hebron, to arrange for handing over the kingdom. An agreement had been arrived at. Abner had accomplished his task, and was already on his way home to Mahanaim, when Joab, David’s captain, sent to call him back. He came, and Joab led him aside under the gate as though he had some private words to say to him, instead of which he thrust him through the body with his sword. David protested his innocence (Abner must have had many friends and followers among the Israelites) and mourned over Abner’s death. The corpse was solemnly interred at Hebron and David went in sackcloth behind the bier, but Joab was left unpunished. More just was the Israelites’ lament for Abner’s death. “Must Abner die as the godless dieth?” they sang.[85] “Thy hands were not bound, nor thy feet put into fetters; as a man falleth before the sons of iniquity fellest thou.”

When the news of Abner’s death came to Mahanaim, Ishbosheth’s “hands were feeble, and all the Israelites were troubled.” The pillar of the kingdom had fallen. The two captains thought to earn David’s gratitude. While Ishbosheth was taking his midday rest on his bed in the sleeping chamber, they crept unnoticed into the house, hewed off the head of their king, and brought it with all speed to David at Hebron. This murder also must have been welcome to David; it brought him quickly to his goal; but he would not reward the agents—he had them both hanged.

DAVID SECURES THE CROWN

The throne of Saul was vacant, and David, the husband of his daughter, was at the head of no inconsiderable power; whom else could the tribes of Israel, which had obeyed Ishbosheth, now raise to the throne, if the melancholy division was to be brought to an end and the people again united under one rule? The elders of the tribes were wise enough to judge the situation aright. So the whole people came together at Hebron; in full assembly David was raised to the throne of all Israel, and anointed by the elders. All was joy, harmony, and hope, that, after the close of the long, fraternal quarrel, better times might now be in store.

Eight years had gone by since Saul had fallen at Gilboa, and David had at last attained the object which he had persistently aimed at through so many changes of fortune. But he did not feel secure so long as male descendants of Saul were still surviving. Still he would not lay hands on them himself. Now the Hivites of Gibeon nourished a deadly hatred against Saul’s family, because, “in his zeal for the children of Israel,” Saul’s hand had lain heavy upon them. David offered “to make atonement for the wrong which Saul had done them,” and thereupon they demanded: because their land had borne no fruit for three years, that seven men of Saul’s family should be delivered to them “to be hanged before Jehovah at Gibeah,” the home of Saul. Just seven male descendants of Saul survived, two sons of his concubine, Rizpah, and five grandsons, whom Saul’s eldest daughter had borne to Adriel. These David took and “delivered into the hands of the Gibeonites and they hanged them in the hill before Jehovah.”

Only Mephibosheth, Jonathan’s son, David spared, remembering his oath of friendship to Jonathan. Moreover, Mephibosheth was young and lame in both feet; in the night of terror after the battle of Gilboa, his nurse had let him fall. David left him his inheritance intact, in so far that he was allowed to take possession of Saul’s portion in Gibeah, and the king ordered that the bones of Saul and Jonathan should be brought from Jabesh to Zelah near Gibeah, where Saul’s father rested. In the tribe of Benjamin, which had been Saul’s and, among the friends of his house, David’s deeds were not forgotten; these men hated “David, the man of blood.”c

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER V. DAVID’S REIGN

The eyes of Israel were now all turned to David. All the tribes of Israel, in the persons of their nobles, came to Hebron and said: “Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh. And moreover, in times past, even when Saul was king, thou wast he that leddest out and broughtest in Israel: and the Lord thy God said unto thee, Thou shalt feed my people Israel, and thou shalt be ruler over my people Israel.” Thereupon the elders of Israel anointed David to be their king before Jehovah in Hebron. Nothing denotes more clearly than these words of our chronicler, the idea which animated all Israel in calling upon David to mount the throne of Saul. He still lived in their memory as the renowned leader in the struggle with the Philistines. And the memory of the days of Saul must have been all the more vivid, the more inglorious and mean the present appeared.

David could consequently be in no doubt as to his first task as newly elected king of Israel. Israel must be again free, and the Philistines thrown back on their coasts. Nothing else was intended when the tribes invited him to be their prince. And, like Saul in former days, by this means alone could David permanently retain the confidence with which the tribes approached him at his anointing.

In the country of the Philistines also, the significance of what had passed in Hebron was quickly perceived. There was probably no need of many words and messages to announce that the position of vassal to Philistia, in which David had hitherto stood, was at an end. If Saul’s kingdom had passed to David, between him and the Philistines the cause of Israel still retained the same rights as in the days of Saul. In spite of this, David seems to have been attacked sooner than he could have anticipated; immediately, on the news of his anointing at Hebron, the Philistines invaded Judah. David seems to have been taken unawares, and Israel’s attempt to make itself independent through him, to have been nipped in the bud. Beitlahm (Bible Bethlehem) David’s home, was quickly occupied, and Hebron was threatened. David was warned, but having no time to summon the militia, was compelled to withdraw hastily to the cave of Adullam, which stronghold had long ago been intrusted to him. Here he seems to have remained some time, until he had collected his forces, and later he succeeded in inflicting a sensible defeat on the Philistines, who had fixed their camp in the land of giants, the so-called plain of Rephaim north of Jebus, opposite Gibeon.

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But it must be confessed that the Philistines were not annihilated, or even merely reduced to quiescence by this. The struggle was again renewed on the occasion of a second invasion of Judah by the enemy. In obedience to Jehovah’s oracle, David passed round the Philistines, who had again encamped in the land of giants, and attacked them from the north, i.e. from behind. He smote them from Gibeon to Gezer.

For the time the Philistines seemed to have remained quiet after these two defeats, which David had inflicted on them within so short a time. But their power was not yet broken, and David must have fought many and doubtless severe battles before Israel had rest from the Philistines. Many a reminiscence of David and his heroes, many a bold feat of his valiant host, lived on through subsequent generations and was referred to this very struggle. At one time it is David’s own life which is at stake, at another, Goliath of Gath is slain, the enemy who has also lent his name to the unknown Philistine giant whom David had formerly killed. Finally, by a decisive battle, David succeeds in winning the Philistine’s capital and with it their whole country. From this time forward the power of the Philistines is broken. Never afterwards do they appear as the enemies of Israel. From the time of David the relations between the two nations are essentially peaceful. Nor, in spite of his victories, did David subjugate Philistia or destroy her nationality. He was content to have won back Israel’s position, defeated the enemy, and kept peace with him. It even appears that moderately friendly relations were opened between the rivals. Indeed, so little were the Philistines now considered as the hereditary foes of Israel, that David chooses his bodyguard from amongst them.

But David was not content with the success he had so far attained. Israel was not merely to be free. Israel was to be united, and raised to a position commanding respect among the neighbouring states. Step by step, David brought this aim nearer fulfilment. He trained the tribes to give new and better expression to their cohesion than had formerly been possible; he fitted them to guide their destinies according to his own ideal; thanks to him, for a time, Israel was even able to have a decisive voice in the council of the peoples of Anterior Asia, who dwelt west of the Euphrates. No wonder, then, that Israel knows no greater king than David, and that his name is the expression, to the most remote posterity, of all the magnificence and all the splendour which could ever have been imagined in Israel. David was and remains the greatest man next to Moses in the history of Israel, and is at the same time the most popular.

It was not David’s work which awakened in the tribes of Israel the consciousness that they formed an unit, a single people, nor that for a transitory period they acted as one nation. Moses, and again later, Saul, even Deborah for some of the tribes, had given expression to this ideal unity, and temporarily realised it. The tribes must now long have known that they were the limbs of a single nation. But always, as had been lately manifested in Saul, the strength was lacking to maintain what had been momentarily acquired. What was especially wanted even when liberty had been won, was a national centre, round which the life of the nation, political as well as religious, might gather. Only when this was attained could the unification be really complete, and any sort of permanence be guaranteed for the liberty won by the sword. Saul, with inconceivable shortsightedness, did little or nothing towards this object. The national sanctuary, first lost and afterwards again recovered, he had left standing in an obscure corner of Israel, and had fixed his royal abode in his native Benjamite city of Gibeah where[88] he had lived as a peasant, and which had neither past nor future—the best evidence that Saul lacked the kingly faculty. David saw deeper than Saul. If Saul was an able warrior, who, when he had sheathed his sword, returned to his cattle at Gibeah, David, on the contrary, was a born ruler. He recognised that religion and national life needed a centre, unity a base, national power a place of assembly—in short that if the country was to maintain its unity and independence, it must have a capital worthy of royalty and fitted to secure it.

Immediately after the conclusion of the first Philistine wars, David proceeded to the accomplishment of this object. His choice bears witness to his genius. Hebron, lying at the southern end of the country, and being moreover the capital of his own tribe, could be suited, neither by its position nor its tribal character, to form the centre of the new kingdom, which must be superior to the ancient tribal distinctions. Saul’s residence of Gibeah was disqualified on similar grounds, and probably also strategically unimportant. On the other hand, the fortress of Jebus answered, as did no other place in Israel, to what David sought. Furnished by nature with the attributes of an almost impregnable stronghold from a strategical point of view, Jebus is one of the most important places in the country. At the middle point of the traffic between the Mediterranean and the East, as of that between Syria and Egypt, it is a natural centre for trade and commerce. As it was still in the possession of the Canaanites, it was well qualified to remain aloof from the contention for precedence among the tribes. And yet again as it lay not far from David’s birthplace, Jebus provided for the preservation of David’s kingship and of that connection with the tribe of Judah which was to a certain extent indispensable. In fact, David’s choice of Jebus—henceforth called Jerusalem in the Old Testament—as capital of his kingdom, was an act of incalculably wide-reaching importance. It is quite impossible to say what would have become of Judah and the throne of David in the centuries which followed Solomon’s death, but for the possession of Jerusalem. Of the part played by Jerusalem in the destinies of Israel, both before and after the exile, every one who knows the story is aware. If David’s successful fight for liberty against the Philistines was the first jewel which he added to his newly acquired crown, the second was the town of Jerusalem, which he now won and raised to be the royal city of Israel.

Jebus had hitherto been a relic of that large territory forming with Gibeon, Beeroth, Kirjath-jearim and Chephirah, a Canaanitish strip of land, which once, in the period of the conquest and for a considerable time after, had extended into the possession of Israel. In course of time, most of this land, so long beyond the borders of Israel, had been absorbed. Finally Saul had exerted himself in the matter by the application of force. Only Jebus, with its strong rock-citadel Zion, had obstinately resisted all attacks. Its possessors seem to have formed a singular little Canaanitish nation, called, from their town, the Jebusites.

David’s attempt to win the Jebusites and their town for Israel by peaceful means, miscarried. Their rocky eyrie, Zion, appeared to the Jebusites so strong that the lame and blind would suffice to defend it. Undismayed by their scorn, David proceeded to use force, and stormed town and citadel. The citadel he took possession of himself and called it David’s citadel (the city of David) after having first restored the building for his own purposes. Hiram of Tyre, to whom the friendship of his powerful neighbour must have been a matter of some importance, is said to have assisted him with[89] cedar wood and workmen. The former masters of the town seem, like the Philistines after them, not to have been treated according to the usage of war, but to have been spared. At least in later times we find the Jebusites living with Israel in Jerusalem.

DAVID’S GREATNESS IN TIME OF PEACE

But the conquest of Jerusalem by David, and the selection of this town as the capital of the country, had yet a further significance. A royal sanctuary was a necessary adjunct to the king’s residence and the capital of the country. But religion in Israel was a popular institution. No affair which touched the whole nation could dispense with it. The national capital, the centre of the life of the people, must, if it were to answer its purpose, also be the centre of the religious life. In order, therefore, to make Jerusalem, as a capital, what it might be and what by David’s means it actually was to become for Israel, it must be the centre of Jehovah’s worship.

David’s greatness is raised to a still higher level by the fact that he thought of this also. History is made by the man who recognises the spirit of his time and of his country, and is in a position to step forward and act decisively in consonance with it. David perceived that the spirit of his nation and its destiny only worked in the close connection of the national with the religious life. He had an eye for the most secret inner existence of his nation, according to which it must be the people of religion, God’s people. Thus he became at once the historical, and what was inseparable from this, the religious hero of Israel. We need neither overlook the weakness and despotic whims of David, nor transform the man, by nature a hero, into a feeble saint, in order to appreciate his deep religious character and his importance for the religion of Israel. As David had glorified Israel’s past, so he had done for its future, and in days of tribulation his name revived Israel’s sinking hope and faith in God. Jehovah, the God of Israel, became through him the chief dweller at Jerusalem, the neighbour and almost the household companion, nay more, the host and father of its king. Jerusalem, the royal city, is at the same time the city of God, the holy city; Davi[90]d’s Dynasty is Jehovah’s royal house, and its members Jehovah’s sons, and even the hero of the last days, who shall save Israel and the world from all their woes, can henceforth be pictured in no other way than as a second David, the great son and antitype of the glorious founder of the holy city.

The ancient sanctuary of the time of Moses, the Ark of God, had been almost forgotten since the evil days when it fell into the enemy’s hand. The Philistines indeed, smitten with a solemn awe, had restored the ark. But neither Saul nor the priesthood of Nob, which had succeeded that of Shiloh, nor any one else in Israel, had interested himself in it. It might seem that its sojourn in the enemies’ country had desecrated it. Or probably the small measure of good fortune it had brought to the arms of Israel’s hosts at Aphek had shaken the belief in its virtue.

Not so David. The scruples of superstitious Saul and of his age, did not terrify him. He saw what the Ark of God was and that it was what he needed: the ancient sanctuary of Israel, which assured Jehovah’s presence in the desert, and with which great memories were connected. For him the fact that it had long, and perhaps in the first instance, had its location with the tribe of Joseph, could only be an additional reason for once more restoring it to honour. Everything must depend on his winning over to himself and Jerusalem that northern group of the tribes.

Thus the Ark of God was fetched in solemn procession and in the presence of the whole people from Baal Jehuda [Bible, Baalah (Kirjath-jearim) in Judah] where it stood in the house of a private individual. But an accident which befell the driver of the cart upon which it was carried, perplexed David. The fancy he had thought dispelled, that Jehovah’s hand of blessing was withdrawn from the ark, now appeared to be founded on the truth. He did not venture to conduct it to Zion. It was only when even a foreigner, Obed Edom of Gath, in whose house the Ark had been left for three months, derived blessing from it, that David carried out his intention. With rejoicing and the sound of trumpet, the people led Jehovah to Zion. David himself executed the motions of dancing before the Ark, clad in the linen garment of a priest, and fulfilled as chief the priestly office before Jehovah in Zion. Michal, Saul’s proud daughter, was ashamed of her husband for degrading himself before his serving men and maids. David was proud of having been honoured before Jehovah. There was in him a truly religious nature, which did not scruple to go even to the verge of what were, even for that age, religious eccentricities.

It must be in the highest degree astonishing that David built no temple for the Ark. If he fetched it to his capital and his palace, he must also have meant to erect there a fitting resting-place for Jehovah. Since he did not do so, he must have been guided by special reasons and considerations. If, as the history of Samuel hints, the Ark had already a temple of its own in Shiloh, it can be positively said that only a divine oracle could have withheld David from building a fitting temple. Without such a definite declaration of Jehovah’s will, it would have been culpable indifference and criminal contempt for the Majesty of Jehovah for David to have built no temple. There is consequently no real grounds to discredit as a late invention the tradition of David’s firm intention to build Jehovah a temple on Zion and its prevention by a prophetic saying. The rather late compilation of the writings concerning it cannot be taken into consideration, in face of such overwhelming inherent grounds for the truth of the fact. Nay, it is believeable that already on this occasion a prophetic saying furnished David with the prospect of the continuance of his dynasty.

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FURTHER WARS BREAK OUT

David was not left to the peaceful enjoyment of what he had already acquired. It could scarcely have been otherwise, and David would hardly have desired that it should. If Israel were to be master in Syria, if her borders were to be secured and the independence so often contested by surrounding peoples were to be rendered indisputable, explanations with her remaining neighbours must take place. David could not then possibly rest content with the acquisition of the kingship over all Israel, and the overthrow of the Philistines. The occasion, not undesired by David, came from without, from Ammon. The Ammonites soon joined themselves with the various Aramaic peoples, so that, when he had conquered them, David was master of all the border country to the north and east of Israel.

It is extremely doubtful whether the Ammonites were permanently subdued. At a later period their territory did not belong to Israel, but it probably did in David’s time. In any case the marauding eastern tribes which had so often threatened Israel, were for the present reduced to quiescence. The frontier of David’s kingdom was now secured in the east as far as to the desert. In the north his rule extended to Lebanon and Hebron. Even the rulers of the territories lying farther to the north and east sought his friendship. As for instance, King Toi of Hamath on the Orontes, who had lived at feud with Hadad-ezer and consequently could only be grateful to David for his overthrow. Also King Talmai of Geshur, a district of Hermon, southwest of Damascus. A daughter of his was one of David’s wives. She became the mother of Absalom.

The Phœnicians had even better reason than these northern neighbours to keep on good terms with David. Nothing but gain could result to their commercial operations from the existence in the interior of Palestine of a powerful and well-ordered state, such as David was striving after. Their king, Hiram of Tyre, concluded a friendly alliance with David, which continued under Solomon.

Thus David’s kingdom stretched from the Red Sea to Lebanon. It was the ruling power in Syria. It stood in uncontested power. It had no longer any adversary to fear. Next to David the greatest share in this result was due to Joab, his chief general—especially as David did not latterly often take the field himself. From beginning to end he remained faithfully devoted to David, unshaken through all the storms and vicissitudes of fortune—a warrior to whose keen sword success was never denied, but also a man of rude violence and unbridled selfishness, to whom no bond seemed sacred, no means to be rejected.

It is obvious that in such quarrels as he had to conduct on all sides, David had need of a carefully administered and well-disciplined army. The nucleus of his troops, a kind of guard on whom he could implicitly rely, consisted of those six hundred men, who, long ago, in the days of his flight from Saul, had gathered round him and had remained true to him during his persecution. When David became king, they, of course, stayed with him. Henceforth they represented his bodyguard, and bore the name of Gibborim, the “Heroes.” In war, special tasks were, as a matter of course, assigned to them. The gaps in the circles of these picked troops, which resulted from David’s numerous wars, were afterwards filled up after the victories over the Philistines—for reasons which are explained by the purpose of the force as the king’s bodyguard. The recruits were chiefly[92] foreigners, especially Philistines and Cretan mercenaries of cognate race. Thus this whole force soon bore the name of Cretans and Philistines.

Important as this picked body was at all times to David, it could not possibly suffice for his great campaigns. David recognised that for wars such as he had to conduct, a permanent and reliable military organisation was necessary for Israel, even in time of peace, so that even then Israel’s troops might be under surveillance and no tribe be able to evade its duty in the moment of war. The census of the people undertaken by David’s chief captain, Joab, served this object. It was to secure the supervision of those capable of bearing arms in Israel, and to afford a groundwork for that organisation. Joab spent three-quarters of a year on the way; he extended his journey to Kadesh on the Orontes, the capital of the once mighty Hittite empire, which, consequently, if the statement is correct, had also been subdued by David. Soon after this numbering, a destructive pestilence fell upon Israel. In this David recognised Jehovah’s avenging hand. We have other reasons to assume that David’s remodelling of the army was not the cause of his success in the struggle with the neighbouring peoples. It appears only to have been taken in hand as a result of the information here collected, and as a measure which might be of value at a subsequent period.

The close of David’s history, so far as it is not dominated by the well-known occurrences in his own family, might be said to be comprised in two episodes, which concern his relations to the few surviving members of the family of his predecessor, Saul. They probably belong to the time before David’s foreign wars, but stand in our narrative in no historical sequence, so that it is difficult to define their date exactly. The second of them is to be judged from the first.

According to this, David, doubtless some time after the whole of Saul’s kingdom has fallen to him, and he had firmly established himself in Zion, felt constrained to exercise some grace towards the surviving posterity of Saul, in memory of the friendship which had united him to Saul’s son, Jonathan. On inquiry it appeared that a son of Jonathan’s, named Meribaal (or Mephibosheth) was still alive. He was lame from a child, and lived, as it seems, in profound seclusion—probably from fear of David’s vengeance—in Lodebar. David had Meribaal brought before him, and presented him with his grandfather’s possessions. It would seem, therefore, that for a time this had been assumed by David. He was, however, to take up his abode at Jerusalem, and Saul’s servant, Ziba, was to cultivate the estate in Gibeah. David here joins magnanimity and policy. He magnanimously pardons Meribaal, who might regard his life as forfeited, and also makes him royal gifts. But he also does not omit to separate the prince from his family and Saul’s royal seat, and to keep him under his own eyes in Jerusalem. He, as well as the nobles of Benjamin, were to be removed from everything which might remind them of the ancient claims of Saul.

If David here exercised magnanimity in a manner which no one could have expected of him, it is not probable that, in another instance of which we are apprised he was influenced by a desire to exterminate the house of Saul. The town of Gibeon, which an ancient compact had secured in its Canaanitish integrity, had suffered violence from Saul “in his zeal for Israel.” It is to be presumed that he made an attack on Gibeon, and executed a sanguinary punishment on a part of the Canaanite population. For this breach of faith, the guilt of blood lay on Saul and on Israel and must be expiated. Once in David’s time, some time after the above described event, the land had been scourged for three years with drought and famine. David[93] questioned Jehovah concerning it, and its cause is named as the blood-guiltiness weighing on the house of Saul, and therefore—for the king represents the people—on Israel. The citizens of the injured Gibeon were to decide on the atonement. They demanded blood for blood; seven male descendants of Saul were delivered to the Gibeonites and by them “hanged up before Jehovah.” They were Saul’s two sons by his concubine Rizpah, who had once caused the breach between Abner and Eshbaal (Ishbosheth), besides Saul’s five grandsons from the marriage of Merab (the correct reading instead of Michal, lxx. Luc. Pesh.) with Adriel the son of Barzillai of Abel-meholah. Jonathan’s son, Meribaal, was spared for the sake of David’s bond of brotherhood with Jonathan. In her profound mother-love Rizpah kept watch by her slaughtered sons, scaring wild beasts and birds of prey from the corpses, till at last rain fell as a token that Jehovah’s anger was appeased. The bodies could now be buried. David collected their bones and had them deposited in the hereditary sepulchre of Kish at Gibeah. Saul’s house fell, but scarcely with David’s consent—a sacrifice to the religious belief of the time.

DAVID AND ABSALOM

David had gloriously overcome the foes of Israel, but he had not attained to winning the mastery over his own unruly passions. The same man who could guide his people step by step with strength and dexterity, did not possess enough firmness of will to train his own sons. The bitter fruit could not fail to appear. Our records tell the story, with a plain objectivity, with an unsparing impartiality, and from a high moral standpoint that it would be hard to parallel.

Whilst Joab is with the army before Rabbath-Ammon, David transgresses with the wife of a captain who has gone to the war. In order to escape the responsibility for the consequences which do not fail to follow, David had Uriah, the husband, sent home with a message concerning the state of the war. But, ostensibly from a feeling of soldierly duty, although he probably knew what had happened, he refuses to visit his wife and hastens back to the army. Only one means now remains to hide the king’s fault. David gives Uriah a letter to Joab which disposes of the troublesome accuser. Joab must place him at a dangerous place in the battle and leave him to his fate. The plan succeeds; Uriah’s wife Bathsheba duly bewailed her spouse and then became the wife of her seducer.

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When Bathsheba had given birth to a child, that which Uriah had already suspected or discovered could no longer be concealed, and the prophet Nathan becomes spokesman for the public conscience. First in a parable, and then in plain language, he announces to David the judgment of Jehovah. David, thereby showing his true greatness, instead of being angered by Nathan, owns his guilt. The child falls sick, and, in spite of David’s prayer, dies after seven days. In the child’s death David recognises Jehovah’s judgment on his own sin. But he cannot prevent his example from speedily ripening into evil fruit in his grown sons.

His first-born, Amnon, is consumed by a passion for his half-sister, Tamar. By a stratagem, suggested by an unscrupulous flatterer at the court, he manages to get her into his power. A feigned sickness offers an excuse for her visit to him. When the deed has been accomplished, he roughly thrusts the dishonoured maiden from him with pitiless violence, a sure sign that it was not love, but savage desire which had prompted him.

It is as though we were watching a Greek tragedy of fate, when we follow the chronicler’s relation of how the evil deed brought forth evil. Now in fatal succession, guilt is heaped on guilt. The father had begun with open adultery, and had then sought to veil his guilt by hypocrisy and to cover it with blood. He could not, therefore, be surprised if his children did not shrink from the violation of honour, or even from incest, and thence allowed themselves to pass to murder and rebellion.

After what he had done himself, David had not the courage to punish Amnon’s crime, save with words. So another of his sons, Tamar’s own brother Absalom, took it on himself to avenge the outrage on his sister. But he knew how to wait till opportunity offered. Two years after the crime had been committed, Absalom invited the king’s court to the festival of the sheep-shearing at his estate of Baal Hazar. Amnon and the other princes attended. During the meal, Amnon was struck down unawares by Absalom’s people. The others fled homewards, and Absalom to Geshur to his grandfather, Talmai. Three years he remained there in exile, till, by a stratagem of Joab, he succeeded in altering the king’s disposition towards him. Absalom was permitted to return to Jerusalem, but for two years more he was forbidden to appear before the king’s eyes. Finally he succeeded, again through Joab’s intervention, in obtaining a complete pardon.

No good came to David from his pardon of Absalom. To the son’s ambitious and imperious spirit, were now joined spite and the desire to revenge the wrong which he believed, or professed to believe, had been done him. Established in his rights as heir to the throne, he took advantage of his newly acquired position to steal the hearts of the people from the king, who was now growing old. And, not content with the prospect of eventually becoming his father’s lawful successor, he laid a malicious plan for the premature supersession of the king. For the space of four years he secretly prepared what he had in mind, winning over the people by royal splendour and popular mildness, and obtaining accomplices and comrades for his treacherous plans. Fully equipped, he passed to open rebellion against the unsuspecting king.

He desired, with the king’s permission, to make sacrifice in the ancient, sacred Hebron, the discarded, and consequently discontented, capital of Judah. Messengers who left Jerusalem at the same time as he did, announced throughout Israel Absalom’s approaching succession. Here in Hebron, supported by Jewish tribal chiefs, Absalom unfurled the standard of rebellion. Soon a considerable number of the men of Israel rallied round him.

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To David, the news of Absalom’s rising was a thunderbolt from a clear sky. It found him unsuspecting and completely unprepared. Not only in Judah but in the remaining portion of Israel, David’s government must have aroused discontent. Beyond his six hundred faithful followers, he seems for the moment to have been able to count on little support in the country west of Jordan. Only the east, which had formerly stood firmly by the house of Saul, appears also to have remained true to him. Even in his strong capital he did not feel himself safe for an instant from a sudden attack of Absalom, and decided to leave it.

Even now, reduced to the sorest straits ever experienced in his stirring life, the trust in God, the courage and wisdom which had so often sustained him, did not forsake David. Leaving his harem behind in the palace, he flees across the Kidron to Jordan. His bodyguard, his household, and what remains to him, accompanies his flight, including the priests Zadok and Abiathar with the Ark of God. David bids them return to Jerusalem; he cherishes the hope that Jehovah will not forsake his city. Moreover, the priests will be able secretly to inform him through their sons Jonathan and Ahimaaz of what is passing in the city. With the same object he sends back the faithful Hushai, commissioning him to appear as a partisan of Absalom and to frustrate the counsels of the crafty Ahitophel, who has gone over to Absalom.

David was now soon to learn that Absalom’s appeal to Israel had also found a willing ear in Saul’s house and tribe. He was still at the Mount of Olives when Meribaal’s steward, Ziba, met him with the message that his master had joined Absalom in the hope of recovering the throne of his grandfather. Soon afterwards in Bahurin a notable Benjamite, Shimei, comes upon him. He receives him with fierce reproaches, which betray plainly enough how fresh was the hold retained over many irreconcilables by the memory of Saul and his house’s bloody fall, though of this David was guiltless.

Absalom took possession of the empty capital. He showed the people that he had entered upon the succession to David, by appropriating to himself the latter’s harem. If Absalom meant to secure his throne, David must first be removed. Now, before he had collected an army, this would be an easy matter, since Absalom had already considerable force. This, in view of the present state of things, was the counsel of Ahitophel. But Absalom’s destiny willed it that he should not follow this advice. It flattered the vanity of the king’s son to let one of David’s former adherents also speak. Hushai’s stratagem succeeded in befooling the deluded man, and his fate was sealed. He worked on Absalom’s dread of David’s brave and daring host, and induced him to wait till he should have collected round him the forces of all Israel. At the same time he informed David, through the priests, of what he had counselled.

David was now master of the situation, and his decision was immediately taken. He crossed the Jordan, went to Eshbaal’s (Ishbosheth) former capital, Mahanaim, and employed the time allowed him in gathering an army.

Meanwhile Absalom had also crossed the Jordan. In the country east of that river a battle could not be avoided. David’s army marched in three bodies, led by Joab, Abishai, and the Gittite Ittai. Absalom’s commander was David’s nephew Amasa, who was the son of an Ishmaelite Ithra and David’s sister Abigail. David himself, on the earnest entreaty of his people, remained behind in Mahanaim. In the wood of Ephraim—which must have[96] been the name of a wooded district east of Jordan—the decisive struggle took place. Absalom’s host, though far more numerous, for they stand to the narrator for “all Israel,” made no stand before David’s men. In the hurry of the flight Absalom is caught by his long waving hair in the branches of a terebinth. The mule gallops on. Swinging thus between heaven and earth, he is found by a common soldier who informs Joab of what he has seen. That savage warrior knows no mercy. Even David’s special injunction which had restrained the soldier meets with no regard from him. He rates the man’s weakness and himself thrusts three darts into Absalom’s body. Immediately afterwards he causes trumpet-calls to announce the end of the pursuit. Absalom’s body is thrown into a pit and covered with stones.

David, seated at the gate of Mahanaim, awaits the issue. The watchman perceives a man running up from the battle-field, then a second: in the first he recognises Zadok’s son, Ahimaaz, who had already done good messenger work in Jerusalem. Outrunning Joab’s messenger, he brings tidings of David’s victory. The father’s heart thinks only of Absalom. Asked concerning him, Ahimaaz evades the question. Meantime the other runner has come up and tells bluntly what has happened. The king trembles. Deeply moved, he mounts into the upper chamber of the gate-house, breaking out into loud lamentations over his son. He remained there a long time in his sorrow, not even heeding the victorious army which had meantime marched up. Joab’s anger at this treatment of his brave and faithful troops was not small. It was only his vigorous words which succeeded in inducing the king to rouse himself and master his sorrow.

As was to be expected, the people’s conscience revived after the sword had spoken. The revolted tribes, mindful of Israel’s debt of gratitude to David, and, perhaps, in obedience to the ancient grudge against Judah, once more turned penitently to David. Only Judah still stood defiantly apart. It is distinctly apparent that David’s own tribe had been the home of the conspiracy. The first thing, as David believed, was to win it over. He entered into negotiation with the elders of the tribe of Judah, and even offered Amasa Joab’s place in the army. Perhaps an ancient cause of Judah’s discontent was by this means removed.

The men of Judah now brought David across the Jordan with much ceremony, the Shimei before mentioned joining them at the head of one thousand Benjamites. David magnanimously pardoned him. Ziba, too, was active in David’s service. Soon the lame Meribaal also appeared to clear himself from Ziba’s accusation. David, not wholly trusting in his innocence, restored to him only half of his possessions. In Gilgal, the rest of the army encountered David’s train. The pre-eminence accorded by David to the stiff-necked men of Judah, breeds very comprehensible ill will. The feud between north and south threatens to break out anew.

Indeed, a portion of the tribe of David could not even now manage to restrain its enmity towards him. Sheba-ben-Bichri of Benjamin once more sounded the call to arms against the king. A considerable section of Israel seems to have again responded to the summons to revolt. But this time Judah remained steadfast and conducted David back to Jerusalem. In accordance with David’s promise, Amasa was to summon the militia of Judah to face the rebels. Joab was not the man to endure patiently a slight which he had not wholly deserved. As Amasa delayed, Joab once more contrived to render himself indispensable to the king. Him, also, David sent out to battle against Sheba with the bodyguard. At Gibeon they came upon Amasa. Like Abner before him, he fell by Joab’s hand.

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The rebels had gone north. Joab pursued and drove them to the uttermost borders of the Israelite territory. In Abel-beth-maacha, near Dan and the sources of Jordan, Sheba succeeded in making a stand. Joab prepared to storm the town. Then, in response to his demand, the rebel’s head was thrown to him over the wall. Joab departed, and spared the faithful city.

With this, David’s control over the course of events comes to an end. What followed was scarcely of his doing. For a quiet and undisturbed period David may still have held the reins in Israel; then we find him as a worn-out old man, scarcely master of his own will, and in the hands of a court and harem not too nice in their aims and methods. As far as history is concerned, David had disappeared from the scene.

The outline of David’s character stands more clearly in the light of history than that of Saul. Israel’s greatness and Jehovah’s honour are David’s first precepts, and this fact also secured for him the gratitude of Israel and the love and respect of posterity for all time. Nor could they be obscured by the truly gigantic shadow of the man of violence. David towers head and shoulders above the average human ruler. He also stands out prominently beyond both the kings of Israel who followed him and his predecessor Saul, in respect of grandeur, magnanimity, wisdom, tenacity, strength, and skill in victory as in rule. Even in the extravagance of his personal and despotic passions there are few who come up to him.

But even in his weaknesses David’s greatness of soul always reappears in its original beauty. David’s despotic whim seduced Bathsheba and basely murdered Uriah—but bowed, in righteous sense of guilt and unfeigned repentance, to the judgment of the people and the uncompromising sentence of Jehovah’s prophet. David’s paternal weakness was responsible for Amnon’s crime and Absalom’s rebellion—but the father’s heart did not cease to beat warmly for the son who had sinned so deeply. David’s weakness comes home to us in his noble sorrow over Absalom, and is, in our eyes, a striking instance of paternal fidelity. David’s magnanimity may seem to have degenerated into want of firmness in regard to Joab—though we have too little insight into the exact course of events to be able to form a conclusive judgment—but as concerns Saul and his house, as well as Shimei and Amasa, it is indisputable. Poetic endowment and religious zeal are so much the characteristics of his nature, that the possibility of David’s having taken an active share in the beginnings of the religious lyric in Israel will scarcely be called in question.b

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RENAN’S ESTIMATE OF DAVID

David died at the age of about sixty-six years, after a thirty-years’ reign, and in his palace of Zion. He was buried close by, in a tomb hollowed in the rock, at the foot of the hill on which stood the city of David. All this happened about one thousand years before Christ.

A thousand years before Christ. This fact must not be forgotten in seeking to gain an idea of a character so complex as that of David, in endeavouring to form a picture of the singularly defective and violent world which has just unfolded itself before our eyes. It may be said that religion in the true sense was not yet born. The god, Jehovah, who is daily assuming in Israel an importance without parallel, is of a revolting partiality. He brings success to his servants; this is what is supposed to have been observed, and this makes him very strong. There is as yet no instance of a servant of Jehovah, whom Jehovah has abandoned. David’s profession of faith may be summed up in one word: “Jehovah who preserved my life from all danger.” Jehovah is a sure refuge, a rock whence one may defy one’s enemy, a buckler, a saviour. The servant of Jehovah is in all things a privileged being. Oh, it is a wise thing to be a scrupulous servant of Jehovah!

It was above all in this sense that the reign of David was of extreme religious importance. David’s was the first grand success made in the name and by the influence of Jehovah. The success of David, confirmed by the fact that his descendants succeeded him on the throne, was the palpable demonstration of Jehovah’s power. The victories of Jehovah’s servants are the victories of Jehovah himself; the strong god is he who wins. This idea differs little from that of Islam, whose vindication has scarcely any other support than that of success. Islam is true, for God has given it the victory. Jehovah is the true God by proof of experience; he gives the victory to the faithful. A brutal realism saw nothing beyond this triumph of material fact. But what is to happen on the day when the servant of Jehovah shall be poor, dishonoured, persecuted for his fidelity to Jehovah? The element of the grandiose and the extraordinary reserved for that day, may be perceived from the struggle of the Israelite conscience up to the present time.c

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CHAPTER VI. SOLOMON IN HIS GLORY

The picture of the last period of King David’s life is clouded by the struggle for the succession. The true circumstances of Solomon’s accession will forever remain to some extent obscure, owing to the incompleteness of our information. We give the account as found in the records we possess.

David had grown old and needed careful attendance. At the court the question as to who should succeed him could not remain in abeyance. According to order of birth, David’s fourth son, Adonijah, stood next to the throne after Absalom’s death. In fact, Adonijah regarded himself as the heir, and went so far as to exercise the rights of heir-apparent, even in public, as Absalom had done. A part of the court, and an influential portion of the people, seem also to have fully recognised Adonijah as the future king. David himself, who tenderly loved Adonijah, and had regarded him as taking the place of the Absalom whom he still mourned, did not venture to oppose him. Adonijah had the same mother (Haggith) as Absalom.

But Adonijah’s hopes did not meet with universal acceptance at the court. It is true that he succeeded in winning over Joab and the priest Abiathar, to his cause. But on the other side stood Bathsheba, who was exerting herself to obtain the succession for her son Solomon. Her cause was favoured by the priest Zadok, the prophet Nathan, and Benaiah, the captain of the royal bodyguard. Thus in the last days of David’s life, two parties stood opposed to one another at the court.

One day Adonijah gave a banquet to his followers at the serpent-stone (En-rogel), a sacrificial stone in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. Nathan, who was, as it appears, the spiritual head of the opposition, feared lest the banquet should end, like that of Absalom in Hebron, with the hailing of Adonijah as king. This would mean the ruin of Solomon’s cause. It was therefore an occasion for prompt measures. Bathsheba must at once inform the king of what was happening at the serpent-stone; she must remind David of a former promise that gave a prospect of Solomon’s succession, and obtain its immediate confirmation.

Bathsheba did what she was told. According to agreement, Nathan, after a short interval, follows her to the king’s presence, to lend her words emphasis. He even professes to have already heard the cry of the conspirators, “Long live King Adonijah.” The two succeed in arousing the king’s suspicions. He is convinced that again in his old age he is to be deprived of the throne and become the victim of a conspiracy of one of his sons. At once he solemnly adjudges the succession to Solomon. By David’s command the latter is conducted on the king’s own mule to Gihon, a sacred[100] spring near Jerusalem, anointed by Zadok and Nathan, hailed as king, and solemnly enthroned. The joyful acclamations of the people and the noise of the trumpets, reach the ears of the banqueters, who are not far off. They have scarcely time to ask the cause, when Jonathan, Abiathar’s son, brings tidings of what has occurred. Solomon is king. Adonijah has no resource but the altar, at whose horns he implores bare life from his more fortunate brother. He does homage to the latter and is granted his life.

Solomon is thereupon proclaimed King, and now before David bows his head in death he lays on his successor a charge which he has closely at heart. He reminds him that Joab’s deeds of blood against Abner and Amasa have not yet been expiated, and puts him in mind of the services rendered to him by Barzillai, and of Shimei’s curses upon his house. Barzillai he is to reward loyally; the other two he shall not let go down to sheol (i.e. the Hebrew hades) in peace.

THE EARLY YEARS OF SOLOMON’S REIGN

David had scarcely closed his eyes when the desire for the throne was again roused in Adonijah, whom Solomon had pardoned. Through Bathsheba’s intervention he requested Solomon to give him David’s nurse, Abishag, to wife. What this wish meant, according to the conception of the period, we know from Absalom’s behaviour towards David’s harem. Solomon saw through Adonijah’s daring plans, and the latter paid with his life. The fate of Adonijah’s most distinguished partisans was also decided. Abiathar was relieved of his priestly office, but his life was spared in consideration of the services he had rendered to David in trouble and prosperity. He was banished to Anathoth, and his former colleague, Zadok, took his place. Joab, foreboding evil, fled to the altar of Jehovah, but there was no mercy for him. Appealing to his ancient blood-guiltiness, Solomon had him hewn down. Finally Shimei, who had not shared in Adonijah’s attempts, was for the time being confined to Jerusalem, and, soon after, when in opposition to the king’s command he left the city, he was executed.

This is the account contained in 1 Kings i.-ii. Many have recently taken the view that the first part distinctly contains the story of a palace intrigue, set on foot by Nathan and Bathsheba in favour of Solomon against Adonijah’s succession; while the second part of the narrative has been recognised as an only partially veiled attempt to avert from Solomon the responsibility for the bloody deeds with which he thought to establish his newly acquired throne.

The fact that there hitherto had been no word of Solomon’s succession seems to be decidedly in favour of this view. If Adonijah was the innocent victim of a court intrigue, it must be assumed that Bathsheba and Nathan persuaded the weak old king into acknowledging a promise he had never given, but which he now gladly adopted in his anxiety for the peace of his last days. This conception seems also to be favoured by the additional circumstance, that the narrator, obviously in an access of intentional irony, does not give an account of his own respecting Adonijah’s criminal intentions at the sacrificial feast, but makes Nathan give his detailed version in the king’s presence. Finally, as regards the second part of the narrative, in the passage concerning David’s last dispositions, the traces of a later hand are distinctly visible, suggesting the idea that the whole passage is of late origin. This also lends support to the notion that, both according to[101] the original account and also in reality, Solomon at least removed Joab from his path, not on account of his earlier but by reason of his later conduct, and not in compliance with David’s wish, but for being a partisan of Adonijah.

But the literary basis of this last conception is not sufficiently secure. It is just those portions of David’s last words which refer to Joab and Shimei, which are indisputably old, while the whole passage comes from our most authentic sources. Besides, as a matter of fact, such a wish on David’s part does not in itself awaken such grave doubts as might appear. Only we must guard against trying to measure the distant past by our own moral feelings, and we must bear in mind what David, following the cruel faith of his time, did to the house of Saul, in order to blot out the stain of an ancient deed of blood which still lay on it. Thus it cannot really appear strange that he should have been tormented by an uneasy fear at the guilt and curse of a past, which, one day, when he was gone, might strike his house as that guilt of blood had chastised the house of Saul.

With Abiathar’s removal from the priesthood, an act of the highest importance for the history of religion in Israel was accomplished. In place of the house of Eli, which had already been severely threatened in the time of Saul, but had finally recovered itself under David’s favour, a new priesthood appeared on the scene. How significant the change was is shown by the circumstance that a prophetic reference to it is already made in the story of Eli. Eli derived his priesthood and that of his family from Egypt and probably from the father of the priesthood, Aaron. In what Zadok’s claim consisted we do not know. He can hardly have been the first of an entirely new line, and thus not even a Levite. Solomon would have guarded against putting in Abiathar’s stead a priest of quite unpriestly blood. Henceforth the “Bene- (sons of) Zadok” hold possession of the priesthood at Jerusalem. And after the erection of the temple they succeeded in bringing this priesthood, and with it their own house, to high prosperity and power.

Solomon’s task as king was clear. As David’s successor he was heir to great wealth; he had only to preserve what David had created and to confirm himself in its possession. Abroad he had to maintain the extraordinary prestige which Israel had acquired; at home to make the unity of the tribes, which David had completed, a permanent thing, and to chain Israel to the house of the great king.

In the last Solomon did not succeed. For himself, as far as we can see, he seems to have been possessed of sufficient force and skill. As long as he lived, David’s kingdom remained in his hands, if not undisputed, still in the main undiminished. And if he did not contrive, or did not care, to make the tribes of Israel contented under his sway, yet, during his reign, matters did not come to an open breach. The single attempt at a rising of which we hear, that of Jeroboam, he put down by force. Eager as the northern tribes may have been to renounce the house of David, they did not dare to wrest from Solomon the sceptre he wielded with so much power. This, which mainly concerns internal relations, shows that Solomon was not the weak, inactive king whom many have represented him to be. But abroad also Solomon showed himself equal to his task, at least in all questions of importance.

Difficulties were not wanting. The death of the great David was an event which many of Israel’s adversaries had doubtless long been looking for. When to this was added the disappearance from the scene of his bravest soldier, Joab, the opportunity for attacking Israel could not have[102] been more favourable. A scion of that ancient royal house of Edom which David had overthrown, Hadad by name, had fled to Egypt. He had succeeded, like Solomon himself, in obtaining in marriage a princess of the house of Pharaoh, the sister of Queen Tahpenes. Immediately after David’s death he returned to his own country and seems to have wrenched at least a part of Edom from Solomon. But either his dominion was insignificant and not dangerous to Solomon, or the latter afterwards succeeded in regaining possession of Edom, for the approach to the Red Sea by Ezion-geber remained open to Solomon.

A second adversary is said to have risen against Solomon in the north. One of the captains of that Hadad-ezer of the Aramæan state of Zobah whom David had conquered, Rezon-ben-Eliadah, separated himself from his master. After a long life of adventure, he founded a dominion of his own, and made the ancient Damascus its capital. He drove out the governor whom David had placed there, and Solomon did not succeed in recovering the city. Here, then, if the tale be historical, Solomon suffered a real and, as it seems, a permanent loss. Still it would be hard to say whether, at the time, it was much felt; for probably neither David nor Solomon had ever been in possession of Damascus and Aram-Damascus. Here, too, as in Solomon’s home government, the most serious question would seem to be the outlook for the future. For in course of time the kingdom of Damascus was to become one of Israel’s most dangerous opponents.

If, therefore, in this way Solomon had received in the south, and perhaps also in the north, certain, though probably not very important checks, still he appears to have done a considerable amount for the preservation and strengthening of Israel’s prestige. It is possible that he did not attach so much importance to those of David’s conquests which lay on the outskirts of the kingdom as to the preservation of Israel itself. It is a fact that he protected it by founding strong fortresses against hostile invasions—an undertaking whose high utility cannot possibly be called in question. Thus in the north he fortified Hazor and Megiddo; in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem Beth-horon and the royal Canaanitish city, Gezer; to the south, for the protection of the border as the caravan route from Hebron to Eloth, he fortified the city of Tadmor. The Egyptian Pharaoh, whose daughter Solomon married, had conquered Gezer for him. A town named Baalath whose site is uncertain but perhaps lay near Gezer, is also mentioned among Solomon’s fortified places. He also bestowed great attention on increasing the war material and cavalry which were distributed through a series of garrison towns and in keeping them ready for use. Though the figures concerning these are somewhat doubtful, the fact itself cannot be called in question. All this shows that we can scarcely speak of a decline in the power of Israel under Solomon, even if he abandoned certain outlying posts.

Yet, nevertheless, Solomon did not attain to his father’s greatness. He had grown up as a king’s son, without occasion and necessity to steel his will in the hard school of danger and privation, and he did not possess his father’s energy and initiative. He thought more of the rights and pleasures of kingship than of his high duties and tasks. The father’s despotic tendencies, in him only showing at intervals and immediately restrained and overcome, are in the son the groundwork of his character. His favourite amusements are costly buildings, strange women, rich display.

But he also insisted on the regular execution of justice, and his chief strength lay in the orderly administration of his country. Side by side with this went the final removal and absorption of the Canaanites. Both probably[103] served the same object. Solomon required a great deal of money and labour for his costly buildings. His subjects must supply them. He made no distinctions amongst the population, no one escaped the common burdens. To him all Israel formed one unit and was partitioned, without regard to the differences between the tribes or the distinction between Israelite and Canaanite, into twelve zones, each of which was administered by a governor. Some of their names have been lost. The amount to be paid in taxes was regulated on the basis of this division. The compulsory service which Solomon required for his mighty structures for war and peace, were doubtless arranged in a similar manner. In Lebanon alone he is said to have kept ten thousand men who rendered such service, constantly occupied under Adoniram. The distinction between Israelites and Canaanites was continued only to a certain extent, in that what had formerly been the Canaanitish zones were considerably smaller than the others. Thus, when it came to their turn to serve, the Canaanites were more affected; the forcible incorporation in Israel, indeed, made them liable to be called on.

Such burdens were unknown to the simple courts of David and Saul, and they must now, therefore, have weighed all the more heavily. Freedom, as the possession of the subject, was little regarded. No wonder, then, that in course of time the discontent, probably long nourished in secret, broke out into fierce rebellion. It was no accident that it started in the house of Joseph, that is, from Ephraim, still less that it proceeded from one of Solomon’s overseers. From two sources, the ancient dislike of the northern tribes to the house of Jesse, and the discontent with the present harsh government, the waters flowed into the same channel.

An Ephraimite of Zereda, Jeroboam-ben-Nebat, placed himself at its head. He seems to have been a young man of low rank, the son of a poor widow. The king came to know and value him amongst his workmen when, towards the end of his reign, he was building mills and thus “repaired the breaches of the city of David.” Soon the oversight “of the charge of the house of Joseph” was laid on him: the best opportunity to make himself acquainted with the people’s grievances and to utilise them for his own benefit. At some time or other Jeroboam made up his mind to raise the standard of rebellion. But without success: either the conspiracy was prematurely discovered or Jeroboam’s rising was put down. He himself escaped, and found a welcome with Pharaoh Shishak (Shashanq) the founder of the XXIInd Dynasty (Manethan). It is worthy of note that a prophet of Shiloh, Ahijah by name, supported the action of Jeroboam. The discontent with Solomon’s rule had already taken hold of all classes of the population.

Tradition represents Solomon as a king rich in wisdom and justice and in gold and treasures. That he was so, is shown by his measures for securing his frontier, and for regulating the administration, as well as by the famous and certainly historical judgment of Solomon, respecting which posterity may indeed ask itself, for which did the great king deserve the palm: wisdom or justice? It is certain that many sayings of practical worldly wisdom have also come down from him. It is also probably credible that, at the very beginning of his reign, a vision indicated to him the path he was to follow and Jehovah’s will as well. That rich treasures should have passed through his hands cannot seem strange, when we consider the heavy taxes he exacted and how many profitable enterprises he conducted besides.

It is beyond all doubt that Solomon was the first who imported the horse into Israel, at least to any great extent and especially for purposes of war.[104] More remarkable is it that all accounts concerning this, agree with later notices respecting Solomon’s splendour and magnificence. Nor can this prevent them from being regarded—at least so far as concerns the fact as worthy of credit. If Egypt was, as it appears, the country from which Syria obtained its horses, and Solomon the son-in-law of the ruling Pharaoh, we can find little objection to the statement that Solomon managed to derive considerable profit from the import of Egyptian horses. The visit to Solomon of the queen of the ancient kingdom of Sheba, may probably have been connected in the first instance with commercial relations. This, too, I am not inclined to relegate at once into the domain of fable. For even if later stories have considerably exaggerated Solomon’s splendour, they would not have arisen without some foundation in fact. The voyages of Solomon’s ships to the Arabian gold country of Ophir are, it seems to us, particularly well authenticated. The account speaks of a single ship, which Hiram of Tyre managed with his skilled seamen and which is said to have brought the products and articles of merchandise of the favoured Arabia direct to Israel and Tyre.

That, in spite of all this, Solomon’s coffers were often empty, finally to such a serious extent that he was obliged to pledge twenty towns in Galilee to Hiram, cannot be denied in face of the last-named fact: the marriage with a daughter of Pharaoh made his household costly, and the castles and fortifications must have swallowed enormous sums.

In Solomon’s government there was one weak point which might easily produce a rupture. There was no need for it to come now; but if a fit and determined man were forthcoming the crisis was ready. For opinion in Israel was sufficiently prepared.

The transition from an elective monarchy to a rigidly despotic government, had been too rapidly completed. The tribes of Israel, of their own free choice, had set the crown on David’s head as formerly on that of Saul. Israel had been a purely elective kingdom. But David’s sons played each in turn the rôle of heir-apparent. Neither Absalom, Adonijah, nor Solomon had thought of first obtaining election by the tribes. As David’s sons, the succession to their father belonged to them. Israel had become an hereditary monarchy. This development lay indeed in the nature of the case. It would have been already completed in the house of Saul had Jonathan lived or Eshbaal been abler or more fortunate; nevertheless, it was now in all the greater danger, for the exclusion of the house of Saul had a second time brought home to the consciousness of the tribes, the independence of the people’s will.

The change, however, could only have worked beneficially if in the meantime the binding of the tribes of Israel to the house of David could really have been effected. Even David had not entirely accomplished this task, so difficult under existing conditions. The northern tribes and Benjamin always eyed his rule with distrust. Still less was Solomon equal to the task. It was impossible that his despotic inclinations, and especially the severe pressure of the taxes, could serve to make the tribes forget that only a short time ago, not birth, but the people’s will, had raised the king to his throne.

How far the ferment had gone in the northern tribes, even in Solomon’s own day, we see clearly enough from the circumstance that the rebellion broke out during his life-time. It was only by force that it was suppressed, and the secession of the northern tribes from Solomon was averted. It was Jeroboam, one of the overseers of the king’s workmen, who had prepared it. He was compelled to flee to Egypt, and was there, as it seems, received with[105] open arms. But Solomon’s rule was strong enough to make it impossible for him and his to think of a repetition of the rising, so long as Solomon possessed the throne. It may excite surprise that an Israelite rebel should have received protection in Egypt whose Pharaoh was the father of one of Solomon’s wives. The explanation is to be found in the fact that Shishak, the Egyptian Shashanq I, was the founder of a new dynasty and consequently knew not Solomon.

After Solomon’s death, which we may place about the year 930 B.C., the succession of his son Rehoboam at first appeared to be a matter of course. What it was which secured to him the precedence over Solomon’s other sons we do not know. As a fact he seems to have mounted the throne and occupied it for a time. But the seething discontent with Solomon’s government which the northern tribes had so long restrained, broke out, if not immediately on his accession, at any rate soon after. There may have been many negotiations and attempts to smooth things over, until finally Rehoboam determined himself to make terms with the discontented in Shechem. Meanwhile Jeroboam had also had time to return from Egypt, and take the guidance of the movement into his own hand.b

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CHAPTER VII. DECAY AND CAPTIVITY

Rehoboam could easily have made himself popular by a few insignificant concessions. He had come to Shechem in Ephraim to be acknowledged by the assembled tribes. Jeroboam spoke in the name of the people, praying the king to lighten the burdens that Solomon had put upon them. Rehoboam demanded three days in which to reflect and consult his courtiers. The old men advised him to submit, the young men counselled him to resist public opinion. He followed this latter advice and gave an insolent and rough answer: “My father hath chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.” Then the people answered: “What portion have we in David? To your tents, Israel.”

THE SCHISM OF THE TEN TRIBES

Upon signs of open rebellion Rehoboam hastily returned to Jerusalem. The weak bond which had united the tribes of the north to those of the south was severed forever. The Judeans alone remained faithful to David’s race, including Jerusalem, which had an interest in keeping its place as a royal city. A part of the land of Benjamin, forming the outskirts of Jerusalem, and the towns of Simeon enclosed in the land of Judah remained united to the little Judean kingdom, which also retained Idumæa under its sovereignty. All the rest of the land on both sides of Jordan kept the name of the kingdom of Israel, with an uncertain suzerainty over the territory of Moab and Ammon. Syria had already made itself independent of the Jewish[107] empire. Thus the empire which had had a moment of brilliancy under the reigns of David and Solomon, was replaced by two kingdoms, nearly always at war with one another. The schism is placed about the year 975 B.C.[2]

Jeroboam, who was at the head of the separatist movement, had no trouble in having himself proclaimed king by the dissenting tribes. But he feared the attraction which the temple of Jerusalem already had for the Israelites. Wishing to prevent pilgrimages dangerous to his authority, and to consecrate the political secession by a religious one, he established the worship of the golden calf.

The history of the kingdom of Israel is only a succession of violent usurpations nearly always provoked by the prophets, who intervened in everything in the name of Jehovah, and made all manner of government impossible by their perpetual opposition. In Judea, on the contrary, the undying remembrance of David assured the regular succession of royal power in his family.

The only important event in the reign of Rehoboam, is the expedition of Shashanq I, king of Egypt, called Shishak in the Bible, who took Jerusalem and pillaged the treasures of the temple and of the palace, amongst others the golden shield Solomon had had made. The end of Rehoboam’s reign and that of his son, Abijam, and his grandson, Asa, were filled by wars of no importance against the kingdom of Israel.

Jeroboam did not succeed in founding a dynasty in Israel. He died after a reign of twenty-two years, and his son Nadab was massacred with all his family, by his lieutenant, Baasha. The same event was reproduced after an equal interval. Baasha reigned twenty-two years, and his son Elah and all his family were assassinated by Zimri. But the army which was then in the land of the Philistines, proclaimed Omri general, and marched against the usurper, who burnt himself in his palace after a reign of seven days.

The kingdom of the north had not the advantage of possessing a strong and well-situated capital like that of the south, and on a height in the territory of Ephraim, Omri built the city of Samaria, which by its strong position could become a centre of resistance for Israel, as Jerusalem was for Judah. In Assyrian inscriptions, Samaria and even the kingdom of Israel are always called the house of Omri. Besides this important foundation to which his name was to remain attached, Omri showed proof of his ability by securing himself an ally against the ever-increasing danger of a struggle with Syria. He asked and obtained the hand of Jezebel, daughter of Ithobaal (Ethbaal), king of Tyre, for his son Ahab.

Ahab is generally represented as a type of impiety; to assert this is entirely to misunderstand the character of this epoch. No one was impious; each people had its god and thought him stronger than the others. Ahab heard his wife boasting of the power of Baal; he thought it clever to make sure of two divine protectors instead of one, and leaving Jehovah his sanctuaries at Dan and Bethel, he built a temple to Baal at Samaria. There was no intention of abolishing the worship of Jehovah. The worship of Baal had existed in Israel at the time of Gideon, and even in the time of Saul; it had been abolished since the reign of David. When Ahab wished to re-establish it, he stumbled against the unyielding patriotism of the prophets, who would acknowledge no other god but the national one.

They made a desperate fight against Baal. The people, persuaded like the king, that two religions are better than one, looked on at these quarrels [108]without taking part in them. Elijah, the prophet, reproaches them with being lame in both feet. The legend of Elijah and the priests of Baal (2 Kings xviii.) in its theatrical setting sums up the struggle between the national worship of Jehovah and the Phœnician worship of Baal, a struggle which was prolonged for half a century.

Elijah, the Tishbite, is probably an historical personage, but it is difficult to discern his real personality in the midst of the fables accumulated about him. The massacre of the priests of Baal really took place under Jehu, after the extermination of the princes of the house of Omri. Elijah’s mysterious life, his sojourn in the desert where he was fed by ravens, his visions and miracles, the power attributed to him of making rain fall at his word, have made him the model and patron of ascetics of the succeeding ages. The last passage of the legend has not a Hebrew character; he is taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire. The resemblance of the name Elijah with the Greek name of sun, “Helios,” might lead one to believe in some mythological infiltration.

The legends of Elijah and Elisha show us the extent of the admiration of the people for the prophets, and by that we can judge of the influence they must have had on the politics of their time. This influence was not limited to the kingdom of Israel, and was not always beneficial. Thus Jehovah orders Elijah to anoint Elisha as prophet, Jehu as king of Israel, and Hazael as king of Syria, and the Bible adds: “that him that escapeth the sword of Hazael shall Jehu slay; and him that escapeth from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha slay. Yet I have left seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal and every mouth which has not kissed him.” Foreign war was added to religious dissensions. Ben-Hadad, king of Damascus, “having thirty-two kings as his auxiliaries,” assembled his army and laid siege to Samaria. The Children of Israel slew of the Syrians an hundred thousand footmen in one day. But the rest fled to Aphek, into the city and there a wall fell upon seven and twenty thousand of the men that were left. And Ben-Hadad fled and came into the city into an inner chamber. Ahab spared Ben-Hadad upon his promise to restore the cities of Israel that were in possession of the Syrians. This clemency, which reminds one of that shown by Saul to the king of the Amalekites, could not please the prophets. One of them said to Ahab: “Thus saith the Lord, Because thou hast let go out of thy hand a man whom I appointed to utter destruction, therefore shall thy life go for his life, and thy people for his people.”

Ahab had played a fine part; unfortunately he soon furnished a legitimate grievance to his enemies: he wanted a vineyard adjoining his house, and the proprietor refused to sell it. On the advice of Jezebel, he had the owner accused of treason, and when the judges condemned him he confiscated his goods. No doubt it was a crime, but no greater than that of David, who had caused the death of one of his officers so as to obtain the latter’s wife; and that had not prevented David from being a king after the Lord’s heart: whilst the death of Naboth served as a pretext to justify the plots of those jealous of Ahab’s family.

It is remarkable that there should have been proofs of friendships between the kingdoms of Israel and Judah only under the kings of the house of Omri; and singularly enough, this alliance was concluded with one of the kings of Judah, who found grace in the sight of the writers of the Bible, because of their fervour for the worship of Jehovah.

Asa, grandson of Rehoboam, died after a reign of forty-two years. His son Jehoshaphat surpassed him in piety; the only reproach made against him[109] in the Book of Kings, is with regard to his having tolerated sacrifices “in the high places,” and this reproach is without import, as this custom was not considered heretic until the reign of Hezekiah. Jehoshaphat made his son Jehoram (or Joram) marry a daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, called Athaliah. The king of Israel, wishing to retake Ramoth in Gilead, which had not been included among the towns restituted by Ben-Hadad, demanded the assistance of the king of Judah as his ally: Jehoshaphat consented to follow him; but not until he had consulted Jehovah on the issue of the battle. Ahab gathered together four hundred prophets: all announced the success of the expedition. Micaiah, however, when urged to speak the truth, prophesied the defeat and death of Ahab.

Thereupon Ahab ordered him to be seized and kept until his return. “If thou certainly return in peace,” says the prophet, “then hath not the Lord spoken by me.” Ahab left and Jehoshaphat accompanied him according to his promise. The Syrians had received the order to direct their attack against the king of Israel. He disguised himself so as to mingle with the soldiers. Jehoshaphat, who had retained his royal robes, ran great danger, and only escaped death by making himself known through his war-cry. But a chance arrow smote Ahab between the joints of his armour. He had himself supported in his chariot, with his face turned toward the Syrians, and died in the evening. His courage did not prevent the loss of the battle; at sunset the cry went forth: “Every man to his city and to his own country.”

The dead king was brought back to Samaria and buried there. He had reigned twenty-two years, during which he had checked the invading power of the Syrian kings, and contracted useful alliances with Tyre and the kingdom of Judah. He had built several towns and protected the arts and industry. Although he raised a temple to Baal, it is difficult to admit that he proscribed the worship of Jehovah, as he consulted the prophets in all circumstances, and before his last campaign found four hundred prophets to reply to his appeal.

At the news of Ahab’s death, the Moabites, who for forty years had paid a tribute to Israel, hastened to shake off their yoke. This event has been unexpectedly enlightened in recent times, by the discovery of a stele erected at Dibon by Mesha, king of Moab. This stele, covered with characters similar to those of the most ancient Phœnician inscriptions, was with great difficulty taken away by M. Clermont-Ganneau, vice-consul of France, who offered it to the museum of the Louvre.

THE MOABITE STONE

The Arabs, perceiving the importance which Europeans attached to this monument, had blown it up; but nearly all the pieces were put together again, and those missing supplemented by the help of an impression, which fortunately had been taken when the inscription was whole. Here is a translation of the principal passages:[110] “I am Mesha, son of Nadab (Chemosh-melesh), king of Moab. My father reigned over Moab thirty years, and I reigned after my father. I have erected this stone to Chemosh, the stone of deliverance, for he has delivered me from my enemies, he has avenged those that hate me. Omri was king of Israel and oppressed Moab for a long time because Chemosh was angered against his people. The son of Omri succeeded him and said: ‘I will also oppress Moab.’ But in my day Chemosh said: ‘I will cast my eyes on him and over his house and Israel shall perish forever.’”

He then enumerates the towns which he has taken from the king of Israel: “I attacked the town of Ataroth and I took it and killed all the people in honour of Chemosh god of Moab. And I carried away the arel of Dodah[3] and I dragged it along the ground before the face of Chemosh at Kerioth. And Chemosh said unto me: Go and take Nebo from Israel. And I went at night and fought against the town from daybreak until noon, and I took it, and killed all, seven thousand men, for they had been interdicted in honour of Ashtar-Chemosh. And I carried away the arels of Jehovah, and I dragged them along the ground before Chemosh.” Mesha then speaks of the town of Korkhar which he had built, and where wells and canals were dug by the captives of Israel.

This inscription, which is the most ancient monument of Semitic epigraphy, clearly shows us the purely national character of the religions of Palestine. In it, Chemosh plays the part attributed to Jehovah in the books of the Hebrews. If Moab was oppressed by Israel, it was because Chemosh was angered against his people, in the same way as Israel explains its servitude by the anger of Jehovah. If Mesha undertook a war, it was in obedience with the orders of Chemosh: he placed an interdict over the towns and massacred the inhabitants in honour of Chemosh, as Joshua or David did in honour of Jehovah. These are the same ideas and the same expressions. The stele of Mesha concerns political history as well as the religious. The war between Israel and Moab is described in the Bible, and the two versions can be compared. The Moabite version is an official bulletin, that of the Book of Kings bears a legendary character, and the prophet Elisha plays in it the most important part.

Under the reign of Jehoshaphat’s son, called Jehoram or Joram, like the king of Israel, the Edomites made themselves independent of the kingdom of Judah. The Chronicles also mention an invasion of the Philistines and the Arabs, in which all the children of Jehoram perished, excepting Ahaziah who succeeded him. The intrigues of the prophets were then preparing bloody revolutions in Syria and the kingdom of Israel.

Joram, king of Israel, and Ahaziah, king of Judah, son of Jehoram’s sister Athaliah, renewed the attack of Ahab and Jehoshaphat against Ramoth of Gilead, and had no better success. Joram, wounded by the Syrians, returned to Jezreel to establish himself, and his nephew Ahaziah came to see him.

A new revolt was now raised by Jehu, who, having been anointed by the prophets, slew the kings of Israel and Judah, Jehoram and Ahaziah, Jezebel and “all that remained of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, and all his great men, and his kinsfolk and his priests, until he left him none remaining.”

The priests of Baal, assembled by treachery, were all killed, the temple was overthrown and made into a draught house. These butcheries had an unexpected counterblow in Jerusalem. Of all Ahab’s family there remained only Athaliah, Joram’s widow, and Ahaziah’s mother. She occupied the throne after her son’s death, and as a singular result of Jehu’s crime, the worship of Baal, proscribed in the kingdom of Israel, found a refuge in the kingdom of Judah.

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Thus is this event described in the Book of Kings: “And when Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah, saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the seed royal. Jehosheba, the daughter of king Joram, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash, the son of Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king’s sons which were slain; and they hid him, even him and his nurse, in the bed chamber, from Athaliah, so that he was not slain. And he was with her hid in the house of the Lord six years. And Athaliah did reign over the land.”

This story, which furnishes the subject of one of Racine’s masterworks, is more dramatic than probable. The Bible does not tell us of whom this royal family, exterminated by Athaliah, was composed. The brothers and nephews of Ahaziah had been assassinated by Jehu on the road to Samaria; there is no reason why Athaliah should have completed the massacre by killing her grandchildren. If some of the king’s sons remained at Jerusalem safe from the rage of Jehu, no one had more interest in keeping them than the queen mother, as she was their guardian and could legalise her power by reigning in their name. All we know is that six years later the high priest Jehoiada presented a child to the soldiers, telling them that he was Ahaziah’s son, and the last branch of David’s race.

This child was proclaimed king under the name of Jehoash; Athaliah heard acclamations and rushed out of the palace and was slain by order of the high priest. The temple of Baal was invaded, and the high priest Mattan slain before the altar. Jehoiada appointed himself guardian of the new king, who was only seven years old: it was a government ruled by the priests.

The kingdom of Israel was divided for the first time in Jehu’s reign, for it is easier to deal with disarmed people than to cope with strange invasions. Hazael, the usurper, raised, like Jehu, by the prophet Elisha, conquered all the region to the east of the Jordan: “the land of Gilead, the territories of Gath, Reuben and Manasseh, from Aroer on the torrent Arnon to Gilead and Bashan.” The time was not far distant when the kingdoms of Israel and Damascus were to be absorbed by the powerful Assyrian Empire. Hazael, twice beaten by Shalmaneser II, acknowledges his supremacy, Jehu sent him a tribute of gold and silver bars.

These facts, which the Bible does not mention, are contained in two Assyrian inscriptions, one of which is found on the obelisk of Nimrud, and the other on a tablet in the British Museum. In these inscriptions Jehu is called the son of Omri, which proves that the Syrians knew little about the genealogy of the kings of Israel. A bas-relief on the Nimrud obelisk represents persons of Jewish or Aramæan types, wearing turbans with pointed tops, bringing presents, and one of them is prostrating himself before Shalmaneser. It is supposed that this bas-relief, twice repeated, represents the submission of Hazael and Jehu. If Jehu, in declaring himself vassal to the king of Assyria, hoped for protection against Hazael, he was mistaken. Shalmaneser did not intervene in the quarrels of his vassals and Jehu left his son Jehoahaz a weakened and mutilated kingdom in 815 B.C.

Hazael, and his son, Ben-Hadad III, who succeeded him, reduced the Israelite army to ten thousand footmen, fifty horsemen, and ten chariots. Israel did not begin to recover itself until the reign of the son of Jehoahaz, named Joash like the king of Judah; the two kingdoms of the north and south were once more governed by kings of the same name. At Jerusalem the priests, who had governed without control since Athaliah’s death, appropriated to themselves the revenues destined for the maintenance of the temple. At the[112] end of twenty-three years, as these repairs were not made, Jehoash, who was then thirty, wished to put an end to this scandal and withdrew from them the free disposal of money. The discontent of the priests only broke out after Jehoiada’s death, perhaps because thenceforth Jehoash took less caution. According to the Book of Chronicles, he had the son of his benefactor, who was remonstrating with him, stoned by the people, and it is to avenge this death that he was assassinated on his return from a war with the Syrians, in which he was wounded. The Book of Kings does not mention this war, and on the contrary says that Jehoash diverted Hazael by giving him the treasures of the temple. The Book of Kings does not mention the murder of Jehoiada’s son, neither does it explain the reason of Jehoash’s assassination. His son, Amaziah, succeeded him and punished his murderers, “but the children of the murderers he slew not,” which indicated an improvement in the ideas and morals of the country (797 B.C.).

The kingdom of Israel, so weakened in the reigns of Jehu and Jehoahaz, was raised by three victories of Jehoash over Ben-Hadad, son of Hazael. It is said that they were predicted by Elisha on his death-bed.

Joash regained the towns taken from his father, Jehoahaz. At the same time Amaziah, king of Judah, beat the Edomites in the valley of Salt, and took from them the town of Sela, afterwards called Petra. Proud of this success he provoked the king of Israel. An encounter took place at Beth-shemesh; Amaziah was beaten and taken prisoner. Joash entered Jerusalem, destroyed the walls for four hundred cubits, pillaged the temple and the royal treasure, and took hostages back to Samaria. According to Josephus, Joash had given life and liberty to Amaziah on condition that he should open the gates of the city to him. Joash, who survived his victory only a short time, had as successor his son Jeroboam II. The kingdom of Judah remained under the dependence of the kingdom of Israel until the end of the reign of Amaziah, who died like his father, by an assassin’s hand, the result of conspiracy. The Book of Chronicles says he had turned away from the Lord, which might lead one to believe that this conspiracy was headed by the priests.

The second Book of Chronicles entirely omits the name of Jeroboam, son of Joash, whose name is mentioned only once in the first book in connection with an enumeration. This is a curious omission, for in this reign the kingdom of Israel seems to have attained a certain amount of power and brilliancy. According to the Book of Kings: “He restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath unto the sea of the plain, according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which he spake by the hand of his servant Jonah, the son of Amittai the prophet, which was of Gath-hepher.”

Jonah’s prophecy has not descended to us. The legend which says he was swallowed by a whale, was written at a much later date. A German theologist thought he could attribute to him the oracle against Moab, cited in the Book of Isaiah as belonging to a more ancient prophet, and concluded that Jeroboam had subjugated the Moabites, but Munk rejects this opinion. The conquest of Syria has also been attributed to Jeroboam by explaining, in an arbitrary manner, the very obscure sentence in the Book of Kings: “He recovered Damascus and Hamath, which belonged to Judah, to Israel.” To complete this scanty information concerning the long reign of Jeroboam, which lasted more than forty years, we are reduced to gathering details from prophetic writings.

Thus, through Joel and Amos, we know that at about this time there was an earthquake and a plague of locusts. Historical allusions are rarely made by the prophets, and their predictions bear a general character which[113] does not allow of fixing dates. This incertitude does not exist for Amos, who himself relates that he was denounced by the high priest of Bethel for having predicted the approaching fall of Jeroboam. As he was of Judah, he was requested to go and prophesy in his own country. Since Jehu’s accession, it became known that the declamations of the prophets were not without danger to the dynasties.

Prophecy was developed later in Judah than in Israel, perhaps because the priests were more powerful there. A passage in Jeremiah (xxix. 26) tells us that the high priest Jehoiada had established officers in the house of the Lord, who were to put “every man that is mad and maketh himself a prophet,” in prison with chains around their necks. But these restrictive measures could not entirely prevent the development of prophecy, which answered to a public necessity as the press does to-day. Without the opposition maintained among the people by the prophets, the Hebrews would have been a race of slaves, bowing the knee to their masters like other eastern nations. The attachment of the Judeans to the house of David, explains why the part of the prophet was different in the two kingdoms. Instead of stirring up plots like those of Israel, the prophets of Judah attacked the morals of their fellow-citizens. They announced to them that in punishment of their vices, and above all of their impiety, Jehovah would deliver them into the hands of strange conquerors.

Their preachings were written, and were addressed to the educated portion of the population. The collections of prophecies in the Bible form one of the most important parts of Hebrew literature, and contain pieces of great beauty. There is a difference of temperament and style among them, but that which is common to all, is an ardent patriotism blending itself with religion. As patriotism is an exclusive sentiment, religion had to bear the same character. It was not sufficient to say that the national god was the most powerful of all gods; it was believed that he was the only God. The prophets did not doubt that after having chastised His people, He would place them at the head of all nations under a new David. The brilliant future they dreamt of corrected the bitterness of their complaints of the present. But the hopes of the Messiah, ever adjourned, were not realised. They were given a mystical meaning, and this change of sense prepared the way for a new religion.

DESTRUCTION OF THE TWO KINGDOMS

Judah had become vassal to Israel; probably for a time the kingdom of the south had been annexed to that of the north, for the Book of Kings places an interval of twelve years between the assassination of Amaziah and the accession of his son Azariah, also called Uzziah. If there was no interregnum, then the text is faulty. The death of Jeroboam II was followed by an epoch full of troubles, in which Judah seized the opportunity to raise itself.

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Azariah took and rebuilt the port of Elath on the Red Sea. According to the Book of Chronicles he conquered Gath and even Ashdod from the Philistines, he exacted tributes from the Ammonites, fortified all the towns of Judah, and made agriculture prosperous. Elated at his success, he ventured to offer incense in the temple, thus usurping the privileges of the priests, and was instantly struck with leprosy. The Book of Kings, a little less impregnated with sacerdotal ideas than the Chronicles, limits itself to saying, that the Lord afflicted him with a disease, and that he remained in a house for lepers until his death, whilst his son Jotham reigned in his stead.

During this time Israel had fallen a prey to anarchy. Jeroboam II had died after a reign of forty-one to fifty years, unless here also there was an interregnum, for the figures of the Bible do not agree. His son Zechariah was assassinated by Shallum at the end of six months. At the end of a month the murderer of Zechariah was assassinated by Menahem, who, according to Josephus, commanded the army. This was a repetition of the events which had taken place at the fall of the house of Baasha. Menahem reigned ten years, and left the throne to his son Pekahiah, who two years later was assassinated at Samaria by one of his captains named Pekah, the son of Remaliah.

The kingdom of Judah had continued to improve under the reign of Jotham, son of Azariah, who like his father imposed a tribute on the Ammonites. But Jotham died after a reign of sixteen years, and his son Ahaz, from the time of his accession, had to fight a coalition of Rezin, king of Damascus and Pekah, king of Israel. According to the prophet Isaiah, they wished to place a son of Tabeal on the throne of Judah; he was a man from among them. Ahaz was beaten by the king of Syria, who took the port of Elath from the Judeans, and by the king of Israel, who killed one hundred and twenty thousand of his men, and made two hundred thousand prisoners, according to the author of Chronicles. Ahaz, frightened at the coalition of the Syrians and Israelites, placed himself under the protection of the king of Assyria, Tiglathpileser III; he declared himself his vassal, and sent him all the treasures of the temple and of the royal house. Tiglathpileser marched against Syria, took Damascus and carried away its inhabitants to Kir, and slew Rezin. He also invaded the kingdom of Israel: “and took Ijon and Abel-beth-maacha and Janoah, and Kadesh and Hazor and Gilead and Galilee, all the land of Napthali, and carried them captive to Assyria.”

Pekah did not survive his defeat for long. Like most of his predecessors he was slain. His murderer, Hoshea, took possession of the throne and was the last king of Israel. His authority only extended over the territory of Ephraim, and he paid a tribute to the king of Assyria. Too weak to free himself from this subjection, he tried to obtain help from outside, and sent messages to a king of Egypt whom the Bible calls So, and who is probably Shabak, an Ethiopian king of the XXVth Dynasty.

Hoshea did not pay the annual tribute regularly, which the king of Assyria had imposed upon him, either because his resources were insufficient or because he counted on the assistance he had asked of Egypt. Shalmaneser had him seized and put in prison, then attacked Samaria, which resisted bravely, in vain awaiting help. The king of Egypt did not wish to risk the chances of war for the support of a lost cause. The king of Judah, Hezekiah, son of Ahaz, was afraid of bringing wrath on his head and prudently stayed at home, occupying himself solely in preparing a religious reform. The siege of Samaria had already lasted ten years when Shalmaneser died. It[115] was actively carried on by his successor, who took the town and carried away its inhabitants to Assyria and Media to the number of about twenty-seven thousand, according to the inscription of Khorsabad. They were gradually absorbed by the populations in the midst of which they had been placed. The Israelites of the northern tribes transported by Tiglathpileser, and those which Sargon had taken from Samaria, were replaced by colonies taken from diverse provinces of the Assyrian Empire, who likewise mingled with those who remained of the old Israelite and Canaanite inhabitants. There arose a mixed race for whom the Judeans always had a great aversion. These new Samaritans had nevertheless adopted the worship of Jehovah without abandoning the religion of the country they had left. Among the Israelites who had been left in the country, there were great numbers who migrated into the kingdom of Judah and even into Egypt. The prophets of Judah have not a word of pity for their brethren of Israel. The author of Chronicles does not mention the fall of Samaria. This event seems to him less worthy of the attention of posterity than the details of the ritual, the choirs of the Levites, the burnt offerings and purifications. (722 B.C.)

The piety of Hezekiah is represented in the Book of Chronicles as forming an absolute contrast to the impiety of his father Ahaz. The changes he introduces into the national worship were far more serious than those his father was accused of having made, only they conformed to the interest of the sacerdotal caste. Ahaz had limited himself to renewing parts of the accessories of the temple which dated from Solomon’s time, and did not seem of such good taste to him, as what he had seen in Damascus. Hezekiah destroyed all the high places in his kingdom, that is to say, local sanctuaries, chapels, private altars, groves, and all material symbols of religion, notably “the brazen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the Children of Israel did burn incense unto it: and he called it Nehushtan.” The temple of Jerusalem thenceforth became the only sanctuary where sacrifices could be made to the national God. The priests who offered sacrifices and the Levites charged with the keeping of the temple, thus saw the increase of their importance and their revenues.

After Sargon’s death there had been a general revolt among the vassals of Assyria. Hezekiah did as the others; he refused to pay the tribute and sought the aid of Egypt, in spite of the advice of the prophet Isaiah, who would have liked all human aid disdained and divine protection alone reckoned on. Sennacherib, Sargon’s successor, after having punished the Babylonian revolt, invaded Palestine. “Hezekiah remained shut up in Jerusalem like a bird in a cage,” says the Assyrian inscription. The towns and strongholds were taken, two hundred thousand captives were sent to Assyria. Then Hezekiah sent to the king of Assyria at Lachish, to say: “I have offended, return from me, that which thou puttest on me I will bear. And the king appointed unto Hezekiah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold, and Hezekiah gave him all the treasure that was found in the temple and in the treasures of the king’s house. At that time did Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord and from the pillars which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria.”

Sennacherib was not appeased; he had just heard that a new Egyptian army was being formed at Pelusium and he thought Hezekiah was trying to gain time. He remained before Lachish, which he was besieging, and sent part of his army towards Jerusalem. Having heard that Tirhaqa, king of[116] Ethiopia, was advancing against him at the head of an army, Sennacherib made a fresh attempt to obtain the surrender of Jerusalem.

The prophet Isaiah then reassures Hezekiah on the issue of the war; he promises him that in a year’s time his subjects will be able to cultivate their fields and gather the fruits. “And it came to pass that the Angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred four score and five thousand: and when they arose in the morning, behold they were all dead corpses. So Sennacherib, king of Assyria, departed and returned and dwelt at Nineveh.”

There is an Egyptian legend concerning Sennacherib’s hasty departure. According to this legend, told to Herodotus by the priests, the god Ptah, so as to reward the piety of Sethos, king of Egypt, who favoured the sacerdotal caste, had sent a multitude of rats into the Assyrian camp. In one night they gnawed all the strings of the bows and of the shields; the enemy being unable to fight, were obliged to flee, and the greater number perished in the panic. Herodotus adds that in his time there was a statue in the temple of Ptah, representing the king holding a rat in hand, with the following inscription: “Whoever thou art, on seeing me, learn to respect the gods.”

According to a Dutch work, The Family Bible, which we have already mentioned, the Egyptian priests who related this legend to Herodotus did not know much about the symbols of their own religion. “Generally the rat is a symbol of destruction, particularly of the plague. The invasion of rats spoken of in our fable is no other than a false interpretation of the rat found in the hands of statues. This rat really represents the plague. As the Israelites attributed the cause of this illness to the angel of the Lord, the Egyptian story would agree with what the Bible says of the retreat of Sennacherib, were it not that Herodotus gives Pharaoh the name of Sethos, whilst the Bible calls him Tirhakah. At any rate, Sennacherib was obliged to interrupt his wars on account of infectious diseases. Of course his inscription does not state this: at the end of it he boasts of having brought back to Nineveh, not a greatly reduced army, but great treasures conquered partly in the land of Judah, and of having received from Hezekiah, not only the offer of a heavy ransom, but also that of submission. This point was only realised in the imagination of the vain monarch. Hezekiah maintained his independence.”

The Assyrians had left the land in a deplorable state. The fields had been ravaged, the towns burnt, the strongholds destroyed, and their inhabitants reduced to slavery. The people ascribed all these evils to the theocratical side which was all-powerful in the reign of Hezekiah. This side had always preached war to the death; it is true that the national independence had been saved, but it was at the cost of material interests, and prompt submission might have prevented terrible disasters. The destruction of local sanctuaries, to the benefit of the temple at Jerusalem, had also upset all religious customs, especially in the provinces.

Rabshakeh knew that this radical step was impiety in the eyes of conservatives, and it was not without reason that he wished to speak to the people in the Hebrew language. It is thus that one can account for the violent reaction which took place against the reforms of Hezekiah in the reign of his son Manasseh. The Bible attributes all to the king, but the invectives of the prophets against what they call “the hardening of the people,” suffice to prove that the government more or less unconsciously followed the course of public opinion.

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The reaction raised continual opposition on the vanquished side, as is always the case after bloody repressions; for the Book of Kings tells us that Manasseh (2 Kings xxi. 22) “shed innocent blood very much, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to the other.” The tradition referred to in the Talmud, according to which Isaiah was sawn between two planks, is rejected generally; a detail of such importance would not have been omitted in the Bible. The account in Chronicles of another Assyrian invasion, of the captivity of Manasseh and his repentance, is likewise rejected; the prayer he is said to have made after his conversion makes part of what is called the Apocrypha of the Old Testament, and is comparatively of recent origin.

The Assyrian documents do not mention any invasion into Judea by the successors of Sennacherib. Jeremiah and the Book of Kings represent the ruin of the kingdom of Judah as the punishment for the idolatry of Manasseh without alluding to his repentance. M. Munk says: “Therefore we believe in giving no value to the deeds which the Chronicles assign to Manasseh. We will say as much of the Apocryphal history of Judith. The book of Judith must be considered as an edifying story, but fabulous, composed by an author little versed in history and geography. Thus we do not know of any important historical event of the long reign of Manasseh, excepting the reaction which took place among the priests and prophets. It is probable that Judah was troubled by no outside enemies during this reign.”

Manasseh died after a reign of fifty-five years (641 B.C.) and his son Amon, who had also shown himself hostile to the theocratic party, was assassinated two years later. It is not known whether there were religious or political motives for this murder: but the people were very wroth about it, and killed the conspirators and placed Josiah, son of Amon, aged eight years, on the throne (639 B.C.).

In the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign, whilst the carpenters, architects, and masons were doing some repairs in the temple, the high priest Hilkiah presented himself before the scribe and said that he had found the Book of the Law in the temple. The Book was brought to the king, who had it read to him. At the reading of the terrible threats it contained, he rent his garments: “Go ye, inquire of the Lord for me and for the people and for all Judah concerning the words of the Book that is found: for great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this Book to do according unto all that which is written concerning us.”

It is believed that this Book found in the temple comprised the principal parts of Deuteronomy, especially the commandments contained in the iv. chapter, the curses pronounced in the xxviii. chapter against those who would turn away from the terms of the alliance; and in the intermediate chapters all that related to the proscribing of strange religions and the worshipping of images, the privileges of the tribe of Levi, and the establishment of one sanctuary alone in the town chosen by the Lord.

Judaism, that is to say, exclusive theocratic and iconoclastic monotheism, was under the patronage of Moses, the legendary hero who had brought Israel out of Egypt. To change the religious customs of the nation, they opposed to the conservative tradition another represented as being more ancient and which was connected to a venerated name. King Josiah, armed with a version which he did not think necessary to authenticate, set himself to the task of executing all its prescriptions. The sanctuaries of Judah[118] were destroyed, the priests were maintained, but they had no function in the temple. The king then went to Bethel and destroyed the sanctuary raised by Jeroboam. He did likewise in all the towns of Samaria: “And he slew all the priests of the high places upon the altars and burned men’s bones.”

After this invasion into the ancient kingdom of Israel, to which it would seem that the Assyrians, then in their decline, opposed no obstacle, the king of Judah entered Jerusalem, where he ordered a solemn celebration of the Passover: “According as it was written in the Book of this Covenant. Surely 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: but in the eighteenth year of King Josiah, wherein this passover was holden to the Lord in Jerusalem.”

The enthusiasm of the theocratic party is shown by the unlimited praises of the Book of Kings: “And like unto Josiah was there no king before him, that turned to the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses, neither after him arose there any like him.”

All the promises of the prophets could not fail to be realised under the reign of such a prince; he could consider himself certain of the protection of the Lord, whose worship reigned entirely throughout all the land of Judah and even of Israel. These hopes were cruelly crushed by the disastrous events which marked the end of the reign of Josiah. Neku, king of Egypt, wishing to take advantage of the fall of the Assyrian Empire, was directing an army towards the Euphrates to fight against Nabopolassar, king of Babylon. Judah was in no wise threatened, and the Book of Kings does not explain the motives which may have decided Josiah to take part in an uneven struggle. He came to meet the Egyptian army at Megiddo in the plains of Jezreel. According to the Book of Chronicles, Neku sent ambassadors to him, saying, “What have I to do with thee, thou King of Judah? I come not against thee this day, but against the house wherewith I have war: for God commanded me to make haste: forbear thee from meddling with God, who is with me, that he destroy thee not.” Josiah paid no heed to this warning; he fought and was killed. “And all Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah. And Jeremiah lamented for Josiah; and all the singing men and the singing women spake of Josiah in their lamentations to this day.”

The Bible contains only a very dry account of the events which followed the death of Josiah, which has been a little further completed by the help of some passages taken from Jeremiah. The defeat of Megiddo seems to have dealt a fatal blow to the reforms of Josiah, for the Book of Kings accuses all his successors of having “done evil in the sight of the Lord.” The people had placed Jehoahaz, son of Josiah, called Shallum by Jeremiah, on the throne. Three months later Neku made him go to Riblah and sent him as prisoner to Egypt and replaced him by another son of Josiah’s named Eliakim, and changed his name into Jehoiakim, exacting from Judea a tribute of one hundred talents of silver and one talent of gold.

THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY

At the end of three years Neku was beaten at Carchemish by Nebuchadrezzar, son of the king of Babylon. The little kingdom of Judah was situated between two great empires, Egypt and Chaldea, and pressed on all sides. Jehoiakim, although vassal to the king of Egypt, to whom he owed[119] the throne, so as to keep it, submitted to the suzerainty of the king of Babylon. But as he always preferred Egypt, he revolted. Nebuchadrezzar sent some troops, and scattered bands of Moabites and Ammonites in Judea, who only wanted an opportunity to avenge their long oppression. The king shut himself up in Jerusalem, awaiting from Egypt help which never came. The prophets did not agree, and accused one another of imposture. Jeremiah discouraged resistance by his sinister predictions. The people were more and more irritated, and several times his life was threatened. But he had partisans, for at least his was a free voice protesting against public misery. If he was severe towards the people, he was far more so towards the king, whom he accused of foolish expenditures and tyranny. “He said, ‘thus saith the Lord concerning Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah: He shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem.’” The king burnt his prophecies and had him pursued; but as Jeremiah belonged to the sacerdotal caste, being the son of Hilkiah, they helped to hide him. One of his disciples was not so fortunate; he had taken refuge in Egypt, and was brought back and put to death.

According to the Book of Chronicles, Jehoiakim was sent to Babylon laden with chains. Josephus pretends that Nebuchadrezzar, having entered Jerusalem promising to do no harm to the king, made him die in spite of his promise, and deprived him of burial according to the prophecy of Jeremiah. The Book of Kings merely says that Jehoiakim “slept with his fathers.” His son Jehoiachin, called Jeconiah or Coniah by Jeremiah, reigned only three months.

Nebuchadrezzar established as king in Jerusalem the last of the sons of Josiah, who changed his name, Mattaniah, to Zedekiah. As to Jeconiah, he remained prisoner in Babylon for thirty years. Evil-Merodach, successor to Nebuchadrezzar, freed him. Had Zedekiah contented himself with being satrap to the king of Babylon, he could have governed the remainder of the Jews in peace; but he was drawn in different ways by the current of public opinion, then represented by the prophets as it is to-day by the newspapers. Those who announced an approaching deliverance were more eagerly listened to than those who, like Jeremiah, preached submission to the conqueror, for they could not believe that the Lord had abandoned his people. Zedekiah had received messages from Tyre and Sidon, Ammon and Moab; no doubt it was concerning a general rebellion. Jeremiah sent each of the ambassadors, and even the king, a wooden yoke, announcing that all people who resented the Babylonian yoke would be punished by the sword, famine, and plague. He himself appeared in the temple with a yoke on his shoulders. A prophet who was for war tore it off and broke it before the people, saying, “Thus saith the Lord: Even so will I break the yoke of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon from the neck of all nations within the space of two full years.”

The king was greatly embarrassed, for it was only by the fulfilment that a true prophecy could be distinguished from a false. He began negotiations with Egypt; the king of Egypt, Hophra (Apries, Uah-ab-Ra), having promised him help, he refused to pay the tribute he had been subjected to for eight years. Nebuchadrezzar decided to settle the Jews, and came to attack Jerusalem. Zedekiah assembled the people, and to obtain the Lord’s favour it was decided that those who had Jewish slaves should free them, conforming with a law attributed to Moses, but which had never been carried out. The oath was taken with the ancient custom of cutting an ox in two and[120] passing between the portions of meat. But the news came that an Egyptian army was arriving in Judea; the Chaldeans went to meet it. They thought that all was won, that there was no necessity to mind, and each one took back his slaves. Jeremiah, indignant at this, announced that the town should be burned, and that the land should become a desert. Then, as he tried to leave Jerusalem, he was accused of wanting to pass over to the enemy. They had become very suspicious of him. “Let him be put to death,” said they, “for he unnerves the hands of the fighting men.” The king was obliged to have the prophet put in prison.

According to Josephus, the Egyptian army was beaten in a great battle. Jeremiah alone says it returned to Egypt. The Chaldeans continued the siege of Jerusalem, which lasted for nearly ten years: “The famine prevailed in the city, and there was no bread for the people of the land. And the city was broken up, and all the men of war fled by night by the way of the gate between two walls, which is by the king’s garden. Now, the Chaldeans were against the city round about: and the king went the way toward the plain. And the army of the Chaldeans pursued after the king, and overtook him in the plains of Jericho: and all his army were scattered from him. So they took the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon at Riblah.” The walls of Jerusalem were destroyed, the city was devastated by fire, and great numbers of prisoners were carried off to Babylon.

The king of Babylon confided the government of the land to a Jew called Gedaliah, a friend of Jeremiah, and probably, like him, a partisan of peace and submission. Gedaliah established his residence at Mizpah, and announced to the Jews that they had nought to fear in remaining faithful to Nebuchadrezzar. The officers and soldiers who had hidden themselves in the provinces at the time of the taking of Jerusalem, returned in large numbers. A great number of Jews emigrated to Egypt, in spite of the prophecies of Jeremiah, announcing to them that they would be pursued by the vengeance of the king of Babylon, and that Egypt would be conquered. The prophet Ezekiel, one of those transported in Jehoiachin’s time, also prophesied the conquest of Egypt by the Chaldeans. According to Josephus, these predictions were fulfilled. Nebuchadrezzar had beaten and killed Hophra (Apries, Uah-ab-Ra), and had taken away into Chaldea the Jews established in the Delta. But M. Maspero says, “Egyptian accounts do not allow of admitting the authenticity of this tradition; on the contrary, they prove that Nebuchadrezzar met with a serious reverse.”

An appendix to the Book of Jeremiah talks of 745 Jews carried away to Babylon five years after the fall of Jerusalem; but it is probable that they were taken from among those who had remained in Judea after the murder of Gedaliah. According to these passages, the total number of those transported thrice in the reign of Nebuchadrezzar would be forty-six hundred souls. This number is so weak that one might think the author had counted only the heads of the family. The Lamentations attributed to Jeremiah offer us a poetical picture of the misery of Jerusalem and Judea after the Chaldean conquest:

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“How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people; how is she become as a widow, she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces; how is she become tributary? She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies. Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens. We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows. But thou, O Lord, remainest for ever, thy throne from generation to generation. Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, and forsake us for so long time.”

At the same time the exiled, in the remembrance of their country, gave vent to accents of a depth which even Dante has never surpassed, and in which the hope of vengeance was displayed with a fierce energy.

“By the waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth: if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.”

That which has given life to the Jewish people is the feeling of patriotism carried to the extreme, the hatred for the stranger. The native land is not alone the corner of the earth in which one is born, it is the moral link uniting the members of a society in common thought so as to form one family. This small nation, surrounded and then subjugated by more numerous and stronger neighbours, from which it differed neither in race nor language, was distinguished from them by religion. This religion is the ideal form of patriotism; it dominates and fills its history. If they regret Jerusalem, it is on account of the temple. The intolerant fanaticism of the prophets, the narrow formalism of the priests, raised around the people of the Lord an invisible rampart, more insurmountable than the great wall of China. At the same time, when national independence was giving way to strength, the resolute energy of the theocratical party was preparing its revival. This is one of the greatest marvels of history, and all the miracles with which this nation filled its legends are not worth those which they themselves performed by the sole power of their faith.b

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER VIII. THE RETURN FROM CAPTIVITY

THE PROPHECY OF THE RETURN

After hearing this sonorous prophecy of Isaiah, in which, at worst, the wish was father to the thought, we may hear what so critical a student of Jewish history as Ernest Renan had to say of the prophets in general.

“As much as half a century before the capture of Samaria,” he says, “almost all the activity of the Hebrew genius had been concentrated in Judah. Prophetism had arrived at its main conclusions—namely, monotheism, God (or Jehovah) being the sole cause of the phenomena of the universe; the justice of Jehovah and the necessity that that justice should be carried into effect on earth and for each individual within the limits of his own existence; a democratic puritanism in manners, hatred of luxury, of secular civilisation, of the obligations resulting from complicated civil organisation; absolute trust in Jehovah; the worship of Jehovah, consisting above all in purity of heart. The immensity of such a revolution astounds us, and when we reflect on it we find that the moment when the creation took place is the most fertile in the whole history of religion. Even the initial movement of Christianity in the first century of our era, gives place to this extraordinary movement of Jewish prophetism in the eighth century before Christ. All of Jesus is contained in Isaiah. The humanitarian destiny of Israel is as clearly written towards 720 as that of Greece will be two hundred years later.

“Down to the time of Elijah and Elisha, Israel is not essentially distinguished from the neighbouring peoples; there is no mark on her forehead. From the moment now reached, her vocation is absolutely laid down for her. After a very favourable reign (that of Hezekiah), prophetism will traverse[124] a long period of trial (the reigns of Manasseh and Amon), and will then completely triumph under Josiah. The history of Judah will henceforth be the history of a religion, first confined during long centuries to her own limits, then mingling by the victory of Christianity in the general movement of mankind. The ancient prophets’ cry of justice will not be stifled. Greece will lay the foundations of lay society, free in the sense in which the economists understand it, without heeding the sufferings of the weak which result from the greatness of the social work. Prophetism will accentuate the just claims of the poor; it will undermine the position of the army and of royalty in Israel; but it will found the synagogue, the Church, societies for the poor, which, from the time of Theodosius, will become all powerful and will govern the world. During the Middle Ages the thundering voice of the prophets, interpreted by Saint Jerome, will awe the rich and powerful, and, for the benefit of the poor, or those who pretend to be such, will prevent every sort of industrial, scientific, or worldly progress.

“Germanic laicism repulsed the thrusts of this oppressive ebionism. The warrior, Frank, Lombard, Saxon, Frisian, took his revenge on the man of God. The warrior of the Middle Ages was so simple-minded that his credulity soon brought him again under the yoke of theocracy, but the Renaissance and Protestantism emancipated him; the Church could not recover her hold on her prey. In fact, the barbarian, the most brutal of lay princes, was a deliverer compared with the Christian priest with the secular arm at his disposal. The hardest oppression is that exercised in the name of a spiritual principle; lay tyranny contents itself with the homage of the body; the community which has the power to enforce its opinions is the worst of scourges.

“The work of the prophets has thus remained one of the essential elements of the world. The motion of the world is the resultant of the parallelogram of two forces—liberalism on the one side, and socialism on the other; liberalism of Greek origin, socialism of Hebrew origin; liberalism making for the greatest human development, socialism paying attention first of all to justice, understood in a strict sense, and to the happiness of the greatest number in practice, so often sacrificed to the needs of civilisation and the state. The socialist of our time who declaims against the abuses inevitable in a great organised state, greatly resembles Amos, representing as monstrous the most obvious necessities of society, such as the payment of debts, loans on security, and taxes.

“Before venturing to say which of these two opposing tendencies is the right one, we must know what is the goal of humanity. Is it the well-being of the individuals who compose it, or is it the attainment of certain abstract, objective aims, as they are called, which require hecatombs of individuals as sacrifices? Each will answer according to his moral temperament, and that is enough. The universe, which never ceases to make revelations, reaches its end by an infinite variety of ways. What Jehovah wills always comes to pass. Let us be calm; if we are of those who are mistaken, who work against the tide of the supreme will, it is of little consequence. Humanity is one of the innumerable ant-hills where reason gains her experience in space; if we miss our part, others will gain it.”

Accepting the prophets and prophecy, then, in whatsoever spirit one individually will, it is interesting to note in what manner and to what degree the prophecy is fulfilled, for the Jews return to rebuild the temple and the walls, only to remain obscure, and helplessly to pass from master to master.a

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THE CONDITION OF THE EXILES

The history of the Hebrews is divided into two distinct periods. The first, purely legendary until the time of Samuel, only becomes a true history under the kings; it ceases abruptly for Israel at the siege of Samaria by Shalmaneser IV [and Sargon II] and for Judah about a century later at the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadrezzar.

The ruin of Israel was complete; the tribes, transported to the other side of the Euphrates, by degrees forgot their former recollections, customs, language, even their religion, and became confounded with the nations of Higher Asia. When and how, it is not known. Colonists brought into Canaan by Esarhaddon, replaced them by mingling themselves with the remains of the Israelite population. Such was not the case with the Judeans taken to Babylon; although not so numerous, they kept to their national life during exile. When the occasion arose, they returned to their own country, surrounded themselves by the rural population left by the conqueror to cultivate the land, and became the centre of a new nation.

The Jews transported by Nebuchadrezzar had been established in different provinces of the Chaldean Empire, in which they dwelt together. Their condition was infinitely better than that of political exiles in Siberia, Cayenne, or Numea at the present time. Jeremiah advised his compatriots to cultivate and build, which proves that they were given land and that they formed colonies.

They were governed by their elders who judged without appeal even in extreme cases, as is seen by the story of Susanna in the addition to the Book of Daniel. Nothing prevented them from carrying on their religion freely. It is true that as sacrifices could be offered regularly only at Jerusalem, the sacrificers had no employment: but the prophets maintained their influence, and Ezekiel speaks several times of the visits paid to them so as to consult the Lord. M. Munk says: “There were probably meetings where prayer was offered up in common, and perhaps the origin of synagogues dates back to this time. A tradition referred to in the Talmud of Babylon, Meghilla, fol. 28, a, attributes the foundation of a synagogue built of stones from the Holy Land, to the exiles who had accompanied Jehoiakim.”

The legends of Daniel in the lions’ den, and of the three men in the furnace, do not suffice to make one believe in a religious persecution, which the contemporary prophets would not fail to have mentioned; all that can be concluded from these popular traditions, gathered very much later, is that some Jews, doubtless eunuchs or diviners, were able to play a part at the court of the Babylonian kings. The natural wrath of the Jews against the destroyer of Jerusalem, gave rise to a legend according to which, Nebuchadrezzar, in punishment of his arrogance, was driven from amongst men for seven years and reduced to being a beast. “And he 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.” It is probable that the Jewish captives in Babylon took the large winged bulls with human heads at the gates of the Assyrian palaces, for images of the kings. The historical books of the Bible do not mention this legend, which is only quoted in the Book of Daniel, written in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. A song of triumph on the death of Nebuchadrezzar is written in the Book of Isaiah.

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THE COMING OF CYRUS

In the reign of Nabonidus, called Belshazzar in the Book of Daniel, Babylon was besieged by Cyrus, king of the Persians. The town was well supplied with provisions, and relied on the strength and height of its walls: but Cyrus turned aside the waters of the Euphrates, and made his army enter the dried-up bed of the river. Had the Babylonians suspected his intentions they might have caught the enemy in a trap by closing the doors leading to the Euphrates: but they were occupied in celebrating a feast. This circumstance gave rise to the legend of Belshazzar, related in the Book of Daniel.

Cyrus is not even mentioned in this account, a strange omission, considering it was he who gave the Jews back their country. M. Munk identifies the Median Darius of Daniel with the Xerxes of Xenophon; but the Cyropædia is a romance bearing no more authority than the Book of Daniel. After the accession of Cyrus, the Jews had followed the rapid progress of the New Persian Empire with interest. The siege of Babylon seemed to them the vengeance of their God on those who had oppressed his people. They considered the Persians as deliverers, for the enemies of our enemies are always our friends. This sympathy and hope are vividly expressed by the second Isaiah. He calls Cyrus, “the Shepherd of Jehovah, who performeth his pleasure even in saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built, and to the temple, Thy foundations shall be laid.”

He is so persuaded that Cyrus is the instrument of the God of the Jews, chosen especially to deliver them, that he gives him the name of Messiah like to a true king of Israel: “Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him, to open before him the gates. I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass and cut in sunder the bars of iron.… I am the Lord and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” The last sentence is an allusion to the Mazdean doctrine of the two principles. The Persians attribute the good to a good god named Ormuzd, and evil to a wicked god named Ahriman. The prophet on the contrary proclaims one only god, author alike of good and evil, which proves that at this time the belief in the devil had not yet been accepted by the Jews.

Nevertheless, there was a great connection between the Jewish and Iranian religions: both were iconoclastic, and the Bible never accuses the Persians of idolatry, as it does other nations. The kindness Cyrus showed to the Jews is generally attributed to these religious affinities. It can also be accounted for by political reasons. The facility with which he had taken Babylon seems to indicate that he had accomplices in the place. In favouring the Jews he was acquitting himself of a great obligation. It may be that he proposed from thence to conquer Egypt, and that he thought it would be advantageous to place on the Egyptian frontier, an energetic people whose fidelity was assured to him. According to the Bible, from the first year of his reign, or rather in the year following the siege of Babylon, he allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and build their temple. He even gave the chief priest all the sacred vessels that had been taken from the temple at Jerusalem by Nebuchadrezzar. This chief priest, grandson to King Jehoiachin, bore the characteristic name of Zerubbabel, that is to say, “born at Babel.” In other passages he is designated under the name of Sheshbazzar, which seems to be more of a title than of a proper name.

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THE RETURN TO JERUSALEM

The decree of Cyrus appeared in 536 B.C., fifty-two years after the fall of Jerusalem, and sixty-three years after the exile of King Jehoiachin. Ineffectual efforts have been made so that these figures should correspond to the seventy years of captivity prophesied by Jeremiah, which only represents a round and undetermined number in the mind of the prophet. The greater part of the Hebrew captives had followed the advice of Jeremiah, and built houses and cultivated their fields. In the land of their exile they had developed that aptitude for commerce which to-day distinguishes the Jewish race. It was hard for them to sacrifice their interests to begin a new life in a ruined country. Those who, having taken advantage of the decree of Cyrus, had left Babylon under Zerubbabel, numbered about forty thousand without counting the slaves according to Ezra, who also gives a list of the families; this list is reproduced with variations in the Book of Nehemiah and in the Third Book of Esdras.

“In adding up the detailed numbers,” says M. Munk, “there are scarcely thirty thousand. According to the Jewish doctors one must take into consideration the surplus of the Israelites of the ten tribes.”

In spite of this explanation made to conciliate the figures, it is generally acknowledged that the emigrants all, or nearly all, belonged to the ancient tribe of Judah. The name Jehoudin, Judeans, corrupted into that of Jews, must henceforth be used to designate the new political and religious society which established itself in Palestine.

It was, thanks to the unceasing efforts and exclusive patriotism of the theocratic party, that the Jews had gone through the long years of exile without ceasing to be a nation, without mixing with strange people. Among the families who returned to Judea, those of the priests formed at least one-eighth of the total. Some, not having their genealogies, were excluded from the priesthood.

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After the return to Jerusalem, the first care of Zerubbabel and the high priest Jeshua was to raise the altar for the sacrifices, and to gather together the offerings of the chiefs of the fathers for the reconstruction of the temple.

“They gave money also unto the masons, and to the carpenters; and meat and drink, and oil, unto them of Sidon and to them of Tyre, to bring cedar trees from Lebanon to the sea of Joppa, according to the grant that they had of Cyrus, king of Persia. Now in the second year of their coming into the house of God at Jerusalem, in the second month, began Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua, the son of Jozadak, and the remnant of their brethren the priests and the Levites, and all they that were come out of the captivity unto Jerusalem; and appointed the Levites from twenty years old and upward, to set forward the work of the house of the Lord.… And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, they set priests in their apparel with trumpets, and the Levites the sons of Asaph with cymbals, to praise the Lord, after the ordinance of David, king of Israel” (Ezra iii. 8, 10).

In this, the Book of Ezra describes an event which Josephus places in the time of Darius, and which shows that in the narrow zeal of the sacerdotal aristocracy, the pride of race had as large a share as religious intolerance. We remember that after the destruction of the kingdom of Israel, populations from Media and Chaldea, principally Kutheans, had been established by Esarhaddon in the land of Samaria, so as to replace the Israelites transported over the Euphrates. According to the Book of Kings, these strange colonists adopted the God of their new country. They feared the Lord and served their own gods after the manner of the nations out of which they had been brought to Samaria.

The descendants of these colonists having mingled themselves more and more with the remains of the former Israelite population, the custom of strange worship diminished. The reform of Josiah spread itself over the land, and in the Book of Jeremiah we read that after the destruction of Jerusalem, the people of Shiloh, Shechem, and Samaria came and wept over the ruins of the temple. Thus, in spite of their strange origin, the Samaritans had the same religion as the Jews, and although the Book of Ezra calls them the enemies of Judah and Benjamin, the step they took with regard to the emigrants of Babylon showed the most brotherly dispositions.

“Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the Children of the Captivity builded the temple unto the Lord God of Israel; then they came to Zerubbabel, and to the chief of the fathers and said unto them: Let us build with you: for we seek your God, as ye do; and we do sacrifice unto him since the days of Esarhaddon king of Asshur, which brought us up hither. But Zerubbabel and Jeshua and the rest of the chief of the fathers of Israel said unto them: Ye have nothing to do with us to build an house unto our God; but we ourselves together will build unto the Lord God of Israel, as king Cyrus the king of Persia hath commanded us. Then the people of the land weakened the hands of the people of Judah, and troubled them in building. And hired counsellors against them, to frustrate their purpose all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia.”

But the temple was built in spite of the intrigues of the Samaritans, and the dedication took place in the sixth year of the reign of Darius (515 B.C.). According to the Book of Ezra, Darius found the decree of Cyrus among the records at Ecbatana and ordered it to be carried out. We know nothing of the fate of the Jewish colony during the last thirty years of the reign[129] of Darius and during the twenty years of the reign of Xerxes. The Book of Ezra contains no fact relating to this period for more than half a century.

In the seventh year of the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus (458 B.C.), more than half a century after the establishment of the temple, a new colony of Jews left Babylon for Jerusalem under the leadership of Ezra, grandson of the priest Seraiah who had been put to death by Nebuchadrezzar at the fall of Jerusalem. Ezra had taken the title of “sophar,” that is to say, scribe or doctor of the law: “he had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments.” The firman he had obtained from Artaxerxes has come to us travestied by the Jews, and the terms are even more suspicious than those of the decree of Cyrus. It is possible that the king may have helped the emigrants with money or provisions and even exempted the priests from taxes; but it is not likely that he would have condemned to death, as the Book of Ezra says, those who would not submit to the religious law which the leader of the expedition was going to enforce. This law, wrought during the captivity under the influence of the prophet Ezekiel, answered to the authoritative inspirations of the sacerdotal party of whom Ezra was the chief. All privileges were reserved for the priests, of whom the Levites were only the servants. This explains why among the fifteen chiefs of families, who answered to Ezra’s appeal, there was not one Levite. Nevertheless, there was a great number of them in Babylonia. Ezra, with a great deal of trouble, succeeded in recruiting a few of them.

The first colony led by Zerubbabel, arrived in Judea under very trying circumstances. The land had not remained unoccupied during the captivity at Babylon. Besides the poor people whom Nebuchadrezzar left there, because they were not worth taking away, Idumæans, Moabites, and other strangers had come and settled themselves. A place had to be found among them, for the new-comers were not powerful enough to expel them. The emigrants had to consider themselves lucky in forming alliances with the families who were in possession of the territory, without ascertaining whether these families were of pure Israelite blood. But when Ezra arrived at the head of a new colony, the difficulties of the first installation no longer existed. The marriages contracted by his predecessors with strange women seemed to him abominable and ungodly. He prayed, fasted, rent his garments, assembled the people, and begged that these wretched beings should be sent away with their children. It was, as the authors of The Family Bible remark, like a new form of sacrifice of children to Moloch. But without seeking examples in the Canaanite religions, Ezra could remind them of Abraham sending his servant Hagar into the desert accompanied by her child.

The authority of a priest and the national pride stifled all family feeling: “All the congregation answered and said with a loud voice, As thou hast said, so must we do. But the people are many and it is a time of much rain, and we are not able to stand without, neither is this a work of one day or two: for we are many that have transgressed in this thing.”

An assembly, presided over by Ezra, held a severe investigation. The Bible gives us the names of one hundred and thirteen individuals who had married strange women, and who had to send them away with their children. Those belonging to the priesthood offered a ram in expiation of their sin. The number of children is unknown, also whether each mother was able to take away the bread and water such as Abraham had given to Hagar in[130] sending her into the desert. In the following year great events took place, the counterblow of which must have been felt in Judea, although the Bible does not mention it.

THE WALLS UPRAISED AGAIN

Egypt raised itself against Persia and took as king the Libyan Inarus. The armies of the land and sea, destined to crush this rebellion, assembled in Syria and Phœnicia. Inarus having been put to death with fifty Greek prisoners in spite of the conventions sworn, the satrap of Syria, Megabyses, indignant at this treachery, in his turn revolted. It is not known whether the Jews took the part of the king or of the satrap. It is supposed that on this occasion the walls of Jerusalem were again destroyed, but the Book of Ezra does not say so; it ends abruptly after the account of the expulsion of the strange women, and we only find Ezra again, thirteen years later, in the Book of Nehemiah, which also bears the title of The Second Book of Ezra. Nehemiah, whose recollections helped to compose this work, was a zealous Jew, cupbearer to king Artaxerxes. He obtained his master’s permission to go to Jerusalem and raise the walls, and started as a pasha of Judea with an escort of cavalry, and royal letters to the keeper of the forests who was to supply the timber for construction. In spite of his official position, and the prestige which the favour of the king was to give him, he had to fight against adversaries who were sufficiently powerful to raise serious difficulties for him. He names three of them: Sanballat, the Horonite; Tobiah, a royal servant in the land of the Ammonites; and Geshem, the Arab.

The pride of the Jews began to bear its fruit; the Samaritans whose disinterested help they had refused, the strange families whose daughters they had repudiated, were not anxious to see Jerusalem a stronghold once more: those who were for peace feared the dreams of independence pertaining to the Messiah, and useless rebellions followed by blood-shed: the country people feared the concentration of political and religious authority in the capital.

At first they mocked at the fortifications begun, then threatened the workmen; Nehemiah made them work with their swords at their sides; at night there were sentinels. They tried to intimidate him, and told him that he was accused of wishing to be proclaimed King of the Jews, they wanted to draw him to meetings, but by prudence he refused to go. He was even suspicious of his friends; prophets told him his life was in danger, and advised him to hide in the temple; he thought a trap was being laid for him, and that they were trying to make him violate the law which forbids the laity to enter the temple; and he answered, “Should such a man as I flee?” Thanks to his energy and activity, the work was finished at the end of fifty-two days.

After having raised the walls of Jerusalem, Nehemiah resolved to quiet the discord which was beginning to show itself among the classes. The poor complained of the rich. Many people had to borrow money to pay the taxes; they had hired out their fields and vineyards, and then sold their sons and daughters so as to have bread.

Nehemiah, instead of preaching resignation and patience to the poor, made the rich ashamed of their hardness. He reminded them that at Babylon, according to his means he had redeemed those Jews who had become slaves to strangers:[131] “And will ye even sell your brethren? or shall they be sold unto us? Then held they their peace, and found nothing to answer. And I said: It is not good that ye do: ought ye not to walk in the fear of our God because of the reproach of the heathen our enemies? I likewise, and my brethren and my servants might exact of them money and corn. I pray you let us leave off this usury. Restore, I pray you, to them, even this day, their lands, their vineyards, their olive yards, and their houses. Then said they We will do as thou sayest.” Nehemiah made them take the oath before the priests and shook his garment, saying: “So God shake out every man from his house, and from his labour, that performeth not this promise, even thus he be shaken out, and emptied. And all the congregation said Amen.”

With its walls and gates Jerusalem was a town and not a city; there were no inhabitants. The Jews preferred living in the country, where they cultivated their fields, to shutting themselves up in this town without any resources, which in the time of the monarchy owed its riches only to the presence of the court. Nehemiah and the chiefs of the people agreed that one-eighth of the population of Judea should establish itself at Jerusalem, and they cast lots for the families who had to transfer, nolens volens, their dwellings thither. They established a sort of police; sentinels were placed at the gates, which were shut at night, and only opened in the morning after sunrise. But the new Jewish state could only be constituted by the promulgation of the law. Standing on a platform facing the people, solemnly assembled for the autumn feast, Ezra read the Law called by the name of Moses.

If Josephus can be relied on, the public reading of the Law took place several years sooner, and Ezra had died before the arrival of Nehemiah in Jerusalem: but the Bible attests the presence of Nehemiah beside Ezra. The congregation indulged in oriental demonstrations, there were fasts, prayers, loud confessions; they smote their breasts, clad themselves in sackcloth, and put dust on their heads, after which they signed the agreement to conform to the Law. The Bible gives the names of those who signed in the name of all the people. There were twenty priests, almost as many Levites, and forty-four laymen. Ezra’s name is not on the list; it is supposed that he had died before the act was drawn up.

Those who signed undertook to repudiate all strange marriages, to buy nothing on the Sabbath day, to observe the sabbatical year, to pay one-third of a shekel (about twenty cents) yearly for the divine service, to supply the wood for the sacrifices, to offer the first-born of men and animals and the first fruits of the earth, and to pay tithes for the maintenance of the priests and Levites. As they had to live in Jerusalem they had to be kept: but the precepts which appeal to peoples’ purses are not readily received. Malachi, the last of the prophets, complains of the negligence in the paying of the tithes. At the same time he accuses the priests of failing to do their duty and making themselves despised by the people.

After a sojourn of twenty-two years in Jerusalem, Nehemiah had resumed his duties at the court of Artaxerxes. He soon heard that his constitution had difficulty in establishing itself, and he obtained fresh leave from the king. He found his work compromised: buying and selling took place on the Sabbath as on other days; the Levites not being paid, had left their posts; mixed marriages had become so frequent that the children spoke a mixture of Hebrew and strange dialects. The ruling class set the bad example, as is nearly always the case. The high priest, Eliashib, had given a lodging in the temple to Tobiah, one of his relations, and had married one of his sons to a daughter of Sanballat; these two men were adversaries of[132] Nehemiah. He showed himself very severe; he sent away the son-in-law of Sanballat, turned Tobiah out of his apartment, closed the gates of the town during the whole Sabbath, and forbade the merchants of Tyre to approach the walls on that day. He entirely shared the ideas of Esdras on the subject of mixed marriages. Had not strange women been the fall of the wise king Solomon? Israel must be purified from this contamination. He struck those who were refractory and pulled out their hair. They had to submit, willingly or unwillingly. The payment of the tithes was assured to the Levites and priests, and regular order was established in the administration of the revenues of the temple. That was the chief point, and Nehemiah had the right to consider himself the benefactor of the Jewish theocracy: “Remember me, O my God, concerning this, and wipe not out my good deeds that I have done for the house of my God, and for the offices thereof.”[4] d

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER IX. FROM NEHEMIAH TO ANTIOCHUS

We have very little information from trustworthy sources concerning the subsequent events of the period of Persian dominion. The list of high priests during this interval of some two centuries is—reckoning from father to son, with the approximate date at which they flourished—Jeshua, the son of Jozadak, 463; Josakim, 449; Eliashib, the contemporary of Nehemiah, 415; Joiada, 413; Johanan or Jonathan, 373; Jaddua, 341. Into their hands, it appears, the direction of the commonwealth passed by degrees, unless some other person were appointed by the king of Persia; the Persian governors retaining certain prerogatives not more fully particularised, but probably the collection of the king’s taxes and the levy of recruits for military service.

UNDER PERSIAN RULE

Generally speaking, the Jews enjoyed humane treatment under Persian rule, only alloyed now and again by extortionate taxation. Bagoses, governor under Artaxerxes II, imposed on the country a tax of fifty drachmas for every lamb of the daily sacrifice for seven years, in consequence of a quarrel between Johanan the high priest and Joshua his brother. Concerning a rebellion against Artaxerxes III (Ochus, 362-338), which ended in the destruction of Jericho and the carrying away captive of many Jews to Hyrcania, we have but vague reports.

In the north the extent of the restored state was hardly greater than that of the former kingdom of Judah, while in the south, where Edomite tribes had forced their way into the country, it was hardly so great. From the dense population which appears to have dwelt in the land by the end of the Persian supremacy, we may conclude that other immigrations had taken[134] place besides those recorded in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. There were, moreover, numerous Jewish communities, not only in the regions about the Euphrates, but in the countries round Palestine, and even in Asia Minor and Egypt, which remained in touch with the mother country, and provided sacrifices and other gifts for the temple.

PERSIAN INFLUENCES ON JEWISH RELIGION

It is true that the hopes of the complete restoration of their former might and independence cherished at the time of the return from captivity had not been fulfilled. The splendid promises of the prophets withdrew from the mean and narrow sphere of the present into an ideal and remote future. If any expectations of political power still existed, they had to be abandoned perforce. The pressure of the times taught and compelled the people to turn their eyes to internal and spiritual conditions, by no means to the detriment of the community. The period of the Babylonian exile, comparatively short though it was, had wrought a complete change in the religious views of the nation. The leaning towards heathen cults, which had been so strongly manifest in earlier times, had completely disappeared; the prophets and psalms of this date employ no weapon but ridicule against idolatry. The sufferings they had endured, the infliction of the long-threatened chastisement, had brought about a purification of religious feeling. The adherents of heathen cults had withdrawn from the Jewish society in time of oppression, and the result had been a tightening of the bond that held them together, and a stern abhorrence of intermixture with foreigners, born of a keen instinct of self-preservation and strengthened by the memory of old and mournful experience. Contact with the Magian religion, which predominated in the Persian Empire and permitted no image-worship, may have done something towards this end; at least an acquaintance with eastern Asiatic conceptions is evident in the writings of the prophets of the exile (Ezekiel and Zechariah). The belief in the personal existence of angels, and of evil spirits likewise, the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead in the enlightened aspect of the immortality of the soul, a greater accuracy of chronological statement, etc., are intellectual acquirements which the Jews brought with them from exile and developed further under the same influences.

ALEXANDER THE GREAT

In the year 334 Alexander of Macedon entered upon that campaign of conquest against Persia which speedily brought about the fall of the great empire. After the battle of Issus (November 333) Syria and Phœnicia were subjugated, Tyre alone offered a stubborn resistance, and was not taken until August 332, after a seven months’ siege. It is said that at the beginning of the siege Alexander called upon the high priest of Jerusalem to rebel against Darius. But, unlike the Samaritans, who promptly brought an auxiliary army to Alexander’s assistance, the Jews refused to renounce the allegiance they owed to the king of Persia. In order to punish this disobedience, Alexander marched upon Jerusalem after the fall of Tyre, which was soon followed by that of Gaza. The high priest came to meet him at the head of the assembled priesthood, marching in solemn procession in their sacred vestments. At this spectacle Alexander dismounted and bowed reverently[135] before the venerable high priest, because—as he declared to the astonished Parmenio—just such an august figure had once appeared to him in a dream. He made a peaceful entry into Jerusalem, caused sacrifices to be offered for him in the temple, and permitted the Jews to live according to their laws, granting them, among other privileges, exemption from taxation during the Sabbath year. Many Jews thereupon determined to enter his army.

The authenticity of this story of Alexander’s march to Jerusalem, which is told by Josephus and the Talmud but by no Greek historian, has been impugned with good reason.[5] The high priest in question is called Jadus (Jaddua) by Josephus, and Simon the Just by the Talmud. Later amplifications of these stories declare that, as a token of gratitude for Alexander’s favour, the high priest promised him that all sons born to high priests that year should be called Alexander. Although certain books of the Bible are later than the dissolution of the Persian Empire, Alexander’s name is not mentioned in any; he is only referred to under various figures in the dreams and visions of the book of Daniel. Thus the great figure which Nebuchadrezzar beholds in a dream, the iron thighs (Daniel ii. 32-40), the fourth terrible beast in Daniel’s dream (vii. 7, 19), the goat coming from the west in the following vision (viii. 5 seq.), and, lastly, the great king (xi. 3), stand for the Macedonian kingdom or Alexander the Great.

The dissolution of the Persian Empire at first brought about no substantial change in the political and religious condition of the Jews, and the influences bred of the diffusion of Greek civilisation in Anterior Asia were not felt by them till much later. But, generally speaking, the state of the Jewish commonwealth during this period and down to the wars of the Maccabees is wrapped in a certain amount of obscurity, since the lack of Biblical records throws us back almost entirely on the narrative of Josephus, who himself drew from somewhat turbid sources and did not sift his material with sufficient care. After the rapid decline of the Macedonian kingdom and during the conflict of Alexander’s generals among themselves, Palestine, together with Phœnicia and Cœle-Syria, became the apple of discord between the rulers of the Syrian and Egyptian kingdoms. Ptolemy I (Lagi or Soter reigned until 283) seized Jerusalem in the year 320 by a sudden attack on the Sabbath (on which day no resistance was offered) and carried away a large number of Jews to Egypt, where some of them were sold as slaves and some enrolled in the royal army. Ptolemy, however, did not gain permanent possession of the country until the battle of Gaza, in 312, after which he again marched into Jerusalem, but acted with great clemency, so much so that many Jews of consequence migrated with him to Egypt, one of them being a learned man of the name of Ezekias (Hizkiah). The high priests at the time were Onias I, in 330, and his son Simon I, in 310.

UNDER THE SELEUCIDS

With the battle of Gaza in 312 is associated, among the Jews as among other oriental nations, the “era of the Seleucids” (also called Minjan Shtarot—æra contractuum—and, probably, “[the years] of the rule of the Hellenes”) which remained in use during the Middle Ages and even later. When afterwards the era of the creation of the world also came into use among the Jews, most Jewish chronologists, in order to reduce the two to a [136]common standard, assumed that the era of the Seleucids had begun in the year 3448 after the creation of the world, and one thousand after the coming forth out of Egypt. They accordingly reduced any given date of the Seleucid era to the corresponding date after the creation of the world by adding 3447 to it, and to the corresponding date of the Christian era (with precision only for the first nine months of the year, as the Seleucid year begins in autumn) by deducting the Seleucid date from 312 to find the year B.C., or deducting 312 from it to find the year A.D. Asarja de’ Rossi, in the twenty-third chapter of Meor Enajim, enlarges upon the error of Jewish chronologists, who identify the beginning of the Seleucid era with the beginning of Greek dominion in Asia.

For more than a century Judea remained under the rule of the Greek kings of Egypt, and on the whole enjoyed, with slight interruptions, a period of happy tranquillity and benevolent treatment. The relation of the kings of Egypt to the country cannot have been widely different from that of the kings of Persia, the commonwealth was represented abroad by the high priest, whose first business it was to see to the levying of the taxes. After Simon I, mentioned above, the office was held by his brother Eleazar (his son Onias being too young), who was succeeded by his uncle Manasseh (276), and then by Onias II (250).

An old tradition associates with the name of the second Ptolemy (Philadelphus) the origin of a literary undertaking in some respects unique in the literature of antiquity, the translation of the Holy Scriptures into the Greek language.

The high priest, Onias II, mentioned above, who is depicted as a morose and avaricious man, brought down upon himself the wrath of Ptolemy III, surnamed Euergetes, his Egyptian suzerain, by refusing to pay the annual tribute of twenty talents, and would have involved his country in a great calamity had not Joseph ben Tobiah, his sister’s son, stepped into the breach. With his uncle’s permission he undertook to go as ambassador to the Egyptian court, where by wise liberality he contrived first to win the favour of the courtiers, and then of the king himself. At the farming out of the taxes of Cœle-Syria, Phœnicia, and Judea, for which purpose many nobles from those countries had come to the Egyptian court, Joseph, without more ado, offered twice as much as any of them, and, being provided by the king with adequate forces, was able by well-directed severity not only to levy the sum agreed upon but to gain great wealth and reputation for himself. For two and twenty years he filled the office of tax-farmer for the whole region known as Syria.

Josephus relates with great satisfaction that Ptolemy Euergetes, passing through Jerusalem on his way back from a victorious struggle with Seleucus Callinicus, king of Syria (245) offered sacrifices in the temple and bestowed great gifts on it; but Judea had nevertheless suffered from the perpetual friction between Egypt and Syria. She also endured many evils at the hands of the Samaritans under the administration of Onias.

These quarrels between the two great kingdoms between which Judea was wedged, did not cease in the reign of the fourth Ptolemy (Philopator, 221-204). Antiochus (the Great) of Syria had occupied Galilee and the land east of Jordan when Philopator took the field against him, defeated him at Raphia, and forced him to conclude peace. Among those who congratulated Philopator on this victory were ambassadors from the Jews, whom he received graciously, and desired to show his favour towards them by coming to Jerusalem and sacrificing in the temple. On this occasion he[137] was inspired with a wish to enter the Holy of Holies, nor would he be restrained by the urgent remonstrances of the priests and the tumult of the whole city. But as he was about to set his foot within the hallowed space he was seized with sudden faintness and had to be carried away senseless.

Thirsting for vengeance, he departed, and promulgated harsh measures against the Jews, and, when they did not produce the effect he anticipated, he collected all the Jews in Egypt together on his return home, and shut them up in a circus, where they were to be trodden to death by elephants excited by intoxicating liquors for the purpose. At the decisive moment, however, the elephants turned against their drivers and wrought hideous havoc among the assembled crowds of Egyptians. This cruel act of Philopator and the miraculous deliverance of the Jews forms the subject of the third Book of the Maccabees and lacks historic confirmation. According to Josephus, the event took place in the reign of Ptolemy Physcon (146-117), the motive being revenge because the Jews had supported the claims of Cleopatra, widow of Ptolemy Philometor.

After the death of Philopator (204), and the accession of his son, a child of five, Antiochus succeeded in conquering Palestine, and it never again fell under the sway of Egypt.

Onias II was succeeded by his son, Simon II, who proved more worthy of his high office than his father had been. It is on this Simon that the name of “the Just” (ha-Zaddik) was bestowed, and in the Mishnah he is styled one of the last of the men of the Great Assembly. His motto as there given, “The world rests upon three things, doctrine, the service of God, and benevolence,” is in sharp contrast to the views that dominated the world in his day, and is characteristic of the aspirations of the spiritual leaders of the time. The list of the Tannaïm (teachers of the Mishnah) usually opens with his name. Joshua ben Sirach, a younger contemporary of his, lavishes encomiums on him, and he has been glorified even more by later legend. He embellished and fortified the temple, constructed aqueducts, and rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem which Ptolemy Lagi had broken down and left in a state of demolition. The means for this expenditure were promptly and liberally supplied by the numerous and valuable gifts and contributions which were bestowed on the temple from all quarters, and not by Jews only; and which served likewise to attract the envy and covetousness of many foreign rulers. Onias III, the son and successor of Simon the Just, filled the office of high priest no less worthily.

The labours of the Sofrim seem to have been unaffected by any of these political events; the storm which raged throughout the whole of Anterior Asia after the death of Alexander had only made the Jews, who had no political power whatever, devote themselves the more diligently to the consolidation of their religious inheritance, and in this occupation they found compensation for the loss of external splendour and constancy at the approach of their enemies. The 119th Psalm, that “hundred-fold echo of the excellence and needfulness of the Law,” is typical of this spirit. The completion of the Book of Psalms and the composition of Chronicles, and the Book of Esther must be assigned to the first century of Greek dominion, i.e. to about 200 B.C. The language of these books leads us to infer a flagging of the primitive spirit of Jewish nationality; as a result of close intercourse with Syria, Aramaic gained ground, especially as the speech of the common people.

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THE SYRIAN DOMINION; ANTIOCHUS THE GREAT

On the disintegration of the Macedonian Empire, Syria fell first to Antigonus, and then (after the battle of Ipsus in 301) to Seleucus I, surnamed Nicator, who was assassinated in 281. His successors were—his son, Antiochus I, surnamed Soter (281-261), Antiochus II, surnamed Theos (261-247), Seleucus II, surnamed Callinicus (246-227), Seleucus III, surnamed Ceraunus (227-224), then the brother of the last-named monarch, Antiochus III, surnamed the Great (224-187), Seleucus IV, surnamed Philopator (187-176), Antiochus IV, surnamed Epiphanes (175-163). The son of Antiochus IV, Antiochus Eupator, who was only thirteen years of age at the time of his father’s death, was assassinated, together with his guardian, Lysias, by Demetrius, the son of his father’s brother Seleucus, in the year 161.

The Greek language and literature, Greek ideas and habits, which had been making an abiding conquest of Anterior Asia since the days of Alexander the Great, had not failed to make their influence felt at length by the Jews. First, indeed, by those who lived away from Judea, remote from the centre of Jewish thought and Jewish life. We have already seen how, as a result of these conditions, the need of a Greek translation of the sacred books arose among the Egyptian Jews; to what kind of literature this translation itself gave rise we shall presently show. But while in Egypt, Asia Minor, and elsewhere, the Jewish and Greek spirit contrived to establish some sort of accord, a very different state of things prevailed in Palestine. Here the contrast of the Jewish and Greek conceptions of the universe was manifest in its full strength and bitterness. In Judea, in place of the conditions which had facilitated reciprocal approximation and partial amalgamation in Egypt, such as a preponderant Greek majority, brisk intercourse in civil life, and general culture on the part of the Jews, the situation was reversed. Jerusalem was the original seat of Jewish life, which constantly derived fresh strength from perpetual and minute study of the national scriptures and zealous practice of the divine precepts. This life, grave, strict, based on the inviolable ground of morality, tending always towards austerity and self-sacrifice, contrasted vividly with the blithe and sensuous mode of life of the Greeks, with its ready enjoyment of the moment and what it offered. The clear intellect of the Jewish thinker plainly perceived that this alluring existence hid the most shameful vices under an artificial veil.

The relations of the Syrian Empire with the Jews were at first of an amicable character. Seleucus Nicator had given Jews equal privileges with Macedonians and Greeks in the cities he founded in Asia Minor and Syria and in Antioch itself, and his example was followed by his grandson Antiochus Theos. After the death of Ptolemy Philopator the Jews gave a cordial welcome to Antiochus the Great, who had defeated Scopas, the Egyptian general, and Antiochus readily acknowledged their good will. He helped them to repair the damage done by the war, gave liberal gifts in money and natural objects for the service of the temple, permitted and advanced the completion of the temple buildings begun before his time, and granted the members of the senate, the priests, and other temple officers entire immunity from taxation. To increase the population of the capital, he granted exemption from taxation for three years to its inhabitants and to any who would remove thither within a fixed period, and remission of one-third of the taxes after that; any who were sold as slaves were to have their liberty and property restored. He gave evidence of the great confidence he reposed in the loyalty of the Jews by transplanting two thousand of them[139] from Mesopotamia and Babylonia to the provinces of Lydia and Phrygia, which were on the verge of rebellion, and granting them fields and vineyards, together with ten years exemption from taxation. He also guaranteed to all Jews within his empire, without restriction, the right of living according to the law of their forefathers.

Seleucus IV, surnamed Philopator, the son and successor of Antiochus the Great, was a man of humane and pacific temper, and yet during his reign a cloud, the presage of the storm that was so soon to burst, gathered over Judea. The Syrian court was constantly involved in great financial straits because of the contribution which had yet to be paid to the Romans. Under these circumstances Simon, the overseer of the temple, who had had a quarrel with the high priest, drew the attention of Apollonius, commander of the Syrian forces in Cœle-Syria, to the riches of the temple treasury. The hint was eagerly taken, and Seleucus despatched his servant Heliodorus with orders to inspect the temple treasury. In vain did the pious and conscientious Onias expostulate with him, in vain did he protest that a great part of the treasure consisted of deposits made by widows and orphans, and that the sum total amounted to no more than four hundred talents of silver and two hundred talents of gold. Heliodorus was obstinate; but was prevented by a supernatural appearance, when he was actually within the treasury, from carrying his sacrilegious purpose into effect. It seemed to him that a gorgeously clad horseman trampled him under foot, while at the same time two youths appeared, glorious to behold, and scourged him unremittingly, so that he was carried thence in a swoon. The intercessions and expiatory sacrifices of the high priest restored him to life, and nothing would induce him to repeat the attempt. Onias himself repaired to the court of Seleucus to defend himself against the charges brought by his violent adversary Simon, with what result is uncertain. Seleucus was soon afterwards poisoned by this same Heliodorus, but the latter’s purpose of placing himself on the throne was frustrated.

ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES

On hearing the news of the death of Seleucus, his brother Antiochus, surnamed Epiphanes, who was in Rome at the time as a hostage, hastened home and assumed the reins of government. He is the Antiochus who won a melancholy celebrity in the annals of the Jews, and gave occasion for a glorious episode in their history, which ended with the attainment of political independence. Nevertheless, the imputations cast upon his character are to some extent baseless or exaggerated. In spite of the luxurious and licentious life he led, he was not worse than the majority of Syrian and Egyptian monarchs of the period. He was good-natured and liberal, though accessible to the arts of flatterers and evil counsellors, and irritable under the restraints imposed upon him by the Romans. Ancient Greece was incapable of comprehending the existence of religious conviction or the capacity for making such sacrifices on its behalf as were made by the Jews; to Antiochus the question was merely that of reducing rebellious subjects to submission, the rather because certain of them compelled him to have recourse to measures of ever-increasing severity.

The first seed of the growing complications was sown by the Jews themselves. Soon after the accession of Antiochus, Joshua (Greek Jason) the brother of the high priest, visited him and purchased the office of high priest for a large annual payment, Onias being compelled to retire into private life.[140] Jason took advantage of his exalted position to introduce Greek customs into Jerusalem, and among other things instituted a gymnasium (a place for the practice of physical exercises). A large number of the priests took great pleasure in it, so much so that the regularity of the temple services suffered; while to the devout it seemed an abomination and a desecration of the holy city. Hand in hand with these practices went the violation of the precepts for the regulation of Jewish life, and among other things the artificial obliteration of the traces of circumcision.

Meanwhile the friendly relations between Egypt and Syria had once more been disturbed by the refusal of Antiochus to give up Cœle-Syria, which his father had promised as the dowry of Cleopatra on her marriage with Ptolemy Philopator. In a progress which he made through his western dominions while war with Egypt was impending, Antiochus came to Jerusalem, where he met with a magnificent reception, and made his entry by torchlight amid the joyful acclamations of the people.b

There was a sharp contrast between the welcome of his entry and the mood imposed by his stay. Under Antiochus Epiphanes the Jews suffered such outrages as finally steeled even their unwarlike hearts to battle. The character and cruelties of Antiochus deserve some further detail, as do also the deeds of his native lieutenant, who tormented the conservative Jewish conscience more exquisitely perhaps than the foreign master; for to the people Jason was a renegade who began his Hellenising, it was said, on his own name, which was originally Joshua or Jesus. In the following account of Antiochus’ conduct towards the Jews, George Smith does not take so kindly a view of the Syrian king as has been given above.a

JASON AND ANTIOCHUS TORMENT THE PEOPLE

Antiochus Epiphanes was mean in his spirit, low in his habits, covetous in disposition, and exceedingly cruel in temper. The evil tendency of his bad character was, however, rather elicited by the corrupt state of Jewish morals, than voluntarily directed against this people. But the result was terrible beyond description. Soon after his accession, Jason, the brother of the high priest, proceeded to the king at Antioch, and offered a great increase of tribute, if he would appoint him high priest, and confine his deposed brother Onias in his capital. The necessities of the king, occasioned by the great tribute which he had to pay to Rome, acting upon an unprincipled and covetous mind, induced him to yield a ready compliance with this infamous proposal. The pious and venerable Onias therefore was forthwith deposed and banished, and Jason invested with the high-priesthood.

Finding how availing money was with the young monarch, Jason gave a further sum for liberty to erect a gymnasium at Jerusalem, for the celebration of Grecian games in the holy city; and to build an academy for teaching youth the sciences, after the manner of Greece; and for power to make such Jews as he thought fit free of the city of Antioch. The effect of these licenses tended to strengthen the party of the usurper, and at the same time to inflict a terrible blow on the great cause of Jewish nationality and religion. The academies were erected, and Grecian learning cultivated. His gymnasium was so much frequented, that priests neglected their duties at the altar to contend in the games. As these exercises were performed naked, it induced a general desire to avoid the distinguishing mark of Judaism.[141] “The only avowed purpose of these athletic exercises was the strengthening of the body; but the real design went to the gradual changing of Judaism for Heathenism, as was clearly indicated by the pains which many took to efface the mark of circumcision. The games, besides, were closely connected with idolatry; for they were generally celebrated in honour of some pagan god. The innovations of Jason were therefore extremely odious to the more pious part of the nation, and even his own adherents did not enter fully into all his views.”

So extensively did this impious priest carry out his irreligious and denationalising plans, that he actually sent Jews to contend in the games which were celebrated at Tyre before Antiochus, although they were avowedly in honour of Hercules; transmitting by them, at the same time, a large sum to be presented as a votive offering to the god. The persons entrusted with the present had, however, so much more sound principle than their master, that they presented the money to the Tyrians for building ships of war.

About this time Antiochus, aware that the king of Egypt intended to attempt the recovery of Judea and Phœnicia, in making a tour of these provinces, went to Jerusalem, where he was received by Jason with great splendour.

This apostate high priest had now laboured for three years to destroy the Jewish constitution and religion, when he found himself the victim of villainy similar to that which he had himself practised. It being the time to remit the annual tribute to Antioch, he sent it by the hand of his younger brother, Onias, who, carrying out in his own case the prevailing desire to merge all Hebrew distinctions in an accommodation to Greek customs and manners, had taken the name of Menelaus. This person, in his intercourse with the Syrian king, instead of discussing those subjects with which he had been charged by his brother, availed himself of every opportunity of insinuating himself into the good graces of the king; and having to some extent succeeded, he ventured to bid a much larger sum than Jason had paid as tribute, and was accordingly invested with the high-priesthood. Thus did the unworthy descendants of Israel barter away the interests of their country; and, instead of uniting their energies to make Judea strong and respectable in the eyes of surrounding states, they looked at nothing but the gratification of their own low and sordid passions.

Menelaus returned to Jerusalem with his commission, where, as he was supported by the powerful sons of Tobias, he soon found himself at the head of a formidable party. But, notwithstanding this, Jason had sufficient[142] strength to resist his pretensions; and the people being disgusted with his infamous treachery, he was obliged to return to Antioch. Here, the further to commend himself to the favour of the king, he and his friends solemnly abjured the Jewish religion, and engaged to bring the whole Hebrew people to take the same course, and to assimilate their manners and institutions in all respects to the model of the Greeks. On making these promises, he obtained a military force, which being unable to resist, Jason fled to the country of the Ammonites, leaving to the still more apostate Menelaus the government of Jerusalem. He proceeded to carry out his engagement with the imperial court in all but one particular—he neglected to send the tribute which he had promised to pay. After having been repeatedly reminded of his obligation in vain, he was summoned to Antioch, where he soon found that the amount must at once be paid; but the temporary absence of the king at the moment of his arrival gave him time to send orders back to Lysimachus, his deputy at Jerusalem, to abstract as many of the golden vessels from the temple as would suffice to raise the money. By these means he realised enough to pay his debt, and, besides, to make large presents to Andronicus, to whom Antiochus had entrusted the direction of affairs in his absence. But this fact coming to the knowledge of Onias, the deposed high priest, who resided in exile at Antioch, he complained so severely of this conduct, that an insurrection of the Jews residing in the capital was seriously apprehended, in consequence of their anger against Menelaus. At his instance, therefore, Andronicus murdered the pious ex-high-priest under circumstances of the greatest baseness and atrocity. This sacrilegious conduct was equally fruitful of mischief at Jerusalem; for although Lysimachus had three thousand men under his command, so enraged were the populace when they heard what had been done, that they attacked him and his guards, and, having slain many, pursued him into the temple, where he was destroyed.

On the return of Antiochus to Antioch, he was informed of the death of Onias by the hand of Andronicus; and, wicked as he was, he was so affected at the enormity of this crime, that he ordered that officer to be taken to the spot where he had committed the murder, and there to suffer the penalty of death.

These collisions and murders had brought Jerusalem into great trouble and difficulty, and rendered the rule of Menelaus hateful to the people. While the Jewish capital was in this distracted condition, Antiochus visited Tyre. The Jewish sanhedrim took advantage of the proximity of the king to Jerusalem to send three persons thither, for the purpose of explaining the unhappy circumstances of the Jewish people, and of showing that this was attributable to the conduct of the high priest. They acquitted themselves so well in this duty, that Menelaus, unable to defend himself, had recourse to his usual weapon, bribery: by this means he gained over the king’s favourite, Ptolemy Macron, who not only induced the monarch to acquit the high priest, but also to put the deputies to death.

This afforded Menelaus a complete victory; so he henceforth proceeded on in his career of impiety and cruelty, unchecked by inward principle or external power. During this time, while Antiochus was engaged in an expedition to Egypt, on a report being spread that he was killed before Alexandria, Jason, who had been long sheltered among the Ammonites, suddenly appeared before Jerusalem with a band of one thousand resolute men. With this force, by the aid of his friends within the city, he easily obtained admission, and forced Menelaus to retire into the citadel. Being[143] thus in possession of the metropolis, he vented his rage against all those whom he suspected to belong to the party of his brother: this led to the most shocking barbarity, which, however, was soon terminated by the approach of Antiochus.

The king, having invaded Egypt with every encouragement and prospect of success, was suddenly arrested in his progress by the presence of Roman ambassadors, who insisted on his immediate retreat, on pain of being declared an enemy to Rome. Not daring to meet the arms of the republic, he sullenly relinquished his prey; and, returning, heard that the Jews had rejoiced at the rumour respecting his death, and were now in a state of insurrection against his authority: he therefore marched directly to Jerusalem. The Jews, aware of his wrath, closed their gates, and defended their city with great vigour; but in vain; they could not resist his army: Jerusalem was taken by storm, and subjected to the most horrid barbarities. The carnage lasted for three days; and it is said forty thousand persons were killed, and an equal number taken for captives and sold as slaves into the neighbouring countries. Elated with his success, he caused Menelaus the high priest to lead him into the temple, even into the most holy place. Here he defiled the sacred vessels, and removed all the gold, valuables, and treasure which had been laid up there, even to the vail of the sanctuary. By these means he obtained one thousand eight hundred talents of gold and silver, besides the gold and vessels which he took from the temple; and with this booty he marched in triumph to Antioch. And as if this butchery and robbery was not a sufficient infliction on the unhappy Jews, he confirmed Menelaus in the high-priesthood, and appointed one Philip, a Phrygian, a most barbarous man, to be governor of the country.

These measures were the commencement of a regular system of tyranny and slaughter. After two years from the spoiling of the temple by Antiochus, he sent Apollonius to Jerusalem, with an army of twenty-two thousand men. He came in a peaceable way, and took up his quarters in the city, until the first Sabbath day, when he sallied out with his troops, ordering them to massacre the men, and make captives of all the women and children. This cruel and unexpected attack on an unarmed population, amid the sanctities of the Sabbath, filled Jerusalem with blood, and was followed by universal rapine; the houses were plundered and demolished, the walls of the city broken down, and a castle built on Mount Zion, which commanded the entrance of the temple; by which means Apollonius obtained entire control over the celebration of worship.

These preparations appear to have been made with the design of carrying out a preconceived purpose of the king. Soon afterwards an edict was published at Antioch, and proclaimed in all the provinces of Syria, commanding the people, throughout the whole empire, to worship the gods of the king, and to acknowledge no religion but his. An old Greek was sent to Judea to enforce this law. Henceforth all the services of the temple were prohibited; circumcision, the keeping of the Sabbath, and every observance of the law, were now made capital offences; all the copies of the sacred books that could be found were destroyed. Idolatrous altars were erected in every city, and the people were commanded to offer sacrifices to the gods, and to eat swine’s flesh every month on the birthday of the king. The temple at Jerusalem was altered and profaned, in accordance with this infamous policy. The sacred building was dedicated to Jupiter Olympus; an image of this heathen deity set up; and, on the altar of Jehovah, another smaller one was erected, on which to sacrifice to Jupiter.

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The Jews had never before been subjected to a persecution so directly levelled against all their institutions, and enforced with such diligent and persevering malignity. The execution of these laws was as execrable as their object. Two women, having circumcised their infants with their own hands, being detected, were led through the streets of Jerusalem, with their infants hung about their necks, and then cast from the highest part of the walls of the city, and dashed to pieces. On another occasion a thousand men, women, and children were discovered secretly observing the Sabbath in a cave, and all barbarously put to death by the inhuman Philip.

Antiochus was enraged to find that so many of the Jews resisted his will; and his wrath was perhaps rendered more intense because the Samaritans had readily submitted to his edict, and allowed their temple to be dedicated to Jupiter Xenios, or, “the protector of strangers.” He therefore came in person to Jerusalem, to enforce the law, or extirpate the people. His first victim was Eleazar, a very aged scribe, who, when commanded to eat swine’s flesh, positively refused, and, although ninety years of age, upheld the religion of his God with sterling energy; and, at last, exhorting others to follow his example, died under the lash of the tyrant. A mother and her seven sons, all grown up, acted in the same heroic manner. The young men, refusing to transgress the law, were subjected, in succession, to the most horrid tortures, until every one of them, and, lastly, the mother also, died martyrs for the cause of truth and righteousness.

These atrocities produced the results which always follow such deeds, where any manly spirit or nobility of soul remains. Men who had a conscientious regard for the law of their God and the religion of their fathers, and whose minds were not so debased by slavery as to have lost every noble attribute of human nature, would prefer dying in a patriotic resistance to such tyranny, rather than to perish tamely under the power of the tyrant. The man who first dared to adopt this course was an aged priest, named Mattathias, the father of five sons, all distinguished for bodily strength and nobility of mind. When the king’s officers came to the city of Modin, where this family resided, to make the Jews sacrifice to the heathen gods, they invited Mattathias to bring his sons and brethren first to the sacrifice, that the influence of his character and office, as a ruler, might induce others to follow his example; that he might thus be regarded as one of “the king’s friends.” The aged priest indignantly refused compliance, protesting[145] that, if himself and his sons stood alone, they would adhere to the law and ordinances of God. While he was thus declaring his determination, he saw one of the apostate Jews come forth to the altar to offer sacrifice. This flagrant act roused the spirit of the priest: inflamed with zeal, he ran towards the culprit, and, in the sight of all the people, inflicted on him the punishment which the law denounced against idolatry—he slew him upon the altar. He also killed the king’s commissioner, who had been sent to compel the people to sacrifice, and pulled down the altar; then, running through the city, crying, with a loud voice, “Whosoever is zealous of the law, and maintaineth the covenant, let him follow me,” he, with his sons, abandoned all the property they had in the city, and went out into the wilderness. They were quickly followed by many others; and, as soon as it was noised abroad, great numbers crowded to their retreat, until Mattathias found himself at the head of a considerable body of men.

Having placed himself and his friends in this position, the venerable priest addressed himself to the arduous duty which he had undertaken with becoming gravity and zeal. The first point which appears to have engaged his attention was, the proper line of conduct which they were bound to pursue with respect to the Sabbath. Hitherto the Jews had always regarded themselves as under a religious obligation to avoid all warlike operations on that holy day. To such an extent had this been carried, that they would not defend themselves, even when attacked. Their heathen foes, therefore, generally selected the sacred day for their assaults, that they might secure their object without resistance. But Mattathias, having considered the subject with his friends, and consulted such learned scribes as he had access to, decided that, although it was not right to provoke a combat on the Sabbath day, it was, nevertheless, their duty, if attacked on that day, to defend themselves, and resist the aggression. This was a most important decision, and had a mighty influence upon the results of the ensuing war.

The general course of proceeding adopted by the aged chief seems, also, to merit particular attention. He did not shrink from engaging any of the Syrian forces that came in his way; but his principal object, or, at least, his immediate design, does not appear to have been the expulsion of the Syrians. As a patriotic soldier, this might have been expected; but as a patriotic priest, he thought it wiser to act differently. He appears to have viewed the humbled and prostrate condition of Israel as the result of the infidelity of the people; and therefore directed his energies to the restoration of the Jewish faith. With this object he marched from town to town, destroying all idolatrous altars, punishing with death, or driving into other lands, those that had apostatised from the faith, recovering the sacred books which had been concealed, and restoring again the law, the worship, and the authority of Jehovah. In these efforts he was eminently successful. Those who had not been circumcised submitted to that rite; and not only was the religious aspect of the country soon greatly improved, but some important advantages were gained over the enemy. When the venerable Mattathias found his end approaching, he exhorted his sons to devote their lives to the holy cause in which they had been engaged, reminding them of the noblest examples in Hebrew history. He then advised them to regard their brother Simon as their counsellor, on account of his wisdom; and Judas he appointed the captain, because of his strength and bravery: him he surnamed Maccabeus, or, “the hammerer.”[6] Thus Mattathias blessed his sons, and died in a good old age.

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On the death of his father, Judas took the command of the band which had been gathered together, about six thousand men (2 Maccabees viii. 1); and, as soon as the days of mourning had expired, proceeded to carry on the war. This may be called the war of Jewish independence. From the time of their return from captivity the Jews had been always in entire subjection to Gentile powers. At first they were a part of the Persian Empire; they then passed under the dominion of Alexander; on the division of his kingdom they were subjected to Egypt; and, lastly, had been attached to the Greek kingdom of Syria. Nor is it probable that the Jews would have made any vigorous efforts to obtain freedom and self-government, if they had been ruled with tolerance and moderation. But the boundless cruelty and insane impiety of Antiochus were too much for endurance, by men of such energy and intellect as the Jews. Besides, the time was peculiarly appropriate for such an attempt. The disjointed fragments of the Macedo-Grecian Empire were becoming daily more feeble and disorganised; while the mighty power of Rome was steadily advancing, giving constant evidence of her great purpose and destiny—to govern the world. It was, therefore, the manifest policy of Rome to encourage, rather than to suppress, efforts made by states, subject to the kingdoms of Syria and Egypt, for the purpose of obtaining independence. Under such circumstances Judas commenced his martial career.g

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER X. THE MACCABÆAN WAR

The Hebrews had not only their Exodus but also their War of Independence. Their Garibaldi bore the name of Judas, from which his memory should take some of the stain. To this name was added the epithet of “Hammer” or “Maccabæus.”

The ancient Hebrew valour was at last aroused from its deathlike slumber. Those Jews who would rather endure wrong from man than do wrong in the sight of God, were not all willing nor in the long run able to maintain an attitude of patient suffering. They saw that war was not always one-sided, and that when their escape was cut off they must at last be brought by despair to defend themselves. So the sluggish mass gradually became thoroughly leavened, until even cowards took heart, and the national spirit was stirred to its very depths.

This was not to be a war for independence, distorted by priests into a war of faith; but Israel from the start was fighting for its religion, the root of its national existence. This origin of the war ennobled it also in its continuation, when it aimed at and gained political freedom.

The beginning of resistance to the oppression of conscience, the first active opposition to violence, was made by Mattathias, a priest who, to avoid unreasonable demands and persecution, had retired to his birthplace, Modin. But hither came also the servants of the king. When commanded to sacrifice to the heathen gods and thus set a good example to others, Mattathias steadfastly refused. When a Jew prepared to make such a sacrifice before his eyes, he struck him down at the altar, and also slew the Syrian captain. Then he escaped to the mountains with his five sons and his followers. His flight was the signal for many orthodox families to flee to the desert and take up their abode in the caverns of the mountains.

An armed force was sent out against them from Jerusalem. As they would not lift their hands in self-defence on the Sabbath, about one thousand, including women and children, were slaughtered. Then Mattathias took counsel with his followers, and it was decided that henceforth, though they would themselves make no attack on the Sabbath, they would nevertheless, if attacked, defend themselves. As the forces of Mattathias grew, raids were undertaken in all directions, altars were overthrown, newborn[148] boys were circumcised, and apostates and heathen without distinction were punished with the sword.

Within a year Mattathias died (166 B.C.), leaving the leadership to his third son Judas, with his elder brother Simon as adviser.

The conduct of the war could not but gain in rapidity and reckless determination under Judas, who was a man of great personal bravery and had already shown great qualities of leadership. He was very skilful in choosing time and place of battle. He made much use of the night for sudden surprises, setting fire to the enemy’s camp and intimidating the masses of the Syrians. His surname Maqqabi, “the hammer,” was long afterwards applied to the whole family, who at this time were called Asmonæans. Their party called themselves Assideans or Chasidees (the pious).

Apollonius was sent against Judas with a large force, among them auxiliaries from Samaria, which had made peace with Antiochus. He was probably over-confident of his superiority and advanced incautiously, for he was defeated and killed. Judas gained a second victory immediately afterwards. Seron, commander of the Syrian militia, thinking he saw an opportunity to gain honour by suppression of the rebellion, now marched against Judas. Near the pass of Beth-horon he was suddenly attacked on the march by Judas. As he was unable to manage his forces properly they became disordered, were driven down the mountain-side, and fled with great loss to Philistia.

Such tidings from Judea were not calculated to put the king in a good humour, especially as the whole affair came at a most inopportune time for him. An instalment of his war debt to Rome was due; but his treasury had been exhausted by the equipment of his great army, and his income was inadequate, owing to the difficulty of collecting taxes in the remote provinces of the east and to the disruption he had rashly provoked among the Jews. So with half of his army he set out for Persia to collect tribute and raise money by any means possible. The rest of the army was left in command of Lysias, who received peremptory orders to make an end of the Jews, bring foreign settlers into the country, and divide the lands among them by lot. (166 B.C.)

Since the defeat of Seron there had been no force in Judea able to cope with Judas’ little army of six thousand men, and he had remained undisputed master of the country. Philip, the governor, finding himself confined in Jerusalem under the protection of the garrison of the citadel, appealed in distress to Ptolemæus, governor of Cœle-Syria and Phœnicia. The latter perhaps at the same time received orders from Lysias. He sent out an army under Nicanor and Gorgias, which was augmented by Syrian and Philistine militia to a strength of perhaps twenty thousand men. Nicanor, confident of victory, had proclaimed in the coast cities that he would sell Jewish slaves at one talent each; so there were many traders with money and chains in the train of the army which encamped at Emmaus, fifteen Roman miles from Jerusalem.

Judas and his followers saw that there would be a decisive battle. Unable to implore divine help in the temple at Jerusalem, they assembled in an old sanctuary at Mizpah, fulfilled their religious duties as far as possible, and opening the “Book of the Law” for a prophecy, obtained the watchword “Eleazar,” “God hath stood by.” Judas organised his army and purged it of its weak elements in accordance with the Law, his force being thus reduced to only about three thousand men.

Meanwhile the enemy had approached the foot of the mountain south of Emmaus. Gorgias set out by night with foot and horse to surprise Judas.[149] But the latter got news of the movement, and Gorgias found the camp empty. At daybreak Judas stood face to face with the main army, now weakened by the absence of Gorgias’ division. Without hesitation he began the attack. The Syrians were utterly defeated, and driven to the south and west. When Gorgias returned, he saw the camp burning from afar, and the Jews, whom their leader had forbidden premature plundering, drawn up in battle array against him. At this sight, the courage of his men deserted them, and they took to flight. The Syrian general hastened directly across country to Antioch to report the wretched outcome of the campaign. The Jews, returning from pursuit, found immeasurable booty in the enemy’s camp.

For this year the war was at an end. In the following year (165 B.C.), however, Lysias himself, at the head of a much greater force, crossed to the east of Jordan, and marched around the Dead Sea into Idumæa, in order to attack and crush his opponent from the rear. But on the boundary near Bethzur he found his way barred by Judas with an army of ten thousand men. The resistance offered by the Jews was so stubborn that Lysias was obliged to give up the whole undertaking as hopeless. He set out on his return to Antioch, with the intention of raising a still larger army and again trying his luck. He took the same route by which he had come. Judas, following closely, and harassing him continually, was victorious in a number of battles, and after taking the city of Jaser returned to Judea.

Judas now proceeded with all his forces to Jerusalem, in order to restore the temple and the orthodox worship of God. The garrison in the citadel was harassed and worried by incessant attacks. All traces of heathen worship were wiped out, the great altar was rebuilt with new stones, and new sacred vessels were procured. On the anniversary of the day when, three years before, the altar had first been desecrated by heathen sacrifice, the first orthodox worship was held again as the beginning of an eight days’ dedication festival.b

This ceremonial has been enthusiastically described by the patriotic Josephus: “When, therefore, the generals of Antiochus’ armies had been beaten so often, Judas assembled the people together, and told them that after these many victories which God had given them, they ought to go up to Jerusalem, and purify the temple, and offer the appointed sacrifices. But as soon as he, with the whole multitude, was come to Jerusalem, and found the temple deserted, and its gates burnt down, and plants growing in the temple of their own accord, on account of its desertion, he and those that were with him began to lament, and were quite confounded at the sight of the temple; so he chose out some of his soldiers, and gave them order to fight against those guards that were in the citadel, until he should have purified the temple. When therefore he had carefully purged it, and had brought in new vessels, the candlestick, the table (of shew-bread), and the altar (of incense), which were made of gold, he hung up the veils at the gates, and added doors to them. He also took down the altar (of burnt-offering), and built a new one of stones that he gathered together, and not of such as were hewn with iron tools. So on the five and twentieth day of the month Kislev, which the Macedonians call Apelleus, they lighted the lamps that were on the candlestick, and offered incense upon the altar (of incense), and laid the loaves upon the table (of shew-bread), and offered burnt-offerings upon the new altar (of burnt-offering). Now it so fell out, that these things were done on the very same day on which their divine worship had fallen off, and was reduced to a profane and common use, after[150] three years’ time; for so it was, that the temple was made desolate by Antiochus, and so continued for three years. This desolation happened to the temple in the hundred forty and fifth year, on the twenty-fifth day of the month Apelleus, and on the hundred and fifty-third olympiad: but it was dedicated anew, on the same day, the twenty-fifth of the month Apelleus, in the hundred and forty-eighth year, and on the hundred and fifty-fourth olympiad. And this desolation came to pass according to the prophecy of Daniel, which was given four hundred and eight years before; for he declared that the Macedonians would dissolve that worship (for some time).

“Now Judas celebrated the festival of the restoration of the sacrifices of the temple for eight days; and omitted no sort of pleasures thereon: but he feasted them upon very rich and splendid sacrifices; and he honoured God, and delighted them, by hymns and psalms. Nay, they were so very glad at the revival of their customs, when after a long time of intermission, they unexpectedly had regained the freedom of their worship, that they made it a law for their posterity, that they should keep a festival, on account of the restoration of their temple worship, for eight days. And from that time to this we celebrate this festival, and call it Lights. I suppose the reason was, because this liberty beyond our hopes appeared to us; and that thence was the name given to that festival. Judas also rebuilt the walls round about the city, and reared towers of great height against the incursions of enemies, and set guards therein. He also fortified the city Bethsura, that it might serve as a citadel against any distresses that might come from our enemies.”c

The news of the Jews’ military successes had been received by their enemies with fierce wrath; those who had been so lately scourged by Judas were breathing revenge; and now the report of the restoration of the Jewish religion made their cup full. The heathen peoples all about fell upon their Jewish neighbours, so that defence had continually to be made on all sides, and Judas was unable to lay down arms at all.

Finally the Assideans decided in council to divide their army into three parts. Simon with three thousand men was sent into Galilee to drive out the enemies there. Judas and his brother Jonathan with the main army were to cross the Jordan to the aid of the besieged garrison in Gilead, while the remaining force was to defend Judea from attack. Simon completed his task first. Victorious in numerous battles, he drove the forces of the heathen out of the district and brought the Jewish population of Galilee in safety to Judea.

Judas, with his usual rapidity of movement and promptness in availing himself of opportunities, overran the whole district of Gilead, winning battle after battle and siege after siege, and destroying temples and altars as well as fortifications. With regard to the Jews of Gilead he pursued the same policy that Simon had carried out in Galilee, leading them across into Judea, where he could the more easily defend them from the raids of the heathen. The Jewish armies returned home crowned with victory, and the country was left in peace for a short time, unmolested by the Syrian government, which had its hands full with its own affairs after the death of King Antiochus on his Persian campaign. (164 B.C.)

The warrior Judas was now in such honour among his people that he could assume the leadership in time of peace. He had now to consider the reorganisation of the unsettled commonwealth. Support had to be provided for the families brought from Galilee and Gilead, not an easy task, as the following year was a sabbatical one. Furthermore, the hostile citadel beside[151] the temple remained a thorn in the side of Israel. At first Judas had only time to attend to the collection of the scattered sacred books.

In 163 he began the siege of the citadel. Some of the garrison escaped and were joined by recreant Jews, who went to Antioch to make complaint against their own people. On the death of Antiochus Epiphanes his son, the child Antiochus, surnamed Eupator, had succeeded to the throne. The regency, to which the father had appointed Philip, had been seized by Lysias. In him the messengers from Jerusalem found a willing listener, for he was not likely to forget how he had been put to shame two years before. Besides, the new kingdom could not allow itself to be defied.b

The death of the relentless Antiochus Epiphanes could not but seem to the Israelites a divine dispensation. So we find Josephus explaining it and declaring that it was not because of his sacrilege towards the Persian Diana, but towards the Hebrew Yahveh. His account of this event and his stirring picture of the following conflicts we quote at some length.a

“About this time it was that King Antiochus, as he was going over the upper countries, heard that there was a very rich city in Persia, called Elymais; and therein a very rich temple of Diana, and that it was full of all sorts of donations dedicated to it; as also weapons and breast-plates, which, upon inquiry, he found had been left there by Alexander, the son of Philip, king of Macedonia; and being incited by these motives, he went in haste to Elymais, and assaulted it, and besieged it. But as those that were in it were not terrified at his assault, nor at his siege, but opposed him very courageously, he was beaten off his hopes; for they drove him away from the city, and went out and pursued after him, insomuch that he fled away as far as Babylon, and lost a great many of his army; and when he was grieving for this disappointment, some persons told him of the defeat of his commanders whom he had left behind him to fight against Judea, and what strength the Jews had already gotten. When this concern about these affairs was added to the former, he was confounded, and, by the anxiety he was in, fell into a distemper, which, as it lasted a great while, and as his pains increased upon him, so he at length perceived he should die in a little time; so he called his friends to him, and told them that his distemper was severe upon him, and confessed withal, that this calamity was sent upon him for the miseries he had brought upon the Jewish nation, while he plundered their temple and contemned their God; and when he had said this, he gave up the ghost. Whence one may wonder at Polybius of Megalopolis, who, though otherwise a good man, yet saith that ‘Antiochus died, because he had a purpose to plunder the temple of Diana in Persia’; for the purposing to do a thing, but not actually doing it, is not worthy of punishment. But if Polybius could think that Antiochus thus lost his life on that account, it is much more probable that this king died on account of his sacrilegious plundering of the temple at Jerusalem. But we will not contend about this matter with those who may think that the cause assigned by this Polybius of Megalopolis is nearer the truth than that assigned by us.

“However, Antiochus, before he died, called for Philip, who was one of his companions, and made him the guardian of his kingdom; and gave him his diadem, and his garment, and his ring, and charged him to carry them, and deliver them to his son Antiochus; and desired him to take care of his education, and to preserve the kingdom for him. This Antiochus died in the hundred forty and ninth year; but it was Lysias that declared his death to the multitude, and appointed his son Antiochus to be king (of whom at present he had the care), and called him Eupator.

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“At this time it was that the garrison in the citadel at Jerusalem, with the Jewish runagates, did a great deal of harm to the Jews: for the soldiers that were in that garrison rushed out upon the sudden, and destroyed such as were going up to the temple in order to offer their sacrifices, for this citadel adjoined to and overlooked the temple. When these misfortunes had often happened to them, Judas resolved to destroy that garrison; whereupon he got all the people together, and vigorously besieged those that were in the citadel. This was in the hundred and fiftieth year of the dominion of the Seleucidæ. So he made engines of war, and erected bulwarks, and very zealously pressed on to take the citadel. But there were not a few of the runagates who were in the place, that went out by night into the country, and got together some other wicked men like themselves, and went to Antiochus the king, and desired of him that he would not suffer them to be neglected, under the great hardships that lay upon them from those of their own nation; and this because their sufferings were occasioned on his father’s account, while they left the religious worship of their fathers, and preferred that which he had commanded them to follow: that there was danger lest the citadel, and those appointed to garrison it by the king, should be taken by Judas and those that were with him, unless he would send them succours. When Antiochus, who was but a child, heard this, he was angry, and sent for his captains and his friends, and gave order that they should get an army of mercenaries together, with such men also of his own kingdom as were of an age fit for war. Accordingly an army was collected of about a hundred thousand footmen, and twenty thousand horsemen, and thirty-two elephants.

“So the king took this army, and marched hastily out of Antioch, with Lysias, who had the command of the whole, and came to Idumæa, and thence went up to the city Bethzur, a city that was strong, and not to be taken without great difficulty. He set about this city, and besieged it; and while the inhabitants of Bethzur courageously opposed him, and sallied out upon him, and burnt his engines of war, a great deal of time was spent in the siege; but when Judas heard of the king’s coming, he raised the siege of the citadel, and met the king, and pitched his camp in certain straits, at a place called Bethzachariah, at the distance of seventy furlongs from the enemy; but the king soon drew his forces from Bethzur, and brought them to those straits; and as soon as it was day, he put his men in battle-array, and made his elephants follow one another through the narrow passes, because they could not be set sideways by one another. Now round about every elephant there were a thousand footmen and five hundred horsemen. The elephants also had high towers (upon their backs), and archers (in them); and he also made the rest of his army to go up the mountains, and put his friends before the rest; and gave orders for the army to shout aloud, and so he attacked the enemy. He also exposed to sight their golden and brazen shields, so that a glorious splendour was sent from them; and when they shouted, the mountains echoed again. When Judas saw this, he was not terrified, but received the enemy with great courage, and slew about six hundred of the first ranks. But when his brother Eleazar, whom they called Auran, saw the tallest of all the elephants armed with royal breast-plates, and supposed that the king was upon him, he attacked him with great quickness and bravery. He also slew many of those that were about the elephant, and scattered the rest, and then went under the belly of the elephant, and smote him, and slew him; so the elephant fell upon Eleazar, and by his weight crushed him to death. And thus did this man come to his end, when he had first courageously destroyed many of his enemies.

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“But Judas, seeing the strength of the enemy, retired to Jerusalem, and prepared to endure a siege. As for Antiochus, he sent part of his army to Bethzur, to besiege it, and with the rest of his army he came against Jerusalem; but the inhabitants of Bethzur were terrified at his strength; and seeing that their provisions grew scarce, they delivered themselves up on the security of oaths that they should suffer no hard treatment from the king. And when Antiochus had thus taken the city, he did them no other harm than sending them out naked. Fie also placed a garrison of his own in the city; but as for the temple of Jerusalem, he lay at its siege a long time, while they within bravely defended it; for what engines soever the king set against them, they set other engines again to oppose them. But then their provisions failed them; what fruits of the ground they had laid up were spent, and the land being not ploughed that year, continued unsowed, because it was the seventh year, on which, by our laws, we are obliged to let it lie uncultivated. And withal, so many of the besieged ran away for want of necessaries, that but a few only were left in the temple.

“And these happened to be the circumstances of such as were besieged in the temple. But then, because Lysias, the general of the army, and Antiochus, the king, were informed that Philip was coming upon them out of Persia, and was endeavouring to get the management of public affairs to himself, they came into these sentiments, to leave the siege, and to make haste to go against Philip; yet did they resolve not to let this be known to the soldiers or the officers; but the king commanded Lysias to speak openly to the soldiers and the officers, without saying a word about the business of Philip; and to intimate to them that the siege would be very long; that the place was very strong; that they were already in want of provisions; that many affairs of the kingdom wanted regulation; and that it was much better to make a league with the besieged, and to become friends to their whole nation, by permitting them to observe the laws of their fathers, while they broke out into this war only because they were deprived of them, and so to depart home. When Lysias had discoursed thus with them, both the army and the officers were pleased with this resolution.

“Accordingly the king sent to Judas, and to those that were besieged with him, and promised to give them peace, and to permit them to make use of and live according to the laws of their fathers; and they gladly received his proposals; and when they had gained security upon oath for their performance, they went out of the temple: but when Antiochus came into it, and saw how strong the place was, he broke his oaths, and ordered his army that was there to pluck down the walls to the ground; and when he had so done, he returned to Antioch.”c

The defenders of the temple had, however, possessed no authority to make a treaty for others. Judas and the Assideans were not bound by it nor included in it. So negotiations had to be continued after the withdrawal of the hostile army. The principal in these negotiations seems to have been the notorious Menelaus, who had been made high priest by Antiochus Epiphanes, and whose shameless plundering and desecration of the temple had been one of the main causes of the popular uprising. During the progress of the negotiations, Lysias, apparently fearing that Menelaus might undermine his influence with the king, accused him of being the cause of all the mischief and had him put to death. As the execution of this wretch seemed to give proof that Lysias and the king sincerely desired peace, an agreement was soon arrived at.

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Demetrius, the uncle of Eupator, who had for years been held as a hostage at Rome, now managed to make his escape. Landing at Tripolis with a small force, he soon got control of the army, and was thus easily enabled to take possession of the government. He had the young king and Lysias put to death, and assumed the royal title (162 B.C.). Immediately Jews of the Hellenistic party under the leadership of Alcimus, an aspirant for the high-priesthood, approached the new king with complaints of the Assideans. As Alcimus had been guilty of heathen excesses, Judas and his followers had denied him access to the altar which they had restored. Demetrius listened to his complaint, appointed him high priest, and sent a considerable force under Bacchides to establish him in office by violent means. The learned aristocracy were disposed to come to terms with Alcimus; and as the services of the temple were no longer interfered with by the soldiers of the citadel and religion was not threatened with any disturbance, Judas could not reckon upon sufficient support to resist the command of the king in violation of the treaty.

So Bacchides led Alcimus without opposition to Jerusalem, transferred the government of the country to him, and left a body of troops for his protection. Alcimus sought to strengthen his hold on his position; but proving faithless to the learned caste, sixty of whom he caused to be put to death, he soon began to lose influence, and the Assideans again got the upper hand. Alcimus finally found his position quite untenable and journeyed to Antioch a second time.

It was probably during this time that Judas sent an embassy to Rome to propose a protective alliance (1 Maccabees viii. 17). This proposal of course had particularly in view protection against Demetrius, for Judas certainly must have known that the Senate was not favourably disposed towards the king. The embassy brought home a treaty which left it to the judgment of each of the two parties as to whether circumstances required the performance of military service. But the assistance of the Jews could not be of much use to Rome at this time; and as the treaty did not bind Rome strongly enough, it was of but little benefit to the Jews. However, the alliance had at least the appearance of reality, and it is likely that the Senate sent Demetrius a warning.

In response to the complaint of Alcimus, the king sent a strong force under Nicanor, former master of elephants, to Judea. Although a bitter hater of the Jews, this leader first tried the way of friendly negotiation. Judas consented to a meeting after his brother Simon had suffered a defeat. But Nicanor could not retreat from the demand that Alcimus be acknowledged, and Judas suspecting treachery, withdrew. Soon after this, Nicanor, defeated in a first skirmish, vented his ill-humour on the priests, whom he suspected of Assidean sympathies. In spite of their burnt-offerings for the king, he derided and insulted them, and threatened to destroy the temple upon his return.

A battle took place at Adasa, not far from Guphna. Nicanor was reinforced by Syrian militia and impressed Jews, but neither could have been a very reliable kind of troops, so that it was probably necessary for the general to set an example of great bravery. After a severe conflict, Nicanor fell fighting gloriously; his troops turned in flight, and were pursued a day’s journey with great slaughter. (161 B.C.) The head and arm were cut from Nicanor’s body and exposed in Jerusalem; and that day was long annually celebrated as the “day of Nicanor” (2 Maccabees xv.).

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But the land was not to enjoy peace long. Such a triumph of rebellious subjects was not easily overlooked. The king once more placed his reliance in the faithful Bacchides, who was now sent a second time with Alcimus. Passing through Galilee to Jerusalem without opposition, he reinstalled Alcimus and then marched to Berea in search of Judas. The latter was encamped at Elasa, a place which, like Berea, appears to be situated in the mountain wastes of southern Judea. Judas, then, had chosen a position in a wild mountainous region, and there he was attacked. The sight of the hostile army disheartened Judas’ followers, and only eight hundred remained by him. Nevertheless, Judas would not yield to the superior force but inspired his handful of men to desperate battle. The position was favourable to defence, and flight was probably impossible except to individuals.b

For the account of the last brave fight of Judas we turn again to the pages of his countryman, Josephus.

“Now when Judas was deserted by his own soldiers, and the enemy pressed upon him, and gave him no time to gather his army together, he was disposed to fight with Bacchides’ army, though he had but eight hundred men with him; so he exhorted these men to undergo the danger courageously, and encouraged them to attack the enemy. And when they said they were not a body sufficient to fight so great an army, and advised that they should retire now and save themselves, and that when he had gathered his own men together, then he should fall upon the enemy afterwards, his answer was this: ‘Let not the sun ever see such a thing, that I should show my back to the enemy; and although this be the time that will bring me to my end, and I must die in this battle, I will rather stand to it courageously, and bear whatsoever comes upon me, than by now running away, bring reproach upon my former great actions, or tarnish their glory.’ This was the speech he made to those that remained with him, and whereby he encouraged them to attack the enemy.

“But Bacchides drew his army out of their camp, and put them in array for the battle. He set the horsemen on both the wings, and the light soldiers and the archers he placed before the whole army, but was himself on the right wing. And when he had thus put his army in order of battle, and was going to join battle with the enemy, he commanded the trumpeter to give a signal of battle, and the army to make a shout, and to fall on the enemy.

“And when Judas had done the same, he joined battle with them; and as both sides fought valiantly, and the battle continued till sunset, Judas saw that Bacchides and the strongest part of the army was in the right wing, and thereupon took the most courageous men with him, and ran upon that part of the army, and fell upon those that were there, and broke their ranks, and drove them into the middle, and forced them to run away, and pursued them as far as to a mountain called Aza: but when those of the left wing saw that the right wing was put to flight, they encompassed Judas, and pursued him, and came behind him, and took him into the middle of their army; so not being able to fly, but encompassed round about with enemies, he stood still, and he and those that were with him fought; and when he had slain a great many of those that came against him, he at last was himself wounded, and fell, and gave up the ghost, and died in a way like to his former famous actions. When Judas was dead, those that were with him had no one whom they could regard (as their commander); but when they saw themselves deprived of such a general, they fled. But Simon and Jonathan, Judas’ brethren, received his dead body by a treaty from the enemy, and carried it[156] to the village Modin, where their father had been buried, and there buried him; while the multitude lamented him many days, and performed the usual solemn rites of a funeral to him.

“And this was the end that Judas came to. He had been a man of valour and a great warrior, and mindful of all the commands of their father Mattathias; and had undergone all difficulties, both in doing and suffering, for the liberty of his countrymen. And when his character was so excellent (while he was alive), he left behind him a glorious reputation and memorial, by gaining freedom for his nation, and delivering them from slavery under the Macedonians. And when he had retained the high-priesthood three years, he died.”c

INDEPENDENCE

If ever praise was deserved by any soldier-patriot, it was earned by the noble-minded Judas Maccabæus. His sphere of action did not place nations at his feet, or give him an opportunity of marshalling myriads; yet, making a proper estimate of his small resources and his great achievements, the Hebrew hero, during the six years of his martial career, will not be disparaged, when placed in comparison with any warrior whose deeds have been heralded by history, or formed the theme of poetic inspiration.

After the death of Judas, the apostate Jews, under the protection of the Syrians, again recovered strength, and were placed by the Syrian general in possession of all offices of trust throughout the country; while, at the same time, no mercy was shown by Bacchides to any one who was known to have been a follower of Judas. In this crisis those who still adhered to the worship of Jehovah, and were willing to hazard their lives in his cause, gathered themselves together, and made Jonathan, the youngest brother of Judas, their captain. Under his command they withdrew to the wilderness. Bacchides retired to Antioch, and the Jews had two years of tranquility.

Jonathan and his friends did their utmost during this interval to strengthen their cause and increase their numbers, until they had become so formidable, that the apostate Jews sent to inform Demetrius, king of Syria, of their growing strength, and to invite him to cut them off. Bacchides was accordingly sent again into Judea with his army; but Jonathan, having discovered the design of the apostate Jews to seize his person, and deliver him up to the Syrian general, had fifty of the principal conspirators put to death. This prevented the others from attempting anything. The forces of Jonathan did not enable him to meet Bacchides in the field. He therefore retired to Bethbasi, a fortified place in the wilderness, which he repaired, and put into such a posture of defence, that the utmost efforts of the Syrians could not reduce it. Bacchides, enraged at his failure, raised the siege, and in his wrath put to death many of those Jews who had invited him to undertake this disastrous campaign. On his retiring from Bethbasi, Jonathan sent an embassy after him, with proposals of peace, which were accepted, and sworn to by both parties.

The affairs of Syria now afforded some prospect of good for the Jewish people. Demetrius Soter having made himself obnoxious to the surrounding states, and given himself up to luxury, a young man of obscure birth was put forward, who pretended to be the son of Antiochus Epiphanes, and as such laid claim to the Syrian throne. Having, by means of this external support, raised an army and made himself formidable under the title of[157] Alexander Balas, Demetrius was aroused from his sloth. In those circumstances, the rival parties saw the importance of winning over the Jews. Demetrius therefore sent to Jonathan, offering to make him governor of Judea, and ordering all the hostages detained in the citadel of Jerusalem to be released, giving him at the same time full power to levy troops. By using this letter, Jonathan obtained the release of the hostages, and the retirement from Judea of all Syrian garrisons, except that of Bethzur, and the citadel of Zion, which were still held for the Syrians, but which were occupied chiefly by apostate Jews.

Alexander Balas was not behind his rival in his offers. He called Jonathan his friend and brother, sent him a golden crown and a purple robe, and appointed him to the high-priesthood. Jonathan accepted these presents, and entered upon his office as high priest; he did not, however, openly commit himself to either party.

Demetrius, upon hearing of this, became still more extravagant in his offers; and in an epistle which has been preserved by Josephus, he endeavoured to outdo Balas in the extravagance of his promises. All this was vain: the Jews could not forget what they had suffered, and ultimately gave their hearty support to Balas, who, having defeated and slain his rival, ascended the throne. The affairs of Syria, however, were at this time too uncertain and troubled to allow an occupant of the throne repose: a short time sufficed to dispossess Balas, and place Demetrius Nicator, son of the preceding king, at the head of the government.

While these changes were taking place in Syria, Jonathan again invested the citadel of Zion. Notice of this being sent to Nicator, he summoned Jonathan to meet him at Ptolemais. The Jewish chief obeyed the mandate; and not only succeeded in justifying his conduct, but so pleased the Syrian king that he placed under the government of Jonathan several districts which had previously belonged to Samaria. Jonathan, having returned to Jerusalem, pressed the siege of the citadel; but finding it impregnable, he petitioned Demetrius that the garrison might be withdrawn. The king happened to be at this time in great distress: the citizens of Antioch having raised an insurrection against him, he solicited aid from the Jewish chief. Jonathan complied, and sent three thousand chosen men, who restored the city to obedience; when the faithless king, freed from danger, not only refused to withdraw the garrison, but insisted upon the payment of the tribute which he had previously remitted. By this conduct he completely alienated the Jews from his cause; nor did much time elapse before an opportunity offered for manifesting this alienation.

Trypho, who had administered the affairs of Syria under Alexander Balas, managed to obtain the custody of a son of his, who had been consigned to the care of an Arab chief. With this powerful element of rebellion, he soon collected an army, and appeared against Demetrius. So readily was his cause espoused, that Demetrius was defeated, and compelled to retire into Seleucia. The young prince then assumed the government, under the profane title of Antiochus Theos, “the God.”

As Jonathan had great cause to be dissatisfied with Demetrius, he joined Antiochus, who, in return, confirmed him in possession of all his dignities and privileges. In consequence of this arrangement, Jonathan fought several battles with the soldiers of Demetrius, with varying success. At this time, however, he sent another embassy to Rome, which was kindly received, and dismissed with marks of friendship. The two brothers, Jonathan and Simon, exerted themselves, in this season of comparative tranquillity, to put the[158] fortresses of the country in the best condition, and to prepare for any future circumstances. Nor was it long before dark reverses crossed their way. Trypho had used Antiochus only as a means to work out his own personal and ambitious views. But he now found the way so opened, that Jonathan, the Jewish high priest, was the only apparent obstacle to his views. He accordingly devised a plan for getting this hero into his power, and, under pretence of adding Ptolemais to his dominions, Jonathan was induced to go there with only one thousand men. But immediately on their entering the gates, his men were cut in pieces, and he thrown into chains.

This was a terrible stroke to the rising cause of Jewish liberty. But Simon, the remaining brother, broke its force by taking on himself the command of the army and the direction of affairs; so that, when Trypho, immediately on the capture of Jonathan, marched into Judea, he was met by Simon with such an imposing force, that the Syrian general durst not hazard a battle. Trypho then pretended that his object in seizing Jonathan was to obtain the payment of one hundred talents, due for tribute; and that if this sum was sent him, and Jonathan’s two sons as hostages, the chief should be released. Although Simon distrusted these statements, he sent the money and the young men. The perfidious Syrian received the hundred talents, and retained both Jonathan and his sons in captivity; and being compelled to retire into Gilead, he there put the noble Jonathan to death.

Simon now formally assumed the command of the army, and the high-priesthood, and sent ambassadors to inform the Senate of Rome of his accession, and of the fate of his brother. They were received with every demonstration of honour, and returned with a treaty between Rome and the Jewish priest. During this time Demetrius had still maintained the war with Trypho; and Simon and the Jewish people, being greatly incensed against the murderer of Jonathan, thought the friendship of Demetrius preferable to intercourse with such a perfidious person. They accordingly sent a present of a golden crown to Demetrius, with overtures of peace.

This measure was the means of restoring the Jews to political independence. Demetrius at this moment so greatly needed the aid of the Jews in his war with Trypho, and was so pleased with their voluntary adhesion to him, that he accepted their present, consented to bury in oblivion all past differences, recognised Simon as high priest and prince of the Jews, and relinquished all future claims on the Jewish people; and these grants were published as a royal edict. Thus did Judea again take its place among the independent nations of the earth.d

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CHAPTER XI. FROM THE MACCABEES TO THE ROMANS

From the decayed Syrian kingdom, whose king, Demetrius, was languishing in imprisonment in Parthia, the Jewish people had no serious danger to fear. So Simon, as prince and high priest, ruled the land wisely and justly for several years. He restored the national religion everywhere, had coins struck with his name, and took suitable measures for the welfare and the safety of the people. And when Antiochus, the brother of the imprisoned king, demanded again the tribute to which Demetrius had relinquished claim, and took the field upon Simon’s refusal, John, the son of Simon, who had been appointed general by his father, inflicted a defeat upon the Syrian army at Ashdod. (139 B.C.)

Now Simon ruled like a second David over the liberated land. The Jewish people in solemn assembly named him “Commander-in-chief and unimpeachable prince of the nation, with the right of conferring all the dignities and offices in the kingdom and of forever exercising supervision over sacred affairs,” and a record of this plebiscite was set up in the sanctuary. Simon strengthened the alliance with Rome, promoted agriculture and commerce, and honoured justice and the fear of God.

Simon sought the best interests of his people, “as that evermore his authority and honour pleased them well,” says the first Book of Maccabees. (xiv. 4, etc.)[160] “Then did they till their ground in peace, and the earth gave her increase, and the trees of the field their fruit. The ancient men sat all in the streets, communicating together of good things, and the young men put on glorious and warlike apparel. He provided victuals for the cities, and set in them all manner of munition, so that his honourable name was renowned unto the end of the world. He made peace in the land, and Israel rejoiced with great joy. For every man sat under his vine and his fig tree, and there was none to fray them. Neither was there any left in the land to fight against them; yea, the kings were overthrown in those days. Moreover, he strengthened all those of his people that were brought low; the law he searched out, and every contemner of the law he took away. He beautified the sanctuary, and multiplied the vessels of the temple.”

But Simon’s end was not to be so happy as David’s. His son-in-law, Ptolemæus, whom he had placed in command of the plain of Jericho, was ambitious for the supreme authority. So he invited the high priest with his two sons, Mattathias and Judas, to his house, and slew them at a banquet. This crime, however, brought its perpetrator no advantage. Simon’s son John, surnamed Hyrcanus, escaped the snares of his brother-in-law, and after killing the murderers sent against him, quickly took possession of Jerusalem and the high-priesthood, and after a long siege, took Jericho. Ptolemæus, however, after murdering the imprisoned mother and two brothers of the Maccabæan, saved himself by flight across the Jordan.

Afterwards John concluded a favourable treaty with Antiochus, by which for a moderate tribute and the pledge of military service, he was confirmed in his ancestral dignity and position. With the sums that he took from David’s rifled tomb, John enlisted an army of mercenaries, with which he completed the liberation of the land, extended the bounds of his state on all sides, subjugated Samaria and Galilee, and forced the Idumæans (Edomites) either to accept the Jewish law and be circumcised, or to emigrate.

King Antiochus fell in battle against the Parthians. Against his brother Demetrius, who was released from imprisonment, John protected himself by renewed alliance with the Romans, who now in their accustomed manner held out their protecting hand over the little people on Lebanon until the hour came when they could devour it along with the great state against which they had protected it. (128-126 B.C.)

A consequence of this alliance with Rome was that the Jewish nation once more enjoyed a happy period before its fall. The nearly thirty years’ reign of John Hyrcanus was a period of external peace and internal well-being, when the Jew lived free and unhindered according to the laws of their theocracy, and brought the “holy state” to its full development. Only internal quarrels, caused by the sectarian hatred of the schools and religious parties, and by the race jealousy and pride of orthodoxy with which the Jews looked down upon the Samaritans and Galileans, disturbed the harmony of their relations.

THE WARRING SECTS

When the worship of Jehovah was restored to its rights and external religious pressure ceased, the place of the former sects, the heathenising Hellenists and the orthodox Chasidees (Assideans), was taken by the Sadducees and Pharisees, two schools of religious brotherhoods which followed the same tendencies, only with less roughness and without violent means of conversion. The Sadducees, named after their founder Zadok, made the attempt “in teaching and precept to amalgamate the Greek wisdom of the time with the Jewish nature, not in order to destroy the latter, but to uplift and advance it.” Consisting of the wealthier and more aristocratic part of the people, they aimed at greater freedom in life and thought, put a less strict construction upon the Mosaic Law and tried to bring it more into harmony with Greek customs, teachings, and mode of thought. Under the[161] influence of Greek philosophy they took the ground that there is no higher fate which unalterably predestines all human affairs, and especially that God neither does evil nor controls it; that good and evil, human weal and woe, depend solely upon man’s own choice, and upon his knowledge or his ignorance. A further step brought them to the denial of immortality and eternal reward, as well as of the actual existence of angels and spirits.

In contrast to the Sadducees were the Pharisees (i.e., “the particular”), who claimed to be distinguished from others by their greater piety. They originated in the ranks of the Chasidees (“the pious”), and held strictly to the law and the prophets. But they regarded with greatest care and solicitude the letter and the wording of the law, and thus through arbitrary and forced interpretation, they produced a great mass of directions, commandments, and petty definitions of external sanctimoniousness, upon the observation of which they set great value. In this way they fell into hypocrisy and mock holiness.

Acting on the principle: “Build a fence about the law,” they saw in the restriction and limitation of action a sign of orthodox piety. “Driven by ambition, and more or less consciously indulging their own selfishness, the Pharisees made piety a kind of trade, in order by it to gain permanent power.” They wore certain signs, e.g., little rolls on arm or neck inscribed with words from the sacred law; and they sought by the “appearance of piety” to draw the people to them. “Living poor in the sight of the world, many of them, nevertheless, did not despise the treasures and pleasures of the world.”

A third sect, called the Essenes or Essees, like the Pharisees descended from the Chasidees, believed God was best served and their own salvation promoted by separation from the world and its indulgences, by the curbing of all passions and lusts, by abstinence from wine, meat, and oil, and by pious penances and common devotion. They dwelt in groups on the west side of the Dead Sea, carried on agriculture, cattle raising, and innocent, peaceful occupations. As the individuals renounced private property, they brought both possessions and profits together into a common treasury for common use. All members of the order wore the same garb; only a few believed in marriage. As overseers of the poor and physicians, they earned the gratitude of mankind. “Their external forms, their division into three successive, strictly separated degrees, their admission and strict investigation of pupils, with the vow of secrecy, their solemn oath upon reception into the last degree with the requirement henceforth to refuse all oaths—many of these things may appear to be copied from the Pythagoræan societies; but after all that would only be something chance and unimportant beside the nature of their efforts themselves. At all events, they are the noblest and most remarkable product that ancient religion brought forth without attempting to go beyond itself.”

Related to the Essees, only a “refinement and improvement” of them, were the Egyptian Therapeutæ, of whom the Jewish-Alexandrian author Philo gives an enthusiastic description. As among the former, we find among the latter also “community of life and labour in deserts, close conformity to Holy Scriptures and allegorical interpretation of them. But the common labour becomes here merely a common spiritual exercise in the true fear of God and veneration of the great lawgiver Moses in contemplative rest.” The Therapeutæ lived in small companies about a house of prayer, but on Sabbaths and feast days they united for greater services. Their principal seat and place of assembly was in the desert by Lake Mareotis[162] west of Alexandria. Women were also received in the order, “at the meetings modestly taking their places beside the ranks of men. Besides the expounding of the sacred books and edification out of them, prayers and fasting were their daily business, with bread, salt, and hyssop as the most suitable nourishment. Moreover the actual spiritual exercises readily rose to new and characteristic songs and poetic creations of various kinds.” The “Book of Wisdom” appears to be one of the finest fruits of this spiritual tendency.

The Maccabæan family, which had showed itself so great in time of need and distress, degenerated in good fortune. Before his death John Hyrcanus bestowed the secular princely dignity upon his wife, while the high-priesthood went by right of inheritance to his eldest son Aristobulus. Hardly had the latter taken possession of his office, however, when he assumed the title of King, imprisoned his mother and let her starve to death. He also kept three of his brothers in durance; the fourth, Antigonus, fell a victim of a court cabal before his very eyes. These deeds, however, awakened the conscience of the royal high priest, who was not without feeling, and so tormented him that he died the very next year. (108 B.C.)

His brother Alexander Jannæus now stepped from the cell to the throne. He was a rough man, who took pleasure only in women, wine, and arms, and began his reign with the murder of one of his brothers. He was brave and warlike, and during the twenty-seven years of his reign extended the boundaries of the kingdom to the south. The Pharisees, however, who were angered with him for his preference for Hellenistic manners, aroused the people against him. At the Feast of Tabernacles, while sacrificing at the altar as high priest, he was pelted with citrons. Enraged at this disgrace, the violent man had six thousand of the people apprehended and killed by his mercenaries.

This hasty deed was to bear evil fruits for him. On a campaign against the Arabians he lost the greater part of his army through an ambush. When he returned to the capital a fugitive, the Pharisees stirred up the people to civil war, raised troops, and called on the king of Syria for aid. Alexander Jannæus was defeated and for a long time wandered about helpless in forest and mountains. But after a while he again got together a mixed force of Jews and mercenaries, gained a victory over his enemies, and returned to Jerusalem. Here, while celebrating the most voluptuous feasts, he had eight hundred crucified and their wives and children slaughtered before their eyes. By these bloody deeds he inspired such terror in his opponents that they thenceforth attempted no further resistance. He could now follow his lust of conquest unhindered. And his arms were in fact so victorious beyond Jordan that at his death the Jewish kingdom had almost the extent it had in the days of David. (79 B.C.)

Jannæus’ widow, Alexandra, a wise and determined woman, by the advice of her late husband, attached herself to the Pharisees and thus obtained a quiet reign, her son Hyrcanus occupying the high priest’s office. She defended the conquered lands, and in spite of an army of foreign mercenaries, had a full treasury. But scarcely had she closed her eyes when her son Aristobulus, at the head of the persecuted Sadducees, raised the banner of revolt, was victorious in battle, and compelled his brother to abdicate in his favour the high priestly dignity together with the royal power. (70 B.C.) But after some time Hyrcanus, at the suggestion of the sly and enterprising Idumæan, Antipater, escaped from Jerusalem and with the aid of several Arabian chiefs began war against his brother.

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ANTIPATER

This gave the Romans, before whose tribunal the quarrelling Asmonæans brought their case for decision, an occasion for intervention. Pompey, whom Aristobulus, by the costly gift of a golden vine had tried in vain to gain for his side, demanded the surrender of all fortresses, including the capital. And when the royal high priest hesitated and made preparations for war, he had him imprisoned, and took Jerusalem by storm after a three months’ siege. (63 B.C.) Then he appointed Hyrcanus high priest and prince of the nation (ethnarch) without the royal title, imposed upon him annual tribute to the Romans, demolished the walls of Jerusalem and the principal fortress of the land, and narrowed the boundaries of Judea. Samaria became independent, Galilee was attached to the viceregency of Syria. Pompey’s curiosity led him to enter the Holy of Holies, but he refrained from all violation or spoliation. Aristobulus and his two sons followed the general to Rome to adorn his triumph. After a while the elder son Alexander, and soon afterward, the father also made their escape. They returned to Palestine and raised a new war, but both were captured again. Alexander was beheaded at Antioch; Aristobulus was put out of the way in Rome itself, probably by poison, but was buried at Jerusalem with royal honours.

During these events the brave and shrewd Idumæan Antipater had rendered the Romans great services, thus winning the favour of all the generals from Pompey to Cæsar. They transferred to him the entire secular authority over Judea, together with Galilee and Samaria, while Hyrcanus the high priest was restricted to the guidance of religious affairs. Through him the Jews were granted the right to live in accordance with the laws of their fathers, were freed from all burdens of war and the tribute was put upon a just and moderate basis. By these services Antipater won the love of the Jews in such a degree that he could rule in the land like a king, even though he did not bear that title.b

With Weber’s theory that Antipater was popular, George Smith does not agree. But we shall turn from Antipater to note the rise of that dark name in Jewish chronicle, King Herod.

Antipater carefully conformed to the views of Cæsar in arranging the affairs of Judea. He raised again the walls of Jerusalem, journeyed through the country, used every means to repress the lawlessness and disorder which the late troubles had engendered, and, by alternate persuasion and power, reduced the people to obedience. To carry out this plan, he made his eldest son, Phasael, governor of Jerusalem, and his second, Herod, governor of Galilee. The latter was a young man of extraordinary talent and spirit. He devoted himself with great ability to the difficult duty which devolved upon him. Galilee was at this time greatly infested with bands of robbers: Herod sought them out, and all that fell into his hands he put to death, even including Hezekiah, their leader. The government of Antipater and his sons was not popular with the Jewish people; for all saw that, although Hyrcanus was the nominal head, restored by Pompey, the Idumæan was really the chief. This was unpalatable: the people preferred Aristobulus. When, therefore, Herod was found acting in this decisive manner, he was summoned before the sanhedrim, to answer the charge of having arbitrarily exercised the power of life and death. The young man, under the advice of his father, appeared in their court, bearing with him a letter from the prefect of Syria, charging Hyrcanus, the president of the sanhedrim, to protect him. He presented himself, however, more like a prince than a criminal.[164] He was attired in purple, with hair neatly dressed, and surrounded with his guards. This appearance confounded the Jewish elders. Even those who had preferred the charge against Herod did not now dare to repeat it, and he was thus virtually acquitted; when Sameas arose, and, protesting at length against their cowardice, affirmed, that if they thus spared Herod, the time would come when he would not spare them. This roused the assembly; but Hyrcanus adjourned the business, and then advised Herod to withdraw; and thus the case terminated.

About three years afterwards, while Judea was progressing in order and wealth, Julius Cæsar was assassinated in the capitol, and the Roman world again convulsed, from its centre to its circumference.

Immediately after this event, Hyrcanus sent ambassadors to the Roman Senate, requesting a confirmation of all the privileges and immunities which had been given by Cæsar; a request which was immediately granted. While Rome and the provinces were in the utmost perplexity as to the result of pending arrangements, Antipater was most ungratefully poisoned by Malichus, a Jewish general, who soon after was put to death for the crime, at the instance of Herod, by Cassius Longinus, who then wielded the Roman power in Syria and Asia Minor. This circumstance, as Malichus was popular with many, increased the dislike of the Jews to Herod; and they petitioned Marc Antony, who soon after came into Syria, against him; but in vain: the address of Herod, in showing the services which his father had rendered to the Roman cause, warded off all danger, and secured him the protection of this triumvir.

Urgent necessity, however, called Antony into Italy; and Syria and the neighbouring kingdoms—having lately been subjected, in rapid succession, to the rapacity and extortion of Dolabella, Longinus, and Antony; and knowing that Rome was at war with Parthia, and that they were, in consequence, likely to be subjected to a repetition of these evils—agreed to invite the Parthians to come and occupy these countries. This was done. Syria and Asia Minor were occupied; and Antigonus, the surviving son of Aristobulus, was seated on the Jewish throne, with the title of king, under the protection of Parthia. In the course of these events, Hyrcanus and Phasael were made prisoners. The former had his ears cropped, and was thereby rendered incapable of ever being high priest again; the latter killed himself in prison. Herod contrived to escape; and, having placed his family and treasures in safety, fled to Rome.

HEROD

When Herod reached the imperial city, he fortunately found Antony and Octavius there on friendly terms. He therefore renewed his friendship with the former, who received him very cordially, introduced him to Octavius, and stated how very useful Antipater had been to Julius Cæsar in Egypt. Herod was, therefore, patronised by both these great men, who held in their hands, at that moment, the political destinies of Rome and of the world. When the son of Antipater had fled as a fugitive to the imperial city, his highest hope was to get Aristobulus, a grandson of Hyrcanus, and brother to Mariamne, to whom he was espoused, placed upon the throne, with himself as minister, or procurator, under him. In this way his father had wielded all the power of Judea; and he hoped, at that time, for no higher dignity. But, being received with such marks of distinction, and promising Antony further sums of money, he was, by the favour of these two arbiters[165] of the affairs of nations, himself raised to the throne. The senate was accordingly convened, and Herod introduced to the conscript fathers by two noble senators, who set forth the invaluable services rendered by his father to the Romans; and, at the same time, declared Antigonus, who then governed at Jerusalem, to be a turbulent person, and an enemy to their nation; while Antony pointed out the importance of having a fast friend to Rome on the throne of Judea during his approaching expedition against Parthia. The Senate hereupon unanimously elected Herod to the throne, and voted Antigonus an enemy of Rome.

The whole of these proceedings was evidently conducted upon the presumption that Judea was either a recognised province of the Roman Empire, or, at least, entirely dependent upon the imperial state. But what follows is yet more strange. Considering the entire peculiarity of Jewish manners and religion, it might have been supposed, even if the Senate had made the appointment, that the inauguration of the king would have been in accordance with the rites of the nation to be ruled. But, no! Immediately, upon the vote of the fathers, Herod was conducted by Antony and Octavius into the capitol, and there consecrated king, with idolatrous sacrifices. Having thus far secured the object of his highest ambition, Herod remembered that the affairs of his family and kingdom did not justify a protracted stay at Rome: he therefore departed from the city at the expiration of seven days; and, by a rapid journey, reached Judea just three months after he had left it.

Here, although beset with difficulties, he found a fair field; the Parthians had, during his journey, been driven from Syria, which was again occupied by Roman troops. His first care was to collect an army, with which, and some aid from the Roman general, he made himself master of Galilee. Following up this success, he marched to the relief of his family, who were closely besieged by Antigonus. In this object he also succeeded; and, after a series of dangers and exploits, he became master of all the country, and shut up Antigonus in Jerusalem. Yet, notwithstanding the utmost efforts of Herod, it was not until his rival had reigned three years that he was able, when supported by a Roman army, to reduce the capital, which was at length taken by assault, and subjected to fearful massacre and pillage from the Roman troops, who, enraged at the obstinacy of the defence, continued the slaughter after all resistance had ceased; and at length Herod had to pay a large sum of money to save Jerusalem from being destroyed. Antigonus was taken and put to death by the Romans as a malefactor.

Herod was now seated on the throne of Judea, the first of a new dynasty. Hitherto the Asmonæan or Maccabæan family had really or nominally governed. With Hyrcanus and Antigonus this line had ended; and Herod, who was not a Jew, but an Idumæan by nation, and professedly a Jewish proselyte in religion, was, by the favour of Rome, invested with supreme authority over the Jewish people. From the first elevation of Antipater, the cause of his family was unpopular; and it was only the consummate sagacity of that person, in attaching himself to the oldest branch of the Asmonæan family, which enabled him to carry out his purpose. Herod felt this throughout his career. It was this which kept Antigonus so long upon the throne; it was this which caused the son of Antipater so much difficulty, when possessed of the object of his ambition.

Fully aware of the state of the public mind, his first care, after having recovered Jerusalem, was the extermination of the Asmonæan family. Although he had married Mariamne, the daughter of Hyrcanus, this seemed in no wise to soften the violence of his political hate. All those Jews who[166] had supported Antigonus were proscribed, forty-five of the principal of them were slain; all their property was confiscated, and seized by the king; all the gold, silver, and valuables found in Jerusalem were taken for his use; and thus, with the exception of a small part of the people, the land was treated like a conquered country. Influenced by this jealousy of the Asmonæans, Herod found an obscure priest of Babylon, who was descended from the ancient high priests of Israel. Him he raised to the high-priesthood, although his wife’s brother was of age, and heir to the office. He also cut off the whole sanhedrim, except Sameas and Pollio.

The superseding of Aristobulus in the high-priesthood created an element of discord and misery in the family of Herod, which ultimately destroyed his peace. Herod’s intimacy with Antony introduced his family to the infamous Cleopatra. Alexandra, the mother of Mariamne and Aristobulus, by her influence with this queen, and her intercession with Antony, induced Herod to cancel his appointment. Ananelus was set aside, and Aristobulus inducted into the high-priesthood. But this young man was received with such marks of favour and affection by the people, whilst officiating at the ensuing feast of tabernacles, that all the jealous enmity of Herod was again blown into a flame, and the heartless king soon after caused the young priest to be drowned whilst bathing. Cleopatra, informed of this crime, used her utmost influence with Antony to have Herod slain. Besides the gratification of vanity and revenge (for she had attempted in vain to seduce Herod), she greatly desired the possession of Judea; but as Antony was equally in want of money to sustain him in his contest with Octavius, Herod supplied him, and continued to reign.

After the fall of Antony, Herod waited upon Octavius, and by his frank and candid deportment secured the friendship of the sole governor of the great Roman Empire. Prior to this time, Herod had lured the aged Hyrcanus from his captivity in Parthia, and, after placing him in close surveillance for several years, had him beheaded. The future course of Herod was violent, miserable, and vile. He laboured, on the one hand, to make his kingdom great, and his country magnificent; but his means of effecting this were most atrocious: while, on the other hand, his conduct to his family was suspicious and cruel.

In his public life he consolidated his power, and raised Judea to a state of wealth and prosperity which it had not before attained for centuries. Having by the most sanguinary means cut off the last of the Asmonæans, he built a theatre in Jerusalem, and a spacious amphitheatre in the suburbs. All kinds of heathenish games were introduced. Musicians, players, courses, gladiators, and wild beasts, were exhibited in the holy city. And it is a circumstance worthy of observation, that there yet existed sufficient zeal for the Divine Law to render all these exceedingly disgusting to a great body of the Jewish people. About this time Herod also rebuilt several important fortresses, and restored Samaria, which had long lain in ruins. He also adorned Jerusalem with a stately palace for himself, which was built of the most costly materials, and of exquisite workmanship.

Yet all these things were performed in a manner and style so foreign to the peculiar genius of the Jewish mind, that, proud as they were of their country, they were by these means more and more alienated from the king. He saw this, and laboured to stem the torrent of public feeling. At one time he wished to introduce an oath of allegiance; but it was so strenuously opposed by the most eminent Jewish doctors, that he was compelled to lay it aside. He then remitted a part of the taxes, professedly on account of[167] several national calamities which had recently fallen upon the country, but really to bid for popular favour: this also was vain. One other course was open to him; and he pursued it. The temple, as then existing, was unworthy of the nation and of the improved state of Jerusalem: he proposed to rebuild it; but so distrustful were the people of his promise and of his religion, that they would not have the old one removed until they saw the materials collected for the new building. After two years of preparation, the old edifice was taken down in parts, as the new one was raised. The holy place was finished in eighteen months, the body of the structure in eight years. This building was erected in the Greek style of architecture, and of the most costly and beautiful marble and other material; and the great work appears to some extent to have produced a better state of feeling between the Jews and their king.

Yet, during all these works, Herod’s domestic course was one of continued misery and crime. As if the blood through which he had waded to the throne, and the numerous victims which in these times of turbulence and war were sacrificed to his ambition, were not sufficient to satiate his sanguinary nature, his lovely wife Mariamne, after having borne him two sons, was doomed by his order to perish on the scaffold, the victim of the most groundless jealousy and cruel conspiracy. He endeavoured to bury this crime in oblivion by other marriages, but in vain. Intense suspicion haunted all his thoughts; a morbid apprehension of evil destroyed every acquisition, and turned all the members of his family into foes. Under this influence, after years of disquiet, he condemned his two sons by Mariamne to death. It were useless to attempt the history of this family at greater length. Herod married ten wives, eight of whom bore him children. This was not the least amongst the causes of his domestic misery.d

Herod willed his dominion to his two sons, Herod Antipas and Archelaus, and after some delay they entered into their inheritance. Archelaus was ethnarch over Samaria, Judea, and Idumæa, which he misgoverned so grossly that the exasperated Jews complained to Rome (6 A.D.). Augustus deposed and banished his faithless servant, putting a procurator over the dominions.a

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CHAPTER XII. THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY

A CRITICAL VIEW OF CHRIST AND OTHER MESSIAHS

In Judea the position of the Roman procurators was one of great difficulty. The Jews were the most restless of all the peoples of the empire. The most inoffensive measures wounded their religious susceptibilities. Thus the general census made by Quirinus, governor of Syria, at the command of Augustus, seemed to them a menace and a danger. Long ago, in the reign of David, a similar measure had evoked murmurs amongst them; it was worse still under foreign rule. They persuaded themselves that the object of the census was to reduce them to slavery. A certain Judas, surnamed the Gaulonite or the Galilean, stirred up a revolt, which was suppressed by the procurator, but the partisans of Judas, who were afterwards known as the Zealots, formed a sect which played an important part during the last days of Jewish history. According to them, the law forbade the Jews to recognise any sovereign except God, and it was their duty to die rather than submit to a human authority. This perpetual confounding of religion and politics was often extremely troublesome to the Romans. Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea, having brought into Jerusalem Roman ensigns adorned with the portrait of Tiberius, the Jews complained loudly at the offence, and betook themselves to Cæsarea, where the governors resided, to demand the removal of the ensigns. He surrounded the malcontents with his troops, but they offered their throats to the knife, declaring that they would rather die than endure the desecration of the Holy City. Pilate gave way, and afterwards, by the express command of Tiberius, removed the golden shields which bore in their inscriptions the names of the gods of the empire. Another time, desiring to build an aqueduct to bring water to Jerusalem, he took money from the temple treasury, and there was another riot on that score.

The rule of the Romans, like that of the Seleucidæ before them, made the Jews fall back upon their Messianic dreams. In these the Bible played the leading part. The prophets of old had merely been religious and popular tribunes; nevertheless, by the aid of fanciful interpretation they succeeded in making them soothsayers. They were made to predict the supremacy of the Jewish nation over all others; by taking some sentences of their writings apart from the context the people discovered allusions to their future deliverer, their Messiah. Like all mythological types, this ideal figure of the Messiah grew more and more clearly defined. But at the same time it assumed a loftier significance, it became purely moral in character. In face of the vastness of the Roman power, a warrior king like David would not have been enough; what was needed was rather a revealer, like Moses, to set up the kingdom of God upon earth. The Messiah, in this supernatural rôle,[169] was bound to exercise a far greater effect upon the people; but any kind of revolution, whether violent or mystical, must always inspire the ruling classes with equal abhorrence. The Jewish priesthood implored the aid of the secular arm against Jesus of Nazareth, as it had done against Judas Maccabæus. Pilate being loth to put an innocent man to death in order to gratify priestly spite, they gave him to understand that his own position would be compromised by indulgence, and he yielded for fear of losing his office. Moreover, it is likely that the death sentence caused him no great remorse; no doubt he said to himself that it was the price of maintaining order, and that in dealing with an enemy to society there was no constraining need to be just. This event, which divides the history of the world in two, passed unmarked by the generation that witnessed it. The five or six lines which we find in Josephus appear to be an interpolation. If Josephus had believed, as the passage states, that Jesus was the Messiah and that he was more than man, it is obvious that, instead of remaining a Jew, he would have become a Christian.b

The excerpt from Josephus is as follows: “Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works—a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was (the) Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.”

As has just been said, this paragraph is probably an interpolation of a copyist of a much later period. It would seem, then, that no contemporary record, no mention even, of the life of Jesus has been preserved to us. This fact is one of the most striking paradoxes in all history. As a general rule, it may be taken for granted that the great names in history are achieved during the life of their bearers. But here, speaking purely from the standpoint of the historian, was an obscure personage, whose entire theatre of action, so far as known, consisted of the petty state of Palestine, at that time one of the minor dependencies of Rome. The period of activity of this personage as an historical character compasses but a few years; and it would appear that during his life his deeds were practically unknown beyond the bounds of the petty state in which he lived. Yet the historical result of these activities was more momentous, even from a strictly secular standpoint, than the deeds of any other character of history. A new era, recognised by the chief civilisations of the world, dates from his birth; and whole libraries of literature are devoted to every aspect of his life, in strange contrast to the paucity of contemporary records.

There is no occasion to chronicle here the incidents of the life of Jesus. To every reader of these pages these incidents have been familiar from childhood. As there is no contemporary source to quote, at best we could but paraphrase the scriptural accounts, to which every reader may turn for himself.a

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MESSIANIC IDEA

Beyond the borders of Palestine, where they held their ancient glories in perpetual remembrance, the Jews gave less thought to their Messiah. In[170] the Greek cities whither they had been allured by commerce, at Ephesus, Cyrene, and above all, Alexandria, they tried to gain acceptance for their traditions and their monotheism under the warranty of the Sibyls; they composed apocryphal writings in somewhat tame verse, or studied Greek philosophy. The monistic theories of Plato attracted them most strongly to his school, and Philo makes amazing efforts, by dint of moral allegorising, to discover Platonic teachings in Genesis. The word, λόγος, which signifies both the reason of things and human speech, became the starting point of a kind of abstract mythology; and among the Hellenistic Jews the idea of the Word assumed an importance equal to, and a character hardly less personal than, that of the Messiah among the Jews of Palestine. From one of these groups Christian legend was destined to arise, from the other Christian philosophy. The Persian doctrine of the principle of evil, the Egyptian doctrine of the resurrection of the body, had already become familiar to the Jews; Christianity adopted them and made them the basis of a vast mythological edifice, the Fall and Redemption, the great Judgment Day of God, and the coming of His kingdom upon earth after the destruction of the world, which was placed in the immediate future. The dispersion of the Jews throughout all the eastern provinces of the empire offered a vast field to Christian propaganda, which, however, soon spread beyond the Jewish race, when once the innovating party had definitely rejected circumcision, the distinction between clean and unclean meats, and all the trivial and troublesome practices which separated Israel from other nations. The Jewish element was soon submerged by the rising tide of world-wide proselytism known as the calling of the Gentiles.

The introduction of Christianity into Greece is associated with the name of a Jew, St. Paul, just as the introduction of the Dionysiac mysteries is with that of the Thracian Orpheus. It is a divine seed come forth from the East, after an interval of fifteen centuries, and developing in the fructifying rays of the sun of Greece. But Christianity, although it represents the last phase of the progressive invasion of the West by oriental beliefs, is an original religion and not a heresy of Judaism. Far from being the supplement of the Jewish faith, we might rather call it its denial. The dominant note of Judaism is the attitude at which it places the conception of the Divine; between man and his God the distance is infinite. Christianity, on the contrary, had for its fundamental dogma the worship of the God-man. The Jewish religion, alone of all the religions of the earth, confined itself absolutely to this present life, without following man beyond the limits of his earthly destiny; to Christianity the earth is but a temporary place of trial, and life a preparation for eternity. The Jewish nation prides itself on the exclusive inheritance of the Law and casts forth the multitude of the uncircumcised from its midst; while Christianity proclaimed itself the universal religion from the beginning, and has never ceased to call men of all nations to itself. The Christians borrowed nothing from Judea but its traditions and its legends; had they rested satisfied with these, they would have been no more than a small Jewish sect that would have passed away unnoted. Judaism is one of the tributaries of the great Christian river, but it is not its principal source. In its apotheosis of humanity Christianity has a direct link with Hellenism, of which it is the legitimate successor.

The doctrines of the Fall, the Incarnation, the Redemption, the Sacrament of the Eucharist, all have their source in the most ancient beliefs of Indo-European peoples; which explains why the Jews so obstinately hold[171] aloof from it. The true heir of Jewish thought is Islamism, the modern religion of the Semitic race. By depriving Christianity of its Greek elements, by setting aside the idea of the incarnation of the Divine in humanity, which spanned the gulf between God and man, Mohammed restored Semitic monotheism to its pristine severity, tempered only by belief in the devil and in a future life, which the Jews themselves had ended by accepting.

At Rome, whither all men seeking their fortunes drifted, the Jews were very numerous, and insinuated themselves among all classes, especially among women, exploiting their credulity by interpreting dreams and selling philtres and amulets. They were generally confounded with Chaldeans and other venders of horoscopes. A lady of rank, whom they had converted to their religion, having had reason to complain of their sharp practices, Tiberius enlisted four thousand Jews, whom he sent to Sardinia. A grandson of Herod, Agrippa by name, who had squandered his fortune in profligate courses and lived by his wits, insinuated himself into the good graces of the young Caligula. During a walk which they took together, Agrippa said aloud, “When will the day come on which the death of old Tiberius will leave thee master of the empire, for my happiness and that of the world?” The words were repeated to Tiberius by a freedman, and Agrippa was put in prison. Caligula, who became emperor soon after, set him at liberty and gave him the tetrarchy of his uncle Philip (who had died shortly before), with the title of King. But the ambitious Herodias could not endure to see her brother, whom she had formerly assisted out of her bounty, win a higher rank than her husband. At her instigation Antipas proceeded to Rome to solicit the diadem. It was an evil day for him; Agrippa accused him of having laid up a store of arms and of holding communication with the Parthians; Caligula, without deigning to inquire into the matter, banished him to Lyons in Gaul, and added his tetrarchy to Agrippa’s kingdom.

The new king soon had an opportunity of rendering signal service to his co-religionists. Caligula desired to have divine honours paid him. This was no new thing; Alexander had caused himself to be worshipped, like the ancient kings of Egypt, the majority of his successors had followed his example; the Cæsars might well do as much. It was a logical result of monarchy; when one man is set above the rest, it is easy for him to fancy himself a god. The Jews alone, to their eternal honour in history, had courage to protest against this apotheosis of tyrants that disgraced the end of the Old World. When orders had been given to place the emperor’s statue in the temple of Jerusalem, the attitude of the Jews became so menacing that Petronius wrote to the emperor asking him to revoke the command, which could only be carried into effect by the extermination of the whole people. Agrippa was at Rome at the time. He gave a magnificent banquet to Caligula, and when the emperor, inflamed with wine, offered to extend his kingdom, he entreated him to respect the religious scruples of his subjects. The emperor yielded, but when he received Petronius’ letter he flew into a violent rage, accused the governor of having taken bribes from the Jews, and threatened him with the imperial vengeance. Fortunately for Petronius and the Jews, Caligula was soon afterward assassinated by Chærea, one of his officers. The Senate was desirous of restoring the republic, but the prætorian guard, composed of Germans, offered the throne to Claudius, the uncle of Caligula. According to Josephus, it was Agrippa who persuaded him to accept, and served as[172] intermediary between the Senate and the army. Chærea was put to death. Claudius had no sooner assumed possession of the empire than he added Judea, Samaria, and some districts in the Lebanon, to the kingdom of Agrippa. The principality of Chalcis was bestowed upon his brother Herod.

Agrippa, having thus become king over the whole of Palestine, proceeded to Jerusalem, and hung in the temple a golden chain which Caligula had given him when he came out of prison. Like Herod, his grandfather, he set up a great many monuments, he enlarged Jerusalem considerably, and built an amphitheatre at Berytus, where he instituted gladiatorial shows. But while Herod had never been able to win popularity, Agrippa gained the affections of the Jews by showing himself a strict observer of the Law. Munk, who takes the story from the Rabbis, tells how, at the Feast of the Tabernacles, he read the Book of Deuteronomy in public, and, coming to the passage in which the lawgiver denies a foreigner the right of reigning over Israel, he burst into tears, remembering his own Idumæan descent. But from all sides the people cried to him, “Fear not, Agrippa, thou art our brother!” It was undoubtedly to please the priests at Jerusalem that he put James, the brother of John the Evangelist, to death; for the Jews, when they were in the ascendant, were very far from allowing others the religious liberty which they everywhere claimed for themselves. Christian preaching might be attended with more or less success among the communities of Jews or Jewish proselytes settled elsewhere than in Judea; but at Jerusalem, where memories of independence still survived, no man could be acknowledged as the true Messiah who had failed to deliver his nation from foreign oppression, and the new sect could not take root in the country that had been its cradle. Moreover, the little church at Jerusalem was very inoffensive, and the Book of Acts does not tell us on what pretext James was beheaded. Simon Peter, the chief of the Apostles, whom Agrippa had cast into prison, was delivered by night, and his deliverance was ascribed to angelic agency. This miraculous deliverance of St. Peter forms the subject of one of Raphael’s finest pictures.

At Agrippa’s death, which took place a short time after, his son, also named Agrippa, was only seventeen years of age. In spite of his youth the emperor was desirous of letting the kingdom of Judea descend to him, but was unfortunately dissuaded from his purpose by his advisers. The tetrarchy of Philippi was afterward bestowed on Agrippa the Younger, but Judea fell finally under the rule of procurators. Of all the provinces of the empire it was the most difficult to govern. The others accepted Roman dominion. In exchange for their independence Rome offered civilisation to Spain and Gaul, peace and quiet to Greece and Asia, wearied as they were by centuries of war. But the Jews understood Græco-Roman civilisation no better than the Mohammedans understood our own, and as for peace, they would accept it only on the condition that they should be over all other nations: that was what they understood by the kingdom of God.

Their Messianic dreams haunted them more and more persistently. The land was full of visionaries, and they always found disciples. A prophet named Theudas induced more than four hundred persons to follow him into the wilderness by declaring that he would cause them to pass dry-shod over Jordan. Fadus, the procurator, despatched a body of horsemen, who slew him and dispersed his following. The author of the Acts, who placed the said Theudas before the time of Judas the Gaulonite, indicates the comparison generally made between the preaching of these two agitators and[173] that of the Apostles. Roman governors and Jewish lovers of order saw no great difference between men inspired and robbers. Tiberius Alexander, a renegade Jew of Alexandria, who succeeded Fadus in the government of Judea, crucified two sons of Judas the Gaulonite, who were still upholding the sect of the Zealots. As for the populace, they were well disposed to all attempts, but among innovators they liked those who adopted violent measures better than those whose methods were peaceable; thus, as the Gospel relates, Barabbas was preferred to Jesus.

Samaria, like Jerusalem, had its prophets and its messiahs. In the days of Pontius Pilate there was one who gathered together a great multitude on Mount Gerizim, promising to show them the sacred vessels which had been buried there by Moses. Pilate punished these wretched people so severely that Vitellius, governor of Syria, compelled him to go to Rome, there to exculpate himself before Tiberius. In the reign of Claudius one Simon of Gittha taught in Samaria with great success a subtle form of theology borrowed from the Judæo-Egyptian schools of Alexandria, which subsequently reappears in the mythological doctrines of Christian Gnosticism. He assigned the principal rôle in it to himself, giving himself out to be an incarnation of the great power of God, though he acknowledged the divine mission of Jesus. He averred that in him, Simon, God had revealed himself to the Samaritans in the character of the Father, as he had revealed himself to the Jews in the crucifixion of the Son, and to the Gentiles by the gift of the Holy Ghost. The doctrine of the Trinity, perhaps borrowed from Egypt, has become a part of Christianity, but Simon appears to have given a place in it to the Feminine Principle, probably represented by the Holy Ghost, that name being feminine in Hebrew. Wherever he went he took with him a very beautiful woman, whom he had bought in the market at Tyre. Her name was Helen, and Simon, identifying her with Homer’s Helen, deduced from the name a mystical scheme of redemption for the Eternal Feminine. It was the time when Christianity was first preached, and the Apostles were credited with miraculous powers of healing by the laying on of hands. A prophet ought to work miracles, and Simon was accordingly anxious to purchase their methods, and proposed that they should work together. The invincible repugnance of the Jew for the Samaritan made them repel his advances with scorn. A legend grew up in the Christian church about the name of Simon, surnamed Magus, who became the type of all charlatans, and the name of simony has since been given to all traffic in holy things.

The reciprocal antipathy of Jews and Samaritans was a source of embarrassment to the Roman government. Some Galileans, on their way to Jerusalem for the feasts, passed through Samaria and quarrelled with the inhabitants. The men of Jerusalem, led by a robber chieftain, pillaged Samaria. Cumanus, the procurator, was called upon to intervene, and decided in favour of the Samaritans. The Jews accused him of taking bribes, and appealed first to the governor of Syria and then to the emperor. The young Agrippa, who stood high in the good graces of Claudius, contrived that the Jews should win their suit, and Cumanus was banished.

From the government of this same Cumanus, Josephus dates the disorders which ended in the destruction of Jerusalem. He had, nevertheless, treated the religious scruples of the Jews with great consideration, going so far as to inflict capital punishment on a Roman soldier who had torn up a copy of the Pentateuch while engaged in suppressing a riot. The sway of Rome was not oppressive, and the government confined itself to protecting the public peace against adventurers who lived on plunder under the cloak of religion,[174] and fanatics who endeavoured to stir up the people by promising to work miracles before them. One of these induced thirty thousand persons to follow him to the Mount of Olives, that thence they might see the walls of Jerusalem fall at his behest. Felix, the procurator, sent soldiers to disperse the multitudes, and the prophet took to flight. But it was always the same story. “Judea,” says Josephus, “was full of robbers and sorcerers who deceived the people, and not a day passed in which Felix did not punish some of one sort or the other. But the robbers continued to stir up the people to rebel against the Romans, giving over to fire and plunder the villages of those who refused to rejoin them.”

When it might have been imagined that severe repressive measures had delivered Judea from this pest, it reappeared in a yet more formidable shape. At the festivals, when a great concourse of people from all parts were gathered together at Jerusalem, bandits known as sicarii, that is “men of the knife,” mingled with the throng and stabbed their victims, without any being able to see whence the blow came, for the assassins were the first to cry murder. “The first whom they assassinated on this wise,” says Josephus, “was Jonathan the high priest, and not a day passed on which they did not kill several in the same manner. The panic that prevailed throughout the city was worse than the evil itself. Men looked for death at any moment, as in time of war. They saw none approach without trembling, they did not dare to trust their friends. These precautions and suspicions did not put a stop to the murders, so great was the daring of these villains and their skill in hiding themselves.” Josephus does not ascribe anything of a religious character to these assassinations. But according to the author of the Philosophumena (Origenf or St. Hippolytus) the sicarii were identical with the Zealots, and were connected with the sect of the Essenes. “When they hear any of the uncircumcised speak of God and of His law, they seek to come upon him by stealth in a solitary place and threaten to kill him unless he will be circumcised: if he refuses to obey, he is slain. This is wherefore they are called Zealots, and by some sicarii.” Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews accuses Felix, the procurator, of having procured the assassination of the high priest Jonathan by the sicarii, an accusation which he does not repeat in the Wars of the Jews. Felix was a brother of Pallas, the freedman and favourite of Claudius. Tacitus speaks of him in even harsher terms than Josephus. “Claudius made Judea into a province which he abandoned to Roman knights or to freedmen; among these Felix distinguished himself by every sort of cruelty and license, he exercised the authority of a despot in the base spirit of a slave.” The Jews caused him to be accused before Nero, who had succeeded Claudius, but he was saved by the influence of his brother Pallas.

At Cæsarea there was a constant rivalry between the Jewish and the Greek or Syrian part of the population. The Jews were exempt from military service; the Greeks and Syrians, from whose ranks the legions were recruited, were jealous of this inequality. Hence arose taunts on the one side and recriminations on the other, sanguinary quarrels and riots. Finally the two parties sent agents to plead their cause before Nero, who decided against the Jews and deprived them of civil rights. Josephus says that this decree was the cause of the rebellion of the Jews; but it was only the last drop that makes the cup overflow. The rebellion had long been inevitable. It was not induced, like that of Judas Maccabæus, by religious persecution; the Romans allowed the Jews the free exercise of their religion, as they allowed it to all other nations. But the Jews were the chief people in the[175] empire who did not belong to the Indo-European race. There is an incompatibility of temper between that race and the Semitic; we perceive the fact only too clearly in Algeria. The demand for union with the empire, raised after the death of Herod, had proceeded from the Jews themselves. A procurator, even if not beyond reproach, could not possibly be worse than their native kings. Festus, who succeeded Felix, seems to have governed with firmness and prudence. Like his predecessors, he dealt severely with robbers, sicarii, and messiahs. But nothing could allay the fever that had laid hold upon Judea and worked madness in the brain; for there are epidemics in the moral as in the physical order. We cannot lay all the blame on the Romans; their rule secured the peace of the world, a boon which was doubtless worth the sacrifice of the restless and precarious autonomy of a few peoples. But we mourn for Greece, and we may be permitted to mourn for Judea. Nor must we cast a stone at this small and fiery nation, with its obstinate will to live. Depopulated Greece had died of weariness and exhaustion. Judea, overflowing with inhabitants, was about to die in a frenzy of patriotism; it is the worthier death.

In spite of the Roman occupation, the Jewish theocracy found means for tyrannical action. The high priests seized upon the tithes due to the priests, the principal inhabitants of Jerusalem, espoused the cause of the inferior clergy, who were starving; there were fights in the streets, and the Roman government looked on passively, not wishing to meddle with religious matters. They were Agrippa’s affair, since the appointment of the high priests had been left to him. He, though his kingdom did not extend to the northern provinces, resided in Herod’s palace at Jerusalem. He had built a tower, from the height of which the inner court of the temple could be scanned. The priests regarded this as a profanation, and built a high wall, shutting off both the palace and the barracks of the Roman guard. Agrippa and Festus wished to demolish it, but, thanks to the support of the Empress Poppæa, who was a Jewess, or, at least, very well disposed towards the Jews, the priests gained permission from Nero that the wall should remain. After the death of Festus, and before the arrival of Ananus, the high priest convoked the Sanhedrim to sit in judgment on and condemn certain transgressors of the law, and, among others, James, the brother or cousin of Jesus. Hanan belonged to the sect of the Sadducees, which consisted entirely of wealthy people. James was greatly beloved by the poor. The epistle attributed to him, though it preached patience to the latter, contains passages little favourable to the rich. He was stoned. The sentence was illegal, for the high priest had no right to pass sentence of death in the absence of the procurator. Ananus was deposed from his office, but the death of James gave rise to great disaffection, and no doubt contributed to the separation of Christians from Jews. James was one of those who endeavoured to avoid this separation, and the church at Jerusalem, of which he was the head, showed great attachment to the practices of Judaism.

At Rome, the preaching of Christianity had begun in the reign of Claudius, and as it stirred up incessant quarrels among the Jews, which led to the disturbance of public order, the emperor had them all expelled from the city. Suetonius ascribes these scenes of disorder to Christ; it is the first time that we meet with the name in a pagan author, and the phraseology of Suetonius appears to indicate that, in his opinion, Christ was a person who lived at Rome in the time of Claudius: “Judæos, impulsore Christo assidue tumultuantes, Roma expulit.” According to Dion Cassius,[176] the Jews were not expelled from the city, but were forbidden to assemble together. The Christians were confounded with the Jews; the distinction first began to be made under Nero. “They put to the torture,” says Suetonius, “the Christians, a sort of men holding a new and noxious superstition.” A terrible fire, which destroyed more than half of Rome, gave occasion for these tortures. Rumour accused Nero of having set fire to Rome that he might rebuild it in greater beauty; it was even said that during the fire he had gone up into his theatre and sung the destruction of Troy.

“To put an end to these rumours,” says Tacitus, “he sought for guilty persons, and inflicted the most cruel tortures upon persons detested for their infamous practices, who were commonly called Christians. This name they took from Christ, who was condemned to death under Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilate. This pernicious superstition, suppressed for the moment, had since overflowed, not only in Judea, where was the source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all crimes and shames meet together. Those were first seized who confessed, and afterwards, on their testimony, a great number of others, who were convicted, less of having set fire to Rome than of hating the human race. Mockery was added to torture; they were wrapped in the skins of beasts to be cast to dogs to devour; they were crucified; they were set alight like torches to give light by night. Nero had offered his gardens for this spectacle, and he mingled with the people in the garb of a charioteer or driving a chariot. Thus these wretches, though deserving of exemplary punishment, inspired pity, for they were not sacrificed to the interests of the public but to the cruelty of a single man.”

It seems as though the Christians must have been safe in their obscurity from the emperor’s notice if it had not been directed to them by some special influence. Gibbon appears to believe that the beautiful Poppæa, the mistress and wife of Nero, and a Jewish comedian who had won his master’s favour, prevented the persecution from spreading to all Jews at Rome by concentrating it on a dissenting sect, in very evil odour with genuine Israelites. Renan goes farther, and thinks that the persecution directed against the Christians may have been excited by the intrigues of the Jews. He bases his opinion upon an ingenious interpretation of a very obscure passage in Clemens Romanus. Against this conjecture we may set the silence of the Apocalypse, which contains no allusion to Poppæa nor to the Neronian persecution. Now, as Renan has demonstrated by a wealth of evidence, the Apocalypse was a direct outcome of this persecution.

Nero is Antichrist and the Beast, and the number 666, which is the number of the Beast, represents the letters of his name, Νέρων Καισαρ, transcribed in Hebrew and added up according to their numerical value. Like the Book of Daniel, written at the time of the great struggle of the Jews with the kings of Syria, the Book of the Revelation is a political and religious pamphlet. The author gives his estimate of the events of his time or expounds his hopes for the future under the figure of prophetic visions and of enigmas to which he sometimes supplies the key. The Jews were extremely fond of this form of literature. The Apocalypse, i.e., the Revelation, ascribed to John, the last survivor of the Apostolic band, was written during the period of anarchy which lay between the death of Nero and the accession of Vespasian. It was the eve of the last agony of Judea; the speedy dissolution of the Roman Empire was expected. A supreme conflict between heaven and earth was about to begin, and would end by the great judgment of God and the reign of his Christ. Nor did the prophet lie; for it was in truth the end of the old world and the birth of the new.b

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CHAPTER XIII. THE REVOLT AGAINST ROME

The Jewish heart had been kindled to a successful revolt under Judas Maccabæus. The memory of this triumph and of the cruelties that had forced it upon the unwarlike people, ripened the national heart for an effort against even the mighty empire of Rome. The struggle was one of the bravest and one of the most horrible in the world’s annals. It found a splendid chronicler in Josephus, who was one of the generals, and fought bravely, and yet, like his Grecian prototype, Thucydides, won his immortality by his pen instead of by his sword. Josephus’ account is, however, a voluminous work in itself, and we must be content with some of the most brilliant pages, turning to Ménard for a briefer sketch of the general story.a

In Judea, the temper of the nation had long given warning of approaching revolt. It broke out at length when Gessius Florus was appointed procurator through the influence of his wife, who was a friend of Poppæa’s. His vexatious measures and rapacity wore out the patience of the Jews; on this point Tacitus is at one with Josephus. Disorders first occurred at Cæsarea on the occasion of Nero’s decree; then the action of Florus in taking seventeen talents out of the temple treasury provoked a riot at Jerusalem. The soldiery spread through the streets, plundering the houses and massacring the peaceable inhabitants, not sparing even women and children; after which the procurator withdrew to Cæsarea, leaving only one cohort in the tower of Antonia. The Zealots promptly occupied the temple precincts. When a government flees before the mob it may safely be predicted that the most excited and violent party will impose its will on the rest. In vain did Agrippa II and his sister Berenice, who happened to be at Jerusalem at the time, endeavour to allay the popular frenzy. They could gain nothing, in spite of the respect felt for the last descendants of the ancient kings. A band of men left the city, seized the fortress of Masada, and massacred the garrison.

The moderate party, composed of the wealthier classes and the priests, would have recoiled from an insensate struggle against the power of Rome, but Eleazar, the leader of the party of action, made the rupture final by refusing to offer in the temple the victims which were wont to be sacrificed there by the emperor’s command for the prosperity of Rome and of the empire. The friends of order sent to entreat Agrippa and Florus to come with all speed to protect them against the rebels. Agrippa sent three thousand horsemen, who took possession of the upper city, while the Zealots, robbers, and sicarii occupied the temple and the lower city. Florus returned no answer. According to Josephus, he wished the insurrection to grow to a[178] head, and, when it was exhausted by its own violence, to extinguish it in blood. Such are the habitual tactics of military leaders in time of revolution. Such deliverers deserve, as Lamennais says, to be execrated in the present and in the future.

The insurgents, who were masters of the temple, refused entrance to the partisans of peace, made their way into the upper city, and set fire to the palace of Agrippa and Berenice. They also burnt the archives, in order to destroy all vouchers of credit and so bring over the debtors to their side. They were commanded by Manahem, the son of Judas the Gaulonite, and by Eleazar, the son of the high priest Ananias, who was one of the principal leaders of the opposite party, for civil war had set division even between members of the same family. The tower of Antonia was taken and burnt by the revolutionaries, who allowed Agrippa’s horsemen to depart unmolested. The Romans, for their part, took refuge in the three towers of the old wall. Ananias, who, with his brother Hezekiah, was found hidden in an aqueduct, was slaughtered by Manahem. Then Eleazar, enraged at the assassination of his father and uncle, stirred up the people against Manahem, who now gave himself the airs of a tyrant. “It was not worth while,” he said to them, “to cast off the yoke of Rome in order to stoop to that of the least among yourselves.” Manahem was stoned in the court of the temple. Such of his partisans as could make their escape took refuge in the fortress of Masada. The Romans asked for terms of capitulation. They were promised their lives, but they had no sooner given up their arms than Eleazar and the Zealots fell upon them and slew them all but one, who consented to be circumcised. The rest died, to a man, without asking for mercy, only crying out upon the sanctity of their oaths. These imprecations filled the people with dire forebodings, all the more so because this perjury had been committed on the Sabbath day.

The same day and hour, as if by the working of divine vengeance, says Josephus, a massacre of the Jews took place at Cæsarea; of twenty thousand men not one was left, for those who escaped were captured by Florus and sent to the galleys. This massacre roused the whole nation to such a pitch of fury that they ravaged the towns and villages of the Syrian frontier, Philadelphia, Heshbon, Gerasa, Pella, and Scythopolis, with fire and sword. They then sacked Gadara, Hippos, and Gaulonitis, burned Sebaste and Askalon, and demolished Anthedon and Gaza. They slew all that were not Jews. Then, as was to be expected, terrible reprisals followed. An epidemic of carnage raged all over southern Syria and extended to Egypt. Every mixed city became a battle-ground. If we are to trust Josephus, the Jews were never the aggressors. That is hard to believe. It is possible that the rabble, seeing Judea rebel against Rome, concluded that they might massacre the Jews with impunity. But it is also very probable that the insurrection had roused to the highest pitch the fanaticism of Jews settled elsewhere than in Judea, and that they were desirous of imitating the exploits of their brethren at Jerusalem. In Alexandria, as a sequel to a discussion in the theatre, the Jews armed themselves with torches and threatened to burn all the Greeks alive. The governor of the city was Tiberius Alexander, the Jewish convert to Hellenism who had formerly been procurator of Judea. He tried to make his compatriots listen to reason, but without success. He was obliged to send for the Roman legions. The Jewish quarter, known as the Delta, was heaped with corpses; Josephus speaks of fifty thousand slain. At Damascus the Syrians cooped the Jews up in the gymnasium and slew ten thousand of them. They had carefully concealed[179] their design from their wives, nearly all of whom professed the Jewish religion.

After they had succeeded in retaking Jerusalem, the Zealots occupied the fortresses of the Dead Sea district. They massacred the Roman garrison of the castle of Cypros, which commanded Jericho; that of Macherus capitulated. At length Cestius Gallus, governor of Syria, determined to take up arms against the insurrection. He started from Antioch with his legions and some auxiliary troops furnished by Agrippa, who accompanied him on this expedition, and by the kings of Commagene and Ituræa. Galilee and the seaboard were subdued, and Cestius advanced to Gabao, two leagues from Jerusalem. The city was full of pilgrims who had come up to the Feast of Tabernacles. Although it was the Sabbath day, an immense multitude marched forth, and the irresistible onset of this troop of anarchists triumphed over Roman discipline. Simon, the son of Giora, one of the bravest leaders of the Zealots, pursued the fugitives and dispersed the Roman rear-guard. Agrippa endeavoured to induce the insurgents to submit by promising them an amnesty in the name of Cestius; one party among the people was desirous of accepting terms, but the anarchists killed the ambassadors. Cestius again advanced upon Jerusalem and took possession of the outskirts of the city. The insurgents had abandoned the new city and fallen back upon the temple. If he had attacked immediately, the war would have come to an end. A member of the family of Ananus, who was at the head of the party of order, offered to open the gates to the Romans; the Zealots flung him from the walls. For five days Cestius endeavoured to storm the temple precincts. The soldiers were at work sapping the walls, sheltering themselves under their shields, in the formation known as the “tortoise” (testudo). The anarchists, losing heart, began to take to flight, and the moderate party were about to open the gates, when Cestius, deceived by false reports, or perhaps seduced by bribery, sounded the retreat, withdrew to Gabao, and—pursued and harassed by the Jews, who killed six thousand of his men—escaped under cover of night, leaving his baggage and engines of war behind.

The partisans of peace, seeing that in spite of their efforts they were embarked upon the conflict, resolved to set themselves at the head of the movement, so as to keep it within bounds if that were still possible. “Ananus,” says Renan, “took more and more the position of head of the moderate party. He still had hopes of bringing the mass of the people over to peaceful counsels; he endeavoured secretly to check the manufacture of arms, and to paralyse resistance while seeming to organise it. This is the most dangerous of all games to play in time of revolution; Ananus was, no doubt, what revolutionaries call a traitor. In the eyes of the enthusiasts he was guilty of the crime of seeing clearly; in those of history he cannot be absolved from the guilt of having accepted the falsest of false positions, that which consists of making war without conviction, merely under pressure from ignorant fanatics.” Among the peace party were some who held aloof lest they should be involved in a destruction which they regarded as inevitable. Such, for example, were some of the Pharisees, and certain doctors, careless of politics and absorbed in the study of the law, the adherents of the Herod family, and the members of the Christian church, who, since the death of James, had begun more and more to regard their cause as distinct from that of the Jews.

Munk, though he says nothing of the rabbis who emigrated to Jabneh before the final struggle, deals somewhat harshly with the Herodians and[180] Christians. “Only such,” he says, “as rated their personal interests above those of their country, or sought the melancholy satisfaction of seeing in its ruin the triumph of their political or religious opinions, fled in the hour of peril. The friends of Agrippa openly betrayed their country by going over to the Roman side and paying court to Cestius and the emperor Nero. Among the fugitives were also the Christian Jews, following the advice given by Jesus Christ to his disciples (Matthew xxiv. 16). Preoccupied with the kingdom of Heaven, which they then seriously looked for, the Christians did not feel it their duty to meddle with earthly matters nor to take part in the defence of their unhappy country; led by Simeon, their bishop, they withdrew beyond Jordan, far from the clash of arms, and sought a refuge in the city of Pella.”

Cestius died, of disease or grief, shortly after his defeat. Nero handed over the command to Vespasian, an experienced general, who had given proof of his military capacity in Germania and Brittany. Vespasian proceeded to Syria by way of Asia Minor, while his son Titus went to Alexandria to fetch two legions and lead them into Palestine. Agrippa and some other petty kings from the country round about, Antiochus of Commagene, Sohemus, and Malchus the Arab, brought auxiliary troops to Vespasian, and at the end of the winter of the year 67, an army of sixty thousand men marched into Galilee. The government of that province had been committed by his fellow-countrymen to Josephus, the historian to whom we owe the account of the whole war; and though he was one of the peace party, he had neglected no measures for putting the country in a state of defence. The defence, which he relates in detail, was heroic. The little city of Jotapata held out with amazing resolution against arms and engines of war. Forty thousand men succumbed during the siege.c

Both as a vivid narrative and as a type of the ferocity of assault, resistance and revenge marking the battles of that time, the account by Josephus of his own ingenious and desperate defence of Jotapata is well worth citing at length. He speaks of himself, like Cæsar, in the third person.a

THE DEFENCE OF JOTAPATA DESCRIBED BY JOSEPHUS

Jotapata, he says, is almost all of it built upon a precipice, having on all the other sides of it every way valleys immensely deep and steep, insomuch that those who would look down would have their sight fail them before it reaches to the bottom. It is only to be come at on the north side, where the utmost part of the city is built on the mountain, as it ends obliquely at a plain. This mountain Josephus had encompassed with a wall when he fortified the city, that its top might not be capable of being seized upon by the enemies. The city is covered all round with other mountains, and can no way be seen till a man comes just upon it. And this was the strong situation of Jotapata.

Vespasian, therefore, in order to try how he might overcome the natural strength of the place, as well as the bold defence of the Jews, made a resolution to prosecute the siege with vigour. To that end he called the commanders that were under him to a council of war, and consulted with them which way the assault might be managed to the best advantage; and when the resolution was there taken to raise a bank against that part of the wall which was practicable, he sent his whole army abroad to get the materials together. So when they had cut down all the trees on the mountains that adjoined to[181] the city, and had gotten together a vast heap of stones, besides the wood they had cut down, some of them brought hurdles, in order to avoid the effects of the darts that were shot from above them. These hurdles they spread over their banks, under cover whereof they formed their bank, and so were little or nothing hurt by the darts that were thrown upon them from the wall, while others pulled the neighbouring hillocks to pieces, and perpetually brought earth to them; so that while they were busy three sorts of ways, nobody was idle. However, the Jews cast great stones from the walls upon the hurdles which protected the men, with all sorts of darts also; and the noise of what could not reach them was yet so terrible, that it was some impediment to the workmen.

Vespasian then set the engines for throwing stones and darts round about the city; the number of the engines was in all a hundred and sixty; and bade them fall to work and dislodge those that were upon the wall. At the same time such engines as were intended for that purpose, threw at once lances upon them with great noise, and stones of the weight of a talent were thrown by the engines that were prepared for that purpose, together with fire, and a vast multitude of arrows, which made the wall so dangerous, that the Jews durst not only not to come upon it, but durst not come to those parts within the walls which were reached by the engines; for the multitude of the Arabian archers, as well also as all those that threw darts and slung stones, fell to work at the same time with the engines. Yet did not the others lie still when they could not throw at the Romans from a higher place; for they then made sallies out of the city like private robbers, by parties, and pulled away the hurdles that covered the workmen, and killed them when they were thus naked; and when those workmen gave way, these cast away the earth that composed the bank, and burnt the wooden parts of it, together with the hurdles, till at length Vespasian perceived that the intervals there were between the works were of disadvantage to him; for those spaces of ground afforded the Jews a place for assaulting the Romans. So he united the hurdles, and at the same time joined one part of the army to the other, which prevented the private excursions of the Jews.

And when the bank was now raised, and brought nearer than ever to the battlements that belonged to the walls, Josephus thought it would be entirely wrong in him if he could make no contrivances in opposition to theirs, and that might be for the city’s preservation; so he got together his workmen, and ordered them to build the wall higher; and when they said that this was impossible to be done while so many darts were thrown at them, he invented this sort of cover for them:

He bade them fix piles, and expand before them raw hides of oxen newly killed, that these hides, by yielding and hollowing themselves when the stones were thrown at them, might receive them, for that the other darts would slide off them, and the fire that was thrown would be quenched by the moisture that was in them; and these he set before the workmen; and under them these workmen went on with their works in safety, and raised the wall higher, and that both by day and by night, till it was twenty cubits high. He also built a good number of towers upon the wall, and fitted it to strong battlements. This greatly discouraged the Romans, who in their own opinions were already gotten within the walls, while they were now at once astonished at Josephus’ contrivance and at the fortitude of the citizens that were in the city.

And now Vespasian was plainly irritated at the great subtilty of this stratagem, and at the boldness of the citizens of Jotapata; for taking heart[182] again upon the building of this wall, they made fresh sallies upon the Romans, and had everyday conflicts with them by parties, together with all such contrivances as robbers make use of, and with the plundering of all that came to hand, as also with the setting fire to all the other works; and this till Vespasian made his army leave off fighting them, and resolved to lie round the city, and to starve them into a surrender, as supposing that either they would be forced to petition him for mercy by want of provisions, or if they should have the courage to hold out till the last, they should perish by famine: and he concluded he should conquer them the more easily in fighting, if he gave them an interval, and then fell upon them when they were weakened by famine; but still he gave orders that they should guard against their coming out of the city.

Now the besieged had plenty of corn within the city, and indeed of all other necessaries, but they wanted water, because there was no fountain in the city, the people being there usually satisfied with rain-water; yet it is a rare thing in that country to have rain in summer, and at this season, during the siege, they were in great distress for some contrivance to satisfy their thirst; and they were very sad at this time particularly, as if they were already in want of water entirely, for Josephus, seeing that the city abounded with other necessaries, and that the men were of good courage, and being desirous to protect the siege to the Romans longer than they expected, ordered their drink to be given them by measure; but this scanty distribution of water by measure was deemed by them as a thing more hard upon them than the want of it; and their not being able to drink as much as they would, made them more desirous of drinking than they otherwise had been; nay, they were so much disheartened hereby as if they were come to the last degree of thirst. Nor were the Romans unacquainted with the state they were in, for when they stood over against them, beyond the wall, they could see them running together, and taking their water by measure, which made them throw their javelins thither, the place being within their reach, and kill a great many of them.

Hereupon, Vespasian hoped that their receptacles of water would in no long time be emptied, and that they would be forced to deliver up the city to him; but Josephus being minded to break such his hope, gave command that they should wet a great many of their clothes, and hang them out about the battlements, till the entire wall was of a sudden all wet with the running down of the water. At this sight the Romans were discouraged, and under consternation, when they saw them able to throw away in sport so much water, when they supposed them not to have enough to drink themselves. This made the Roman general despair of taking the city by their want of necessaries, and to betake himself again to arms, and to try to force them to surrender, which was what the Jews greatly desired; for as they despaired of either themselves or their city being able to escape, they preferred a death in battle before one by hunger and thirst.

However, Josephus contrived another stratagem besides the foregoing, to get plenty of what they wanted. There was a certain rough and uneven place that could hardly be ascended, and on that account was not guarded by the soldiers; so Josephus sent out certain persons along the western parts of the valley, and by them sent letters to whom he pleased of the Jews that were out of the city, and procured from them what necessaries soever they wanted in the city in abundance; he enjoined them also to creep generally along by the watch as they came into the city, and to cover their backs with such sheepskins as had their wool upon them, that if any one should[183] spy them in the night-time, they might be believed to be dogs. This was done till the watch perceived their contrivance, and encompassed that rough place about themselves.

And now it was that Josephus perceived that the city could not hold out long, and that his own life would be in doubt if he continued in it; so he consulted how he and the most potent men of the city might fly out of it. When the multitude understood this, they came all round about him, and begged of him not to overlook them while they entirely depended on him, and him alone; for that there was still hope of the city’s deliverance if he would stay with them, because everybody would undertake any pains with great cheerfulness on his account, and in that case there would be some comfort for them also, though they should be taken: that it became him neither to fly from his enemies, nor to desert his friends, nor to leap out of that city, as out of a ship that was sinking in a storm, into which he came, when it was quiet and in a calm; for that by going away he would be the cause of drowning the city, because nobody would then venture to oppose the enemy when he was once gone, upon whom they wholly confided.

Hereupon, Josephus avoided letting them know that he was to go away to provide for his own safety, but told them that he would go out of the city for their sakes; for that if he stayed with them, he should be able to do them little good while they were in a safe condition; and that if they were once taken, he should only perish with them to no purpose; but that if he were once gotten free from this siege, he should be able to bring them very great relief; for that he would then immediately get the Galileans together, out of the country, in great multitudes, and draw the Romans off their city by another war. That he did not see what advantage he could bring to them now, by staying among them, but only provoked the Romans to besiege them more closely, as esteeming it a most valuable thing to take him; but that if they were once informed that he was fled out of the city, they would greatly remit of their eagerness against it. Yet did not this plea move the people, but inflamed them the more to hang about him.

Accordingly, both the children and the old men, and the women with their infants, came mourning to him, and fell down before him, and all of them caught hold of his feet, and held him fast, and besought him, with great lamentations, that he would take his share with them in their fortune; and I think they did this, not that they envied his deliverance, but that they hoped for their own; for they could not think they should suffer any great misfortune, provided Josephus would but stay with them.

Now, Josephus thought, that if he resolved to stay, it would be ascribed to their entreaties; and if he resolved to go away by force, he should be put into custody. His commiseration also of the people under their lamentations, had much broken that of his eagerness to leave them; so he resolved to stay, and arming himself with the common despair of the citizens, he said to them:

“Now is the time to begin to fight in earnest, when there is no hope of deliverance left. It is a brave thing to prefer glory before life, and to set about some such noble undertaking as may be remembered by late posterity.”

Having said this, he fell to work immediately, and made a sally, and dispersed the enemies’ out-guards, and ran as far as the Roman camp itself, and pulled the coverings of their tents to pieces, that were upon their banks, and set fire to their works. And this was the manner in which he never left off fighting, neither the next day nor the day after it, but went on with it for a considerable number of both days and nights.

[184]

Upon this, Vespasian, when he saw the Romans distressed by these sallies (although they were ashamed to be made to run away by the Jews; and when at any time they made the Jews run away, their heavy armour would not let them pursue them far; while the Jews, when they had performed any action, and before they could be hurt themselves, still retired into the city), ordered his armed men to avoid their onset, and not to fight it out with men under desperation, while nothing is more courageous than despair; but that their violence would be quenched when they saw they failed of their purposes, as fire is quenched when it wants fuel; and that it was most proper for the Romans to gain their victories as cheap as they could, since they are not forced to fight, but only to enlarge their own dominions. So he repelled the Jews in great measure by the Arabian archers, and the Syrian slingers, and by those that threw stones at them, nor was there any intermission of the great number of their offensive engines. Now, the Jews suffered greatly by these engines, without being able to escape from them; and when these engines threw their stones or javelins a great way, and the Jews were within their reach, they pressed hard upon the Romans, and fought desperately, without sparing either soul or body, one part succouring another by turns, when it was tired down.

When, therefore, Vespasian looked upon himself as in a manner besieged by these sallies of the Jews, and when his banks were now not far from the walls, he determined to make use of his battering-ram. Now, at the very first stroke of this engine, the wall was shaken, and a terrible clamour was raised by the people within the city, as if they were already taken.

And now, when Josephus saw this ram still battering the same place, and that the wall would quickly be thrown down by it, he resolved to elude for a while the force of the engine. With this design he gave orders to fill sacks with chaff, and to hang them down before that place where they saw the ram always battering, that the stroke might be turned aside, or that the place might feel less of the strokes by the yielding nature of the chaff. This contrivance very much delayed the attempts of the Romans, because, let them remove their engine to what part they pleased, those that were above it removed their sacks, and placed them over against the strokes it made, insomuch that the wall was no way hurt, and this by diversion of the strokes, till the Romans made an opposite contrivance of long poles, and by tying hooks at their ends, cut off the sacks.

Now, when the battering ram thus recovered its force, and the wall having been but newly built, was giving way, Josephus and those about him had afterwards immediate recourse to fire, to defend themselves withal; whereupon they took what materials soever they had that were but dry, and made a sally three ways, and set fire to the machines, and the hurdles, and the banks of the Romans themselves; nor did the Romans well know how to come to their assistance, being at once under a consternation at the Jews’ boldness, and being prevented by the flames from coming to their assistance; for the materials being dry with the bitumen and pitch that were among them, as was brimstone also, the fire caught hold of everything immediately; and what cost the Romans a great deal of pains, was in one hour consumed.

And here a certain Jew appeared worthy of our relation and commendation; he was the son of Sameas, and was called Eleazar, and was born at Saab, in Galilee. This man took up a stone of vast bigness, and threw it down from the wall upon the ram, and this with so great a force that it broke off the head of the engine. He also leaped down and took up the head of[185] the ram from the midst of them, and without any concern, carried it to the top of the wall, and this, while he stood as a fit mark to be pelted by all his enemies. Accordingly, he received the strokes upon his naked body, and was wounded with five darts; nor did he mind any of them while he went up to the top of the wall, where he stood in sight of them all, as an instance of the greatest boldness: after which he threw himself on a heap with his wounds upon him, and fell down, together with the head of the ram. Next to him, two brothers showed their courage; their names were Netir and Philip, both of them of the village of Ruma, and both of them Galileans also; these men leaped upon the soldiers of the tenth legion, and fell upon the Romans with such a noise and force as to disorder their ranks, and put to flight all upon whomsoever they made their assaults.

After these men’s performances, Josephus, and the rest of the multitude with him, took a great deal of fire, and burnt both the machines, and their coverings, with the works belonging to the fifth, and to the tenth legion, which they put to flight; when others followed them immediately, and buried those instruments and all their materials under ground. However, about the evening the Romans erected the battering-ram again, against that part of the wall which had suffered before; where a certain Jew that defended the city from the Romans, hit Vespasian with a dart in his foot, and wounded him a little, the distance being so great, that no mighty impression could be made by the dart thrown so far off.

But still Josephus and those with him, although they fell down dead one upon another by the darts and stones which the engines threw upon them, yet did not they desert the wall, but fell upon those who managed the ram, under the protection of the hurdles, with fire, and iron weapons, and stones; and these could do little or nothing, but fell themselves perpetually, while they were seen by those whom they could not see, for the light of their own flame shone about them, and made them a most visible mark to the enemy, as they were in the day-time, while the engines could not be seen at a great distance, and so what was thrown at them was hard to be avoided; for the force with which these engines threw stones and darts made them hurt several at a time, and the violent force of the stones that were cast by the engines was so great, that they carried away the pinnacles of the wall, and broke off the corners of the towers; for no body of men could be so strong as not to be overthrown to the last rank, by the largeness of the stones; and any one may learn the force of the engines by what happened this very night; for as one of those that stood round about Josephus was near the wall, his head was carried away by such a stone, and his skull was flung as far as three furlongs. In the day-time also, a woman with child had her belly so violently struck, as she was just come out of her house, that the infant was carried to the distance of half a furlong; so great was the force of that engine.

The noise of the instruments themselves was very terrible, the sound of the darts and stones that were thrown by them, was so also; of the same sort was the noise the dead bodies made, when they were dashed against the wall; and indeed dreadful was the clamour which these things raised in the women within the city, which was echoed back at the same time by the cries of such as were slain; while the whole space of ground whereon they fought ran with blood, and the wall might have been ascended over by the bodies of the dead carcasses; the mountains also contributed to increase the noise by their echoes; nor was there on that night any thing of terror wanting that could either affect the hearing or the sight: yet did a great part of those[186] that fought so hard for Jotapata fall manfully, as were a great part of them wounded. However, the morning watch was come ere the wall yielded to the machines employed against it, though it had been battered without intermission. However, those within covered their bodies with their armour, and raised works over against that part which was thrown down, before those machines were laid by which the Romans were to ascend into the city.

In the morning Vespasian got his army together, in order to take the city by storm. But Josephus, understanding the meaning of Vespasian’s contrivance, set the old men, together with those that were tired out, at the sound parts of the wall, as expecting no harm from those quarters, but set the strongest of his men at the place where the wall was broken down, and before them all, six men by themselves, among whom he took his share of the first and greatest danger. He also gave orders, that when the legions made a shout they should stop their ears, that they might not be affrighted at it, and that, to avoid the multitude of the enemies’ darts, they should bend down on their knees, and cover themselves with their shields, and that they should retreat a little backward for a while, till the archers should have emptied their quivers; but that, when the Romans should lay their instruments for ascending the walls, they should leap out on the sudden, and with their own instruments should meet the enemy, and that every one should strive to do his best, in order not to defend his own city, as if it were possible to be preserved, but in order to revenge it, when it was already destroyed; and that they should set before their eyes how their old men were to be slain, and their children and their wives to be killed immediately by the enemy; and that they would beforehand spend all their fury, on account of the calamities just coming upon them, and pour it out on the actors.

And thus did Josephus dispose of both his bodies of men; but then for the useless part of the citizens, the women and children, when they saw their city encompassed by a threefold army (for none of the usual guards that had been fighting before were removed), when they also saw not only the walls thrown down, but their enemies with swords in their hands, as also the hilly country above them shining with their weapons, and the darts in the hands of the Arabian archers, they made a final and lamentable outcry of the destruction, as if the misery were not only threatened, but actually come upon them already.

But Josephus ordered the women to be shut up in their houses, lest they should render the warlike actions of the men too effeminate, by making them commiserate their condition, and commanded them to hold their peace, and threatened them if they did not, while he came himself before the breach, where his allotment was; for all those who brought ladders to the other places, he took no notice of them, but earnestly waited for the shower of arrows that was coming.

And now the trumpeters of the several Roman legions sounded together, and the army made a terrible shout; and the darts, as by order, flew so fast that they intercepted the light. However, Josephus’ men remembered the charges he had given them, they stopped their ears at the sounds and covered their bodies against the darts; and as to the engines that were set ready to go to work, the Jews ran out upon them, before those that should have used them were gotten upon them. And now, on the ascending of the soldiers, there was a great conflict, and many actions of the hands and of the soul were exhibited, while the Jews did earnestly endeavour, in the extreme danger they were in, not to show less courage than those who, without being[187] in danger, fought so stoutly against them; nor did they leave off struggling with the Romans till they either fell down dead themselves, or killed their antagonists. But the Jews grew weary with defending themselves continually, and had not enow to come in their places to succour them—while, on the side of the Romans, fresh men still succeeded those that were tired; and still new men soon got upon the machines for ascent, in the room of those that were thrust down; those encouraging one another, and joining side to side with their shields, which were a protection to them, they became a body of men not to be broken; and as this band thrust away the Jews, as though they were themselves but one body, they began already to get upon the wall.

Then did Josephus take necessity for his counsellor in this utmost distress (which necessity is very sagacious in invention, when it is irritated by despair), and gave orders to pour scalding oil upon those whose shields protected them. Whereupon they soon got it ready, being many that brought it, and what they brought being a great quantity also, and poured it on all sides upon the Romans, and threw down upon them their vessels as they were still hissing from the heat of the fire: this so burnt the Romans, that it dispersed that united band, who now tumbled down from the wall with horrid pains, for the oil did easily run down the whole body from head to foot, under their entire armour, and fed upon their flesh like flame itself, its fat and unctuous nature rendering it soon heated and slowly cooled; and as the men were cooped up in their head-pieces and breast-plates, they could no way get free from this burning oil; they could only leap and roll about in their pains, as they fell down from the bridges they had laid. And as they were thus beaten back, and retired to their own party, who still pressed them forward, they were easily wounded by those that were behind them.

However, in this ill success of the Romans, their courage did not fail them, nor did the Jews want prudence to oppose them; for the Romans, although they saw their own men thrown down, and in a miserable condition, yet were they vehemently bent against those that poured the oil upon them, while every one reproached the man before him as a coward, and one that hindered him from exerting himself; and while the Jews made use of another stratagem to prevent their ascent, and poured boiling fenugreek upon the boards, in order to make them slip and fall down; by which means neither could those that were coming up, nor those that were going down, stand on their feet; but some of them fell backward upon the machines on which they ascended, and were trodden upon; many of them fell down on the bank they had raised, and when they were fallen upon it were slain by the Jews; for when the Romans could not keep their feet, the Jews, being freed from fighting hand to hand, had leisure to throw their darts at them. So the general called off those soldiers in the evening that had suffered so sorely, of whom the number of the slain was not a few, while that of the wounded was still greater; but of the people of Jotapata no more than six men were killed, although more than three hundred were carried off wounded. This fight happened on the twentieth day of the month Desius (Sivan).

Hereupon Vespasian comforted his army on occasion of what had happened, and as he found them angry indeed, but rather wanting somewhat to do than any further exhortations, he gave orders to raise the banks still higher, and to erect three towers, each fifty feet high, and that they should cover them with plates of iron on every side, that they might be both firm by their weight, and not easily liable to be set on fire. These towers he set upon the banks, and placed upon them such as could shoot darts and[188] arrows, with the lighter engines for throwing stones and darts also; and besides these, he set upon them the stoutest men among the slingers, who not being to be seen by reason of the height they stood upon, and the battlements that protected them, might throw their weapons at those that were upon the wall, and were easily seen by them. Hereupon the Jews, not being easily able to escape those darts that were thrown down upon their heads, nor to avenge themselves on those whom they could not see, and perceiving that the height of the towers was so great, that a dart which they threw with their hand could hardly reach it, and that the iron plates about them made it very hard to come at them by fire, they ran away from the walls, and fled hastily out of the city, and fell upon those that shot at them. And thus did the people of Jotapata resist the Romans, while a great number of them were every day killed, without their being able to retort the evil upon their enemies; nor could they keep them out of the city without danger to themselves.

But as the people of Jotapata still held out manfully, and bore up under their miseries beyond all that could be hoped for, on the forty-seventh day (of the siege) the banks cast up by the Romans were become higher than the wall; on which day a certain deserter went to Vespasian, and told him, how few were left in the city, and how weak they were, and that they had been so worn out with perpetual watching, and also perpetual fighting, that they could not now oppose any force that came against them, and that they might be taken by stratagem, if any one would attack them; for that about the last watch of the night, when they thought they might have some rest from the hardships they were under, and when a morning sleep used to come upon them, as they were thoroughly weary, he said the watch used to fall asleep; accordingly his advice was, that they should make their attack at that hour.

But Vespasian had a suspicion about this deserter, as knowing how faithful the Jews were to one another, and how much they despised any punishments that could be inflicted on them; this last, because one of the people of Jotapata had undergone all sorts of torments, and though they made him pass through a fiery trial of his enemies in his examination, yet would he inform them nothing of the affairs within the city, and as he was crucified, smiled at them!

However, the probability there was in the relation itself did partly confirm the truth of what the deserter told them, and they thought he might probably speak the truth. However, Vespasian thought they should be no great sufferers if the report was a sham; so he commanded them to keep the man in custody, and prepared the army for taking the city.

According to which resolution they marched without noise, at the hour that had been told them, to the wall; and it was Titus himself that first got upon it, with one of his tribunes, Domitius Sabinus, and had a few of the fifteenth legion along with him. So they cut the throats of the watch, and entered the city very quietly. After these came Cerealis the tribune, and Placidus, and led on those that were under them. Now when the citadel was taken, and the enemy were in the very midst of the city, and when it was already day, yet was not the taking of the city known by those that held it; for a great many of them were fast asleep, and a great mist, which then by chance fell upon the city, hindered those that got up from distinctly seeing the case they were in, till the whole Roman army was gotten in, and they were raised up only to find the miseries they were under; and as they were slaying, they perceived the city was taken.

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And for the Romans, they so well remembered what they had suffered during the siege, that they spared none, nor pitied any, but drove the people down the precipice from the citadel, and slew them as they drove them down; at which time the difficulties of the place hindered those that were still able to fight from defending themselves; for as they were distressed in the narrow streets, and could not keep their feet sure along the precipice, they were overpowered with the crowd of those that came fighting them down from the citadel. This provoked a great many, even of those chosen men that were about Josephus, to kill themselves with their own hands; for when they saw that they could kill none of the Romans, they resolved to prevent themselves being killed by the Romans, and got together in great numbers, in the utmost parts of the city, and killed themselves.

And on this day the Romans slew all the multitude that appeared openly; but on the following days they searched the hiding-places, and fell upon those that were under ground, and in the caverns, and went thus through every age, excepting the infants and the women, and of these there were gathered altogether as captives twelve hundred; and as for those that were slain at the taking of the city, and in the former fights, they were numbered to be forty thousand. So Vespasian gave order that the city should be entirely demolished, and all the fortifications burnt down. And thus was Jotapata taken, in the thirteenth year of the reign of Nero, on the first day of the month Panemus (Tammuz).b

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CHAPTER XIV. THE FALL OF JERUSALEM

Josephus escaped from the general massacre at Jotapata with much difficulty. His life was threatened not only by the Roman soldiers who found him shut up in a cave and wished to have his life, but also by the forty other inmates of the cave who did not approve of Josephus’ desire to surrender. Josephus had recourse to the pious subterfuge of a divine vision ordering him to surrender to the Romans. But his companions in misery treated him as a contemptible coward, and he was forced to prove his physical valour by holding them all at bay. He finally suggested that they draw lots and kill each other successively. By some strange circumstance, which Josephus does not explain, the Jews in the cave bravely met death at the hands of one another until only two survived, of whom Josephus was one. Josephus easily persuaded this man to resign the privilege of martyrdom and join him in surrendering to the Romans. Josephus is our only authority for the story and he does not shine in particular brilliance even according to his own explanation. Dean Milman heaps contempt upon him for the hypocrisy and trickery of his attitude in this matter, but in the first place it would have been a profitless folly to yield to the fanaticism of his comrades, and in the second place his death would have deprived us of his invaluable history. And even Milman, while confessing the inconsistency of Josephus’ character, admits the glory of his generalship in spite of his lack of previous military instruction, confesses that he held the Roman arms in check for two months on the very frontier of an “insignificant province,” and takes the siege of Jotapata as a type of “the nature of the conflict of the Jews with the Roman supremacy, against which, in the wide circle of the empire, they were the last desperate combatants for freedom.” Josephus was treated as a traitor by the Jews, even as Thucydides had been exiled by the Greeks, but he[191] strove hard to mitigate the horrible extremes to which Roman cruelty was driven by the superb courage of the doomed nation.

Jotapata having fallen, the Roman arms speedily overran the country. The Samaritans, despised by the Jews, entrenched themselves on Mount Gerizim, where they were massacred to the number of eleven thousand and six hundred. The city of Cæsarea was surrendered by the Greeks who had massacred the Jews in the city. Tiberias also opened its gates to the Romans. Tarichea resisted, and received only butchery as the reward of its heroism. Many of the inhabitants fled to the Lake of Galilee in light fishing boats, and yet when they were pursued by the heavy barks of the Romans, they had the courage to attack the Romans with stones. “Feeble warfare,” as Milman says, “which only irritated the pursuers: for if thrown from a distance they did no damage, only splashing the water over the soldiers or falling harmless from their iron cuirasses; if those who threw them approached nearer, they could be hit in their turn by Roman arrows. All the shores were occupied by hostile soldiers, and they were pursued into every inlet and creek; some were transfixed with spears from the high banks of the vessels, some were boarded and put to the sword, the boats of others were crushed or swamped, and the people drowned. If their heads rose as they were swimming, they were hit with an arrow, or by the prow of the bark; if they clung to the side of the enemy’s vessel, their hands and heads were hewn off. The few survivors were driven to the shore, where they met with no more mercy. Either before they landed, or in the act of landing, they were cut down or pierced through. The blue waters of the whole lake were tinged with blood, and its clear surface exhaled for several days a fœtid steam. The shores were strewn with wrecks of boats and swollen bodies that lay rotting in the sun, and infected the air, till the conquerors themselves shrank from the effects of their own barbarities. Here we must add to our bloody catalogue the loss of six thousand lives.”

Those who had remained in the town and surrendered peaceably, trusting in Roman honesty, had even more bitter fate. After long and cold-blooded deliberation, Vespasian had twelve hundred of the aged and weak put to death; six thousand of the strongest were sent to help dig the ditch which Nero was trying to cut through the Isthmus of Corinth; more than thirty thousand others were sold as slaves. This deed of Vespasian, as Milman says, “tarnished his fame forever.” The harshness, however, led to the instant surrender of all the rest of Galilee except the towns of Gamala, Giscala, and Itabyrium. Gamala held out four months, and its fate was as curious as it was terrible. Josephus describes the town as clinging to the side of a mountain with the houses very thick and close to one another. The Romans made a breach in the walls and gradually forced the Jews up to the top of the town, where they made a sudden rally and charged fiercely down upon the Romans, who being able neither to resist the impetus of the Jews nor to press back the Romans in their rear, took refuge in the houses. The houses were so lightly built that they collapsed under the weight of the crowded soldiers and the whole town came tumbling down the cliff-side like a pack of cards. The Romans suffered a great panic with heavy loss and the Jews drove them out of the town, Vespasian himself being saved with great difficulty from slaughter. Gradually, however, the city was overcome and a bloody massacre followed. Hundreds threw themselves over the precipices with their wives and children. Hundreds of others the Romans flung over the cliffs. Nine thousand corpses marked the vain courage of the people of Gamala. Itabyrium had fallen in the meanwhile and Giscala was abandoned[192] by its commander John of Giscala, who took his troops and his ambition into Jerusalem, though hotly pursued by Titus.

“But Jerusalem,” says Milman, “was ill-preparing herself to assume the part which became the metropolis of the nation, in this slow contest; and better had it been for her, if John of Giscala had perished in the trenches of his native town, or been cut off in his flight by the pursuing cavalry. His fame had gone before him to Jerusalem, perhaps not a little enhanced by the defection of his rival Josephus. The multitude poured out to meet him, as well to do him honour, as to receive authentic tidings of the disasters in Galilee. They assumed a lofty demeanour, declared that for Giscala, and such insignificant villages, it was not worth risking the blood of brave men—they had reserved all theirs to be shed in the defence of the capital. Yet to many their retreat was too manifestly a flight, and from the dreadful details of massacre and captivity, they foreboded the fate which awaited themselves. John, however, represented the Roman force as greatly enfeebled, and their engines worn out before Jotapata and Gamala; and urged, that if they were so long in subduing the towns of Galilee, they would inevitably be repulsed with shame from Jerusalem. John was a man of the most insinuating address, and the most plausible and fluent eloquence. The war and the peace factions not only distracted the public councils, but in every family, among the dearest and most intimate friends, this vital question created stern and bloody divisions. Every one assembled a band of adherents, or joined himself to some organised party. The youth were everywhere unanimous in their ardour for war; the older in vain endeavoured to allay the frenzy by calmer and more prudent reasoning. First individuals, afterwards bands of desperate men, began to spread over the whole country, spoiling either by open robbery, or under pretence of chastising those who were traitors to the cause of their country. The unoffending and peaceful who saw their houses burning, and their families plundered, thought they could have nothing worse to apprehend from the conquest of the Romans than from the lawless violence of their own countrymen.”

There is no space here to tell in detail the horrors of the civil war that ensued within Jerusalem. The cruelties inflicted by the Romans themselves hardly rivalled the infamous treacheries, murders, and indignities even to corpses, which the Jews heaped upon their own people. The Roman Empire itself, however, was also undergoing the throes of a civil war, in which the Jews thought they saw the dissolution of the empire and the golden opportunity for the independence of their own country. But the ship of Roman state weathered this tempest as so many another, and by the spring of the year 70 A.D. Titus commenced the siege of the city in earnest. At this time Jerusalem was crowded with something like a million persons who had come in for the Passover, but the aggregate number of fighting men seems to have been less than twenty-four thousand, while the forces of Titus are estimated at about eighty thousand. The Jews expected succour from their kinsmen of Parthia as well as from other quarters of the empire, but before these arrived, if they were ever sent at all, the forces of Titus appeared before the city. Taking six hundred horse with him Titus advanced at once to reconnoitre, but as no one appeared to oppose his progress he incautiously approached so near the wall that he was suddenly surrounded by a multitude of men who rushed out from one of the gates behind him. Bareheaded and without his breastplate as he was, yet he forced his way through this multitude and escaped unharmed to the Roman camp, although many of his followers were slain.

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Attempts were made at once to take the walls by storm, but these assaults were repulsed by the defenders, the Roman army retired to its entrenchments, and a regular siege began. Battering-rams were brought into play against the walls, while catapults and ballistæ were plied incessantly against the defenders on the walls, and were responded to with similar weapons by them. In the use of these weapons, however, the Jews were very unskilful, while the bolts and stones thrown from the Roman camp did effective work both on the walls and inside them. The enormous thickness of the outer walls resisted the battering-rams for some days, but they gave way at last and the defenders retired within their second line. This second wall was carried five days later and Titus was thus made master of the lower city.

Famine now added to the war within and without the city its ghastly terrors. Never has a more thrilling picture of human misery been painted than that of Josephus.a

JOSEPHUS’ ACCOUNT OF THE FAMINE

It was now a miserable case, and a sight that would justly bring tears into our eyes, how men stood as to their food, while the more powerful had more than enough, and the weaker were lamenting (for want of it). But the famine was too hard for all other passions, and it is destructive to nothing so much as to modesty; for what was otherwise worthy of reverence was in this case despised; insomuch that children pulled the very morsels that their fathers were eating out of their very mouths, and what was still more to be pitied, so did the mothers do as to their infants; and when those that were most dear were perishing under their hands, they were not ashamed to take from them the very last drops that might preserve their lives; and while they ate after this manner, yet were they not concealed in so doing; but the seditious everywhere came upon them immediately, and snatched away from them what they had gotten from others; for when they saw any house shut up, this was to them a signal that the people within had gotten some food; whereupon they broke open the doors, and ran in, and took pieces of what they were eating, almost up out of their very throats, and this by force: the old men, who held their food fast, were beaten; and if the women hid what they had within their hands, their hair was torn for so doing; nor was there any commiseration shown either to the aged or to infants, but they lifted up children from the ground as they hung upon the morsels they had gotten, and shook them down upon the floor; but still were they more barbarously cruel to those that had prevented their coming in, and had actually swallowed down what they were going to seize upon, as if they had been unjustly defrauded of their right.

They also invented terrible methods of torment to discover where any food was, and they were these: to stop up the passages of the privy parts of the miserable wretches, and a man was forced to bear what it is terrible even to hear, in order to make him confess that he had but one loaf of bread, or that he might discover a handful of barley-meal that was concealed; and this was done when these tormentors were not themselves hungry; for the thing had been less barbarous had necessity forced them to it; but this was done to keep their madness in exercise, and as making preparation of provisions for themselves for the following days. These men went also to meet those that had crept out of the city by night, as far as the Roman guards, to gather some plants and herbs that grew wild; and when those people thought they had got clear of the enemy, these snatched from them what[194] they had brought with them, even while they had frequently entreated them, and that by calling upon the tremendous name of God, to give them back some part of what they had brought; though these would not give them the least crumb; and they were to be well contented that they were only spoiled, and not slain at the same time.

It is therefore impossible to go distinctly over every instance of these men’s iniquity. I shall therefore speak my mind here at once briefly: That neither did any other city ever suffer such miseries, nor did any age ever breed a generation more fruitful in wickedness than this was, from the beginning of the world. Finally, they brought the Hebrew nation into contempt, that they might themselves appear comparatively less impious with regard to strangers. They confessed what was true, that they were the slaves, the scum, and the spurious and abortive offspring of our nation, while they overthrew the city themselves, and forced the Romans, whether they would or no, to gain a melancholy reputation, by acting gloriously against them, and did almost draw that fire upon the temple, which they seemed to think came too slowly; and, indeed, when they saw that temple burning from the upper city, they were neither troubled at it, nor did they shed any tears on that account, while yet these passions were discovered among the Romans themselves: which circumstances we shall speak of hereafter in their proper place, when we come to treat of such matters.

So now Titus’ banks were advanced a great way, notwithstanding his soldiers had been very much distressed from the wall. He then sent a party of horsemen, and ordered they should lay ambushes for those that went out into the valleys to gather food. Some of these were indeed fighting men, who were not contented with what they got by rapine; but the greater part of them were poor people, who were deterred from deserting by the concern they were under for their own relations: for they could not hope to escape away, together with their wives and children, without the knowledge of the seditious; nor could they think of leaving these relations to be slain by the robbers on their account; nay, the severity of the famine made them bold in thus going out: so nothing remained but that, when they were concealed from the robbers, they should be taken by the enemy; and when they were going to be taken, they were forced to defend themselves, for fear of being punished: as after they had fought, they thought it too late to make any supplications for mercy: so they were first whipped, and then tormented with all sorts of tortures before they died, and were then crucified before the wall of the city. This miserable procedure made Titus greatly to pity them, while they caught every day five hundred Jews; nay, some days they caught more; yet did it not appear to be safe for him to let those that were taken by force go their way; and to set a guard over so many, he saw would be to make such as guarded them useless to him.

The main reason why he did not forbid that cruelty was this, that he hoped the Jews might perhaps yield at that sight, out of fear lest they might themselves afterwards be liable to the same cruel treatment. So the soldiers, out of the wrath and hatred they bore the Jews, nailed those they caught, one after one way, and another after another, to the crosses, by way of jest; when their multitude was so great, that room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses wanting for the bodies.

But so far were the seditious from repenting at this sad sight, that, on the contrary, they made the rest of the multitude believe otherwise; for they brought the relations of those that had deserted upon the wall, with such of the populace as were very eager to go over upon the security offered[195] them, and showed them what miseries those underwent who fled to the Romans; and told them that those who were caught were supplicants to them, and not such as were taken prisoners. This sight kept many of those within the city who were so eager to desert, till the truth was known; yet did some of them run away immediately as unto certain punishment, esteeming death from their enemies to be a quiet departure, if compared with that by famine.

So Titus commanded that the hands of many of those that were caught should be cut off, that they might not be thought deserters, and might be credited on account of the calamity they were under, and sent them in to John and Simon, with this exhortation, that they would now at length leave off (their madness), and not force him to destroy the city, whereby they would have those advantages of repentance, even in their utmost distress, that they would preserve their own lives, and so fine a city of their own, and that temple which was their peculiar pride. He then went round about the banks that were cast up, and hastened them, in order to show that his words should in no long time be followed by his deeds. In answer to which, the seditious cast reproaches upon Cæsar himself, and upon his father also, and cried out with a loud voice, that they contemned death, and did well in preferring it before slavery; that they would do all the mischief to the Romans they could while they had breath in them; and that for their own city, since they were, as he said, to be destroyed, they had no concern about it, and that the world itself was a better temple to God than this. That yet this temple would be preserved by him that inhabited therein, whom they still had for their assistant in this war, and did therefore laugh at all his threatenings, which would come to nothing; because the conclusion of the whole depended upon God only. These words were mixed with reproaches, and with them they made a mighty clamour.

So all hope of escaping was now cut off from the Jews, together with their liberty of going out of the city. Then did the famine widen its progress, and devoured the people by whole houses and families; the upper rooms were full of women and children that were dying by famine; and the lanes of the city were full of the dead bodies of the aged; the children also and the young men wandered about the market-places like shadows, all swelled with the famine, and fell down dead wheresoever their misery seized them. As for burying them, those that were sick themselves were not able to do it; and those that were hearty and well, were deterred from doing it by the great multitude of those dead bodies, and by the uncertainty there was how soon they should die themselves; for many died as they were burying others, and many went to their coffins before that fatal hour was come!

Nor was there any lamentation made under these calamities, nor were heard any mournful complaints; but the famine confounded all natural passions; for those who were just going to die, looked upon those that were gone to their rest before them with dry eyes and open mouths.

A deep silence also, and a kind of deadly night, had seized upon the city; while yet the robbers were still more terrible than these miseries were themselves; for they brake open those houses which were no other than graves of dead bodies, and plundered them of what they had; and carrying off the coverings of their bodies, went out laughing, and tried the points of their swords on their dead bodies; and, in order to prove what mettle they were made of, they thrust some of those through that still lay alive upon the ground; but for those that entreated them to lend them their right hand, and their sword to despatch them, they were too proud to grant their[196] requests, and left them to be consumed by the famine. Now every one of these died with their eyes fixed upon the temple, and left the seditious alive behind them. Now the seditious at first gave orders that the dead should be buried out of the public treasury, as not enduring the stench of their dead bodies. But afterwards, when they could not do that, they had them cast down from the walls into the valleys beneath.

However, when Titus, in going his rounds along those valleys, saw them full of dead bodies, and the thick putrefaction running about them, he gave a groan, and, spreading out his hands to heaven, called God to witness that this was not his doing.

Some of the deserters, having no other way, leaped down from the wall immediately, while others of them went out of the city with stones, as if they would fight them; but thereupon, they fled away to the Romans: but here a worse fate accompanied these than what they had found within the city; and they met with a quicker despatch from the too great abundance they had among the Romans, than they could have done from the famine among the Jews; for when they came first to the Romans, they were puffed up by the famine, and swelled like men in a dropsy; after which they all on the sudden over-filled those bodies that were before empty, and so burst asunder, excepting such only as were skilful enough to restrain their appetites, and, by degrees, took in their food into bodies unaccustomed thereto.

Yet did another plague seize upon those that were thus preserved; for there was found among the Syrian deserters a certain person who was caught gathering pieces of gold out of the excrements of the Jews’ bellies,—for the deserters used to swallow such pieces of gold, when they came out,—and for these did the seditious search them all, for there was a great quantity of gold in the city, insomuch that as much was now sold (in the Roman camp) for twelve Attic drachmæ as was sold before for twenty-five; but when this contrivance was discovered in one instance, the fame of it filled their several camps, that the deserters came to them full of gold. So the multitude of the Arabians, with the Syrians, cut up those that came as supplicants, and searched their bellies. Nor does it seem to me that any misery befell the Jews that was more terrible than this, since in one night’s time about two thousand of these deserters were thus dissected.

But as for John, when he could no longer plunder the people, he betook himself to sacrilege, and melted down many of the sacred utensils which had been given to the temple, as also many of those vessels which were necessary for such as ministered about holy things, the caldrons, the dishes, and the tables; nay, he did not abstain from those pouring-vessels that were sent them by Augustus and his wife; for the Roman emperors did ever both honour and adorn this temple. Whereas this man, who was a Jew, seized upon what were the donations of foreigners, and said to those that were with him that it was proper for them to use divine things while they were fighting for the Divinity, without fear, and that such whose warfare is for the temple, should live of the temple; on which account he emptied the vessels of that sacred wine and oil, which the priests kept to be poured on the burnt-offerings, and which lay in the inner court of the temple, and distributed it among the multitude, who, in their anointing themselves and drinking, used (each of them) above an hin of them. And here I cannot but speak my mind, and what the concern I am under dictates to me, and it is this: I suppose, that had the Romans made any longer delay in coming against these villains, the city would either have been swallowed up by the ground opening upon them, or been overflowed by water, or else been destroyed by such thunder[197] as the country of Sodom perished by, for it had brought forth a generation of men much more atheistical than were those that suffered such punishments, for by their madness it was that all the people came to be destroyed.

And, indeed, why do I relate these particular calamities?—while Manneus, the son of Lazarus, came running to Titus at this very time, and told him that there had been carried out through that one gate, which was entrusted to his care, no fewer than a hundred and fifteen thousand eight hundred and eighty dead bodies, in the interval between the fourteenth day of the month Xanthicus (Nisan), when the Romans pitched their camp by the city, and the first day of the month Panemus (Tammuz). This was itself a prodigious multitude; and though this man was not himself set as a governor at that gate, yet was he appointed to pay the public stipend for carrying these bodies out, and so was obliged of necessity to number them, while the rest were buried by their relations, though all their burial was but this, to bring them away, and cast them out of the city. After this man there ran away to Titus many of the eminent citizens, and told him the entire number of the poor that were dead; and that no fewer than six hundred thousand were thrown out at the gates, though still the number of the rest could not be discovered; and they told him further, that when they were no longer able to carry out the dead bodies of the poor, they laid their corpses on heaps in very large houses, and shut them up therein; as also that a medimnus of wheat was sold for a talent; and that when, a while afterwards, it was not possible to gather herbs, by reason the city was all walled about, some persons were driven to that terrible distress as to search the common sewers and old dunghills of cattle, and to eat the dung which they got there; and what they of old could not endure so much as to see, they now used for food. When the Romans barely heard all this, they commiserated their case; while the seditious, who saw it also, did not repent, but suffered the same distress to come upon themselves; for they were blinded by that fate which was already coming upon the city, and upon themselves also.

Now of those that perished by famine in the city, the number was prodigious, and the miseries they underwent were unspeakable; for if so much as the shadow of any kind of food did anywhere appear, a war was commenced presently; and the dearest friends fell a fighting one with another about it, snatching from each other the most miserable supports of life. Nor would men believe that those who were dying had no food; but the robbers would search them when they were expiring, lest any one should have concealed food in their bosoms, and counterfeited dying: nay, these robbers gaped for want, and ran about stumbling and staggering along like mad dogs, and reeling against the doors of the houses like drunken men; they would also, in the great distress they were in, rush into the very same houses two or three times in one and the same day. Moreover, their hunger was so intolerable, that it obliged them to chew everything, while they gathered such things as the most sordid animals would not touch, and endured to eat them; nor did they at length abstain from girdles and shoes; and the very leather which belonged to their shields they pulled off and gnawed; the very wisps of old hay became food to some; and some gathered up fibres, and sold a very small weight of them for four Attic drachmæ. But why do I describe the shameless impudence that the famine brought on men in their eating inanimate things, while I am going to relate a matter of fact, the like to which no history relates, either among the Greeks or Barbarians! It is horrible to speak of it, and incredible when heard. I had indeed willingly omitted this calamity of ours, that[198] I might not seem to deliver what is so portentous to posterity, but that I have innumerable witnesses to it in my own age; and besides, my country would have had little reason to thank me for suppressing the miseries that she underwent at this time.

There was a certain woman that dwelt beyond Jordan, her name was Mary; her father was Eleazar, of the village Bethezub, which signifies “the House of Hyssop.” She was eminent for her family and her wealth, and had fled away to Jerusalem with the rest of the multitude, and was with them besieged therein at this time. The other effects of this woman had been already seized upon; such, I mean, as she had brought with her out of Peræa, and removed to the city. What she had treasured up besides, as also what food she had contrived to save, had been also carried off by the rapacious guards, who came every day running into her house for that purpose. This put the poor woman into a very great passion, and by the frequent reproaches and imprecations she cast at these rapacious villains, she had provoked them to anger against her; but none of them, either out of the indignation she had raised against herself, or out of the commiseration of her case, would take away her life; and if she found any food, she perceived her labours were for others, and not for herself; and it was now become impossible for her any way to find any more food, while the famine pierced through her very bowels and marrow, when also her passion was fired to a degree beyond the famine itself; nor did she consult with anything but with her passion and the necessity she was in.

She then attempted a most unnatural thing; and snatching up her son, who was a child sucking at her breast, she said: “O thou miserable infant! for whom shall I preserve thee in this war, this famine, and this sedition? As to the war with the Romans, if they preserve our lives, we must be slaves! This famine also will destroy us, even before that slavery comes upon us;—yet are these seditious rogues more terrible than both the other. Come on; be thou my food, and be thou a fury to these seditious varlets and a byword to the world, which is all that is now wanting to complete the calamities of us Jews.”

As soon as she had said this she slew her son; and then roasted him, and ate the one half of him, and kept the other half by her concealed. Upon this the seditious came in presently, and smelling the horrid scent of this food, they threatened her, that they would cut her throat immediately if she did not show them what food she had gotten ready. She replied, that she had saved a very fine portion of it for them; and withal uncovered what was left of her son. Hereupon they were seized with a horror and amazement of mind, and stood astonished at the sight; when she said to them:

“This is mine own son; and what hath been done was mine own doing! Come, eat of this food; for I have eaten of it myself! Do not you pretend to be either more tender than a woman, or more compassionate than a mother; but if you be so scrupulous, and do abominate this my sacrifice, as I have eaten the one half, let the rest be reserved for me also.”

After which, those men went out trembling, being never so much affrighted at anything as they were at this, and with some difficulty they left the rest of that meat to the mother. Upon which the whole city was full of this horrid action immediately; and while everybody laid this miserable case before their own eyes, they trembled, as if this unheard-of action had been done by themselves. So those that were thus distressed by the famine were very desirous to die; and those already dead were esteemed happy, because they had not lived long enough either to hear or to see such miseries.

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This sad instance was quickly told to the Romans, some of whom could not believe it, and others pitied the distress which the Jews were under; but there were many of them who were hereby induced to a more bitter hatred than ordinary against our nation;—but for Cæsar, he excused himself before God as to this matter, and said, that he had proposed peace and liberty to the Jews, as well as an oblivion of all their former insolent practices; but that they, instead of concord, had chosen sedition; instead of peace, war; and before satiety and abundance, a famine. That they had begun with their own hands to burn down that temple, which we have preserved hitherto; and that therefore they deserved to eat such food as this was. That, however, this horrid action of eating one’s own child, ought to be covered with the overthrow of their very country itself; and men ought not to leave such a city upon the habitable earth to be seen by the sun, wherein mothers are thus fed, although such food be fitter for the fathers than for the mothers to eat of, since it is they that continue still in a state of war against us, after they have undergone such miseries as these. And at the same time that he said this, he reflected on the desperate condition these men must be in; nor could he expect that such men could be recovered to sobriety of mind after they had endured those very sufferings for the avoiding whereof it only was probable they might have repented.c

THE CLOSE OF JEWISH HISTORY

In spite of such gaunt famine, however, the war went on and the resistance continued. Soon the battering-rams made a breach in the wall of Antonia, and Titus called upon his soldiers to mount the breach, but only one soldier, Sibanus, and eleven others responded, and these were overwhelmed at once. Two nights later, however, twenty-four soldiers crept into the breach, and Antonia was taken. Titus at once made offers of clemency and many accepted his offer of mercy, but the rest fled to Zion and the temple. He then called a council of war to decide whether the temple should be saved; many of his generals were in favour of destroying it, but nevertheless Titus ordered the flames to be extinguished, fixing the next day for the final assault. But even Roman discipline could not control the infuriated soldiers and one of them threw a blazing torch into the gilded lattice of the porch. “The flames sprang up at once. The Jews uttered one simultaneous shriek and grasped their swords with a furious determination of revenging and perishing in the ruins of the temple. Titus rushed down with the utmost speed: he shouted, he made signs to his soldiers to quench the fire: his voice was drowned and his signs unnoticed in the blind confusion. The legionaries either could not or would not hear: they rushed on, trampling each other down in their furious haste, or stumbling over the crumbling ruins, and perished with the enemy. Each exhorted the other, and each hurled his blazing brand into the inner part of the edifice, and then hastened to his work of carnage. The unarmed and the defenceless people were slain in thousands; they lay heaped like sacrifices round the altar; the steps of the temple ran with streams of blood, which washed down the bodies which lay upon it.”

Titus himself entered the Holy of Holies before the flames had reached the sanctuary, and with a last effort attempted to save it, but in his very presence his soldiers fired the great door and the building was soon wrapt in flames.

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Thus was Jerusalem destroyed. Josephus reckons that the number of people who perished in this siege was one million one hundred thousand, and while this is probably an exaggeration it is not impossible that such a number may have perished, when we remember that a large proportion of the male population of Judea had gathered in Jerusalem for the Passover. Persecutions of the remaining Jews were soon begun at Antioch, where several Jews were burnt and tortured. It is to Titus’ credit that these persecutions were checked and his soldiers rebuked: “The country of the Jews is destroyed—thither they cannot return: it would be hard to allow them no home to return to—leave them in peace.” The booty taken at Jerusalem was so enormous as to cause an immense depreciation in the value of gold and silver throughout Asia, and this even though the treasures of the temple had been burned and destroyed.

The revolt lasted a little longer in the Dead Sea region. The castle of Herodion soon fell; Macherus surrendered, but the men were slain, the women and children sent to slavery. Masada held out till the year 73, when the garrison, seeing their case hopeless, killed their wives and children, and then themselves after setting fire to the castle. The Jews in other parts of the world suffered many disasters and made a few efforts at revolt under Zealots, but gradually all resistance was crushed out in blood, and the Jews having perished by the hundred thousand, ceased to be a nation. As Munk said, “Almost all Judea became a desert; the wolves and the hyenas entered the cities.”a

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From that day forward the Jews have no important history. The extremist party of the prophets and Zealots, which was likewise the nationalist party, no longer existed; it had been drowned in blood. As for the priests and rabbis, they had long since withdrawn from the conflict, but it is due to them that the Jews, having completely lost their national existence, have been able to subsist to this day as a religious body. “Renouncing the hope of playing a political rôle,” says Munk, “the[202] Jews directed all their efforts towards a moral aim, and devoted themselves wholly to consolidating their religious unity.” Convinced at last that their mission as a body politic was at an end, and that the sanctuary at Jerusalem, with its priests and sacrifices, could no longer be the symbol about which the scattered remnants of the Jewish nation were to gather, they laid down their arms, and sought by peaceful ways and intellectual methods to strengthen themselves as a religious body. For a while Palestine still remained the chief seat of religious study, the rabbis settling in several cities of Galilee, notably Sephoris and Tiberias. From the school of Tiberias, founded about the year 180, came forth the famous rabbi, Yehudah, surnamed the Holy, who collected the incomplete codes and traditional laws of the schools of the Pharisees, and, in the first quarter of the third century, fashioned them into an immense system of laws known under the name of the Mishnah, or Second Law. This code is divided into six parts, entitled Sedarim, orders. Each of the six is subdivided into several treatises, each treatise into chapters. This code was annotated, discussed, and amplified, first by the Palestinian and then by the Babylonian school, and each school afterwards made a collection of these annotations and discussions. The name of Gemara, Complement, was given to these collections, which were much more voluminous than the Mishnah that serves for their text. The Mishnah and the Gemara together form the Talmud, the Teaching.

The Zealots who had perished in the struggle for independence or in the massacres that followed on their defeat, and the rabbis who laboured in obscurity and silence, constituted but a comparatively small part of the Jewish population, and we may well ask what became of the innumerable slaves who flooded the empire after the fall of Jerusalem. They did not all succumb to the arduous toils of the Coliseum. Under Hadrian there was a fresh influx of Jewish slaves; Dion Cassius, who speaks of five hundred and eighty thousand men killed in the course of the war, says nothing of women or children. We cannot doubt that they were sold, according to the common custom. Renan says that at the yearly fair of the Terebinth, near Hebron, Jews could be bought at the same price as horses. Once bought, they ran no further risk of death from hunger or destitution, for a slave, even if bought at the price of a horse, represented money’s worth, which it was not in his master’s interest to lose. Among their co-religionists, slaves like themselves, or freedmen, these unhappy beings found the pathetic brotherhood of the poor, ingenious in expedients. All the little nameless trades offered resources to this humiliated race, unscrupulous, skilful in exploiting the vices of the ruling classes, armed with good reasons for not loving the human race. Mingled with slaves of other races, they communicated to them the fanaticism of their wrath and their hopes of revenge. This revenge was afterwards relegated to a distant future; but at that time, smarting under the memory of recent disaster, they dreamt of it as complete and in the immediate future. Let the world come to an end, since nothing could reform it; let it go down to the bottomless pit, with all its defilements, and the agonies of the outcasts of life, and oppressions without number, and inexpiable ills! The hour of deliverance is near, and the accursed shall go to everlasting fire, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. The fall of the Jewish nation redounded to the advantage of Christian propaganda. From that time forward we hear less and less of the Jews and more and more of the Christians.

It is an inevitable consequence of military government that after every conquest the conquered impose their ideas on the conquerors. When Rome had subjugated Greece, she herself submitted to the dominion of the Hellenistic spirit, which imposed on the Romans its own forms of art, its literary culture, its mythology, and its philosophy. Rome, mistress of Asia, was invaded by Asiatic luxury, the East opened upon the West the floodgates of its superstitions, sensual, gloomy, frenzied, or ascetic; nothing was talked of save mysteries, funeral feasts, horoscopes, magic, purifications, Isis and Mithras, the passion of Attys, gods dead and risen again. Egypt had deified the Pharaohs, Rome deified the Cæsars. Finally, Judea, the last province conquered by the Romans, was the last to impose its religious thought upon the world. The obscure traditions of a despised people were destined to take the place of the glorious memories of Greece and Rome. A monarchy required a monarchial religion. The republic had vanished from the earth, it could not be left in the heavens. The images of the gods still stood in their temples, but since the time of Augustus the only god of the empire had been the emperor. Since the conscience of the conquerors of the world had not revolted from the apotheosis of tyrants, the conquered were fully entitled to seek among their own ranks for a worthier object. One nation alone had refused its incense to the emperors. That nation was destined to provide a God for the coming centuries. In the arrogant words of a Jew of our own times, this nation said to the world, “Till thou art able to understand me, behold a man of my race, make of him thy god.” Humanity had found its social ideal in servitude; it was just that the gibbet of slaves should become the symbol of the religion of the human race.

Thus in the great Christian synthesis, the worship of the God-man, which sums up the whole of Greek anthropomorphism, took its place by the side of Jewish monotheism. With the principle of universal order, the source and reason of things, was associated, in the unity of the Divine, the moral law in its loftiest form, the sacrifice of self and redemption through suffering. But while other religions, when introduced into the empire, had allowed the traditions and monuments of Græco-Roman civilisation to remain, the monistic religion of the Semitic race was destined to exclude all other religious forms and wipe out the traces of them. Like the wind of the desert that destroys everything in its path, the solitary God of Sinai was to sweep away all the works of the past. Hence, some centuries later, Rutilius Numatianus, the last of pagan poets, exclaimed, in the midst of the ruins of civilisation and the empire, “Would to the gods that Judea had never been conquered! The plague, extirpated there, hath spread abroad, and a vanquished nation oppresses its conquerors.” Had this poet had a little of the living faith of those he despised, had religion been anything to him beyond a literary form, he would have recognised that this conquest of the world by Jewish thought was but a just vengeance for the hideous wars of Titus and Hadrian, and a striking proof of the justice of the gods. The events of human history are neither effects of capricious chance nor phases of necessary evolution, but moral consequences of a great law of equilibrium and expiation which is the nemesis of history.e

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CHAPTER XV. HEBREW CIVILISATION

If a nation can be in any sense summed up, the National Idea of the Hebrews as a unit has been stated by Hegel in contrast with the Idea of other peoples. He says: While among the Phœnician people the Spiritual was still limited by Nature, in the case of the Jews we find it entirely purified—the pure product of thought. Self-conception appears in the field of consciousness, and the Spiritual develops itself in sharp contrast to Nature and to union with it. It is true that we observed at an earlier stage the pure conception “Brahma,” but only as the universal being of Nature; and with this limitation, that Brahma is not himself an object of consciousness. Among the Persians we saw this abstract being become an object for consciousness, but it was that of sensuous intuition—as Light. But the idea of Light has at this stage advanced to that of “Jehovah,”—the purely One. This forms the point of separation between the East and the West; Spirit descends into the depths of its own being, and recognises the abstract fundamental principle as the Spiritual. Nature, which in the East is the primary and fundamental existence, is now depressed to the condition of a mere creature; and Spirit now occupies the first place. God is known as the creator of all men, as he is of all nature, and as absolute causality generally. But this great principle, as further conditioned, is exclusive Unity.

This religion must necessarily possess the element of exclusiveness, which consists essentially in this—that only the One People which adopts it, recognizes the One God, and is acknowledged by Him. The God of the Jewish People is the God only of Abraham and of his seed: National individuality and a special local worship are involved in such a conception of deity. Before Him all other gods are false: moreover the distinction between “true” and “false” is quite abstract; for as regards the false gods, not a ray of the Divine is supposed to shine into them. But every form of spiritual force, and a fortiori every religion is of such a nature, that whatever be its peculiar character, an affirmative element is necessarily contained in it.

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However erroneous a religion may be, it possesses truth, although in a mutilated phase. In every religion there is a divine presence, a divine relation; and a philosophy of history has to seek out the spiritual element even in the most imperfect forms. But it does not follow that because it is a religion, it is therefore good. We must not fall into the lax conception, that the content is of no importance, but only the form. This latitudinarian tolerance the Jewish religion does not admit, being absolutely exclusive.

The Spiritual speaks itself here absolutely free of the Sensuous, and Nature is reduced to something merely external and undivine. This is the true and proper estimate of Nature at this stage; for only at a more advanced phase can the idea attain a reconciliation (recognise itself) in this its alien form. Its first utterances will be in opposition to Nature; for Spirit, which had been hitherto dishonoured, now first attains its due dignity, while Nature resumes its proper position. Nature is conceived as having the ground of its existence in another—as something posited, created; and this idea, that God is the lord and creator of Nature, leads men to regard God as the Exalted One, while the whole of Nature is only His robe of glory, and is expended in His service.

In contrast with this kind of exaltation, that which the Hindu religion presents is only that of indefinitude. In virtue of the prevailing spirituality the Sensuous and Immoral are no longer privileged, but disparaged as ungodliness. Only the One—Spirit—the Non-sensuous is the truth; Thought exists free for itself, and true morality and righteousness can now make their appearance; for God is honoured by righteousness, and right-doing is “walking in the way of the Lord.”

With this is conjoined happiness, life, and temporal prosperity as its reward; for it is said: “that thou mayest live long in the land.”—Here too, also, we have the possibility of a historical view; for the understanding has become prosaic; putting the limited and circumscribed in its proper place, and comprehending it as the form proper to finite existence: Men are regarded as individuals, not as incarnations of God; Sun as Sun, Mountains as Mountains—not as possessing Spirit and Will.

We observed among this people a severe religious ceremonial, expressing a relation to pure Thought. The individual as concrete does not become free, because the Absolute itself is not comprehended as concrete Spirit, since the Spirit still appears posited as non-spiritual—destitute of its proper characteristics. It is true that subjective feeling is manifest—the pure heart, repentance, devotion; but the particular concrete individuality has not become objective to itself in the Absolute. It therefore remains closely bound to the observance of ceremonies and of the Law, the basis of which latter is pure freedom in its abstract form. The Jews possess that which makes them what they are, through the One: consequently the individual has no freedom for itself. Spinoza regards the code of Moses as having been given by God to the Jews for a punishment—a rod of correction. The individual never comes to the consciousness of independence; on that account we do not find among the Jews any belief in the immortality of the soul; for individuality does not exist in and for itself.

But though in Judaism the Individual is not respected, the Family has inherent value; for the worship of Jehovah is attached to the Family, and it is consequently viewed as a substantial existence. But the State is an institution not consonant with the Judaistic principle, and it is alien to the legislation of Moses. In the idea of the Jews, Jehovah is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and Jacob; who commanded them to depart out of Egypt,[205] and gave them the land of Canaan. The accounts of the Patriarchs attract our interest. We see in this history the transition from the patriarchal nomad condition to agriculture.

On the whole the Jewish history exhibits grand features of character; but it is disfigured by an exclusive bearing (sanctioned in its religion) towards the genius of other nations (the destruction of the inhabitants of Canaan being even commanded), by want of culture generally, and by the superstition arising from the idea of the high value of their peculiar nationality. Miracles, too, form a disturbing feature in this history—as history; for as far as concrete consciousness is not free, concrete perception is also not free; Nature is undeified, but not yet understood.b

THE LIFE AND CUSTOMS OF THE ISRAELITES

The expiatory offerings of the Israelites were governed by precepts which were more numerous than sacrifices. If any one had violated the Laws of the Torah, or Book of the Law, he was obliged at once to offer up a young ox; the fat and kidneys of the ox were burnt before Yahveh, the skin, head, legs, stomach, and flesh were burnt outside the camp. If the whole community sinned, the ancients or heads of families had to offer up this sacrifice. Any one who could not afford an ox could replace it by a goat or a young lamb if he had witnessed a curse without declaring it, or if he had blasphemed himself, or had touched the body of an impure animal or any other impurity. A poor man was only obliged to offer up two doves or pigeons, one as a sin offering, the other as a sacrifice. If he was very poor indeed, he contented himself by bringing the tenth part of an ephah of flour without adding oil or the incense for the sacrifice.

The peace offering was offered up after a vow or a pious act, or after a benefit for which the son of Israel wished to thank Yahveh. The law also ordained a few peace offerings such as the ram brought by the Nazarite, at the same time that he offered up a sacrifice. At the festival of the First Fruit, the Hebrews brought two yearling lambs which belonged to the priests. The priest only had the breast and right shoulder of the other peace offerings, while the remainder of the victim formed part of the grand repast to which the tribe was invited, and from which the Christian feasts must have sprung.

Besides the victims chosen for these three kinds of sacrifices, there were two others, the young cow and the red cow, which were sacrificed on special occasions. When the body of a murdered man was found in the country, the ancients and the chiefs of the families of the surrounding towns assembled together. When the nearest place to where the murder had been committed had been carefully fixed upon, the ancients of that city or borough were obliged to take a young heifer, which had not yet worked, to a rough and uncultivated valley. There, after wringing the neck of the cow, the ancients in the presence of the priests washed their hands over the victims killed in the valley, and sang. The guilty man remaining unknown and not making atonement for his crime, the sacrificed heifer served as an atonement instead.

The red heifer, quite full grown, but which had never been yoked, was killed and burnt whole by the cohene-hakadel, who sprinkled the entrance of the tabernacle, seven times with his finger dipped in the blood of the victim. The cinders of the cow were collected to make lustral water (water of separation), which purified people from the touch of corpses. Perhaps the cow thus sacrificed represented sin and impurity. Amongst the Egyptians,[206] red seems to have been a wicked colour. That was doubtless why the Hebrews had chosen a cow of this colour as victim of sin.

The entire nation was expected to make presents to Yahveh, without counting the private offerings which were added to all these donations. The law decided upon some of them. The poor, who could not offer up two doves or two of their young as sin offerings, could instead offer a tenth part of an ephah of flour without oil or incense. The husband who doubted his wife’s chastity brought her before the priests to try her, but began by presenting some barley, as the offering of jealousy.

The first day the priest exercised his powers he brought the tenth part of an ephah of flour. He offered up half in the morning and half in the evening. According to the Talmud and Josephus, the high priest had every day to offer up sacrifices. This offering had to be consumed whole; as for the other presents, only a handful was burnt and the rest was given to the priests. Voluntary donations and those which were the result of vows have also to be added to those ordained by religion.

Sweet-smelling perfumes were brought by the sons of Israel and burnt upon the altar, Yahveh alone was allowed to smell them. “Whoever makes this perfume for his own use, let him be taken from his people.”

Every first-born belonged to Yahveh; a month after birth, a child had to be presented to the temple and bought back for five shekels at most. As for the first-born of animals, it was offered up as a peace sacrifice, and the flesh went to the priests. If it were an unclean animal, it could be sold or killed for the benefit of the tabernacle.

Besides these sacrifices, which took place, for the most part, at no fixed times, the Hebrews celebrated feasts in honour of Yahveh. Each week they had to observe the Sabbath, by abstaining from work. This was in memory of the repose of Yahveh, the seventh day after he had created the world. Perhaps this number seven, so particularly beloved by the Hebrews, which was the close for them of certain periods of days and years, was also a remembrance of Egypt. The great mourning for the death of Osiris lasted seven days. During the same length of time the death of Adonis, the divine young man slain by the teeth of a wild boar, was mourned in Phœnicia.

On the Sabbath day every occupation was forbidden, even picking up wood or cooking food. No longer journey was allowed than a walk of two thousand steps outside the town. All the religious functions as well as military operations were carried on on that day as on other days. It was only after exile, when a spirit of narrow fanaticism took hold of the people, that Jewish soldiers at certain times preferred to let themselves be killed rather than violate the repose of the Sabbath by fighting. Originally the difference between the Sabbath and other days was only the absence of work and the sacrifice of two lambs, followed by an offering of libation, which had to be made in the middle of the day. Later when there were synagogues throughout Palestine, everybody went there on the Sabbath to pray in common and to hear the Law explained from the mouth of the rabbi. The Sabbath began, like all the days amongst the Hebrews, at sunset, and ended the following evening.

Every seven years the earth also had a Sabbath. During the whole year it rested. People were forbidden to till or sow, or trim the vine or olive trees. Everything the earth produced naturally and unaided went to the land-owner and to the beggars and strangers. That year also all debts and all slavery were cancelled. A Hebrew slave had the right to leave his master[207] after six years; if he preferred to stay with him, he was put against a door and his ear was pierced.

The Egyptians celebrated the feast of the New Moon and the different phases of its course. The Hebrews also celebrated the New Moon; during this feast sacrifice was offered up composed of two bulls, a ram, and seven lambs, to which a he-goat was added as an expiatory offering. Offerings and libation were also added to all this. There was doubtless a solemn repast at the New Moon, when the people were assembled to eat the sacrificed animals.

It was generally the day after the new moon had been seen in the sky that the feast was celebrated.

But the principal feasts of Israel were the feasts of the Passover, of Pentecost, and of Tabernacles, and the day of Atonement. The first three originally had to do with the different phases of the harvest, later souvenirs of national life were associated with them.

The social organisation of the Hebrew people was to a certain degree the outcome of the religious ideas. Yahveh, the master and king of Israel, governed the country through the Law. The chiefs were only the lieutenants of Yahveh, whose business it was to see that the laws were observed which had been transmitted by Moses. All the eldest sons of the Hebrews were equals, there was no aristocracy, no lower class, no plebeians; nothing in Israel resembled Greek or Roman society, divided into castes, whose only objects very often were to crush one another. With this principle of equality among the Hebrews, royalty and its origin did not even enter into the thoughts of the Israelites. If the political and administrative codes of the Hebrews be examined, as they appear in the Pentateuch and in subsequent history, it will be seen that certain great assemblies were called together by the chiefs of Israel, and were composed of ancients, judges, and scribes.

The ancients appear to have been the elders of the family. In each town they formed a kind of local council, and regulated the affairs of the city; they also seem to have had a fairly large judicial power. The Law gave them, in many instances, the right of pronouncing judgments and enforcing the Law. The elders also formed on great occasions a national council, in whose wisdom the chief of the Hebrews could enlighten himself. In general matters they appeared to be often invested with sovereign powers. It was the elders of Israel who invited Samuel to choose a king. Later, they chose David to rule over Israel. It would be a mistake to consider these elders as an aristocratic assembly, full of hatred and bound down to odious privileges; they were the natural representatives of the family, members of different houses who came out of the shade of the fig trees at certain times, to regulate at the gates the affairs of the town, or to give their opinions on the general interests of the Hebrew state.

In each important locality, there was a tribunal composed of judges. The Levites of the city, versed in the knowledge of the Law, doubtless formed part of the tribunals. The judges held very honoured places and formed part of all the great assemblies where the interests of Israel were discussed. They held their office by election.

The scribes, who were also elected, assisted in the great assemblies. They formed the learned part, holding the style like the Egyptian scribes. They were attached to the elders or to the judges, holding the office of genealogists, and in the wars served as heralds to the commanders of the army. At the head of the scribes, there was a chief with certain rights not enjoyed by the others.

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In order to assure the equality of rights for the entire Hebrew race, the Law tried to establish, as far as possible, equality of fortune. Every fifty years transferred property had to be returned to the original possessors, but this rule seems hardly to have been observed. Trade and usury, the principal sources of the investment of money, were excluded by the Law from this rule, and thus making Israel an agricultural nation. Israel soon escaped from the obligations. The Hebrew was a most astonishing mixture of idealism and of practical common sense, and this explains many contradictions in his nature. Even to-day the Jew can unite to a prodigious extent, the most terrestrial details with the highest and noblest sentiments. All that was most idealistic in Israel was collected together in the Law; but how far did the lives of the Hebrews resemble their book?

Foreigners and colonists were not ill-treated in Israel. The Law guaranteed protection to Hebrew and colonist alike. But the good will shown towards the Canaanite and the sons of Ammon and Moab was not very great. They were forever excluded from using the title of citizen. Neither they nor the bastard nor the eunuch could take a place in the assembly of Yahveh. But at the third generation the sons of Edom and Mizraim were admitted as Israelites on condition they submitted to the ceremony of circumcision, by which the Hebrew was always distinguished from the Gentile.

Marriage was considered an absolute obligation, from which nobody could be exempt. This idea was certainly one of the causes of the morality and power of Israel. Woman was not according to the Law an inferior being, she was part of man, she bore the same name as man; he was called isch, and she ischa, with the feminine termination. No more in Israel than in Egypt were the young girls and young women shut up from all eyes. Nobody could have enjoyed more liberty than Miriam and Deborah. Woman looked up to and free, as she was imagined in a country where law was respected, has been marvellously described at the end of Proverbs. The more they thought of woman, the more she was punished when she forgot her duties.

The power of fathers over their sons and daughters before marriage was very great. The latter could be sold as slaves, but only for a time. However, the Law forbids the father the right of killing his children. It was necessary for the father, in order to have his son put to death, to appeal to the assembly of the elders assembled at the gates of the town. Brought up with the knowledge of the Law, the son remained for a long time under the authority of his father, for whom he had to work even after marriage, which emancipated the daughters.

How were the inheritances divided, and did the right of the eldest son ever exist in Israel? The eldest son, so long as a daughter had not come before him, had a right to two parts of the paternal succession. The remainder was distributed equally amongst the other children. As for the father, he could not lawfully change his will in favour of a favourite son. What Jacob did for Joseph, the Hebrew legislators wished to spare to future generations. Israel with the proud Josephides suffered too severely from favouritism not to repudiate it energetically. Far inferior to the right of priority of birth, the law of favouritism only feeds hypocrites and stirs up hatred and jealousy in the bosoms of families. When a man died leaving only daughters, they shared the inheritance with the obligation of only marrying members of their tribe. If there were no daughters, the nearest relations inherited. Later, by putting aside the Law, the heads of families commenced leaving a part of their property either to their daughters or sometimes to their slaves.

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This short account of the Jewish Law would be incomplete if it were silent on an interesting feature of the society of Israel, the slave. Like all nations of antiquity, Israel had slaves. But the Law softened their lot. Amongst the slaves were Hebrews and foreigners. A man who was much in need could sell his young daughter as a slave. Sometimes the son of her master was obliged to marry her. The Hebrew incapable of paying the fine after a theft was obliged to deliver himself up to the man he had stolen from. When reduced to the last extremity, he could sell himself. These were the principal circumstances of slavery in Israel, but at the end of six years the slave became free, and left his master with a reward in the shape of lambs, kids, and goats. They also received presents of ground and of household linen. But if the slave at the eighth year said to his master, “I will not leave you,” the master would take a bodkin or puncheon, and pierce the ear of the slave leaning against the door of his house: this was a sign of perpetual slavery.

Foreigners became slaves in Israel by selling themselves, or when they were prisoners of war. The Law was lenient towards them. They had the right to take part in the panegyrics and joys of Yahveh, to share the repast of the climes and the natural fruit of the Sabbatic years, and to rest on the Sabbath day. If their masters mutilated them, they were obliged to liberate them; freedom might be the result of a broken tooth. If the slave died from his master’s ill-treatment, the master was terribly punished; how, is not clearly stated. A slave seems once to have enjoyed the office of steward; the management of the whole house was in his hands.

Except in regard to Yahveh, the Hebraic Law appears to have received beneficial influence from Egypt and Assyria; at every moment that beautiful chapter cxxv of The Book of the Dead seemed to be remembered, where the soul justifying itself before Osiris, after stating that the precepts of charity had been fulfilled, dares to add “I have not made tears flow.”c

HEBREW ART, ARCHITECTURE: THE TEMPLE, TOMBS, ETC.

During the last three centuries, many scholars have devoted themselves especially to the art of this nation that has played such an extraordinary rôle in the history of the world. These researches have been directed almost entirely upon the temple at Jerusalem and its furniture; for here, where the national life was concentrated, was in fact all the art that the country produced. Moreover, while the remains are no longer in our hands or under our eyes, there is not a single edifice in all oriental or classical antiquity concerning which we possess such numerous and circumstantial records.

The city of Jerusalem occupies to-day the northern extremity of a plateau which is bounded on the east by the valley of the Kidron, and on the south and west by the valley of Hinnom. This plateau is divided from north to south by a ravine called the valley of the Tyropœon (“the cheesemakers”) in such a manner as to form two hills. The eastern hill is Mount Moriah, whose southern extremity, now called Ophel, was Zion, the “city of David.”

When Solomon ascended the throne, Jerusalem occupied only Zion, and did not begin to extend to the western and larger hill until under the kings of Judea. Mount Moriah, on the north, was given up to husbandry, and a rich man of Jerusalem, Araunah, owned there a field with a threshing-floor, where camels and oxen trod out the grain at harvest-time. David had bought[210] the field of Araunah as a site for the temple of the true God, and had erected an altar on the threshing-floor.

The work began in the fourth year of the reign of Solomon. The materials had already been in great part fitted. Architects, workmen, and artists were engaged in Tyre by the aid of King Hiram, and the work progressed rapidly. The summit of Moriah was first levelled, and then around the remaining hillock was constructed an immense retaining wall of extraordinary solidity, extending up to the level of the summit. It was built of enormous blocks held together by cramp-irons, and was supported on the outside by embankments. All the space between the interior face of this wall and the rock was filled in with rubble in such a way as to form a square platform.

Then followed the erection of the temple itself, and so rapidly was it pushed that the dedication feast was celebrated only seven years after the laying of the first stone of the substructure. The temple was to be enclosed by two courts, but Solomon completed only the first or inner one, and the east wall of the second or outer, which was not finished until long after the great king’s death, in the reign of Manasseh.

The Bible gives us a detailed description of the magnificence of the interior of this sanctuary, built and decorated by Phœnician workmen, and of the objects of art accumulated there by the most ostentatious of Hebrew kings.

The architecture and the decorations of the interior were all in Egyptian style, like the temples of the Phœnicians themselves. But of the works of Solomon nothing has remained but the cisterns and the east wall of the outer court. This wall is ornamented with a gate under which Solomon had his throne placed when he assisted at public ceremonies; it was still called Solomon’s gate, even after the time of Herod. Numerous enlargements and restorations were made under the kings of Judea; but in 586 B.C., when the Chaldeans took Jerusalem, the temple was totally destroyed.

Fifty-two years later, the captive Jews in Babylon having been delivered by Cyrus, their leader, Zerubbabel, undertook to rebuild the temple of the true God. Though similar in plan to that of Solomon, the new edifice was[211] less beautiful and of less majestic proportions; the old men who recalled the former one wept. This building stood for nearly five centuries, passing through the domination of the Seleucidæ and the Roman conquest of Pompey without being sacked or demolished.

Then Herod, the Idumæan, made king of the Jews by the Romans, conceived the idea of making himself popular with the people by rebuilding the temple in all the splendour of Solomon. The execution of his plan, which included enlargement,—Josephus says he doubled the original size,—required the complete demolition of the former structure and the rebuilding of the ancient terraces and the gates crowning them. The only portion of the old temple that he seems to have preserved was the eastern gate or gate of Solomon. The ancient plan, however, was apparently not departed from in the main.

The great outer court was surrounded on three sides by a double colonnade of Doric columns twenty-five cubits high. On the south side was a basilica, i.e. “a building with three unequal naves supported by columns.” This enclosure was the Court of the Gentiles, and was open to all visitors. A barrier only three cubits high prevented the ungodly from entering the enclosure reserved for the Israelites, which comprised the Court of Women and the Court of Men, or of Israel. The Court of Women had at its four corners square halls serving for the supplies of the temple, for ablutions, or other pious exercises.

From this court three gates led through a group of buildings to the Court of Israel. The principal one of these gates, celebrated as the Nicanor Gate, had doors of Corinthian bronze, and was of beautiful architectural proportions and rich construction. The Court of Israel, which was reserved for men who had performed certain acts of purification, was eleven cubits wide. The halls surrounding it on three sides, which had façades furnished with porticoes, were appendages of the divine cult. Each was consecrated to a special service. Here the skins of victims were salted and washed; the musical instruments, the salt, the eternal fire, the wood were kept here; and here was the hall of the sanhedrim.

Finally came the Court of the Priests, in the middle of which were the temple proper and the altar of burnt offerings. The temple stood on a terrace six cubits high, so that there was thus a difference of level of eight and a half metres between the platform of the temple and the Court of the Gentiles. Its architectural features were essentially the same as those of Solomon’s temple. This temple of the Jews was one of the most majestic works of architecture that antiquity produced. The succession of enclosed courts rising one above another and crowned by the gigantic white marble pylons of the sanctuary is a conception of genius that was realised only here, and all antiquity had but one voice in praise of its imposing grandeur.

The House of the Eternal was embellished with an unprecedented luxury. Costly woods, gold, silver, ivory, precious stones even—nothing was spared by this people that was so jealous of its God. The accessories of the cult, moreover, sacred vessels, knives, basins, utensils of every kind, were works in which caster and engraver vied with one another in the display of their art.

But it must not be forgotten that the artists who decorated the ancient temple were Phœnicians; and as the Phœnicians always limited themselves to imitation of the Egyptians and the Assyrians, their technique has a hybrid character, which, like Syria itself from a geographical point of view, is a sort of compromise between Asia and Egypt.d

The race which had so little influence on the art of the world and so much upon its literature, religion, commerce, and destinies, has had the[212] strangest of all national fates. To the Christian it is as the escape of the soul from the corruption and death of the body. Newmane has thus closed his History of the Hebrew Monarchy, in words that may fitly serve as finis here:

“It is not intended here to pursue the later fortunes of the Jewish nation. We have seen its monarchy rise and fall. In its progress, the prophetical and the sacerdotal elements were developed side by side; the former flourished in its native soil for a brief period, but was transplanted over all the world, to impart a lasting glory to Jewish monotheism. The latter, while in union with and subservient to the free spirit of prophecy, had struck its roots into the national heart, and grown up as a constitutional pillar to the monarchy: but when unchecked by prophet or by king, and invested with the supreme temporal and spiritual control of the restored nation, it dwindled to a mere scrubby plant, whose fruit was dry and thorny learning, or apples of Sodom, which are as ashes in the mouth. Such was the unexpansive and literal materialism of the later rabbis, out of which has proceeded nearly all that is unamiable in the Jewish character: but the Roman writers who saw that side only of the nation, little knew how high a value the retrospect of the world’s history would set on the agency of this scattered and despised people.

“For if Greece was born to teach art and philosophy, and Rome to diffuse the processes of law and government, surely Judea has been the wellspring of religious wisdom to a world besotted by frivolous or impure fancies. To these three nations it has been given to cultivate and develop principles characteristic of themselves: to the Greeks, Beauty and Science; to the Romans, Jurisprudence and Municipal Rule; but to the Jews, the Holiness of God and his Sympathy with his chosen servants. That this was the true calling of the nation, the prophets were inwardly conscious at an early period. They discerned that Jerusalem was as a centre of bright light to a dark world; and while groaning over the monstrous fictions which imposed on the nations under the name of religion, they announced that out of Zion should go forth the Law and the word of Jehovah. When they did not see, yet they believed, that the proud and despiteful heathen should at length gladly learn of their wisdom, and rejoice to honour them. In this faith the younger Isaiah closed his magnificent strains, addressing Jerusalem:

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CHAPTER XVI
THE PROPHETS AND THE HISTORY OF SEMITIC STYLE

Written Specially for the Present Work

By Dr. D. H. MÜLLER

Professor in the University of Vienna; Member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, etc.

The Prophets prophesied in a far-off land, many, many hundred years ago. They prophesied to a small nation that dwelt in a small country and established a petty kingdom. The petty kingdom has been crushed under the iron heel of the world’s advance, the nation scattered to every quarter under heaven; but the writings of the prophets remain; they have come down to us in the original text; they have been translated into every language and are read by every nation.

To this day the words of the prophets resound from every pulpit, in admonition and menace, for comfort and salvation. The substance of the prophetic discourses is sufficiently familiar, and these words spoken thousands of years ago do not fail of their effect to-day. From the depths of the heart they welled forth, divine inspiration was their source, they were addressed to men burdened with passions and frailties; and hence they have kept their power through centuries and tens of centuries.

We will not at present concern ourselves with the substance of the prophetic books nor with the development of prophecy; we will consider the form of the prophetic discourses. Men prized the substance so highly that they neglected to examine the form. Are they prose or poetry? Even this question has not been answered. A Greek oration is minutely analysed; we know the rules of rhetoric, and divide each oration into its component parts. A Greek or Latin poem is classed as drama, epic, lyric, etc., and its metre is studied and criticised. What rules govern the composition of the prophetic books?

MAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF STYLE

On the basis and in pursuance of my previous researches I advance the thesis that “the main characteristics of the style of the prophetic writings are strophic composition and responsion.” What a strophe is every one knows; nevertheless I will expressly state that by “strophe” I mean a group of lines or verses, standing in relation to other verses, and yet forming in and by themselves a compact whole.

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In Semitic poetry or rhetoric, in so far as we may speak of it, the “responsion” has hitherto been an unknown quantity; but we are familiar with it in classical literature, the best examples being the choruses of the Greek dramas. The strophe and antistrophe correspond in metre, in form, and in the division of the periods; they frequently correspond in substance also; and this correspondence is often marked by verbal consonance or assonance. This peculiarity, which seems to be of infrequent occurrence and trifling importance in Greek literature, has been recognised and named by the exact observation and penetrative criticism of classical philology; in Semitic poetry, where the responsion, combined with the strophic structure, to which it serves as the element of crystallisation, must be regarded as of the very essence of the poem or discourse, it has neither been explained nor named.

AN EXAMPLE FROM AMOS

I will take an example of the responsion from Amos, the first prophet who cast his discourses into literary form, Chaps. vii.-viii.

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This vision of Amos sets forth a series of punishments which have overtaken or threaten to overtake the land. “The first two refer to dangers already past at the time of the discourse, the last two to the future.” In form, again, the first two and the last two exhibit a close affinity with one another. All four strophes have eight lines apiece and begin with the same phrase; in all four the second line begins in the same fashion, but proceeds differently even in the verses of each couple. In the third line the couples diverge entirely, the twin strophes alone remaining in close correspondence.

This method of working on a definite plan was a favourite one with the prophets. The change of picture in the same framework produces a lasting impression, and the repetition of the same form with a different substance fixes the mind on the thing seen, which is in danger of vanishing all too quickly. The responsion in verses apparently different is very noteworthy; as are lines 7 and 8 respectively, where the desolate places of Isaac correspond to the songs of the temple changed into howlings, and the rising with the sword of the third strophe to the many dead bodies of the fourth.

AN EXAMPLE FROM EZEKIEL

I take another example of correspondence between the strophes from the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, Chap. xxi.

1) And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying,	6) And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying,
2) Son of man,	7) Son of man,
Set thy face toward the South.	Set thy face toward Jerusalem
And drop thy word toward the South,	And drop thy word toward the Sanctuaries,
And prophesy against the forest of the field in the South;	And prophesy against the land of Israel;
3) And say to the forest of the South:	8) And say to the land of Israel:
Hear the word of the Lord;
Thus saith the Lord God:	Thus saith the Lord:
Behold I will kindle a fire in thee	Behold I am against thee,
And it shall devour every green tree in thee and every dry tree.	And will draw forth my sword from its sheath
	And will cut off from thee the righteous and the wicked.
	9) Seeing that I will cut off from thee the righteous and the wicked.
The flaming fire shall not be quenched,	Therefore shall my sword go forth out of its sheath against all flesh
And all faces shall be burnt thereby.
From the north to the south.	From the north to the south.
4) And all flesh shall see	10) And all flesh shall know
That I, the Lord, have kindled it:	That I the Lord have drawn forth my sword out of its sheath;
It shall not be quenched.	It shall not return any more.

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THE SONG OF THE SWORD

One of Ezekiel’s grandest poems is the Song of the Sword. The sword from the North in the hand of Nebuchadrezzar comes forth against Jerusalem and destroys the last remnant of life in the perishing city. The introduction to the Song of the Sword is an allegory such as Ezekiel loves; he looks in prophetic trance towards the south and sees a fire approaching from thence which seizes upon the forest of the south and devours the green tree and the dry. Then he solves the riddle, thus interpreting the vision. By placing the riddle and the interpretation in parallel columns, we obtain a classic example of strict responsion.

As a third example of the responsion I select Matthew vii. 13, 14,

Enter ye in by the narrow gate:
For wide is the gate,	For narrow is the gate,
And broad is the way,	And straitened the way,
That leadeth to destruction	That leadeth unto life,
And many be they that enter in thereby.	And few be they that find it.

In order to grasp the fundamental idea, that of the responsion, let us once more clearly define that of the strophe and antistrophe.

STROPHE AND ANTISTROPHE DEFINED

The strophe consists of a number of verses combined so as to form a larger whole; it contains a sheaf of ideas which express a single idea, just as a sheaf of rays unites to form a single light.

The antistrophe represents an analogous or contrasting idea, which is, like the former, the sum or product of another sheaf of ideas, and answers to the former in some or all of its component parts.

Accordingly the responsion, thus conceived of, is the formal expression of this relation of two or more strophes to one another. Where the principle of the responsion is strictly carried out each line of the first strophe corresponds to the corresponding line of the second, either verbally or substantially, and in the latter case either by parallelism or antithesis. The similarity of the majority of lines which thus correspond throws the differences at certain points into strong relief and renders them all the more forcible and impressive.

The highest organic structures have been analysed and found to be built up from a single cell. All the preliminary conditions which enable the cell to form organisms lie dormant in it already, but the germ cannot become an organic being except by a slow process of development. What we now have to do is to find the germ from which the responsion has developed; and the[217] germ of this phenomenon is the parallelismus membrorum which constitutes the vital element of apothegm and verse in the Semitic languages, and more particularly in Hebrew. But two things may be parallel one with another not only by analogy but by contrast. The parallelismus membrorum places side by side two or more ideas, analogous but not identical, and adapted by their slight diversity to give an image of what the poet desires to convey. Such sentences abound in the prophetic discourses, as in Isaiah i. 3,

And Amos ix. 2,

The idea, being presented under a different figure, is repeated without producing an effect of tedium or monotony.

What the parallelismus membrorum is to the verse or sentence, that the responsion is to the strophe or discourse.

By slight variations on the responsion two literary forms were evolved to supply an æsthetic want. When two strophes stand in such a relation that the conclusion of the one answers to the beginning of that which succeeds it, the result is the concatenation, which unites two strophes with one another and leads the way from one field of thought to another. Again, if the beginning of one strophe or group of strophes corresponds with the conclusion of the same, the result is the inclusion, the object of which is to emphasise the logical and æsthetic unity of the said strophe or group of strophes.

An example of concatenation may be cited from Isaiah, Chap. i.

One column begins—

and ends—

The second strophe-column begins—

Here, as we see, the beginning of the second column answers to the beginning of the first and is linked with its conclusion.

Habakkuk (ii. 11) affords another example,

(end of strophe)

Herewith the image of a building rises before the prophet as before the reader. A thought flashes through the prophet’s mind, and he proceeds,

(beginning of strophe)

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And as an example of the inclusion we may quote Jeremiah xlvi. 20-24:

(beginning of strophe)

(end of strophe)

In the second chapter of Zephaniah, we find an example of the two-lined inclusion:

(beginning of strophe)

(end of strophe)

Thus the three literary forms, besides the strophic measure, which govern the composition of the prophetic books are—the responsion, the concatenation, and the inclusion.

If the responsion is the expression of the outward and inward symmetry—of substance and form—proper to two strophic organisms which, though they may be far apart, show their relation one to another by similarity of character and structure, and correspond to each other more or less, either by analogy or antithesis, the concatenation may be regarded as the complement and counterpart of the responsion, inasmuch as it unites the two strophic organisms by an outward and inward bond—of substance and form. By this means the two are combined to constitute a greater whole. For this reason the concatenation does not run parallel to the responsion, but joins the end of one strophe to the beginning of a second, and leads from one field of thought to another. The inclusion may be regarded as, in a certain sense, the reverse of the concatenation. As the concatenation brings about the conjunction of two strophes, so the inclusion constitutes the boundary line that cuts one strophic organism off from the next. The concatenation obliterates the distinctive character of two separate strophic organisms, the inclusion rounds off and defines a strophe, or group of strophes, and emphasises its distinctive character.

AN EXAMPLE FROM ISAIAH

I cannot refrain from giving at least one example from Isaiah of a strophe-column, which corresponds with a parallel column of similar structure. I select the famous vision of Chapter vi. for the purpose. It may be regarded as one of the earliest prophecies of Isaiah, in conception perhaps the earliest of all. The Tesetes tradition gives the passage as a single whole, without break or paragraph. In dealing with a prophet of Isaiah’s rank, and one so pre-eminent in the composition of these prophetic discourses, we[219] naturally seek to discover a definite plan in the composition of this vision, and such a plan does, as a matter of fact, become manifest to the critical student. The vision begins, “And I saw the Lord,” and the continuation and complement opens with the words (verse 8), “And I heard the voice of the Lord.” The passage, accordingly, falls into two parts, one describing what the prophet saw, the other what he heard. If we examine the two parts more closely we are struck by the phrase, “Then said I,” occurring in the one after he had seen all, and in the other after he had heard all. Hence it appears that the grand vision consists of two images, which correspond with each other exactly.

1) And I saw the Lord	8) And I heard the voice of the Lord, saying,
Sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up,	Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?
And his train filled the temple.	Then I said, Here am I, send me.
2) Above him stood the Seraphim:
Each one had six wings;	9) And he said, Go, and tell this people
With twain he covered his face,	Hear ye indeed, but understand not;
And with twain he covered his feet,	And see ye indeed, but perceive not.
And with twain he did fly.
3) And one cried unto another, and said,	10) How fat is the heart of this people
Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts.	And their ears how heavy,
The whole earth is full of his glory.	And their eyes as it were shut.
	Else might they see with their eyes
4) And the foundations of the thresholds were moved at the voice of him that cried,	And hear with their ears
	And understand with their heart,
	And turn again, and be healed.
And the house was filled with smoke.
5) Then said I, Woe is me!	11) Then said I, Lord, how long?
Because I am a man of unclean lips, etc.	And he answered, Until the cities be waste, without inhabitant, etc.

Besides these two-column discourses, of which we have just seen an example, we find three-column discourses, especially in Micah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. They frequently consist of three parallel parts, each divided into two or three strophes. The strophes of each column correspond on the one hand, the corresponding stanzas of each part on the other, so that we have, if we may so express it, a vertical and a horizontal responsion. The double responsion gives, as it were, the fixed points between which the network of the strophes is outspread. A classic example of this method is the great discourse in the ninth chapter of Jeremiah, which belongs to the best period, and the authenticity of which is unreservedly admitted by Biblical criticism. Lack of space unfortunately forbids me to give it here arranged according to the principles I have laid down.

It is time to observe that the same laws may be shown to prevail in cuneiform inscriptions and the works of the prophet Mohammed.

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AN ASSYRIAN EXAMPLE

As an example of responsion I give a passage from the great inscription of Sargon (L. 186-194).

That city and that palace,	(But) its ruler,
Asshur, the father of the gods,	Its royal architect,
In the glory of his shining countenance	May he attain to old age,
	May he obtain power
Graciously may he look upon it,	For ever and ever,
To days far hence	May its maker grow old.
May he proclaim its renewing.
With his shining mouth may he decree:	With his sounding lips may he speak:
The protecting genius,	He who dwelleth in them,
The rescuing God,	In health of body,
Day and night	And joy of heart,
Let them rule therein,	And gladness of spirit,
Nor let their power cease.	May he rejoice therein,
	May he taste the joy of life.

A BABYLONIAN EXAMPLE

A very instructive example of the strophe combined with responsion is afforded by the second Babylonian version of the Creation, which has been for the first time translated and published by T. G. Pinches. It consists of forty lines, and is arranged in four strophes of ten lines each. The responsion is clear and vivid to the last degree, the end harks back to the beginning with manifest intention. The concatenation constitutes, as it were, a rivet between the strophes. I will confine myself at present to quoting the beginning of the first three and the ending of the last two strophes.

Str. I (beginning),

Str. I (end),

Str. II (beginning),

Str. II (end),

Str. III (beginning),

The age of this Babylonian story of the Creation probably goes back to at least the middle of the second millennium of our chronology, and in this very ancient specimen of Semitic poetry we find this poetic form fully developed.

[221]

EXAMPLES FROM THE KORAN

It seems hardly possible to believe that the Arab prophet, who regarded it as an insult to be described as a poet, should have employed definite literary forms, and more particularly the strophe combined with the responsion, in his revelations. Yet such is the fact. In most cases the strophes rise and fall in harmony with his abrupt and agitated style (similar strophes occur in the prophetic books), but regular strophes are to be found, and in those that rise and fall we can trace a definite law which altogether excludes the idea of chance. The occurrence of the strophe combined with the responsion in the Koran, is a point of the utmost importance to the hypothesis of strophic composition, because the correctness of the arrangement of the Koran in lines seems to be assured both by the rhyme and by tradition. I will bring to your notice in this place an example of the regular strophe from the Koran. In the thirty-sixth surah we come upon a passage framed, as it were, between two verses, which form the inclusion.

Between these two lie five strophes of four lines each.

Str. I, begins (v. 29),

Str. II, begins (v. 33),

Str. III, begins (v. 37),

Str. IV, begins (v. 41),

Str. V (v. 45), takes up the burden of the first, and begins,

I will also subjoin an example of the falling strophe combined with the responsion, from sura 56, vv. 57-72.[222]

This passage, which is complete in itself, consists of four stanzas, of 5-4-3-2 verses, all of them diverse presentations of the same idea and alike in construction.

The whole group is enclosed between two single verses which correspond to one another, and form, as it were, a frame to it.

An exact observation of the Koran shows that strophes of the most varied structure occur in it, often combined with the responsion, and held together by all kinds of other literary forms. The principal characteristic of the strophe is still unity of idea, which, being in its nature relative, is subject to great variation. Nor is the strophe the final and greatest unit. As the strophe is formed by the combination of several lines or sentences, so a group is formed of a number of strophes and a great systematically constructed discourse of several groups. The same laws which govern the sentence and the verse prevail in the structure of the strophe and the formation of the group. Parallelism and antithesis are the principal elements of form in sentence and verse; they are likewise the forces that struggle for expression, and assert themselves in the structure of the strophe and the formation of the group.

The question may be raised: How did Mohammed come to adopt this form of composition? For the present, I can only advance a hypothesis in reply. Mohammed received the first impulse to meditate upon matters of religion from various wise and learned men, and through them became acquainted with the principal doctrines of Judaism and Christianity; and in like manner he must have acquired from them the tradition of this form of poetry, a form which, unlike the poetry of the heathen, was not devoted to the delight and joy of life, but to religious meditation and to ancient and pious legend. This form of composition may have been practised and preserved by the old soothsayers (Kahin) after it had been generally superseded by the new-fangled and rigidly metrical poetry. Mohammed may possibly have acquired the secret of this form of composition from such a Kahin, who had meditated upon the nature of religion. He therefore rightly rejected the title of poet, and with equal right called himself the “Seal of the Prophet”; for he spoke and wrote in the style of the prophets of old.

[223]

THE PREVALENCE OF STROPHIC FORM AND RESPONSION EXPLAINED

A careful consideration of the laws of strophic form and responsion which can be shown to exist, though in unequal measure, in the three great Semitic literatures, leads us to the conclusion that there are only three possible explanations of their occurrence. Either we have to do with a phenomenon evolved independently in different parts of the world, or these literary forms were invented by one nation and borrowed and imitated by the others, or, lastly, they must all be referred to a common origin.

The three nations among whom we find these literary forms are so widely separated in space and time that there can be no question of borrowing between them. But, again, phenomena so original and complicated could not appear in different places without something of a common origin.

Accordingly, the only possible assumption is that they may all be referred to a common origin, and that even in primitive times religious poetry was governed by these literary forms. They have been preserved in the Bible, the cuneiform inscriptions, and the Koran.

The establishment of the fact that strophic composition combined with responsion is to be found in all three Semitic literatures naturally drew my attention to a similar phenomenon in the choruses of Greek tragedy, a phenomenon noted and recognised by classical philology, though not treated with the consideration it deserves. Too much stress has been laid on the metrical uniformity of the strophes, too little on their substantial correspondence, and more especially on the way in which the latter is interwoven with assonance and verbal responsion. A certain amount of critical acumen is required for the recognition of these subtly concealed and delicate allusions and antitheses, but when once they are recognised, we cannot doubt that in their choruses the Greek tragedians employed the same artistic methods as the prophets. Strophe and antistrophe are modelled on the same pattern, not in rhythm and syntax alone, but in idea. Now and then the correspondence may be seen and shown to exist line for line, but in most cases it is found only in single lines, though almost always in such as occur in the same place, a circumstance that proves that the correspondence is not due to chance, but that a definite artistic intention was at work to create a certain symmetry between the two strophes.

EXAMPLES FROM THE GREEK TRAGEDIES

I subjoin a few examples in support of this assertion. From the Prometheus of Æschylus, 397-414.

[224]

The curious responsion of these two strophes is very interesting, interwoven as it is with most of the lines, now by verbal similarity (as in στένω and στονόεν), now by similarity of sense (tears and weeps), now by antithesis (gods and men), and lastly, by an etymological play upon words (νόμος and νέμονται). In addition we have the contrast of ideas in the last lines, in the one strophe Zeus constrains the gods, in the other men mourn complaining. Again in the Œdipus Rex of Sophocles, 1, 863-910:

Strophe I	Antistrophe I
Beginning.
863) Be it my lot to keep	873)’Tis insolence begets the tyrant,
That reverent purity of word and deed, etc.	Insolence, foolishly puffed up, etc.
Conclusion.
870) Ne’er shall forgetfulness lull them to rest:	880) Rivalry that brings
Weal to the state I ask not God to end:	A great god in them dwells, nor ever waxeth old.
	Never shall I depart from God my champion.
Strophe II	Antistrophe II
Beginning.
883) But a man who walks in haughty insolence of word or deed,	897) Never shall I more in reverence go to Delphi’s holy place
Fearing not the hand of Justice, nor revering shrines of gods.	Nor the shrine of Abæ, nor Olympia.
Conclusion.
895) But if such deeds as these are held in honour	909) No longer in Apollo’s worship manifest,
What offerings need I bring the gods?	But honours to the gods go all unpaid.

This form of strophic construction is worthy of note, because not only do the strophe and antistrophe correspond, but the couples of strophes answer to one another; in other words, besides the vertical responsion we find a horizontal responsion (as in Jeremiah ix.), expressed sometimes by the use of identical words, sometimes by antithesis.

Euripides, Bacchæ.

[225]

In the strophe we have the shy and timid fawn which takes flight from the pasture and rejoices at her escape from the pursuit of the hunters, in the antistrophe the presumptuous man who transgresses the laws of nature and custom. In the one the timid flight, in the other the subtle (ποικίλος) lying in wait of the gods; the fawn escapes the huntsman, man escapes not the gods. The antithesis in lines 4-5 is most striking. The last lines of both strophes are identical.

A careful study of the responsion in all the wonderful variety of form it presents will suffice to show, even from these few examples, that they bear an amazing resemblance to the forms exhibited by Semitic poetry, particularly by the prophetic writings.

SEMITIC INFLUENCE AND THE GREEK CHORUS

Instead of attempting to prove here that the Greek chorus came into being under Semitic influences I will subjoin the opinion of a classical philologist who has studied the question more minutely than any one else. I refer to D. P. Thomas M. Wehofer (Untersuchungen zur altchristlichen Epistolographie, p. 16).

“For the rest, long before the Christian era Greek literature had received a strong admixture of Semitic art-forms. For, as has been convincingly proved, in my opinion, by Dr. D. H. Müller (Die Propheten, p. 244 seq.), the Greek choruses, those splendid productions of Greek poetry, must be referred for their origin to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, whither (according to the tradition preserved by Euripides in the Phœnissæ) ‘chosen Phœnician virgins were sent from Tyre to conduct the service of the god.’ It is evident that the Greek chorus, the germ from which Greek tragedy was destined to be evolved, followed the same path as Greek painting and plastic art.

“The Greek spirit took possession of all the elements of beauty it encountered, not to preserve them in a petrified state, but by its own working to shape and perfect them, and bring them to the highest conceivable pitch of development.”

The genius of Greece recognised the power of Semitic poetry; it gladly left it its soaring flight, but brought into it the noble feeling for form which was its own peculiar gift, and to ideas and responsion added metrical symmetry. The choruses present a happy combination of the Semitic spirit and the Greek sense of beauty.

The assumption that the Greek chorus, with its strophe and antistrophe, is a Semitic invention is not without bearing on the history of the earliest ages of Semitic poetry. If the Greeks borrowed the chorus, it must have been in use in the religious worship of the Phœnicians. If, in connection with this fact, we consider the responsion in the strophes of the prophetic writings, which exhibit precisely the same method of composition and[226] literary form as the Greek choruses, we are forced upon the hypothesis that the earliest form of prophetic composition must be regarded as a chorus with strophes and antistrophes.

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[227]

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter a is reserved for Editorial Matter.]

Chapter I. Land and People

b L. Ménard, Histoire des anciens peuples de l’Orient.

c B. Stade, Geschichte des Volkes Israel.

d The Holy Bible.

e Strabo, Γεωγραφικά.

f Tacitus, Annales.

g Justin, The History of the World.

h Ammianus Marcellinus, Rerum Gestarum libri.

i Comte de Volney, Voyage en Égypte et en Syrie.

j J. G. Eickhorn, De Antiquis Historiæ Arabum Monumentes.

Chapter II. Origin and Early History

b A. H. Sayce, The Early History of the Hebrews.

c Max Löhr, Geschichte des Volkes Israel.

d Wolfgang von Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit.

e B. Stade, Geschichte des Volkes Israel.

f The Holy Bible.

g L. Ménard, Histoire des anciens peuples de l’Orient.

h Eduard Reuss, Introduction to the Holy Bible.

Chapter III. The Judges

b Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (translated from the Greek by William Whiston).

c Salomon Munk, La Palestine.

d L. Ménard, Histoire des anciens peuples de l’Orient.

e The Holy Bible.

Chapter IV. Samuel and Saul

b J. E. Renan, Histoire du peuple d’Israël.

c Max Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums.

d The Holy Bible.

e The Talmud.

Chapter V. David’s Reign

b Rudolf Kittel, Geschichte der Hebräer.

c J. E. Renan, Histoire du peuple d’Israël.

d The Talmud.

e Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (translated from the Greek by William Whiston).

f The Holy Bible.

Chapter VI. Solomon in his Glory

b Rudolf Kittel, Geschichte der Hebräer.

c The Holy Bible.

d F. W. Newman, A History of the Hebrew Monarchy.

Chapter VII. Decay and Captivity

b L. Ménard, Histoire des anciens peuples de l’Orient.

c Rudolf Kittel, Geschichte der Hebräer.

d The Moabite Stone.

e A. H. Sayce, The Early History of the Hebrews.

fAssyrian Inscriptions.

g Salomon Munk, La Palestine.

h Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (translated from the Greek by William Whiston).

i The Holy Bible.

j The Apocrypha.

k Gaston C. C. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient.

Chapter VIII. The Return from Captivity

b The Holy Bible.

c J. E. Renan, Histoire du peuple d’Israël.

d L. Ménard, Histoire des anciens peuples de l’Orient.

e Salomon Munk, La Palestine.

f Xenophon, Cyropædia (translated from the Greek by J. S. Watson and Henry Dale).

g The Apocrypha.

h Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (translated from the Greek by William Whiston).

[228]

Chapter IX. From Nehemiah to Antiochus

b David Cassel, Lehrbuch der jüdischen Geschichte und Litteratur.

c Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (translated from the Greek by William Whiston).

d The Talmud (the Mishnah).

e J. Jahn, The Hebrew Commonwealth.

f The Apocrypha (The Books of the Maccabees).

g George Smith, The Hebrew People.

h Asaria de’ Rossi, Meor Enajim.

Chapter X. The Maccabæan War

b F. Hitzig, Geschichte des Volkes Israel.

c Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (translated from the Greek by William Whiston).

d George Smith, The Hebrew People.

e J. Jahn, The Hebrew Commonwealth.

f The Holy Bible.

g The Apocrypha.

h Polybius, Καθολικὴ κοινὴ ἱστορία.

Chapter XI. From the Maccabees to the Romans

b Georg Weber, Allgemeine Weltgeschichte.

c The Apocrypha (The Book of Wisdom).

d George Smith, The Hebrew People.

e Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (translated from the Greek by William Whiston).

Chapter XII. The Rise of Christianity

b L. Ménard, Histoire des anciens peuples de l’Orient.

c Flavius Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews and the Wars of the Jews (translated from the Greek by William Whiston).

d The Holy Bible.

e Salomon Munk, La Palestine.

f Origen, φιλοσοφούμενα.

g Cornelius Tacitus, The Works of Cornelius Tacitus (translated from the Latin by A. Murphy).

h J. E. Renan, Histoire du peuple d’Israël.

i E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

j Suetonius, Vitæ duodecim Cæsarum.

k Dion Cassius, Ῥωμαικὴ ἱστορία.

l Clemens Romanus, Epistolæ.

Chapter XIII. The Revolt Against Rome

b Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews.

c L. Ménard, Histoire des anciens peuples de l’Orient.

d Salomon Munk, La Palestine.

e Thucydides, Συγγραφή.

f F. R. Lamennais, Essai sur l’indifférence en matière de la religion.

Chapter XIV. The Fall of Jerusalem

b H. H. Milman, History of the Jews.

c Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews.

d Salomon Munk, La Palestine.

e L. Ménard, Histoire des anciens peuples de l’Orient.

f Dion Cassius, Ῥωμαικὴ ἱστορία.

g The Talmud (Mishnah and Gemara).

Chapter XV. Hebrew Civilisation

b G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History.

c E. Ledrain, L’histoire d’Israël.

d E. Babelon, Manuel d’archéologie orientale.

e F. W. Newman, History of the Hebrew Monarchy.

f The Holy Bible.

g Baruch Spinoza, Opera posthuma.

Chapter XVI. The Prophets and the History of Semitic Style

The Holy Bible.

T. G. Pinches, “Babylonian Story of the Creation” (in Records of the Past).

Thos. M. Wehofer, Untersuchungen zur altchristlichen Epistolographie.

D. H. Müller, Die Propheten in ihrer ursprünglichen Form.

D. H. Müller, Strophen und Responsion.

Felix Perles, article in Wiener Zeitschrift für Kunde des Morgenlandes, X, 112, 71.

J. Zeenner, article in Zeitschrift für Katholische Theologie, XX, 378.

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[229]

A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL

BASED ON THE WORKS QUOTED, CITED, OR EDITORIALLY CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF THE PRESENT HISTORY; WITH CRITICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

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[239]

PART V

THE HISTORY OF PHŒNICIA

BASED CHIEFLY UPON THE FOLLOWING AUTHORITIES

A. H. L. HEEREN, JOHN KENRICK, O. MELTZER, T. MOMMSEN,
F. C. MOVERS, R. PIETSCHMANN

WITH ADDITIONAL CITATIONS FROM

APPIANUS ALEXANDRINUS, ARISTOTLE, ARRIAN, THE HOLY BIBLE,
C. K. J. VON BUNSEN, PHILO BYBLIUS, QUINTUS CURTIUS,
W. DEECKE, DIODORUS, MAX DUNCKER, ERATOSTHENES,
EUPOLEMUS, ED. GERHARD, E. GIBBON, P. F.
J. GOSSELIN, GEORGE GROTE, HANNO,
HERODOTUS, F. HOMMEL, ISOCRATES,
ST. JEROME (HIERONYMUS),
FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS, JUSTIN, MENANDER OF EPHESUS, POMPONIUS MELA,
B. G. NIEBUHR, J. P. PETERS, JAS. RENNELL, VICOMTE DE ROUGÉ,
SALLUSTIUS, SANCHONIATHON, PLINIUS SECUNDUS, STRABO,
THEOPHILUS, THUCYDIDES, GEORG WEBER, WILLIAM
OF TYRE, H. WUTTKE, XENOPHON

TOGETHER WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY ON

THE INDIVIDUALITY OF PHŒNICIAN HISTORY AND ORIGIN
OF THE NAME

BY

RICHARD PIETSCHMANN

[240]

Copyright, 1904,
By HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.

All rights reserved.

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[241]

PART V.—PHŒNICIA

TABLE OF CONTENTS

	Page
Individuality of Phœnician History and Origin of the Name	243
Phœnician History in Outline	246
Carthaginian History in Outline	251
Chapter I. Land and People	255
Chapter II. Early History and Influences	263
Chapter III. The Phœnician Time of Power	279
Chapter IV. Phœnicia under the Persians	289
Chapter V. Phœnicia under the Greeks, the Romans, and the Saracens	301
Chapter VI. The Story of Carthage	308
Chapter VII. Phœnician Commerce	329
Chapter VIII. Phœnician Civilisation	346
Appendix A. Classical Traditions	356
Brief Reference-List of Authorities by Chapters	361
A General Bibliography of Phœnician History	363

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[242]
[243]

INDIVIDUALITY OF PHŒNICIAN HISTORY AND ORIGIN OF THE NAME

By RICHARD PIETSCHMANN

Translated for this work from his Geschichte der Phönizier.

The history of both the Egyptian and the Babylonian peoples is closely bound up with the territorial history of a limited tract of land, while with the Phœnicians it is quite otherwise. Their history is in a far less degree the history of their land. Among all civilised nations of antiquity, Phœnicia was the first that, maintaining its national individuality and its form of civilisation, learned to become independent of the clod of earth upon which this individuality had been developed. It was the first that, by means of emigration and the founding of settlements, gained sufficient space to attain to full historical importance.

Upon the determination of the balance of power of the old Orient, upon the political life of their neighbours, the petty states of this district in reality never exerted a positive influence. At the most, their existence and their policy of the moment helped in the decision of some questions of relatively small importance in the course of world-historic events. Would we be more interested in the history of Tyre and Sidon than in that of Gaza and Ashdod, if the first communication of the East with the West had not been opened chiefly by the Phœnicians; and if a Phœnician colony, Carthage, a most dangerous rival first to the Greek towns of Sicily, and afterward to the rising world-power of Rome, had not fought the bitter struggle for supremacy on the coast-lands of the western half of the Mediterranean—a struggle which, after a long past poor in feats of arms, immortalised the name of the Punic race? The fame that illuminates the figures of the generals Hamilcar and Hannibal is reflected on the history of the mother country.

It is no new thing in the history of races for a reorganisation of the national life of an active people to take place in its colonies and emigrant fragments. We may cite the foundation of the states of the Veragri, and of the Normans, and the rise of the United States of America out of the settlements of New England. But, as these examples show, this seldom comes to pass without the evidence of considerable sacrifice of national individuality. Generally such new political formations involve at the same time a more or less complete change of national character, a great portion of which is sacrificed[244] in the adaptation to changed conditions of life; but few traces of such a change can be observed amid the Phœnicians in their colonial cities.

Moreover, we are only now, since excavations in Greece have brought to light considerable quantities of remains from pre-Homeric times, beginning to put a correct estimate upon the sum of fruitful suggestions and finished products which the Phœnician seafarers and traders together with their wares brought to the nations of the West, and above all to Greek art. In this way, the expansion of the Phœnicians exercised an enduring influence upon the whole course of the history of civilisation in all later times.

What fitted them to become, in this sense also, an historically important people was, besides the tenacity of will with which they pursued their aims, a high degree of intellectual receptivity, which enabled them to assimilate with ease the attainments of foreign culture; and also the adaptability and insight with which they could make themselves at home even in entirely foreign surroundings.

Of the favourableness, or unfavourableness of circumstances, they were no more independent than any other people on earth has been. It even appears that, in accordance with some law, they achieved results only when, in the course of their undertakings, they came in contact with nations whose civilisation was still in process of formation, or at least, during the period of contact, did not attain to any importance of its own.

But the skill with which they were able to turn just such circumstances to their own advantage, and to continue a national existence in the midst of such an environment (this highly developed capacity for adaptation was their peculiar inheritance) was something that at least would have been utterly impossible with the cultured races of the Nile and the Euphrates. It was chiefly due to the fact that, not national elements, but those which had been learned and borrowed from foreign races, predominated in Phœnician culture. This made culture a comfortable garment, took from it and its wearers the awkwardness that would have developed in case of a more independent origin, kept it free from many fast chains and immutable faults which come with a uniform national culture and an isolated history of development.

As the scene of the history of the Phœnicians varies in extent with the location of their settlements, Phœnicia is less a fixed geographical idea than a name, which would simply designate in general that portion of the Syrian coast, whose chief population was of Phœnician descent.

Accordingly, the origin of the name “Phœnicia” (Phoinike) which the Greeks gave to this stretch of coast, is to be found in the Greek name of the inhabitants: “Phoinix,” the plural “Phoinix” and not “Phoinikes” from the name of the country.

“Phoinix” is formed like “Cilix,” the “Cilician,” and denotes the Phœnician as a man of reddish-brown complexion, as in Greek “phoinos” is the name of a colour varying from a brownish to a deep red. The same root which is in “phoinos” and “Phoinix” is also found in “Pœnus,” “the Punic,” which was the form given by the Italian races to the name they heard from the mouths of the Greeks of Greece proper (Hellas).

Word formations like that of Phoinix, not being very common in Greek as names of races, the Greeks did not always keep in mind the fundamental meaning of Phoinix, and very early began to devise artificial etymologies for it, which have in part proved to be quite arbitrary and absurd but in part have found approval among modern savants. Nor have the latter, on their side, neglected to increase the number of unsuccessful attempts at interpretation. It is not necessary to enter here into a discussion of the majority of[245] these explanations, upon a refutation of the assertion that the Phœnicians received their name from Phoinix, a brother of Cadmus, or that the word “dyers in red” designates them as “purple merchants,” or even “robbers” and “murderers,” and other such notions, for they are now things of the past. Nevertheless they are in some degree on the right track, inasmuch as in them Phoinike is regarded as the derived, and Phoinix the root word.

As the date-palm and its fruit first became known to the Greeks through the medium of the Phœnicians, this tree was likewise called by them Phoinix, the “Phœnician” palm. So in antiquity it was a widespread interpretation to make Phoinike come, not from Phoinix, “the Phœnician,” but from phoinix, “date palm,” making Phoinike signify the “land of palms,” “the land of the date palm.” Among moderns, Movers in particular has brought forward many reasons for the correctness of this explanation.

Athenæus expressly mentions dates as a valuable article of Phœnician trade; but it is perhaps a great mistake to take them for a product of Phœnicia instead of a mere article of commerce, for the fruit of the Phœnix dactylifera does not reach maturity at all in Phœnicia. Little can be proved from the representation of the palm tree on coins whose origin may be traced solely to Grecian prototypes.

Finally, it is a philological impossibility that after the form Phoinike, as the name of the country, has been derived from phoinix, “date palm,” such a form as Phoinix as a designation of the inhabitants could ever have been in turn the result of derivation from this name of the country.

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[246]

PHŒNICIAN HISTORY IN OUTLINE

A PRELIMINARY SURVEY COMPRISING A CURSORY VIEW OF THE SOURCES OF PHŒNICIAN HISTORY, THE SWEEP OF EVENTS, AND A TABLE OF CHRONOLOGY

Of the sources for this history it is hardly possible to do more than to say that they hardly exist in any tangible form, and to echo Heeren’s complaint:

“The severest loss which ancient history has to mourn, a loss irreparable, is that of the destruction of the records that should inform us of the affairs, the government, and the enterprises of the Phœnicians. In proportion to the vast influence which this nation had in the civilisation of mankind by its own great inventions and discoveries (the invention of alphabetical writing is alone sufficient to show their importance), by its numerous colonies established in every quarter, and by its commerce extending even beyond these; the more sensibly we feel the gaps which the loss of these records leaves in the history of the human race. It is the conviction of the extent of this loss that gives the few fragments which have been preserved out of the great mass, a peculiar attraction to the historian; and though it may be impossible to compile from them a history of the Phœnicians, yet they will probably enable him to draw a tolerably faithful picture of the general character and genius of this nation in its various undertakings.”

The Phœnicians were a Semitic people, probably an early offshoot, like the Canaanites, from the parent stock; a people of remarkable industry, intelligence, and enterprise. Their country lay in southern Syria, between the Lebanon Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea, a strip of land about two hundred miles in length by thirty-five at its greatest width. Phœnicia was never a united state, but rather a confederacy of cities. At the time of our earliest knowledge Sidon stood at the head, but in the thirteenth century, B.C. Tyre became the most important.

CARTHAGINIAN HISTORY IN OUTLINE

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CHAPTER I. LAND AND PEOPLE

Phœnicia proper, even in its most flourishing state, was one of the smallest countries of antiquity. It comprised that part of the Syrian coast extending from Akko to Aradus, [Arvad] a narrow strip of land about two hundred miles in length, from north to south; and probably nowhere more than thirty-five miles in width. This short line of coast, rich in bays and harbours, was covered with lofty mountains, many of which ran out into the sea and formed promontories, and whose heights, covered with forests, supplied the most valuable material in the construction of the fleets and habitations of the Phœnicians. The larger range of these mountains bore the name of Libanus [Lebanon], and the other parallel range, the Antilibanus, lay eastward towards Syria. The sea, which broke with great fury upon this rocky shore, had probably separated some of these promontories from the mainland, and which, forming little islands at a small distance from the shore, are not less worthy of note than the mainland itself, being everywhere covered with extensive colonies and flourishing cities. Thus Aradus, the most northern frontier city of Phœnicia, was built on one of these islands; and opposite to it on the mainland was Antaradus, which derived its name from it. About eighteen miles to the south of this stood, and still stands, Tripolis; and at a like distance Byblus, with the temple of Adonis; and again, farther south, Berytus. Keeping along the coast, we come to Sidon at nearly the same distance; and finally, fourteen or fifteen miles farther, towards the southern boundary of the country, was erected, upon another island, the stately Tyre, the queen of Phœnician cities. The space between these places was covered with a number of towns of less import, but equally the abode of industry, and widely celebrated for their arts and manufactures. Among these were Sarepta [Zarephath], Botrys, Orthosia, and others; forming, as it were, one unbroken city, extending along the whole line of coast and over the islands; and which, with the harbours and seaports, and the numerous fleets lying within them, must have afforded altogether a spectacle scarcely to be equalled in the world, and must have excited in the stranger who visited them, the highest idea of the opulence, the power, and the enterprising spirit of the inhabitants.

Although these cities existed altogether in the flourishing period of Phœnicia, history has given us some account of the manner and time of their successive foundations. They were colonies of one another; and, like all other colonies of the ancient world, were founded either for purposes of trade, or by bodies of citizens who left their native abode in consequence of civil dissensions. The oldest of them, “the first-born of Canaan,” according to the Mosaic record, was Sidon, the foundress of the trade and navigation of the Phœnicians. Sidon was the parent of Tyre. In the first[256] place, merely as a staple for her own wares; but the daughter soon waxed greater than the mother, and successfully rivalled her. In the blooming period of Phœnicia, Sidon was only the second Phœnician city in point of extent, though still rich and mighty, and secured in a great measure by her excellent harbours from ruin and decline, so long as the maritime commerce of the Phœnicians should endure. Arvad was founded by another colony from Sidon, and owed its origin to a civil broil in this city, which drove the discontented party to seek a new abode.

Palætyrus, founded by Sidon, and situated on the mainland, continued a powerful, rich, and flourishing commercial city till the time of Nebuchadrezzar, the Babylonian-Chaldean conqueror; against whom it had to defend itself during a siege or blockade of thirteen years; but that he in reality ever took or destroyed it, as is commonly asserted, there is no historical proof. During this blockade, the greater part of the inhabitants took refuge upon a neighbouring island, already furnished with numerous establishments and buildings, and thus founded the island city of Tyre, which, favoured by its strong position, soon equalled the parent city, and not only outlived the Babylonian and Persian empires, but continued to increase as the ancient Tyre declined. It was finally captured by Alexander, after an obstinate resistance; but he robbed it less of its ancient opulence and splendour by his arms, than by the foundation of Alexandria, which henceforth became the great seat of the commerce of the world, though Tyre did not altogether decline. In the midst of this city stood the temple of the principal deity of the Tyrians, the protecting god of the city, as its name, Melkarth, signifies. This deity was called by the Greeks the Tyrian Hercules, though entirely different from their god bearing the same name; hence the myths of the two are often confounded. The worship of the Tyrian deity was introduced into the most distant parts of the world to which that people penetrated and founded settlements; he was honoured as the national god by the independent colonies of Tyre, who were wont to acknowledge his supremacy by solemn embassies. The city was protected by high walls of cut stone; and had two harbours, one on the north towards Sidon, the other on the south towards Egypt. The mouth of the latter could be closed by immense chains.

Let us now inquire what was the internal government of these cities? What their relation with each other? Whether they formed one general confederation? or whether they remained entirely separate states, without any common tie? These questions demand our serious attention.

The remarks above made upon the nature of the country readily explain why the Phœnicians could never become a conquering nation, and the founders of a great monarchy, such as that of the Chaldeans, the Persians, and others. They must have been well satisfied, if they could protect their little territory from the invasions of such powerful Asiatic conquerors; and being, from the earliest times downwards a people dwelling in cities, they could have had no idea of taking the long marauding expeditions common to nomad nations.

In order to obtain a correct idea of the political state of Phœnicia, it is necessary to have a general notion of the rise and progress of civil government among the Syrian tribes. As far as the light of history carries us back, we everywhere find a number of single cities, with the territory around them, under a monarchial form of government; the sovereign power being placed in the hands of kings or princes. Examples certainly are to be met with where some of these cities and their monarchs obtained a decided[257] preponderance (Damascus is at once an instance) and assumed to themselves a degree of authority. This, however, was a kind of forced alliance, which extended no farther than the exaction of tribute and subsidies in times of war, without depriving the subjected cities of their government and rulers. Syria, while independent and left to itself, never became organised into one state or one monarchy.

Here, then, we trace the groundwork of the Phœnician government. This country, like Syria, never became one state; but, from the earliest period down to the Persian monarchy, was always divided into a number of separate cities, each with its little territory around it. Some writers have stated positively the precise extent of the dominions of each city. Thus Antaradus, and the territory about it, formed part of the domain of Aradus, to which it lay opposite; thus Sarepta came within the dominion of Sidon, etc.

Allied cities, however, were certainly frequent in Phœnicia; indeed it seems very probable, that at certain times all the cities of Phœnicia formed one confederation, at the head of which stood originally Sidon, and afterwards Tyre. Even as early as the Mosaic period, alliances among these cities were common; the necessity of their common defence from foreign attack, which separately they were too weak to withstand, must naturally have led to this system. Neither were these confederations confined to Phœnicia alone; they prevailed also in the countries colonised by the Phœnicians; and Carthage in Africa, as well as Gades [or Gadeira] in Spain, stood at the head of the settlements in these districts without, however, obtaining a complete authority over them. A common religion, the worship of the Tyrian Hercules, the national and colonial deity, formed likewise a bond of union for all these cities, both of the mother country and the colonies, and strengthened and preserved the connection between them.

It is the nature, however, of all such confederations, to be liable to frequent changes; they vary indeed according to the political interests, and even the power and views of the separate states. Many changes of this kind must have arisen in this quarter, by the foundation and growing prosperity of the inland colonies; and many modifications must have taken place as these acquired sufficient strength to assume a kind of independence of the parent states. In the present case, in which we shall confine our observations to the flourishing period of Tyre,—that is, the period from Solomon to Cyrus, or at least Nebuchadrezzar,—it will be sufficient to show that Tyre, in the sense just stated, was always the dominant city of Phœnicia.

This may be inferred, in the first place, from the description given of Tyre by the prophet Ezekiel. Sidon and Arvad [Aradus] were at this time her allies, and supplied their contingents of soldiers and sailors. This being proved of the largest and most distant city of Phœnicia, no doubt can be well entertained respecting the smaller and nearer.

Besides, the subjects and allies of Tyre, and their revolts against the capital, are more than once expressly spoken of in history. The most striking proof of this is preserved in Josephus, from the works of Menander. For when King Shalmaneser undertook his expedition into western Asia and against Phœnicia, the allied cities, Sidon, Palætyrus, Akko, and many others, revolted against the Tyrians, and submitted to the king of Assyria. They went so far indeed as to fit out a fleet against them, which was defeated by the Tyrians, who thus secured themselves from further danger.

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By comparing these fragments of Phœnician history and its government with the accounts that are left us respecting the state of Carthage, we obtain something more than bare historical conjecture, as we find a striking similarity between the government of the mother country and the colonies. What Tyre was towards Sidon, Arvad, Tripolis, etc., Carthage was towards Utica, Leptis, Adrumetum, and other cities. It not only seems quite natural, that in cities inhabited by one people, and so frequently called upon to struggle against their common and powerful enemies, alliances should be formed, and by alliances a kind of authority be conceded to the mightiest; but it is also consonant with the whole tenor of ancient history, that colonies should adopt the government of the mother state.

It may be concluded, then, from these facts, that the Phœnician cities formed together one confederation, at the head of which, in the period of their greatest splendour and perfect independence, stood Tyre. At the time of their subjection to Assyria and Persia, the bond that connected them necessarily became loosened, the other cities paid their tribute and furnished their contingents to Persia instead of to Tyre; the latter, however, still preserved its rank, and was always considered the chief city of the land.

The next question, namely, What was the internal government of the Phœnician cities? is equally difficult and obscure.

However desirable it may be to trace out accurately the gradual rise and progress of civic government in these, the earliest commercial cities, want of information limits us to a few general observations.

First, then, there can be no doubt but that each Phœnician city had its own proper government, and that in this respect they were perfectly independent of each other. They always appear so, as the following pages will evince, upon every occasion, and in every period of their history; being never spoken of but as separate states.

Secondly, It seems equally certain, that the chief authority was placed in the hands of kings, and certainly of hereditary kings, although political parties many times fomented revolutions by which new families were raised to the throne. This is especially shown by the history of Tyre; a catalogue of whose kings is extant in Josephus, from the time of Hiram, the contemporary of David, till the siege of the city by Nebuchadrezzar. Even under the dominion of the Persians, the royal dignity was preserved, though the monarchs were now only tributary princes, obliged to furnish money and ships to the Persians, and to attend them, when required, in their military expeditions. The kings of Tyre appear in this state in the expedition of the Persians against Athens, and even as late as the overthrow of Persia and the capture of Tyre by Alexander. As Tyre had its proper kings, so also had the other Phœnician cities, Sidon, Aradus, and Byblus. These are mentioned in various periods, and even as late as the Macedonian conquest.

Thirdly, Notwithstanding the existence of the royal dignity, the government was certainly not despotic; nay, the monarchial power was so strictly limited as to render it almost republican. It was indeed well-nigh impossible that despotism could have endured for so many centuries in commercial states, which can thrive only in the atmosphere of political liberty. A large maritime commerce requires a spirit of enterprise and resolute activity altogether incompatible with despotic government. Even the repeated political changes which took place in all these cities, and more particularly in Tyre, as well as the continual departure of colonies and their settlement in distant parts of the world, are circumstances which not only could not have been brought forth by despotism, but are the legitimate offspring of free nations.[259] Many particulars which warrant this conclusion may still be found in Phœnician history, notwithstanding the general scantiness of its information.

Next to the kings stood the Phœnician magistrates. These conjointly sent ambassadors. Indeed, at certain periods, a general congress of the great Phœnician cities was wont to be held, when the kings in council with the sanhedrim deliberated upon the common affairs of the confederacy. Tripolis was the place destined for the common assembly of the three principal cities.

Besides this, there is no question but the authority of the monarchs was very essentially limited by religion. The priests in these states formed a numerous and powerful class, and seem to have stood next in rank to the kings. Sicharbas, or Sichæus, the chief priest of the principal temple, was the husband of Dido [Elissa], and brother-in-law to King Pygmalion. His persecution and death by the latter, gave rise to those serious commotions which ended in the emigration of that numerous colony which founded the city of Carthage. The political influence of the Phœnician priests of Baal among the Jews, which caused a revolution in the state, is sufficiently well known. Among a people like the Phœnicians, where everything so much depended on sanctuaries and religion, the priesthood could scarcely fail to have a large share in the government, though we are not in a situation to determine precisely its extent.

The prophet Ezekiel in his prophecy against the king of Tyre, gives us a somewhat deep insight into the power of the prince of that city. He is pictured as a powerful prince, living in great splendour; but still as the ruler of a commercial city, which by its trade filled his treasury; as one who encourages and protects commerce by his wisdom and policy; but who, in the end, degenerating to craft and injustice, is threatened with the punishment of his misdeeds. “With thy wisdom and with thy understanding,” Ezekiel cries, “hast thou gotten thee riches; with gold and silver hast thou filled thy treasury by means of the greatness of thy commerce. Full of wisdom sealedst thou great sums; thou dwellst in a garden of God, ornamented from thine infancy with precious stones, clothed with fine garments. But traffic has enriched thee with ill-gotten wealth and thou hast sinned.” From this remarkable passage it may at least be gathered, that the revenue of the Tyrian kings, and without doubt that of the princes of the other cities also, was derived from commerce; but whether from the customs, or, which seems more probable, from a monopoly of some of the branches of trade, or from both, cannot be decided.b

ORIGIN OF THE PHŒNICIANS

As is seen on examination of the different names which were in course of time applied to the Phœnicians, they are not as a race to be separated from the rest of the Canaanites, especially from the various elements of the pre-Israelitish population of Palestine. Their history is only that of a section of the Canaanite race, the history of that portion which, as far back as the times to which the earliest historical information concerning this territory refers, had fixed its abode, not in the interior of Palestine but on the edge of the sea, along the coasts of the strip of country which bordered it on the north as far as those level stretches of the coast lands of Syria which extended to the northwestern slopes of Lebanon. Although in the matter of descent no difference can be discerned between[260] them and the other Canaanites, historical science must, nevertheless, regard them as a different people. It is in this sense that they are spoken of as the Phœnician race, the Phœnician people. They, and the inhabitants of the colonies which they founded, alone have a claim to the name of Phœnicians.

We can only guess at the manner in which the settlement of the Phœnician country by the Canaanites was effected, but the occurrences which afterwards took place in the interior of Palestine point to the assumption that the Canaanites did not spread inwards from the coast. It is not easily conceivable that at first they possessed merely those long narrow stretches of land and only subsequently extended their settlements from thence over those portions of the country west of Jordan of which they were masters before the Israelites. From ancient times there prevailed, as far as can be discovered, an endeavour on the part of the population of the interior, to approach the flat country on the coast, where the fruitful fields were in any case much more attractive than the mountains and hilly districts which, even in the time of the Israelites, were still partly covered with forest.

It may be concluded, therefore, that the Canaanite population of Phœnicia had at some time immigrated thither, either from the southern strips of the Syrian coast or from the northern portions of the interior of Palestine. But if this be so, the immigration must still be looked upon as an event which was completed at a distance of time historically so remote, that a distinct and faithful recollection of it can hardly have been preserved by the Phœnicians themselves. Even a possibility that a dim notion of these occurrences may have lingered, at least in isolated legends, is scarcely to be calculated on. Rather should we expect all real knowledge of the kind to be early extinguished, and that the Phœnicians in their new home, as a result of the historical development through which they passed, should have early come to regard themselves as the primitive inhabitants of the country. As a fact there do exist notices respecting what purport to be Phœnician traditions, the age and to some extent the authenticity of which cannot indeed be determined, but which seem to indicate that at least in Hellenic and still later times, the Phœnicians cherished this opinion. Every people considers itself autochthonous, directly it has ceased to remember its origin.

On the other hand, there are accounts which tell of an immigration of the Phœnicians, and even of an immigration from regions lying farther south. The first who speaks of this is Herodotus. In the description of the collection of Xerxes’ army which he sketches in the seventh book of his work, he says: “As regards the Phœnicians, they formerly dwelt, as they themselves say, on the Erythræan Sea. From thence they passed transversely across Syria and now dwell there on the seashore.”

Most of the remaining notices of the coming of the Phœnicians from the Erythræan Sea, which are found in the writings of the ancients, are to be referred to this assertion of Herodotus. The few other isolated references may be passed over in silence, with the exception of the one concerning the origin of the Phœnicians furnished by Justin in his extracts from the historical works of Pompeius Trogus. What he tells us is as follows: “The people of the Tyrians are descended from Phœnicians who, disquieted by an earthquake, left their first home on the inland sea of Syria (ad Syrium stagnum), and soon after settling on the nearest seacoast, there built a town, which they called Sidon on account of the abundance of fish, for the fish is called ‘sidon’ by the Phœnicians.” The statement that “sidon” means “fish” is incorrect, but it has at least the sense of[261] “fishing.”

The inland sea, the Syrium stagnum which is here mentioned, is said to be not far from the Syrian coast. This has been thought to refer to the Lake of Gennesareth, the Sea of Galilee, with its abundance of fish. But as stagnum means a body of water with no outlet, this interpretation is improbable. Christian Carl Josias Bunsen seems rather to have found the real one, when he expressed the opinion that the Dead Sea is meant, and that the earthquake which is said to have induced the Phœnicians to quit the shores of that sea was the same to which the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is ascribed in the Bible. The tale of the destruction of these towns apparently lies at the root of the idea that in this region, immeasurable ages ago, there existed a higher civilisation than was known in historical times, and which belonged to races other than those which dwelt there in the historical period. The higher the idea which men formed of this ruined civilisation, the less could they impute its disappearance exclusively to chance, and the blind forces of the rude powers of nature. When legend glances back to the prehistoric past, she always regards the overthrow of the noble and beautiful as the direct result of a crime.

Compared with one another, the two accounts allow us to conclude the existence of a common tradition, in which the division of the peoples into different tribes is explained generally, and its cause is conceived to have been a great natural disturbance, a transformation of the earth’s surface which is said to have occurred in the region round about the Dead Sea. In the reports which underlie the statements of Justin, or rather the sources of Pompeius Trogus, the history of the rise of the Phœnicians began with this catastrophe and therefore probably the general history of the various offshoots of the Canaanite section of humanity. On the other hand, in the Bible narrative, the same tradition is applied to connect it with the rise of two races which afterwards dwelt in the vicinity of that catastrophe. The peculiar nature of the catastrophe and the circumstance that just such great convulsions of the earth give occasion to new adjustments of the relations of peoples, lead to the conclusion that the joint tradition, which may be inferred from the two presentations, again refers back to a conception which cannot have arisen in the north of Palestine or in its coast districts, but only in the immediate neighbourhood of the Dead Sea, and in face of tokens which witness in eloquent language to the effects of the mighty forces of nature. In other words, a legend of local origin which ascribed the creation of the Dead Sea to a powerful convulsion of the earth, formed the germ of a legendary cycle with much common groundwork, in which the chief importance was assigned to the region of the Dead Sea and an earthquake which is said to have done its work there. This cycle consisted of a series of legends whose subject was the destruction of a lost civilisation which had attained a high pitch of excellence, and expression was thereby given to the conviction that the history of nations is not indeed to be traced back to its first starting-point, the origin of man, but that nevertheless the human race must have had a common origin.

If we ask with which race this legendary cycle developed, it is evident that we have here to do with a tradition of Canaanite origin which can have arisen only amongst those Canaanites who had their seat in the inland district, which lies in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea. When it arose, cannot of course be determined. The Biblical account comes from the so-called Yahvistic narrator, who wrote as is assumed about the middle of the ninth century B.C. No doubt, however, the tradition on which this narrator draws is of much more ancient origin.

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At best then we conclude that the information of Herodotus and Justin was derived from a Canaanite legend, in which a region by the Dead Sea was regarded as the starting-point of a division of the nations. And the starting-point was placed there, not because it was historically certain that such a movement of nations had begun in that place, but, on the contrary, because the starting-point was really unknown. But that region was said to have been the scene of a violent transformation of the earth’s surface, which had swallowed up the flourishing settlements of antiquity, and in their place created a dreary waste. It was only for this reason that the legend for the division of the nations was there localised.

The early study of navigation in Phœnicia, the development of the Phœnician race into a seafaring commercial people, the international character of their proceedings—in short all those peculiarities attending the appearance of this people in history, which have always required explanation—have been readily ascribed to their former sojourn on the shore of the Erythræan Sea. For the idea is, that it was not by any means in a state of savagery, but as skilled seamen, as experienced traders, conversant with all the achievements of the civilisation of southern latitudes and prepared for every contingency, that the Phœnicians for some cause not further explained, changed their home and sought out the Mediterranean coast of Syria. Although it has never been asserted that this event could belong to historical times, with it the explanation of historical problems, which so far as it is admissible, at all times is to be drawn entirely and without arbitrary suppositions from the condition and situation of the Phœnician settlements on the Syrian shore, is relegated into the region of the entirely unknown. As a matter of fact, those particular regions which have been specially represented as the primitive home of the Phœnicians, namely, the Babylonian coasts of the Persian Gulf and those which lie to the west of them, are so little qualified to favour the rise of navigation, owing to the want of suitable woods, that, as Aristobulus informs us, when Alexander the Great conceived the design of bringing the coast district of eastern Arabia under his dominion, both seamen and portable ready-made ships had to be brought from Phœnicia to Babylon, and this was actually done with the express intention of making of Babylonia, what it had never hitherto been, namely, “a second Phœnicia.”

Thus neither those statements which make the Phœnicians the primitive inhabitants of their country, nor those which represent them as immigrants, have any convincing force. It is in itself probable that they were originally native not to Phœnicia but to some place farther south, and in the interior of Palestine; but not because we have information to that effect, but solely on account of the outlying position of their settlements, representing the most northerly extent of territory of the Canaanites. Amongst the peoples of antiquity the Phœnician is not indeed the only one which must not be regarded as autochthonous, although all the accounts of their immigration which we possess are unworthy of credit. As a rule no conjectures can be brought forward, as to the road by which this or that people reached its place of abode. That this is possible in the case of the Phœnicians is one of the exceptions. They can only have reached their homes from the south, and that which urged them forward was, as has already been emphasised above, that same movement of peoples, which, starting from the northern territories of Arabia, has always produced an effect in the south of Palestine.c

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CHAPTER II. EARLY HISTORY AND INFLUENCES

BEGINNINGS OF THE HISTORY AND CIVILISATION OF PHŒNICIA

According to the opinion of eminent geologists Phœnicia was an inhabited country at some wholly prehistoric period, long before the first appearance of the Phœnicians. Nevertheless neither skulls nor other portions of the skeletons of the primitive, prehistoric inhabitants have been found there up to the present time. But on the floor of particular caves, of which there are many on the western slopes of Lebanon, are certain strata composed of the remains of burnt coal and ashes, potsherds, splinters of the bones of animals, and flint stones of various shapes. The whole, as it were, cemented together by calcareous sinter, into a kind of brecciated mass as hard as stone. The bones of animals have been declared to be those of a species no longer extant, but they exhibit no trace of having been modelled. On the other hand the flints, which exist in great quantities, are regarded as products which are certainly the work of human hands. At least, experts who have gone deep into this department of inquiry, have expressed the conviction that shapes such as these exhibit could not have come into existence in any other way, by means of any fall of rock or chance splitting of masses of flint. Unfortunately, however, a class of shapes is in question concerning whose origin doubt and hesitation are permissible. There is no object amongst them which bears on the face of it either the unmistakable impress of a tool or a sure sign of polishing or careful fashioning. It also seems as though the deposits on the floors of those grottos which have been the principal subjects of investigation had in no instance remained undisturbed. Further confirmation must consequently be looked for before the existence of a population of Phœnicia which was prehistoric in the geological sense, can be regarded as an established fact, and even then the generation which exclusively employed tools of such a rough form as these flint fragments must in any case have been, would be divided by an immeasurable gulf from the generations which were subsequently established in the same country.

It is in no way probable that when the Phœnicians chose the lowlands on the west side of the Lebanon chain as their place of abode they took possession of a tract of country which had as yet practically no population. But we have not the slightest grounds for guessing the stage of civilisation of the predecessors whom they encountered there, nor to what race these belonged. Certain scholars have indeed sought to answer the question, why it was in Phœnicia that in early times a much higher development of[264] civilisation appeared than in most of the other countries inhabited by members of the Semitic family of peoples, by the hypothesis that the branch of Semites which immigrated there found, as did those who settled in Babylonia, a population entirely different in endowments and descent, and who had long been in possession of a many sided civilisation; with these they may have intermingled, and from the complete amalgamation first proceeded that section of humanity, which bears in history the name of Phœnicians. This hypothesis has no other foundation than the idea that otherwise it would be necessary to attribute to a Semitic people qualities which are denied to the Semitic family generally.

As already shown, the exact point of time at which the race of Phœnicians established its claims to a home in Phœnicia, cannot be computed. It is still more impossible to fix its date than it is to determine the first commencement of historical development in Egypt and Babylonia, because in Phœnicia there is a total lack of monuments which might afford some kind of glimpse at such far remote distances of the past as are revealed by the earliest monuments of Egyptian and Babylonian origin. It may, however, be regarded as established that a consistent development, preparing the way for results which are known to history, began much later in Phœnicia than in the Nile Valley and the territory at the mouth of the Euphrates and the Tigris. Like the Babylonians and Egyptians, the Phœnicians were subsequently unable to refrain from drawing up a chronological scheme of their own history, embracing an inconceivably long period. At least Julius Africanus, a Christian chronographer who wrote in the first quarter of the third century A.D., mentions incidentally that there were versions of Phœnician history in which the latter was made to go back no less than 30,000 years. But this is quite a modest total when we remember that Babylonians are said to have asserted that their reckoning extended back 480,000 years. In what manner the enormous number of 30,000 years was attained may be guessed. A brief span of time would be filled by historical occurrences and lists of rulers.

As to primitive history, properly so called, or if it is preferred, the sojourn of the Phœnician people in its first and original home, it is probably not touched on in any way. In all probability the lion’s share was accorded to the gods, and to a plan of arrangement designed to bring the doctrine of the rule of the gods on earth, and especially in Phœnicia, into the framework of a regular chronological system. Such a scheme was required, because the lists of rulers were not limited to the enumeration of historical personages, but began with mythical figures and with gods. Therefore, on the whole, there is nothing behind these high figures, if they have been accurately reported, beyond a chronology of the Phœnician cosmogony and stories of the gods.

Of much more ancient origin and of much greater positive value is another date which is given by Herodotus. He asserts that during his stay at Tyre, which may be placed in the year 450 B.C., certain priests of the sanctuary there which was consecrated to the god Hercules (i.e. Melkarth) responded to his question as to how long the temple had been standing, by saying that that temple had been erected when the town was founded, and that that event had happened 2300 years before. According to this the founding of Tyre would fall somewhere in the year 2750 B.C. B. G. Niebuhr has declared himself very sceptical of the trustworthiness of the informants to whom Herodotus owed this intelligence. But even if their estimate is not to be taken as exact, and was not derived direct from records of the founding of the temple, and if it is also uncertain whether Herodotus was not merely[265] informed of the period at which, in Phœnicia, the founding of the oldest city in that country began, still in itself few objections can be found to the correctness of this estimate as on the whole an approximately accurate date. It stands to reason that on practical grounds it was to the interest of the priesthood of that temple to bring exaggerated notions of its age into circulation. But in doing this, since they expressly invoke the notorious age of the town, they had every inducement to keep within the bounds of what was generally regarded as possible. At best, therefore, their estimate will be the earliest date with which the contemporary inhabitants of Phœnicia believed that they might associate their historical recollections generally. It was not merely a date such as is derived from simple love of romancing; otherwise they would have gone further back. In fact about twenty-five hundred years before Christ the Canaanites had actually taken up their abode in Phœnicia.

As everything points to the presumption that we have no historical information which stands in the way of free invention as to the age of the towns, this fact should serve to confirm the theory that the origin of the towns of Phœnicia did not take place under the influence of historical events of a violent character, and that the character of the conformation of the soil of the whole territory which favoured the isolation of the different sections, had its effect at a very early stage of their development. This was all the more to be expected because the rest of the Canaanites exhibited only slight tendencies towards national unity, a want which may perhaps be explained by the probability that their original home was also the border territory of the cultivated land of Syria, and that presumably the force of circumstances under which the transition to the life in fixed abodes was completed had not been enough to banish all remains of the nomad’s disposition. Even at the time of the immigration of the Israelitish tribes, the land west of Jordan was not, according to all appearance, thickly populated, and although along the Syria coast, a greater density of population had long prevailed, yet even in Phœnicia itself the first scattered settlements had little of the character of townships until the development of an active maritime trade, which continually drew fresh sections of the inhabitants of the lowlands to the neighbourhood of the landing-places. But for this very reason the fact that subsequently every separate section of the Phœnician country was referred to solely as the appendage and domain of each great coast city, should not lead us to the conclusion that these sections corresponded to a primitive division of the Phœnician race into separate branches. What this phenomenon really points to is rather mainly an historical effect arising from the geographical peculiarities of Phœnicia. And if the population was not everywhere of pure Phœnician origin, especially in the northern districts—it apparently received continual accessions from the territory of Lebanon and the inland country south of the latter—it is still not to be admitted that distinctions of tribe influenced the choice of the country to be settled.

There is a special tendency to assign a peculiar position to the men of Byblus and Berytus. But the reasons which have prompted it are by no means conclusive; the fact that these two towns are not mentioned in the table of peoples is explained by the general application of the term “Sidonian.” It is true that in another passage of the Old Testament (Joshua xiii. 5) the Byblites are apparently not included under the general name of Sidonians. But if the general sense of this passage has not been distorted by numerous interpolations, which can scarcely be conceded, still, the independent and separate importance of Byblus will appear as a historic[266] fact and not as one to be referred to the prehistoric founding of the city by a tribe of non-Phœnician origin. A writer who, as in this case, wishes to point out to his fellow tribesmen the tracts of country they are to subdue, concerns himself rather with states and political units than with ethnological problems. As regards the separate existence of Byblus, we need only ask the question whether as a town not founded by Phœnicians it could have become what it did: namely, a pre-eminently sacred place, a centre of religious life and thought which had no second in this country—in fact, the Mecca of the Phœnicians. The coins of this city make it clear that to them “Kaddischat” (i.e., the “holy”) and Gebal (i.e., Byblus) were regarded as identical names. Here special honour was paid to “El” or, as the Greeks said, Kronos, who was the highest conception of God in Phœnician theology. Here, too, the service of the “Lady of the City,” Astarte, acquired, with all the unrestraint of the primitive sensuousness inherent in the notion of a goddess of love and vitality, a more distinct and potent shape than in the rest of Phœnicia. In the territory of Byblus, moreover, lay the scenes in which love once united the goddess with the youthful ruler Adonis, the most beautiful of the gods, and where at the instigation of a jealous deity, his deadly enemy, her lover met his early death from the tusk of a wild boar.

The surmises concerning the diverse origin of the original inhabitants of the towns of Phœnicia lose still more importance from the fact that, like Syria generally, Phœnicia first becomes the scene of historical events only in connection with the development of other countries, and had evidently long before then been subjected to foreign influences. One of the most ancient records of the history of the world, a relief which the Egyptian King Sneferu caused to be set upon a rock in the Wady Magharah, shows us the Egyptians, somewhere about the year 2800 B.C., as conquerors of the Mentiu [or Mentu], the nomad tribes of Mount Sinai.

In this warlike expedition they fought for the possession of the tracts of that inhospitable mountain region where copper ore was to be found, but long before this there appear to have been manifold relations between the inhabitants of the Nile Valley and the people of Anterior Asia—relations which rested mainly on the exchange of merchandise. For instance, it was doubtless as an article of commerce that the produce of those copper mines first became known in Egypt. It was only when this source threatened to fail them that the nation, little warlike as its temper was, determined by the subjection of the predatory inhabitants of the mountains to secure itself a regular supply of the invaluable ore which was not obtainable in Egypt. Whether, as has been assumed, the operation of friendly relations went so far that the influence of ancient Egyptian art may even be traced in the most ancient statues of Babylonia, is a question which must remain undecided. The stiff appearance of the figures which has been taken as a sign of this is probably better explained by the hardness of the material in which the works were executed in order that they might be able to last for all time, and also by the lack of convenient tools. On the other hand, even in the treatment of separate portions of the body, more attention is paid to the shape of the internal structure on which the outer depends, and more regard had to the modelling than is found in the formal style, where the chief attention is paid to rendering the general outline, and which is characteristic of Egyptian art. These differences are the beginning of a line of development peculiar to the sculpture of the Babylonians and Assyrians. Still, even in the Egypt of the pyramid age, there is much which points to very early commercial relations, regularly subsisting between it and the Semitic countries.

[267]

Far greater importance must be attached to the influence exercised by the Babylonian civilisation on the nationalities of Syria, before the conditions which are seen to have prevailed in historical times began to take visible shape. Although it may have begun to make itself felt later than that which came from Egypt, this influence was still from the first more enduring and penetrating. Two routes led the civilisation of Babylonia to the countries of the west. The one ascends the course of the river Euphrates, and has its outlet somewhere at the top of the Bay of Issus, in the northeast of the interior of Syria. Here the land of the Kheta borders the Euphrates, or, as the Assyrians name it, the land of Khatti. It was chiefly from this territory, that is, from the extreme northwest of Mesopotamia, that the Babylonian—subsequently the Assyrio-Babylonian civilisation—made its way into Syria, and similarly in Syria itself it spread mainly in the direction of from north to south. The wide circuit which it takes is necessitated by the fact that it is only on the upper course of the Euphrates that the great Syrian desert, which extends between the eastern borders of Palestine and the right bank of the Euphrates, comes to an end.

The other route also shuns the great desert land and turns in a southwesterly direction from the estuary of the two rivers towards the north of Arabia. From here also Babylonian civilisation only reached Palestine and Syria by a circuitous path which led moreover through tracts of country whose natural conformation refuses its inhabitants any impulse towards the reception of an advanced civilisation. This route, however, supplies a more direct connection with the actual starting-point and home of the civilisation of Babylonia. In all ages the zone of this southern thoroughfare, which stretches from the country of the Euphrates to the land east of Jordan and down to the south of Palestine, has in great part formed a home for nomads and semi-nomads. Of all Eastern nations, Babylonia exercised in the west of Palestine and the coast plains of Syria the greatest influence on the unstable populations of this zone. The habits of life which from all time have distinguished most of the tribes dwelling here,—namely, the Bedouin habits,—can only be pursued so long as each separate tribe has a wide range. As during long periods of isolation the layers of air that cover the steppe roll up into balls of cloud which suddenly break in heavy storms on the surrounding countries; so when the density of the population has increased to such an extent that this zone can no longer feed its inhabitants, a movement sets in which induces whole tribes to seek a new home in the cultivated land in the neighbourhood, and thus once more leave sufficient space for those who remain behind. Whilst the lands of the nomads give up their surplus population, those tribes which previously dwelt farther off arrive in the near neighbourhood of the arable districts, and gradually approach the level of the inhabitants of the latter. That form of existence which is the only one possible in the purlieus of a zone habitable only for nomads and semi-nomads, necessitates, from the very facts of the case, that most of the attainments of the civilisation of other and more happily situated countries must forever remain of little value to the dwellers of that district. The civilisation of Babylonia could no more be imitated here as a whole than any other phase of development resting on division of labour, on wealth, and the development of the idea of property.

Such regulated conditions and restrictions of the will of the individual as prevailed in Babylonia must, in any case, have always been in the highest degree repugnant to the unrestrained inhabitants of this zone, which lived only in the present, and must have seemed by no means worth striving after,[268] as even in the present day European conditions have no attraction for most of the dwellers in Arabia. The ingenious products of industry they no doubt regarded as desirable valuables and adornments, and sought to obtain them without thinking of the possibility of learning to make such things for themselves. The only inventions which they really adopted were certain simple and practical ones, the use of which gave them light, and whose employment was permitted even by the primitive existence which they led, and besides these they received whole series of religious conceptions in which they imagined themselves to perceive an important increase and extension of their own knowledge. On the other hand, the wanderings to and fro which prevailed amongst the tribes, secured a rapid and general diffusion of any acquisitions they might make.

The influence of Babylonia on the rise of the civilisation of Syria would consequently, as far as regards the immigration of the Canaanites and the lands in the south of the great Syrian desert considered as its route, have been at first limited to a few main features. On the other hand the influence which the same civilisation acquired in Syria from the north, by virtue of its early extension in the countries of the upper course of the Euphrates, was probably equally old and far more complete. The race of the Hittites concerning whose origin and descent little is known, may have had a special part in this as intermediaries. But it is uncertain when the presence of this influence in Syria begins. The peoples of Syria were made in the highest degree susceptible to Babylonian civilisation by the fact that by descent and language they belong primarily to the Semites. For although the civilisation of Babylonia is probably not originally the product of a Semitic race, yet in Babylonia itself individual tribes of Semitic origin had made this civilisation their own in an age which belongs to the prehistoric period, and had transformed it so as to give it a Semitic character. And the elements of culture which penetrated into Syria from the northern territories of the Euphrates had passed through still further modifications and adaptations, and had laid aside whatever was foreign to the Semites. Merely on this account, it is obvious that what was transmitted could have retained little that was of a specifically Babylonian complexion. Everything in Syria which seems to bear this character on the face of it was, perhaps, just because this is so distinctly obvious, not borrowed in very ancient times, more probably adopted later; for the relations with the Assyrians lasted for centuries, and there was, speaking generally, no geographical boundary on the northeast between Syria and the countries of the Euphrates. At best such phenomena are due to a revival and renovation which left little standing that bore a true Syrian stamp, even if anything of the kind was attempted. Even the Assyrians themselves took all the trouble imaginable to copy the Babylonians as exactly as possible, and the peoples of Syria, who were still less independent in spirit, did the same so far as they were under the influence of the Assyrians. And even many centuries before the power of the Assyrians reached such a height that they were compelled to adjust[269] themselves to it, they had derived everything that we call cultivation from the Babylonian sphere of civilisation.

Above all, the religious conceptions of the peoples of Syria were remoulded by it. Most of the attempts which were made with the object of formulating the native beliefs into a system were only brought about subsequently, as the Assyrio-Babylonian example became known. But not merely the interpretation of the existing worship and belief, not only the theology must have become more and more closely assimilated to the Assyrio-Babylonian pattern, but also, in the course of time, the names and artistic representations of the gods. For instance, we are informed that in the towns of the Philistine plains a god of the name of Dagon enjoyed specially high honour. He is frequently represented on coins, bearded and with long locks of hair, and holding a fish in either hand: the lower half of the body ends in a fish’s tail covered with scales and provided with fins. Both the name and the manner of representation distinctly point to a connection with Babylonia. In this case, according to all appearance, we are not dealing with a god whose worship was only introduced by the Philistines, but with an ancient Canaanite deity. He was also worshipped by the Canaanites of the interior. If we may trust the statement of Philo, in the Phœnician accounts of the beginnings of human civilisation it was to Dagon that the discovery of the nourishing properties of corn and the invention of the plough were ascribed. Now amongst the gods of Babylonia there is also found a god named Dagon or Dakan who figures in several inscriptions as the author of the laws, and it is also known that there were Babylonian legends which referred the first regulations of human life to teachings said to have been imparted by beings who were half men, half fish. Further, in Babylonian and Assyrian art we frequently find such hybrid creatures as well as human forms disguised as fish, the head of a fish’s skin, which hangs down the back being placed on the head of each figure. Up till now, however, we have no explanation of what these figures are meant to signify nor do we know by what name they were called. Nevertheless a model of this kind probably furnished the original for that representation of Dagon which was usual amongst the Canaanites. If he passed as the god of agriculture and its rules, he might still have adopted this shape. In any case the form is proof of Babylonian influence. As to the name, it is very probable that it was really of Semitic origin, but reached the Canaanites by way of Babylonia together with the conception of the god of the cultivation of the soil, which it denoted, and this may even have happened when they had not yet fixed their abode in Palestine. But as regards the pictorial representation, it is in the highest degree improbable that a people of essentially inland origin should from the first have imagined the divine protector and patron of agriculture as half man, half fish, and with fishes in his hands. The Canaanites can only have lighted on this strange manner of representing him when they had been already long established in Palestine, when divine beings of this form had become known to them through numerous designs imported from Babylonia, and it seemed as though no essential distinction existed between the conception of these beings and that of Dagon. Presumably the most decisive point of union was afforded by the name Dagon. Etymologically it signifies no more than a god of “corn” = dagan, but it also sounds like the word dag which means “fish,” and so easily lends itself to a double meaning which directly justifies and explains the design afterwards adopted from the name of the god.

In other cases Babylonian names seem to have dislodged the original[270] designations of Syrian deities. But the same may be said of the Egyptian influences which, penetrating into Syria from the south, and especially into the coast districts, encountered those of Babylonia and Assyria.

With all this it must not be forgotten that the civilisation of the peoples of Syria did not stop at mere borrowing. In its beginnings it was not indeed an independent and uniform creation; but still the diversities of the separate districts lent it a certain variety, and the distribution of the different tribes gave a great deal of individuality. We may presume that the civilisation of the districts connected with the countries on the Euphrates first reached a considerable height and that then the other parts of Syria, in their various degrees, merely followed this development. In some details the influence of the earliest civilisation of northern Syria, or at least a special connection with it, betrays itself among the Phœnicians.

The gods Anat and Reschuf, seem to have reached the Phœnicians from North Syria at a very early period. So far, indeed, it is only certain that they were worshipped by the Phœnician colonists on Cyprus. However, the name Anat appears in the names of several towns in the Holy Land (in Beth-Anat and perhaps also in Anatoth), and a trace of the name Reschuf is still recognisable in the name of the coast town Arsuf. Portraits of these deities are displayed on the monuments of the Egyptians, who had appropriated them during their intercourse with Syria. The circumstance that the Egyptians were fond of representing both deities with the town goddess of Kadesh on the Orontes, points to Reschuf as well as Anat having been received into the Phœnicians’ system of gods from the pantheon of the northern portion of Syria. From the closing sentence of the treaty which Ramses II concluded with the Kheta [Hittites], it even seems that Anat was worshipped in many towns in the Hittite kingdom.

THE COLONIES

The settlement of the island of Cyprus by Phœnicians must have begun at a very early period, and probably took place at the beginning of the complete occupation of the mainland. In this process Phœnicia acquired an outland only a day’s journey from the coast of Syria, with favourable harbours on the side facing that coast, and sources of wealth of the most various kinds. The Phœnicians were most attracted by copper, the “Cyprian earth,” which along with iron and silver was found in the mountain range in the middle of the southern half of the island. It is probable that they acquired that masterly skill in mining which was the wonder of ancient times, not in Lebanon, but in the process of exploiting the copper treasures of Cyprus.

In most places there is no trace in historical times of distinction between autochthonous Cypriotes and descendants of the immigrant Phœnicians. It is only in places where there is a continuous flow of maritime intercourse from Phœnician districts, that we find an element of pure Phœnician nationality in the inhabitants. The political conditions of the island took shape quite in the same form as in Phœnicia and in Canaanitish Palestine. Here, too, the more flourishing municipal communities acquired supremacy over the neighbouring districts under the sovereign superintendence of town kings; in this way, it is true, they did not form an organic unit of political independence, but they formed different kingdoms of small area which corresponded to an equal number of town districts. Certain dynasties succeeded[271] for a while in reducing several of these town districts to subservience, but at the first opportunity the league of kingdoms which had been thus expanded breaks up very easily into its original constituents.

Excavations recently carried on in Cyprus have brought to light seals on which are engraved pictorial representations of Babylonian form, and inscriptions in Babylonian cuneiform writing, with names of ancient Babylonian sovereigns. These seals which reach Cyprus in the form of rarities in the course of barter and exchange, show how ancient are the trade communications extending from the districts about the mouth of the Euphrates and the Tigris to the shore lands of northern Syria.

The wars which the Egyptians repeatedly waged from about 2830 B.C. with the Bedouin races of Sinai, exercised upon the political relations of Syria no more influence than the punishment executed by the Egyptian king, Pepi, upon an Aamu tribe, the Herusha, so that for the whole period of time from 2750 B.C., until the rise of the second [New] Theban Kingdom of Egypt, there is no political incident to note further than the conjecture that about the year 1950 B.C. one of the Elamite sovereigns of Babylonia appears to have reduced a large part of Syria to ephemeral subservience. Before the beginning of the second half of the second millennium B.C., must also be placed the commencement of the colonising activity of the Phœnicians, the first forcible occupation of Cyprus, possibly also the inauguration of trade with the large islands of the Grecian archipelago in the farther west. Moreover, before this point of time, under the influence of the states of Mesopotamia, the culture of those lands to the northeast and to the north of Syria had begun to take on the complexion which makes them similar to the culture of Babylonia. Many productions of this superimposed culture were already popularised in Egypt in the time of the Middle [Old Theban] Kingdom.

Whether the invasion of Egypt by the Hyksos, to which the Middle Kingdom was exposed, was preceded by upheavals in the political relations of Syria is not known. The Hyksos, at the time of their expulsion, appear to have found support in the population of southern Palestine. The conquest of the Hyksos’ stronghold of Avaris [Ha-Uar] under the Theban king Aahmes (I), is closely connected with the conquest of the town of Sherohan [Sharhana] in southwestern Palestine, and it is from this point that can be traced the beginning of the attempt by the Pharaohs to subdue Syria. To what a wide extent Egyptian culture must have expanded in the Syrian lands during the period in which the Canaanite princes ruled the provinces of Lower Egypt may be easily gathered.

The so-called expulsion of the Hyksos mainly consisted in the removal of a foreign dynast and his troops, and not in the expatriation of a whole people; yet the battles which this result entailed had hardened the Egyptians into a warlike race, and the national army thus created gave the kings of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties a weapon which they utilised for centuries afterwards, partly to reduce broad stretches of foreign territory to their sovereignty or supremacy, partly also from time to time to impose new constitutions on the reduced territories, and to pillage to the fullest extent districts whose inhabitants had proved rebellious. In the most important centres they subdued, they placed Egyptian garrisons, introduced Egyptian officials to collect taxes as they became due, erected strongholds in places where, for strategical reasons, they seemed likely to be of advantage; a king of the XXth Dynasty even goes so far as to boast of having raised a temple to Amen in Canaan. They are animated, however, by no set intention to incorporate[272] one province after another with their empire; their nearest concern is to press as far north as possible, to the North Syrian foreland of the Euphrates. They succeeded from time to time, although always for a short space only, in procuring free communication with the banks of the great mysterious torrent which did not run north as did their own Nile at home, but flowed in the direction of the distant south. Here was the turning-point of the trade route along which the “bluestone of Babel” and so many other rare products of Mesopotamia found their way to the “wretched” Ruthennu, the inhabitants of Syria. Thus at a comparatively cheap rate could be produced a number of the coveted articles which the commerce between northern Syria and the Canaanite country had made expensive.

Concerning events that take place in Phœnicia the Egyptian monuments of this time give us little information. Aahmes seems to have visited this scene of action, for by the country of Zahi, which is mentioned in an inscription of his, the Egyptians understand that slice of Syria to which Phœnicia belongs.

Without compromising themselves by a useless defence, the cities of Phœnicia already appear to have done homage to Tehutimes I, and to have discharged tribute. They must have been well content for the sovereigns of Egypt to rout the robber hordes of the mountains in Lebanon and Bekaa, and for a foreign jurisdiction and a foreign power to restore peace and order in northern Syria by the force of arms. True, they themselves did not always escape from these encounters with impunity. Tehutimes III repeatedly entered Phœnicia at the head of his army. On his return from Tunep in the twenty-ninth year of his reign, he sacked at harvest time the whole country of Zahi. The great corn stores lying ready to be threshed were commandeered, and an equal store of wine and oil. In the thirty-fourth year he took two cities of the land of Zahi, and in one of his last campaigns he destroyed the city of Arkali, i.e., Akko. In the reports of the campaigns of Tehutimes III there is no mention of Tyre and Sidon. By the term “dwellers in the harbour” (their overthrow being alluded to in a poetical description of the power of this monarch) we should, however, comprehend the inhabitants of the coast towns of Phœnicia. Gaza and Joppa are repeatedly mentioned at this time.

In the annals of Tehutimes III, Keft ships and Kepuna ships laden with timber are mentioned. In the poetical description of victory mentioned above, the land of Kefa is placed together with Asebi, i.e., with Cyprus or with a territorial portion of this island. We may hazard the conclusion that in Kefa are comprehended the islands of the “great sea,” i.e., of the Mediterranean; at all events it is not to be looked for in Phœnicia. Otherwise Tehutimes III would have included Kefa as the scene of his achievements in the annals along with Zahi and the lands of the Ruthennu. Moreover, the Keft people, represented by the Egyptians, do not in the slightest degree resemble the Canaanites. Clearly the Egyptian artists do not find in them the characteristic features which they are so fond of representing in the Semites of Anterior Asia, even until they pass into the régime of caricature.

The successor of Tehutimes III was Amenhotep II, of whose campaign in Syria we have but fragmentary evidence. His rule and that of his son Tehutimes IV lasted but a short while. Then came Amenhotep III, who reigned more than thirty-six years, and to him succeeded Amenhotep IV, called Khun-aten, the strangest of all the Pharaohs, who held his court not at Thebes, but in a new imperial capitol which he built for himself in the city known to-day as Tel-el-Amarna. He it was who had thoughts of converting[273] the Egyptian religion to a monotheistic system. A particularly lucky stroke of fate has saved from ruin at Tel-el-Amarna a number of historical documents of the most valuable nature, which belonged to the state archives of Khun-aten, and which have only recently come to light from the hidden repositories in which they were preserved from destruction.

It was the discovery of these tablets that first gave the means for estimating correctly the extension of Babylonian civilisation in Anterior Asia even at this period. In those Syrian districts which were completely under the dominion of Egypt, men used the Babylonian cuneiform character and the Semitic idiom of Babylonia in written intercourse with the Egyptian court, and like the Aramaic in the Persian epoch, this idiom was the official language of diplomatic negotiations, and was consequently studied even in Egypt itself.

The confusion which followed in Egypt on the decease of the unwarlike Khun-aten, facilitated a gradual increase in the power of the kingdom of the Kheta, already forwarded by the policy of that prince and his predecessor which had been directed rather to maintaining their possessions than to an extension of power. The peoples of Syria were left to themselves until, under Hor-em-heb, Egypt again began to acquire internal cohesion; Seti I, however, was the first who was able to reconquer much of the lost territory. He managed to advance through Syria, to the frontiers of the Kheta kingdom, and to return home with a rich booty. His son and successor, Ramses II, renewed the struggle for the possession of northern Palestine, and conducted, with varying success and through long years, a war against the Kheta and their allies. Finally a treaty of peace was concluded between the two powers, by which little more was left to the Egyptians than the dominion over the coast lands of Palestine, in which they were from henceforth able,—at least while Ramses II ruled,—to maintain themselves undisturbed. A strip of the Phœnician coast may also have remained under the suzerainty of this Pharaoh.

The arrangement with the Kheta remained in effect, not merely down to the close of the long reign of Ramses II, but also during that of his son Meneptah, and placed the districts of Syria where Egypt retained a free hand in a state of dependence for several generations. One of the Pharaohs of the XXth Dynasty, Ramses III, also succeeded in re-establishing for a short time the dominion of Egypt, at least in the south of Palestine. In the eighth year of this king’s reign, the kingdom of the Kheta succumbed to the onslaught of a national migration for which a host of tribes from distant countries had joined together. Carrying their wives and children with them, the invaders made their way through Syria to the eastern frontier of Egypt. Amongst the tribes from which this enterprise started the Egyptians make mention of the Pursta (Pulista?). It is not impossible that this name denotes that same people to whom Palestine owes its name, the foreign nation of the Philistines. The assertion that the Askalonians, i.e., the Philistines, destroyed Sidon, is not to be taken quite literally, and only to be regarded as referring to the devastation and plundering of a part of Phœnicia. The repulse of the Pursta and their allies is one of the last signs of life still displayed by the effete Egypt of the period of the XXth Dynasty. The later Ramessides soon entirely lost that dominion over the districts of southern Palestine which Ramses II could still call his own. Centuries went by before armed intervention in the affairs of Syria could be again ventured on from the Nile Valley.

By the sixteenth century B.C., and before that date, though how much earlier it is impossible to say, the Phœnicians were familiar with the whole[274] of the Ægean Sea, which they had probably reached in the first instance by way of the south coast of Asia Minor and the island of Rhodes. From the harbours of Rhodes it was a simple matter to sail to the smaller isles of the archipelago, and so, by easy stages, to the Ægean coasts of Greece and Asia Minor. It is probable that, in pursuit of their commercial enterprises, they visited every nook and corner of this part of the Mediterranean, establishing factories where the conditions were favourable, and trading-stations on islands near the shore, or at such points on the mainland as seemed least liable to attack, instructing the natives in the art of mining where minerals were to be had, or taking the work in hand themselves.

VOYAGES AND TRADING-STATIONS

The records of their presence which have come down to us are scanty, and in some cases of doubtful authenticity. The statements of Greek authors to the effect that certain cities, buildings, or forms of worship, were erected or instituted by the Phœnicians, often mean no more than that their real origin was unknown. The names of Cyclopean, Pelasgian, and Phœnician were indiscriminately bestowed on all relics of venerable antiquity, and even when the Homeric poems were composed, the Phœnician occupation of the Greek archipelago lay far back in the remote past. In the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Phœnicians appear only as dwellers in Phœnicia, or the land of Sidon, mariners and traders, whose business leads them to and fro in great waters, far from their homes, and who now and again cast anchor in one spot for a twelvemonth or so, as occasion offers. We hear much of their doings, of the splendour of their goblets of wrought silver, and their embroidered stuffs, the product of Sidonian looms; of the jewels of gold and amber they offer for sale; of their dishonest and knavish tricks, of how they cheat simple folk of their property, and then sell them into slavery, induce maidservants to come on board their galleys with stolen goods and their masters’ children, and then, quickly hoisting sail, carry off the sons of noble houses to be sold as slaves at the next port they reach. But this is no true description even of the period when the Greek epics came into being, except in so far as it makes Sidon the chief depot of the unmatchable products of the art and industry of northern Syria. The episodes in the Odyssey which treat of Phœnician knavery are later interpolations. Nor are the deductions as to Phœnician expansion drawn by certain scholars from certain proper names in Greece very convincing, as, for all their ingenuity, they rest on internal evidence alone.

The Phœnicians colonised Rhodes, as they had colonised Cyprus, though not to the same extent. The centre of their settlements was Jalysus, opposite the coast of Asia Minor, at the northern end of the island; Cameiros, on the east, is also said to have been a Phœnician city. They established settlements in several of the Sporades and Cyclades, in Thera, Melos (where they found sulphur and alum), and Oliaros (Antiparos). The island of Cythera supplied them with a station for the purple murex fishery, and a starting-point for voyages to the west and to the Peloponnesian coast. Whether they had any settlements in Crete is uncertain, but they certainly had some close to the coast of Thrace, for Herodotus speaks with wonder and admiration of their gold mines in the island of Thasos. They are said, but on insufficient evidence, to have colonised Samothrace. Nor is it impossible that some venturesome mariners may have sailed through the Hellespont[275] and Bosphorus to the Pontus Euxinus, and established Phœnician factories on the north coast of Asia Minor.

Schliemann’s excavations at Hissarlik, Mycenæ, Tiryns, and Orchomenos, and other discoveries of the relics of pre-Homeric civilisation, have brought to light a number of objects unmistakably Phœnician, or copied from Phœnician models, which prove that, in externals at least, the civilisation of the islands and coasts of the Ægean had far more affinity with that of northern Syria than with that which was destined to arise in Hellas. To take but a single example, the walls of Hissarlik, Tiryns, and Mycenæ, when complete, must have borne a strong resemblance to those of the strongholds of Palestine and northern Syria, as represented in Egyptian works of art. We do indeed find some attempts at originality among the relics of this period, as, for instance, in the shapes and decorations of the earthen vessels of Argolis, but, generally speaking, the foreign element preponderates; though it must remain an open question whether everything that indicates the ascendency of Asia Minor in this early stage of civilisation came by way of the sea, or whether some of it may not have been due to the gradual spread of Asiatic influences. Of Egyptian influence, direct or indirect, there is hardly a trace.

We must not, however, exaggerate the range of Phœnician influence. The great cities in which it was dominant perished early, and little or nothing of it penetrated to the interior of the mainland. Nor do the Phœnicians seem ever to have been undisputed masters of the Ægean; their stations were early abandoned, in Rhodes they had to maintain their ground against the Carians and were finally ousted by the Dorians. The north of Cyprus was early peopled by Greeks. In details and externals, there are many links between this early pre-Homeric civilisation and that which we find reflected in the Greek epics, but such remains of the former as survived were confined to a few island and seaboard tribes, and even among them, were undergoing a process of transformation. Its most important legacy was an acquaintance with the practical arts. The Phœnician vessels, sorry craft as they were, served as models to the Greeks, Phœnician gains by sea spurred them to imitation, and we are probably right in supposing that they learnt from the Phœnicians how to steer by the pole-star at night. A few details of the architecture of Tiryns, Mycenæ, and Hissarlik were adopted by the later architecture of Greece, though the difference of material had deprived them of their significance. Technical art in certain places and industries long remained faithful to patterns of Asiatic origin, as is manifest in the pottery of Melos and Rhodes, some bronzes lately discovered in Crete, and above all, as we should expect, in the manufactures of Cyprus.

The most important acquisition which the Greeks owed to the Phœnicians, was the art of writing, and the Canaanite alphabet, which, however, the latter had not acquired themselves at the time when North Syrian influence[276] was in the ascendant in Greece. The Greeks adopted it at a later period, as they had shortly before adopted a system of weights and measures, closely akin to that which obtained in northern Syria, though they do not seem to have owed this last solely to the Phœnicians. Their commercial institutions and pecuniary transactions may have followed Phœnician models in many respects; for example, the Phœnicians were the first people whose commerce beyond sea made it necessary for them to insure legal protection for life and property by means of securities.

Where large numbers of Phœnicians lived together on foreign soil, they united to form distinct corporations with magistrates of their own. It was to the interest of these scattered communities to maintain intimate relations with some great city in their native land, and the mutual obligations thus incurred, were associated with the worship of the local divinity of the mother city. If, however, a Phœnician merely desired to make a brief stay in some foreign port, he put himself under the protection of a resident of good repute, and became his guest. At parting, a potsherd was broken in two, one half being kept by the host, and the other by the departing guest, who was thenceforth bound to extend a like protection to his former host, any member of his family, or any person employed in his affairs. When the latter desired to recommend any one to the protection of his former protégé, he gave him the broken potsherd to present as his credentials; if the two halves fitted, the bearer’s identity was established. Among the Greeks, this system of reciprocal hospitality (proxenia), took the place of the modern consular service. The Phœnicians in Greek cities were also money-lenders, and advanced loans at interest on ships and cargo, and in banking the Greeks probably learned much from them. It is unlikely that such a city as Carthage, into which wealth flowed from all quarters, should have been without a regular banking system, and a kind of money market. From Crete and Cythera, the Phœnicians sailed to the western end of the Mediterranean, allured no doubt by rumours of the mineral wealth of Spain. Sicily, Malta, Gozzo, Cossura, and the African coast, west of the great Syrtis, were at first no more to them than necessary anchorages and stations for obtaining provisions on the long voyage through the straits that divided Europe from Africa to the mouth of the Guadalquivir. The development of Phœnician colonies followed the sea route to Tartessus, and it was not until the route was well established that certain places along it rose into importance. Cadiz, the farthest point of it, was older than Utica; Lixos, on the African coast, beyond the straits, was said to be older than Cadiz. Tarshish yielded not only silver in immense quantities, but gold, lead, and other metals; the fisheries were profitable, and probably even then tin and amber found their way from the far north to the countries at the western end of the Mediterranean basin.

The Sidonians had been foremost in occupying the Ægean; the western half of the Mediterranean was the sphere of Tyrian enterprise. With the sole exception of Leptis Magna, on the western margin of the great Syrtis, every Phœnician colony there, as far as our information goes, was founded either from Carthage or directly from Tyre. Carthage sends tribute and ambassadors to the temple of Hercules at Tyre, her founders are the founder of Tyre and the goddess Dido, whom legend transforms into a Syrian princess. The Tyrian Melkarth is the reputed progenitor of the Carthaginians; it is he who subdued the Libyan tribes who opposed the first colonists, and who opened a gateway to the Atlantic to his people, setting up great pillars of rock on either hand, as beseems a god whose token is[277] two pillars. The most important Phœnician settlement in the south of Sicily was Heracleia Minoa or Rosh Melkarth, i.e., Melkarth’s Head (Cape Melkarth). Again, just as the Greeks sometimes called Phœnician wares “Sidonian,” so certain articles of Phœnician commerce are called in Old Latin sarranic, a word derived directly from Sur. The fact that the Tyrians represented Phœnicia in western waters does not necessarily imply their supremacy at home. It seems more likely that they had, by right of discovery, a kind of monopoly of the trade with Tarshish and the western Mediterranean—a situation paralleled by the partition of the world between Spain and Portugal when the two sea-routes to the Indies were first discovered. The enormous profits of this trade, however, undoubtedly secured Tyre the leading place in Phœnicia, after the loss of the colonies in the Ægean.

But even in the west, the Phœnicians could not maintain their footing against the Greeks, and on the entrance of the latter into Sicily, soon after the middle of the eighth century, they abandoned most of their possessions in that island. On the opposite coast of Africa, their colonies seem to have been more numerous, and since the rise of Carthage, their influence had spread far into the interior. There they came in contact with tribes wholly incapable of competing with them, and Punic became the common language of the country, just as Arabic did at a later period, though whether the cities there owed their origin to Tyrians, Carthaginians, or natives, we are unable to say. There were other Phœnician colonies beyond the straits, which are said to have been destroyed by native tribes. When they were founded, when destroyed, and how long an interval had elapsed before Hanno of Carthage went forth, in the middle of the fifth century, to establish fresh colonies there, are questions to which we have no answer. Punic mariners seem to have been the first to visit the Canary Islands, and, according to the report that has come down to us, Hanno’s expedition reached a point sixteen days’ journey south of Cape Verde on the coast of New Guinea.

Our information concerning the voyages of Phœnicians to the north, in search of the tin which the nations of antiquity valued so highly, is vague in the extreme. Ezekiel mentions tin among the metals brought by Tarshish to the Tyrian market, but he may refer to that which was obtained from Lusitania and Galicia. On the other hand, the Gaditanians are said to have brought it by sea from the Cassiterides or Tin Islands (the coast of Britain), and the story goes that a merchant of Cadiz who steered his vessel on the rocks, in order to preserve the secret of the route from the Romans who were tracking him, was compensated for his loss out of the public funds. Again, the hypothesis that the Phœnicians actually got as far as the Baltic shore, to traffic for amber with the inhabitants of Samland, though conceivable, rests on nothing but conjecture. It is possible that they never went as far as Cornwall, and merely pretended that the tin of Spain was the product of the northern isles to evade the risk of competition.

Phœnician enterprise was directed to the west rather than to the east, and chose the way of the sea rather than that of the land. The reason was simple; sea-transport was exposed to fewer risks, and tribes in a low stage of civilisation accorded to settlers and merchants who came among them to barter treasures from the remotest ends of the earth, for the raw produce of the soil, a very different welcome from what they could expect from the rulers of the civilised East. But, few as their settlements were, the Phœnicians, nevertheless, drove a thriving trade with oriental nations. The products of Armenia must have come into the Tyrian market before the days of[278] Ezekiel; Syria and Palestine supplied Phœnicia with food, with raw material and articles of commerce, and with labour for her wharves. In the time of Herodotus, the spices of Arabia passed through the hands of Phœnician merchants, and he mentions that in Egypt there was a Tyrian quarter of the city [Memphis] and a temple of the “foreign Aphrodite,” presumably Astarte.

The Phœnicians do not seem to have felt bound to interfere with the Israelite occupation of the land west of Jordan, and, with a few insignificant exceptions, the two nations appear to have lived side by side in peace; a state of things advantageous to both parties.

The migration of the Pursta, by destroying the Hittite empire, gave rise to a number of petty states, whose impotence may be estimated by the fact that in 1110, Tiglathpileser I, King of Assyria, pressed forward to the very shores of the Mediterranean. But more than two hundred years had yet to elapse before the kings of Assyria could seriously contemplate the conquest of Phœnicia. Tyre, strong in her monopoly of the trade with Tarshish, remained mistress of the seas, and mother of remote colonies long after the glory of Phœnicia had waned in the Ægean, and entered upon the heritage of Sidon, which had formerly held a similar position. Whether there was any political compact in virtue of which she took the lead in Phœnician affairs, we cannot tell; the foundations of her supremacy were her fleet and commerce, and the gradual extension of her sovereignty to a wider area.

The list of the kings of Tyre supplies useful chronological references for Jewish history, and to this accident we owe it that Josephus has preserved some extracts from Menander’s Annals of Tyre. The first monarch mentioned in these extracts is the son and successor of Abibaal, Hiram, who ruled Tyre from 969 [980] to 936 B.C.b

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CHAPTER III. THE PHŒNICIAN TIME OF POWER

THE REIGN OF HIRAM I

The sources of information for the reign of Hiram are richer than for any other period of Phœnician history. They no longer offer merely a few scattered notices and chance remarks, or names which have scarcely any historical value, but they furnish data which are important, not only from their contents but relatively also in their extent, and which are all the more valuable because they touch upon the most remarkable period of the history of Western Asia. These sources may be divided into three classes. In the first rank are the priceless remnants of Phœnician historiography which Josephus, for the comparison and verification of the Biblical accounts of King Hiram and his relations with Solomon, has preserved from the historical works of Menander and Dius. Second, and even more important in their way, are the Biblical accounts themselves, which give information concerning the political, commercial, and social relations that were established between Israel and Phœnicia and their rulers. A third source of information in which, to be sure, has been incorporated many a legend from this brilliant period of both countries, consists mainly of later versions of Phœnician and Israelitish history, fragments from the works of Chætus, Theophilus, and Eupolemus, which have been preserved by ecclesiastical writers as a supplement to the above excerpts of Josephus and for a like purpose.

After the death of the little-known King Abibaal, his son Hiram I ascended the throne at the age of twenty. The date of this event has been proven by chronological research to have been 980 B.C., eight years before the death of the great Israelite king David.[7]

From all that the above-mentioned sources relate or that can be inferred from comparison with the conditions before the reign of Hiram, it is apparent that Phœnicia was already in a condition where her affairs needed only to be more firmly moulded and secured. Hence, in this respect also, the Phœnician and Israelitish states, whose rulers, Hiram and Solomon, were friends and had so much in common in character and tastes, were in very similar [280]circumstances. For it was but recently that in Tyre, too, a kingdom had been established in place of the government of the suffets, and at the same time the bond of dependence completely severed which had united Tyre as a colony to Sidon. It is probable, indeed, that in the weakness of the mother state this relation had before this time been maintained solely from a feeling of filial duty.

The relations with Israel and the recognised position as hegemonic state which Tyre maintained under Hiram, may have been established in the period immediately preceding, but what the records tell of this renowned king nevertheless makes him appear as the real founder of the Tyrian state. The records of the sources concerning his buildings on the island of Tyre, by which he secured the metropolis of the country against the reverses of a continental war, point to this. This work was carried out on a magnificent plan and made the formerly insignificant island town a protecting bulwark not only for Tyre, but for the whole of Phœnicia. These edifices must belong to the very beginning of his reign, for the accounts of Menander and Dius, which are evidently arranged in chronological order, mention them first, and the buildings which were erected at Jerusalem, at the beginning of his reign and with his co-operation, make it presumable that some occurrence of that kind had already taken place at Tyre.

A glance at the political position of the neighbouring states of the continent throws light upon the next point. The Israelites had very recently subjugated all the peoples of the vicinity with the sole exception of the Phœnicians; the smaller Syrian states, hitherto divided, formed a closer alliance with one another, and under the king of Damascus were beginning, even at that time, to form the second power in Western Asia.

So, threatened by the fresh danger of the combined forces of the hitherto divided Israelitish and Aramæan races, the Phœnicians spared no efforts in increasing the fortifications of the island city. It may well be presumed that in these early days of the new Tyrian royal state, Palætyrus, which in the period immediately subsequent continues to appear as the more important and as the seat of the royal residence, was the site of many new buildings, especially of such royal palaces as Hiram’s workmen also erected in Jerusalem. Of these, however, the sources give no information, because they bear upon the island town which was subsequently the more important, and because only a few remains of Palætyrus were in existence when these records were written.

Furthermore, the religious ceremonies took quite a new form under this king. Some of the old sanctuaries already in existence in Tyre he rebuilt, others he replaced with entirely new ones. According to the records the latter was the case with the temples of the two guardian deities, Melkarth and Astarte, while they mention the restoration of the cedar roofs of other temples not named, but in regard to the magnitude of these latter buildings, they relate how Hiram went to Lebanon and had a whole wood of cedar trees cut down for the work. The third great temple, that of Baalsamin, was adorned with golden votive offerings, amongst which was that famous golden pillar, often mentioned in later times and still on view in Tyre until the last centuries of its independence.

As through these enterprises, indicative of the love of splendour and the great wealth of the king, provision was made for the magnificence of the new royal city and of its religious services, so too, another regulation of Hiram’s, mentioned by Menander, points to a reorganisation of the cult, or at least of the order of festivals. For Menander relates that Hiram was the first to[281] have the Awakening of Hercules celebrated in the month of Peritius, when he was starting forth on the war against the Cypriotes.

We learn from the records that the king not only reorganised the internal structure of the Tyrian state, but also took measures to safeguard the foreign acquisitions of his predecessors. The passage from Menander, cited above, tells that Hiram made war against the Cypriotes, who did not pay their tribute and were again subjugated by Hiram. From this it is clear that the Island of Cyprus had already, under Hiram’s predecessor, passed from the possession of Sidon, which had colonised it during her hegemony, to Tyre.

As all the records we have had under consideration indicate that Tyre had gained its position as leading state during the previous reign, and in Hiram’s time was looking to the organisation and strengthening of what had been won, the same thing may be said of the relations with Israel. The records on this subject are relatively complete, and of the most manifold interest for the history of both these flourishing states. We shall therefore have to treat them somewhat more in detail.

Through David’s successful wars the Israelitish state had grown from its former insignificance to a power greater than had for a long time existed in Western Asia. The whole of Syria and Palestine, with the exception of the northern coast, belonged to the kingdom of Israel, so that Phœnicia, on the continent side, was nearly surrounded by Israelitish territory. All the routes of commerce which led from the Euphrates, from Arabia and Egypt, to the emporiums of the Mediterranean, were controlled by the Israelites, and after the conquest of the Edomite district, they also possessed the commercial ports on the Red Sea, where the Phœnicians had long carried on an extremely profitable trade with Arabia and Ethiopia, and perhaps also, even before David’s time, with India. Under these circumstances the Phœnicians made an effort to enter into closer relations with their powerful neighbours.

Soon after the beginning of his reign, Hiram sent an embassy to David which resulted in his despatching Phœnician workmen to Jerusalem to build the Jewish king a palace. There is no mention of compensation for this service; so it seems, especially from the short account which makes the messengers and the workmen go to David together, that the Phœnician ruler had the building erected simply in order to show himself well-disposed towards the Israelite. However that may be, with the continued friendship of their rulers there could be no lack of important results for the political and commercial relations of the two states; and commercial undertakings and alliances, such as we find in greater extent in the reign of Solomon, may even at that time have been entered into by them.

After the death of David, Hiram sought to maintain the cordial relations between the two countries under Solomon’s rule, and therefore took occasion, upon the latter’s accession to the throne, to send an embassy to Jerusalem with congratulations, and to request the continuation of the friendship. Solomon was then cherishing the project of building the temple which David had desired to erect after the completion of the palace which Hiram’s workmen had built for him in Jerusalem towards the end of his reign. For the pious king considered it unfitting that he should dwell in a “cedar palace,” while the dwelling of Jehovah was a tent. But in view of the continuance of internal disturbances and the still incomplete subjugation of the provinces that had been incorporated in the kingdom, he was withheld from his project by the prophet Nathan, who showed him that the execution of it was destined to his successor.

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In carrying out his father’s plan, Solomon could not dispense with Phœnician workmen and artificers, so he took the opportunity afforded by the friendly overtures of the Tyrian king to make a treaty with him. According to the more ancient version of this treaty, Hiram was to furnish cedar and cypress wood, together with carpenters and stone-masons for the building, and to send the materials already shaped on rafts to Judah. In return Hiram stipulated that he should receive yearly as long as the work continued, twenty thousand measures of wheat, as “food for his house,” that is, for the royal household, and twenty, or according to the reading of the Septuagint and according to Josephus, twenty thousand measures of oil of olives.

After the temple at Jerusalem had been completed with the assistance of Phœnician artificers, other compacts for similar purposes must have been made by the pomp-loving Solomon with the Tyrian king. For we learn that the supplies of cedar and fir trees and gold continued for twenty years. That at the same time the commercial relations of the two countries were regulated by treaties, import duties for wares fixed, the position of the Phœnician merchants resident in Judah, as well as that of the numerous Israelites settled in Phœnician lands determined, lies quite in the nature of the case and is also in part supported by definite statements.

A Phœnician tale represents the wise Solomon in a dispute with his friend Hiram, confounding him with riddles, and then being himself overcome by a Phœnician wiser than himself. As the legend of the wisdom of Solomon is here ingeniously linked with the friendly relation with Hiram, so another legend of the extraordinary wealth of the Israelitish king makes use of the same relation, by ascribing to him a remarkable votive offering in the temple of Melkarth, that golden pillar which, according to the excerpts from Menander and Dius, King Hiram had set up in the said sanctuary, where it was admired by Herodotus. Now, a legend which Eupolemus has preserved, says that this pillar came from Solomon, who sent it to Hiram in gratitude for his assistance in the building of the temple.

This tale has too much the character of a popular tradition to be deemed a mere invention of Eupolemus; and it is too vexatious to the spirit of later Judaism to be of Jewish invention. According to another Phœnician story, Solomon sent the gold that was not used in the building of the temple to[283] the Tyrian king, and the latter is said to have had that famous column made as a setting for the statue of his daughter, who was married to Solomon. That Solomon married a daughter of Hiram is reported by two authors who have written on Phœnician history, Chætus and Menander of Pergamus. Biblical history records the marriage of Solomon with the daughter of an Egyptian king, and also mentions the Jewish king’s large harem, in which were also Sidonian women, for whom Solomon established the racial cult of the Sidonians, the worship of Astarte. This would indicate for the Sidonians an unusually high position in the harem.

As Tyrian legend and history take pains to honour Hiram for his connection with Solomon, who was early a resplendent figure in eastern tradition, on the other hand we must not overlook a similar effort in Jewish historiography, which tells us with pleasure of the friendship of the two Israelitish rulers with Hiram, and does not conceal the fact that the external brilliancy and wealth of Solomon were a consequence of the connection with the rich and artistic neighbouring nation. Even later Jewish tradition relates many a strange thing about this famous Tyrian king. He is said to be that prince of Tyre who in Ezekiel xxviii. 2, walks amid the precious stones of Paradise, and, in accordance with a further interpretation of Ezekiel’s prophecy, he is said to have perished at the siege of Tyre by Nebuchadrezzar, after having lived five hundred years.

According to another not quite unfounded tale, Hiram had a temple built at Tyre like that at Jerusalem, and introduced Jewish customs in it, in which respect Hiram may be compared to the Emperor Julian, who transferred Christian usages to heathendom. This story is allied to another Syrian tradition that the ecclesiastical translation of the Old Testament which the Syrians use is that which Hiram requested Solomon to have made. As the traditions of the Phœnicians and of the neighbouring Hebrews and Syrians so long preserved the memory of the two kings, they look upon this time as the period of splendour of both Phœnicia and Israel.b

THE SUCCESSORS OF HIRAM

Hiram was succeeded by his son Baalbazer, who died after a reign of seven years. He was succeeded by his son Abdastarte, who reigned nine years. At the age of twenty-nine he fell a victim to a palace revolution. The four sons of his nurse conspired against him and removed him from their path. The oldest of them, Metuastarte, son of Leastarte mounted the throne and held the government twelve years. [Most of the authorities differ from Pietschmann in assigning twenty-four years to Metuastarte’s reign, in the last half of which he associated with himself on the throne a scion of the royal house who is known as Astarte or sometimes Abdastarte II.] His successor was one of his brothers, Astharymus, who nine years later was put to death by his brother Phelles. Only eight months afterwards a like fate overtook the latter. He was murdered by Ithobaal, (Eth-baal), priest of Astarte.

With Ithobaal’s accession orderly conditions were again restored. He entered into friendly relations with the kingdom of northern Israel, concluded what Amos calls a “brotherly covenant” with it, and gave his daughter, Jezebel, in marriage to the warlike king, Ahab, son of Omri. The drought which visited northern Syria in Ahab’s time is also mentioned in the annals of Tyre; they limit its duration to one year, and ascribe its[284] cessation to an intercessory procession which Ithobaal performed. Under his government the heavy doom which was to fall on the Syrian countries from Assyria, drew nearer to Phœnicia. Asshurnazirpal marched with his army (876 B.C.) down from the upper valley of the Orontes into the low-lying coast district of Djun Akkor, and proceeding southward across it, penetrated to the Nahr-el-Kelb, where one of the Assyrian rock sculptures appears to date from him. The towns of Phœnicia made haste to buy him off with presents, and thus escaped for this time. Ithobaal, it is said, founded Botrys, probably in the well-grounded anticipation that this raid would not be the last of the kind which would take this direction. From Botrys the passage of the Ras-el-Shakka could be commanded.

The successor of Ithobaal was his son Baalazar, who reigned six years, and the latter’s son Mettenus (Metten) then ruled during twenty-nine years. After his death the crown passed to Pygmalion. With this king, who occupied the throne forty-seven years, the consecutive list of the kings of Tyre which has come down to us from Menander’s works, comes to an end. No more of it has been preserved intact.

In Baalazar’s time the danger threatening Phœnicia from the growing power of Assyria, seems to have been recognised at Aradus and in the neighbouring towns. In the battle of Qarqar (854) Mettenbaal [Matinu-Baal of Shalmaneser II’s records], King of Aradus, fought on Ahab’s side against Shalmaneser II, and so perhaps did also the troops of Ushu and Sian, two places which the Assyrian inscriptions generally mention, together with Simyra and Aradus, and also those of Akko. These would be the towns which were least protected by natural boundaries on the side of northern Syria. Shalmaneser II boasts that on his campaigns against Hazael of Damascus, he had taken tribute from Tyre, where Metten was then reigning, and Sidon (842 and 839 B.C.), and also from Byblus (839); this may be a bragging name for voluntary presents he had received there. In Pygmalion’s time Sidon and Tyre seem to have been under an obligation to pay taxes to the Assyrian king, Adad-nirari III, whose conquering expeditions twice attained Phœnicia (804 and 803). It then had peace from the Assyrians for more than half a century, until the time of Tiglathpileser III. This king’s inscriptions announce that he wasted the territory of the towns of Simyra, Akko, Ushu, and Sian, installed there Assyrian captains and established colonists who were brought thither from the farthest corners of the empire. Hiram II of Tyre and Sibittibi’li of Byblus are named amongst the kings whose homage he received in Syria, and on another occasion Mettenbaal of Aradus, while Tyre had to pay him one hundred and fifty talents of gold. Aradus, Byblus, and Tyre were apparently the only independent states of Phœnicia at this time.

Tyre remained the most independent and the most powerful. Elulæus, who reigned there about 728-692 B.C., under the name of Pylas, succeeded, at the outset of his reign in subduing the rebellious Cypriotes by means of his war-ships. In his time Shalmaneser IV, the successor of Tiglathpileser III, overran the whole of Phœnicia. A peace was concluded, by which Sidon, Akko, even Palætyrus, and many other towns passed to the Assyrian king. Apparently they wish to make themselves independent of the island city, even at the cost of their political independence. But since the Tyrians showed themselves dissatisfied with this, Shalmaneser again advanced into Phœnicia, and in order to reach the island fortress, he collected sixty ships with eight hundred rowers, from which it appears that they were of small dimensions. But the Tyrians defended themselves bravely; with twelve[285] ships they scattered the enemy’s fleet, and took five hundred prisoners. Then the Assyrian king marched away, but left behind a part of his army, to hold the mainland opposite Tyre and cut it off from the river which there fell into the sea, and from the aqueducts, and thus prevent the Tyrians from supplying themselves with drinking water. This is said to have lasted for five years, while the Tyrians had recourse to the water which collected in wells they dug on their island. In the end they appear to have grown weary of resisting. Apparently the annals of Tyre do not assert that the efforts of the Assyrians were entirely without result. Sargon ascended the throne of Assyria in 722, and it is supposed that the Tyrians came to terms with him in 720, when he appeared in Syria to crush the alliance of Arpad, Simyra, Damascus, and Samaria. Sargon boasts that he drew the Ionians like fish from the sea, and quieted Cilicia, and Tyre, and he speaks of Tyre as a town which belonged to him. Sennacherib set up a king in Sidon, named Tubaal, that is Ithobaal, on whom he imposed a tax; Abdili’ti of Aradus and Urumilki of Byblus also did homage to him. From Syria he took workmen to Nineveh, who had there to build ships for him after the pattern of the vessels of their own country. These were manned with Tyrian, Sidonian, and also Greek, i.e., probably Cyprian, seamen, and with them he was able to undertake a maritime expedition on the Tigris to subdue the people of Bit Yakin and the Elamites “with their gods,” and to carry them away as prisoners (694 B.C.). These vessels are represented on a bas-relief at Kuyunjik, round transports, with the hind and foreparts bent upwards, and war-ships with a great projecting keel. Both classes had two decks. On the upper one, behind high side railings, outside which the warriors have hung their shields, the prisoners and men armed with spears, are seen seated. Between the decks sit the oarsmen, their backs turned to the forepart of the ship. Two rows of oars are at work, one above the other; two long poles serve instead of a rudder and are disposed right and left of the stern of the vessel.

Soon after Sennacherib’s son Esarhaddon had begun his reign, Abd-milkot, king of Sidon, the successor, apparently, of that Ithobaal or Ethbaal whom Sennacherib had installed there, allowed himself to be beguiled into an effort after independence, in unison with Sanduarri, ruler of the two towns of Kundu and Sizu, which are to be sought inland, to the east of Sidon. The attempt failed. Sidon was taken (678 B.C.), plundered, and laid waste; the fortifications were demolished, the inhabitants led away into exile, and on its site a new settlement was established, which was peopled by men from the eastern districts of the Assyrian empire and received as a colony the name of Kar-Asshur-akhe-iddin (the city of Esarhaddon). In the year 671 B.C. Esarhaddon took the field against Tirhaqa of Egypt; and Baal of Tyre, trusting in Tirhaqa’s power, exhibited insubordination. As in Shalmaneser’s time, Tyre was again cut off by the Assyrians from all its supplies of food and water. It is not stated whether Baal was thus reduced to submission. But certain it is that in Asshurbanapal’s reign Baal was again besieged by the Assyrians, in his island city. Defences were again erected on the mainland opposite, and all approaches were blocked by land and sea. To quench their thirst the besieged are said to have been finally reduced to drinking salt water. The final result was that Baal submitted and tendered guarantees for a more loyal demeanour in future. He delivered up his own daughter and those of his brother as wives for the supreme king, together with a rich dowry, and also surrendered him his son Yahi-melek. This was more than Asshurbanapal required, and he sent Yahi-melek back to his father. Probably with the assistance of Baal’s war-ships, the Assyrians then[286] proceeded to the subjection of the other island king of Phœnicia, Yakinlu of Aradus. He also was compelled to send his daughter to Nineveh with many presents; every such addition to his harem was peculiarly grateful to Asshurbanapal. Subsequently, however, Yakinlu again fell into disgrace, and was deposed; perhaps not without the co-operation of his ten sons, who all presented themselves, with valuable presents, at Asshurbanapal’s court, to make application for the vacant throne. It was given to one of them, called Azebaal; the rest were bought off with honours. The period to which these events belong cannot be exactly determined; it is possible that they may have some connection with the fact that Asshurbanapal’s brother Shamash-shum-ukin succeeded in rousing the vassals in the west to rebellion. In connection with a campaign which was undertaken against the Arab prince Yauta about 640 B.C., the towns of Ushu and Akko were punished in exemplary fashion, for negligent payment of the tribute and for repudiating their allegiance. This may have been the last warlike action which an Assyrian army performed in the territory of Phœnicia, although an Assyrian governor of Simyra, with the rank of an eponymos, or limmu, is mentioned as late as the year 636 B.C.

Syria and Palestine did not escape the blows of fate whose force wrecked the Assyrian empire after Asshurbanapal’s reign. Hordes of Scythian horsemen, carrying bows and javelins, broke in from the north and penetrated as far as the frontiers of Egypt (about 625 B.C.). Presents from Psamthek I are said to have induced them to turn back. Before leaving Syria the stragglers plundered the sanctuary of Aphrodite at Askalon. The power of Egypt was again increased under the rule of Psamthek, for his special care was the creation of a mercenary army composed of Carians and Ionians, and so strong did it become that his son and successor, Neku II (608 B.C.), was able to go still further and attempt to recover the dominion which the Pharaohs of the New Kingdom had possessed in Syria. Josiah of Judah, who was foolhardy enough to oppose him at Megiddo, was by him defeated. Syria seems to have submitted to him, as far as the countries bordering the Euphrates. Gaza offered resistance, but was taken.

But it was only for a short time that Neku II could feel himself a conqueror. Nabopolassar sent his son Nebuchadrezzar against him, and at Carchemish on the Euphrates a battle was fought in the year 605 B.C. which Neku lost. Nebuchadrezzar could not at once completely follow up his victory, for he had to return to Babylon, where his father had in the meantime died. Still the Babylonians now had a free hand in Syria, and Neku did not again venture to face them.

The Phœnicians had long learnt how to make the best of a foreign supremacy. A strong party which held it advisable to side with Nebuchadrezzar as the most powerful of the rivals for the lordship over Assyria, appears to have held the reins of government in Tyre, when Apries (Uah-ab-Ra) attained that of Egypt. The latter, as Herodotus relates, immediately on his accession, took the field against Sidon and gave battle to the Tyrians by sea; and then only does it appear that opinion changed and Tyre allowed herself to enter into negotiations with Egypt. Otherwise, in 587 Nebuchadrezzar would have had no grounds for not only proceeding with his army to renew the siege of Jerusalem, but also advancing against Tyre. Apries did not venture to march against the Babylonians, but left the Jews and Tyrians to their fate. Already in July, 586, the capital of the kingdom of Judah had been conquered: the town was destroyed and the people led away into exile in Babylonia. According to Ezekiel the Tyrians hailed the fall of[287] Jerusalem with joy: the gate which barred the nations was broken, another commercial route was opened up. But according to Menander, in 587 Nebuchadrezzar had already begun to blockade Ithobaal II in his island. Tyre resisted longer than ever before, and Ithobaal II did not surrender for thirteen years (574), and probably then only because he was compelled to do so by the straits to which the isolation from the mainland and the cessation of all industries had reduced his subjects. The town was neither taken by storm nor plundered and ruined. Ithobaal’s family had to remove to Babylon, so that in case Baal II, to whom Nebuchadrezzar gave Tyre in fee, should prove insubordinate, the Babylonians might not want for pretenders to the crown. To frighten the Pharaohs from further attempts to interfere, Nebuchadrezzar undertook a campaign against Egypt (in 568). The Tyrians remained docile. Nabonidus still called Gaza the southernmost landmark of his kingdom.

The reign of Baal II, which lasted ten years (to 564), was followed by an interregnum, a period in which Tyre was not under kings, but under judges, suffets—that is, rulers who could lay claim to no sort of legal right. Thus Tyre was in a state of anarchy. Finally a party prevailed, which sent for a legitimate king from Babylon, namely Maharbaal (Greek Merbalos), who reigned four years. He was succeeded by his brother Hiram (III), who was also fetched from Babylon. The annals of Tyre place the transference of power into the hands of Cyrus, the Persian, in the fourteenth year of the twenty years’ reign of Hiram III (538 B.C.). As a matter of course, when Babylon fell into the hands of the Persians, Phœnicia, like the rest of Syria, also changed masters. It seems as though the wearisome siege of Tyre, under Nebuchadrezzar, and the period of anarchy which followed it, had stifled in the Tyrians the last remains of the desire for independence. Hiram’s passive demeanour may have been determined by doubt of the safety of his own throne, if not by considerations respecting his kinsmen who had remained at Babylon, and dread of the nomination of a rival king by Cyrus; and if Hiram possessed some of the hereditary wisdom of the former princes of Tyre, who appeared even to Ezekiel as in their way “wiser than Daniel,” he may also have recognised in the Persians the people to whom belonged the future in southwestern Asia.

The modest extent of Phœnicia did not, from the first, correspond to the inordinate number and distant position of the colonies, which the Phœnicians, chiefly for the sake of the successful preservation of their commercial interests, had been obliged to establish on foreign shores. The loss in internal strength and able-bodied population thus inflicted on the mother country, was not compensated by the treasures laid up in that mother country itself, whose surroundings permitted of no extension of territory, and whose own prosperity would have been permanently hazarded by any attempt at an aggressive increase of power. And if, in many instances, the despatch of emigrants may have disposed of an excess of population, nothing could prevent the colonies from becoming, in course of time, more and more estranged from the interest of the mother city, and attaining a position in which they were entirely dependent on their own resources. To sail from the Syrian coast to Gades (Cadiz), took eighty days in the time of the Greeks, and before that probably much longer, and it was necessary to traverse the whole of the Mediterranean. Even if Phœnicia had been spared the continual pressure of the exigencies of war, it would still have been impossible permanently to maintain the dominion over the colonies in their entire extent, and to prevent the development of independence. But the[288] very period in which the Phœnicians had most to suffer from attacks of the Assyrians, when the inhabitants of Tyre had to confine themselves to the defence of their citadel in the sea, coincides with the time in which the Hellenes founded their colonies in Sicily. The immediate connection with the Phœnicians of the west was thus lost. The latter were now compelled to defend themselves against the adversary with their own arms, and, as it were, with a complete change of front. At the same time, in the beginning of the seventh century, according to all appearance, there arose in the land of Tarshish a native dynasty, whose representative in legend is the long-lived king, Arganthonius, who is supposed to have attained the considerable age of one hundred and fifty years, and the rulers of this dynasty no longer exclusively favoured the commerce of the Phœnicians. When, about the year 690, the merchant Chalæus of Samos, arrived there, he was able unmolested to sell so much silver, that he is said to have made sixty talents by the transaction, and his example was imitated, especially by Phœnician seamen. Wherever the Hellenic merchant or seaman was admitted, he began to cast the Phœnician into the shade, and when, in the reign of Psamthek I, Egypt made herself more than ever accessible to foreign intercourse, it was not the Phœnicians but the Hellenes who derived the most advantages from the fact, although it may be true that, at Neku’s bidding, the Phœnician seamen were the first who attempted the circumnavigation of Africa, and successfully accomplished it. In Cilicia, even before the Persian epoch, Hellenic civilisation had begun to be generally adopted, and about the same time at which Phœnicia became subject to Cyrus, the towns of Cyprus, which had long been for the most part Hellenic, passed, though only temporarily, under the supremacy of Egypt. From this date down to the time of Alexander the Great, the history of Phœnicia forms a part of the history of the Persian empire, while from the middle of the seventh century B.C. the history of the Phœnicians of the west, merges more and more in that of the city which there constituted herself the energetic mistress of the colonies; that history is connected in the closest fashion with the destinies of Carthage.d

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER IV. PHŒNICIA UNDER THE PERSIANS

Although Tyre does not appear to have lost its independence in its wars with Nebuchadrezzar, it was impossible that it should endure a siege of thirteen years without great injury to its prosperity. At the commencement of the Babylonian war it was evidently at the head of the Phœnician states; the people of Sidon and Aradus furnished its fleet with mariners and soldiers; the artisans of Byblus wrought in its dockyards. But from this time the pre-eminence of the Tyrians is lost. Aahmes II dispossessed them of Cyprus, though a family of Tyrian origin seems to have acquired the sovereignty in Salamis, which they retained till deprived of it by Evagoras. We do not find any mention made of the Phœnician naval states, as forming a part of the alliance into which the Babylonians, Lydians, and Egyptians entered, for the purpose of resisting the danger which threatened them all from the rising power of Cyrus. But whether they were connected during this time with Babylon, or, as is more probable, with Egypt, whose power had revived under Aahmes II, they would be equally in opposition to the policy of Persia; and it was as a preparatory step towards obtaining possession of the seacoast, that Cyrus secured himself an ally in Palestine, by showing the Jews other marks of favour, and allowing them to rebuild Jerusalem, in doing which they availed themselves of the aid of Sidon and Tyre in felling timber on Lebanon. Without this security, it would have been very impolitic in Persia to allow the fortification of a place of such natural strength as Jerusalem.

During the whole of his reign we find no mention made of his employing the Phœnician navy in his enterprises, which indeed were exclusively military. Towards its close he unquestionably meditated an expedition against Egypt; but his attention was drawn off to the nomadic nations on his northeastern frontier, in warfare with whom he lost his life. Xenophon indeed attributes to him the conquest of Cyprus, Phœnicia, and Egypt, in his Cyropædia; but his assertion has not obtained credit. Cambyses, his son, almost immediately undertook an expedition against Egypt, in which he employed the naval forces of the Phœnicians. Both Cyprus and Phœnicia gave themselves up unresistingly to the power which was evidently destined to inherit the ascendency in Western Asia, previously possessed by Babylon. When the conquest of Egypt was effected, he wished to attack Carthage; but the Phœnicians refused, alleging the religious obligations which forbade them to take part[290] in a war against their own descendants. Cambyses had no means of compelling them; he had no fleet of his own; they had given themselves up, by preference rather than necessity, to the Persians. The Cyprians had not the same motive as the Phœnicians for refusing to act against Carthage; but the strength of the naval armament lay in the Phœnician ships, and Cambyses desisted from his project.

In the more perfect organisation, both of its revenues and its forces, which the Persian monarchy owed to Darius, the navy of Phœnicia became a regular and very important part of the public power. By its means Darius made himself master of the islands on the coast of Asia Minor. Along with Palestine and Cyprus it formed the fifth of the twenty nomes into which his empire was divided, and they paid jointly a tribute of 350 talents—just half the money-tribute which was levied from Egypt. Although these nomes are called by the general name of satrapies, and had each a separate governor, it does not appear that the internal constitution of the several kingdoms was disturbed; at least, in Phœnicia and in Cyprus the native princes continued to reign.

The commercial prosperity of Tyre and Sidon remained unimpaired, except by the rivalry of their own colonies of Carthage and Cadiz; for the Persians, like the Turks and Tartars, never became themselves a maritime power. The rich traffic of Arabia and the East still passed through the hands of the Phœnicians, and their manufactories of purple and glass were in full activity. Throughout the long struggle between Greece and Persia, which began with the burning of Sardis, the Phœnicians constituted the naval strength of the Persian armaments. The Cilician and Egyptian troops, destined for the reduction of Cyprus, were conveyed to that island in Phœnician ships. In the conflict by sea and land which subsequently took place, the Phœnician fleet was defeated by that of the Ionian Greeks; but the Persians having been at the same time successful by land, the revolt was suppressed, and Cyprus, after a year’s independence, returned to its subjection. The Persian commanders proceeded from the conquest of Cyprus to attack the Ionian cities themselves. A naval force of 600 vessels was assembled for the reduction of Miletus, the city of Aristagoras, by whom the Ionian revolt had been instigated, among which the Phœnicians were conspicuous for their zeal and bravery. In the sea-fight off the island of Lade, opposite to Miletus, they defeated the Ionians, who were deficient in naval training and discipline, and weakened by the defection of the greater part of the Samians. The conquest of Miletus speedily followed; and the Phœnician fleet, having subdued the islands of Asiatic Greece, crossed over to the Thracian Chersonesus. Miltiades, afterwards the conqueror of Marathon, narrowly escaped capture by one of their vessels, and his son Metiochus fell into their hands. It was no doubt by means of the Phœnician fleet, as well as that of the Ionians, that the islands of the Ægean were reduced, and the land forces of Persia conveyed to Marathon, though no specific mention is made of them in the subsequent operations.

When Xerxes carried out the project of a renewed invasion of Greece, which Darius had been prevented by death from executing, we find the Phœnicians bearing a conspicuous part among the naval forces which he assembled for that purpose. To them, in conjunction with the Egyptians, was committed the construction of the bridges of boats, by which the Hellespont was passed. The Phœnicians were also engaged in the construction of the canal, by which Xerxes cut through the isthmus which joins Mount Athos to the mainland, thus avoiding the fate which had befallen the fleet of[291] Mardonius. They alone had sufficient experience in works of this kind to make the sides of their excavation a gradual slope; the other nations who were employed in it dug perpendicularly down, and increased their own labour by the falling in of the sides. Before crossing the Hellespont, Xerxes mustered his troops near Abydos, and caused his naval forces to try their skill and speed against each other by a contest in the Straits, in which the Phœnicians of Sidon were victorious over the Greeks as well as over the other barbarians. They furnished to the armament which assembled at Doriscus and the mouth of the Hebrus, 300 ships; the Egyptians sending 200, and the people of Cyprus 150. The names of their several commanders, probably their kings, have been preserved by Herodotus; Tetranestus the son of Anysus the Sidonian; Mapen the son of Sirom the Tyrian; and Merbaal the son of Agbaal the Aradian.

We do not hear again of the Phœnician navy, until the Athenians, who had been left predominant in Greece and at the head of her naval confederacy, transferred the war to Cyprus and the coast of Cilicia. When the Persian generals, Artabazus and Megabyzus, mustered their troops in Cilicia for the reconquest of Egypt, they marched through Syria and Phœnicia, gathering the naval forces of this latter country on their way. After the main body of the Athenians had surrendered in the island Prosopitis, a reinforcement of fifty triremes, which had sailed into the Mendesian mouth of the Nile, in ignorance of what had happened, was attacked by the Phœnician fleet and almost entirely destroyed. The Athenians being thus threatened with the loss of their ascendency in the eastern part of the Mediterranean, Cimon, the conqueror at the Eurymedon, was sent with a fleet of two hundred triremes to occupy Cyprus. He attacked Citium, but died before it was reduced; his successor, Anaxicrates, hearing of the approach of a Phœnician and Cilician armament, sailed out to meet them, and defeated them off Salamis in Cyprus. Many of their ships were sunk, a hundred with their crews taken, and the remnant pursued to the coast of Phœnicia. This success, however, was not followed up by the Athenians, who returned almost immediately to their own country.

The Egyptians having revolted from Persia and set Amyrtæus [Amen-Rut] on the throne in the year 405, endeavoured to possess themselves of Phœnicia, the great source of the naval power of Persia; but their plan was frustrated by this return of the Phœnician fleet. We next find them mentioned (394 B.C.) as auxiliaries of Athens in the destruction of the naval superiority which Sparta had gained by the battle of Ægospotami. Persia, which had aided Sparta in the Peloponnesian war, faithful to its policy of distracting Greece by siding with the weaker party, and alarmed at the progress of Agesilaus in Asia Minor, raised by its emissaries a war in Greece, which occasioned the recall of the Spartan king. At the same time Pharnabazus collected a naval armament from Cyprus and Phœnicia to attack the Spartan fleet at Cnidus. The Athenian forces were commanded by Conon, and in the battle which ensued, the Spartans were defeated at sea with the loss of fifty triremes and many of the crews, who after swimming ashore were made prisoners by the land forces. The victorious fleets pursued their way to Greece, and being left by Pharnabazus under the command of Conon, assisted in rebuilding the walls of Athens.

From this time it appears probable that more intimate and permanent relations were established between Phœnicia, and Athens. Phœnicians settled there, and had their own places of worship and interment.

The cities of Phœnicia were involved in the consequences of the war[292] which arose between the Persians and Evagoras of Cyprus. Being forced into hostilities, he did not confine himself to the defence of his own kingdom, but reduced nearly the whole island, sent a fleet against Phœnicia, and took Tyre, according to Isocrates, by assault. In the incidental mention of Phœnician affairs which we thus gain from the Greek historians, Tyre appears as the predominant state, in naval strength, while Sidon was the most flourishing and wealthy, and, as being one of the residences of the kings of Persia, was more difficult to detach from its allegiance.

We next find Phœnicia engaged in the extensive revolt of the Persian provinces, which was encouraged by the successful resistance of the Egyptians under Nectanebo, the hostility of Sparta, and the disaffection of the Asiatic satraps. Nearly the whole maritime region from Egypt to Lycia, including Phœnicia and Syria, Cilicia, Pamphylia, and Pisidia, was in league to throw off the yoke of the Great King; Sparta aided them by a land force, sent to Egypt under Agesilaus, and the Athenian Chabrias commanded the fleet. Tachus, the king of Egypt, successor of Nectanebo I, advanced with an army into Palestine and began to reduce the strong places which were held by the Persians; but in the meantime disaffection had arisen among his subjects and the army, and he was compelled to abandon his kingdom and take refuge in Persia. Artaxerxes Mnemon died soon after, in the year 358 B.C. During the first part of the reign of his successor Ochus, Egypt, being successful in maintaining its independence against his feeble attempts for its reconquest, appears to have acquiesced in his possession of Phœnicia; but now Egypt was invited to take part in a revolt. The satrap and generals of Ochus [Artaxerxes III], who resided in the territory of Sidon, had treated its inhabitants with great insolence, and in a general assembly of the Phœnician cities held at Tripolis (352 B.C.), it was determined to renounce their submission to Persia. They began by destroying the royal residence and the stores of forage collected for the use of the cavalry, and put to death the Persians from whom they had received injuries. Having thus provoked to the utmost the hostility of Ochus, they raised a numerous fleet of triremes, hired foreign mercenaries, prepared arms and stores, and sent a message to Nectanebo inviting him to join them.

Even the sluggish nature of Ochus was roused by these insults to his authority, and he prepared to take a terrible vengeance upon Phœnicia, and especially upon Sidon. He assembled a large force of infantry and cavalry at Babylon, with which (351 B.C.) he began his march towards the coast, commanding Belesys the satrap of Syria, and Mazæus the satrap of Cilicia, to unite their forces and invade Phœnicia. Four thousand Grecian mercenaries, however, whom Tennes the king of Sidon had received from Egypt, commanded by Mentor of Rhodes, sufficed along with the native troops to drive back both the satraps. Meanwhile Cyprus had followed the example of Phœnicia. The nine petty kings who governed an equal number of towns, in subordination to Persia, asserted their own independence. Evagoras, whom we have formerly known as tyrant of Salamis, had been assassinated soon after the termination of his war with Persia, but had left two sons, Pnytagoras and Evagoras. Pnytagoras, the elder, had been expelled by his younger brother; but the Persians had reinstated him, and given Evagoras a command in Asia. Idrieus, the prince of Caria, who had remained faithful to Persia amidst the general defection of the maritime states of Asia, sent a fleet of forty triremes to attack Salamis; Evagoras and the Athenian Phocion brought eight thousand mercenary foot-soldiers, and began the siege on the land side. The island was flourishing, as the[293] result of several years of peace, and the hope of plunder drew adventurers from the opposite coasts of Syria and Cilicia, by whom the army of Evagoras and Phocion was soon swollen to double its former amount, so that dismay and apprehension prevailed not only in Salamis, but among the rulers of the minor states.

While Ochus was on his march from Babylon, Tennes the king of Sidon, alarmed at the magnitude of the forces which were about to be brought against him, sent Thessalion, a confidential minister, to treat with the Persian king for the betrayal of the city when his army should appear before it, promising besides, his advice in the conduct of the expedition against Egypt, the localities of which he knew accurately. Ochus joyfully accepted the offer; but his pride was so much offended when Thessalion demanded, on behalf of Tennes, the pledge of the royal right hand, that he ordered him forthwith to be beheaded. An exclamation of Thessalion, that the king might do as he pleased, but that without the aid of Tennes his projects would fail, recalled him to a better mind, and he gave the pledge of his right hand,—the most sacred in the estimation of the Persians,—and proceeded on his march through Syria. The Sidonians had availed themselves of the king’s delay to make ample preparations for defence. They had collected a fleet of more than a hundred quinqueremes and triremes, fortified themselves with a wall and triple fosse, and carefully drilled their youth in martial exercises. But all was frustrated by the treachery of Tennes, and Mentor, the commander of the Egyptian mercenaries. Under the pretext of going to attend a general council of the Phœnician states, Tennes led one hundred of the most illustrious citizens of Sidon to the Persian camp, and betrayed them into the hands of Ochus, by whom they were put to death, as the alleged authors of the revolt. As he advanced towards the city, he was met by five hundred of the Sidonians with the branches of supplication in their hands. Before he gave an answer to their petition, he asked Tennes whether he was confident that he could place the city in his hands. Tennes replied that he could; and Ochus, who desired to have an opportunity of signal vengeance upon Sidon, which might strike terror into the other revolted states, not only refused the capitulation for which they supplicated, but caused them all to be put to death. It remained for the consummation of the treachery of Tennes to persuade the Egyptian mercenaries to admit the Persian troops within the walls.

The Sidonians had previously burnt their own fleet, that none might withdraw from the common danger; and now reduced to despair, they shut up themselves, their children and their wives in their houses, and set them on fire. Including slaves, forty thousand persons are said thus to have perished; and so large was the treasure buried in the ashes of the conflagration, that the king sold for many talents the right of extracting it. This tale of unexampled perfidy and cruelty terminated in a signal display of retributive justice. Tennes, having served the purposes of Ochus, was put to death by him, or, knowing that this fate was designed for him, attempted suicide; but wavering in his purpose, was killed by his wife, who immediately slew herself upon his body.[8] Retribution awaited Persia also. Sidon lost by this event her chief naval forces, but became again a flourishing city under kings of its own. The cruelty of Persia, however, was never forgotten; and when Alexander invaded Phœnicia, Sidon opened her gates to him. Cyprus was reduced soon after. Salamis was the last place which held out.

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Ochus, who had at first favoured the claim of Evagoras, listened to the accusations of his enemies, and adopted the cause of Pnytagoras. Evagoras afterwards cleared himself from their charges, and received a government in Asia from the Persian king; but being guilty of malversation in his office, he escaped to Cyprus, where he was seized and put to death. Pnytagoras submitted to the Persians, and was confirmed in his sovereignty, and he held it to the time of Alexander, in whose service he engaged, commanding the fleet which besieged Tyre.

The conquest of Egypt, which soon followed that of Phœnicia, was the last rally of the Persian power, before its final struggle and overthrow. In the interval between the conquest of Phœnicia and the invasion of Asia by Alexander, Athens, the chief maritime state of Greece, was occupied with the protection of her own independence against the growing power of Macedonia, and Persia was left quietly to enjoy the command which she had acquired over the fleets of Cyprus, Phœnicia, and Egypt. Her interference in Grecian politics was confined to sending a force to aid the Perinthians in their resistance to Philip, and supporting, with her gold, that party in Athens, which, by opposing Macedonia, delayed the attack that had been long anticipated, when Greece should be united under a single head. Ochus, on his return from Egypt, gave himself up to the congenial vices of the Persian court, tyranny and luxury; but he had two able ministers, Mentor the Rhodian, who governed his western provinces, and Bagoas, the eunuch, the eastern. He had become odious to his subjects, and was killed by Bagoas (338 B.C.). Arses his youngest son, whom Bagoas raised to the throne, in the hope of ruling by his means, soon showed the purpose of avenging his father’s murder, and shared his fate in the third year of his reign. His children having been put to death, and the direct royal line thus become extinct, Darius, a great-nephew of Artaxerxes Mnemon, was placed on the throne, nearly at the same time (336 B.C.) that Alexander became king of Macedonia and master of Greece, whose forces he immediately prepared to employ for the invasion of Asia.

The battle of the Granicus (334 B.C.) had given to Alexander the possession of Asia Minor; by that of Issus (333 B.C.) Darius was driven beyond the Euphrates, and the whole coast of Phœnicia was left open to the Macedonians. Alexander appointed Menon to the satrapy of Cœle-Syria, and himself marched southward along the coast. On his way he was met by Strato, the son of Gerostratus, the king of Aradus and the adjacent territory, who offered him a golden crown, and surrendered to him the island of Aradus, with[295] Marathus and some other towns on the opposite coast. Gerostratus himself, with Enylus of Byblus and the other kings of the Phœnicians and Cyprians, was at this time at Chios, with Pharnabazus and Autophradates who commanded the Persian fleet. Rejecting the offer of alliance made him by Darius, Alexander continued his march, received the submission of Byblus, and occupied Sidon at the invitation of the inhabitants, who remembered the cruelties of Ochus. Strato their king, who had been placed in the sovereignty by the Persians, and was upheld by them, favoured the cause of Darius, and was probably at this time serving in the Persian fleet, with the contingent of Sidon. He was deposed by Alexander; and Hephæstion, to whom the choice of a successor was left, called to the throne Abdalonymus, a remote scion of the royal family, at that time following the occupation of gardener in the suburbs.

Azemilcus, the king of Tyre, was with Autophradates; but ambassadors delegated by the community, and consisting of his son and the most illustrious men of the state, met Alexander on his way, professing, according to Arrian, that they were ready to submit to his command. They probably hoped that, satisfied with this nominal submission, he would pass onward to Egypt, and that they should not be compromised with the Persians, if Darius regained the ascendency. There were obvious reasons, however, why Alexander should not be content with anything less than complete possession of Tyre. It would have been dangerous for him to attack Egypt, while the Persians had the command of the sea; still more dangerous to follow Darius into Upper Asia, leaving behind him Tyre doubtful, and Egypt and Cyprus hostile. While he marched against Babylon, the Persian fleet would reconquer the seacoast and return to Greece, where Lacedæmon was openly hostile, and Athens retained rather by fear than affection. Tyre once secured, the naval power of Phœnicia, the strongest arm of Persia, would be at his command; for the mariners and the sailors would quit her service as soon as they found that their country was occupied by the Greeks. Cyprus would follow the example of Phœnicia; the expedition against Egypt might be easily effected, and the Persians being cut off from the sea, the march against Babylon might be undertaken with safety, and the advantage of an augmented fame. As a cover to his design he requested permission to enter the island, and sacrifice to Melkarth [Hercules] the tutelary god of Tyre, and the progenitor of the Macedonian kings. The Tyrians were not imposed upon, and returned for answer that there was a temple of Melkarth in Palætyrus on the mainland, in which he was at liberty to sacrifice. He prepared therefore to possess himself of the island by force, and the Tyrians to defend themselves.

Probably, had the question of surrender been decided by the wishes of the upper classes, Tyre would have passed quietly into the hands of Alexander. Those who are in possession of honour and wealth are not disposed to put them to hazard for the sake of national independence; they are rather eager to gain merit by submission and co-operation. But in the minds of the common people there arises in such a crisis a passionate, unreasoning sentiment of patriotism, which prepares them to dare and endure everything for the sake of their country. The stubborn resistance of the Canaanites to the children of Israel, the self-devotion of the Sidonians, the desperate struggle of the Carthaginians when their city had been doomed to destruction by the Romans, the horrors of the last siege of Jerusalem, prove what fierce determination characterised the whole race to which the Phœnicians belonged. Perhaps a tradition still lived among the Tyrians,[296] that the kings of Assyria and Babylon, in the days of their highest power, had been foiled in the attempt to possess themselves of their island city. Nor was success altogether hopeless, according to the calculation of probabilities. It might reasonably be expected that, instead of Darius wasting his time in fruitless offers, and not beginning to make preparations till Alexander had taken Tyre, a Persian force would erelong make its appearance in Syria, to interrupt the siege. The obstinate defence made by the Persian commander of Gaza shows what might have been the result had Persia been able to throw succours into Tyre. The boldness of the operation by which Alexander joined the island to the continent had no parallel in the practice of war and would have failed, notwithstanding his most strenuous exertions, had not the naval forces of Aradus and Sidon abandoned the cause of Phœnicia. Carthage, which was bound by ties of origin to Tyre, and had a common interest with her in preventing the naval preponderance of Greece in the Mediterranean, might be expected to give aid, and even in the event of defeat, afforded an asylum. At the moment when Alexander was about to begin the siege, a Carthaginian embassy arrived, bringing gifts to Melkarth, and encouraged the Tyrians to resist. No blockade could be formidable to a city which commanded the sea, and possessed ample wealth for the purchase of supplies. Had the Persian government displayed ordinary vigour, the delay of a seven months’ siege might have changed the history of the Eastern world.

Alexander perceived that his efforts would be vain as long as the Tyrians remained masters of the sea, and gave orders for the construction of new machines, and of a new mole of greater breadth, which, by inclining towards the southwest, instead of crossing the strait in a direct line, was less exposed to the action of the wind and current. While the necessary preparations were making, he himself went to Sidon to collect a fleet. The Sidonian triremes were with Autophradates, along with the ships of Aradus and Byblus; but their commanders, Gerostratus and Enylus, who had heard of the surrender of their respective cities, but not of the defeat of Alexander before Tyre, deserted the Persian cause, and at this critical moment brought their vessels into the harbour of Sidon. A fleet of eighty Phœnician ships was thus collected, which were joined by vessels from Rhodes, Soli, Mallus, and Lycia, and a penteconter from Macedonia.

Not long after, the kings of Cyprus, having heard of the defeat of Darius at Issus, and the occupation of Phœnicia by Alexander, anchored in the same harbour with 120 ships. The fate of Tyre was already decided. While these vessels were being fitted up for the peculiar service to which they were destined, Alexander with his cavalry and light troops made a rapid expedition of eleven days into Cœle-Syria, where he repelled the Arabs of the Desert, who had interrupted his soldiers in cutting down wood on Anti-Libanus, and made terms with the inhabitants of the country. Returning to Sidon, he found that Cleander had arrived from the Peloponnesus with 4000 Greek mercenaries, and having manned his ships with his bravest soldiers, in order to avoid those naval manœuvres in which the Tyrians were more skilful, and to fight hand to hand from the decks, he set sail for Tyre in order of battle, leading in person the right division of the fleet, and anchored in the northern roadstead opposite to the Sidonian harbour. In his absence the construction of the new mole had been proceeding rapidly, though not without obstacles. The Macedonians had thrown whole trees with their branches into the sea, and covered them with a layer of stones, on which other trees were again[297] laid. The Tyrian divers, approaching the mole unseen, laid hold of the projecting branches, and dragging them out, brought down with them large portions of the superincumbent mass. In spite of these exertions, the mole was nearly completed.

Notwithstanding the proximity of Sidon, the Tyrians had not yet heard of the accession of the Cyprian and Phœnician fleets, and were dismayed at the sight of the large force under Alexander’s command. They renounced the intention of giving him battle, began to transport their children, wives, and aged men to Carthage, and blocked up the mouths of their harbours with a line of triremes ranged side by side. As the Tyrian fleet did not come out against him, he sailed towards the city; and finding it impossible to force his way into the Sidonian harbour, he attacked and sunk the three outermost of the triremes, and then anchored under the lee of the mole, which had again advanced nearly to the walls of the city. The next day the Cyprian fleet stationed itself off the Sidonian harbour, the Phœnician off the Egyptian, near that part of the mole on which Alexander’s own tent was pitched. The attack upon the walls was resumed, and every device for assault or defence known in ancient warfare was put in force on both sides.

Defeated in this way, the Tyrians resolved to attack the Cyprian fleet, and took their measures for the purpose with the utmost secrecy. They spread sails before the mouth of the harbour, so that their operations could not be overlooked; they chose for their attack the hour of noon, when the sailors were at their meal, or engaged in their other avocations, and when Alexander had retired to his tent, pitched on that side of the mole which was most remote from the Sidonian harbour. To avoid alarm they came out of port in single file, rowing gently and in silence, till they were near the enemy, when they plied their oars vigorously, and the celeustæ set up the customary shout of signal and exhortation. Alexander had remained that day a shorter time than usual in his tent, and speedily returned to the place where the fleet was stationed. The surprise had been complete; the Tyrians had found the Cyprian ships deserted, or hastily manned in the midst of confusion and alarm; they had already sunk the ships of Pnytagoras, Androcles, and Pasicrates, and were fast disabling the others and driving them on shore. His first object was to prevent any more of the Tyrian fleet from coming out of the harbour, for which purpose he directed his own ships, as fast as they could be got ready, to station themselves before its mouth, thus hindering both the egress of reinforcements, and the return of the others if they should be unsuccessful. He placed himself on board one of those which lay on the southern side of the mole, and sailed round the island to come upon the Tyrian fleet unawares from the north. This movement, though unseen by those who were fighting off the harbour, was perceived by the Tyrians on the walls, who called aloud to them to return, but were unheard amidst the uproar of the battle. Repeated signals were made, but they did not perceive the approach of Alexander’s fleet till they were close upon them. They then turned and fled towards the harbour; a few only were able to enter, the rest were intercepted, and either disabled or taken. The soldiers and crews for the most part saved themselves by swimming to the friendly shore which was near at hand.

This victory allowed the Macedonians to carry on their unobstructed operations against the wall. But its height and solidity opposite to the mole baffled their efforts to make a breach in it, and they were equally unsuccessful in an attack made at midnight by the floating batteries on the part near the Sidonian harbour. A storm had suddenly arisen; the quadriremes, which[298] had been fastened together and covered with planks to afford footing to the soldiers, were torn asunder and dashed against each other, the men who were stationed on them being precipitated into the water. In the darkness and noise, signals could not be seen, nor the word of command heard. The soldiers overpowered the pilots, and compelled them to seek the shore, which they reached in confusion and with much damage. The Tyrians began a second wall within the first, that they might still have a defence, in the event of a breach being effected; but their fears were indicated by the awakening of superstition. It was a prevalent belief that the gods abandoned a city which was about to fall into the hands of an enemy. A citizen reported that he had seen in a dream Apollo preparing to desert Tyre. He was not one of their ancient divinities; but the Carthaginians had brought a statue of him from Syracuse, and had placed it at Tyre, where it had attracted the veneration of the people. To prevent the desertion of the god, they bound his statue by a golden chain to the altar of their native deity, Melkarth. There were some who would have propitiated Saturn, as the Greeks and Latins called Moloch, by the sacrifice of a child of noble birth, according to the immemorial custom of the Phœnicians in times of public distress and alarm; but the wiser counsel of the elder men prevailed. It was probably, however, at this time that the Tyrians, having taken some Macedonians who were on a voyage from Sidon, put them to death upon the walls, in view of their countrymen, and cast their bodies into the sea. If any reliance had been placed on aid from Carthage, it was dissipated by the arrival of an embassy, which informed them that none could be expected. The republic had been exhausted by its wars in Sicily, and had not long before concluded an humiliating peace with Timoleon. They could only promise the Tyrians an asylum for their wives and children, part of whom had been transported thither before the capture of the city.

The attack upon the walls was carried on with the greatest energy, and repelled by the use of all the arts of defensive warfare. To deaden the blows of the battering-ram, and the force of the stones hurled from the catapults, bags of leather filled with seaweed were suspended from the walls. Tyre as a naval city abounded in ingenious mechanicians, who devised new engines for its defence. They erected on the walls circular machines, the interior of which was filled with several layers of yielding materials. These were set in rapid motion, and the darts and other missiles which struck upon them were either blunted and turned aside by the force of their rotation; or, if they penetrated beyond the surface, were stopped by the soft substances within. The Macedonians raised towers upon the mole, which had now advanced to the island, equalling the wall in height, and by throwing bridges from them to the battlements, endeavoured to pass over into the city. The Tyrian mechanicians constructed long grappling-hooks, which they fastened to ropes, and, throwing them out to a distance, laid hold of the soldiers on the towers. If their bodies were caught, they were miserably mangled; if the hook fixed itself on their shields, they were compelled either to abandon them, and expose their undefended bodies; or if, from a feeling of military honour, they clung to them, they were dragged over the tower and precipitated to the ground. Others of the assailants met with the same fate, having been entangled in nets, which rendered them unable to use their hands. Masses of red-hot metal were thrown from the machines, which among the dense crowd never fell ineffectually. A new mode of annoyance was devised against those who attempted to scale the walls. Sand intensely heated in shields of brass and iron was poured out upon them from above,[299] and, penetrating between the armour and the skin, inflicted such intolerable pain that the soldiers threw off their coats of mail, and were pierced by the arrows and lances from the wall. With long scythes fixed to the end of yard-arms, the Tyrians cut the ropes and thongs by which the battering-rams were worked. Towards the end of the day they sallied from the walls, armed with hatchets, and a deadly struggle took place on the bridges, which ended in the Macedonians being driven back. Diodorus and Curtius, who are supposed to follow Clitarchus the son of Dinon, a general of Alexander, represent him as meditating to abandon the siege and march on Egypt after this repulse. This is not probable in itself, since his whole enterprise must have failed had he left Tyre behind him, not only unconquered, but triumphant.

The next day but one being calm, he ordered the ships on which the battering-rams were planted to be brought up against the wall, in which they soon made a breach. They then drew off, and two other ships were brought up on which the bridges and storming parties were placed. Admetus commanded one of these, Cœnus the other, Alexander keeping himself in reserve with a body of his guards, to attack wherever an opening should be made. The triremes were directed at the same time to sail to both the harbours, that they might force an entrance, if the attention of the Tyrians should be absorbed by the main assault. The vessels which carried the machines for throwing darts, or whose decks were manned with archers, were commanded to sail round the island, and, approaching as near as possible to the walls, to distract the attention of the troops upon them by simultaneous attacks on many points. The conflict was short, when once the bridges were laid to the breach in the wall, and the Macedonian soldiers could advance over a firm and level surface. Admetus was the first who mounted; he was killed by a lance at the moment of his setting foot upon the wall, and died exhorting his soldiers to follow him. Alexander, with his guards, immediately entered and directed his march towards the palace, as the readiest access to the city. The Phœnician fleet had in the meantime burst the boom by which the Egyptian harbour was closed, and dismantled the Tyrian ships or driven them ashore. The Sidonian harbour had no such defence, and was easily entered by the Cyprian fleet. The city being thus occupied on all sides, the Tyrians assembled round the Agenorium, where they were attacked by Alexander and killed or put to flight. Many of the inhabitants shut themselves up in their houses and died by their own hands; others awaited their fate at the doors of their houses; many mounted to the roofs and thence flung down stones and whatever was at hand on the heads of the soldiery.

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The Macedonians had been provoked by their obstinate resistance, and enraged at the recent murder of some of their comrades, as before mentioned, and little mercy was shown. The city was burnt; eight thousand were killed, and the rest, with the exception of those to whom the Sidonians gave shelter on board their vessels, sold for slaves to the number of thirty thousand, including the mercenary troops. Two thousand are said to have been crucified, as a reprisal for the death of the Macedonian prisoners. The king and the chief magistrates, with the Carthaginian deputation, had taken refuge in the temple of Hercules, and their lives were spared. Alexander offered sacrifice to him and led a naval and military procession in his honour, accompanied with gymnastic games and a torch race. He consecrated also to Hercules the battering-ram which had made the first breach in the walls, and a Tyrian ship, sacred to the service of the god, which he had captured. And thus, after a siege of seven months, Tyre was taken in July of the year 332 B.C. Alexander replaced the population, which had been nearly exterminated, by colonists, of whom a considerable part were probably Carians, a nation closely allied to the Phœnicians.

The capture of Tyre took place in July, that of Gaza in October. The following winter (331 B.C.) was occupied by Alexander in Egypt, partly in laying the foundation of Alexandria, which was destined to become the great commercial rival of the Phœnician cities. Having visited the oracle of Ammon, he returned in the ensuing spring to Tyre, where his fleet was assembled, sacrificed again to Hercules, detached one hundred Phœnician and Cyprian ships to the Peloponnesus, and appointed Cœranus as collector of the tribute of Phœnicia.

After the battle of Arbela, Alexander incorporated Syria, Phœnicia, and Cilicia in one province, of which he gave the command to Menes. He had broken the power of Tyre, but the commercial activity and maritime enterprise of Phœnicia remained unimpaired. The Phœnicians followed his army on the march to India for the purposes of traffic, and loaded their beasts of burden on their return through the desert of Gedrosia with the gum of the myrrh and the nard, which it yielded in such abundance as to scent the whole region with the fragrance which was diffused, as the army in its march crushed them under foot. The Phœnicians are mentioned first, along with the Cyprians, Carians, and Egyptians, as composing the crews of the ships which were to sail down the Hydaspes to the Indian Ocean and thence to the mouth of the Euphrates and the Tigris. After his return to Babylon, he commanded forty-seven Phœnician vessels of various rates to be constructed and then taken to pieces, conveyed overland to Thapsacus on the Euphrates, and put together again that they might descend the river to Babylon. They were manned from the Phœnicians engaged in the fishery of purple, and other seafaring people from the coast; and wherever in Syria or Palestine any one could be found possessed of nautical skill, if he were a freeman he was enlisted, if a slave purchased. It was one of his vast projects to colonise by their means the islands in the Persian Gulf and its seacoast—a region not less fertile, says Arrian, than Phœnicia itself. His views of conquest extended to the whole Arabian peninsula—a country whose marshes, he was told, yielded cassia; its trees, myrrh and frankincense; and its shrubs, cinnamon. This scheme, with others still more gigantic, was rendered abortive by his death at Babylon in 323 B.C.b

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER V. PHŒNICIA UNDER THE GREEKS, THE ROMANS, AND THE SARACENS

Ptolemy, to whom Egypt fell in the first division of Alexander’s empire, almost immediately attempted the conquest of Syria and Palestine, agreeably to the policy which the sovereigns of Egypt have always adopted, when that country has been ruled by an enterprising king. The forces which Antipater had left there were unequal to its defence, and Ptolemy easily made himself master of them, Jerusalem alone offering any resistance. He placed garrisons in the Phœnician cities, of which he kept possession till the year 315 B.C., when Antigonus, returning victorious from his war in Babylonia, easily reduced the other towns of Phœnicia, and took Joppa and Gaza by storm, but met with an obstinate resistance from Tyre.

Only eighteen years had elapsed since its desolation by Alexander, but the elastic power of commerce had repaired its strength, and though joined to the mainland by his mole, it was nearly as unassailable by an enemy that did not command the sea as while it remained an island. Antigonus blockaded it by land, and collecting a body of eight thousand wood-cutters and sawyers, felled the cedars and cypresses of Lebanon, which were conveyed to the coast by one thousand yoke of oxen, and fashioned into a fleet at Tripolis, Byblus, and Sidon. With the ships constructed in Phœnicia, Rhodes, and Cilicia, he reduced Tyre at the end of fifteen months. His son Demetrius, however, having advanced to Gaza, was totally defeated there (312 B.C.) by Ptolemy, who regained possession of the whole coast of Palestine and Phœnicia, but was compelled almost immediately to resign it to Antigonus and retire into Egypt, having destroyed the fortifications of Akko (Acre), Joppa, Samaria, and Gaza, the first of which was the key of Syria, the second and third of Judea, and the fourth of Egypt. Having defeated the fleet of Ptolemy before Salamis in Cyprus, and reduced that island, which was a chief source of his naval power, Antigonus, in 307 B.C., with his son Demetrius, attempted without success the invasion of Egypt, and on their retreat Ptolemy again possessed himself for a short time of the seacoast of Phœnicia, with the exception of Sidon. False intelligence of a victory gained by Antigonus caused him to make a truce with Sidon and withdraw into Egypt. By the battle of Ipsus (301 B.C.), in which Antigonus lost his life, his son Demetrius was dispossessed of the throne of Syria. He still, however, retained Cyprus, and having obtained possession of the harbours of[302] Tyre and Sidon, reinforced his garrisons in those cities, when required by Seleucus to surrender them, as belonging to his kingdom of Syria, in the new division of territory consequent on the battle of Ipsus. During the war between them, terminated by the surrender of Demetrius in 287 B.C., Ptolemy, who had conquered Cyprus, appears quietly to have reoccupied Phœnicia and retained it during his life.

The possession of Phœnicia had become still more important to the kings of Syria, since Seleucus (300 B.C.) made Antioch on the Orontes, with the harbour of Seleucia at its mouth, a principal seat of his power. Hence a series of struggles between the Seleucidæ and the Ptolemies during the latter part of the third century B.C. Ptolemy Euergetes, the third of the dynasty, had marched an army into Syria in the beginning of his reign (246 B.C.), and had placed an Egyptian garrison in Seleucia, of which his son, Ptolemy Philopator, still kept possession, when Antiochus the Great undertook (218 B.C.) the reconquest of Syria and Phœnicia. He took Seleucia by assault; Tyre and Akko were put into his hands by the treachery of Theodotus, Ptolemy’s lieutenant; and Nicolaus, who commanded the Egyptian army and fleet, was defeated and driven to take refuge in Sidon. In the following year, however, Antiochus, having collected his forces at Raphia, between Gaza and the frontier of Egypt, was totally defeated by Ptolemy, and Phœnicia and Syria remained in the possession of the Egyptians till the death of Ptolemy and the succession of his infant son.

In the year 203 B.C. Antiochus led an army into Syria and Palestine, and recovered possession of them. The Egyptians sent a force under Scopas, which gained some temporary advantages, but they were defeated at Panium and shut up in Sidon, where they were compelled to surrender. Thus Phœnicia once more (198 B.C.) fell under the power of Syria.

Tyre suffered a severe blow, when Ptolemy Philadelphus constructed the harbour of Berenice on the Red Sea, and established a road with stations and watering places between that place and Coptos, reopening at the same time the canal which joined the Pelusiac branch of the Nile to the Gulf of Suez. The traffic of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, which had hitherto passed from Eloth and Ezion-geber across the Desert to Rhinocolura, and thence been conveyed by Tyrian vessels to all parts of the Mediterranean, was now brought by the Nile or the canal to Alexandria. The opening of the safe and easy route by Kosseir and Coptos, which saved the dangerous navigation of the northern end of the Red Sea, gradually drew to Egypt the wealth that had previously flowed into Phœnicia.

The sufferings which the Syrians endured from the civil wars of the Seleucidæ induced them in the year 83 B.C. to place themselves under the dominion of Tigranes, king of Armenia, who took possession of Syria. This state of things lasted for fourteen years, when, in consequence of the victories of Lucullus, Syria and Phœnicia returned for a short time (67 B.C.) to the dominion of the Seleucidæ. Four years later Pompey reduced Syria into a Roman province, making Gaza, Joppa, Dora, and Turris Stratonis free.

The dominion of Rome, however, was exercised mildly; and though Tyre and Sidon ceased to have any political importance, they retained their ancient fame for nautical science, for the manufacture of glass, and the preparation of the purple dye. A school of philosophy arose here, whose doctrines, like those of Alexandria, combined Greek and oriental elements, and endeavoured to reconcile philosophy with theology. Strabo mentions several contemporaries, eminent in their day, whom Tyre and Sidon had produced. Philo, to whom we owe the translation of Sanchoniathon, was a native of[303] Byblus; his pupil, Hermippus, of Berytus. Porphyry, whose original name was Malchus, was of Tyrian parentage, though born at Batanæa, on the eastern side of the Jordan. Berytus became the seat of a school of law, which for three centuries furnished the eastern portion of the empire with pleaders and magistrates. Marinus of Tyre, who lived in the early part of the second century after Christ, was the first author who substituted maps, mathematically constructed according to latitude and longitude, for the itinerary charts which had been in use before. The maps of Marinus, like those of Ptolemy, which were only an improvement upon them, must have been founded on records of voyages and travels, of which the measured or computed distances were translated into latitudes and longitudes. Nowhere could such records have abounded more than in Phœnicia, which for so many centuries had taken the lead of all other nations in navigation and commerce. Had the invention of maps, in the modern sense, been due to the geographers and mathematicians of Alexandria, it is not probable that Ptolemy, himself a native of Alexandria, would have based his own work entirely on that of Marinus of Tyre.

After the sale of the empire by the Roman soldiery to Didius Julianus and his subsequent assassination (A.D. 193), Septimius Severus and Pescennius Niger were competitors for the purple. Niger, who commanded in the East, had his headquarters at Antioch, and all Syria as far as the Euphrates and the coast of Phœnicia was under his power. Antioch and Berytus favoured the cause of Niger; Laodicea and Tyre, through jealousy of their neighbours, that of Severus. On the news of Niger’s unsuccessful attempt to obstruct the march of Severus through the passes of Taurus, they destroyed the insignia of Niger, and proclaimed his rival. Niger sent against them his Mauritanian light troops, with orders to destroy the towns, and put the inhabitants to the sword. The commission was cruelly executed by the barbarians entrusted with it; they fell on the Laodiceans by surprise, and having inflicted great injury upon them, proceeded to Tyre, which they plundered and burnt after a great slaughter of the inhabitants. It had no longer the protection which its insular situation would have afforded it against an invasion of cavalry; Alexander had joined it permanently to the land.

Niger had been defeated by Severus in the battle of Issus (A.D. 194), and was soon after slain at Antioch. In his subsequent settlement of the affairs of the East (A.D. 201), Severus recruited the population of Tyre from the third legion, whose quarters had long been in Syria and Phœnicia, and rewarded the attachment of its inhabitants by giving it the title of Colony with the Jus Italicum. Its prosperity appears to have received only a transient check from its conflagration. A writer of the age of Constantine describes it as equalling all the cities of the East in wealth and commercial activity; there was no port in which its merchants did not hold the first rank. St. Jerome, about the end of the fourth century, in his Commentary on Ezekiel, speaks of it as the noblest and most beautiful city of Phœnicia, an emporium for the commerce of the world, and is at a loss how to reconcile its actual condition with the threat of its perpetual desolation.

The conquest of Phœnicia and Syria in the seventh century, by the Saracens, led to the establishment of an imperial dye-house at Constantinople, the products of which are repeatedly mentioned in the writings of Anastasius, the librarian of the Vatican, under the popedom of Leo III; but the Tyrian purple still enjoys its former celebrity, and is among the articles of luxury imported by the Venetian merchants into Lombardy in the time of Charlemagne.

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Under the tolerant and enlightened sway of the caliphs, the civilisation of Phœnicia suffered no decay. At the time of the Crusades, Tyre retained its ancient pre-eminence among the cities of the Syrian coast, and excited the admiration of the warriors of Europe by its capacious harbours, its wall, triple towards the land and double towards the sea, its still active commerce, and the beauty and fertility of the opposite shore. To the manufacture of glass was added that of sugar, which for its medicinal virtues was carried to the remotest parts of the world. Joppa was at first the only harbour which the Christians possessed; but in the first ten years of the twelfth century, Baldwin, the successor of Godfrey on the throne of Jerusalem, reduced Antipatris, Cæsarea, Acre, Byblus, Tripolis, and Berytus. Sidon was induced to surrender (A.D. 1110) by the opportune arrival of a fleet from Norway, manned by Crusaders, and commanded by the brother of the king, which, passing through the British Channel and the Straits of Gibraltar, anchored in the port of Joppa. Tyre and Askalon alone remained in the hands of the infidels. Baldwin collected his forces (A.D. 1111) for an attack on the former city; but the Norwegian fleet had returned home after the capture of Sidon, and the ships which he hastily collected from the seacoast were of little value. The city had a numerous garrison, the troops, withdrawn from places less defensible, having thrown themselves into Tyre. Sieges were still conducted after the ancient manner, with the battering-ram and the balista. The besiegers made repeated attacks upon the walls, had forced the first and second, and at last brought up against the third two wooden towers, of such a height as to command the interior of the city, and covered with hides of oxen and camels to prevent their being set on fire; the besieged, however, had erected within towers of still greater height, from which they hurled Greek fire and combustibles of every kind upon the works of the Crusaders. Both the towers were utterly consumed. The approach of an army of twenty thousand men from Damascus was announced, and after a siege of four months, Baldwin, despairing of success, drew off his army to Acre and Jerusalem. From Tiberias the Christians made incursions into the territory of Tyre; but Baldwin having built a fort on the site of Palætyrus, undertook no further enterprises against the maritime towns during the remainder of his reign. No re-enforcements of ships and warriors arrived from the West, and the Christian power in the Holy Land was weakened by the dissensions of its chiefs.

His successor, Baldwin II, was taken prisoner in the year 1123, and the Sultan of Egypt was encouraged to attack Joppa with a fleet of ninety sail. The barons of the kingdom of Jerusalem assembled at Acre, appointed Eustace de Grenier viceroy, and sent a pressing message to the Venetians, who had set out with a powerful armament for the East, but had halted on the way to besiege Corfu. Before their arrival, however, the Egyptians had raised the siege and retired on Ibelim, where thirty thousand of them were totally defeated by eight thousand Christians, animated by the presence of their bishops and their holiest relics. The Venetian fleet followed the Egyptian to Askalon, and destroyed it in a battle before the walls of that fortress.

The presence of such powerful auxiliaries encouraged the Christians to undertake aggressive operations, but it was difficult to decide whether Askalon or Tyre should be first attacked, the neighbours of each naturally considering it as the most formidable. The dispute was settled by an appeal to Heaven. Two pieces of parchment were placed in a box upon the altar, on one of which was written “Tyre,” and on the other “Askalon.” The child[305] who was sent to make a choice drew forth that which was inscribed “Tyre,” and preparations were forthwith made for the siege, which began on the 15th of February, A.D. 1124. The Christians fortified themselves on the land side against the attempts to relieve the city which the Turks of Damascus might be expected to make, and began to construct machines with which to assail the walls. The population of Tyre, devoted to commerce, and become rich and luxurious by its means, was unwarlike; but the garrison was composed of Damascenes and Egyptians, who put in force all the known means for obstructing the progress of the siege. The tower of the Christians was set on fire, and only saved from destruction by the heroism of a pilgrim, who ascended it amidst its own flames and the missiles of the Tyrians. They were skilful swimmers, and under cover of night swam to the guardship of the Venetians, cut the cable by which it was anchored, and fastening another to the vessel drew it to the shore.

In expectation that the blockade by sea would be broken by a fleet from Egypt, or by land from Damascus, the Tyrians held out against assault and famine till the month of June. But no effective aid came from either quarter. The commander of Damascus twice marched as far as the Leontes; but the first time he withdrew at the sight of the Christian army, and the second he came to propose terms of capitulation. They were readily granted by the chiefs, though the common soldiers murmured that they were deprived of their hope of plunder, the infidels being allowed to remain in the city on payment of a moderate ransom, or to withdraw with their property. On the 25th of June the garrison marched out; the banners of the kingdom of Jerusalem, the republic of Venice, and the Count of Tripolis were hoisted on the towers, and Tyre once more became Christian. Its archbishopric was given four years after, with some diminution of the province, to William, an Englishman, and the best historian of the Holy Wars. Askalon was not reduced till the year 1153, when it surrendered to Baldwin III, after a siege of eight months.

The kingdom of Jerusalem, which had been in a state of gradual decline during the twelfth century, notwithstanding the efforts made by Europe for its aid, was overthrown by Saladin in the year 1187, and the whole of the seacoast would have fallen into his power but for the heroic defence of Tyre. The battle of Tiberias, in which the army of the Cross had been annihilated, and the king Lusignan taken prisoner, had spread consternation among the Christians; one city after another had opened its gates to the conqueror. Conrad, the son of the Marquis of Montferrat, arrived off the harbour of Acre a few days after its surrender to the Saracens. He had heard nothing of the misfortunes of the Christians, but the light of the setting sun, falling on the banner of Saladin on the ramparts, showed him his danger, and with some difficulty he made his escape to Tyre.

The Count of Sidon, who had taken refuge there, and the castellan of Tyre were negotiating with Saladin for its surrender, and had already prepared to hoist his colours on the walls, as soon as he made his appearance before the gates. The people of Tyre, however, received Conrad with acclamations; the Count of Sidon fled to Tripolis, and preparations were made for the defence of the city. Saladin collected some ships to blockade Tyre by sea, and in the end of the month of December invested the city. Conrad had very few ships, but having possessed himself of some of Saladin’s fleet, which he had enticed to enter the harbour by the hope of a surrender, he manned them with his own troops, and attacking the remainder, drove them on shore. The enemy had taken advantage of his temporary absence to[306] attempt to scale the walls; but he promptly returned and compelled them to retire with the loss of a thousand men. Saladin on this raised the siege, and did not resume it in the following spring. The archbishop, William of Tyre, had been engaged in soliciting aid from the Christian powers of the West, and had prevailed on the king of Sicily to send a fleet to Tyre with three hundred knights; other reinforcements arrived; the release of the captive king, Guy of Lusignan, gave unity to the Crusaders, and they became the assailants. In August of this year (A.D. 1189) the siege of Acre began, which ended, after a succession of extraordinary vicissitudes, in its capture by the united arms of Philip Augustus and Richard Cœur-de-Lion. By the pacification of August, 1192, Joppa is fixed as the southern, and Tyre as the northern boundary of the Christian territories in Palestine.

Tyre continued to flourish as a commercial city during the succeeding century, chiefly through the activity of the Venetians. In return for the assistance which they had rendered to Baldwin II, they had obtained for themselves the concession of a third part of the city and its dependent territory, the right of being governed by their own magistrates and tried by their own tribunals, and various commercial privileges throughout the extent of the kingdom of Jerusalem; and they succeeded in maintaining these rights, though often infringed.

The rise of the Mameluke power in Egypt was soon felt in the capture of Antioch (A.D. 1268), and the subsequent reduction of the principal towns of the seacoast. A temporary respite was obtained by the second expedition of Louis IX, in 1270, and of the son of Henry III, afterwards Edward I of England, in the following year. The dissensions which followed the death of the sultan Bibars (or Beybars) by whom Antioch had been taken, delayed the catastrophe which the nations of the West took no means to avert. The sultan Kalavun (Kalaoon) resumed the attack on the remains of the Christian kingdom. Margaret, the widow of John de Montfort, who held the principality of Tyre, entered into an agreement with him, by which she bound herself to withdraw from all alliance with the Christian princes who harboured evil designs against the sultan, to raise no new fortifications nor repair the old, and to divide with him the revenues of all territory which they might hold in common. Acre was again the scene on which the Christians and Saracens tried their strength. Kalavun died on the march from Egypt, but Ashraf, his son and successor, adopted his policy, and the siege was begun in the first week of April, 1291. Since its reconquest by Philip and Richard, it had taken the place of Tyre as the great mart of the Syrian coast; every language of the East or West found an interpreter within its walls. It was far more strongly fortified than when it defied for two years the attacks of Saladin, and forces were assembled in it amply sufficient for its defence, had they been wielded with vigour and unanimity. But dissension reigned among them. On the 18th of May, 1291, the whole city with the exception of the fort of the Templars, was occupied by Ashraf, and this was delivered up to him by capitulation on the next day. The few places which the Christians still held in Syria attempted no defence. The Frank inhabitants of Tyre abandoned it on the evening of the day on which Acre surrendered, and the Saracens entered it the following morning.

Othman, the founder of the present Turkish empire, began his reign in A.D. 1288, three years before the reduction of Syria by the sultan of Egypt. From the conquest of Asia Minor and the Danubian provinces of the Greek empire, the Turks advanced in the middle of the fifteenth century to the capture of Constantinople (A.D. 1453), and spread a panic through Europe[307] by the sack of Otranto in A.D. 1479. The progress of conquest was checked during the reign of Bajazet II; but his successor, Selim I, in A.D. 1516, conquered Syria in a single campaign, and since that time it has been subject to the Ottomans, the most barbarous of all the conquerors by whom it has successively been subdued. The consequent decline of its prosperity has been rapid and complete. The insecurity of life and property has been fatal alike to manufacturing industry, to agriculture, and to commerce; the traveller, if without arms or escort, has pursued his researches in perpetual danger of being plundered or killed, and with the certainty of vexatious delays and interruptions; the means of communication have been suffered to fall into decay, and no effort has been made to check the process by which nature is destroying the harbours of the coast. Neither sieges nor earthquakes have done so much as Turkish oppression and misrule to make Tyre what the traveller now sees, “a rock for fishermen to spread their nets upon.”b

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CHAPTER VI. THE STORY OF CARTHAGE

The city of Carthage was the culmination in history of the commerce, ambition, and military prowess of the Phœnician people. It was a city which never quite reached the first rank, yet always threatened to seize the supremacy. As a collaborator with the Persians in the great invasion of Greece, Carthage sent her forces against Sicily, only to meet an equal discomfiture. Later she wrought the great city of Rome to frenzies of terror, or hatred. Carthage appears constantly throughout Grecian and Roman history, but it seems well to place here a brief and consecutive story of her career as a city. The picturesque legends of the foundation will be found in Appendix A. The date to be accepted by historians was long uncertain, but seems now to be fixed at 818 B.C. Utica and Gades (now Cadiz) were founded earlier than Carthage, but the feverish ambition of the city of Dido soon told.a

Carthage so greatly outstripped them in wealth and power, as to acquire a sort of federal pre-eminence over all the Phœnician colonies on the coast of Africa. In those later times when the dominion of the Carthaginians had reached its maximum, it comprised the towns of Utica, Hippo, Adrumetum, and Leptis—all original Phœnician foundations, and enjoying probably even as dependents of Carthage a certain qualified autonomy—besides a great number of smaller towns planted by themselves, and inhabited by a mixed population called Liby-Phœnicians. Three hundred such towns—a dependent territory covering half the space between the Lesser and the Greater Syrtis, and in many parts remarkably fertile—a city said to contain 700,000 inhabitants, active, wealthy, and seemingly homogeneous—and foreign dependencies in Sicily, Sardinia, the Balearic isles, and Spain,—all this aggregate of power, under one political management, was sufficient to render the contest of Carthage even with Rome for some time doubtful.

But by what steps the Carthaginians raised themselves to such a pitch of greatness we have no information, and we are even left to guess how much of it had already been acquired in the sixth century B.C. As in the case of so many other cities, we have a foundation legend decorating the moment of birth, and then nothing farther. The Tyrian princess Dido or Elissa, daughter of Belus, sister of Pygmalion, king of Tyre, and wife of the wealthy Sichæus [or[309] Sicharbas] priest of Hercules [Melkarth] in that city—is said to have been left a widow in consequence of the murder of Sichæus by Pygmalion, who seized the treasures belonging to his victim. But Dido found means to disappoint him of his booty, possessed herself of the gold which had tempted Pygmalion, and secretly emigrated, carrying with her the sacred insignia of Hercules; a considerable body of Tyrians followed her. She settled at Carthage on a small hilly peninsula joined by a narrow tongue of land to the continent, purchasing from the natives as much land as could be surrounded by an ox’s hide, which she caused to be cut into the thinnest strip, and thus made it sufficient for the site of her first citadel, Byrsa, which afterwards grew up into the great city of Carthage. As soon as her new settlement had acquired footing, she was solicited in marriage by several princes of the native tribes, especially by the Gætulian Jarbas, who threatened war if he were refused. Thus pressed by the clamours of her own people, who desired to come into alliance with the natives, yet irrevocably determined to maintain exclusive fidelity to her first husband, she escaped the conflict by putting an end to her life. She pretended to acquiesce in the proposition of a second marriage, requiring only delay sufficient to offer an expiatory sacrifice to the manes of Sichæus; a vast funeral pile was erected, and many victims slain upon it, in the midst of which Dido pierced her own bosom with a sword, and perished in the flames. Such is the legend to which Virgil has given a new colour by interweaving the adventures of Æneas, and thus connecting the foundation legends of Carthage and Rome, careless of his deviation from the received mythical chronology. Dido was worshipped as a goddess at Carthage until the destruction of the city: and it has been imagined with some probability that she is identical with Astarte, the divine patroness under whose auspices the colony was originally established, as Gades and Tarsus were founded under those of Hercules—the tale of the funeral pile and self-burning appearing in the religious ceremonies of other Cilician and Syrian towns. Phœnician religion and worship were diffused along with the Phœnician colonies throughout the larger portion of the Mediterranean.

The Phocæans of Ionia, who amidst their adventurous voyages westward established the colony of Massalia (as early as 600 B.C.), were only enabled to accomplish this by a naval victory over the Carthaginians—the earliest example of Greek and Carthaginian collision which has been preserved to us. The Carthaginians were jealous of commercial rivalry, and their traffic with the Tuscans and Latins in Italy, as well as their lucrative mine-working in Spain, dates from a period when Greek commerce in those regions was hardly known. In Greek authors the denomination Phœnicians is often used to designate the Carthaginians as well as the inhabitants of Tyre and Sidon, so that we cannot always distinguish which of the two is meant. But it is remarkable that the distant establishment of Gades, and the numerous settlements planted for commercial purposes along the western coast of Africa and without the Straits of Gibraltar, are expressly ascribed to the Tyrians. Many of the other Phœnician establishments on the southern coast of Spain seem to have owed their origin to Carthage rather than to Tyre. But the relations between the two, so far as we know them, were constantly amicable, and Carthage even at the period of her highest glory sent Theori with a tribute of religious recognition to the Tyrian Hercules; the visit of these envoys coincided with the siege of the town by Alexander the Great. On that critical occasion, the wives and children of the Tyrians were sent to find shelter at Carthage: two centuries before, when the Persian empire[310] was in its age of growth and expansion, the Tyrians had refused to aid Cambyses with their fleet in its plans for conquering Carthage, and thus probably preserved their colony from subjugation.b

THE SITE AND EARLY HISTORY OF CARTHAGE

The point of land still called Capo Cartagine, which projects from the eastern side of the Gulf of Tunis, near the entrance of the Goletta, was in ancient times more nearly a peninsula than it is now, and corresponds exactly with the description given by Thucydides of the sites selected for the purposes of commerce by the Phœnicians. Its height, which is still nearly five hundred feet above the sea, afforded a good lookout; and as a shelter for ships the qualities of the bay are familiar from the description of Virgil, Æn. 1, 160. It was in this way that all the principal colonies of Phœnicia arose, and in this sense Carthage may have owed its origin to the times when Sidon was predominant among the Phœnician cities. But its rapid rise to power was due to a colony from Tyre about the end of the ninth century B.C. The circumstances which led to the migration of Dido belong to the special history of that city. The colony first established itself on the hill called by the Greeks Byrsa, still recognised in the elevated ground which bears the name of St. Louis. It is now only about one hundred and ninety feet above the level of the sea; but its height above the neighbouring ground, on which its strength depended, has no doubt been diminished by the accumulation of ruins around its base. The name, which, from its resemblance to the Greek word for hide, gave rise to the story of Dido’s purchase of as much land as a hide would cover, is Phœnician, and denotes a fortress. Like the Cadmea at Thebes, which it resembled in name, it was the place of arms of the original settlers, the magalia of the civil population being gathered around the base, and gradually forming the New City, the signification of the name Carthage, by which both parts collectively are known, as Neapolis (Naples) has absorbed its older neighbour, Palæpolis. The work of excavating for themselves a dock, in which Virgil represents them as engaged at the arrival of Æneas, would soon follow their settlement; for, though they came with arms in their hands, they came rather as merchants than as warriors, and their first accessions of population were from the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, who flocked to them for the purpose of trade. It was probably in the same place, on the southern side of the peninsula, where we now see the remains of two basins, designed to hold the war navy of Carthage, in the day of its power. They have become a salt marsh; but under the Byzantine emperors, and after the Mohammedan conquest, they retained their ancient use.

We have much cause to regret the diffidence or vanity which made Sallust decline to speak of Carthage, because he had not space to do justice to such a theme. In the wreck which has taken place of ancient literature, even a few lines from his pen would have given us information which we now seek in vain. Its history naturally divides itself into three periods: from its foundation to the year 480 B.C., when its wars in Sicily began; from the year 480 to 265 when its wars with Rome began; and finally, from 265 to 146, when it was destroyed. We are entirely destitute of any continuous history for the first of these periods. The primary cause of its rapid increase is no doubt to be found in the fertility of the soil, and the fortunate selection of its site, midway between the seats of art and[311] civilisation in Asia and the rich countries in the southwest of Europe,—within an easy distance also of the coasts of southern Italy and the islands of Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, and the Balearic Isles. The richest portion of the traffic with these western regions, that with the south of Spain, was kept to itself by Phœnicia, during the time of its ascendency; but as a compensation for its exclusion from the mines of Tartessus, Carthage enjoyed ready access to the interior of Africa, by the caravans, in which the nomadic tribes conveyed the salt and the dates with which the north of Africa abounds, across the Sahara to the countries on the Niger, and brought back thence gold-dust, precious stones, and slaves. They had traffic with the natives of Ethiopia by a different channel. They had visited and colonised the western coast of Africa, as low down as Arguin, and dealt with the natives by dumb barter, receiving gold-dust from them in exchange for their own wares.

As the Carthaginian fleet was defeated in 600 B.C. by the force of a single Greek city, Phocæa, its naval power was at that time not very great. Sixty years later they came again into conflict off Corsica with less advantage to the Phocæans, now expelled from their home by Harpagus, the general of Cyrus. A great change had taken place in Asiatic history. Soon after the first conflict of these powers, Tyre underwent a siege by Nebuchadrezzar, in which, whether captured or not, it suffered so severely that it was never able to regain its former ascendency; and from this time we may date the entire independence of Carthage, and its succession to that dominion in the West which had hitherto belonged to Tyre. This increase of power is connected with the name of Hanno; not the same who commanded the expedition to the western coast of Africa, but of a generation earlier, and living about the middle of the sixth century B.C. According to Dio Chrysostom, “he made the Carthaginians to be Libyans instead of Tyrians, and to inhabit Libya instead of Phœnicia, and to acquire much wealth, and many emporia and harbours and triremes, and an extensive dominion both by land and sea.” These words plainly imply, that in the time, and by means of the measures of Hanno, Carthage, from being a dependency of Tyre, became a substantive state, having its seat in Africa; and that a great extension of its wealth and its power, both by sea and land, took place at the same time and under the same auspices. In an historian, we should have inferred from the phrase “that he had caused the Carthaginians to inhabit Libya instead of Phœnicia,” that he had been the leader of a large emigration from Tyre, to which this increase was owing; in a rhetorician it appears to mean nothing more than the preceding clause, namely, that before his time Carthage had been virtually a portion of Phœnicia, but henceforth was an independent African power. That such was the effect of the decline of Tyre after the siege by Nebuchadrezzar is certain; and even if no large part of its population migrated at once, during the siege and after it, the decay of its prosperity and the loss of its independence would naturally attract them towards Carthage, which was already powerful and able to protect itself. Such an increase, coupled with the decline of the Tyrian power throughout the western Mediterranean, would account for the sudden start which Carthage appears to have made in the sixth century B.C. The military talents of Mago, who lived between the middle and end of this century, contributed to the same result. He organised their military forces, and prepared the way for the extensive wars which the Carthaginians carried on in Sicily.

Cambyses, after the conquest of Egypt, wished to have attacked Carthage, the submission of Cyrene and Barca having brought his frontier into contact with theirs; but the Phœnicians, who must have furnished the fleet[312] for this purpose, refused to engage in hostilities against their own colony. Darius solicited the aid of Carthage in his projected invasion of the Greeks, but without success. When Xerxes renewed his father’s undertaking, he entered into a treaty with the Carthaginians, in virtue of which, in the same year in which he crossed the Hellespont, they poured a large army into Sicily, gathered from Gaul, Liguria, and Spain, as well as all their African territories. The battle of Himera was as fatal to the plans of Carthage as Salamis and Platæa to those of Xerxes; but Sicily continued for a long time to be the scene of struggles between Carthaginians and Greeks, till both were absorbed in the growing empire of Rome.c

MOMMSEN’S ACCOUNT OF CARTHAGE

The Semitic race stands amongst and yet apart from the peoples of the old classical world. The base of the former is the East, of the latter the Mediterranean; and as war and migration advanced the frontiers and threw the races amongst one another, a deep sense of dissimilarity still divided and yet divides the Indo-Germanic peoples from the Syrian, Israelitish, and Arabian nations. This is also true of that Semitic people which more than any other has extended itself westward; namely, the Phœnician or Punic race. Their first home is the narrow strip of coast between Asia Minor, the highlands of Syria, and Egypt, which is called the plain—that is Canaan. This is the only name which the nation applied to itself—in Christian times the Libyan peasant still called himself a Canaanite; but to the Hellenes Canaan was the “Purple Country,” or the “Land of the Red Men,” Phœnicia, and in the same way the Italians were accustomed, as we are ourselves, to call the Canaanites Phœnicians.

The country is well adapted to agriculture; but above all the excellent harbours and the abundance of wood and metals are favourable to trade, which here, where the superabundance of the eastern continent stretches far into the Mediterranean Sea with its numerous islands and harbours, may have first started in all its importance to man. What courage, sagacity, and enthusiasm can contribute, the Phœnicians called into play to unite the East and West and give full development to commerce and what it involves, as navigation, manufacture, colonisation. At an incredibly early period we find them in Cyprus and Egypt, in Greece and Sicily, in Africa and Spain, and even in the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea. The region of their commerce extends from Sierra Leone and Cornwall as far as the Malabar coast; through their hands pass the gold and pearls of the East, the Tyrian purple, slaves, ivory, lion and panther skins from the interior of Africa, Arabian incense, the linen of Egypt, clay pottery and wines from Greece, Cyprian copper, Spanish silver, English tin, the iron of Elba.

In contrast to the Indo-Germanic aptitude for political organisation, the Phœnicians, like all Aramaic nations, lacked the inspiring idea of self-governing freedom. In the best days of Sidon and Tyre, Phœnicia was the eternal apple of discord of the powers which ruled on the Nile and the Euphrates, and was subject now to the Assyrians, now to the Egyptians. With half their force the Hellenic cities would have made themselves independent; but the sharp-sighted men of Sidon calculated that the barring of the caravan routes towards the East or of the Egyptian harbours would be more costly than the heaviest tribute, and consequently they paid their taxes punctually to Nineveh or Memphis, as the case might be,[313] and when nothing else would serve, even fought the kings’ battles with their ships.

And as at home the Phœnician placidly endured the oppression of their masters, so abroad they were by no means inclined to exchange the peaceful ways of a commercial policy for one of conquest. Their colonies are factories; to them it was of more importance to take their wares from the natives and bring others to them than to acquire broad lands in distant countries and accomplish there the slow and difficult work of colonisation. They even avoided war with their competitors; almost without resistance they allowed themselves to be driven out of Egypt, Greece, Italy, and in the great sea fights which were fought in early days for the dominion of the western Mediterranean, at Alalia and Cyme it was the Etruscans, not the Phœnicians, who bore the brunt of the battle against the Greeks. If, on occasion, competition could not be avoided, the matter was compromised as well as might be; no attempt was ever made by the Phœnicians to conquer Cære or Massalia.

Still less, of course, were the Phœnicians inclined to wars of aggression. The sole instance in ancient times of their taking the offensive on the battle-field, was in the Sicilian expedition of the African Phœnicians, which ended with the defeat of Himera by Gelo of Syracuse (480), and then it was only as obedient subjects of the great king and in order to avoid taking a share in the campaign against the eastern Hellenes, that they took the field against the Hellenes of the west, as their Syrian kinsmen, in the same year, had to submit to joining with the Persians in the battle of Salamis.

This was not cowardice; the navigation of unknown waters in armed vessels demands brave hearts, and the Phœnicians have often shown that such were to be found among them. Still less was it the want of persistence and individuality in the sense of nationality; rather have the Aramæans, with an obstinacy to which no Indo-Germanic people ever attained, and which to us of the West appears as either more or less than human, defended their nationality against all the seductions of Greek civilisation, as well as against all the coercive force of both eastern and western despots, alike with the weapons of the spirit and with their blood. It is the want of a political sense which, though co-existing with the liveliest racial feeling and the most faithful adherence to the mother-city, still characterises the essential nature of the Phœnicians. Freedom had no attractions for them, nor did they possess any lust of rule; “they dwelt careless,” says the Book of Judges, “after the manner of the Sidonians, quiet and secure,” and in possession of riches.

Amongst all the Phœnician settlements none throve more quickly nor more securely than those which the Tyrians and Sidonians had founded on the south coast of Spain and in the north of Africa, in regions where neither the arm of the great king, nor the dangerous rivalry of the Grecian sailors had reached, but where the natives stood face to face with the foreigners as the Indians to the Europeans in America.

Amongst the numerous and flourishing cities on these shores one was pre-eminent, the “New City” of Karthada, or, as the westerns called it, Karchedon, or Carthage. Though not the earliest settlement of the Phœnicians in this region, and perhaps originally a city standing under the protection of the neighbouring Utica, the oldest Phœnician city in Libya, she soon outstripped her neighbour and even the mother-country, owing to the incomparable advantages of her position and the eager activity of her inhabitants. She stood not far from the (former) estuary of the Bagradas (Mejerda)[314] which flows through the richest grain-bearing district of North Africa on a fertile elevation of the soil, which is even now set with villas and covered with olive and orange groves, and which sinking gently towards the plain ends on the sea side in a promontory encircled by the waves. Situated near the centre of the Gulf of Tunis, the greatest haven of North Africa, where that beautiful stretch of water offers the best anchorage for large ships and the most excellent springs gush close to the shore, this place is so peculiarly favourable to agriculture and commerce and the connection between the two, that not only did the Tyrian settlement there become the first commercial city of the Phœnicians, but in Roman times also, Carthage, though scarcely restored, became the third city in the empire, and even to-day under no very favourable conditions a flourishing town of a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants still exists. The agricultural, mercantile, and industrial prosperity of a city in such a position and with such inhabitants explains itself; but we need some answer to the question as to how this settlement developed a political power such as no other Phœnician city possessed.

Before the stream of Hellenic migration which was pouring itself westward in unrestrained flood, which had already thrust the Phœnicians from Greece itself and from Italy, and was preparing to do the like in Sicily, Spain, and even Libya, the Phœnicians were compelled to make some kind of stand if they did not wish to be utterly annihilated. Here, where they had to do with Greek merchants and not with the Great King, it was not enough for them to submit in order to be allowed to carry on their trade and industry in the old fashion, in return for the payment of a tax. Cyrene and Massalia had already been founded; already the whole east of Sicily was in the hands of the Greeks; it was high time for the Phœnicians to make resistance in earnest. The Carthaginians assumed the task; in long and obstinate wars they set a bound to the encroachment of the Cyrenæans, and Hellenism was unable to establish itself west of the desert of Tripoli. Moreover, the Phœnician settlements in the west of Sicily defended themselves against the Greeks with Carthaginian help, and gladly and voluntarily added themselves to the dependants of the powerful kindred city. These important successes, which belong to the second century of the town, and which saved the southwestern portion of the Mediterranean to the Phœnicians, of themselves gave the city which had won them the hegemony of the nation and at the same time an altered political position. Carthage was no longer a mere merchant city; she aimed at the supremacy over Lydia and over a portion of the Mediterranean Sea because she was compelled to do so.

It was probably the after effect of these foreign successes which first induced the Carthaginians to pass from the position of tenants and occupants by concession to that of actual owners and conquerors. In the 300th year of Rome the Carthaginians seem to have first freed themselves from the payment of ground-rent, which they had hitherto been obliged to deliver to the natives. Thus it became possible to cultivate the soil on a large scale for themselves. Even as landowners, the Phœnicians had always relied on making use of their capital and on cultivating the fields to a great extent, by means of slaves or hired workmen; thus a great part of the Jews were employed in this fashion for a daily wage by the Tyrian merchant princes. The Carthaginians could now exploit the rich Libyan soil to an unlimited extent through a system analogous to that of the planters of the present day. Chained slaves tilled the ground—we find that individual citizens[315] possessed as many as twenty thousand of them. More than this. The agricultural towns in the neighbourhood were forcibly subdued, and the free Libyan peasants transformed into fellahs, who paid their masters a tribute of the fourth part of the produce, and were subject to a regular system of recruiting in order that Carthage might have an army of its own. Feuds with the wandering shepherd tribes (νομαδες) on the frontiers were constant; but a chain of fortified military posts secured the pacified districts and these tribes were slowly pushed back into the deserts and mountains, or compelled to recognise the Carthaginian supremacy, pay tribute, and furnish troops.

Besides this the dominion of Carthage was finally extended over the rest of the Phœnicians in Africa, the so-called Liby-Phœnicians. These consisted partly of the smaller bands of settlers which had been led from Carthage to places along the whole northern and part of the northwestern coast of Africa, and cannot have been without importance, since at one time thirty thousand such colonists were settled on the Atlantic shore alone; and partly of ancient Phœnician settlements, which were especially numerous on the coast of the modern province of Constantine and of the Beylik of Tunis, and included, for example, Hippo, later called Regius (Bonah), Adrumetum (Susa), the lesser Leptis (south of Susa),—the second city of the African Phœnicians,—Thapsus, and greater Leptis (near Tripoli). How it came about that all these towns placed themselves under the command of Carthage, and whether they did so voluntarily to shelter themselves from the attacks of the Cyrenæans and Numidians or under compulsion, cannot now be discovered; it is certain that they were described in official documents as subjects of the Carthaginians, were obliged to pull down their walls and had to pay taxes and render military service to Carthage.

Thus the Tyrian factory had become the capital of a powerful North African empire, which reached from the desert of Tripoli as far as the Atlantic sea, and though it is true that in the western half (Morocco and Algiers) it contented itself with a somewhat nominal occupation of the coast, on the other hand in the wealthier East it ruled over the modern districts of Constantine and Tunis, as well as over the interior and was continually advancing its southern frontiers; the Carthaginians, as an ancient author significantly remarks, had changed from Tyrians into Libyans.

The period in which this transformation of Carthage into the capital city of Libya took place is all the more difficult to determine since the change was doubtless effected by degrees. The author just referred to mentions Hanno as the reformer of the nation; if this is the same man who lived in the time of the first war with Rome, he can only be regarded as the perfecter of the new system, which was presumably worked out in the fourth and fifth centuries of the city of Rome.

Side by side with the rise of Carthage went the decline of the great Phœnician cities in the mother-country, of Sidon and especially of Tyre, whose prosperity was ruined partly as the result of internal commotions, partly by pressure from without, in particular the sieges by Shalmaneser in the first century of Rome, by Nebuchadrezzar in the second, and by Alexander in the third. The noble families and the ancient commercial houses of Tyre removed for the most part to the secure and flourishing daughter-city and brought thither their intelligence, their capital, and their traditions. When the Phœnicians came into touch with Rome, Carthage was emphatically the first Canaanite city as Rome was the first Latin community.

But the dominion over Libya was only one-half of the Carthaginian power; their maritime and colonial supremacy had, at the same time, developed[316] not less formidable proportions. In Spain the chief seat of the Phœnicians was the ancient Tyrian settlement in Gades (Cadiz); west and east of the latter they also possessed a chain of factories, and in the interior the territory of the silver mines, so that they occupied the modern Andalusia and Granada, at least their coasts. Ebusus and the Balearic Isles the Carthaginians had themselves colonised at an early period, partly for the sake of the fisheries, partly as advance posts against the Massaliots with whom, from this base, they carried on an eager war. Similarly by the end of the second century of Rome the Carthaginians had established themselves in Sardinia, which they exploited in exactly the same way as Libya.

In Sicily, finally, it is true that the roads from Messana and the eastern and larger half of the island had early fallen into the hands of the Greeks; but by help of the Carthaginians the Phœnicians maintained themselves, some in the smaller islands in the neighbourhood, the Ægates, Melita, Gaulos, Cossyra, of which the colony in Malta was especially flourishing; some on the western and northwestern coasts of Sicily, where, from Motya, and later from Lilybæum, they kept up relations with Africa and from Panormus and Solœis with Sardinia. The interior of the island remained in possession of the native Elymi, Sicani, and Sicels.

All these settlements and possessions were considerable enough in themselves; but they were of still greater importance as the pillars of the Carthaginian dominion of the sea. By the possession of the south of Spain, the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, the west of Sicily and Melita, in union with the prevention of Hellenic colonisation on the eastern Spanish coast, as well as on Corsica and in the neighbourhood of the Syrtis, the lords of the North African coast closed their seas against the foreigner and monopolised the western waters. The Phœnicians had indeed to share the Tyrrhenian and Gallic seas with other nations; but this might be tolerated so long as the Etruscans and Greeks counterbalanced each other there, and with the former as the less dangerous rival, Carthage even entered into an alliance against the Greeks.

But after the downfall of the Etruscan power, which, as is usually the case in alliances entered into under stress of circumstances, Carthage had probably not exactly used all her strength to avert, and after the frustration of the schemes of Alcibiades, when Syracuse was indisputably the first Greek naval power, this system of balance could no longer be maintained. As the rulers of Syracuse began to aim at the dominion over Sicily and lower Italy, and over the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic seas, the Carthaginians had perforce to pursue an energetic policy. The first result of the long and obstinate struggle between them and their opponent, Dionysius of Syracuse (405-367), a prince as powerful as he was infamous, was the annihilation or reduction to impotence of the central Sicilian states, in the interest of both parties, and the partition of the island between the Syracusans and Carthaginians. But each party constantly renewed the attempt to dislodge its rival. Four times the Carthaginians were masters of all Sicily, save Syracuse, and were baffled by its strong walls; almost as often the Syracusans under able leaders, such as the elder Dionysius, Agathocles, and Pyrrhus, appeared to be almost as near success. But gradually the balance became more and more in favour of the Carthaginians. Meantime the struggle on the sea was already decided. Pyrrhus’ attempt to restore the Syracusan fleet was the last. When it had failed the ships of the Carthaginians ruled the whole western Mediterranean without a rival; and their attempts to occupy Syracuse, Rhegium, and Tarentum showed what they[317] could do and what was their object. Side by side with this went the endeavour to gradually monopolise the maritime trade of these regions against both foreign countries and their own subjects; and it was not a Carthaginian practice to shrink forever from the violence required to further an object. A contemporary of the Punic war, Eratosthenes, the father of geography, testifies that any foreign sailor, who fell into the hands of the Carthaginians on his way to Sardinia or the Straits of Gades, was thrown by them into the sea.

Aristotle, who died about fifty years before the first Punic war, describes the Carthaginian government as having passed from a monarchy into an aristocracy or a democracy inclining towards oligarchy; for he calls it by both names. The conduct of business lay first of all with the council of Elders, which like the Spartan Gerusia consisted of two annually appointed kings and twenty-eight Gerontes, who also, as it appears, were elected year by year by the citizens. It was this council which to all intents and purposes carried on the business of the state; for example, it took the steps necessary for war, gave orders for levies and recruiting, appointed the general, and gave him a number of Gerontes as colleagues, from amongst whom the subordinate commanders were as a rule taken; to it the despatches were addressed. It is doubtful whether a larger council stood side by side with this small one; in no case was it of much importance, nor does it appear that any special influence appertained to the kings; their chief function was that of supreme judges, as they are not unfrequently styled (suffets, prætores). The general’s power was greater; Isocrates, an elder contemporary of Aristotle, says that at home the Carthaginians obeyed an oligarchical government, but in the field a monarchical one, and so the office of the Carthaginian general is described by Roman authors as that of a dictator, although the Gerontes joined with him must have, practically at least, limited his power, as must also the regular account which was unknown to the Romans and which he had to render on laying down his office. Above the Gerusia and the officials stood the body of the hundred and four, or, more briefly, the hundred, or judges, the chief bulwark of the Carthaginian oligarchy. This was not part of the original constitution of Carthage, but, like the Spartan ephorate, took its rise in the aristocratic opposition to the monarchical elements in that constitution. Owing to the system of purchasing offices and the small number of the members of the highest court, a single Carthaginian family, that of Hago, which was pre-eminently distinguished for its wealth and military glory, threatened to unite the administration in war and peace, with the charge of justice, in their own hands; this led, about the time of the decemvirs to a change in the constitution and the establishment of this new authority.

It appears that although the Carthaginian citizens were not expressly limited to a passive assistance at the discussion of questions concerning the state, as was the case in Sparta, yet practically their influence in such matters was very slight. At the elections to the Gerusia a system of open bribery prevailed; at the appointment of a general the people were indeed consulted, but probably only when in reality the appointment had already been made on the suggestion of the Gerusia; and in other matters the people were only referred to when the Gerusia thought good or could not agree. Popular tribunals were unknown in Carthage. The impotence of the citizens was probably an essential condition of their political organisation; the Carthaginian messes, which are mentioned in this connection and compared to the Spartan pheiditia, may have been fraternities conducted on[318] an oligarchical basis. We even hear of a distinction between “citizens” and “manual workers,” which leads us to suppose a very degraded position for the latter, and perhaps no rights at all.

Regarded as a whole, the Carthaginian constitution appears to have been a government by capitalists, such as is conceivable in a citizen community without a well-to-do middle class, and consisting on the one hand of a crowd owning no property and living from hand to mouth, on the other of great merchants, estate owners and noble magistrates. Nor was Carthage without that infallible token of a corrupt city oligarchy: the system of enriching the impoverished masters at the cost of the subjects by sending them to the subordinate communities as treasurers and superintendents of forced labour. Aristotle describes this as the main cause of the tried stability of the Carthaginian constitution. Down to his time no revolution worth mentioning had been effected in Carthage, either from above or beneath; the crowd remained leaderless in consequence of the material advantages which the ruling oligarchy was in a position to offer to all ambitious or distressed members of the upper class, and were compensated by the crumbs which fell to them from the master’s table in the form of bribes at elections or in some other fashion.

Of course with such a government there could not fail to be a democratic opposition; yet even at the time of the first Punic war this was completely powerless. Later on, partly under the influence of the defeats suffered, their political influence is seen rapidly increasing, and far more rapidly than that of the similar and contemporary Roman party; the popular assembly began to give the final decision in political questions and broke the all-powerful influence of the Carthaginian oligarchy. A patriotic and reforming energy prevailed in the opposition; still we cannot overlook the fact that it rested on a corrupt and rotten foundation. The Carthaginian citizenhood, which well-informed Greeks have compared to the Alexandrian, was so corrupt that in this respect it deserved to be powerless, and it might well be asked what good could come from revolutions where, as in Carthage, the scamps were instrumental in making them.

From a financial standpoint Carthage maintained in all relations the first place among the cities of antiquity. At the time of the Peloponnesian war this Phœnician city was, according to the testimony of the first of Greek historians, financially superior to all Greek states, and her revenues are compared to those of the Great King. Polybius calls her the richest city in the world. The close relation between Phœnician agriculture and capital is characteristic. The idea of never acquiring more land than could be properly cultivated is quoted as a leading principle of Phœnician agriculture. The Carthaginians also made their profit out of the wealth of the country in horses, cattle, sheep, and goats, in which, according to the testimony of Polybius, Libya at that time surpassed all other countries on earth by reason of her nomad tribes.

As in the exploitation of the soil, so also in the exploitation of their subjects the Carthaginians were the instructors of the Romans; through them was poured into Carthage the ground-rent “of the best part of Europe” and of the fertile North-African districts, which in some regions, for instance in Byzakitis and on the lesser Syrtis, was superabundantly favoured. In Carthage, as afterwards in Rome, learning and art seem to have been generally dominated by Hellenic influence, but were not neglected; a considerable Phœnician literature existed, and at its conquest the city was found to contain valuable libraries and many treasures of art, though it is true that these[319] had not been produced in Carthage but carried off from the Sicilian temples. But intellect also was here at the service of capital; even the general distribution of certain kinds of knowledge and in particular of an acquaintance with foreign languages, in which Carthage may at this period have stood almost on a line with imperial Rome, shows the thoroughly practical direction which was given to Hellenic culture in Carthage.

The superiority of Carthage is not expressed merely in the amount of her revenue; amongst all the important states of antiquity it is here alone that we find the economical principles of a later and more advanced period; we hear of foreign government loans, and in the money system we find, besides gold coins, a piece of money of a material in itself worthless, a thing elsewhere unknown to antiquity. In fact, if the state were a speculation, none would ever have fulfilled its task more brilliantly than Carthage.

WAR IN SICILY BETWEEN ROME AND CARTHAGE

For more than a century the feud between the powers of Carthage and Syracuse had ravaged the beautiful Sicilian island. The war was carried on on both sides partly by political propaganda, Carthage maintaining relations with the aristocratic-republican opposition party in Syracuse, and the Syracusan dynasties with the national parties in the Greek cities that paid tribute to Carthage, and partly by means of mercenary armies with the aid of which Timoleon and Agathocles, as well as the Phœnician generals, had fought their battles. As both sides used the same methods, the contest was carried on with a disregard for truth and honour unknown in the history of occidental peoples. The Syracusans were finally defeated. In 314, before the breaking out of the war, Carthage claimed only a third of the island, that lying west of Heracleia Minoa and Himera, and had recognised the hegemony of the Syracusans over several of the eastern states. The expulsion of Pyrrhus from Sicily and Italy (276) left the greater part of the island, especially Acragas, in the possession of Carthage, only Tauromenium and the southeastern end remaining to Syracuse. About 283 a Campanian troop that had served under Agathocles, and had continued marauding on their own account since his death, had established themselves in Messana, the second largest city on the eastern coast, and seat of the anti-Syracusan party. They massacred or drove out the citizens, divided the women, children, and houses among themselves, and settling down to complete possession of the city soon[320] became the third power in the island. The Carthaginians witnessed these proceedings by which the Syracusans received a powerful adversary as neighbour instead of a kindred or friendly people, without displeasure; with the support of Carthage the new-comers, or Mamertines (Sons of Mars), arranged themselves against Pyrrhus, and the untimely withdrawal of this king restored to the Carthaginians all their powder.

A young Syracusan officer Hiero, son of Hierocles, who had drawn attention to himself by reason of his close kinship to Pyrrhus and the bravery with which he had fought in the battles of that king, was appointed head of the Syracusan army (274). By his moderation and wise generalship he won the confidence of all his supporters, dismissing the mercenaries, reorganising the citizen-militia, and trying first as general, later as king, at the head of civic troops to restore the vanished power of Hellas. With the Carthaginians, who in conjunction with the Greeks had driven Pyrrhus from the island, the Syracusans were at that time at peace; their nearest enemy being the Mamertines, kinsmen of the hated mercenaries. In alliance with the Romans, who about this time sent their legions against the Campanians in Rhegium, Hiero turned towards Messana. By a great victory, after which Hiero was made king of the Siceliotes (269), he succeeded in confining the Mamertines within the limits of their own city, and after the siege had lasted several years they were reduced to extremity—finding themselves unable longer to defend the city unaided against Hiero. A conditional surrender was impossible, the axe of the executioner that had been used upon the Rhegium Campanians was surely awaiting those of Messana in Syracuse, and their only hope of safety lay in delivering over the city either to the Carthaginians or the Romans, to both of whom the conquest of the important position must be of equal moment.

Whether it would be more advantageous to surrender to the Phœnicians or to the lords of Italy was doubtful; after long hesitation the majority of the Campanian citizens finally decided to give over possession of their fortress to the Romans. Rome was striving for the possession of Italy as Carthage was for that of Sicily; but the plans of neither power could proceed further at that time. Just here lay a reason for the wish of each that a neutral power should permanently establish itself on its frontier—Rome looking to Tarentum, Carthage to Syracuse and Messana. Failing this, each preferred to occupy the cities itself rather than let them fall into the hands of its rival.

As Carthage had tried in Italy,—Rome being on the point of taking Rhegium and Tarentum,—to acquire these cities for herself, her purpose being frustrated by a mere accident, so Rome now saw in Sicily an opportunity of bringing Messana into her symmachy; should this design fail, the city could not hope to remain independent or turn Syracusan, she would be thrown into the arms of Phœnicia. Would it be justifiable to let an opportunity, that would certainly never return, escape, of taking possession of the natural bridge-head between Sicily and Italy and by securing it to themselves by a firm and, for very good reasons, reliable occupation; was it also justifiable to sacrifice, in renouncing all hopes of Messana, dominion over the last free passage between the eastern and western seas and Italy’s free trade? Other objections than those of sentiment and justice arose to the occupation of Messana. That it must lead to a war with Carthage was the least among them, Rome having nothing to fear from such a war, however serious it might be. It was far more important that she should, by the crossing of the sea, depart from the purely Italian and continental policy she had formerly[321] pursued; so the system founded by the authors of Rome’s greatness was relinquished for another, the consequences of which no one could foresee. It was one of those moments when reflection and calculation cease, and faith in a personal star and that of the fatherland alone gives courage to grasp the hand that beckons out of the future, and follow wherever it may lead. Long and earnestly the Senate deliberated upon the offer of the councillors to send the legions to the assistance of the Mamertines, yet came to no decision. But among the citizens to whom the matter was finally referred, there was alive that consciousness of strength of a power that has come to greatness through its own efforts. The conquest of Italy gave to the Romans, as that of Macedonia had given to the Greeks, courage to blaze a new political path for themselves; support of the Mamertines was warranted by the power of protection claimed by Rome over various Italian states. The Italians from over seas were taken into the Italian confederation, and on the proposition of the citizens’ council it was decided to send them aid (264).

ROME AND CARTHAGE

Let us compare the powers of Rome and Carthage. Both were agricultural and commercial states with no other claim to greatness; the subordinate and eminently practical position held by the arts and sciences was in both virtually the same, the balance being perhaps a trifle in favour of Carthage. But in Carthage commercial industries led those of agriculture, while in Rome they occupied second place, so that at a time when the Carthaginian farmers were leaving their fields to become large slave and property owners the great mass of the Roman citizens were still at the plough. In Carthage was to be seen the opulence peculiar to great commercial centres, but Rome still displayed in her customs and police regulations old-fashioned strictness and economy.

When the Carthaginian envoys returned from Rome they represented the parsimony of the Roman councillors as exceeding all accounts, alleging that a single silver service did duty for the entire council, and confronted its members anew in every house to which they were invited. In all else the systems of both states were alike, the judges of Carthage and the senators of Rome rendering decision according to the same code. The strict dependence in which the Carthaginian governing bodies held their officials, their orders to the citizens not to learn the Greek language and to hold no intercourse with any Greek save through the medium of an interpreter, reveal the same spirit as that that inspired the Roman laws, but in contrast to the cruel and stupid severity of these Carthaginian regulations, the Roman fines and censure laws appear mild and reasonable. The Roman Senate which opened its doors to the highest ability worthily represented the nation and had no reason to fear her or her officials. The Carthaginian Senate, on the contrary, represented only the aristocratic families and was held under the most jealous governmental control; an institution founded on mistrust above and below it could be sure neither of the support of the people nor of security from usurpation by officials. To their freedom from these defects may be ascribed the steadily onward course of Roman politics that never retreated a step because of disaster, and did not forfeit fortune’s favour through indolence or irresolution. Carthage on the other hand would frequently retire from the contest that one last rally might have won, and weary or unmindful of her great national undertakings would let the[322] structure she had half erected tumble to the ground only to commence her work anew after a little time. Between the capable Roman official and the governing board existed a perfect understanding, whereas at Carthage these two classes were at constant war, the officials often being forced to take stand against their superiors and make common cause with their political opponents.

Both Carthage and Rome had dominion over people of many races besides their own. Rome admitted to citizenship district after district of these aliens, even leaving a legal way of entrance open to the Latins themselves; whereas Carthage shut herself off entirely from all her dependencies, extending to them not the slightest hope that she would ever admit them to such equality. Rome permitted the communities that were of kindred race to have a share in the spoils of war, and sought by specially favouring the rich and influential of tributary states to reconcile them to Roman dominion. Carthage not only kept for herself all the fruits of victory, but deprived tributary cities of their most useful privilege—free trade. Rome never entirely denied independence to even the weakest of her subject states, and never burdened them with heavy taxes; Carthage sent representatives far and wide and laid even the ancient Phœnician cities under exorbitant toll, treating their inhabitants little better than they would slaves. In the African-Carthaginian alliance there was thus not a single commonalty, with the exception of Utica, which did not aspire to bettering its political and material condition through the fall of Carthage, whereas in the Roman-Italian alliance there was not one which by rebelling against a rule that promoted its material welfare, without directly challenging the political opposition party, would not have lost more than it gained. When the Carthaginian statesmen thought to have linked to Carthage Phœnician dependencies by arousing their fear of a Libyan revolt, and the dominant states by the payment of oracle money to their temple, they were carrying mercantile practices over into a field where these did not belong. Experience showed that the Roman symmachy, despite the less solid front it opposed to Pyrrhus, held together like a wall of rock; while that of Carthage fell apart like a spider-web as soon as a hostile power set foot on the soil of Africa. This was evidenced at the landing of Agathocles and Regulus, and also in the war against the mercenaries, while the spirit that prevailed in Africa is shown by the fact that the Libyan women voluntarily sacrificed their jewels to the mercenaries to carry on the war against Carthage. In Sicily she appears to have acted with greater moderation, hence to have obtained better results. Her dependencies there were allowed relative freedom in their trade with other lands, using metal money exclusively from the first in their domestic commerce, and enjoying in every respect greater liberty of action than was accorded to Sardinians and Libyans. Had Syracuse fallen into her hands, all this would have soon been changed; but no such thing occurred, and under the wise moderation of Carthaginian rule, favoured by the unfortunate disarray of the Sicilian Greeks, a distinctly Phœnician party arose in Sicily; Philinus of Acragas, for example, writing the history of the great war after the loss of the island to the Romans entirely from a Phœnician point of view. Still, on the whole, the Sicilians, as subjects and as Hellenes, must have borne an aversion to their Phœnician masters equal to that shown by the Tarentians and the Samnitians towards Rome.

The revenues of Carthage undoubtedly exceeded those of Rome, but this was offset by the greater likelihood of her sources of supply, tributes, and[323] toll, running dry at the moment when she needed them most, and by the far greater expense entailed by her system of warfare. From a military point of view the resources of both states, though differing in kind, were fairly equal. At the conquest of Carthage her population (including women and children) numbered seven hundred thousand, and must have remained about the same up to the end of the fifth century of Rome. At this time Carthage could, in case of necessity, place a force of forty thousand hoplites in the field. But, desirable as it seemed to her that the great body of her citizens should be trained to military service, she could not bestow upon artisans and factory-workers the rugged physical strength of the countryman, nor could she overcome in the Phœnician his inborn aversion to the work of war. In the fifth century of Rome there fought in the Sicilian army a general’s guard or “sacred body” of twenty-five hundred Carthaginians; a century later with the exception of the officers there was to be found in all the Carthaginian forces, notably in her Spanish army, not a single Carthaginian. The main body of the Carthaginian army was formed of Libyans, this people furnishing recruits, who, in the hands of capable officers, developed into unequalled foot-soldiers and light cavalry-men. To these were added soldiers from all the dependent states of Libya and Spain, the celebrated sling-shooters of the Balearic Isles who seemed to have occupied a position between that of allied troops and mercenaries, and lastly the soldiery gathered in, in case of necessity, from other lands. Such a military force could be increased to almost any strength, and in courage, skill in handling weapons, and in the ability of its officers could compare favourably with that of the Romans. But when mercenaries had to be employed, a long time must elapse before it could be got in readiness, whereas the Roman militia could at any moment be sent into the field. There was further nothing to hold the Carthaginians together but the hope of gain and loyalty to the flag, in contrast to the Romans who were united by all the ties that bound them to the fatherland. To the Carthaginian officer of the usual type, the hired troops fighting under him, yes, even the Libyan peasants, were of no more account than are cannon balls in our day; hence shameful deeds were committed, as for example the betrayal of the Libyan troops by their commander Himilco, which had for result a serious Libyan revolt. The term “Punic faith” as used thereafter in connection with the Carthaginians came to be a standing reproach that injured them not a little. All in all, Carthage experienced every ill that fellah and mercenary armies can bring into a land, finding on more than one occasion that paid allies were more dangerous than sworn foes.

The faults of such a military system could not be overlooked by the Carthaginian rulers who were constantly trying to amend them; treasuries were kept filled and arsenals stocked that more mercenaries might be hired at any moment; and particular attention was given that branch of the service that corresponded in ancient times to our modern artillery—war-machines in the use of which Carthaginians were more expert than the Siceliotes, and elephants there having superseded the ancient war-chariots. But the chief bulwark of the nation, the navy, was the object of special pride and care. In the construction, as in the navigation of ships, the Carthaginians far surpassed the Greeks. In Carthage were built the first ships having three banks of oars, and the rigging of their sailing ships mostly quinqueremes rendered them as a rule swifter than those of the Greeks; the rowers, slaves belonging to the state, who never left the galleys, were admirably drilled, and the captains were skilled and fearless. In this respect Carthage was decidedly superior to Rome, who with her own few ships and those of allied[324] Greece could not think of measuring forces on the open sea with a power that at that time ruled supreme over the western Mediterranean. If we summarise the knowledge gained by a close comparison of the resources of the two great powers, we find that at the beginning of their conflict they stood on very nearly equal ground. To this, however, we feel obliged to add that Carthage, though exerting all her powers of genius and wealth to provide herself with artificial means of offence and defence, could not yet make good her lack of native troops, or compensate the need of an independent alliance. That Rome could be endangered only in Italy, Carthage only in Libya, was not to be denied, and equally undeniable was it that Carthage could not long escape such a peril.d

The inevitable conflict between such neighbouring rivals as Rome and Carthage, came soon and lasted long. It brought forth great figures and impressive events on both sides.[9] In the first Punic war the Carthaginians, after the defeat of their fleet in the Ægates, lost their possessions in Sicily, and the groups of islands belonging to it, and were obliged to pledge themselves to the payment of thirty-two hundred talents. Immediately afterwards the bloody war, of more than four years’ duration (241-237), against the rebellious mercenaries broke out, in which the Libyan cities also took part, and in which Hamilcar’s generalship finally won the victory over the mutineers. In the meantime the Romans had taken possession of Sardinia, and the Carthaginians, who did not yet feel strong enough for a fresh war, had not only to relinquish formally the possession of that island, but also to pay an additional tribute of twelve hundred talents. Corsica was also snatched from them at the same time with Sardinia. After the suppression of the revolt Hamilcar crossed to Gades (Cadiz) with the army, to begin a war of conquest on the Pyrenæan peninsula. For nine years he fought successfully against the Spanish tribes, until in 229 he met death in battle. His son-in-law, Hasdrubal, who succeeded him, was able by peaceful means, rather than by war, to extend further the bounds of Carthaginian sovereignty. In 221, when Hasdrubal had fallen by the hand of a Gaul, the army chose Hamilcar’s famous son Hannibal commander-in-chief, a choice no one in Carthage dared oppose.

In the years 221 and 220 Hannibal completed the conquest of Spain as far as the Ebro; in 219 he took Saguntum, in spite of an alliance existing between it and Rome. This was the cause of the second Punic war (218-201), in which the Carthaginians, under the spirited leadership of Hannibal, who made his way across the Pyrenees and the Alps even into Italy, at first achieved great successes, but at last were overcome by the inexhaustible military resources and the marvellous endurance of the Romans, who carried on the war in four places at once.

After the defeat at Zama (202) peace was granted in 201 to Rome’s humbled rival under the following hard conditions: surrender of all but ten ships of war and of all elephants, the payment of ten thousand talents, the indemnification of Massinissa, and the promise not to take up arms again without the consent of the Romans. By wise measures Hannibal sought gradually to uplift his oppressed fatherland; but in this way prejudiced the interests of the aristocracy, who before this had been unfavourable to him, and who, with the help of the Romans, exiled him from Carthage (195).

After that Carthage was ruined within by controversies between the aristocratic and the popular parties, and threatened from without by Massinissa [325]who, set at the side of the Carthaginians by the Romans to watch them, and relying on his protectors, took from them one piece of their territory after another. The Romans, to be sure, from time to time sent commissioners to the spot, but only to give either no decision at all, or one unfavourable to the Carthaginians. Marcus Cato came there in 157 as one of these commissioners, and because the Carthaginians declined his offer to deliver an arbiter’s judgment (presumably an unfavourable one), he was from that time on extremely embittered against them, and consequently closed every speech in the senate with the words, “Censeo ceterum, Carthaginem esse delendam” (“Moreover, I think Carthage must be destroyed”).

When the Carthaginians at last, after the expulsion of the party of Massinissa (151) resisted the latter and were defeated, the Romans declared this a breach of peace, and in 149 sent the consuls, Manius, Manilius, and Lucius Marcius Censorinus, with eighty-four thousand men to Sicily. The Carthaginians begged for peace, but were required first to give three hundred children of the nobility as hostages, and to surrender all arms and munitions of war. When the Romans thereupon gave them the further command to abandon their city and settle again further inland, all classes and ranks united for the most desperate defence.

Thus began a last fearful conflict (third Punic war, 149-146), which ended with the conquest of Carthage by Publius Cornelius Scipio. Fire raged in the city seventeen days. A large portion of the inhabitants perished, the survivors were led into slavery. The city was razed to the ground, and the whole Carthaginian territory, with the exception of a few tracts that were given to the cities in alliance with the Romans, especially to Utica and Hippo, was made into the Roman province of Africa.

In 122, it was decided, on the proposal of Gaius Gracchus, to rebuild the city under the name of Junonia, and to plant there a colony of six thousand Roman citizens. However, the fall of Gracchus prevented the execution of the project. Julius Cæsar took it up again, but was not able to carry it out. The restoration did not begin, then, until under Augustus, who populated the city with three thousand Roman colonists and numerous natives from the vicinity.

The new city reached a high prosperity in the time of the empire, so that it took the second position, after Alexandria, among the cities of the empire outside of Rome. It was the seat of the Roman proconsul and of most of the other Roman officials, later also of a Christian bishop, and by reason of its favourable situation it soon became once more a rich seat of commerce, in which, however, there was no lack of schools of grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, and the other liberal arts.

LAST DAYS OF CARTHAGE

In 439 A.D. it was taken by the Vandals under Genseric, and was for almost a century the capital of the Vandal kingdom, until in 533 it was incorporated in the eastern Roman Empire by Justinian’s general, Belisarius. The latter restored the ruined fortifications, and called the city in honour of his emperor, Justiniana.e

The western conquests of the Saracens were suspended near twenty years, till their dissensions were composed by the establishment of the house of Omayya; and the caliph Moawiya was invited by the cries of the Africans themselves. The successors of Heraclius had been informed of the tribute[326] which they had been compelled to stipulate with the Arabs; but instead of being moved to pity and relieve their distress, they imposed, as an equivalent or a fine, a second tribute of a similar amount. The ears of the Byzantine ministers were shut against the complaints of their poverty and ruin; their despair was reduced to prefer the dominion of a single master; and the extortions of the patriarch of Carthage, who was invested with civil and military power, provoked the sectaries, and even the Catholics, of the Roman province to abjure the religion as well as the authority of their tyrants. The first lieutenant of Moawiya acquired a just renown, subdued an important city, defeated an army of thirty thousand Greeks, swept away fourscore thousand captives, and enriched with their spoils the bold adventurers of Syria and Egypt. But the title of conqueror of Africa is more justly due to his successor Okbaben Nafi [Akbah]. He marched from Damascus at the head of ten thousand of the bravest Arabs; and the genuine force of the Moslems was enlarged by the doubtful aid and conversion of many thousand Barbarians. It would be difficult, nor is it necessary, to trace the accurate line of the progress of Akbah. The interior regions have been peopled by the Orientals with fictitious armies and imaginary citadels. In the warlike province of Zab, or Numidia, fourscore thousand of the natives might assemble in arms; but the number of three hundred and sixty towns is incompatible with the ignorance or decay of husbandry; and a circumference of three leagues will not be justified by the ruins of Erbe or Lambesa, the ancient metropolis of that inland country. As we approach the seacoast, the well-known cities of Bugia and Tangier define the more certain limits of the Saracen victories. A remnant of trade still adheres to the commodious harbour of Bugia, which in a more prosperous age is said to have contained about twenty thousand houses; and the plenty of iron which is dug from the adjacent mountains might have supplied a braver people with the instruments of defence.

The remote position and venerable antiquity of Tingi, or Tangier, have been decorated by the Greek and Arabian fables; but the figurative expressions of the latter, that the walls were constructed of brass, and that the roofs were covered with gold and silver, may be interpreted as the emblems of strength and opulence. The province of Mauritania Tingitana, which assumed the name of the capital, had been imperfectly discovered and settled by the Romans; the five colonies were confined to a narrow pale, and the more southern parts were seldom explored by the agents of luxury, who searched the forests for ivory and the citronwood, and the shores of the ocean for the purple shellfish. The fearless Akbah plunged into the heart of the country, traversed the wilderness in which his successors erected the splendid capitals of Fez and Morocco, and at length penetrated to the verge of the Atlantic and the great desert.

The river Sus descends from the western sides of Mount Atlas, fertilises, like the Nile, the adjacent soil, and falls into the sea at a moderate distance from the Canary, or Fortunate, Islands. Its banks were inhabited by the last of the Moors, a race of savages without laws, or discipline, or religion; they were astonished by the strange and irresistible terrors of the oriental arms; and as they possessed neither gold nor silver, the richest spoil was the beauty of the female captives, some of whom were afterwards sold for a thousand pieces of gold. The career though not the zeal of Akbah was checked by the prospect of a boundless ocean. He spurred his horse into the waves, and raising his eyes to heaven, exclaimed with the tone of a fanatic:[327] “Great God! if my course were not stopped by this sea, I would still go on, to the unknown kingdoms of the West, preaching the unity of thy holy name, and putting to the sword the rebellious nations who worship any other gods than thee.” Yet this Mohammedan Alexander, who sighed for new worlds, was unable to preserve his recent conquests. By the universal defection of the Greeks and Africans he was recalled from the shores of the Atlantic, and the surrounding multitudes left him only the resource of an honourable death. The last scene was dignified by an example of national virtue. An ambitious chief, who had disputed the command and failed in the attempt, was led about as a prisoner in the camp of the Arabian general. The insurgents had trusted to his discontent and revenge; he disdained their offers and revealed their designs. In the hour of danger, the grateful Akbah unlocked his fetters, and advised him to retire; he chose to die under the banner of his rival. Embracing as friends and martyrs, they unsheathed their scimitars, broke their scabbards, and maintained an obstinate combat till they fell by each other’s side on the last of their slaughtered countrymen. The third general or governor of Africa, Zuhair, avenged and encountered the fate of his predecessor. He vanquished the natives in many battles; he was overthrown by a powerful army, which Constantinople had sent to the relief of Carthage.

It had been the frequent practice of the Moorish tribes to join the invaders, to share the plunder, to profess the faith, and to revolt to their savage state of independence and idolatry, on the first retreat or misfortune of the Moslems. The prudence of Akbah had proposed to found an Arabian colony in the heart of Africa; a citadel that might curb the levity of the barbarians, a place of refuge to secure, against the accidents of war, the wealth and the families of the Saracens. With this view, and under the modest title of the station of a caravan, he planted this colony in the fiftieth year of the Hegira. In its present decay, Kairawan still holds the second rank in the kingdom of Tunis, from which it is distant about fifty miles to the south; its inland situation, twelve miles westward of the sea, has protected the city from the Greek and Sicilian fleets. When the wild beasts and serpents were extirpated, when the forest, or rather wilderness, was cleared, the vestiges of a Roman town were discovered in a sandy plain. The vegetable food of Kairawan is brought from afar; and the scarcity of springs constrains the inhabitants to collect in cisterns and reservoirs a precarious supply of rain-water. These obstacles were subdued by the industry of Akbah; he traced a circumference of thirty-six hundred paces, which he encompassed with a brick wall; in the space of five years, the governor’s palace was surrounded with a sufficient number of private habitations; a spacious mosque was supported by five hundred columns of granite, porphyry, and Numidian marble; and Kairawan became the seat of learning as well as of empire. But these were the glories of a later age; the new colony was shaken by the successive defeats of Akbah and Zuhair, and the western expeditions were again interrupted by the civil discord of the Arabian monarchy. The son of the valiant Zobair maintained a war of twelve years, a siege of seven months, against the house of Omayyah. Abdallah was said to unite the fierceness of the lion with the subtlety of the fox; but if he inherited the courage, he was devoid of the generosity of his father.

The return of domestic peace allowed the caliph Abdul-malik to resume the conquest of Africa; the standard was delivered to Hassan, governor of Egypt, and the revenue of that kingdom, with an army of forty thousand men, was consecrated to the important service. In the vicissitudes of war the interior provinces had been alternately won and lost by the Saracens. But the seacoast still remained in the hands of the Greeks; the predecessors[328] of Hassan had respected the name and fortifications of Carthage; and the number of its defenders was recruited by the fugitives of Cabes and Tripoli. The arms of Hassan were bolder and more fortunate; he reduced and pillaged the metropolis of Africa; and the mention of scaling ladders may justify the suspicion that he anticipated, by a sudden assault, the more tedious operations of a regular siege. But the joy of the conquerors was soon disturbed by the appearance of the Christian succours. The prefect and patrician John, a general of experience and renown, embarked at Constantinople the forces of the Eastern Empire; they were joined by the ships and soldiers of Sicily, and a powerful reinforcement of the Goths was obtained from the fears and religion of the Spanish monarch. The weight of the confederate navy broke the chain that guarded the entrance of the harbour; the Arabs retired to Kairawan, or Tripoli; the Christians landed; the citizens hailed the ensign of the cross, and the winter was idly wasted in the dream of victory or deliverance. But Africa was irrecoverably lost; the zeal and resentment of the commander of the faithful prepared in the ensuing spring a more numerous armament by sea and land; and the patrician in his turn was compelled to evacuate the post and fortifications of Carthage. A second battle was fought in the neighbourhood of Utica: the Greeks and Goths were again defeated; and their timely embarkation saved them from the sword of Hassan, who had invested the slight and insufficient rampart of their camp. Whatever yet remained of Carthage was delivered to the flames, and the colony of Dido and Cæsar lay desolate above two hundred years, till a part, perhaps a twentieth, of the old circumference was repeopled by the first of the Fatimite caliphs. In the beginning of the sixteenth century the second capital of the West was represented by a mosque, a college without students, twenty-five or thirty shops, and the huts of five hundred peasants, who, in their abject poverty, displayed the arrogance of the Punic senators. Even that paltry village was swept away by the Spaniards whom Charles V had stationed in the fortress of the Goletta. The ruins of Carthage have perished; and the place might be unknown if some broken arches of an aqueduct did not guide the footsteps of the inquisitive traveller.f

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER VII. PHŒNICIAN COMMERCE

At all stages of its history Phœnicia was essentially a manufacturing and commercial rather than a warlike nation. Nevertheless, it took a more or less prominent part in the combats of the great nations for many centuries. There was only one period, namely, during the reign of Hiram, the contemporary of David and Solomon, about 950 B.C., when Phœnicia could aspire to anything like first rank among the nations. It was at most a community of scattered cities, each generally independent of the others, rather than a nation in the narrower sense. Nevertheless, such is the vitality of a nation whose prosperity is based on the pursuits of peace, that Phœnicia continued to hold a respectable place among the powers of the earth, for a longer period than almost any other of the minor nations of antiquity. Thus we find it reviving again and again, after being subjected by the foreign conquerors, until finally, even so late as 332 B.C., it was able to afford most powerful opposition to Alexander, and throughout this period, for at least a thousand years, the navy of the Phœnicians was celebrated as being, for the most of the time, a type of excellence, and the Phœnicians for this reason were coveted as allies, or hired as mercenaries by such great contending powers as the Greeks and the Persians. All in all, notwithstanding the comparatively minor place which is always assigned to the Phœnicians, in comparison with such great conquering powers as Egypt and Babylonia, there are many reasons for feeling that the great manufacturers and traders of antiquity were among the most admirable of the peoples whose history has been preserved.

The accounts of wars and conquests must necessarily always hold a foremost place in the records of the historian, at least in our day, but one should not hesitate to give a due measure of praise to a nation whose ideal was not self-aggrandisement through the destruction of other nations, but the building up of power through the far more useful channels of manufacture and commerce. Where other nations destroyed, the Phœnicians constructed. They took no high rank as inventors pure and simple, but they were acceptors of the inventions of other peoples, and as an educating influence they have no peers among the oriental nations. And this is true simply because the Phœnicians were the great progressive and commercial people of antiquity.a

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SEA TRADE

It requires no great sagacity to develop the causes by which the Phœnicians became a commercial and seafaring people. They were in a manner constrained to it by their situation; for the commodities of interior Asia becoming accumulated in vast quantities upon their coasts, seemed to demand a further transport. It would, nevertheless, be an error to assume this as the first and only impulse to their navigation, which most likely had the same origin here that it generally had among commercial nations; it sprung from piracy. The seeming advantages which this affords are too near and too striking to be overlooked by uncivilised nations; while the benefits to be derived from a peaceable and regular commerce are too distant to come at first within the scope of their ideas. It was thus that the piratical excursions of the Normans gave the first impulse to the navigation of the western countries of Europe. But among nations who are not, like the African nest of pirates, held back by despotism and other unfavourable circumstances, good gradually grows out from this original evil. A trifling advance, too, in civilisation soon teaches mankind how greatly the benefits of trade surpass those of plunder; and as the latter diminishes, the former increases.

This is exactly the state in which the navigation of the Phœnicians is first presented to our notice, in the time of Homer—the earliest period at which we catch an authentic glance at it from any definite accounts.

The Phœnicians at this period visited the Greek islands and the coasts of the continents as robbers, or merchants, according as circumstances offered. They came with trinkets, beads, and baubles, which they sold at a high price to the inexperienced and unwary Greeks; and they thus gained opportunities of kidnapping their boys and girls, whom they turned to good account in the Asiatic slave markets, or who were redeemed at heavy ransoms by their parents and countrymen. A most faithful and lively picture of the state of society in these respects is drawn by the Greek bard himself, in the narrative which he makes Eumæus relate of his birth and early adventures.

This kind of intercourse, however, could not last beyond the infancy of Grecian civilisation. As this advanced, and that people grew formidable upon the seas, and Athenian and Ionian squadrons covered the Mediterranean, it must of itself have assumed another shape, as piracy would no longer be tolerated. But notwithstanding this, the connection between Phœnicia and Greece, in the flourishing period of the latter, seems not to have continued so strong as might naturally have been expected. There is no trace of an active intercourse between Tyre and Athens, or Corinth; there is no vestige of commercial treaties, such as frequently were closed between Carthage and Rome. Commercial jealousy, common to both nations, in some measure accounts for this phenomenon. (How much less has the intercourse between England and France always been than it might have been, considering the situation and magnitude of the two kingdoms!) I trust, however, that the following observations will be deemed satisfactory upon this subject.

First. The principal source of trade among all great seafaring nations must ever be directed toward their colonies. It is only there that mutual exchange of commodities can be effected upon an extensive scale; all other sales are by retail, or in small quantities. The truth, which the experience of the greatest maritime states of modern times confirms beyond a doubt,[331] was felt both by Phœnicians and Greeks: hence the chief commerce of both nations was confined to their colonies.

Secondly. The Greeks could the more easily abstain from purchasing of the Phœnicians as they could import nearly all the wares they required from their own colonies in Asia Minor, which maintained the same intercourse with the countries of inner Asia as Tyre and Sidon; and obtained and exported in a great degree the same Asiatic merchandise.

Thirdly. During the time of their greatest splendour, that is, from the commencement of the Persian wars, the Greeks were not only the rivals of the Phœnicians, but their declared political enemies. The hatred of the Phœnicians toward the Greeks is shown in nothing clearer than in their ready willingness to lend their fleets to the Persians; and in the active share they took in the Persian expeditions against the whole of Greece, or against the separate states. How, then, can it be expected, that under such circumstances a very lively or regular commerce could have existed between them?

The Phœnicians, however, still possessed the advantage of furnishing the Greeks with certain articles of the most costly description, in great demand, which they could not obtain from their own colonies, and the Phœnicians alone could supply. To these belong especially, perfumes and spices, which they imported from Arabia, and which were absolutely necessary to the Greeks in their sacrifices to the gods. They also supplied them with the manufactures of Tyre: its purple garments, its rich apparel, its jewels, trinkets, and other ornaments, which could be obtained nowhere else of such fine workmanship, or so decidedly in accordance with the prevailing fashion.

The same causes which limited the commerce of the Phœnicians with Greece tended also to diminish it with its colonies on the coast of Asia Minor and in Sicily. History has preserved us no express information upon this particular; but to the causes already cited there remains to be added the fact, that in proportion as the trade of the Phœnicians decreased in the western Mediterranean, that of the Carthaginians increased, till at length they possessed it almost exclusively.

When the first Phœnicians visited Spain, it is said they found silver there in such abundance, that they not only freighted their ships with it to the water’s edge, but made their common utensils, anchors not excepted, of this metal. Thus laden, they returned back to their native country, which lost no time in taking possession of this ancient Peru, and founding colonies there, whose name and situation we have already described.

When the Phœnicians first settled here, artificial mine works were quite unnecessary. The silver ore lay exposed to view, and they had only to make a slight incision to obtain it in abundance. The inhabitants themselves were so little acquainted with its value, that their commonest implements were composed of this metal. The demands of the Phœnicians, and their avidity to possess it, first taught them its worth; and it is probable that the arrival and settlement among them of these strangers, who could supply them with so many useful articles, in exchange for that upon which they set such little store, was to them a source of gratification. But when the stock they had in hand was exhausted, and the insatiable foreigners saw it necessary to open mines, the lot of the poor Iberians became truly pitiable. That the Spanish mines were worked by slaves is clear from Diodorus, who describes their wretched fate; and even though his statement may refer to the time of the Romans, there can be but little doubt that the same practice had long previously existed. Whether the natives were compelled[332] to this labour we know not positively; but they scarcely could have escaped it altogether, though the extensive traffic of the Phœnicians in slaves would have rendered it easy for them to introduce sufficient hands from abroad. Even if only employed as free labourers, their lot was sufficiently hard. That, however, the mines in Spain were not worked merely by digging, is clear from Diodorus, whose relation of itself proves that shafts were opened, and the subterraneous water forced out by machines; even if the interesting allusion to mine works in the Book of Job should not be admitted as referring to the Phœnicians.

The mine works of the genuine Phœnicians seem to have been confined to the present Andalusia. According to Strabo, the oldest were situated upon the mountain in which the Bætis or Guadalquivir takes its rise, upon the south part of the Sierra Morena, which, on the borders of Andalusia and Murcia, bore the name of Sierra Segura. They did not extend beyond this previous to the time of the Carthaginians, who entered upon the conquest of Spain with much more energy and power.

For the rest, silver was certainly the principal, but could scarcely be the only object obtained. Gold, lead, and iron were discovered; and besides these, tin mines were opened by the Phœnicians on the northern coast of Spain, beyond Lusitania. All these metals are spoken of by the prophet Ezekiel as the produce of the Spanish mines. “Spain (Tarshish) [or Tartessus] traded with thee, because of the multitude of thy goods; silver, iron, tin, and lead, it gave thee in exchange for thy wares.” The trade in salt fish has already been mentioned as a branch of the earliest commerce of Spain.

The commerce of the Phœnicians in their Spanish settlements was carried on in the same manner as they usually carried it on elsewhere; the only method indeed by which it can be carried on among uncivilised nations—namely, by barter. It is not only so described in the passage above quoted from the prophet Ezekiel, but the same is confirmed by Diodorus. They brought, on their side, Tyrian wares—probably linen, the usual clothing of Spain; perhaps, also, trinkets and toys, and such articles of finery as are eagerly coveted by barbarians. In exchange for these they obtained the above-mentioned natural productions; and silver, not as money, but as merchandise, and upon which their profit must have been doubled, if the conjecture, not destitute of probability, be true, that they bartered it in the southern countries for gold.

It would appear from Diodorus as if their settlements in both the countries of Sicily and Carthage were founded with no other object, than for the convenience of their intercourse with Spain; and so far as Sicily alone is[333] concerned, he seems to be right. In the long voyage from their native shores to that distant country, a harbour, to which they might run in, in case of storms or other accidents, was indispensably necessary. And although they established here a trade, by barter, with the natives, and thus managed to obtain the rich produce of the island for themselves, it is probable that the Greeks, who were always extending their possessions, soon deprived them of all, except the original object of their settlement.

The case was different, however, with regard to Africa. If we merely look at the long line of commercial establishments formed upon this coast, it will be difficult to believe them all intended solely for the preservation of a communion with Spain. It is not denied but that such may have been the origin of the earliest settlements, as for example that of Utica; but when these cities began to flourish, and drew to themselves the trade of inner Africa, there can be no doubt but the Phœnicians took a part in it, and obtained the commodities of this quarter of the globe, though in the first instance, only at second hand.

Having thus shown the direction and extent of the trade and navigation of the Phœnicians toward the west, let us now bend our course eastwards, and trace their progress upon the two great southwestern gulfs of Asia, the Arabian and Persian. In these, it has already been stated, they had partly settled, and thus gained secure harbours from which to set forth on their still more distant enterprises.

It must, however, be at once perceived, that their navigation here could not have a like undisturbed continuance with that of the Mediterranean. As the proper dominions of the Phœnicians never stretched so far as to either of these gulfs, it depended upon their political relations how far they could make use of the harbours they possessed there. For even though the way might be open to their caravans, the dominant nations of inner Asia might not be always willing to allow foreign colonies on their coasts.

Ophir was the general name for the rich countries of the south, lying on the African, Arabian, and Indian coasts, as far as at that time known. From these the Phœnicians had already obtained vast treasures by caravans; but they now opened a maritime communication with them, in order to lighten the expense of transport, and to procure their merchandise at the best hand. The name of Ophir was common even in the time of Moses, and was then applied to those southern countries only known by common report. It was therefore now spoken of as a well-known name and country; and it may be fairly presumed, that when the Phœnicians entered upon this new line of trade, they only took possession of a previously well-established system; since it was a regular, settled navigation, and not a voyage of discovery. From its taking three years to perform, it would appear to have been directed to a distant region; but if we consider the half-yearly monsoons, and that the vessels visited the coasts of Arabia, Ethiopia, and the Malabar coast of India; and also that the expression, “in the third year,” may admit of an interpretation that would much abridge the total duration, the distance will not appear so great. The commodities which they imported were ivory, precious stones, ebony, and gold, to which may be added apes and peacocks; all satisfactorily proving that they visited the countries just mentioned; especially Ethiopia, and probably India.

The voyages of the Phœnicians thus far had a fixed and regular course; but besides these, they were in the habit of fitting out expeditions for the purpose of discovery, which often led the way to an enlargement of their commerce; though they sometimes had no result beyond the extension of[334] their geographical knowledge. Chance has preserved us some particulars respecting a few of these enterprises, through their having been fortunately quoted by Herodotus; but how much more may have been undertaken, and successfully performed, by a people who, no doubt, like Great Britain and Portugal, had its Cook and its Vasco de Gama!

In one of these voyages toward the Hellespont, which they undertook at a very early period, to explore Europe, they discovered the isle of Thasos, opposite the Thracian coast, and were amply repaid for their pains by its productive gold mines, which they worked with wonderful labour and skill, as we learn from Herodotus, who saw them, till they were driven from the island by the Greeks.

The same writer has given us an account of a still more wonderful voyage which this people undertook and successfully performed; this was nothing less than the circumnavigation of Africa. We shall here place before the reader the remarkable narrative, as given by the historian himself.

“That Africa is clearly surrounded by the sea, except where it borders on Asia, Neku II, king of the Egyptians, was the first we know of to demonstrate. That prince, having finished his excavations for the canal leading out of the Nile into the Arabian Gulf, despatched certain natives of Phœnicia on shipboard, with orders to sail back through the Pillars of Hercules into the North (Mediterranean) Sea, and so to return into Egypt. The Phœnicians, consequently, having departed out of the Erythræan Sea, proceeded on their voyage in the Southern Sea: when it was autumn they would push ashore, and sowing the land, whatever might be the part of Libya they had reached, await there till the harvest time: having reaped their corn, they continued their voyage; thus, after the lapse of two years, and passing through the Pillars of Hercules in the third, they came back into Egypt, and stated, what is not credible to me, but may be so, perhaps, to others, namely, that in their circumnavigation of Libya, they had the sun on the right hand (that is, on the north).”

But leaving these distant voyages of discovery out of the question, the extent to which this enterprising people carried their regular navigation is truly wonderful. Though voyages across the open seas have been the consequence of our acquaintance with the New World beyond the Atlantic; yet their hardy and adventurous spirit led them to find a substitute for it in stretching from coast to coast into the most distant regions. The long series of centuries during which they were exclusively the masters of the seas, gave them sufficient time to make this gradual progress, which perhaps was the more regular and certain in proportion to the time it occupied. The Phœnicians carried the nautical art to the highest point of perfection at that time required, or of which it was then capable; and gave a much wider scope to their enterprises and discoveries than either the Venetians or Genoese during the Middle Ages. Their numerous fleets were scattered over the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, and the Tyrian pennant waved at the same time on the coasts of Britain and on the shores of Ceylon.c

MANUFACTURES AND LAND TRADE OF THE PHŒNICIANS

The merchandise exported by the Phœnicians consisted partly of the produce of their own industry and skill; but in a much greater extent of the wares which they received, or imported themselves, from the countries of Asia with which they maintained an intercourse. The raw materials, which[335] their art and labour fashioned, must have been drawn from abroad, as their own little territory could have supplied but a very small portion of what was necessary to satisfy the demands of their numerous and large customers scattered all over the world. The whole of the twenty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel refers to this subject, and in particular to the land trade of Tyre, now threatened with ruin by the military expeditions of Nebuchadrezzar. The sketch of the Hebrew poet affords us an interesting picture of the great international commerce of inner Asia, which enlarges our narrow ideas of ancient trade by showing us that it connected nearly all the countries of the known world.

Previous to the investigation of this branch of foreign commerce of the Phœnicians, let us take a glance at the productions of their own skill and industry, which were, even in the remotest antiquity, so generally celebrated. Among the inventions of the Phœnicians their dyes indisputably hold the highest rank. The beautifully coloured garments of Sidon were celebrated in the Homeric period; and the Tyrian purple formed one of the most general and principal articles of luxury in antiquity. It is altogether incorrect to consider this purple as one particular colour. The expression seemed rather to have signified among the ancients, the whole class of dyes manufactured from an animal substance; namely, the juice of shellfish. It thus formed a distinct species of dye, differing from the second, the vegetable dye, which was composed of various vegetables. Now the first species comprised not merely one, but a great number and variety of colours; not only purple, but also light and dark purple, and almost every shade between.

Purple dyes were by no means exclusively confined to the Phœnicians; but by their great industry and skill, and from the excellent quality of the shells on their shore, they were enabled to bring it to a higher degree of perfection, and to maintain the superiority. Scarlet and violet purples, in particular, were nowhere dyed so well as in Tyre; garments of this colour, therefore, were in the greatest request among the great, and the prevailing fashion in the higher ranks of society. This furnishes us at once with a reason for the unbounded extent to which this branch of industry was carried by the Phœnicians.

Dyeing cannot exist without weaving; and it follows, that as the dyeing among the Phœnicians was done in the wool, the stuffs which they exported must have been the product of their own industry. The principal manufactories of this sort were, in earlier times, at Sidon: Homer repeatedly praises its raiment. At a later period, however, they were common in the other Phœnician cities, and especially in Tyre. It is much to be regretted that history, which so celebrates the garments and woollens of this city, has preserved us no direct information respecting them.

Another product of Phœnician skill was glass; of this they were the inventors, and long enjoyed the exclusive manufacture. The sand used for this purpose was found in the southern districts of the country, near the little river Belus, which rose at the foot of Mount Carmel. The glass manufactories continued, according to Pliny, during a long succession of centuries; their principal seats were at Sidon and the neighbouring Sarepta. From the small number of them, the use of glass would seem to have been much less general in antiquity than among us; while the mildness of the climate in all southern countries, as well as all over the East, rendered any other stoppage of the windows unnecessary, except that of curtains or blinds. Goblets of the precious metals or stones were preferred as drinking vessels.

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Under this head of Phœnician industry, too, may be ranged ornaments of dress, implements, utensils, baubles, and gewgaws, which they produced. The nature of their trade, which for a long time was confined to a traffic by barter with rude, uncultivated nations, among whom such commodities have always a quick and certain sale, must at a very early period have turned their attention to this branch of industry.

The foreign commerce which the Phœnicians carried on with the nations of the interior of Asia may be divided into three branches, according to its three principal directions. The first of these comprises the southern trade, or the Arabian-East-Indian and the Egyptian; the second, the eastern, or the Assyrian-Babylonian; and the third, that of the north, or the Armenian-Caucasian. It is evident, from the various particulars mentioned by the Hebrew poets, as well as by profane writers, that the first of these three branches of commerce was the most important. We call it the Arabian-East-Indian, not because we here assume it as proved that the Phœnicians themselves journeyed over Arabia to India, but because they procured in Arabia the merchandise of the East Indies, for which it was at that time the great market. With regard to Arabia itself, however, they kept up an intercourse with every part of it, as well its eastern coast as that bordering on the Arabian sea.

Spices, gold, and precious stones are expressly enumerated among the natural productions of Happy Arabia. Gold mines, it is true, are no longer to be found there, but the assurances of antiquity respecting them are so general and explicit that it is impossible reasonably to doubt that Yemen once abounded in gold. Precious stones were found in the mountains of the province of Hadramaut; such at least as were considered precious by the ancients; namely, onyxes, rubies, agates, etc. But in addition to these native productions of Happy Arabia, other wares are mentioned as Arabian, certainly not the proper produce of this country, but either Ethiopian or Indian. To the former belongs cinnamon, or canella; and to the latter, ivory and ebony. Besides these, cardamom, nard, and other spices, used in odoriferous waters and unguents, are expressly enumerated by Theophrastus as coming from India.

The commerce of the Phœnicians, however, was not confined merely to southern Arabia, but stretched along the eastern coast on the Persian Gulf:[337] “The men of Dedan were thy merchants; many isles were the merchandise of thy hand: they brought thee for a present horns of ivory and ebony.” Dedan is one of the Baharein Islands, in the Persian Gulf, but if these words of the prophet prove an intercourse between Phœnicia and the Persian Gulf, they also prove not less indisputably the connection in which the Phœnicians stood with India. The large countries to which the Phœnician trade extended beyond Dedan could be no other than India; if this is not sufficiently proved by the situation, it is beyond a doubt by the commodities mentioned. Ivory and ebony could only have been procured in Dedan from India, for there were no elephants in Arabia.

Arabia was then the great seat of the Phœnician land trade. With this was interwoven a connection with the rich countries of the south, Ethiopia and India. Notwithstanding the vast deserts of sand, which protected Arabia from the attacks of foreign conquerors, the merchant’s desire of gain was not damped, but surmounted every difficulty. Caravans, composed of various tribes, penetrated through its wastes in every direction, even to its southern and eastern coasts; here they traded, either directly or indirectly, with the Phœnicians, whose seaports became at last the great staples of their valuable merchandise, whence it was shipped off, and spread over the West at an immense profit to these merchants.

This commerce must have been the more lucrative, as it was, according to the very clear statement of Ezekiel, altogether carried on by barter. It is everywhere spoken of as an exchange of merchandise against merchandise, and even the precious metals are only considered as such. What an immense profit the Phœnician merchant must have made of his Spanish silver mines, by exchanging their produce for gold in Yemen, where this metal was so abundant! What a profit he must have had on other wares, which the Arabians in a manner were obliged to take of him, and in which he had no competitor!

The intercourse with Arabia must have been greatly facilitated by the similarity of the languages of the two nations. These were only dialects of the same language; and though differences might occur, yet there scarcely could have been any difficulty in making each other understood. What an advantage to the Phœnician merchant, to be able, in the mutual intercourse with these distant regions, to make use of his native tongue, instead of being at the mercy of treacherous interpreters! This advantage alone would have sufficed to secure him the exclusive commerce of Arabia, even if the situation of the country had not made it almost impossible for any foreign nation to compete with him.

The commerce of the Phœnicians with Egypt must be considered as a second branch of their southern land trade. Their intercourse with this nation was one of the earliest they formed, as Herodotus expressly assures us that the exportation of Assyrian and Egyptian wares was the first business they carried on. And when it is remembered that Egypt at all times enjoyed the principal land trade of Africa, it would indeed seem surprising if no intercourse had subsisted between two such great neighbouring commercial nations. Still more positive information, however, respecting its existence is given by Ezekiel, who, in his picture of Tyrian commerce, forgets not that with Egypt, but even enumerates the wares which Tyre obtained from the banks of the Nile. “Fine linen with embroidered work from Egypt was that which thou spreadest forth to be thy sail; blue and purple from the isles of Elishah was that which covered thee.” Weaving was one of the principal occupations of the Egyptians, and cotton was a native of their[338] soil. Embroideries of cotton, and with cotton, were common in Egypt, and considered as masterpieces of art; corn, the other great product of Egypt, was only procured from that country upon extraordinary occasions; as Palestine and Syria furnished it of an excellent quality. It is proved, however, that it was brought thence, in cases of emergency, by the caravan journey of the sons of Jacob into Egypt.

One of the principal articles exported by the Phœnicians to Egypt was wine, which this country did not at that time produce. Twice a year large cargoes of this were shipped from Phœnicia and Greece. The second great branch of the Phœnician land trade spread towards the east. It includes the commerce with Syria and Palestine, with Babylon and Assyria, and with the countries of Eastern Asia.

Palestine was the granary of the Phœnicians. Their own mountainous territory was but little adapted for agriculture, while Palestine produced corn in such abundance, as to be able to supply them plentifully with this first necessary of life. The corn of Judea was the best known. It excelled even that of Egypt. It was not, therefore, merely the proximity of the country which led the Phœnicians to prefer this market. Palestine also supplied them with wine and oil. The fact that Palestine was the granary of the Phœnicians explains, too, in the clearest manner, the good understanding and lasting peace that prevailed between these two nations. It is a striking feature in the Jewish history, that with all other nations around them they lived in a state of almost continual warfare; and that under David and Solomon they even became conquerors, and subdued considerable countries; and yet with their nearest neighbours, the Phœnicians, they never engaged in hostilities.

Syria proper, also, supplied its various productions, according to the nature of the different parts of the country—whether adapted for agriculture, the cultivation of the vine, or merely to the nomad life and the breeding of cattle. The wool of the wilderness was one of the wares supplied by the pastoral tribes, who wandered with their flocks as well over the Syrian as over the Arabian deserts.

A moment’s reflection upon Tyrian manufacture of woven goods and their dyes will enable the reader at once to perceive the great importance of this branch of commerce. It converted the very wilderness, so far as they were concerned, into an opulent country, which afforded them the finest and most precious raw materials for their most important manufactures. This circumstance, too, was a means of cementing and preserving a good understanding between them and these nomad tribes; a matter of no inconsiderable consequence to the Phœnicians, as it was through them that the rich produce of the southern regions came into their hands.

The great point, however, to which the trade of the Phœnicians was directed in the east, was Babylon. That a very active commerce was carried on with this flourishing city, even before it forcibly obtained the dominion of Asia and subjected Phœnicia itself, no one can doubt, who is acquainted with the situation and manners of the two nations; and yet, however astonishing it may seem, we have less information respecting this very important branch of trade than upon almost every other. Still we have the positive testimony of Herodotus, that it was one of the most ancient. It probably happened, that it was frequently interrupted by the great revolutions of interior Asia, in which Babylon itself often necessarily participated; it must, however, soon have revived, when the trade of Babylon itself again began to flourish. In proportion, however, as the silence of history upon this interesting[339] subject is remarkable, the conjecture is strengthened, that the trading route between Babylon and Tyre lay through a long uninterrupted desert; the natural consequence of which would be, that, even supposing it not purposely concealed, this commerce would have become but little known. But even in this desert itself are found vestiges which seem to denote its course and magnitude: the ruins of Palmyra and Baalbec are probably links of the commercial chain which connected Tyre and Babylon.

The third, and least branch of Phœnician land trade, was with the countries of the north. No Greek writer, that I am acquainted with, has left the least information respecting it. Ezekiel mentions Tubal, Meshech, and Togarmah. There can be no doubt that Tubal and Meshech denoted the regions lying between the Black and Caspian Seas; the abode of the Tibareni and Moschi, and probably also the Cappadocians. With regard to Togarmah, conjecture runs very strongly in favour of its being Armenia. The probability of the truth of these conjectures is much augmented by the fact, that the wares enumerated are exactly such as these regions produce. Cappadocia, together with the Caucasian districts, from the very earliest times, was the chief seat of the slave trade, and always continued so in the ancient world. The mines of these regions, however, were probably a still greater attraction; and one which their whole history shows they could not withstand.

Armenia, finally, is also recognised by its wares. It is described as a land abounding in horses; and in this respect, as well as in the distinction which the prophet makes between those of an inferior and a more esteemed breed, no country of Asia agrees so well as Armenia.

It is evident that this northern trade also was not carried on with money, but by barter. It was not necessary here, however, to have recourse to caravans, for the way lay through inhabited and civilised countries.b

SILVER AND GOLD IN ANTIQUITY AS MONEY

In the study of the chief commodities of Phœnician commerce, and especially of those which are interesting by reason of the historical influence they exercised on culture, we will first consider the precious metals. For silver and gold stand first and foremost in their great influence upon trade, and for their incalculable effects upon ancient culture.

The desire to obtain these precious metals from their sources, drove the Phœnicians to the most distant lands, gave rise to their boldest commercial undertakings, led their ships into unknown seas, suggested their voyages of discovery, and made them establish colonies in the farthest countries. According to ancient historians, the silver and gold of distant lands were the source of their wealth and prosperity in the world. Being the first to traffic with silver, they laid the foundation of an organised trade for their country, which was not furnished by nature with sufficient commercial commodities to trade with other lands. For what had Phœnicia to offer the far richer and earlier cultivated countries of Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, or what could it give in equivalent exchange for the rich wares of India, if it had not had the precious metals which were quite or partially wanting in these countries?

In olden days silver ranked higher than gold, and it was used for fully a thousand years as an object of trade, before we find a trace of gold being used for the same purpose.

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The use of silver as money was limited in olden times to the Semitic world and certainly to Phœnicia and the neighbouring countries. For whilst the oldest records of the Eastern world, such as Homer and the Zend writings, mention other objects of barter, no trace is found of silver being used for that purpose, whereas at an earlier date than that to which these writings can lay claim, we find the Phœnicians using money as the basis of their commercial intercourse with other countries.

The Mosaic Law, particularly in its oldest and best authenticated part, leads to the conclusion that silver money was common even at the time of the formation of the Israelite state. The ancient laws which treat of sentences of punishment, often state the amount of the expiatory sum of silver. Human beings were valued at their worth in money according to their age or rank (Leviticus xxvii.); houses, lands, and corn and victuals were all estimated according to their value in silver money. The thief, the man who hurts his neighbour, the foolish shepherd and the man who robs a lover of his maid, had to expiate their sins by a proportionate payment. And so also with “the holy things of the Lord”: the sacrifice of a ram was accompanied by a payment of shekels of silver; the first-born of the Israelites were redeemed from the Levites for five shekels apiece by the poll; when the people were numbered, a payment of half a shekel for every man was exacted; and the advice of a seer was paid for in silver money.

The use of precious metals as objects of exchange does not extend farther eastward than the Semitic dominion. In the Zend writings, we find no trace of a currency; an ox is mentioned as payment (pecunia), and in the Law of Zoroaster we find an ox exacted as punishment. According to Biblical testimony precious metals were of no account with the Medians and Parthians except for ornaments. India, even including the gold countries of northern India, was either not cognisant of the use of precious metals as payment, or only adopted such a use of them in a very small way in intercourse with foreigners; and whereas the taxes were levied in money in all the Persian provinces, the Indians paid theirs in bars of gold.

In ancient Egypt, silver money was the common means of payment in her intercourse with the Semites. The presentments upon ancient Egyptian monuments, in which gold and silver earrings are weighed would not prove this, but these presentments record the payment of taxes by foreign people; and the classics and Holy Scripture give concurrent testimony on their use of money. Reference is made to the laws of the old Egyptian kings on the circulation of money, and false coinage.

When we find silver used as money by a people, it shows that it has either a great trade, or that it has reached a rather advanced stage of culture, and it mostly means both. Unworked rough silver pieces, like the oldest money, could only be of value where there were merchants who would take them in exchange for wares or where they understood how to work it. The former was the case with the Hebrews and in the neighbouring countries of Phœnicia, where it was almost exclusively in the hands of those settled in the country, or of the Phœnicians who resorted thither. But in Greece, where, in the Homeric period, the art of working precious metals was not known and trade was in a very backward state, advance had to be made in both directions before money became current. This did not occur till the ninth century, when Greece began to have important places of trade; and as commerce was at that time almost entirely in the hands of the Phœnicians, it led to the introduction of their mode of trade in the country. The use of silver money in Italy is of a later date still.

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The localities of the use of silver as money in antiquity are thus made patent. The Phœnicians traded with other countries than those mentioned, for we know for certain that they went to the Balearic Isles, Spain, Britain, and western and northern Africa. Therefore the nearer a country lay to Phœnicia the earlier it adopted the use of silver as money, and the farther away it lay from this central point of ancient trade the later it was before silver appeared as a medium of exchange in that country, as it was evidently dependent on the country having commercial relations with the Phœnicians.

With regard to the origin of silver in antiquity, we must remark that silver was far more seldom found than gold, and that a great deal of that mentioned by the ancients was so mixed with gold that only an eighth part was silver. The Biblical books, although referring to several places where gold was found, only mention silver coming from Tarshish, or Turditania, and that also brought to Canaan by the trade with Ophir.

In Africa, from whence Western Asia procured her great quantities of gold, the ancients found no silver. In the whole of Western Asia, the seat of the Semitic races, there was no silver, and in Asia Minor there was only a small quantity procured from the mines; and these are the only silver mines mentioned in Asia in antiquity, beyond the unimportant ones of Canaan and northern India. Moreover, in Europe, with the exception of the silver country of Turditania, silver was found only in very few places and in very small quantities.

Cyprus had some silver and gold mines, but it is very doubtful whether it was also to be found in Crete; and albeit unimportant, there were also gold and silver mines in Siphnus. Greece and the neighbouring countries were very poor in silver until the Persian war, the places where it was to be found, like the mines in Attica and probably the silver mines of Epirus and Macedonia, being either not known, or being worked by the Phœnicians; and it was the same with the mines of Thasos and Thrace, which were more famous for their gold than their silver. And beyond these places, if we except the Phœnician commercial district of northern Europe, mention was only made of the silver of Sardinia and Gaul, where the metal was only a late discovery, and of Britain.

Under these circumstances, the Biblical records which tell of Western Asia’s treasures of silver coming from the Phœnician colony of Tarshish are of great value to the history of ancient commerce. The Euphrates is also mentioned in these records, and it is moreover shown that being the centre of the commerce of antiquity, it was the depot for the metals found in the western countries, and as the Phœnicians monopolised the trade with Turditania for nearly a thousand years, they brought the silver to the market of Asia.

The enormous amount of silver possessed by Western Asia even in remote times, shows the great amount circulated by Phœnicia, as it was almost exclusively obtained by trade with that country.

Although silver was more difficult to obtain than gold, and was mostly first secured with gold in small quantities, it was used more than gold. The Greeks generally reckoned that gold was worth the tenth part of silver, and in Biblical books, in the seventh century B.C., there are signs of a similar comparison; but in more remote times silver must have ranked lower than gold, at least in Western Asia.

According to the Mosaic books, of the silver and golden gifts which the twelve chiefs made to the sanctuary, the silver gifts were worth twenty times as much as the golden, and it is therefore presumable, as the ancients were[342] accurate in their statements about hieratic matters, that the old valuation of gold and silver was still then in vogue. As, moreover, in more ancient times, a great deal of silver and a comparatively small amount of gold was imported into Palestine, as gold was used only for ornaments, and not as money, the above valuation is not so astonishing.

We hear in Solomon’s days of plenty of silver, that the vessels of his house were made of pure gold, for silver was “nothing accounted of in the days of Solomon” (1 Kings x. 21), or that he “made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones” (1 Kings x. 27). These are evidently hyperbolical expressions, but they would hardly have been used if a certain change had not taken place in its valuation.

However it may be, an extraordinary amount of silver found its way into Western Asia at a very early period; and the farther one goes back in the history of Phœnicia and its vicinity, the greater the wealth of these countries in precious metals is seen to be; and hence the explanation of the part played there by gold and silver since the seventh century.

The great wealth in gold and silver in Western Asia is shown in the accounts given of the treasures which fell into the hands of the conquering Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians, and the Hebrews in the times of David and Solomon. These treasures did not come from mines, at least we know of none in Western Asia, but they were gained partly from the conquered countries as tributes and booty, and partly from trade which was mainly directed to the capitals of the conquering kingdoms. The record of the wealth of the Assyrian kings far exceeds the almost fabulous accounts of the amount of silver found in Persia by the Macedonian conqueror.

THE SLAVE TRADE OF PHŒNICIA

But the most important branch of Phœnician commerce was the slave trade. Many thousands of these unfortunate beings were employed in the numerous manufacturies and industries of the Phœnician cities, and nearly all the rowers on the great war-ships and trading vessels of this maritime nation were slaves. It is said that sixty thousand slaves manned the three hundred Phœnician ships which joined the Persian navy. In addition, vast numbers of slaves were sent to the colonies for mining and industrial purposes. Hence it can be seen that the demands of the Phœnician markets alone, for slaves, must have been enormous. But the Phœnicians were not content to supply the home market. They searched the world for slaves; and the Phœnician slave dealer was known in every great city of ancient times. Indeed, so numerous became the slave merchants, that the Bible speaks of a thousand of them gathering at one time and place, to attend a slave market, as a not unusual occurrence. Human beings were the most important articles of merchandise in the olden times.

The slave trade is as ancient as is trade itself. Slaves figure in the religious stories of the Assyrians, the Lydians, and Phœnicians; and there are traders mentioned in the Biblical accounts of the old fathers of Israel, and in the poems and myths of the Homeric period. Phœnician seafarers, who sold their wares on distant shores, took the opportunity of kidnapping boys and girls to sell them elsewhere at a high price. The account of Eumæus in the Odyssey will be recollected; Io, and also the chorus of maidens in Euripides’ Helena, were represented as having been brought by Phœnician merchants to Egypt. The traders by land also dealt in human[343] wares. We know how Joseph was sold for twenty shekels to the travelling Midianite merchants.

With the establishment of a regular commercial intercourse between cities and nations, the kidnapping of human beings ceased to be practised by reputable Phœnician merchants; but avaricious men still secretly sent out ships for the purpose of capturing human wares. These spoilers haunted the coasts and harbours of Phœnicia, Asia Minor, and Syria; and either exacted a high ransom from the relatives of their captives, or sold them in the public slave markets.

During the most prosperous period of the slave trade we find the Phœnician slave dealers everywhere, even on the fields of battle, where they followed the fortunes of war as peddlers and purveyors. The booty which fell into the hands of the soldiers was at once purchased by these traffickers, and the little children and women, whose transport would have been difficult, were sold to them at a very low price, or exchanged for wine or some other commodity valued by the soldiers.

In this double capacity as purveyors and slave dealers the Phœnicians appear in the Old Testament account of the armies which attacked the Jews. After the raid, led by the Philistines against the Jews about 845 B.C. (Joel iii. 3), the prophet said: “They have cast lots for my people and have given a boy for an harlot, and sold a girl for wine that they might drink,” and the same prophet, when mentioning the slave trade of the Syrians and Sidonians, writes: “The children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians, that ye might remove them far from their border. Behold, I will raise them out of the place whither ye have sold them, and will return your recompense upon your own head: And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off.”

The greater number of Phœnician slaves came from the neighbouring countries of Palestine and Syria; and this not only because of the nearness of these countries to Phœnicia, but also because of the political condition of their inhabitants. In a great part of Syria and Palestine the old populations had been enslaved by the races invading these countries. As the Canaanites had to submit to the Jews and Hebrews in the south, so the Syrians had to bow to the Canaanites in the north, where they were not only in force on the seacoast, but had become the ruling race far into the interior. A great number of the Jewish inhabitants in the district of the Phœnician maritime cities had the same fate, and, according to many accounts, they were driven into slavery. Hence the inherited enmity between the Phœnicians and the Syrians, and more especially between the Jews and every neighbouring race. The intermingling of so many different neighbouring small states caused continuous wars, which were often waged solely for the purpose of obtaining slaves and gaining wealth by the sale of them. Moreover, slavery was not a despised condition amongst races, accustomed to it from the earliest times, whose gods like Sandon, Marna, Semiramis, and Astarte, whose forefathers like Jacob and Joseph, and whose heroes like Samson had been slaves, or servants. Thus it was quite a common custom in Palestine for parents to sell their children as slaves, or for persons willingly to enter slavery. The Greeks and Romans, therefore, long regarded the Syrians and Jews as born to slavery, as the Europeans once considered the negroes.

The Syrians seem to have been very popular as slaves, but being rather a delicate race, not accustomed to hard work, they distinguished themselves in their devotion to their masters, and their deftness in handiwork, hence their[344] value as house and body slaves. They were also excellent bakers and cooks, and gardeners, for horticulture was unequalled in Syria, and in these respects they were in great demand in western Asia, Europe, and Africa. The women slaves from Syria were equally popular,—pretty, musical, and song-loving,—the Syrians acted as ladies’ maids and hairdressers, and we find them taken to Greece and Italy as dancers, and flute and zither players, where they were a profitable investment to their owners.

Hebrew slaves were a most important branch of the trade, although there is no express mention of it. In the time of the judges when the northern Jewish races were subjugated by the Phœnicians, and when they were at times at the mercy of the Philistines’ raids in the prosecution of their slave trade, the traffic assumed great proportions, and continued until the reigns of Solomon and David, when the political and commercial relations of the Phœnicians and Israelites were put on a proper footing, and a treaty was made forbidding the Phœnicians to take Hebrew slaves out of the country. But after the decline of the David and Solomon kingdom, and the consequent change of the political and commercial relations of both countries, we find complaints of the Phœnicians breaking the old contract and transporting Hebrew slaves both eastward and westward. The Assyrian wars subsequently led to the Hebrews being taken as slaves into both neighbouring and distant countries.

In the Maccabæan wars, we find Phœnician slave dealers crowding the battle-fields, where they bought the Jews at a low price. This period and that following the wars of Pompey in Syria and Judea were the palmy days of Phœnicia’s slave trade. Delos was the great seat of this trade, as it was then the chief resort of Phœnician merchants. Thousands of slaves were imported and sold there on the same day, and the great Dispersion of the Jews in the West dates from this time, which consisted less of merchants than of liberated slaves. But the Phœnician trade in Jewish slaves went on till the latest times, when we find Phœnician merchants in the much frequented slave market at the Terebinth of Hebron buying four Jews for a measure of barley after the war of Hadrian in Judea.

The beautiful women and boys of Greece had from early times been introduced into the East as slaves. In Homeric times they commanded a higher price than any other commodity, and they were brought by Phœnician pirates as prisoners of war to Egypt and Palestine.

The prices at which slaves were bought were uncommonly low, whereas the prices at which they were resold were very high. The greatest profits were made by the slave dealers, who were often pirates, and frequently gained large sums in ransom money for wealthy or princely captives. In Pontus, which was the chief depot for most of these slaves, Lucullus tells us that a slave could be bought for 4 drachmæ, which in English money would be about 17s. 8d. ($4.25). When the slave dealers had an opportunity of buying prisoners of war on battle-fields, or when soldiers put up for sale their booty of women and children, the prices were equally low. The Punic soldiers were sold by the Romans for 3 thalers 18 gr. In Amos we read of the needy being sold for a pair of shoes. In Isaiah lii. 3, reference is made to the Jews being “sold for nought.” The price given by the Phœnicians for slaves was high in comparison with that of other countries; and even those mentioned in the Mosaic Law are rather lower than the Phœnician market prices of the time. Female children from 1 month to 5 years were estimated at 3 shekels, a male child of the same age 5 shekels. The price rose from 5 to 20 years of age; boys and youths were estimated at 20[345] shekels, girls were worth half as much. The highest price was between 20 and 60 years of age; for men 50 shekels, for women 30. At the fourth stage of 60 years and over, the price went down with men three-fourths, i.e., to 15 shekels, and with women to two-thirds, or to 10 shekels.

Compared with the modern prices of slaves, those of antiquity were far lower; but the prices demanded in modern times by the slave dealers of Central Africa, which were from 10 to 20 per cent. lower than on the coast, were about the same as those of antiquity. Two or three generations ago, on the Lake Chad a ten-year slave boy cost about 15 shillings, and a girl of the same age about 21 shillings, prices which correspond closely to those given by slave dealers in antiquity, and to the valuation of slaves as recorded in the Mosaic Law.c

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CHAPTER VIII. PHŒNICIAN CIVILISATION

Egypt and Babylonia were doubtless the greatest nations of remote antiquity, but Phœnicia was in some respects more wonderful than either. Here was a people occupying a tiny strip on the coast of the Mediterranean, its total population aggregated in a few scattered cities, yet, actuated by a common impulse, reaching out east and west, north and south, to the very limits of the known world, and weaving with its trading ships and caravans a web of unity between all the civilised nations of the eastern hemisphere.

Phœnicia itself was at most something like one hundred and fifty miles in length, and in width it varied from literally a few yards to at most thirty-five miles. But the territories that paid tribute through the merchants and explorers whose home was in this tiny centre, were as widely separated as India on the one hand, and the Atlantic islands off the west coast of Africa on the other.

The Phœnician explorers sailed far out beyond the Pillars of Hercules, which for every other nation of antiquity represented the westernmost limits of the known world. Northward the Phœnician commerce stopped only with the confines of civilisation, and southward, on at least one occasion, the adventurous explorers went far beyond it, actually circumnavigating Africa—a feat which was not repeated by their successors for two thousand years.

This circumnavigation of Africa has been questioned, and, indeed, it must be admitted that it rests on rather scant evidence, as we have nothing for it but the authority of Herodotus. But it chanced that in the tale which Herodotus tells he unconsciously bears witness to the truth of the narrative, when he relates that the explorers claimed to have sailed into a region where they had the sun on their right; that is to say, to the north. Herodotus himself does not of course at all comprehend the meaning of this alleged phenomenon; he even asserts that he doubts the accuracy of this statement. Yet, as moderns view the matter, it is clear that this statement in itself is practically a demonstration that the explorers at least did go beyond the equator, and this being the fact, it seems not unreasonable to credit their claim to have made an entire circuit of the continent.

The Phœnicians were not conquerors except in a commercial sense; but, as the traders of the ancient world, they were the means of spreading civilisation to a degree unequalled by any other nation. In particular they colonised the Mediterranean; and they were credited, no doubt justly, by the Greeks with having introduced at least the elements of Egyptian and Babylonian[347] culture to that nation. Their most famous feat in this direction was of course the introduction of the alphabet, which, as the traditions of the time relate, and as modern scholars are quite ready to believe, the Phœnician traders brought with them from the Orient.

THE PHŒNICIANS AND THE ALPHABET

As to the exact origin of this alphabet, modern scholars are still somewhat in doubt. The Greeks themselves ascribed its origin to the Egyptians, believing that the Phœnicians had adopted a modified alphabet from the hieroglyphics. There were others, however, among the ancients who ascribed the origin of the Phœnician alphabet not to Egypt, but to Babylonia, and curiously enough this discrepancy amongst ancient authorities is exactly matched by the discordant opinions of the scholarship of our own day. It is admitted on all hands that the Phœnicians did not themselves invent their alphabet. But whether the foundation upon which they built it was the hieroglyphic or hieratic script of the Egyptians, or the elaborate cuneiform syllabary of Mesopotamia, is not even now clearly established.

The theory of Egyptian origin found about the middle of the 19th century an able and strenuous advocate in the person of Viscount de Rougé, who elaborated the theory which specifically accounted, or attempted to account, for the different letters of the Phœnician alphabet as of Egyptian origin. He based his comparisons not upon the hieroglyphics, but on the modified forms of the hieratic script, believing with good reason that the Phœnicians obtained their alphabet at a very early date—perhaps something like 2000 B.C. He logically confined his analysis to an observation of the oldest specimens of the hieratic writings that were accessible, in particular using the Prisse Papyrus, which, as good fortune would have it, chanced to be written in a very clear, bold hand. This hieratic script, as is well known, follows the hieroglyphics themselves in using at once an alphabet, a syllabary, and a modified form of ideographs. It is one of the most curious facts in the history of human evolution that the Egyptians having advanced through the various stages of mental growth necessary to the evolution of an alphabet, should have retained the antique forms of picture writing and of syllabic representations of sounds after they had made the final analysis which gave them the actual alphabet, and that to the very last they should have used a jumble of the various forms of representation in all their writings. The feat of the Phœnicians, according to the theory of De Rougé, was to select from the Egyptian characters those that were purely, or almost purely, alphabetic in character, and recognising that these alone were sufficient, to reject all the rest. Simple as such a selection seems when viewed from the standpoint of later knowledge, it really must have required the imagination of the most brilliant genius to effect it.

The theory of De Rougé was so ably supported through comparison of the most ancient known inscriptions of the Phœnicians with the hieratic alphabet of the Egyptians that it was almost at once accepted by a large number of scholars, and for many years was pretty generally regarded as having solved the old-time puzzle of the origin of the Phœnician alphabet. More recently, however, the theory of De Rougé has been called in question and the old theory of Pliny, which ascribed the origin of the alphabet to the Babylonian script rather than the Egyptian, has been revived by modern archæologists. Professor Deecke attempted to derive the Phœnician alphabet[348] from the later Assyrian. This attempt, however, has been characterised as refuting itself in the very expression, for it can hardly be in question that the Phœnician alphabet was in use long before the later Assyrian came into existence. A more logical attempt, however, has been made to draw a comparison between the Phœnician and the ancient Accadian, which was the classical speech of Mesopotamia and the model on which the later Assyrian itself was based. This theory, first suggested perhaps by Professor Wuttke, found an able advocate in Dr. J. P. Peters, and more recently has been sanctioned by the high authority of Professor Hommel. Their opinions on the other hand have been ardently combated by the advocates of the theory of De Rougé, and the subject is as yet too obscure and the data are too few for a final decision.

Whether the Phœnicians went to Egypt or to Mesopotamia, however, for their model, it is at least admitted on all sides that among this people originated the alphabet which was transmitted to the Greeks, and through the Greeks to all modern European nations. This fact should of itself suffice to give the Phœnicians a foremost place among the nations of antiquity, in the estimation of the modern critic.

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS; RELIGION

It is a curious fact that the nation to which all Europe owes its alphabet should have been the one which has left us the fewest written records of all of the great nations of antiquity. It is not at all in question that the Phœnicians first developed a purely alphabetical script and transmitted it to the Greeks, yet there are no written monuments of Phœnicia herself preserved to us that are as ancient by some five hundred years as the oldest records of Greece, that have been found in the ruins of her so-called Mycenæan period. Indeed, the oldest records of Phœnician life, at present known, do not come from the territory of Phœnicia proper, but from her colonies. This anomaly has been explained by saying that the Phœnicians were not essentially a monumental people. They were seemingly but little solicitous to preserve records of their national life, the reason being, no doubt, that such records among the early nations were almost solely actuated by the desire of a great conquering monarch to preserve the memory of his own fame. As Phœnicia had no great conquering monarchs, as her conquests were all peaceful ones, lacking the element of dramatic picturesqueness, there was no one who had a personal interest in engraving inscriptions to tell her story to posterity.

Even so great a feat as the invention of the alphabet was probably looked upon by the Phœnicians as more or less a natural development growing out of their contact with Egypt and Babylonia. And, indeed, it is not through the Phœnicians themselves, but through the Greeks, that we are informed of the fact that our alphabet is of Phœnician origin.

So far as one is able to picture the actual manners and customs of the Phœnicians, in the period of their greatest power, one must think of them essentially as a matter-of-fact manufacturing and commercial nation, living in a few relatively large cities, and sending out colonies from these cities whenever the growth of population made such extension seem necessary. Sidon and Tyre were alternately the cities of greatest influence, but neither one apparently was at any period a really great city as regards actual count of population. Tyre in particular had its most important part built upon[349] a small island, which afforded it wonderful opportunities for defence, as such conquerors as Nebuchadrezzar and Alexander found to their cost.

But this island as explored by modern investigators has seemed to be so limited in size as to prohibit any thought that its population was ever large. And it at once becomes clear how necessary it was that colonies should be sent out from time to time, since the population of any prosperous country is constantly increasing. It has even been suggested that the main population of Tyre must, at any given period of its prosperity, have been necessarily absent from its island home on voyages of war or peace, since the restricted area of the island itself makes it difficult to account otherwise for the distribution of such a number of men as was necessary to the equipment of the Phœnician navies and trading fleets.

A nation of traders must necessarily have a high degree of intelligence of a practical kind, but it would seem that the culture of the Phœnicians did not greatly advance beyond this. Their religion was always apparently of a very crude oriental type, akin to that of the Babylonians and of the early Hebrews. In literature they apparently never ranked with these neighbouring nations. Indeed, if they produced at any time a literature of significance, all traces of it are now lost, except certain fragments of doubtful authenticity that have come to us through the Greeks; the most important of these being the alleged writings of Sanchoniathon, as translated into Greek by Philo Byblius, and preserved, in part, by Eusebius.a

Such knowledge as we have of the religion of the Phœnicians is derived from the writings of foreign authors, Greek, Roman, and Hebrew, and from the disputed work of Sanchoniathon just referred to. With this doubtful exception, all native literature on the subject has perished. Nor does art step in, as in the case of Egypt and Babylonia, to atone in some measure for the loss; a few coins and idols found in Cyprus are all the help it gives us in forming an idea of how the Phœnicians conceived of their gods. [Renan discovered the remains of a temple of Adonis near Byblus.]

In the Phœnician cosmogony, the beginning of all things was a moving and limitless chaos of utter darkness. After the lapse of ages this agitated air became enamoured of its own first principles, and from this embrace was generated Mot, which some interpret mud, and others the putrefaction of a watery mixture. From this the universe came forth, first living creatures without sensation, then intelligent beings (Zophasemin or beholders of the Sun), in shape like an egg. From this, too, the sun, moon, and stars were evolved, and the heat and light generated clouds, wind, and rain. At the sound of the tempest creatures male and female awoke, intelligent, but feeble and timid in mind, worshipping the products of the earth. Next, of Kol-pia (Wind) and his wife Baau (Night) were born mortals, Æon and Protogonos, whose children, Genos and Genea, dwelt in the land of Phœnicia and worshipped the Sun, Beelsamin, Lord of Heaven.

Sanchoniathon’s history tells how three sons were born to Æon and Protogonos,—Light, Fire, and Flame. These begot a gigantic race, whose names were bestowed upon the mountains, and of them sprang Memrumus and Hypsouranius (unless the latter name be merely the Greek version of the former). Hypsouranius fixed his dwelling in the island of Tyre, and by him and his race the various arts of mankind were invented.

Of the gods we are told that the progenitors of the race were Eliun and his wife Beruth, who dwelt near Byblus, the oldest city in Phœnicia. Ouranos (Heaven) son of Eliun, wedded his sister Ghe (Earth), and by her had four sons and three daughters. Cronos, the eldest son, deposed and[350] ultimately slew his father, and it is he who assigned to the various other deities their offices and places of abode in Phœnicia.

The Phœnician religion was of a distinctively national type. The active and passive forces of nature were symbolised by male and female deities, as in Egypt, but the Phœnician gods were more definitely associated with the heavenly bodies than the Egyptian. It is doubtful whether Osiris and Isis were primarily identified with the Sun and Moon, but such was unquestionably the case with the Baal and Ashtoreth of Phœnicia. According to Sanchoniathon, the proper title of Baal was Beelsemin, Lord of the Heavens, or Sun. He was the principal Phœnician divinity, and thus his name came to be equivalent to Supreme God, and is more frequently used in this sense than with reference to his original character of Sun-god. In this sense, too, it was applied to other gods locally regarded as supreme, Melkarth, for example, is the Baal of Tyre; and it is therefore difficult to distinguish the character and attributes of Baal, Bel, or Belus from those of Cronos, Ouranos, and Moloch, who were likewise identified with the Sun. In the course of time, the later character so far prevailed over the earlier that the Sun became the object of a separate worship; a process to which we find analogies in the religions of Egypt and Greece. Baal was also identified with the planet Saturn, which presided over the rest, and was therefore their lord or Baal.

The name of Ashtoreth or Astarte does not appear in early Greek writers, to them the principal goddess of the Phœnicians is Aphrodite or Venus Urania (the Celestial). It is said to be Phœnician, but we can gather from it no hint of the primary physical or cosmical character of the goddess who bore it. She was identified with the Moon, as distinguished from the Sun, and with Air and Water, as opposed to Fire. Herodotus says that the oldest seat of her worship was at Askalon, and identifies her with the Babylonian Mylitta and the Alitta or Alilat of Arabian tribes.

The worship of Mylitta at Babylon was accompanied by wanton rites, but these do not seem to have been associated at first with the character of Urania or Astarte, and in the Scriptures the religion of the Phœnicians is reprobated rather for its cruelty than for its licentiousness. It was from the worship of the goddess Mylitta, at Babylon, that the corruption of morals spread to the worship of Venus in Syria, Phœnicia, and Cyprus, tainting it with an impurity which formed no part of it originally.

The worship of Venus must have been established in Cyprus long before the Greeks began to colonise the island, though it owed its great development, in part at least, to their plastic imagination. Here, too, the license which characterised the worship of Mylitta prevailed, and the ports of the[351] island became celebrated for the number and beauty of their courtesans. Large bodies of hierodulæ, at once prostitutes and ministers of the goddess, were attached to the temples of Venus in Asia, and afterward in Greece. The origin of this custom, evil as it was, must originally have been religious in character, for the daughters of noble Armenian families passed without reproach from the service of the goddess to marriage with their equals in rank. We find traces of the same customs in remote Phœnician settlements.

Cronos or Saturn is mentioned by Greek and Latin writers among the principal deities of Phœnicia and Carthage, but it is by no means certain which particular Phœnician god answered to the Cronos of the Greeks. The most characteristic circumstance we learn concerning him is that human sacrifices were made in his honour. “The Phœnician history of Sanchoniathon,” says Porphyry, “is full of instances in which that people, when suffering under great calamity … chose, by public vote, one of those most dear to them, and sacrificed him to Saturn.” In the fragmentary history preserved to us, we find no mention of such sacrifices, but in the siege under Alexander it was proposed to revive a custom obsolete for ages, and sacrifice a boy to Saturn. That such a practice prevailed in earlier times is certain; we trace it in the Phœnician colonies, and above all in Carthage. On the occasion of any extraordinary calamity an unusual number of victims was sacrificed, but human sacrifice was also part of the established ritual, and every year a youthful victim was chosen by lot.

Infants were burnt alive, and the most acceptable of all sacrifices was that of an only child. The image of Saturn was of brass, the outstretched hands were hollowed so as to receive the body of the child, which slid thence to a fiery receptacle below. Mothers brought their infants in their arms, and quieted them by caresses till the moment they were thrown into the flames, since any manifestation of reluctance would have rendered the sacrifice unacceptable to the god. Human sacrifices were not made to one god only, or to one answering to the Saturn of the Greeks and Romans; but since Saturn was reputed to have devoured his own children it was natural that they should call any god to whom infants were offered by his name. Wherever human sacrifices prevailed they assumed that Saturn was worshipped; but, although Chiun (mentioned by the prophet Amos) was undoubtedly the planet Saturn, it does not appear that infants were offered to him.

The gods hitherto mentioned belonged to Phœnicia as a whole, but Melkarth, “king of the city” was the tutelary god of Tyre, and by Tyrian colonies his worship was spread far and wide throughout the ancient world. Under the name of Melicertes he appears in Greek mythology as a Sea-god, and bears the synonym of “the wrestler,” an epithet of Hercules. The Egyptians worshipped Hercules as one of their great gods, but Herodotus found no trace to show that his worship had been brought from Egypt to Tyre.

We should expect to find among a seafaring people the worship of a god corresponding to the Greek Poseidon, but though several marine deities are mentioned by Sanchoniathon, very few traces of any such god appear in the public worship of Phœnicia. This may perhaps be explained by the circumstance that they brought their religious system with them to the shores of the Mediterranean. The mythology of Semitic nations appears to have contained no god to correspond with Neptune. The divinities who really presided over navigation among the Phœnicians were the Cabiri, the reputed sons of Vulcan, who were represented in the garb of smiths, and whose images were placed on the prows of Phœnician vessels.

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If idolatry be defined as the worship of false gods the Phœnicians were idolaters, but they were not image-worshippers in the same sense as the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Greeks. Their temples seem to have contained no representation of the deity, or at most, a rude symbol. What we know of their religion is merely external; to the more interesting question of what spiritual conceptions they attached to the names and attributes of their gods and the rites by which they were worshipped, we have no answer to give. The leading characteristic of the nation was practical activity, and the evidences of this were what foreigners saw and recorded. Our ignorance is the less to be regretted because the Phœnician religion had little influence in historic times on the beliefs of other nations or on the art and literature of the ancient world. Its genuine character survived at Carthage, and even after the fall of that colony it long retained its hold on such portions of northern Africa as had been subject to Carthaginian dominion.b

CULTURE; ART

That which gave the Phœnician culture of the period preceding the Egyptian supremacy its peculiar stamp, was the abundance of Babylonian elements, which had, however, been so thoroughly assimilated, that the civilisation of Phœnicia presented itself to the Egyptians as a perfected and independent one.

There was an astonishing number of cities and fortified places. Many branches of industry and a flourishing trade had increased the wealth of the inhabitants, and developed a considerable degree of luxury in their manners. At the same time, agriculture and stock-raising were extensively carried on. We know that the Egyptians imported great quantities of corn, wine, and oil from the land of Zahi, i.e., Syria and Phœnicia.

Babylonian and Assyrian influences cannot be distinguished in detail, but it seems probable that many of the borrowings in the field of religion came directly from Babylonia. The name of Astarte had already been given to the goddess worshipped in many places of Syria. The Phœnician priests may have had already the Babylonian robes in which they are later represented.

The religious art of Mesopotamia furnished the Phœnicians models for the representation of cherubs and other winged forms. This appears most plainly in the representation of the god Ilu, who is given not only a double pair of wings, but often, like some divinities of the Mesopotamian pantheon, a trailing caftan-like garment.

Moreover, it can readily be seen that the borrowing of the alphabet must have been preceded by long and numerous borrowings of a more material nature, and adaptations of arts.

The development of art in Syria was furthered by the great number of small states in the land. The love of display of all the petty princes increased the demand for jewels and costly vessels, especially for gold and silver work. The enormous profits of this trade were also doubtless an attraction to the Phœnicians.

In the articles of luxury that came to Egypt by way of tribute or of trade, the art and industry of the Nile Valley found much to learn. From them was obtained a greater supply of designs suitable for merely ornamental purposes, and also a hitherto unknown method of application for some ornaments. Thus, reliefs now and then contain full-faced figures of gods and men, and a greater preference for winged figures manifests itself.[353] There are, in fact, but few fields in which the counter effect of unhindered intercourse with the inhabitants of Syria cannot be traced.

On the other hand, the peoples of Syria adopted much from the Egyptians and their civilisation. In Phœnicia, to be sure, this influence is not so plain as in the coast-land of Palestine, but it is none the less a certainty for all the succeeding periods. The Phœnician religion adopted the Egyptian gods Horus, Tehuti, Ptah, Bast, Hapi, and others. The Osiris myth gained considerable currency among the Phœnicians. In their attempts to determine the relations of the various gods the Phœnician priests may have followed Egyptian schemes; for both Phœnician and Egyptian theology establish eight divinities, or four pairs of gods, as world-forming powers under the rule of a chief god.

But the most important effect of the contact with Egypt is seen in the art, and particularly the religious art, of the Phœnicians. Much use is made of various signs and hieroglyphs, e.g., the full moon symbol, the hieroglyph for “life,” the serpent of Uræus, the hawk of Horus, the eye of Uzat. Scarabs, too, were quite extensively made.

Decorative patterns as well as sacred symbols were adopted by the Phœnicians from Egypt. The lotus flower and bud, and the nechef plant especially, came into vogue as designs for capitals.

Finally, it seems altogether probable that the Phœnicians in their intercourse both with Egypt and their neighbours in Syria borrowed not only forms, but methods in all fields of art and industry.

That an art which was bent principally upon assimilation and imitation was not able to attain any great consistency of development, nor feeling for unity of style, is not at all surprising. To find a language of form, in which Asiatic would combine with Egyptian to produce something new, was beyond its power; its mode of expression remains a kind of jargon, embellished with a little Greek, but which never stood higher than pigeon English among the idioms of the present. Where the Phœnician artist gives free play to the inventions of his own genius, he only produces creations that show a lack of genuine feeling for form, in no less degree than the rough and absurd mixture of totally different styles, of which he is so often guilty.

In their fame as inventors there is so much borrowed glory that it is questionable whether the founding of a single branch of industry is really to be ascribed to them. Their commercial capacity must be reckoned far higher than their creative ability, than all that they ever produced independently. A tenacious striving for enrichment by the gains of trade, which, full of a delight in undertaking, of shrewd determination and calculation, seeks its advantage without yielding to any difficulty or danger, is united with a mode of thought that bends circumstances to itself: that knows no consolidated national interests; that, in spite of the religious fears that pictured with horrors the fate of the soul of him who died abroad without ritualistic protection from the demon of the death hour, and in spite of a devoted attachment to the place of birth, is always ready to leave it as soon as it appears advantageous.c

THE PHŒNICIAN INFLUENCE ON HISTORY

If we sum up all that has been said to specify the place of the Phœnicians in the history of the world, we see that their position was more due to their circulation of the cultures of the eastern lands to western countries than to their own creations.

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By their inventions and technical skill, activity, and industry they enriched and beautified the external life of the ancient people. By their courageous sea voyages, they extended the knowledge of the world and opened up new objects for discovery, and fresh fields for the spirit of enterprise. By their great intercourse and universal commerce, they introduced the products of distant cultured countries to the most backward races, and thus incited them to creations of their own. And if these advantages were of a material nature, and if the satisfaction of the desire for gain and profit were the aim and object of this selfish commercial people, they bore the seed of an advanced culture which elicited imitation which would not otherwise have been attempted.

The historical books of the Tyrians, mentioned by Josephus, with the exact account of the period, were not without influence on the Israelites and Greeks; and the tradition that the Phœnicians introduced the alphabet-writing to the European people, and were the founders of many religious forms and cult practices, and taught the sacred arts, shows that deeper elements of culture were fostered and circulated with the material benefits, and that trade and intercourse in their hands were active instruments for spiritual evolution, as their attention was not exclusively turned to the material, but also directed to spiritual advantages.

Through their colonies the Phœnicians became the creators of ordered state forms and legal institutions which put bounds and limitations to the common conditions of war. Activity was used for the welfare and salvation of mankind, and the arts of peace found a proper field for their beneficial development. This, however, is the sum of their influence. It would be appraising the Phœnicians too highly to regard them as the forerunners of the Greeks in religious wisdom, art, and poetry.

In religious doctrine they were more receptive than productive. They adopted most of the nature-symbolic divinities of the Babylonians, Egyptians, and other cultured races; and by mixing up different representations and symbols, they confused the ideas in a formless whole, and veiled them in mystic darkness. Instead of continuing through free speculation what is understood, or impressing an idiosyncratic national stamp on what was foreign, they reduced the fundamental elements to a complicated convolution of ideas devoid of clear forms or ethical foundation. As their life was so permeated with the mercantile spirit, they placed their divinities in direct relation with appearances of practical experience, and desecrated the deep doctrines by material significations, by lascivious use, and by cruel practices.

Given over to the sweet habits of life, they bemoaned in mourning services the instability and perishableness of all that is earthly, without seeking any faith in immortality or in the continuance of the soul beyond the borders of time. There are no traces or memorials of Phœnician poetry or literature.

Their cult, spoilt by unbridled or unnatural practices, was not of a character to express itself in holy inspiration and to give rise to religious hymns.

Their nature-gods, derived from the Tyrian Melkarth, were colourless symbolic figures, destitute of heroic deeds, or historical myths fitting for a popular epic. What room, indeed, was there for leisure and interest in poetry and heroic stories in a restless life of industry and trade?

But surely the Phœnicians did something great in building and sculpture? It is true that the temple of Jerusalem was built by Tyrian workmen, artists, and builders; that the temple buildings in Tyre, Aradus, Paphos, and Gades, in Carthage and Utica, excited the admiration of antiquity; that[355] the buildings of King Hiram, the ruined temples in Malta and Gozo, the gigantic tombs and the circular “nurhage” in the Balearic Isles and in Sardinia, testify to architectural skill; but they are far inferior to those of the Egyptians, or of the cultured races of the Euphrates and Tigris. From what we gather from some descriptions, their temples were more noted for size and magnificence than for artistic taste.

Their materials were chiefly wood and metal, and from the description of the jewels, treasures, and ornaments of all kinds, which distinguished the fine buildings of the Phœnicians, we see that their fame was not due to the grand full forms of simple stone architecture, but to the rich ornamentation and brilliant variegation. The structure of the ships seems also to have been of the same character as the buildings. The Phœnician buildings cannot be compared with the Assyrian, which the recent excavations have brought to light; and much that was hitherto attributed to the Phœnicians is now found to be Ninevite art, and also in the West many remains of old Phœnician work are traced to the Etruscans.

Phœnician sculpture takes a still lower rank. The physical powers which work externally and internally in the creation and destruction of nature that they deified could not be represented in beautiful forms in art, like the ethical powers of the human heart with the Greeks. Their fetiches were demoniacal distortions, their images of gods were frightful, and the figures were overladen with symbols and attributes. The human form, the fundamental type of all organic art, found no free and natural expression, and the fantastic forms of animals and plants on their vessels were borrowed from the Assyrians and Babylonians. Pure form and natural beauty were quite wanting.i

“The stage of development,” says Gerhard, “of such artistic remains of the Phœnicians as are known to us, instead of putting them on a higher plane show that their fame in antiquity was due to their technical working of such materials, as iron, gold, ivory, glass, and purple; and to their usefulness as intermediaries which led to their being often called upon either to execute or to disseminate the higher art of interior Asia. They had a considerable influence upon Grecian art in early times, but at the time of its development, very little. The inartistic nature and the want of the plastic sense, peculiar to all Semitic races, was seen in the Phœnicians.”m

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APPENDIX A. CLASSICAL TRADITIONS

Indirectly America owes its discovery to Phœnicia; for her bold venturers into new oceans began that spirit of discovery for the advancement of trade which has given the art or the sport of discovering a solid basis. The Phœnicians founded the school of maritime exploration which the Portuguese revived centuries later, and the Spanish took up at the instigation of the Italian Columbus. So America owes a debt to the Phœnicians. Indeed, there have not been wanting those who claimed that the Phœnicians themselves actually found and colonised America. Of this more will be said in the volumes on America. Meanwhile there follows a stirring account of a voyage made by Hanno who, five or six centuries B.C., set forth on a governmental commission to enlarge the knowledge and the trade of Carthage, the chief colony of Phœnician origin. Hanno’s own account is given followed by a comment of Heeren’s.a

“THE VOYAGE OF HANNO, BEYOND THE PILLARS OF HERCULES, WHICH HE DEPOSITED IN THE TEMPLE OF SATURN”

“It was decreed by the Carthaginians, that Hanno should undertake a voyage beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and found Liby-Phœnician cities. He sailed accordingly with sixty ships of fifty oars each, and a body of men and women to the number of thirty thousand, and provisions and other necessaries.

“When we had passed the Pillars on our voyage, and had sailed beyond them for two days, we founded the first city which we named Thymiaterium.[357] Below it lay an extensive plain. Proceeding thence towards the west, we came to Solœis, a promontory of Libya, a place thickly covered with trees, where we erected a temple to Neptune; and again proceeded for the space of half a day towards the east, until we arrived at a lake lying not far from the sea, and filled with abundance of large reeds. Here elephants, and a great number of other wild beasts, were feeding.

“Having passed the lake about a day’s sail, we founded cities near the sea, called Cariconticos, and Gytte, and Acra, and Melitta, and Arambys. Thence we came to the great river Lixus, which flows from Libya. On its banks the Lixitæ, a shepherd tribe, were feeding flocks, amongst whom we continued some time on friendly terms. Beyond the Lixitæ dwelt the inhospitable Ethiopians, who pasture a wild country intersected by large mountains, from which they say the river Lixus flows. In the neighbourhood of the mountains lived the Troglodytæ, men of various appearances, whom the Lixitæ described as swifter in running than horses.

“Having procured interpreters from them, we coasted along a desert country toward the south two days. Thence we proceeded towards the east the course of a day. Here we found in a recess of a certain bay, a small island, containing a circle of five stadia, where we settled a colony, and called it Cerne. We judged from our voyage that this place lay in a direct line with Carthage; for the length of our voyage from Carthage to the Pillars was equal to that from the Pillars to Cerne.

“We then came to a lake, which we reached by sailing up a large river called Chretes. This lake had three islands, larger than Cerne, from which proceeding a day’s sail we came to the extremity of the lake, that was overhung by large mountains, inhabited by savage men, clothed in skins of wild beasts, who drove us away by throwing stones, and hindered us from landing. Sailing thence we came to another river, that was large and broad, and full of crocodiles and river horses; whence returning back we came again to Cerne.

“Thence we sailed towards the south twelve days, coasting the shore, the whole of which is inhabited by Ethiopians, who would not wait our approach but fled from us. Their language was not intelligible even to the Lixitæ, who were with us. Towards the last day we approached some large mountains covered with trees, the wood of which was sweet-scented and variegated. Having sailed by these mountains for two days, we came to an immense opening of the sea; on each side of which, towards the continent, was a plain, from which we saw by night fire arising at intervals in all directions, either more or less.

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“Having taken in water there, we sailed forwards five days near the land, until we came to a large bay, which our interpreters informed us was called the Western Horn. In this was a large island, and in the island a salt-water lake, and in this another island, where, when we had landed, we could discover nothing in the day-time except trees; but in the night we saw many fires burning, and heard the sound of pipes, cymbals, drums, and confused shouts. We were then afraid, and our diviners ordered us to abandon the island. Sailing quickly away thence we passed a country burning with fires and perfumes; and streams of fire supplied from it fell into the sea. The country was impassable on account of the heat. We sailed quickly thence, being much terrified; and passing on for four days, we discovered at night a country full of fire. In the middle was a lofty fire, larger than the rest, which seemed to touch the stars. When day came we discovered it to be a large hill, called the Chariot of the Gods. On the third day after our departure thence, having sailed by those streams of fire, we arrived at a bay called the Southern Horn; at the bottom of which lay an island like the former, having a lake, and in this lake another island, full of savage people, the greater part of whom were women, whose bodies were hairy, and whom our interpreters called Gorillæ. Though we pursued the men, we could not seize any of them; but all fled from us, escaping over the precipices, and defending themselves with stones. Three women were, however, taken; but they attacked their conductors with their teeth and hands, and could not be prevailed upon to accompany us. Having killed them, we flayed them, and brought their skins with us to Carthage. We did not sail farther on, our provisions failing us.”b

Heeren makes this observation on Hanno’s account of his voyage. “The opinions respecting the Periplus of Hanno differ very widely from one another, both as regards its authenticity and the circumstances attending it. I cannot, however, believe that any critic will, in the present day, doubt its authenticity in the whole, though they may its completeness. Its shortness has led many to suppose that it is only the abridgment of a larger work, and this opinion is favoured by Rennell, and seems confirmed by the passage in Pliny, Hist. Nat. II, 67, where he says: Hanno sailed from Gades round Africa to Arabia, and has given a description of the voyage. But another writer has already justly observed that Pliny had not himself read the Periplus, but depended on the uncertain testimony of another; and that the passage of Pomponius Mela, III, 9, clearly shows that Mela had read our Periplus. Gosselin, Recherches, I, 64. The Periplus was not, certainly, the description of a voyage, in our sense of the phrase, but a public memorial of the expedition, being an inscription posted up in one of the principal temples of Carthage.”f

HIMILCO’S VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY

About the same time that Hanno was seafaring southward another Carthaginian, Himilco, was working his way northward from Gades or (Cadiz). He was less successful in his efforts, and complained that a dearth of wind and a superfluity of seaweed ruined his progress. The Roman poet, Rufus Festus Avienus, of the fourth century A.D., made use of Himilco’s information in his poetical geography, Ora Maritima, from which the following picture of the world is taken.

“Where the ocean presses in, and spreads wide the Mediterranean waters, lies the Atlantic bay; here stands Gadeira [Gades], of old called Tartessus [Tarsish]; here the Pillars of Hercules, Abyla, left of Libya and Calpe. Here rises the head of the promontory, in olden times named Œstrymnon [Cornwall], and below, the like-named bay and isles; wide they stretch and are rich in metals, tin, and lead.

“There a numerous race of men dwell, endowed with spirit, and no slight industry, busied all in the cares of trade alone. They navigate the sea on their barks, built not of pines and oak, but wondrous made of skins and leather. Two days’ long is the voyage thence to the Holy Island, once so called, which lies expanded on the sea, the dwelling of the Hibernian race: at hand lies the Isle of Albion. Of yore the trading voyages from Tartessus reached to the Œstrymnides [the Scilly Islands]; but the Carthaginians and their colonies near the Pillars of Hercules navigated on this sea, which Himilco, by his own account, was upon during four months; for here no wind wafted the bark, so motionless stood the indolent wave. Seaweed[359] abounds in this sea, he says, and retards the vessel in her course, while the monsters of the deep swarm around. Far off is seen Geryon’s hold; here wide expands the Bay of Tartessus, and from the river thither is one day’s voyage; here lies the town of Gadeira, of yore called Tartessus; then, great and rich, now poor and fallen, where I saw naught great but Hercules’ festival.

“Geryon’s fort and temple overtops the sea; a line of rocks crowns the bay; near the second rock disembogues the river. Close by arises the Tartessus’ mount bedecked with wood. Next follows the island Erythea, ruled by the Carthaginians, for in early days the Carthaginians had there planted a colony. The arm of the sea, which divides it from the continent and from the fort, is but five stadia broad. The island is sacred to Marine Venus; it contains her temple and oracle.

“Beyond the Pillars, on Europe’s coast, Carthage’s people of yore possessed many towns and places. Their practice was to build flat-bottomed barks for the convenience of navigating shallows; but westward, as Himilco tells us, is open sea; no ship has yet ventured on this sea, where the windy gales do not waft her, and thick fogs rest on the waters. It is the ocean which far roars around the land—the unbounded sea. This the Carthaginian Himilco saw himself, and from the Punic records I have taken what I tell thee.”l

POMPONIUS MELA ON THE PHŒNICIANS

Pomponius Mela, a Roman citizen but a Spaniard by birth, was the author of the earliest Latin treatise on geography extant. His work is dated about the middle of the first century A.D., and his description of the Phœnicians shows with what deference they were eyed at that time. The translation used here is that of Arthur Golding, published in London in 1590.

“Phœnicia is renowned for the Phœnicians a pollitique kinde of men, and both in feates of warre and peace peerlesse. They first inuented Letters and Letter matters and other artes also, as to goe to the sea with Shippes, to fight upon the water, to raigne over nations, to set up kingdomes, and to fight in order of battell. In it is Tyre, sometime an Ile, but nowe ioyned to the fyrme Lande, since the time that Alexander made workes about it to assault it. Further foorth, stand certaine small Villages, and the Cittie of Sidon, euen yet still wealthie, and in olde time the greatest of all the Cities oppon the Seacoast, before it was taken by the Persians.

“Between that and the foreland of Euprosopon (it may be interpreted fayre prospect), there are the Townes called Byblos and Botris, and beyonde them were three other, ech distaunt a furlong asunder, and therefore the place was of the number called Tripolis; then follow the Castle Simyra, and a Cittie not unrenowned, called Marathos. From thence the country being not crooked with the Sea, but lying foorth right side by side unto it, bendeth his shore into the maine Land, and receiveth a great Baie. About the which dwell ritch people, the cause whereof is the situation of the place, for that the Countrie being fertile, and furnished with many riuers able to beare shippes, serveth well for the easie erchaung and conueying in of all kinds of wares, both by Sea and Land. Within that Baye, is first the residue of Syria, which syrnamed Antioche, and on the shore thereof, stande the Cities Selucia, and Aradus.”h

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APPIANUS ALEXANDRINUS ON THE FOUNDING OF CARTHAGE BY DIDO

“The Phœnicians built Carthage in Africa fifty years before the sack of Troy. It was Founded by Xorus and Carchedon or as the Romans, and indeed the Carthaginians themselves, will have it, by a Tyrian Lady called Dido who (her Husband being privily murdered by Pygmaleon, Tyrant of Tyre, which was revealed to her in a Dream) conveyed aboard all the Treasure she could, and shipping herself with some Tyrians that fled from the Tyranny, came to Libya, to that place where now Carthage stands; and upon the people of that Countrie’s refusal to receive them, they demanded for their Habitation only so much Land as they could compass with an Ox-hide. This proposition seemed ridiculous to the Africans, and they thought it a shame to refuse strangers a thing of so small consequence, besides they could not imagine how any Habitation could be built in so small a patch of ground, and therefore that they might have the pleasure to discover the Phœnician subtlety, they granted their request.

“Whereupon the Tyrians, taking an Ox-hide, cut it round about, and made so fine a thong, that they therewith encompassed the place where they afterwards built the Citadel of Carthage, which from thence was called ‘Byrsa.’ [Byrsa in Greek signifies a Hide.]

“Soon after by little and little extending their limits, and becoming stronger than their neighbours, as they were more cunning, they caused ships to be built to traffick on the sea after the manner of the Phœnicians, by which means they built a city adjoining to their citadel. Their power thus encreasing they became masters of Libya, and the circumadjacent sea; and at last making War upon Sicily, Sardinia and all the Islands of the Sea, and even in Spain itself, they sent thither Colonies, till at length, from so small a beginning, they formed an Estate comparable in Power to that of the Greeks, and in Riches to that of the Persians.e”

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BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter a is reserved for Editorial Matter.]

Chapter I. Land and People

b A. H. L. Heeren, Historical Researches.

c R. Pietschmann, Geschichte der Phoenizier.

d The Holy Bible.

e Flavius Josephus, Ἰουδαϊκη ἀρχαιολογία.

f Herodotus, Ἱστορίαι.

g Justin, Historiarum Philippicarum libri XLIV (epitome of Trogus Pompeius).

g C. K. J. von Bunsen, Ægyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte.

h Menander of Ephesus, Annals of Tyre (quoted in Josephus).

Chapter II. Early History and Influences

b R. Pietschmann, Geschichte der Phoenizier.

c O. Meltzer, Geschichte der Karthager.

d Herodotus, Ἱστορίαι.

e B. G. Niebuhr, Lectures on Ancient History.

f The Holy Bible.

g Menander, Annals of Tyre (quoted in Josephus).

Chapter III. The Phœnician Time of Power

b F. C. Movers, Die Phoenizier.

c Max Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums.

d R. Pietschmann, Geschichte der Phoenizier.

e Josephus, Ἰουδαϊκη ἀρχαιολογία.

f The Holy Bible.

g Herodotus, Ἱστορίαι.

h Menander, Annals of Tyre (quoted in Josephus).

i Dius, Chætus, Theophilus, Eupolemus, Fragments.

Chapter IV. Phœnicia Under the Persians

b John Kenrick, Phœnicia.

c Herodotus, The History of Herodotus (translated from the Greek by William Beloe).

d Xenophon, Cyropædia (translated from the Greek by J. S. Watson and Henry Dale).

e Diodorus Siculus, The Historical Library (translated from the Greek by G. Booth).

f Arrian, History of Alexander’s Expedition (translated from the Greek by Mr. Rooke).

g Quintus Curtius, The Wars of Alexander (translated from the Latin by John Digby).

h Isocrates, Orations.

Chapter V. Phœnicia Under the Greeks, the Romans, and the Saracens

b John Kenrick, Phoenicia.

c Diodorus Siculus, The Historical Library (translated from the Greek by G. Booth).

d Strabo, The Geography of Strabo (translated from the Greek by J. Falconer and H. C. Hamilton).

e E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

f William of Tyre, Historia belli sacri.

g Sanchoniathon (see Bibliography under Court de Gébelin).

h Saint Jerome (Hieronymus), Commentarii in Iesaiam.

Chapter VI. The Story of Carthage

b George Grote, History of Greece.

c John Kenrick, Phoenicia.

d T. Mommsen, Römische Geschichte.

e Meyer’s Konversations-Lexikon.

f E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

g Thucydides, Συγγραφή.

h Sallustius, Bellum Jugurthinum.

i Eratosthenes, Γεωγραφικά.

j Isocrates, Orations.

k Polybius, Καθολικὴ κοινὴ ἱστορία.

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Chapter VII. Phœnician Commerce

b A. H. L. Heeren, Historical Researches.

c F. C. Movers, Die Phoenizier.

d Strabo, The Geography of Strabo (translated from the Greek by J. Falconer and H. C. Hamilton).

e Diodorus Siculus, The Historical Library (translated from the Greek by G. Booth).

f Strabo, Γεωγραφικά.

g Herodotus, The History of Herodotus (translated from the Greek by William Beloe).

h Plinius Secundus, Historia Naturalis.

Chapter VIII. Phœnician Civilisation

b John Kenrick, Phoenicia.

c R. Pietschmann, Geschichte der Phoenizier.

d O. C. C. Emmanuel de Rougé, Mémoire sur l’origine égyptienne de l’alphabet phénicien.

e W. Deecke, Der Ursprung der Kyprischen Sylbenschrift.

f H. Wuttke, Geschichte der Schrift und des Schriftthums.

g J. P. Peters, Nippur.

h F. Hommel, Geschichte Assyriens und Babyloniens.

i Georg Weber, Weltgeschichte.

j Herodotus, The History of Herodotus (translated from the Greek by William Beloe).

k Plinius Secundus, Historia Naturalis.

l Philo Byblius (see Bibliography).

m Eduard Gerhard, Auserlesene griechische Vasenbilder.

Appendix A. Classical Traditions

b Hanno, “The Periplus of Hanno.”

c Justin, The History of the World (translated from the Latin by G. Turnbull).

d The Holy Bible.

e Appianus Alexandrinus, The History of Appian of Alexandria (translated from the Greek by J. Dancer).

f A. H. L. Heeren, Historical Researches.

g Himilco’s Voyage of Discovery. Preserved through the Ora Maritima of Rufus Festus Avienus.

h Pomponius Mela, The Rare and Singular Works of Pomponius Mela (translated from the Latin by Arthur Golding).

i Aristotle, Politics.

j Jas. Rennell, The Geographical System of Herodotus.

k P. F. J. Gosselin, Recherches sur la géographie systématique et positive des anciens.

l Avienus, Ora Maritima.

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A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PHŒNICIAN HISTORY

BASED ON THE WORKS QUOTED, CITED, OR EDITORIALLY CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF THE PRESENT HISTORY; WITH CRITICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

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PART VI

THE HISTORY OF WESTERN ASIA

BASED CHIEFLY UPON THE FOLLOWING AUTHORITIES

ERNEST BABELON, MAX DUNCKER, PAUL KAROLIDES, EDUARD MEYER,
PERROT AND CHIPIEZ, GEORGE RADET, A. H. SAYCE,
A. SOCIN, CHARLES W. SUPER

WITH ADDITIONAL CITATIONS FROM

THE SO-CALLED POEM OF PENTAUR, H. C. BRUGSCH, STEPHANUS
BYZANTINUS, J. A. CRAMER, DEMETRIUS OF SCEPSIS,
DIODORUS, GEORGE GROTE, HERODOTUS, FRITZ
HOMMEL, JUSTIN, POMPONIUS MELA, NICOLAS
OF DAMASCUS, H. SCHLIEMANN, PLINIUS
SECUNDUS, STRABO, THUCYDIDES,
XANTHUS, XENOPHON

TOGETHER WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY ON

THE POSITION OF ASIA MINOR IN HISTORY

BY

WILLIAM J. HAMILTON

[370]

Copyright, 1904,
By HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.

All rights reserved.

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PART VI.—WESTERN ASIA

TABLE OF CONTENTS

	Page
The Position of Asia Minor in History	373
History in Outline of the Minor Kingdoms of Western Asia	380
Chapter I. The Hittites	391
Chapter II. Scythians and Cimmerians	400
Chapter III. Some Peoples of Syria, Asia Minor, and Armenia	413
Chapter IV. The Lydians	421
Appendix A. Classical Traditions	438
Brief Reference-List of Authorities by Chapters	464
A General Bibliography of the History of the Minor Nations of Western Asia	465

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[373]

THE POSITION OF ASIA MINOR IN HISTORY

By WILLIAM J. HAMILTON

From his work Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus, and Armenia

No country in the world presents, perhaps, more interesting associations to the geographer, the historian, and the antiquary than Asia Minor. It is no exaggeration to say that there is scarcely a spot of ground, however small, throughout this extensive peninsula, which does not contain some relic of antiquity, or is not more or less connected with that history, which, through an uninterrupted period of more than thirty centuries, records the most spirit-stirring events in the destinies of the human race, and during which time this country attracted the attention of the world as the battle-field of powerful nations.

Other countries and other people have flourished for a time, and may have left behind them a stronger feeling of interest in the thought and speculations of mankind. But this remarkable difference exists between them, that, while they have attracted paramount attention for a century or more, having risen to eminence only to fall into a greater depth of barbarism, Asia Minor has continued to be a main point of interest and attraction from the very beginning of the historic period.

It may indeed be true, when we turn over the first pages of the annals of the world, that Asia Minor was only of secondary importance when the dynasties of Pharaoh ruled in Egypt. When the sons of Israel went down to buy corn of the Egyptian kings, we read not of the civilisation of Asia Minor, nor did she produce at any period such structures as the pyramids, or the temples of the Nile, to record the talents of her architects or the perseverance of her people; it may be that the student of history will hardly find, during the most flourishing periods of the Ionian commonwealth, a galaxy of talent, patriotism, and courage equal to that which spreads its brightness over the palmy days of Athens, when science, literature, and art flourished under the ægis of Minerva, and the greatest of her military heroes did not disdain to take lessons from philosophers, or to superintend the labours of the sculptor, the painter, and the architect.

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Again, if we look to the history of ancient Rome, and consider the events which occurred there during a thousand years, we might possibly find more to admire and to attract our attention than anything which the history of Asia Minor can afford. The systematic legislation and constitution of the Roman republic, the unrestrained power of the emperors, the schemes of conquest carried on under both forms of government, and the boundless wealth amassed in the first years of the empire, are some of its characteristic features which have never been repeated elsewhere.

And to mention but one instance more, even Syria itself was also an object of greater interest than any other district in the universe ever was, either before or since. The birth of our Saviour, and the events which took place at Jerusalem during His abode on earth, have stamped upon that part of Syria a degree of interest and lofty associations which bears no parallel.

The interest of Asia Minor attaches, in a greater or less degree, to all ages, from the first dawn of history, through the classic periods of the Greek republics, and the darker ages of Byzantine misrule, down to the very times in which we live. Without pretending to give even a faint sketch of its history, I shall here refer to a few of the most interesting points by which this part of the world has been distinguished.

Here was the scene of those remarkable events which the learning or imagination of the early poets have attributed to the Heroic age. The Argonautic expedition, starting from the coast of Thessaly, proceeded through the Propontis and the Euxine, and along the shores of Bithynia, Paphlagonia, and Pontus, visiting various nations, the descriptions of which have been handed down to us with an accuracy worthy of admiration. But a still more interesting locality is presented to us on the shores of Asia Minor. Between the Simœis and Scamander, and on the plains of Troy, we may visit the spot where, in the imaginations of the poet, the gods of antiquity descended from the Olympus and joined in the sport and contests of mankind. As we approach the period of classic history, the importance of the country increases. The town of Sardis was built near the confluence of the gold-bearing Pactolus and the Hermus; and we are dazzled by the accounts of the wealth of Crœsus, which attracted the arms and fell under the bravery of the Persians, who, having crossed the Halys, established their seat of government in Sardis, in the year 548 B.C. Here they reigned for upwards of two hundred years, during which period Sardis was sacked by the troops of Athens; and the myriads of Darius and Xerxes in vain attempted to revenge the insult of putting chains on a band of freemen.

After this came the expeditions of the younger Cyrus, and the retreat of the Ten Thousand; and numerous Greek cities, chiefly on the coast of Ionia, Æolis, and Caria, founded by emigrants and exiles from the parent state of Greece, had in the meantime sprung up, flourished, and increased,—at one period independent, at another subject to Persian rule, but ever sending forth a supply of learned men, who, in the pursuits of philosophy, music, history, sculpture, painting, and architecture, were no mean rivals of their European instructors.

But Asia Minor became again the scene of war and conquest. The battle of the Granicus was an auspicious commencement of the career of Alexander, and his conquest of the peninsula was secured by the battle of Issus. But the empire which he founded, fell to pieces when the hand which had formed it no longer governed. His conquests fell into the hands of rival generals, and the plains of Asia Minor were amongst the prizes for which they fought. Antigonus Eumenes and Lysimachus established themselves[375] in various parts with various success, but a line of kings reigned at Pergamus in uninterrupted succession until Attalus Philopator, in 133 B.C., bequeathed his kingdom to the Roman people.

Another element of discord was thus introduced into this country. Many years intervened before Rome could be said to have obtained quiet possession of the bequest. Since the death of Alexander a rival power to that of the kings of Pergamus had been silently growing up in the distant province of Pontus, the last king of which, Mithridates Eupator, exerted all his extraordinary energies, and the resources of his people, in opposing, for a long time with success, the advance of the Roman arms. In Cappadocia and in Pontus, in Isauria and in the mountainous districts of Cilicia, the rocky and almost impenetrable nature of the country enabled the native tribes long to resist the invader; and it was not until the time of Julius Cæsar and his successor, that the whole peninsula became an integral portion of the territories of the Mistress of the World. The accounts of these long-contested engagements form some of the most interesting pages in the works of the writers of the Augustan age.

Another and a brighter epoch was now to dawn upon this portion of the world; every province and every district felt the high civilisation and luxurious habits of Rome during the first years of the imperial government. New towns owed the splendour and magnificence of their public buildings to the protection of the emperors, while those which had suffered during the wars were rebuilt and enriched by the same liberal hands. New honours and privileges were granted to them, and the products of a favoured clime received fresh encouragement from universal peace. Even those convulsive throes of nature which, during this period, destroyed many of her cities and temples, were but incentives to renewed acts of liberality, as is attested by the coins and the inscriptions, which the traveller meets with in almost every part of this peninsula.

But this prosperity was of short duration; the luxury and the extent of the Roman empire brought with them the accompanying cankers of weakness and dissolution. Rebellion at home, and insurrection on the frontiers attended by military insubordination, soon changed the fair features of peace into the distorted aspect of war; plenty gave way to misery and religious zeal lent its hand to increase the evil. Asia Minor could not be expected to escape the calamity—indeed, an undue proportion of wretchedness seems to have been her lot; for the establishment of the first Christian churches in her territory added fuel to the contests between the pagans and Christians; and while the latter destroyed the temples of paganism, regardless of the beauty of the work or the skill of the builder, they met with personal cruelties and suffered worse persecutions at the hands of their idolatrous enemies.

A vain prospect of better days appeared, when Constantine, after fighting under the cross and conquering Maxentius, laid the foundations of Constantinople on the site of Byzantium, the seat of the future Empire of the East. During this period the early history of the church is intimately associated with that of Asia Minor. It is enough to allude to the celebrated council of Nicæa and its creed, and to mention the names of George of Cappadocia, Gregory of Nazianzus, Eusebius, and St. Basil of Cæsarea. The illusion soon vanished: the apostate Julian, carried along by a love of speculation, and fond of the philosophy of the pagans, led the way by his liberalism, to the establishment of those sects which long agitated the Eastern empire, and shed their baneful influence over the Christians of the West. Amidst these[376] calamities, the same hordes of barbarians who had sacked the plains of Italy and Thrace, carried desolation and ruin into the other parts of the empire, and while the nations of the West were falling into the hands of successive northern chieftains, Asia Minor could not escape the ravages which overwhelmed the eastern provinces.

The annals of the Byzantine empire contain a melancholy list of facts of violence, intrigue, oppression, and vice. In Sapor, king of Persia, a powerful and determined enemy came to the aid of these domestic foes, and a warfare was carried on against him with various success; the conquest or defence of Asia Minor was the rich prize for which they fought. But it is most painful to reflect that some of the greatest cruelties and miseries which were suffered during the fifth century were owing to the dissensions of the Christian sects, in which the names of the two patriarchs, Nestorius of Constantinople and Cyril of Alexandria, were most conspicuous, and the city of Ephesus was the scene of their disgraceful quarrels.

In the reign of Justinian the contests with Persia still continued, and the gold-mines of Trebizond became a subject of dispute between the Greeks and Chosroes I. During his reign the name of Turk first appears in the page of history. Having driven the Avars from their northern wildernesses, they reached the Caucasus, from whence they sent ambassadors to the emperor. Mutual interest dictated the alliance between them and Justinian against the Persians. This did not, however, long avail to protect the Empire of the East against the power of the Great King.

Heraclius ascended the throne A.D. 610, and in the following year Chosroes II invaded the empire; after the conquest of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, his troops marched from the Euphrates to the Thracian Bosporus, devastating the seacoast of Pontus, sacking Ancyra and taking Chalcedon by storm. The heroism of Heraclius, which shone forth during the middle portion of his reign, saved the capital and the empire. Conveying his army by sea to the Gulf of Issus, and carrying the war into the enemy’s country, he compelled the Persians to evacuate Asia Minor and hasten to the defence of Dastagerd and Ctesiphon; and the battle of Nineveh (A.D. 627) reduced the haughty Chosroes to the state of a fugitive.

In the eighth century a new incentive to crime and folly burst upon the Eastern world. The worship of images, which had crept into the practice of the church, now began to be looked upon as idolatry; and the vacillating Greeks were visited by this imputation on the one hand, or by the accusation of impiety on the other, if they renounced the practice. In the year 718 an adventurer from the mountains of Isauria, who had the command of the Anatolian legions, taking the name of Leo III, ascended the throne of Constantinople. The energy with which he adopted the views and directed the measures of the popular party, soon gained for him the name of the Iconoclast. The dispute ceased in 842, on the final establishment of the worship of the images by the Empress Theodora.

Now a fiercer and more lasting enemy had made his appearance; unrelenting efforts were directed against the whole Christian world, from Jerusalem to the Pillars of Hercules and the shores of the Atlantic; and the plains of Asia Minor fell an easy prey to valour and numbers. Mohammedanism had, during the last century, spread rapidly along the southern shore of the Mediterranean; and the worshippers of the Koran had recruited the ranks of the army of the Faithful with hosts of Arabs, Saracens, and Moors. The Caliph Harun al-Rashid twice crossed the plains of Phrygia and Bithynia to invest the heights of Scutari and the Pontic Heraclea, and compelled Nicephorus I[377] to pay him an annual tribute. Theophilus, son of Michael II, avenged these insults and on his fifth expedition penetrated into Syria; but the Caliph Mutazzim again ravaged the plains of Phrygia and directed his efforts against Amorium, the birthplace of Michael. The imperial army was routed and pursued to Dorylæum, which fell into the hands of the conqueror.

It is not necessary here to dwell upon the rise and progress of the Turkish nation, or to show how Toghrul Bey, the grandson of Seljuk, became their leader after the defeat of Mahmud of Ghazni. Alp Arslan, the nephew of Toghrul, completed the conquest of Armenia and Georgia; but having penetrated into Phrygia, his troops were driven back to the Euphrates by the emperor, Romanus Diogenes, a brave soldier, whom the Empress Eudocia had espoused for the safety of the state. The battle of Malaskerd was, however, imprudently fought and lost by the emperor, in August 1071, when the power of the house of Seljuk was established; and the Asiatic provinces of Rome, now lost to Christendom, were soon after overrun by the five sons of Kutulmish, a prince of the house of Seljuk, who established their camp at Kutahiyah. On the death of Alp Arslan by the hand of an assassin, he was succeeded by his son, the celebrated Malik Shah.

On his death, in 1092, his empire, extending from the Black Sea to the confines of Syria, and from the Euphrates to Constantinople, was divided amongst his five sons, the youngest of whom invaded the Roman provinces of Asia Minor, and after several years of treachery and folly on the part of the Greek commanders, the sultan Solyman [Sulaiman] erected his palace and his fortress at Nicæa, the capital of Bithynia, and the seat of the Seljukian Dynasty of Rum was planted within a hundred miles of Constantinople.

The general historian supplies ample details of these interesting events: Jerusalem, the holy city, the object of veneration and of pilgrimage, soon fell into the hands of these Seljukian Turks. The hollow alliance between the emperor and the sultan of Nicæa was burst asunder; a thrill of horror vibrated from Constantinople to the distant shores of Britain at the conduct of the Infidels, and a band of warriors rushed from every part of Christendom to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre, and to release the emperor of Byzantium from the iron grasp of his Turkish conqueror.

In the first crusade their success began with the siege and conquest of Nicæa, and the plains of Asia Minor became again the battle-field of nations. Here the chivalry of Europe met the horsemen of the sultan, and withstood their shock, and Dorylæum became the second time the scene of a decisive battle; the cities of Antioch of Pisidia and Iconium recruited the crusaders, after an exhausting march through the bare and arid plains of Phrygia. Thence they crossed the mountain barrier of Taurus, and descending into Cilicia, proceeded to the conquest of Syria and the Holy Land. The establishment of the Genoese at Constantinople, and in numerous places along the coast and in the interior, followed the march of the Crusaders, and the Greek emperor received an insidious foe into his confidence, instead of an open enemy at his door, whilst in the course of the ensuing half century the Seljukian Turks had again invaded Asia Minor, and re-established the flourishing kingdom of Iconium.

But soon a new power appeared on the stage of the war. In the beginning of the thirteenth century Jenghiz Khan led his Mogul followers from their native deserts to the conquest of the world. Their progress was not checked by his death in 1227, for under his sons and grandsons their power extended over China, Persia, Hungary, Russia, and Syria; and when checked[378] in Egypt they spread themselves over Armenia and Asia Minor. Here the Sultans of Iconium offered some resistance to their progress until Ala-ud-Din sought refuge in Constantinople. But when at length the tide of Mogul conquest rolled back towards the East, the Seljukian Dynasty of Iconium was extinct; Orthogrul, one of the followers of Ala-ud-Din, the last of their sultans, pitched his camp of four hundred families at Surghut on the banks of the Sangarius; and his immediate descendants, having penetrated into Bithynia in 1299, established themselves soon after in the city of Brusa. The division of Anatolia amongst the Turkish emirs was the immediate result of this conquest; the remaining Asiatic provinces, with the seven churches of Asia, were finally lost to the Christian emperor, and the Turkish rulers of Lydia and Ionia still trample on the ruins of Christian monuments.

For above 150 years the Turks of the Ottoman line held possession of Anatolia, and the frequent contests which took place between them and the naval forces of the Christians only tended to increase the power of the Ottomans, to facilitate their passage into Europe, and to bring about their establishment in Thrace and in the neighbourhood of Adrianople. With the exception of the kingdom of Trebizond, Bajazet I had conquered all the Asiatic provinces of the emperor, and only a small extent of ground in the neighbourhood of Constantinople remained to him in Europe. From the imperial residence at Brusa were issued commands almost to the Indus, and Constantinople itself appeared to be within the grasp of Bajazet. Already he had prepared his expedition, and the capital of the empire was about to become his prey, when a temporary relief appeared from a new quarter, and Bajazet himself was overthrown by a stronger arm.

This rival power had sprung up in the wilds about Samarcand, and the world was again to be conquered by an army of Tatars and Moguls, under the command of Timur, or Tamerlane. Persia, Tatary, and India had already yielded to his arms before he turned them against the Ottoman empire, influenced by the quarrels and dissensions which had arisen between Bajazet and his Christian neighbours. The genius of Tamerlane prevailed in the memorable battle of Angora; the sultan lost at once his kingdom and his liberty, and the conqueror established himself at Kutahiyah. The sea put a limit to his progress, and, without the means of transporting his army into Europe, he meditated at Smyrna the conquest of China, but died on his march to the Celestial empire.

Brusa became again, in 1403, the capital of the Ottoman empire, and shared with Adrianople the honours of imperial residence; but Anatolia was distracted for nearly forty years by the civil wars of the sons and descendants of Bajazet, until Muhammed II ascended the throne, in 1451, to close the existence of the Byzantine empire. Weakened and exhausted in each successive reign, and having lost one by one those rich and fertile provinces which formed the brightest gems in the imperial diadem, Constantinople was reduced to the last stage of misery, even before the Turkish host had surrounded its triple fortifications. It still breathed with convulsive throbs, like a trunk deprived of its limbs, suffering under the last pulsations of life. Some Greeks displayed at the last moments an unavailing courage, even after the enemy had scaled the walls, but it only served to exasperate the cruelty of their conquerors.

The fall of Constantinople, in 1453, and the loss of Trebizond in 1461, concluded the history of the Empire of the East. Since that period, subject to the rule and grasp of Turkish despots, the towns of Asia Minor have lost their trade and commerce, her population has been exhausted, and her fairest[379] and richest plains have been left without care or culture. The authority of the janissaries, the despotism of the porte, and the revolts of the local governors have kept up, until within a few years, a system of hostility between the different provinces, while the uncertain tenure of their command, and their jealousy of each other, prevented the chiefs who were well disposed from checking the incursions of the nomad tribes of Turkomans and Kurds, who had settled in her central plains. These combined causes paralysed also, for many years, the energies of European travellers. Dangers and difficulties, which could neither be anticipated nor prevented, rendered a great part of the interior of Asia Minor a sealed book to the inquirer; and her many interesting records of antiquity, towns, temples, citadels, and sepulchral monuments, in various stages of decay, were long unknown. During this dark period the avarice and bigotry of the Turks systematically destroyed them, or consigned them to the chisel or the limekiln.

But there is a dawn, however faint, of happier days in the East. The bigotry of the Turk has yielded to a more frequent intercourse with the Christians, and many of the former difficulties are removed by the establishment, for a time at least, of the authority of the Porte throughout the Asiatic provinces, from the Euxine to the shores of Caramania, and from the coast of Ionia to the eastern confines of Cappadocia, and the effect of this partial improvement is visible in the crowds of eager and enterprising travellers who direct their steps to the shores of Ionia and Caria, and penetrate into the districts of Phrygia, Lydia, and Galatia.

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[380]

HISTORY IN OUTLINE OF THE MINOR KINGDOMS OF WESTERN ASIA

A PRELIMINARY SURVEY COMPRISING A CURSORY VIEW OF THE SWEEP OF EVENTS, AND A TABLE OF CHRONOLOGY

FOOTNOTES

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[391]

CHAPTER I. THE HITTITES

When we pass to the north and west from Syria and Mesopotamia, we enter a region by no means so well known as the home of the Semites. The peninsula of Asia Minor is so situated, geographically, that it is the only highway between Asia and Europe, much as Palestine is the highway between Asia and Africa. The peoples which inhabited it were therefore necessarily, in some sense, a buffer between the great nations of the two continents. For the most part, the rôle they played, at any rate in later history, was a comparatively insignificant one. It is becoming more and more evident, however, that there was a time in ancient history,—using the term in the ordinary or relative sense,—when the people who inhabited Asia Minor took a foremost rank among the nations of their time as a warlike and conquering race.

This people is known as the Hittite race: just who they were, or whence they came, we have no present means of ascertaining. They are vaguely referred to in the Bible records as descendants of Heth, son of Canaan, the son of Ham, and they are even mentioned as one of the seven Canaanite tribes, but no one nowadays ascribes great historical importance to these Hebrew records.

It is only recently that the students of ancient history have come to recognise the importance of the tribe bearing the name of Hittite; indeed, in so far as the Bible records throw any light upon them at all, it would now appear that the impression it conveyed was quite a faulty one, for the Hittites were represented as a people over whom the Hebrews were able to gain an advantage with great ease. It now appears that they were in point of fact one of the most powerful and warlike of ancient nations. There is one Bible narrative, familiar to every one, which would lead one to suppose that the Hittites were at times allies or subordinates of the Hebrews. It will be recalled that Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon, was the wife of a man designated as Uriah the Hittite, at the time when she was seduced by David, and the further details of this shameful history, in which David shielded himself from the consequences of his misdeed by arranging what was substantially the assassination of Uriah, are only too clearly known to all readers of Biblical history. If, however, this Uriah were really a Hittite, it is quite clear that he must have been a man of some distinction, and in any event it is probable that the presence of a Hittite in the army of David was a quite exceptional circumstance, for at this time the Hittites were still a powerful nation, at least the equals, if not the superiors, of the Hebrews themselves.

The time of the greatest power of the Hittites, however, was some centuries earlier, for it is now known that this people is to be identified with the[392] Kheta of the Egyptians and the Khatti of the Assyrians. It will be recalled that the Egyptians under Tehutimes III waged war against the Kheta, as did Seti in a later succeeding generation. But in particular the Kheta are memorable in Egyptian annals because of the great battle at Kadesh, their city on the Orontes, in which Ramses II so distinguished himself. It was this battle, it will be recalled, which is celebrated in that famous description still extant—a description which represents Ramses as combating single-handed against hosts of the enemy, and himself personally destroying the hundred thousand of his assailants. Making all due allowance for the manifest exaggeration usual in oriental inscriptions, it is conceded that Ramses actually gained the victory on this occasion; but it is also clear from the inscriptions that the people against whom this war was waged was regarded as one of the most powerful, if not the very most important, of contemporary nations.

At a slightly later period, when the new Assyrian empire was waxing strong, the Hittites found an enemy on the other side in Tiglathpileser, who defeated them in a memorable battle, as also a few centuries later did Ashurnazirpal. The latter prince, it would appear, completely subjected them and carried their princes into captivity. Yet they waxed strong again, and took up arms in alliance with Ben-Hadad of Syria against Shalmaneser II in the year 855; and though again defeated, their power was not entirely broken until the year 717 B.C., when Sargon utterly subjected them and deported the inhabitants of their city of Carchemish to a city of Assyria, repeopling it with his own subjects.

All these details of the contests of the Hittites against the Egyptians on the one hand and Assyrians on the other were quite unknown until the records of the monuments of Egypt and Assyria were made accessible through the efforts of recent scholars. But it now appears, judged only by the records of their enemies, that the Hittites were a very powerful and important nation for many centuries, and more recent explorations of Asia Minor have brought to light various monuments, which are believed to be records made by the Hittites themselves. To the delight and mystification of oriental scholars it was found that these monuments contained inscriptions in hieroglyphic characters of a kind quite different from any hitherto known. These inscriptions have been carefully studied, in particular by Professor Sayce who has made himself the greatest authority on the subject. As yet, however, very little progress has been made toward the decipherment of this new form of writing. It would appear, however,—at least, such is the opinion of Professor Sayce and others best competent to judge,—that this Hittite script is quite independent of any other form of writing of which we have any knowledge.

It has long been the opinion of scholars that the art of writing originated quite independently in at least four different centres; namely, China, Central America, Egypt, and Mesopotamia; but the discovery of the Hittite monuments seems to add a fifth form. It would be going much beyond the secure footing of present knowledge to assert positively that these five hieroglyphic scripts were really of absolutely independent origin. What we have already said of the vagueness of our knowledge of the early history of man applies with full force here, but with this qualification, it is held that the Hittite hieroglyphics are a thing utterly apart, and if, perchance, at some very remote period, they had the same point of departure as any of the other scripts, there are no present means of proving the fact. It is believed by Professor Sayce and others that the hieroglyphic syllabary found on the[393] monuments of Cyprus is based on this Hittite system of hieroglyphics, and not upon those of Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Aside from their mystifying hieroglyphics, the recently discovered monuments of the Hittites have a peculiar interest because of their rude sculptures which, notwithstanding their primitive character as works of art, are quite unique and very individual. The figures of these sculptures are always represented as wearing a peculiar form of shoe with upturned toe; their headdress is also very typical, usually consisting of a high conical cap. These features, along with the other less marked ones, serve to show that the artist had in mind always to represent a characteristic ethnic type.

It is held by scholars that their language was equally characteristic and more sharply differentiated from any known contemporary tongue, and though the point is not yet as fully established as might be wished, it is thought that the evidence in hand justifies the conclusion that the Hittites were not a Semitic race. It has been even suggested that they had Mongoloid affinities. If such was the case, the Hittites were related rather to the people of the north and northeast—to the Scythians, perhaps even to the Chinese—than to their neighbours of the south. But all these questions must await the results of future investigations. For the moment the Hittites are only just beginning to be revealed to us as a great conquering nation of Western Asia, who at one time rivalled the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians, but the memory of whose deeds had almost altogether faded from the minds of later generations.a

RECENT HITTITE RESEARCH

The results of recent Hittite research have been summarised by Charles W. Super. In essence, he says that during the past two decades no problems of antiquity have received more careful study and thorough investigation than have those connected with the history and civilisation of the people now known as the Hittites; and yet no historical data have been determined with sufficient certainty for a cautious student to draw conclusions even fairly definite. Something like order has been brought out of the pre-existing chaos of that nation’s history, and a few simple facts established; but the results of all this study have been largely conjectural, and the details of the researches, fascinating though they may be to the historian and the antiquarian, have but little interest or value to other students. What is known in a historical sense of this ancient people can be briefly outlined.

We are quite certain that several centuries before our era the Hittites founded a powerful empire in Western Asia, probably with outlying provinces in Africa, and even in Europe as far west as Italy. The greatness of this nation we are able to conjecture from the numerous references made to it in the Bible and Egyptian history, and from the mighty monuments of its power that still exist. The carved figures on these monuments and the representations given by the Egyptians, prove the Hittites to have been of an altogether different physical type from the Semites, and, therefore, of a different race; but their origin has not been clearly determined. The burden of proof appears to favour a Mongol ancestry, and is supported by physical and lingual characteristics common to both races.

Their primitive home is thought to have been in that part of Armenia where the Euphrates, the Halys, and Lycus approach nearest to one another; and it is even asserted that the modern Armenians are descendants of the old[394] Hittites. From this point they began their career of conquests, probably under the leadership of some able and vigorous chief, whose ambition overleaped his native boundaries. One conquest led to another. Their leaders acquired great armies, and subdued many nations, until the Hittites became one of the most powerful peoples of ancient times, and their kings were able successfully to defy even Egypt, at that time the strongest nation on the globe. Then began their decline. They came in conflict with the more progressive Semitic race, and finally were subdued or exterminated by them.

This, in brief, gives the meagre results of modern Hittite research; but the details of the conjecture and theories evolved by the antiquarians concerning this remarkable people would fill many volumes, and be of interest only to historians and antiquarians. A few of the more important facts may be stated however.ab

Traces of Hittite influence have been discovered all over Asia Minor, and the oldest inhabitants of the peninsula seem to have been closely allied both by race and language with this non-Semitic people of northern Syria. Rather more than two thousand years before Christ the Hittites were, as the cuneiform inscriptions testify, the northwestern neighbours of the territory of the Euphrates. The great astrological work of the old king Sargon of Agade contains this entry:

“On the 16th (of the month of Abu) there was an eclipse; the king of Agade died; the god Nergal (i.e., war) devoured the land.

“On the 20th (of the month Abu) there was an eclipse; the king of the land of the Khatti made an attack (?) and gained possession of the throne.”

THE HITTITES AND THE EGYPTIANS

We do not again hear of the Hittites until near the close of the seventeenth century before Christ, but then it is from contemporary Egyptian records. Ramses I had made an offensive and defensive treaty with them, which a sense of their power encouraged them to break and thus involve themselves in a war with Seti I, in which the latter was successful.

In the fifth year of the reign of Ramses the Great a great war broke out between the Kheta and the Egyptians, and the king of the enemy, Kheta-sar, assembled his troops and auxiliaries at Kadesh. Various texts, amongst which is the famous heroic poem once credited to a copyist, Pentaur, have commemorated the great battle of Kadesh; in this way we may easily read between the lines that the triumph which Ramses gained there was a Pyrrhic victory.

It was followed by a peace between Ramses and Kheta-sar, a copy of which is still preserved on a stele of a southern wall of the great hypostyle of Karnak. This highly interesting document “compels,” as Ebers says, the greatest “respect for the high state of civilisation in the Asiatic kingdom and the advanced political organisation of the two nations bound by this document.” This treaty, which in Brugsch’s translation fills seven large octavo pages, emanated from the Kheta king who had a draft of it on a silver tablet submitted to Ramses in the twenty-first year of the latter’s reign. In the centre of this tablet was a portrait in relief of the chief god of the Kheta, “Sutekh, king of heaven and earth.” Ramses was glad to be able to end the long war in so honourable a fashion, and most willingly accepted the proposal of the great king of the Kheta, the “powerful.” We even know[395] the nature of the characters which are engraved on that silver tablet, and can obtain, from a crowd of proper names, a clew to the family to which the Hittite language did, or, what is almost as good, to that to which it did not belong. We learn that it cannot in any case have been a Semitic tongue, and finally we are in a position to form a good idea from the representations on the walls of the Egyptian temples, as well as from recently discovered Hittite monuments, of the dress and even the colour of the skin of this ancient civilised nation. But first let us briefly outline the remainder of its history.

We now come to the oldest inscription of the Assyrian kings, and there, on the stone-tablet of Adad-nirari I (ca. 1340 B.C.), we find that ruler at war with the people of the Lulumi and Shubari, two tribes in northern Syria. These northern countries are directly connected with the Hittites in the great royal annals of Tiglathpileser I (ca. 1100 B.C.), where Column ii. 89 runs, “The land of the Shubari the refractory, the insubordinate, I subdued; on the land of Alzi and the land of Purukhumi which had refused their tribute, I laid the yoke of my lordship; … four thousand inhabitants of Kashka, of Uruma, people of the land of Khatti, the insubordinate who in the pride of their strength had taken towns of the land of Shubartu which were subject to my lord Asshur; they heard of my march against Shubartu, the splendour of my strength overthrew them; they avoided a battle and embraced my feet.”

Further, in Column v. line 48, etc., “[The territory] of the region of the land of Sukhi to Kargamisch [the spelling here indicates the Bible Carchemish] in the land of the Khatti, I plundered in one day,” and finally by way of recapitulation in Column vi. 39, etc., “From the beginning of my rule to the fifth year of my reign my hand has conquered in the whole forty-two countries and defeated their princes from beyond the Lower Zab as far as to beyond the Euphrates and the land of Khatti and the Upper Sea towards the sunset (i.e., Phœnicia).”

From these inscriptions it seems that the term Shubartu (land of the Shubari) had a general significance, and denoted the whole of the mountainous territory in the north of Mesopotamia proper, that is east of Kummukh and on the hither side of the Euphrates. Thus neither Asshur-uballit nor Adad-nirari I penetrated to the narrower sphere of Hittite rule, and it was only towards the end of the twelfth century B.C. that Tiglathpileser I made war against it directly and with success.

This again confirms the view that the most flourishing period of the powerful kingdom of the Hittites and of its civilisation was in the fourteenth and perhaps also in the thirteenth century before Christ.

THE HITTITES AND THE HEBREWS

The Hebrew literature furnishes us with further information. From this we learn that in the year 1000 B.C. and later (in the time of David and Solomon) the Hittites were Israel’s neighbours on the northern frontier, and that intermarriages even took place between the Hittites and the Israelites. For Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, was an Israelitish woman of good family. So far south then did the power of the Hittites extend in the most ancient period of the Israelite kingdom, though the former had been already much endangered by the invasion of a new people, the Aramæans, who had probably wandered there as nomads from the eastern bank of the Euphrates.

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In brief, those Hittites whom we had hitherto looked upon as more or less dim figures have suddenly revealed themselves to us in a new character, and it is almost impossible to say in what department of the science of antiquity they will not prove of pre-eminent importance. As regards Semitic antiquity in particular, they possibly possess the same value for a correct estimate of the relics of the civilisation of the northern Canaanites and the western Syrians as the Sumerians and Accadians have in respect to the civilisation of the Semitic Babylonians and Assyrians and of the Hebrews. Further inquiry, and certainly rich accessions of material, will clear up many points at which it is at present only permissible to guess; and perhaps the immediate future may bring the most interesting conclusion, especially regarding their linguistic position and also in respect to their religious history.c

HITTITE ART

There is no originality in the Hittite art of Syria. It is Assyrian art, interpreted by barbarians and debased in the process. With the exception of one rude torso, found in Cilicia, and the inscribed statue of a lion from Marash, it is all in low relief, according to Assyrian precedent, and the costumes and attitudes of the figures have evidently been copied from the Assyrian, though we remark some difference of detail. For example, the Hittite Astarte, corresponding to the Istar of Babylon and similarly represented, has the special peculiarities of being winged and wearing a conical tiara.

The debasement of the art in Hittite hands is exhibited by a series of bas-reliefs found at Sindjerli, and another in a mound in the same district. The latter of these represents a lion hunt, evidently copied from some Ninevite model, but without any of the vigour which the Assyrians put into their sculptures. The animal appears to be submitting with perfect tranquillity, while he is stabbed to death with javelots.

Farther west, and especially in Cilicia, the sculptures become more original, but also more rude. The special attributes of the Hittites, as shown in these monuments, are the diadem, the women’s tall cap with a long veil, and the pointed shoes. The latter, however, are the ordinary wear of the modern populations of Asia Minor.

One canton of Cappadocia, the Pteria of Herodotus, contains many Hittite ruins. The village of Boghaz-Keui, its ancient capital, possesses bas-reliefs cut in the rock, and the remains of a royal palace having many points in common with those of Assyria. The same is true of the palace of Euiuk; but a sphinx, placed at the door, betrays an Egyptian influence, though details of its sculpture have been borrowed from Assyria.

Both influences are also apparent in the rock sculpture of Boghaz-Keui, called Iasili-Kaïa, “the written stone,” and with these the sculptures of the palace of Euiuk have much in common. But while the Assyrian monuments are in honour of the sovereigns, these of the Hittites all have a religious significance and refer to the worship of the god Men or the goddess Ma or Enio, who corresponds to Anaïtis or Astarte.

The tombs of Gherdek-Kaïasi, not far from Boghaz-Keui and Euiuk, seem also to belong to this Cappadocian civilisation. The façade of the principal vault has a portico with three short columns, somewhat suggestive of the Doric style. These tombs perhaps belong to a period not earlier than 549 B.C., the year when Crœsus ravaged Pteria.

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To sum up, we may conclude with M. Perrot that the monuments of Boghaz-Keui and Euiuk, which bear witness to the primitive Cappadocian civilisation, have all, like those of northern Syria, come under the Assyrian influence. The palaces are like “a reduced copy of the great royal edifices of the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates.” The winged figures, the monsters with eagles’ or lions’ heads, are Assyrian, as are also the divinities carried on the backs of different quadrupeds, the flowers in the hands of the persons represented, and the winged globe, the image of Asshur.

Certain features of the Cappadocian sculptures appear on as good evidence to be borrowed from Egypt, Persia, and even from the Greeks of Asia Minor; but this is the exception. In any case there is nothing in the Hittite art of Pteria that is original or shows individuality, if we except the two-headed eagle, which is evidently connected with the oldest Asiatic forms of worship and reminds us of the Sirens; and if we also except the long curved lituus, the dress cut in the shape of a chasuble, the pointed tiara, and the peaked shoes: details of costume more interesting from the point of view of fashion than from that of art.

As to the relations between the sculptures of Pteria and those of Hittite Syria they are obvious: we have the same hieroglyphics, the same short tunic, the same long robe, the same foot-gear, the same pointed tiara, and the same round cap. The female dress is almost identical at Marash and Iasili-Kaïa; the divinities have like attributes; the lion and the bull are animals which figure by preference in either place.

We may conclude that the same semi-barbarous nation, lacking the power to free itself, either artistically or politically, from the yoke of Egypt and Assyria, inhabited the two slopes of the Taurus.

HITTITE MONUMENTS IN ASIA MINOR

North of the Taurus and beyond the Halys, the monuments connected with Hittite civilisation are, as in Cappadocia, bas-reliefs carved on the sides of rocks or elsewhere. At Ivris, in Lycaonia, there is an inscription in Hittite hieroglyphics and also two colossal figures with unmistakably Assyrian characteristics, and at Iflatun, also in Lycaonia, the winged globe, the divine symbol both in Egypt and Assyria, can still be discerned on the fragment of a ruined building.

Farther west the Hittite monuments become more rare. Two bas-reliefs, which Herodotus mentions as having been carved by order of Ramses II, have been discovered in Lydia. They represent a warrior wearing the conical tiara, the short tunic and the peaked shoe. He is armed with a spear and bow. The style is the same as that of the bas-reliefs of Cilicia, Lycaonia, Cappadocia, and Syria.

The serpentine moulds which were used for manufacturing metal ornaments or charms are superior in workmanship, though here also the ideas represented are evidently Assyrian. But the best Hittite work was lavished on the glyptic art, as is shown by their seals and cylinders. A cylinder found at Aidin in Lydia even exhibits some originality in its ornamental border, though the scene represented is Assyrian.e

The districts of Asia Minor were repeatedly attacked and probably subjugated for considerable periods by the Hittite kings. Everywhere in Asia Minor they left monuments of their campaigns which exactly correspond in style with the monuments of Jerabis, and in part also bear remains[398] of Hamathite inscriptions. Since the discovery of Jerabis there can be no further doubt as to their origin. Among their characteristic peculiarities is the costume, with a high pointed cap and pointed shoes; the figures are usually cut in profile, with widespread legs.

The first of these monuments is an inscribed relief at Ivris on the northern slope of the Taurus, which represents a prince in rich Assyrian costume worshipping a god who is standing and bearing grapes and ears of corn.

Then there are sculptures on the wall of an ancient building at Iflatun on Lake Karaliti in Isauria, and the figure of a warrior in Iconium.

From here the Hittites penetrated into Phrygia and to the coast of the Ægean Sea. On a cliff below the ancient fortress Giaurkalesi in Phrygia (southwest of Ancyra) are the figures of two Hittite warriors wearing a modification of the Egyptian uræus serpent on the front of their caps. The two famous reliefs of Nymphæum on the cliffs of Sipylus which are mentioned in Herodotus and on which remains of Hamathite inscriptions have been preserved, are quite similar. There is also on Sipylus, near Magnesia, a rude rock-sculpture with symbols of the same alphabet, which perhaps represents a goddess, and was looked upon by the Greeks as Niobe.

But the ruins and sculptures found at Euiuk and Boghaz-Keui, east of the Halys, in Cappadocian territory, are the most important and extensive. At the former place are the ruins of a great palace, with an entrance guarded by two sphinxes; on the walls are numerous sculptures of gods and men, lions, bulls, and beings of mixed form, among them a double-headed eagle. At Boghaz-Keui are the ruins of an ancient fortress (the Pteria of Herodotus?), and the walls of a rocky gorge show a long procession, presumably of a religious character. The most important symbols on all these monuments are modifications of the winged sun-disk.

These monuments enable us to perceive clearly the extent of the Hittite conquests. From now on Carchemish, instead of the valley of the Orontes, forms the centre of the Hittite realm, and evidently becomes the residence of the kings. Aside from this, however, only very uncertain reports of these wars have come down to us.

One passage in the Odyssey says that Neoptolemus killed Eurypylus, the son of Telephus, prince of the Κήτειοι, who is later always called prince of Teuthrania; evidently a trace of the name of the Hittites has been preserved here.

Perhaps we may also detect a reminiscence of their campaigns in the Greek legend of the Ethiopian Memnon, son of the dawn, who undertook great campaigns and hastened to the aid of Priam. Herodotus (II, 106) says that the reliefs of Nymphæum, which he claims for Sesostris, were declared by others to be portraits of Memnon. In other respects, however, the dim tradition that the Greeks preserved of these conquests was transferred to the Egyptians (expeditions of Sesostris to Asia Minor and Thrace) and the Assyrians. Moreover, when Lydian tradition connects the royal family of the Heraclidæ with Ninus the son of Belus, the legendary representatives of the Assyrians have perhaps here taken the place of the Hittites, for the Assyrians did not come into direct contact with the Lydians until the seventh century.

A further reminiscence of the wars of the Lydians and the Hittites is perhaps contained in two fragments of the Lydian Xanthus, which refer to the expeditions of the Lydian hero Mopsus (Moxos?) and Askalus, brother of Tantalus, to Syria and especially to Askalon.

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The effects of the Syrian conquest upon Asia Minor were permanent in an unusual degree. It has long been recognised that the names of the Lydian kings Sadyattes and Alyattes, and also Myattes, are Semitic forms; now we may perhaps venture the conjecture that the Lydian royal family of the Heraclidæ was of Hittite origin. Furthermore, we can now identify the god Attes (Attys) of Asia Minor directly with the Syrian Ate and ascribe to him a foreign origin. In fact, the religion of Asia Minor shows a very intimate connection with that of the Semites, which, however, could not hitherto be explained with certainty.d

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CHAPTER II. SCYTHIANS AND CIMMERIANS

THE SCYTHIANS

Scythian is a word of somewhat vague application, designating the barbaric tribes of middle Asia and northern Europe, who from time to time invaded the territories of their more civilised neighbours of the south. They are most prominently noticed in Asiatic history with the conquests of Darius I, who made a memorable invasion of Scythia, as recorded by Herodotus a few centuries later. The Scythians were so powerful as to demand the attention of Alexander the Great before he could feel free to undertake his Asiatic invasion. At a still later period the Scythian hordes invaded Greece itself and even captured Athens. In a word we must recall that at almost every historic period of antiquity the Scythian hordes were hovering about the northern bounds of the oriental civilised world, and from time to time harassing even such powerful nations as the Assyrians and Persians.

Yet if we strive to place the Scythian in the ethnic scale, we find ourselves quite unable to do so. The Scythians were barbarians, and barbarians have no history in the narrower sense of the word. That these same barbarians were the progenitors, in the direct line, of nations that were to make themselves felt at later periods of history can hardly be in question, but the fact is not susceptible of proof.

For our present purpose it will suffice, after a brief citation of two modern authorities, to view the Scythians through the eyes of the ancient Greeks, chiefly Herodotus, recognising that their rôle was a subordinate one in the scheme of Ancient history, and remembering that modern historians have been able to do little but paraphrase the ancient accounts, and to criticise them from various personal standpoints.

The Scythians in their emigration into Asia were careful to avoid the powerful country of Assyria. The stream parted at the northern frontier, one branch passing to the east, the other to the west. The eastern branch will come into prominence later, when we treat of the Manda, under the history of Persia.a

Scythian Influences in Asia Minor

The powerful invasion of Scythian influence into historical life and historical development, and its great influence on the intellectual life of the[401] peoples of Asia Minor (which may be traced in the so-called Hittite monuments, in the Amazonian myths, in the worship of the Chalybian Jupiter or Ares, and in the transformation of the Greek hero, Hercules, into the hero of Asia Minor, confused with the sun-god of the Scythians and the peninsula) cannot be without its influence in the domain of true history. It is impossible to think of the Chalybian-Cimmerian or the Amazonian expeditions as achieving momentary destruction but leaving no trace in the historical life of the nations. On the contrary, everything points to the conclusion that over and above these warlike expeditions a permanent state of affairs was called into being in Asia Minor.

The new conditions form the life and character of the post-Homeric section of the ancient history of Asia Minor before the Persian empire. And in regard to these new conditions in the eastern half of the peninsula, we find there the powerful kingdoms of Moschi and Tubal, which stretched from Pontus as far as Cilicia and Mesopotamia, and for centuries obstinately vindicated their independence against the overwhelming power of Assyria. Still more important, though also more complicated, are the ethnological, political, and the general historical conditions of the post-Homeric world in the western half of Asia Minor.

Not to mention the changes introduced into the countries along the coast by the founding of numerous Greek colonies, we see that the Homeric Asia Minor of the ancient Pelasgian peoples, the Trojans, Ascanians, Mæonians, Esionians, and the pre-Homeric or Homeric Phrygians, shows in the post-Homeric world a shape which differs from the former in many aspects. Thus we come across new names of peoples and countries, as the Lydians, Thynians, Bithynians, Lasonians, Chalybians, Hygennes; names of new dynasties, as the Sandonids (Heraclids) and Mermnadæ of Lydia; new names of kingdoms and towns, as Lydia, Sardis, Smyrna, Ephesus, and new names of gods, new cults, new names of demon-gods or of priests. The “man-equalling” Amazons, who are referred to in Homer as a host dwelling beyond Phrygia and inimical to the peoples of western Asia Minor, now appear as native to western Asia Minor, as allies of Troy and founders of towns in that part of the peninsula.

This new post-Homeric world of western Asia Minor at last finds its centre and culmination on the soil of true history, in the founding and development of the Lydian empire. In this world the Scythian expeditions play much the same part as the Doric immigration in the post-Homeric Greece; and as there that immigration ends with the creation of new states, so also the Scythian immigrations into Asia Minor have an important result in the foundation of a great kingdom in the west of that peninsula, namely the Lydian kingdom.b

Scythian Movements

The Scythians formed for several centuries an important section of the Grecian contemporary world. Their name, unnoticed by Homer, occurs for the first time in the Hesiodic poems. When the Homeric Zeus in the Iliad turns his eye away from Troy toward Thrace, he sees, besides the Thracians and Mysians, other tribes whose names cannot be made out, but whom the poet knows as milk-eaters and mare-milkers; and the same characteristic attributes, coupled with that of “having wagons for their dwelling-houses,” appear in Hesiod connected with the name of the Scythians: and the earliest proof which we find of Scythia, as a territory familiar to Grecian[402] ideas and feeling, is found in a fragment of the poet Alcæus (ca. 600 B.C.), wherein he addresses Achilles as “sovereign of Scythia.” There were, besides, several other Milesian foundations on or near the Tauric Chersonesus (Crimea) which brought the Greeks into conjunction with the Scythians—Heraclea, Chersonesus, and Theodosia, on the southern coast and the southwestern corner of the peninsula—Panticapæum and the Teian colony of Phanagoria (these two on the European and Asiatic sides of the Cimmerian Bosporus respectively), and Cepi, Hermonassa, etc., not far from Phanagoria, on the Asiatic coast of the Euxine: last of all, there was, even at the extremity of the Palus Mæotis (Sea of Azov), the Grecian settlement of Tanais.

All or most of these seem to have been founded during the course of the sixth century B.C., though the precise dates of most of them cannot be named; probably several of them anterior to the time of the mystic poet Aristeas of Proconnesus, about 540 B.C. His long voyage from the Palus Mæotis (Sea of Azov) into the interior of Asia as far as the country of the Issedones (described in the poem, now lost, called the Arimaspian verses), implies an habitual intercourse between Scythians and Greeks which could not well have existed without Grecian establishments on the Cimmerian Bosporus.

Hecatæus of Miletus appears to have given much geographical information respecting the Scythian tribes; but Herodotus, who personally visited the town of Olbia, together with the inland regions adjoining to it, and probably other Grecian settlements in the Euxine (at a time which we may presume to have been about 450-440 B.C.)—and who conversed with both Scythians and Greeks competent to give him information—has left us far more valuable statements respecting the Scythian people, dominion, and manners, as they stood in his day. His conception of the Scythians, as well as that of Hippocrates, is precise and well-defined—very different from that of the later authors, who use the word almost indiscriminately to denote all barbarous nomads. His territory called Scythia is a square area, twenty days’ journey or four thousand stadia (somewhat less than five hundred English miles) in each direction—bounded by the Danube (the course of which river he conceives in a direction from N. W. to S. E.), the Euxine, and the Palus Mæotis with the river Tanais, on three sides respectively—and on the fourth or north side by the nations called Agathyrsi, Neuri, Androphagi, and Melanchlæni. However imperfect his idea of the figure of this territory may be found, if we compare it with a good modern map, the limits which he gives us are beyond all dispute: from the Lower Danube and the mountains eastward of Transylvania to the Lower Tanais, the whole area was either occupied by or subject to the Scythians. And this name comprised tribes differing materially in habits and civilisation. The great mass of the people who bore it, strictly nomadic in their habits,—neither sowing nor planting, but living only on food derived from animals, especially mare’s milk and cheese—moved from place to place, carrying their families in wagons covered with wicker and leather, themselves always on horseback with their flocks and herds, between the Borysthenes and the Palus Mæotis. They hardly even reached so far westward as the Borysthenes, since a river (not easily identified) which Herodotus calls Panticapes, flowing into the Borysthenes from the eastward, formed their boundary. These nomads were the genuine Scythians, possessing the marked attributes of the race, and including among their number the Regal Scythians—hordes so much more populous and more effective in war than the rest, as to maintain undisputed ascendency, and to[403] account all other Scythians no better than their slaves. It was to these that the Scythian kings belonged, by whom the religious and political unity of the name was maintained—each horde having its separate chief and to a certain extent separate worship and customs. But besides these nomads, there were also agricultural Scythians, with fixed abodes, living more or less upon bread, and raising corn for exportation, along the banks of the Borysthenes and the Hypanis. And such had been the influence of the Grecian settlement of Olbia at the mouth of the latter river in creating new tastes and habits, that two tribes on its western banks, the Callipidæ and the Alazones, had become completely accustomed both to tillage and to vegetable food, and had in other respects so much departed from their Scythian rudeness as to be called Hellenic-Scythians, many Greeks being seemingly domiciled among them. Northward of the Alazones lay those called the agricultural Scythians, who sowed corn, not for food, but for sale.

Such stationary cultivators were doubtless regarded by the predominant mass of the Scythians as degenerate brethren. Some historians even maintain that they belonged to a foreign race, standing to the Scythians merely in the relation of subjects—an hypothesis contradicted implicitly, if not directly, by the words of Herodotus, and no way necessary in the present case. It is not from them, however, that Herodotus draws his vivid picture of the people, with their inhuman rites and repulsive personal features. It is the purely nomadic Scythians whom he depicts, the earliest specimens of the Mongolian race (so it seems probable) known to history, and prototypes of the Huns and Bulgarians of later centuries. The Sword, in the literal sense of the word, was their chief god—an iron scimitar solemnly elevated upon a wide and lofty platform, which was supported on masses of fagots piled underneath—to whom sheep, horses, and a portion of their prisoners taken in war, were offered up in sacrifice: Herodotus treats this sword as the image of the god Ares, thus putting an Hellenic interpretation upon that which he describes literally as a barbaric rite. The scalps and the skins of slain enemies, and sometimes the skull formed into a drinking-cup, constituted the decoration of a Scythian warrior: whoever had not slain an enemy, was excluded from participation in the annual festival and bowl of wine prepared by the chief of each separate horde. The ceremonies which took place during the sickness and funeral obsequies of the Scythian kings (who were buried at Gerrhi at the extreme point to which navigation extended up the Borysthenes) partook of the same sanguinary disposition. It was the Scythian practice to put out the eyes of all their slaves; and the awkwardness of the Scythian frame, often overloaded with fat, together with extreme dirt of body, and the absence of all discriminating feature between one man and another, complete the brutish portrait. Mare’s milk (with cheese made from it) seems to have been their chief luxury, and probably served the same purpose of procuring the intoxicating drink called kumiss, as at present among the Bashkirs and the Calmucks.

If the habits of the Scythians were such as to create in the near observer no other feeling than repugnance, their force at least inspired terror. They appeared in the eyes of Thucydides so numerous and so formidable, that he pronounces them irresistible, if they could but unite, by any other nation within his knowledge. [He says of them, to quote Hobbes’ translation (1676): “For there’s no nation, not to say of Europe, but neither of Asia, that are comparable to this, or that, as long as they agree, are able, one nation to one, to stand against the Scythians: and yet in matters of Counsel and Wisdom in the present occasions of life, they are not like to other men.”]

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Herodotus, too, conceived the same idea of a race among whom every man was a warrior and a practised horse-bowman, and who were placed by their mode of life out of all reach of an enemy’s attack. Moreover, Herodotus does not speak meanly of their intelligence, contrasting them in favourable terms with the general stupidity of the other nations bordering on the Euxine. In this respect Thucydides seems to differ from him.c

HERODOTUS ON THE CUSTOMS OF THE SCYTHIANS

The Scythians affirm of their country that it was of all others the last formed, which happened in this manner: When this region was in its original and desert state, the first inhabitant was named Targitaus, a son, as they say (but which to me seems incredible) of Jupiter, by a daughter of the Borysthenes. This Targitaus had three sons, Lipoxais, Arpoxais, and lastly Colaxais. Whilst they possessed the country, there fell from heaven into the Scythian district a plough, a yoke, an axe, and a goblet, all of gold. The eldest of the brothers was the first who saw them; who, running to take them, was burnt by the gold. On his retiring, the second brother approached, and was burnt also. When these two had been repelled by the burning gold, last of all the youngest brother advanced; upon him the gold had no effect, and he carried it to his house. The two elder brothers, observing what had happened, resigned all authority to the youngest.

From Lipoxais those Scythians were descended who are termed the Auchatæ; from Arpoxais, the second brother, those who are called the Catiari and the Traspies; from the youngest, who was king, came the Paralatæ. Generally speaking, these people are named Scoloti, from a surname of their king, but the Greeks call them Scythians.

This is the account which the Scythians give of their origin; and they add, that from their first king Targitaus, to the invasion of their country by Darius, is a period of a thousand years, and no more. The sacred gold is preserved by their kings with the greatest care; and every year there are solemn sacrifices, at which the prince assists. They have a tradition, that if the person who has the custody of this gold, sleeps in the open air during the time of their annual festival, he dies before the end of the year; for this reason they give him as much land as he can pass over on horseback in the course of a day. As this region is extensive, king Colaxais divided the country into three parts, which he gave to three sons, making that portion the largest in which the gold was deposited. As to the district which lies farther to the north, and beyond the extreme inhabitants of the country, they say that it neither can be passed, nor yet discerned with the eye, on account of the feathers which are continually falling: with these both the earth and the air are so filled, as effectually to obstruct the view.

Such is the manner in which the Scythians describe themselves and the country beyond them. The Greeks who inhabit Pontus speak of both as follows: Hercules, when he was driving away the heifers of Geryon, came to this region, now inhabited by the Scythians, but which then was a desert. This Geryon lived beyond Pontus, in an island which the Greeks call Erythia, near Gades (Cadiz) which is situate in the ocean, and beyond the Columns of Hercules. The ocean, they say, commencing at the east, flows round all the earth; this, however, they affirm without proving it. Hercules coming from thence arrived at this country, now called Scythia, where, finding himself overtaken by a severe storm, and being exceedingly cold, he wrapped[405] himself up in his lion’s skin and went to sleep. They add, that his mares, which he had detached from his chariot to feed, by some divine interposition disappeared during his sleep.

As soon as he awoke, he wandered over all the country in search of his mares, till at length he came to the district which is called Hylæa: there in a cave he discovered a female of most unnatural appearance, resembling a woman as far as the thighs, but whose lower parts were like a serpent. Hercules beheld her with astonishment, but he was not deterred from asking her whether she had seen his mares? She made answer that they were in her custody; she refused, however, to restore them, but upon condition of his cohabiting with her. The terms proposed, induced Hercules to consent; but she still deferred restoring his mares, from the wish of retaining him longer with her, whilst Hercules was equally anxious to obtain them and depart. After a while she restored them with these words: “Your mares, which wandered here, I have preserved; you have paid what was due to my care, I have conceived by you three sons; I wish you to say how I shall dispose of them hereafter; whether I shall detain them here, where I am the sole sovereign, or whether I shall send them to you.” The reply of Hercules was to this effect: “As soon as they shall be grown up to man’s estate, observe this, and you cannot err; whichever of them you shall see bend this bow, and wear this belt as I do, him detain in this country: the others, who shall not be able to do this, you may send away. By minding what I say, you will have pleasure yourself, and will satisfy my wishes.”

Having said this, Hercules took one of his bows, for thus far he had carried two, and showing her also his belt, at the end of which a golden cup was suspended, he gave her them, and departed. As soon as the boys of whom she was delivered grew up, she called the eldest Agathyrsus, the second Gelonus, and the youngest Scytha. She remembered also the injunctions she had received; and two of her sons, Agathyrsus and Gelonus, who were incompetent to the trial which was proposed, were sent away by their mother from this country. Scytha the youngest was successful in his exertions, and remained. From this Scytha, the son of Hercules, the Scythian monarchs are descended; and from the golden cup the Scythians to this day have a cup at the end of their belts.

This is the story which the Greek inhabitants of Pontus relate; but there is also another, to which I am more inclined to assent: the Scythian Nomades of Asia, having been harassed by the Massagetæ in war, passed the Araxes and settled in Cimmeria; for it is to be observed, that the country now possessed by the Scythians belonged formerly to the Cimmerians. This people, when attacked by the Scythians, deliberated what it was most adviseable to do against the inroad of so vast a multitude. Their sentiments were divided; both were violent, but that of the kings appears preferable. The people were of opinion that it would be better not to hazard an engagement, but to retreat in security; the kings were, at all events, for resisting the enemy. Neither party would recede from their opinions, the people and the princes mutually refusing to yield; the people wished to retire before the invaders, the princes determined rather to die where they were, reflecting upon what they had enjoyed before, and alarmed by the fears of future calamities. From verbal disputes they soon came to actual engagement, and they happened to be nearly equal in number. All those who perished by the hands of their countrymen were buried by the Cimmerians near the river Tyras, where their monuments may still be seen. The survivors fled from their country, which in its abandoned state was seized and occupied by the Scythians.

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There are still to be found in Scythia walls and bridges which are termed Cimmerian; the same name is also given to a whole district, as well as to a narrow sea. It is certain that when the Cimmerians were expelled their country by the Scythians, they fled to the Asiatic Chersonesus, where the Greek city of Sinope is at present situated. It is also apparent that whilst engaged in the pursuit the Scythians deviated from their proper course and entered Media. The Cimmerians in their flight kept uniformly by the seacoast; but the Scythians, having Mount Caucasus to their right, continued the pursuit, till by following an inland direction they entered Media.

The Scythians have the advantage of all these celebrated rivers [the Danube, Don, Tyras, Hypanis, Borysthenes, etc.] The grass which this country produces is, of all that we know, the fullest of moisture, which evidently appears from the dissection of their cattle.

We have shown that this people possess the greatest abundance; their particular laws and observances are these: of their divinities, Vesta is without competition the first, then Jupiter, and Tellus, whom they believe to be the wife of Jupiter; next to these are Apollo, the Cœlestial Venus, Hercules, and Mars. All the Scythians revere these as deities, but the Royal Scythians pay divine rites also to Neptune. In the Scythian tongue Vesta is called Tabiti; Jupiter, and, as I think very properly, Papæus; Tellus, Apia; Apollo, Œtosyrus; the Cœlestial Venus, Artimpasa; and Neptune, Thamimasadas. Among all these deities Mars is the only one to whom they think it proper to erect altars, shrines, and temples.

Their mode of sacrifice in every place appointed for the purpose is precisely the same, and it is this: the victim is secured with a rope by its two fore feet; the person who offers the sacrifice, standing behind, throws the animal down by means of this rope; as it falls, he invokes the name of the divinity to whom the sacrifice is offered; he then fastens a cord round the neck of the victim and strangles it, by winding the cord round a stick; all this is done without fire, without libations, or without any of the ceremonies in use amongst us. When the beast is strangled, the sacrificer takes off its skin and prepares to dress it.

As Scythia is very barren of wood, they have the following contrivance to dress the flesh of the victim: having flayed the animal, they strip the flesh from the bones, and if they have them at hand, they throw it into certain pots made in Scythia, and resembling the Lesbian caldrons, though somewhat larger; under these a fire is made with the bones. If these pots cannot be procured, they enclose the flesh with a certain quantity of water in the paunch of the victim, and make a fire with the bones as before. The bones being very inflammable, and the paunch without difficulty made to contain the flesh separated from the bone, the ox is thus made to dress itself, which is also the case with the other victims. When the whole is ready, he who sacrifices throws down with some solemnity before him the entrails and the more choice pieces. They sacrifice different animals, but horses in particular.

Such are the sacrifices and ceremonies observed with respect to their other deities; but to the god Mars, the particular rites which are paid are these: in every district they construct a temple to this divinity of this kind; bundles of small wood are heaped together, to the length of three stadia, and quite as broad, but not so high; the top is a regular square, three of the sides are steep and broken, but the fourth is an inclined plane forming the ascent. To this place are every year brought one hundred and fifty wagons full of these bundles of wood, to repair the structure which[407] the severity of the climate is apt to destroy. Upon the summit of such a pile each Scythian tribe places an ancient scimetar, which is considered as the shrine of Mars, and is annually honoured by the sacrifice of sheep and horses; indeed, more victims are offered to this deity than to all the other divinities. It is their custom also to sacrifice every hundredth captive, but in a different manner from their other victims. Having poured libations upon their heads, they cut their throats into a vessel placed for that purpose. With this, carried to the summit of the pile, they besmear the above-mentioned scimetar. Whilst this is doing above, the following ceremony is observed below: from these human victims they cut off the right arms close to the shoulder, and throw them up into the air. This ceremony being performed on each victim severally, they depart; the arms remain where they happen to fall, the bodies elsewhere.

The above is a description of their sacrifices. Swine are never used for this purpose, nor will they suffer them to be kept in their country.

Their military customs are these: every Scythian drinks the blood of the first person he slays; the heads of all the enemies who fall by his hand in battle he presents to his king: this offering entitles him to a share of the plunder, which he could not otherwise claim. Their mode of stripping the skin from the head is this: they make a circular incision behind the ears, then, taking hold of the head at the top, they gradually flay it, drawing it towards them. They next soften it in their hands, removing every fleshy part which may remain by rubbing it with an ox’s hide; they afterwards suspend it, thus prepared, from the bridles of their horses, when they both use it as a napkin, and are proud of it as a trophy. Whoever possesses the greater number of these, is deemed the most illustrious. Some there are who sew together several of these portions of human skin and convert them into a kind of shepherd’s garment. There are others who preserve the skins of the right arms, nails and all, of such enemies as they kill, and use them as a covering for their quivers. The human skin is of all others certainly the whitest, and of a very firm texture; many Scythians will take the whole skin of a man, and having stretched it upon wood, use it as a covering to their horses.

Such are the customs of this people: this treatment, however, of their enemies’ heads, is not universal; it is only perpetrated on those whom they most detest. They cut off the skull below the eye-brows, and having cleansed it thoroughly, if they are poor, they merely cover it with a piece of leather; if they are rich, in addition to this, they decorate the inside with gold; it is afterwards used as a drinking cup. They do the same with respect to their nearest connections, if any dissensions have arisen, and they overcome them in combat before the king. If any stranger whom they deem of consequence happen to visit them, they make a display of these heads, and relate every circumstance of the previous connection, the provocations received, and their subsequent victory: this they consider as a testimony of their valour.

Once a year the prince or ruler of every district mixes a goblet of wine, of which those Scythians drink who have destroyed a public enemy. But of this they who have not done such a thing are not permitted to taste; these are obliged to sit apart by themselves, which is considered as a mark of the greatest ignominy. They who have killed a number of enemies, are permitted on this occasion to drink from two cups joined together.

They have amongst them a great number who practise the art of divination; for this purpose they use a number of willow twigs, in this manner:[408] they bring large bundles of these together, and having untied them, dispose them one by one on the ground, each bundle at a distance from the rest. This done, they pretend to foretell the future, during which they take up the bundles separately and tie them again together. This mode of divination is hereditary among them. The enaries, or “effeminate men,” affirm that the art of divination was taught them by the goddess Venus. They take also the leaves of the lime-tree, which dividing into three parts they twine round their fingers; they then unbind it, and exercise the art to which they pretend.

Whenever the Scythian monarch happens to be indisposed, he sends for three of the most celebrated of these diviners. When the Scythians desire to use the most solemn kind of oath, they swear by the king’s throne: these diviners, therefore, make no scruple of affirming that such or such individual, pointing him out by name, has forsworn himself by the royal throne. Immediately the person thus marked out is seized, and informed that by their art of divination, which is infallible, he has been indirectly the occasion of the king’s illness by having violated the oath which we have mentioned. If the accused not only denies the charge, but expresses himself enraged at the imputation, the king convokes a double number of diviners, who, examining into the mode which has been pursued in criminating him, decide accordingly. If he be found guilty, he immediately loses his head, and the three diviners who were first consulted share his effects. If these last diviners acquit the accused, others are at hand, of whom if the greater number absolve him, the first diviners are put to death.

The manner in which they are executed is this: some oxen are yoked to a wagon filled with fagots, in the midst of which, with their feet tied, their hands fastened behind, and their mouths gagged, these diviners are placed; fire is then set to the wood, and the oxen are terrified to make them run violently away. It sometimes happens that the oxen themselves are burned; and often when the wagon is consumed, the oxen escape severely scorched. This is the method by which for the above-mentioned or similar offences they put to death those whom they call false diviners.

Of those whom the king condemns to death, he constantly destroys the male children, leaving the females unmolested. Whenever the Scythians form alliances, they observe these ceremonies: a large earthen vessel is filled with wine; into this is poured some of the blood of the contracting parties, obtained by a slight incision of a knife or a sword; in this cup they dip a scimetar, some arrows, a hatchet, and a spear. After this they pronounce some solemn prayers, and the parties who form the contract, with such of their friends as are of superior dignity, finally drink the contents of the vessel.

The sepulchres of the kings are in the district of the Gerrhi. As soon as the king dies, a large trench of a quadrangular form is sunk, near where the Borysthenes begins to be navigable. When this has been done, the body is enclosed in wax, after it has been thoroughly cleansed, and the entrails taken out; before it is sewn up, they fill it with anise, parsley seed, bruised cypress, and various aromatics. They then place it on a carriage, and remove it to another district, where the persons who receive it, like the royal Scythians, cut off a part of their ear, shave their heads in a circular form, take a round piece of flesh from their arm, wound their foreheads and noses, and pierce their left hands with arrows. The body is again carried to another province of the deceased king’s realms, the inhabitants of the former district accompanying the procession. After thus transporting the dead body through[409] the different provinces of the kingdom, they come at last to the Gerrhi, who live in the remotest parts of Scythia, and amongst whom the sepulchres are. Here the corpse is placed upon a couch, round which, at different distances, daggers are fixed; upon the whole are disposed pieces of wood, covered with branches of willow. In some other part of this trench they bury one of the deceased’s concubines, whom they previously strangle, together with the baker, the cook, the groom, his most confidential servant, his horses, the choicest of his effects, and, finally, some golden goblets, for they possess neither silver nor brass: to conclude all, they fill up the trench with earth, and seem to be emulous in their endeavours to raise as high a mound as possible.

The ceremony does not terminate here. They select such of the deceased king’s attendants, in the following year, as have been most about his person; these are all native Scythians, for in Scythia there are no purchased slaves, the king selecting such to attend him as he thinks proper: fifty of these they strangle, with an equal number of his best horses. They open and cleanse the bodies of them all, which, having filled with straw, they sew up again: then upon two pieces of wood they place a third, of a semicircular form, with its concave side uppermost, a second is disposed in like manner, then the third, and so on, till a sufficient number have been erected. Upon these semicircular pieces of wood they place the horses, after passing large poles through them, from the feet to the neck. One part of the structure, formed as we have described, supports the shoulders of the horse, the other his hinder parts, whilst the legs are left to project upwards. The horses are then bridled, and the reins fastened to the legs; upon each of these they afterwards place one of the youths who have been strangled, in the following manner: a pole is passed through each, quite to the neck, through the back, the extremity of which is fixed to the piece of timber with which the horse has been spitted; having done this with each, they so leave them.

The above are the ceremonies observed in the interment of their kings: as to the people in general, when any one dies, the neighbours place the body on a carriage, and carry it about to the different acquaintance of the deceased; these prepare some entertainment for those who accompany the corpse, placing the same before the body, as before the rest. Private persons, after being thus carried about for the space of forty days, are then buried. They who have been engaged in the performance of these rites, afterwards use the following mode of purgation: after thoroughly washing the head, and then drying it, they do thus with regard to the body; they place in the ground three stakes, inclining towards each other; round these they bind fleeces of wool as thickly as possible, and finally, into the space betwixt the stakes they throw red-hot stones.

They have among them a species of hemp resembling flax, except that it is both thicker and larger; it is indeed superior to flax, whether it is cultivated or grows spontaneously. Of this the Thracians make themselves garments, which so nearly resemble those of flax as to require a skilful eye to distinguish them: they who had never seen this hemp, would conclude these vests to be made of flax.

The Scythians take the seed of this hemp, and placing it beneath the woollen fleeces which we have before described, they throw it upon the red-hot stones, when immediately a perfumed vapour ascends stronger than from any Grecian stove. This, to the Scythians, is in the place of a bath, and it excites from them cries of exultation. It is to be observed, that they never bathe themselves: the Scythian women bruise under a stone, some wood of[410] the cypress, cedar, and frankincense; upon this they pour a quantity of water, till it becomes of a certain consistency, with which they anoint the body and the face; this at the time imparts an agreeable odour, and when removed on the following day, gives the skin a soft and beautiful appearance.

The Scythians have not only a great abhorrence of all foreign customs, but each province seems unalterably tenacious of its own.d

THE CIMMERIANS

The Cimmerians belong partly to legend, partly to history. We know even less of them than of the Scythians. The name Cimmerians appears in the Odyssey—the fable describes them as dwelling beyond the ocean-stream, immersed in darkness and unblest by the rays of Helios. Of this people as existent we can render no account, for they had passed away, or lost their identity and become subject, previous to the commencement of trustworthy authorities; but they seem to have been the chief occupants of the Tauric Chersonesus (Crimea) and of the territory between that peninsula and the river Tyras (Dniester), at the time when the Greeks first commenced their permanent settlements on those coasts in the seventh century B.C. The numerous localities which bore their name, even in the time of Herodotus, after they had ceased to exist as a nation—as well as the tombs of the Cimmerian kings then shown near the Tyras—sufficiently attest this fact; and there is reason to believe that they were (like their conquerors and successors the Scythians) a nomadic people, mare-milkers, moving about with their tents and herds, suitably to the nature of those unbroken steppes which their territory presented, and which offered little except herbage in profusion. Strabo tells us (on what authority we do not know) that they, as well as the Treres and other Thracians, had desolated Asia Minor more than once before the time of Ardys, and even earlier than Homer.c Historical knowledge of the Cimmerians may be briefly summed up:

About 660 B.C. the Assyrian empire was mightier than ever. A brother of the king ruled in Babylon; the host of petty princes in Egypt were tributary; Syria, Mesopotamia, the eastern mountain lands, and even the frontiers of Armenia and Asia Minor had been directly incorporated with the empire. There seemed to be no reason to fear a dangerous uprising anywhere. A few decades later the proud structure had disappeared from the earth. Though the conquered nations had contributed in part to its fall, both the first impulse and the decisive blows were given from without by a great migration of nations. We find the evident effects of them everywhere; but their course in detail is almost completely veiled in darkness.

The first great wandering started from the northern coast of the Black Sea. About the eighth century the Scythian Scoloti, one of the Iranian nomadic tribes, ostensibly themselves crowded out by the Massagetæ, crossed the Volga and the Don, and drove the Cimmerians out of their abode. Apparently a remnant of the original population remained in the Crimea (this name is itself derived from that of the Cimmerians); but the great mass left home with wives and children. In all probability they went over the Danube into Thrace, being joined by Thracian tribes on the way; and the passage of the Thynians and Bithynians across the Bosporus, and their settlement in the ancient territory of the Bebrykians (as far as the Sangarius), are also connected with these movements.

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About 700 B.C. the Cimmerians, together with the Thracian tribes that had joined them, invaded Asia Minor, devastating and plundering the land far and wide. It was a migration like that of the northern tribes which passed through Syria in the twelfth century, and that of the Galatians into Asia Minor in the third century, who ravaged there just as the Cimmerians did. The invading tribes were doubtless accompanied by wives and children, and carried all their possessions with them.

The isolated notices of the invasion which are all that we possess cannot be determined chronologically. Aristotle records that Antandrus, the Lelegian city on the southern slope of Mount Ida, was in the possession of the Cimmerians for a hundred years. Thracians are also said to have occupied Abydos before its colonisation from Miletus.

They also made their way farther to the east. Sinope is called the principal seat of the Cimmerians; they are said to have slain here the leader of the Milesian settlement, Abrondas (?). When they entered Phrygia, it is said, the last king, Midas, the son of Gordius, killed himself by drinking the blood of a bull. After that the Phrygian kingdom disappears from history.

From here, then, they presumably first came into contact with the Assyrians. King Esarhaddon tells, before his Cilician campaign, of a fight in the unknown district of Khubushna with “the Teuspa of Gimir [Hebrew Gomer], … whose dwelling is far.” This battle, the scene of which can only be sought in Cappadocia, must be put about 675 B.C.

The movements were directed toward Lydia as well as Phrygia. Here at this time the last of the Heraclids, Candaules or Sadyattes, had fallen a victim to a palace revolution, and his murderer, Gyges, son of Dascylus, of the distinguished family of the Mermnadæ, which had been for generations at feud with the Heraclids, had taken possession of the throne. The Delphian oracle having decided in his favour, he had been acknowledged by the Lydians. The new ruler seems to have been a capable warrior. According to Strabo, the whole Troad was subject to him; consequently, he must also have possessed the coast of Teuthrania. That the districts of Caria were under his rule, if not that of his predecessors, appears certain. The Greek coast cities were also attacked by him, and Colophon was taken. In order to defend himself against the Cimmerians, he swore allegiance to the Assyrian king, Asshurbanapal, who records that Gyges (Assyrian Gugu), in consequence, won a great victory over the Cimmerians, and sent two of their chiefs captive to Nineveh.

The allegiance rendered to the Assyrian king was nothing more than a temporary expedient. As soon as he felt safe from the Cimmerians, Gyges began preparations to attack the Assyrian supremacy, which was likely to become dangerous to the hitherto unassailed countries of Asia Minor. With this end in view, he made an alliance with Psamthek of Saïs, who had revolted against Assyria, and sent Greek and Carian mercenaries to his aid. Asshurbanapal, who was fully occupied by his Elamite wars, could take no steps against him.

But soon afterwards the Cimmerians appeared again in Lydia; Gyges himself fell in battle; the whole land was overrun by the wild hordes and Sardis taken. Then they attacked the Greek coast cities. In Ephesus the poet Callinus inspired a resistance that successfully repulsed the attack of the Cimmerian prince Lygdamis;[11] but the temple of Artemis outside the city [412]was burned. On the other hand, the flourishing city of Magnesia, on the Mæander, was taken and destroyed. However, the savage hordes were no more able to hold the plundered territory permanently than to lay regular siege to the fortified cities. Ardys, the son of Gyges, finally restored the power of his father’s kingdom; and as we are told that he attacked the Greeks, he must first have repulsed the Cimmerians and covered his rear. Asshurbanapal tells that he repented the sins of his father, and sent an embassy to renew his allegiance (646 B.C.); however, this certainly means nothing more than the restoration of friendly relations with Assyria.e

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER III. SOME PEOPLES OF SYRIA, ASIA MINOR, AND ARMENIA

THE ARAMÆANS

Next to the Hittites the Aramæans were the people who held the most important towns of Syria, gradually advancing until at last they occupied the whole country. Of the Aramæan stocks named in Genesis x. 23; xxii. 21 sq. very little is known, but it is certain that Aramæans at an early period had their abode close to the northern border of Palestine (in Maachah). A great part was played in the history of Israel by the state of Aram Dammesek, i.e., the territory of the ancient city of Damascus; it was brought into subjection for a short time under David. The main object of the century-long dispute between the two kingdoms was the possession of the land to the east of the Jordan (Hauran, and especially Gilead). Another Aramæan state often mentioned in the Bible is that of Aram Zobah. That Zobah was situated within Syria is certain, though how far to the west or north of Damascus is not known; in any case it was not far from Hamath. Hamath in the valley of the Orontes, at the mouth of the Beka valley, was from an early period one of the most important places in Syria; according to the Bible, its original inhabitants were Canaanites. The district belonging to it, including amongst other places Riblah (of importance on account of its situation), was not very extensive. In 733 B.C. Tiglathpileser III compassed the overthrow of the kingdom of Damascus; he also took Arpad (Tel-Arfad), an important place three hours to the north of Aleppo. Hamath was taken by Sargon in 720. Henceforth the petty states of Syria were at all times subject to one or other of the great world empires, even if in some cases a certain degree of independence was preserved.c

Definite knowledge concerning the smaller peoples of Asia Minor is so limited and vague, the intermixture of small tribes and ruling houses so chaotic, and the literature remaining so meagre and uncertain, that we can do little better than make a brief summary of the fortunes of each of these lesser communities.

PHRYGIA

Phrygia is a country of many mountains and numerous river valleys. The fertility of the latter was always remarkable, and on the northern[414] boundary, at the sources of the river Sangarius, wide stretches of pasture land afforded nourishment for sheep. Grapes were also extensively cultivated.

The ancient Phrygians were an agricultural people, and the strange rites of their religious worship all had reference to the renewal and decay of nature. The “Phrygian mother,” who was called by the Greeks Rhea, or Cybele, and whose name in the Phrygian language is said to have been Amma, had her temple at the foot of Mount Agdus, near Pessinus, where she was served by hosts of priests. She was worshipped in the temple under the guise of a formless stone, said to have fallen from heaven, and was conceived of as driving over the mountains in a chariot, and wearing a crown of towers upon her head. The beloved of Cybele was Attys, and the festivals of his birth and death were celebrated with wild grief and frantic joy and accompanied by barbarous and unlovely rites, much like those of the worship of Adonis at Byblus. Cybele represents nature, or nature as the producer of life, and the birth and death of Attys typify the spring and autumn of the year.

The sovereigns of Phrygia are said to have come from the agricultural class. Gordius, the first king, was called from following his wagon to rule over Phrygia. His son Midas was the hero of many Greek legends. The story of his receiving the gift of turning everything he touched into gold indicates the possession of enormous wealth. This name occurs in various connections, and it appears that the kings of the ancient Phrygian dynasty bore alternately the names of Gordius and Midas. Their tombs are still visible in the Doghanlu valley and exhibit inscriptions in Greek writing, but in the Phrygian language. The dynasty came to an end in face of an invasion of the Cimmerians, about 675 B.C., and on the expulsion of the latter about a century later the kingdom was annexed by Lydia.

A story told by Herodotus shows that the Egyptians regarded the Phrygians as the oldest people of the world. The Greeks thought that they came from Thrace and were originally called Brigians, but the Phrygians, while owning the relationship to the Brigians of Thrace, declared themselves to be the older people. Modern writers are disposed to attribute an Armenian origin to both races. There are indications which serve to show that the Phrygians once extended their rule over a much wider area than that assigned to their country in our maps of the ancient world; that they held command of the seaboard and were even found beyond the Ægean. But these indications do not amount to proof.

The people of Phrygia once inhabited rock-dwellings which still exist, ranged in rows and one above another. They subsequently built towns,—several were ascribed to the first Gordius and Midas,—and developed an advanced type of civilisation. They are credited with the invention of embroidery, and from the wool of their numerous flocks of sheep they manufactured fine cloths. Cotiæum in Phrygia is one of the towns which claims to be the birthplace of Æsop, and though the Greeks affected to despise the Phrygian music, as is shown by the story of Apollo and Marsyas, it is nevertheless a fact that the Hellenes borrowed the Phrygian flute and shepherd’s pipe as well as a Phrygian form of poetry. In the art of sculpture, though they did not invent a school of their own, the Phrygians must have brought considerable originality into play, for they have impressed a distinctly national stamp on their monuments, though the general style was borrowed from abroad.

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THE CAPPADOCIANS

The chief point of interest furnished by this people is to be found in their religious worship. Its principal centres were the two cities of Comana, the one situated on the river Iris, which flows north into the Euxine, and the other in the southern part of the country on the slopes of Anti-Taurus, near the river Sarus. The high priests were generally of royal blood and enjoyed great consideration, even wearing a royal diadem at the great religious festival, and their importance does not seem to have been diminished by the Persian conquest.

The Cappadocians had the reputation of being brave but untrustworthy, characteristics appropriate to a people who worshipped a warrior moon-goddess. For besides the moon-god Men, they adored Ma, or Mene, identified with Enio, or Bellona, as well as with Artemis. Ma was waited on by numerous priests and temple servants, who constituted the main population of the southern Comana, while hosts of maidens, clad in warlike dress and wearing the same weapons as their divine mistress, participated in her wild rites. It is thought that it was the existence of these women which gave rise to the legend of the Amazons, or nation of female warriors, whom the Greeks supposed to have had their home in the mythical town of Themiscyra on the banks of the Thermodon in Pontus.

The chief festival was that known as the “Exodus” of the goddess, and was attended by many pilgrims from far and near. The worshippers gashed their own bodies and took part in the wildest sensual excesses. These, and the personal sacrifices required from the votaries of Ma, reveal the Semitic origin of the race which practised them, and resemble those belonging to the service of the “Phrygian mother.”

The Greek name for the Cappadocians was “Leuco-Syrians,” i.e., white Syrians, and the myth traced their descent from Syros, son of Apollo. The original Semitic population received a foreign admixture in the eighth century B.C., when some of the Cimmerians, who invaded Asia Minor, settled amongst them and became entirely absorbed in the population. The Cataonians, who inhabited a district in the southeast of the country, were said to be a distinct race, but the personal observations of Strabo in the century before Christ could detect no differences between the two peoples. A further evidence of Semitic origin is found in coins of northern Cappadocia, which date from the fourth century B.C. and bear the image of the Syrian god Baal, with legends inscribed in Aramæan.

The southern part of Cappadocia covers the highest plateau of Asia Minor, and its cold climate is a reason why it can never have been very productive, though wine and oil were grown in certain districts. It furnished, however, ample pasturage for sheep and horses, but the chief wealth of the people seems to have consisted in slaves. Silver, iron, and steel were to be obtained in ancient times from the northeastern districts bordering on Armenia, where dwelt the Tibareni, the Chalybes, and other wild tribes of unknown origin. The mineral products of their territory were turned to account by the Greeks, who had established colonies all along the Cappadocian coast.

Our real knowledge of Cappadocian history goes no farther back than the Persian conquest, and the name of Cappadocians is a Persian appellation—Katapatuka. The Persians divided the country into the two provinces of Cappadocia on the Pontus (afterwards called simply Pontus) and Great Cappadocia, stretching from the Taurus range on the south and including the[416] country on the upper reaches of the Halys. Each constituted a separate satrapy whose governors enjoyed practical independence and royal titles.

THE CILICIANS

Between the Taurus Mountains and that ridge which the ancients called Amanus, lies a fertile and isolated plain which formed the principal part of the ancient kingdom of Cilicia. Xenophon describes it as “a large and beautiful plain, well watered, and full of all sorts of trees and vines, abounding in sesame, panic, millet, wheat, and barley,” and “surrounded with a strong and high ridge of hills from sea to sea.” This plain was by no means the whole of the territory occupied by the Cilicians, which stretched far west among the wild Taurus Mountains as far as Coracesium on the borders of Pamphylia, and appears, from the statements of Herodotus, to have reached to the Euphrates and to have also included a large part of Cappadocia.

The Cilicians were a Semitic race and, like the Cappadocians, nearly related to the Syrians. They evidently worshipped the Syrian gods, for the latter are represented on Cilician coins belonging to the Persian epoch, especially the sun-god Baal, seated on a throne and holding grapes and ears of corn in his hand. But we also find representations of Hercules on these coins, and Greek as well as Aramæan inscriptions, showing that this Semitic race passed under the influence of the Hellenes, who had indeed many settlements in the west of Cilicia.

The Cilician cities of Tarsus and Anchiale were said to have been built in a single day by Sardanapalus, king of Assyria. The Assyrian monuments know of no sovereign of that name, but they make mention of several invasions by Assyria, apparently of the destructive nature common to such expeditions. Sargon conferred the sovereignty of Cilicia on Ambris, king of Tubal, whom he afterwards deposed. Cilicia continued, however, to have her own kings, and they rebelled against Assyria on several occasions, finally recovering their complete independence on the fall of the empire. We hear of more than one king of Cilicia in Persian times, all styled Syennesis, which, therefore, seems to have been rather a title than a name. Xenophon describes the passage of Cyrus the Younger through Cilicia, whose king did homage to him, and was subsequently punished for his disloyalty by being deprived of his power, after which the country was ruled by Persian governors.

Alexander passed through Cilicia on his way to his great battle of Issus just beyond the Amanus range, and the country then passed under Macedonian rule; but in the confused years which followed the death of the great conqueror we find the wild country of Cilicia Trachæ, successfully maintained in independence by hordes of Cilician pirates.

PAMPHYLIA AND PISIDIA

Cilicia Trachæ was the western section of the country; it bordered on Pamphylia and Pisidia, and the Cilician pirates were joined in their predatory expeditions by the two neighbouring peoples, of whom the Pamphylians possessed a convenient harbour, that of Side, which seems to have been their great centre. The Pisidians inhabited a country to the north of Pamphylia, and had no coast line of their own. They were a brave and hardy nation, who dwelt in towns built for the most part on high ridges, and who had[417] opposed an obstinate resistance to Alexander. We know nothing of their origin or language, but from the imposing ruins of their cities it is evident that, in spite of being notorious robbers, they had arrived at an advanced stage of civilisation.

THE CARIANS

When the Dorian Greeks settled on the coast of Caria about the year 1000 B.C., they displaced an ancient people who considered themselves to have been settled in the country from the beginning of time. The Greeks, however, believed that these Carians had originally been called Leleges, and had been the subjects of Minos of Crete, whom they served as sailors. Whether they originally came from the Ægean Islands or no, it seems that they had sent out colonies to the Cyclades, Samos, etc., but had been expelled from them by the Phœnicians some centuries before the Dorians invaded their own continental home.

Though they were now forced to abandon the coast and take refuge in the mountains of the interior, the Carians were nevertheless a peculiarly warlike people. The Greeks imitated their fashion of wearing crested helmets and devices on their shields, as well as their method of carrying the shield itself, and they were much employed as mercenaries. From the middle of the eighth well on into the seventh century B.C., the Carian pirates were the terror of the seas, and their god was a warrior god, the Zeus with a battle-axe, whose image is represented on their coins. In harmony with their connection with the sea, we also find that they regarded Zeus as lord of both the ocean and the heavens, and in this character he was honoured at Mylasa in a temple where Lydians and Mysians had the right to worship with the Carians, a fact which the latter cited as a proof of the affinity of the three peoples.

The Carian nation in its mountain home was not ruled by a single king; the different towns under their aristocratic rulers were united in a kind of federative union, a form of government which was continued even after their conquest by the Persians. The common council met under the protection of the Zeus of Chrysaoris at “the white pillars” on the river Marsyas. Sometimes one town and sometimes another would assume a position of pre-eminence. The most famous of the towns of Caria is Halicarnassus, the city of Herodotus, originally a Greek town, and belonging to a Dorian hexapolis of which Cos, Cnidus, Lindus, Camirus, and Ialysus were the other members. After she had become alienated from the league, Halicarnassus incorporated the Carian city Salmacis. Several of her sovereigns are notable figures in history. Artemisia, queen of Halicarnassus, was with Xerxes at Salamis, and Herodotus represents her in the character of a valued counsellor to the Persian sovereign. Another Artemisia was the wife of Mausolus, who lived in the fourth century B.C. Though a Persian satrap, his power was practically that of an independent monarch and was inherited by his widow. The tomb which she erected to his memory is still regarded as one of the most wonderful monuments of the world.

THE LYCIANS

Southeast of Caria is a mountainous peninsula which was occupied by a nation whom the Greeks named Lycians, but who called themselves Tramilians, or according to Herodotus, Termilians. In the northeast of the[418] peninsula there existed a tribe who bore the name of Milyans. Herodotus declares that these Milyans were formerly called Solymi, and that they were the original inhabitants of the country. Herodotus further states that the Termilians were driven from Crete with their leader Sarpedon, in consequence of the latter’s quarrel with his brother, Minos. Modern historians, however, reject the idea of a Cretan origin, as also the derivation which Herodotus gives for the name Lycians. The ancient writer said that it came from the name of Lycus, an Athenian exile who took refuge with Sarpedon; but it is considered more likely that it was derived from Apollo Lyceus, and if this is really the case the Lycians probably worshipped a god of light. Another statement of Herodotus; namely, that the Lycians reckoned descent through their mothers, is not confirmed by the monuments.

These have been found in great numbers, and show that this people developed a peculiar architecture of their own, but that they subsequently submitted to the artistic influence of Greece, though they never copied their models slavishly. The Lycian tombs are very numerous; most of them are built in the sides or carved in isolated fragments and pinnacles of the rocks. It is evident that the utmost reverence was shown to the dead, and their resting places were often placed in close proximity to the houses of the living. The inscriptions are in a language peculiar to the country, and in a writing resembling that used in the Peloponnesus, but distinct from it. None of very ancient date has as yet been deciphered.

The independence of the Lycian character was not only shown in the peculiarly national stamp they gave to everything which they borrowed from the Greek, but when the Lydian kingdom extended its borders so as to include most of the surrounding nations, the Lycians still preserved their own liberties, and Herodotus records the valiant resistance of the inhabitants of Xanthus to the overwhelming forces of the Persian, Harpagus. Though greatly outnumbered, they faced him in battle, but in spite of their heroic efforts he at last succeeded in overpowering them and driving them within their city of Xanthus; whereupon they first collected their families and all their treasures within the walls of the citadel and then burnt it to the ground. After which they sallied forth against the enemy and were all slain, fighting to the last.

The city of Xanthus was afterwards rebuilt and received a population of foreigners, to which, Herodotus asserts, there were added eighty families of Xanthians who had chanced to be abroad at the time of the disaster. The vast ruins of Xanthus proclaim it as the chief city of the Lycians, but many others existed. Pliny even asserts that they were once seventy in number. Strabo speaks of the twenty-three towns of the Lycian League. They were for the most part built on high ridges, and were governed by a senate and a general assembly of the people. The different towns had each a certain number of votes in the federative assembly, the number of votes being determined by the importance of the individual town. The supreme authority was vested in the Lyciarch, an official chosen by the assembly. This form of government survived after the Persian conquest, and, though the country was afterwards conquered by Alexander, and subsequently passed under the dominion alternately of the Ptolemies and Seleucids, its institutions were not destroyed, but continued to exist even under the suzerainty of Rome and down to the time of Claudius.

Lycia was the scene of the devastations of the legendary Chimæra, whom Bellerophon slew; and the latter was also said to have conquered the Solymi for the Lycian king. The Chimæra is a favourite subject of representation[419] in the Lycian sculptures, and it has been supposed that the origin of the legend may be found in the streams of inflammable gas which issue from the side of a mountain of the Solyma range, in the neighbourhood of Deliktash.

THE MYSIANS

The Carians said that Mysus, ancestor of the Mysian nation, was the brother of Car and Lydus, and that this was the reason why the Mysians and Lydians had the privilege of worshipping in the temple of the Carian Jove. Xanthus of Lydia declared that they spoke a language composed of Phrygian and Lydian. As we only possess one specimen of the Mysian language, and that a somewhat doubtful one, our means of testing the question are somewhat inadequate, nor is our knowledge of Mysian early history much more satisfactory. Some ancient writers said that they came from Thrace, and a connection was supposed to exist between them and the Mœsians on the Danube, the latter being regarded as emigrants from Asia by those who believed in the relationship between the Mysians and Lydians.

The Mysians seem to have been driven into the interior by the Greek settlers who had established themselves all along their shores, and in this mountainous region they remained, having apparently made little progress in civilisation even in Persian times.

In the Homeric catalogue the Mysians appear as the allies of Troy, and we hear of their being conquered by Lydia. Their subsequent fate was the usual one of submission to the successive monarchs of the ancient world. They formed part of the Syrian monarchy and after 190 B.C. their country was added to the territory of the king of Pergamus. In 130 B.C. they were included in the Roman province of Asia, after which we hear no more of them as a nation.

THE BITHYNIANS AND THE PAPHLAGONIANS

Between the Olympus Mountains on the northeast of Mysia and the river Halys, which formed the western boundary of Cappadocia on the Pontus, lay the territory of the Bithynians and Paphlagonians. We know little of the early history of either nation.

The Paphlagonians are mentioned in Homer as the allies of the Trojans. Herodotus includes them among the nations conquered by Crœsus and describes the equipment of the Paphlagonians in Xerxes’ army, while Xenophon also speaks of the numerous soldiers they were able to put into the field. Like the other nations of Asia Minor, the Paphlagonians passed successively under the dominion of Persia and Macedonia and they were included with Cappadocia in the territory of Eumenes; but it was only when their country was annexed to the kingdom of Pontus that they ceased to be ruled by native princes. (Third century B.C.)

Bithynia takes its name from the tribe of the Bithyni who, with the Thyni, are said to have originally crossed from Thrace. There was an older population which they expelled, but the tribe of the Maryandini continued to maintain themselves in the northeastern mountains. Bithynia shared the fate of its neighbour in being conquered by both Lydians and Persians, but in the fourth century B.C. we find the beginning of a native monarchy which increased in power, until, under Nicomedes I, the founder of the city of Nicomedia, it became an important kingdom. This kingdom[420] continued to exist till the encroaching strength of that of Pontus drove its sovereign to seek protection from the Roman power. It then became a Roman province and as such was for a time united with Paphlagonia.

The greater part of both these countries is wild and mountainous, and they possess extensive forests, but in many districts the rugged country gives place to fertile plains and valleys. The Greeks founded cities all along the coast, of which Sinope in Paphlagonia was the most important and the last place in that country to submit to the rule of Pontus (183 B.C.).

ARMENIA

In the native language Armenia is called Haik, and accordingly in the native legend we find the name of Haik ascribed to the founder of the first Armenian kingdom. This hero was said to be the fourth in descent from Japhet, and to have fled with a band of followers into the mountains of Ararat in consequence of the tyranny of Belus, king of Babylon, whom he afterwards defeated in a battle on the shores of Lake Van. The inscriptions reveal a close resemblance between the Babylonian writing and that used by the people of Urartu, the name employed in the Assyrian inscriptions for the country of Ararat. A distinction is however to be drawn between two races, the Armenians proper, who are of Aryan origin, and probably first appeared about the sixth century B.C., and the Alarodians, who were previously settled in the country and were eventually completely absorbed by the new-comers. It is the Alarodians, mentioned only by Herodotus, who seem to have possessed an affinity with the Babylonians.

A descendant of Haik is said to have extended his power even as far as Syria and Cappadocia and to have entered into alliance with Ninus of Assyria. The legend further states that Semiramis (Shamiram), queen of Assyria, made war on Araj of Armenia who had refused her love, and that she defeated and slew him in battle, after which she gave Armenia to Cardus. But Cardus rebelled against her and suffered the same fate as his predecessor, though his descendants were permitted to retain the throne as vassals to Assyria, till on the dissolution of the empire they recovered their independence. A later king, Tigranes, appears as the ally of Cyrus and the slayer of his rival Astyages. Tigranes is mentioned by Xenophon, but the value of the rest of the legendary history is extremely doubtful. The Assyrian inscriptions make frequent mention of expeditions into the Armenian territory. It was divided into various principalities. The Haikian dynasty had its seat at Armavir beyond the Araxes, and Van on the lake of the same name was a very ancient capital. The Haikian dynasty continued to reign till Alexander the Great defeated Vahi in 317 B.C. The eastern portion of Armenia was constituted an independent kingdom by Artaxias in 190 B.C., and under a later dynasty, the Arsacid, it seemed likely to become the centre of a great empire. The Romans, however, stepped in and its king Artavasdes, having been taken prisoner by Antony, was beheaded in the year 30 B.C. at the command of Cleopatra, while the country was split up into numerous rival principalities.a

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[421]

CHAPTER IV. THE LYDIANS

Of the somewhat numerous nations that inhabited Asia Minor after the disappearance of the Hittites, the Lydians were the only ones who attained a degree of prominence that makes them an object of particular interest to the present day student of ancient history. And even these have an interest of a somewhat negative kind through their associations with the Greeks on the one hand and the Persians on the other.

As to the origin of the Lydians and their early history, all is utterly obscure. It is not even very clearly known whether they are to be regarded as a Semitic, Aryan, or a Turanian stock; most likely they were a mixed race and owed to this fact the relative power which they attained. Tradition, which here does service for history, ascribes to them three dynasties of kings, which are commonly spoken of as the Attyadæ, Heraclidæ, and the Mermnadæ. The first of these dynasties is altogether mythical, and the second very largely so. There are, however, some half dozen kings of the later period of the second dynasty whose names are known to us; these are Alyattes I, Ardys I, Alyattes II, Meles, Myrsus, and Candaules, and they ruled from about the year 814 B.C. to the year 691 B.C. The last of these kings, Candaules by name, is known to fame through the pages of Herodotus and other writers, and with his overthrow by Gyges, the third and last and the only truly historic dynasty of Lydia was ushered in.

The story of the overthrow of Candaules, as told by Herodotus, is one of the most stirring and famous of that author’s narratives. That it must be regarded as half mythical, however, is evident from the fact that other Greeks had different traditions as to the same event. Thus Plato tells a fabulous tale of the finding by Gyges of a ring which had the property of rendering him invisible at pleasure, which ring became the means through which he succeeded in winning the favour of the wife of Candaules, and ultimately in overthrowing that monarch. All these tales, taking thus the characteristic cast of ancient narratives, agree, however, in the one essential point, namely, the overthrow of the dynasty by Gyges and the establishing of himself and his successors on the throne.

If tradition is to be credited, Gyges was a man of no small merit as an administrator; in particular, it is believed that he first invented a system of coinage. The alleged fact rests on somewhat insecure evidence; still, in default of another claimant, it is usually accepted by modern historians, and[422] this alone should be sufficient to preserve the name of Gyges, to the remotest posterity.

The name of Gyges, however, has attained no such popular notoriety as that of his successor, Crœsus, of about a century later. It is, indeed, the story of Crœsus and his overthrow by Cyrus, as told by Herodotus, that has done more than anything else to preserve the name of Lydia. Thanks to the father of history, the name of Crœsus has stood as a synonym of wealth through all the centuries since that monarch lived, and the tragic story of the overthrow of the mighty autocrat through overweening confidence in himself and an underestimate of his enemy will continue, no doubt, to point a moral for successive generations of readers so long as history is read.

Among all the names of antiquity there is, perhaps, no other more widely and popularly known than that of Crœsus, and there is certainly no other name in ancient or modern history so famous, whose possessor achieved so little. The wealth of Crœsus was largely a heritage from his predecessors, and his share in the only important Lydian war of which we have record, was far from a glorious one. The place of this famous monarch in history is, therefore, as unique as it is interesting.a

THE LAND

It is difficult to fix the boundaries of Lydia very exactly, partly because they varied at different times, partly because we are still but imperfectly acquainted with the geography of western Asia Minor.

The name is first found, under the form of Luddi, in the inscriptions of the Assyrian king Asshurbanapal, who received tribute from Gyges about 660 B.C. In Homer we read only of Mæonians, and the place of the Lydian capital Sardis is taken by Hyde, unless this was the name of the district in which Sardis stood. The earliest Greek writer who mentions the name is Mimnermus of Colophon, in the 37th Olympiad. According to Herodotus the Meiones (called Mæones by other writers) were named Lydians after Lydus, the son of Attys, in the mythical epoch which preceded the rise of the Heraclid dynasty. In historical times, however, the Mæones were a tribe inhabiting the district of the Upper Hermus, where a town called Mæonia (now Mennen) existed. The Lydians must originally have been an allied tribe which bordered upon them to the northwest, and occupied the plain of Sardis, or Magnesia, at the foot of Tmolus and Sipylus. They were cut off from the sea by the Greeks, who were in possession, not only of the Bay of Smyrna, but also of the country north of Sipylus as far as Temnus, in the Boghaz, or pass, through which the Hermus forces its way from the plain of Magnesia into its lower valley. In an Homeric epigram the ridge north of the Hermus, on which the ruins of Temnus lie, is called Sardene. Northward the Lydians extended at least as far as the Gygæan Lake (Lake Colœ, now Mermereh) and the Sardene range (now Dumanly Dagh). The plateau of the Bin Bir Tepe, on the southern shore of the Gygæan Lake, was the chief burial-place of the inhabitants of Sardis, and is thickly studded with tumuli, among which the “tomb of Alyattes” towers to a height of 260 feet.

Next to Sardis, Magnesia Sipylum was the chief city of the country, having taken the place of the ancient Sipylus, now probably represented by an almost inaccessible acropolis discovered by Mr. Humann not far from Magnesia on the northern cliff of Mount Sipylus. In its neighbourhood is the famous seated figure of “Niobe,” cut out of the rock, and probably intended[423] to represent the goddess Cybele, to which the Greeks attached their legend of Niobe. According to Pliny, Tantalis, afterwards swallowed up by earthquake in the pool Sale or Salœ, was the ancient name of Sipylus and “the capital of Mæonia.”

Under the Heraclid dynasty the limits of Lydia must have been already extended, since, according to Strabo, the authority of Gyges reached as far as the Troad, and we learn from the Assyrian inscriptions that the same king sent tribute to Asshurbanapal, whose dominions were bounded on the west by the Halys.

But under the Mermnadæ Lydia became a maritime as well as an inland power. The Greek cities were conquered, and the coast of Ionia included within the Lydian kingdom. The successes of Crœsus finally changed the Lydian kingdom into a Lydian empire, and all Asia Minor westward of the Halys, with the exception of Lycia, owned the supremacy of Sardis. Lydia never again shrank back into its original dimensions. After the Persian conquest the Mæander was regarded as its southern boundary, and in the Roman period it comprised the country between Mysia and Caria on the one side, and Phrygia and the Ægean on the other.

Lydia proper was exceedingly fertile. The hillsides were clothed with vine and fir, and the rich broad plain of Hermus produced large quantities of corn and saffron. The climate of the plain was soft but healthful, though the country was subject to frequent earthquakes. The Pactolus, which flowed from the fountain of Tarne in the Tmolus mountains, through the centre of Sardis into the Hermus, was believed to be full of golden sand; and gold-mines were worked in Tmolus itself, though by the time of Strabo the proceeds had become so small as hardly to pay for the expense of working them. Mæonia on the east contained the curious barren plateau known to the Greeks as the Catacecaumene or Burnt Country, once a centre of volcanic disturbance. The Gygæan Lake, where remains of pile dwellings have been found, still abounds with carp, which frequently grow to a very large size.d

Strabo observes that this lake, which was afterwards called Colœ, was forty stadia from Sardis. It was said to have been excavated by the hand of man, as a bason for receiving the waters which overflowed the neighbouring plains. Near the lake, towards Sardis, was the tomb or tumulus of Alyattes, mentioned by Herodotus as one of the wonders of Lydia; he says the foundation of this monument was of huge stone, but the superstructure was a mound of earth. It was raised by the artisans and courtesans of Sardis. The historian adds that in his time there were extant on the top of the mound five pillars, on which were inscribed the different portions of the work completed by the several trades; whence it appeared that the courtesans had the greater share in it. The circumference of this huge mound was six stadia and two plethra, and the width thirteen plethra. Some writers affirmed it was called “the tomb of the courtesan,” and that it had been constructed by a mistress of King Gyges. Strabo reports that there were other tombs of the Lydian kings besides that of Alyattes, which has been confirmed by modern travellers.f

THE PEOPLE

Herodotus states that Lydus was a brother of Mysus and Car, which is borne out by the few Lydian, Mysian, and Carian words that have been preserved, as well as by the character of the civilisation of the three nations. The language, so far as can be judged from its scanty remains, was Indo-European,[424] and more closely related to the western than to the eastern branch of the family. The race was probably a mixed one, consisting of aborigines and Aryan immigrants. It was characterised by industry and a commercial spirit, and, before the Persian conquest, by bravery as well.

The religion of the Lydians resembled that of the other civilised nations of Asia Minor. It was a nature-worship, which at times became wild and sensuous. By the side of the supreme god Medeus stood the sun-god Attys, as in Phrygia, the chief object of the popular cult. He was at once the son and bridegroom of Cybele or Cybebe, the mother of the gods, whose image carved by Broteas, son of Tantalus, was adored on the cliffs of Sipylus. Like the Semitic Tammuz or Adonis, he was the beautiful youth who had mutilated himself in a moment of frenzy or despair, and whose temples were served by eunuch priests. Or again he was the dying sun-god, slain by the winter, and mourned by Cybele, as Adonis was by Aphrodite in the old myth which the Greeks had borrowed from Phœnicia. This worship of Attys was in great measure due to foreign influence. Doubtless there had been an ancient native god of the name, but the associated myths and rites came almost wholly from abroad. The Hittites in their stronghold of Carchemish on the Euphrates had adopted the Babylonian cult of Ishtar (Ashtoreth) and Tammuz-Adonis, and had handed it on to the tribes of Asia Minor.

The close resemblance between the story of Attys and that of Adonis was the result of a common origin. The old legends of the Semitic East had come to the West through two channels. The Phœnicians brought them by sea and the Hittites by land. But though the worship of Makar or Melkarth on Lesbos shows that the Phœnician faith had found a home on this part of the coast of Asia Minor, it could have had no influence upon Lydia, which, as we have seen, was cut off from the sea before the rise of the Mermnadæ. It was rather to the Hittites that Lydia, like Phrygia and Cappadocia, owed its faith in Attys and Cybele. The latter became “the mother of Asia,” and at Ephesus, where she was adored under the form of a meteoric stone, was identified with the Greek Artemis. Her mural crown is first seen in the Hittite sculptures of Boghaz Keui on the Halys, and the bee was sacred to her. A gem found near Aleppo represents her Hittite counterpart standing on this insect. The priestesses by whom she was served are depicted in early art as armed with the double-headed axe, and the dances they performed in her honour with shield and bow gave rise to the myths which saw in them the Amazons, a nation of woman-warriors. The pre-Hellenic cities of the coast—Smyrna, Samorna (Ephesus), Myrina, Cyme, Priene, and Pitane—were all of Amazonian origin, and the first three of them have the same name as the Amazon Myrina, whose tomb was pointed out in the Troad. The prostitution whereby the Lydian girls gained their dowries was a religious exercise, as among the Semites, which marked their devotion to the goddess Cybele. In the legend of Hercules, Omphale takes the place of Cybele, and was perhaps her Lydian title. Hercules is here the sun-god Attys in a new form; his Lydian name is unknown, since E. Meyer has shown that Sandon belongs not to Lydia but to Cilicia. By the side of Attys stood the moon-god Manes or Men.d

SARDIS AND THE NAME OF ASIA

The commercial and strategical superiority of the site of Sardis gives us reason to think that it was always the seat of royal residence. But it does not seem that the place always had the same name. It was at a rather late[425] period that the great city of the Tmolus took the name it has ever since borne. When Strabo mentions it as subsequent to the Troy war, he signifies, not that the place was deserted in the Homeric epoch, but that it then had a different name. As far as one can judge, the town had three successive titles, Asia, Hyde, Sardis, which correspond to the three great periods of its history.

According to Stephen of Byzantium, there was, at the foot of Tmolus, a town called Asia, and Asia took its name either from this town or from Asies, a native hero. The same geographer assures us that the territory of Sardis was called Esio-nia or Asia. Herodotus attests that local traditions, according to Hermus, derived the name of Asia from Asies and that in his time one of the Sardian tribes was called the Asian. As, in referring to the Cimmerian invasion, in the course of which Sardis was taken, Callinus speaks of it as directed against the Esionians, Demetrius of Scepsis conjectures Esionians to be an Ionian form of Asionians, for, according to him, Mæonia was originally called Asia. Finally, the author of the Iliad applies the term Asia to a plain situated in the valley of the Cayster on the route from Ephesus to Sardis. Strabo reports that there was shown by the side of the river a building dedicated to the hero Asies.

If one connects these different evidences and reflects on the other hand that the hero Asies is, according to the legend, the grandson of Manes and therefore either the brother or the nephew of Attys, eponymus of the Attyads, which carries us back to the earliest Lydian dynasty, one may reasonably suppose: (1) that Asia was the most ancient name of Sardis; (2) that this name, by a kind of gradual shading off, extended first to the district of which this town was the capital, then to the entire province, then to the greater part of the continent; (3) that it retained the name until the day when a new people, the Mæonians, doubtless, became masters of the country and substituted another; (4) that it did not even then completely disappear, but in accordance with a fixed law, was still preserved in an obscure and restricted form as a designation of insignificant sections of that organism of which it formerly composed the whole.

It is not known when the name Hyde gave place to that of Sardis, a Lydian word which signifies year. But this change could hardly have taken place until towards 687. It is only comprehensible if it coincide with the[426] fall of the Mæonian power and the coming of the Lydian people. The Mæonians, as long as their hegemony lasted, had no reason for changing the name of their town. One can conceive on the contrary, that Gyges, anxious to break all links with the past, would give a new name and one agreeable to his men, to the capital he had conquered. Perhaps this term Sardis, or “year,” which thenceforward designated the residence of the Mermnadæ, was chosen by the first among them to perpetuate that memorable date when the prince of Tyra, who was the conqueror of Candaules and legitimised by Delphi, seated himself as master on the Eastern throne.

EARLY HISTORY OF LYDIA

Besides these traditions of which we have just spoken, the early history of Lydia offers only tales so purely legendary that it would be vain to seek a rational foundation for them. Cambles, in an excess of voracity provoked by philtres, devours his wife. Meles has a lion by his concubine. The soothsayers of Telmessus predict to him that Sardis will be impregnable if the animal be taken along the walls. So Meles causes it to walk round the Acropolis at all those points where it could be surprised or forced. As to that part of the citadel looking towards Tmolus, he neglects it, deeming it inaccessible. Under the reign of Alcimus, Lydia knew the Golden Age, enjoying profound peace and amassing immense riches. Perhaps there is some truth in this last story. There is nothing to hinder the belief that this Alcimus really represents the time when, whether by the exploitation of mines, the opening of the grand route from Sardis to Pteria, or other industrial or commercial impulses, Lydia laid the basis of her immense economic prosperity.

But these are only hypotheses. It is in the eighth century that more solid ground is found. The last Heraclids emerge from the cloud of mystery in which their predecessors are confusedly gathered. We know the dates of their reigns and possess a few details of their lives.

By the Christian chronographers they are very briefly mentioned. To supplement these references, we have a document of the first order, a passage from the Universal History, composed in the time of Augustus and at Herod’s request by the peripatetic Nicolaus of Damascus, secretary to the Jewish king.

The extracts of Nicolaus of Damascus have an exceptional value. Under the embellishments of the story, and although the facts are clothed in concrete, fabulous, and symbolic forms, one can find serious information scarcely affected by the myths, traits of a striking reality, which are not due to popular imagination nor to the romantic verve of historians, but which bear the impress of a far-off origin and an incontestable authenticity. Xanthus and his abbreviators are far from having understood the traditions of which they make themselves the echoes. But the very fidelity with which they record them helps us to recover their true significance.

As fragment 49 is for the period which precedes and prepares the elevation of Gyges, a leading document—in fact the only one which permits a reconstruction of the political situation of Asia towards the end of the eighth century—it will be better here to translate the first part, that which shows the antecedents of the Lydian revolution.

“Alyattes, king of the Lydians, had twin sons, Cadys and Ardys. He left them the government and they reigned together, loving each other and[427] adored by the people. But the wife of Cadys, Damonno, entered into adulterous relations with a certain Spermos, her uncle’s cousin. The two culprits resolved to kill the king. To do this, Damonno gave him poison. Cadys fell ill, but without succumbing. A doctor cured him, and he enjoyed even better health than before. Furious, Damonno resolved to do away with the doctor. Judging that if she gave him poison he would avoid its effects by his science, she had a deep hole dug in her palace, caused it to be made invisible from the outside, put a couch above it, and placed others in a row beside it. Then inviting her enemy to a festival, she made him lie down where the trap was hidden. He fell to the bottom, when she covered the place with earth, and thus made him disappear.

“It happened that in his turn Cadys died also. Then Damonno, gaining over a large number of the Lydians by bribery, in concert with Spermos, expelled King Ardys, her brother-in-law. Then she married her lover and proclaimed him king.

ARDYS

“Ardys, who had fled precipitately with his wife and daughter, found himself at Cyme in such poverty that he was reduced to becoming first a ploughman, and then an innkeeper. Every time any Lydians came to his inn he received them with extreme urbanity; nor did he rest until they were his friends. This conduct made Spermos anxious. So he sent a brigand to Cyme, named Kerses, instructed to kill the exile. As a reward Kerses was to marry the daughter of the usurper and receive a present of a thousand stateres.

“On arriving at Cyme the bandit presented himself at the inn of Ardys. The royal innkeeper was just as polite to him as to others. Kerses was charmed with his manners, and became enamored of his daughter, who busied herself with domestic cares. He asked her in marriage, promising her father in return that he would render him an exceptional favour. At first, Ardys, who despised the suitor’s base condition, and who was a thorough aristocrat, refused to give his daughter. But, led away at length by the assurances of the wooer, he ended by granting his request. The agreement made, Kerses revealed the object of his journey. Spermos, in exchange for Ardys’ head, had offered him his daughter, but Kerses wanted Ardys’ daughter, and to win her he would bring the exile his enemy’s head. Ardys approved. Kerses cut off the long hair he had hitherto worn. Then, having furnished himself with a wooden head, sculptured in the image of the outlaw, and having put on it the wig, he set out for Lydia. Spermos, learning the return of his emissary, ran to question him.

“‘All is done,’ Kerses assured him. (He had taken the precaution to hide the head in a little room.) ‘Well,’ answered the other, ‘show me the head you brought back.’ ‘No,’ said the bandit, ‘not before this crowd. Come and see it in secret at the house.’ ‘So be it,’ replied Spermos. The wooden figure lay on the ground. Kerses showed it to his accomplice, who bent over to recognise it. Immediately the brigand struck Spermos with his sword, knocked him down, cut off his head, opened the door, and went to rejoin Ardys.

“At the end of some time the Lydians, who were awaiting Spermos, not seeing him appear, entered the house and saw a decapitated corpse. This spectacle, instead of distressing, gave them pleasure, for the usurper was a bad man, and in his reign a drought had desolated the earth. Thus Spermos perished, having held power two years. He is not inscribed on the royal[428] list. However, Kerses, in fleeing, came across an inn. He went in, and being very joyful at having succeeded in his enterprise, he drank to excess. In his drunkenness he confided in the tavern-keeper, and showed him the head of Spermos. The latter, judging from this that Ardys would recover the throne, managed to make the bandit hopelessly drunk, and killed him; then carrying his head and that of Spermos, went to find the fallen prince.

“When he had come to him: ‘I bring,’ he cried, ‘the greatest blessing possible.’ ‘What is that?’ asked the other. ‘That Spermos is dead, and that Kerses is not my son-in-law? There could be no greater blessing for me.’ Thyessos—such was the innkeeper’s name—answered, ‘That is exactly what I bring,’ and he showed the two heads. ‘What do you want for this service?’ asked Ardys of him. ‘Oh, as for myself,’ answered Thyessos, ‘I ask neither your daughter nor your gold. But I desire that when you are king you shall make my tavern exempt from taxation.’ ‘That I will promise,’ answered Ardys.

“As time went on, Thyessos became enriched by the revenue of his inn. He opened a market near his house, and there consecrated a temple to Hermes. The place thenceforth took the name of Hermaion-Thyessou.

“With regard to Ardys, he was recalled to the throne by the Lydians, who sent an embassy composed partly of Heraclids. After his restoration he brought back to Lydia the happy days of Alcimus. He was a just man, and his subjects adored him. It was he who took a census of the army, which was composed principally of cavalry. We are told he found it to contain as many as thirty thousand riders.

“In his old age Ardys had for favourite a prince of the Mermnadian line, Dascylus, son of Gyges. This Dascylus gradually got all the power into his hands. So the king’s son, Alyattes, fearing that on his father’s death he would seize supreme power, secretly assassinated him. Fearing for her life, the victim’s widow, then pregnant, took refuge in Phrygia, of which place she was a native. At the news of the murder, Ardys, consumed with anger, convoked the Lydians in assembly. As his great age rendered him helpless, he was borne to the meeting in a litter. Before all the people he denounced the crime, hurled imprecations on the heads of the guilty, and gave whoever should discover them the right to kill them. Ardys died, after having reigned seventy years.

“Under the reign of Meles, a famine having ravaged Lydia, the inhabitants went to consult the oracle. The god answered that the kings must expiate the murder of Dascylus. Learning from the diviners that the crime must be atoned for by a three years’ exile, Meles voluntarily retired to Babylon. Moreover, he sent to Phrygia, to the son of Dascylus (the same who had been proscribed even before birth, and, like his father, was named Dascylus) a message advising him to return to Sardis, assuring him that an indemnity would be paid for the murder. The young man refused, giving as a reason that he had never seen his father; that at the time of the crime he was not born, and, therefore, it was not his duty to interfere in the settlement of the affair.

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“During his exile, Meles confided the government to Sadyattes, son of Cadys. This prince, descended from a far-off ancestor named Tylon, was regent in his master’s name, and when the three years were over and Meles came back from Babylon, he faithfully restored the power. Under the reign of Myrsus, Dascylus, the son of that Dascylus murdered by Sadyattes, fearing that plots were being laid for him by the Heraclids, abandoned Phrygia and took refuge among the Syrians who inhabited the province of Pontus, round Sinope. There he married a native, and it was from this marriage that Gyges was born.”

This narrative lends itself to diverse comments. First, does it offer a complete list of the last Sandonids in order of succession? If so, the catalogue in fragment 49 must be preferred to all the others, for the observation in the course of the recital that Spermos was not inscribed in the royal annals, shows that the author had drawn his information from official registers.c

In striking contrast with this account of the origin of the Lydian monarchy is the dramatic recital of Herodotus, which will be found in Appendix A on the classical traditions. From this story of Ardys and his successors, we may take up Professor Sayce’s brief summary of the whole of Lydian history.a

EARLY DYNASTIES

According to the native historian Xanthus (460 B.C.), three dynasties ruled in succession over Lydia. The first, that of the Attyads, is wholly mythical. It was headed by a god, and included geographical personages like Lydus, Asies, and Meles, or such heroes of folklore as Cambletes, who devoured his wife. To this mythical age belongs the colony which, according to Herodotus, Tyrsenus, the son of Attys, led to Etruria. Xanthus, however, puts Torrhebus in the place of Tyrsenus, and makes him the eponym of a district in Lydia. There was no connection between the Etrurians and Lydians in either language or race, and the story in Herodotus rests solely on the supposed resemblance of Tyrrhenus and Torrhebus. It is doubtful whether Xanthus recognised the Greek legends which brought Pelops from Lydia, or rather Mæonia, and made him the son of Tantalus. The legends must have grown up after the Greek colonisation of Æolis and Ionia, though Dr. Schliemann’s discoveries at Mycenæ have shown a certain likeness between the art of early Greece and that of Asia Minor, while the gold found there in such abundance may have been derived from the mines of Tmolus.

The second dynasty was also of divine origin, but the names which head it prove its connection with the distant East. Its founder, a descendant of Hercules and Omphale, was, Herodotus tells us, a son of Ninus and grandson of Belus. The Assyrian inscriptions have shown that the Assyrians had never crossed the Halys, much less known the name of Lydia, before the age of Asshurbanapal, and consequently the old theory which brought the Heraclids from Nineveh must be given up. But we now know that the case was otherwise with another oriental people, which was deeply imbued with the elements of Babylonian culture. The Hittites had overrun Asia Minor and established themselves on the shores of the Ægean before the reign of the Egyptian king, Ramses II. The subject allies who then fight under their banners include the Nasu or Mysians and the Dardani of the Troad from Iluna or Ilion and Pidasa (Pedasus); and, if we follow Brugsch, Iluna should be read Mauna and identified with Mæonia. At the same time the Hittites left memorials of themselves in Lydia. Mr. G. Dennis has discovered an inscription in Hittite hieroglyphics attached to the figure of “Niobe” on Sipylus, and a similar inscription accompanies the figure (in which Herodotus wished to see Sesostris or Ramses II) carved on the cliff of Karabel, the pass which leads from the plain of Sardis to that of Ephesus. We learn from Eusebius that Sardis was first captured by the Cimmerians 1078 B.C.; and, since it was four centuries later before[430] the real Cimmerians appeared on the horizon of history, we may perhaps find in the statement a tradition of the Hittite conquest. Possibly the Ninus of Herodotus points to the fact that Carchemish was called “the old Ninus” while the mention of Belus may indicate that Hittite civilisation came from the land of Bel. At all events it was when the authority of the Hittite satraps at Sardis began to decay that the Heraclid dynasty arose. According to Xanthus, Sadyattes and Lixus were the successors of Tylon, the son of Omphale.

GYGES

After lasting five hundred and five years, the dynasty came to an end in the person of Sadyattes, as he is called by Nicolaus of Damascus, whose account is doubtless derived from Xanthus. The name Candaules, given him by Herodotus, meant “dog-strangler,” and was a title of the Lydian Hermes. Gyges, termed Gugu in the Assyrian inscriptions, Gog in the Old Testament, put him to death, and established the dynasty of the Mermnads, 690 B.C. Gyges initiated a new policy, that of making Lydia a maritime power; but his attempt to capture old Smyrna was unsuccessful. Towards the middle of his reign the kingdom was overrun by the Cimmerians, called Gimirræ in the Assyrian texts, Gomer in the Old Testament, who had been driven from their old seats on the Sea of Azov by an invasion of Scythians, and thrown upon Asia Minor by the defeat they had suffered at the hands of Esarhaddon. The lower town of Sardis was taken by them, and Gyges turned to Assyria for aid, consenting to become the tributary of Asshurbanapal or Sardanapalus, and sending him, among other presents, two Cimmerian chieftains he had himself captured in battle (about 660 B.C.). At first no one could be found in Nineveh who understood the language of the ambassadors.

A few years later, Gyges joined in the revolt against Assyria, which was headed by the viceroy of Babylonia, Asshurbanapal’s own brother. The Ionic and Carian mercenaries he despatched to Egypt enabled Psamthek to make himself independent. Assyria, however, was soon avenged. The Cimmerian hordes returned, Gyges was slain in battle after a reign of thirty-eight years, and Ardys his son and successor returned to his allegiance to Nineveh.

The second capture of Sardis on this occasion was alluded to by Callisthenes. Alyattes, the grandson of Ardys, finally succeeded in extirpating the Cimmerians, as well as in taking Smyrna, and thus providing his kingdom with a port. The trade and wealth of Lydia rapidly increased, and the Greek towns fell one after the other before the attacks of the Lydian kings. Alyattes’ long reign of fifty-seven years saw the foundation of the Lydian empire. All Asia Minor west of the Halys owned his sway, and the six years’ contest he carried on with the Medes was closed by the marriage of his daughter Aryenis to Astyages, and an intimate alliance between the two empires. The Greek cities were allowed to retain their own institutions and government on condition of paying taxes and dues to the Lydian monarch, and the proceeds of their commerce thus flowed into the imperial exchequer. The result was that the king of Lydia became the richest prince of his age. Alyattes was succeeded by Crœsus, who had probably already for some years shared the royal power with his father, or perhaps grandfather, as Floigl thinks (Geschichte des Semitischen Alterthums). He reigned alone only fifteen years.d

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THE TRIUMPH OF PERSIA

Crœsus succeeded in establishing what his predecessors had sought—a powerful monarchy having close fiscal relations with the Hellenic world and ruling through the might of gold. By his efforts Sardis was raised to the height of opulence and became a general rendezvous and a kind of favourite capital of the Greeks. He accomplished this without violence; all his acts show a generous nature, a character inclined to benevolence and forgiveness. In spite of all this he was treated as a barbarian; but he was a refined and charming barbarian, Lydian in his genius for affairs, Greek in his æsthetic tastes—such a Philhellenic barbarian as some of the kings of Macedonia. He had but one fault, an irrational optimism and an excessive faith in the schemes of diplomacy, the virtue of alliances, and the power of gold. This over-confidence, by leading him to defy Cyrus, was his ruin.

Not that the idea of opposing Persia was in itself wrong; Crœsus was obeying a feeling of great foresight when he began preparations for war in 549 B.C. At this date Astyages was dethroned, the Median empire was destroyed, and the equilibrium of the Orient disturbed. The dominions of Cyrus had been extended as far as the Halys, and Persia thus brought into contact with the Lydian kingdom.

Apart from the annoyance of having such a neighbour, Crœsus could not forget that Astyages was his brother-in-law and that both sentiment and interest made it his duty to avenge the Median king.

Moreover, there were economic reasons that influenced him. The Persians were poor mountaineers who knew nothing of business, esteemed nothing but the trade of arms, and professed a profound disdain of all commerce, comfort, and culture. These prejudices of a military people caused particular alarm among the merchant states of the valleys of the Hermus and the Euphrates. From the day when the savage bands from Iran replaced the Median garrisons in Cappadocia it was easy to foresee the annihilation of the rich trade over the ancient route of Pteria.

Thus personal feeling, political fears, and commercial necessities actuated Crœsus to challenge Persia. With this end in view he formed a series of alliances. Nabonidus of Babylon and Aahmes II of Egypt, menaced like Crœsus himself by the ambition of Cyrus, promised him their aid. Foreseeing a conflict with one or another of the powers of the Orient, Crœsus had some time before assured himself of the help of the greatest military power of the time, Sparta. Now that war was imminent, he sent an embassy which by flattery and the representation that the enterprise had the sanction of the Delphic oracle easily induced the Spartans to sign the compact of alliance and friendship.

After this brilliant diplomatic campaign Crœsus believed success was certain. Lacedæmonia was fitting out vessels and equipping troops. Aahmes despatched his contingent. Nabonidus was only awaiting a signal to take the field; his tributaries, the Phœnicians, were ready to obey. Lydian agents were recruiting mercenaries in Thrace. If the forces of the league could have effected their junction, Cyrus would have found himself in grave peril.

But he was warned in time. An Ephesian whom Crœsus despatched to the Peloponnesus to enlist soldiers deserted to Cyrus and informed him of the coalition that was forming against him. The Persian king hastened to act before his enemies were ready. Babylon being his nearest adversary, he at once attacked the city.

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Without waiting for the union of all his forces, without which such an undertaking was quite hopeless, Crœsus hastened to go to the relief of his ally. He crossed the Halys and took the city of Pteria without much difficulty. But he had not counted on the fearful energy of his foe. Cyrus at once set out for the north with his entire army. Passing through the defiles of Cappadocia, he quickly made himself master of the Anti-Taurus, and was in a position from which he could make an attack wherever he chose. Then he proposed a peaceful settlement, offering Crœsus, if he would become a vassal of Persia, the retention of his kingdom with the title and dignity of satrap. The Lydian king defiantly replied that he had never served any one, as had the Persians, the former slaves of the Medes and future slaves of the Lydians.

But these boastful words were not borne out in the campaign that followed. Not only did Crœsus prove himself to possess none of the qualities of a good general, but his heterogeneous army of mercenaries and foreign auxiliaries was utterly unable to cope with the seasoned troops of Cyrus. There was a single furious and bloody battle, which, according to Herodotus, was indecisive, but which other writers, probably with greater accuracy, declare was a victory for the Persians. Crœsus evacuated Pteria, abandoned the bend of the Halys, although it presented an excellent line of defence, and returned to Sardis. He felt quite secure here, for he did not dream that Cyrus would follow at once.

But Cyrus did follow very promptly, after having removed the danger of an attack in the rear by a treaty with Nabonidus. The sudden appearance of the Persians before the gates of Sardis astonished Crœsus, but did not dismay him.

The short campaign which ensued culminated in a great battle on the plain of Thymbrium. (Herodotus says “the plain before Sardis.”) The forces of Crœsus were much depleted by the dispersion of his mercenaries, especially of the Greek hoplites. Of his allies Aahmes was the only one who had sent his contingent. Crœsus’ great hope lay in his famous cavalry, which was considered the bravest and most skilful in the world. Nor were the Persians without fear of these terrible lancers, who might create irremediable disorder should they once succeed in breaking the Persian lines and penetrating the squares of the infantry. To avoid this danger Cyrus employed a stratagem that was suggested by a Mede. He covered the front of his army with a line of camels. Charging upon these enormous beasts that were opposed to them, the Lydian horses were so startled at the sight of them and so annoyed by their odour that they were thrown into confusion and the riders forced to dismount. But in spite of their courage they were overwhelmed and routed by the rude foot-soldiers of Iran. The survivors reached Sardis in safety, and were besieged there by Cyrus.

The defeat of Thymbrium placed Crœsus in a most critical situation. He despatched couriers everywhere, especially to Sparta, to beg his allies for help. The Lacedæmonians, whose soldiers were ready and vessels equipped, were about to give the order to set sail when a new message brought consternation to the city. Sardis had been taken and the king was a captive. [546 B.C.]

Among the conflicting accounts of the fall of Sardis, that of Herodotus appears to be the most trustworthy. According to him the walls were stormed at a vulnerable point that had been discovered accidentally by a Persian soldier.

Although the tradition of the funeral pile of Crœsus has often been attacked by modern critics, principally on the ground that it would have[433] been contrary to the religion of the Persians, after all no valid objection has been brought against it. In condemning Crœsus to the fire the Persians were not acting on their own initiative; they were simply tolerating a usage common to Semitic religions. Death by fire was one of the characteristic traits of Lydian civilisation. A solemn festival was celebrated at Sardis every year, in which the principal divinity of the Lydians, Heracles-Sandon, was represented as perishing on a funeral pile. In delivering himself up to the flames the last king of Lydia was but making himself like a god and securing for himself a glorious end. [See the legend in Appendix A.]

Then by some means of which we are ignorant, perhaps nothing more than an ordinary tempest of rain, the consummation of the sacrifice was prevented.

Crœsus, after his escape from death, found favour with Cyrus, who treated him with great distinction, made him his adviser, and took him with him on his expeditions. The last that is known of him is that he accompanied Cambyses on his Egyptian expedition in 525 B.C.

Such was the end of the house of Gyges. This sudden fall of a powerful empire stupefied the Greeks. Crœsus had dazzled them by his power, his wealth, and his liberality, and they were sorry for him. According to Justin, his fall was considered in all Hellas as a public calamity. The cordial reception and the honours accorded to Greek merchants, soldiers, and artists at his court were not forgotten. His name became familiar, and Greek imagination took delight in embellishing his legend.c

LYDIAN CIVILISATION

The Lydian empire may be described as the industrial power of the ancient world. The Lydians were credited with being the inventors, not only of games such as dice, huckle-bones, and ball, but also of coined money. The oldest known coins are the electrum coins of the earlier Mermnads, stamped on one side with a lion’s head or the figure of a king with bow and quiver; these were replaced by Crœsus with a coinage of pure gold and silver. To the latter monarch were probably due the earliest gold coins of Ephesus.[12] Mr. Head has shown that the electrum coins of Lydia were of two kinds, one weighing 168.4 grains for the inland trade, and another of 224 grains for the trade with Ionia. The standard was the silver “mina of Carchemish,” as the Assyrians called it, which contained 8656 grains.

Originally derived by the Hittites from Babylonia, but modified by themselves, this standard was passed on to the nations of Asia Minor during the period of Hittite conquest, but was eventually superseded by the Phœnicia[434]n mina of 11,225 grains, and continued to survive only in Cyprus and Cilicia. The inns, which the Lydians were said to have been the first to establish,[13] were connected with their attention to commercial pursuits. Their literature has wholly perished, and the only specimen of their writing we possess is on a marble base found by Mr. Wood at Ephesus.[14]

They were celebrated for their music and gymnastic exercises; and their art formed a link between that of Asia Minor and that of Greece. A marble lion at Achmetly represents in a modified form the Assyrian type, and the engraved gems found in the neighbourhood of Sardis and Old Smyrna resemble the rude imitations of Assyrian workmanship met with in Cyprus and on the coasts of Asia Minor. For a description of a pectoral of white gold, ornamented with the heads of animals, human faces, and the figure of a goddess, discovered in a tomb on Tmolus, see Academy, January 15, 1881, p. 45. Lydian sculpture was probably similar to that of the Phrygians as displayed at Doghanlu, Kumbet, and Ayazin, a necropolis lately discovered by Mr. Ramsay. Phallic emblems, for averting evil, were plentiful; even the summit of the tomb of Alyattes is crowned with an enormous one of stone, about 9 feet in diameter. The tumulus itself is 281 yards in diameter and about half a mile in circumference. It has been partially excavated by Spiegelthal and Dennis, and a sepulchral chamber discovered in the middle, composed of large, well-cut, and highly polished blocks of marble, the chamber being 11 feet long, nearly 8 feet broad, and 7 feet high. Nothing was found in it except a few ashes and a broken vase of Egyptian alabaster. The stone basement which, according to Herodotus, formerly surrounded the mound, has now disappeared.d

Of the glories of Lydian civilisation it would be well to have a portrayal. None could be more vivid than Radet’s glowing revivification of the probable splendours of such a scene.

A PICTURE OF LIFE IN LYDIA

One would like to know more of Sardis, that glorious capital of the Lydian state, that strange city which was the advance guard of Hellenism towards the interior, and at the same time the last stage of the Semitic world towards the west: it is not impossible to imagine it. Of complex physiognomy, it reflected the very character of the population who dwelt there. It was a city of contrasts. The traveller coming over the Leuco-Syrian route was informed of the strange sights awaiting him by the monuments of every style along the road. There were colossal figures graven in the rock, figures of strange gods, processions of priests with pointed tiaras, and soldiers with boots turned up at the toe, while lion and bull fights spread along the skirts of the mountain. Occasionally hieroglyphics accompanied these rock-hewn bas-reliefs, witnessing to their Pterian origin; again, the alphabet of the inscriptions showed they were the work of Phrygian sculptors. In places were enormous conical mounds, tombs in the Thracian style, high as little hills, uniformly surmounted by a phallus. The most recent of these funeral mounds were ornamented with friezes. These, showing hunting scenes, files of warriors, groups of animals, all bore the mark of oriental inspiration but in style revealed Greek handiwork. It was like being in a land of transition where the most diverse influences crossed and mingled.

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Whether coming from the direction of Sipylus or issuing from the Catacecaumenian gorges, what struck one first on reaching the vast mountain amphitheatre, in the centre of which Sardis rises, was the imposing mass. The official and military town, the fortress, the acropolis with its broken outline, its abrupt façade rising above the plain in the fashion of a promontory, the vast circle of ramparts; then, beyond the walls, above the battlements, temples, as for instance that of Apollo, grand public buildings, as the royal treasury—a confused mass of roofs, pediments, and towers, standing in bold relief against the background of the Tmolus, whose heights receded far beyond, sombre and confused, in a striking disorder of peaks, ravines, and woods.

The impression of majesty which the capital of Asia Minor gave from the distance, the idea it suggested of a centre of splendour and opulence, vanished as one drew nearer. In the suburbs, on coming out of the immense flat plain which surrounds them, the picture ceased to be majestic and became picturesque, gaining by wildness what it lost in magnificence. The city, on this side, with its gardens, meadows, fields, clusters of trees, thatched huts trellised with roses, had an air of wild forest land. It retained something of the Homeric Hyde, the wild and green land whose sombre oak groves were often ravaged by lightning. It was the quarter of the poor. Straw huts, rough plank cottages, homesteads half in ruins, smothered in high grass or hidden by trees, sheltered a whole population of workmen, mule proprietors or drivers, caravan conductors, miserable horse breeders.

Higher up, on the semicircular terraces seen at the foot of the acropolis, appeared the commercial part, with bazaars, shops, markets, caravanseries, and baths. The extreme west was marked by the agora which spread along the two banks of the Pactolus round the temple of Cybele. Probably more to the east, facing the plain stood the palace of Crœsus, its solid brick walls rising above the confused mass of badly built small houses.

This part of the town was always extremely lively. Carefully driven chariots spun with surprising swiftness along the narrow and tortuous streets. The horses, short, strong, well built, collarless and quick footed, easily carried men or loads. Here and there a convoy of merchandise disappeared into a caravansery. Through the open door could be seen an immense court, a group of plane trees shading a well, and rows of cells with doors opening out under a wooden gallery.

In the bazaar were tiny shops, long and narrow, built one against the other like cells in a hive. Here were sold all the products of the East. The different trades were assembled in groups. Here was the leather market, with every invention in red, blue, yellow, stitched, spangled, and embroidered leather to be found at an Asiatic leather-seller’s; bright-coloured purses, laced sandals, peaked shoes, dyed and embroidered straps, sheaths and lashes, all giving out agreeable odours in the heavy air. In another place was the weavers’ quarter, where were purple stuffs, luxurious hangings, trappings of soft tints, and carpets of striking colours. Farther on, glittered the goldsmiths’ wares; marvels of Assyrian jewelry, necklaces, bangles, rings, whole sets in electrum and silver, and ivory playthings. One of the most curious corners was the perfumery section. There were piled up drugs without number, powders exposed in sacks or heaps, coffers and cases full of pastiles, sachets, smelling salts; essences coloured the flasks; there were pots containing pomades or unguents. Many of these balms and aromatics had saffron as a base. It was with saffron that the most celebrated Lydian composition, baccaris, was made, whose odour, heady and bewildering, was felt above all those that filled the atmosphere.

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Buyers and sellers and hangers-on belonged to the most diverse races. Lydians sold everything, and notably eunuchs. Pterians brought wool and grain; Phrygians, cattle; Greeks spread out pottery, jewels, objects of art conceived after Asiatic types, but fashioned with much more elegance and finish; Carians brought arms, plumed helmets, and graven bucklers, while the Chaldeans offered amulets with a mysterious air.

In a town so cosmopolitan, where industry and commerce brought together so much wealth, morals were naturally very dissolute. Luxury, show, and pleasure were sought after. Every one wore clothes of vivid colour, long and floating tunics, like the bassara, which fell to the feet. Princes had caftans of purple with gold embroidery. As to the coiffure, it generally consisted in a simple ribbon of cloth or gold which bound the hair and prevented it falling over the face. This was the ampyx, used above all by the Greek-loving Lydians. Partisans of old Eastern fashions preferred the mitre. Rings swung in the pierced ears. On the garments shone a profusion of jewels, necklaces, bracelets, anklets, and pendeloques. Every one was scented, locks glistened with aromatic oils, faces had that sickly look given by rouge and cosmetics.

All minds were continuously set on pleasure. At Colophon, where Lydian customs were widely copied, flute and zither players received an official salary to play from dawn till dusk. It is probable that the same custom existed at Sardis. To the Lydians are attributed the invention of the majority of games, such as dice and ball. Their banquets were models of careful taste. This was in contrast to Thessalonian banquets, which were orgies of guzzlers, with piles of victuals, whose sole merit was in being able to fill chariots. In his Gastronomy, the poet Archestratus, a connoisseur and good liver, recommends the real lover of delicacies to have a Lydian pastry cook. Herodotus likewise boasts of the confectionery of Callatebus. At Sardis the favourite dishes were karuke and kandaulos, stews so complicated that the recipes, as transmitted to us by the authors, are as unintelligible grammatically as they are amazing in a culinary way. What is most clearly known of these strange compositions is that they were made of aphrodisiac ingredients and had the reputation of inciting to love. Their action on the organism was compared to that of whips.

There was at Sardis a rendezvous for all the debauchées. This was a sort of park, planted with trees of such thick foliage that the stars could not pierce their impenetrable branchings. According to the imitation that Polycrates made of it at Samos, it was not a simple garden ornamented with arbours and shrubberies, flower beds and fountains, rare animals and exotic plants, but a real town, full of buildings and lanes, small hotels and shops.

This place of feasting and orgy was called the Happy Corner or the Woman’s Theatre.

It was above all in times of grand religious ceremony that the Lydian nature gave play to its two favourite passions, parade and exaltation. During the Cybelean orgies a wild bacchanalia was seen on the slopes of Tmolus. At night, to mourn the death of Attys, the people wandered about in the darkness. Mournful wailing mingled with the sound of muffled drums and piercing notes from the flute. Among the mountain peaks moved and howled fantastic shadows, made disproportionally large by the light of flickering torches. Then, the dawn having come, when the divine lover was restored to light, the terror and anguish were followed by delirious joy. An immense cortège paraded through the town in magnificent procession, every[437] one rivalling his neighbour in magnificence and showing his most sumptuous treasures.

Such was Sardis. Like all towns situated at the confluence of several worlds, it offers us contradictory traits. A sensual materialism reigned, united with ardent mysticism. In this centre, full of surprises, the love of realities was allied with a taste for art. The fever of enjoyment did not detract from practical sense. Ease went hand in hand with boldness. When, on the return from an expedition in the interior, a squadron of Lydian cavalry came in to the sound of the syrinx, and double flute, the Greek—Solon or Thales—philosophising in the streets and seeing the forest of lances high above the roofs, could but ask himself whether the merchants, so pale, languid, and painted, whom he saw in a cloud of perfume in the shadowy shops, really belonged to the same race as these men, so proud, robust, weather-beaten by the winds of the Phrygian Mountains and tanned by the heat of the higher plateaus, showing glorious wounds and curvetting on powerful horses. Yet there was not one of those careless-looking merchants who had not, many times in his life, known the hard toil of caravan traffic—rising before dawn, marching in all weathers, sleeping on hard ground with frequent surprises and needing to be always vigilant.

The spirit of enterprise was the mainspring of the Lydian nature. The Greek did not always understand this, and too frequently looked upon the Lydians merely as instructors in vice. Doubtless they showed no aptitude for intellectual research or moral observation or philosophical speculation. But if not metaphysicians they were remarkable economists, excelling in producing and spreading riches. Above all, they were prudent, tolerant, amiable, genial and frank, well fitted for the task of serving as a bond between the East and the West.c

FOOTNOTES

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APPENDIX A.—CLASSICAL TRADITIONS

On Asia Minor the necessity for a liberal quotation from the classics is both imperative and fruitful of much delight. In this place we may be permitted to read of the Amazons, of Gyges and the curious fatality that lifted him from shepherd to king, and finally of the opulence and downfall of the king Crœsus who has become a very proverb of wealth. We shall quote, then, from Justin, from Pomponius Mela, from Diodorus, and from the ever-dramatic Herodotus, keeping usually to the antique flavour of old English versions.a

JUSTIN’S ACCOUNT OF THE SCYTHIANS AND THE AMAZONS

Scythia, which far and wide extendeth towards the East, is bounded on one side with Pontus, and on the other with the Rhipæi Mountains, on the back with Asia and the river Phasis. It is very long & of no less breadth. The Inhabitants have no boundaries to their Possessions, no Houses, or certain Places of Abode. Their whole Business is to feed vast Herds of Cattle, as they wander thro’ uncultivated Desarts. They carry their Wives and Children with them in Carts cover’d with Hides to defend them from the Cold and Rain, and these serve them instead of Houses.

Their Justice is rather owing to their own natural temper than to their laws. No Crime is reckoned by them so heinous as Theft; for as their Flocks and Herds have no Housing or fence to secure ’em, what could they call their own in such a vast Tract of Wood if Stealing were permitted? They scorn Gold and Silver as much as the rest of Mankind covet it. Their Food is Milk and Hony. The Use of Wool for Cloathing is unknown to them, and tho’ the Cold Weather never abandons them, they only wear the Furs of several Animals. This natural indifference for Wealth has so far improv’d their Justice that they don’t covet what belongs to another, for Riches are only desired in those Places where they can be used. It were to be wish’d that the rest of Mankind were indued with the same generous Principle of Moderation, and abstaining from what is our Neighbours, for then we should not have had so many bloody Wars in all Ages and Countries of the World, neither would the Sword destroy more numbers of Men than the natural Condition of Mortality. So that ’tis really to be admir’d that Nature should frankly give to these People that which the Grecians with[439] all the learning of their Wise Men, and all the repeated Precepts of their Philosophers, were never able to attain, and that so refin’d and Polish’d a Nation, should in these Respects be inferiour to a barbarous uncultivated People; so much greater influence has the Ignorance of Vice on the Lives of the latter, than the Knowledge of Virtue in the former.

They thrice attempted the Empire of Asia, but as for themselves they always remained untouch’d from a foreign Power, or came off Conquerors when invaded. They obliged Darius, King of Persia, to retire with a great but ignominious Precipitation, out of their Country. They cut Cyrus with his whole Army to pieces. With the like Success, they gave a total Defeat to Zopyrion, one of the Generals of Alexander the Great. They heard of the Roman Arms, but never felt them.

They erected the Parthian and Bactrian Empires. The People with continual Wars and Labour are fierce and hardy, and of a prodigious Strength, they lay up nothing which they are afraid to lose, and when they are Victors in the Field, they desire nothing but honour.

Vexoris, King of Egypt was the first that made War upon the Scythians, and sent Ambassadors, to them first, to let them know under what Conditions they should be subject to him. But the Scythians being inform’d beforehand by their Neighbours, that the King was marching towards them return’d this Answer to the Ambassadors, that their Master, who was the Head of so wealthy a People, was certainly ill-advised to fall upon a parcel of poor wretches, whom he had more Reason to expect at home; that the Hazards of War were great, the Rewards of Victory in respect of them none at all, but the Losses evident; for which Reason the Scythians would not tarry till the King came up to them, since the Enemy had so much rich Booty about them, but would make hast to seize it for their own use. This was no sooner said, but put in Execution; but the King hearing with what speed they advanced towards him, betakes himself to flight, and leaving his Army and all his Military provisions behind him, retires in great Fear to his own Kingdom. The Morrasses hindered the Scythians from making a Descent into Egypt; however, in their return from thence they conquered Asia imposing a gentle Tribute upon the Inhabitants, rather as an Acknowledgment of their Title than Reward of Victory. Having spent fifteen Years in the reducing of Asia, they are recall’d Home by the importunity of their Wives, who despatched Messengers on purpose to acquaint them, that unless they speedily return’d, they would have recourse to their Neighbours for Issue, and that it should never happen thro’ the Fault of the Women, that the Scythian Race should be extinct. Thus Asia became tributary to them for the space of a Thousand five Hundred Years. Ninus, King of Assyria, put an end to the paying of this Tribute.

But in this interval of time, two Youths of Royal Extraction, whose names were Hylinos and Scolopitos, being driven out of their Native Country by a Faction of the Nobility, carried vast Multitudes of young Men with them, and settled in Cappadocia near the River Thirmodon, and having possessed themselves by force of the Themiscyrean Plains, took up their Quarters there. Here they continu’d for several Years to ravage their Neighbours. At last by a Combination of the Natives, they were all cut to pieces in an Ambuscade. Their Wives finding so cruel a Loss as this added to their Banishment, take Arms and make a shift to defend their borders, by dislodging the Enemy first from thence, and afterwards carrying the War into his Country. They laid aside all Inclinations of Marrying with their Neighbours, calling it Servitude and not Matrimony, and what cannot[440] be paralleled in History, they encreased their Dominions, without the Alliance of Men, and afterwards in perfect defiance of them, defended their own Acquisitions. To prevent Envy, lest some should seem to be happier than the rest, they fairly killed all the Men that had tarried at Home, and revenged the Loss of their slain Husbands, by retaliating upon their Neighbours. When they had obtained Peace by their Arms, they copulated with the adjoyning Nations to keep up their Race and Name.

They kill’d all their Male Children; As for the Females they bred them up like themselves not in Idleness, nor Spinning, but in Exercises of War, in Hunting and Riding; and burnt off their right Paps, when Infants, that they might not hinder their Shooting, from whence they derived the Name of Amazons. They had two Queens, Marpesia and Lampedo, who being now considerable for their Wealth and Power, divided their Troops into two Bodies, carrying on War, and defending their Frontier by turns, and to procure the greater Authority to their Victories, they gave out that they were the Daughters of Mars. Thus having subdued the greatest part of Europe, they possess’d themselves of some Cities in Asia: After they had founded Ephesus, and several other Cities there, they sent part of their Army with a great Booty Home. The rest that tarried behind to secure their Acquisition in Asia, being attacked by the Barbarians, were all cut to pieces, together with their Queen Marpesia. Her Daughter Orithya succeeded her in the Kingdom, who besides her admirable Skill in Military Affairs, has made her name celebrated to all Ages, by preferring her Virginity.

By her Gallantry, and Prowess the Amazons got such a reputation in the World, that the King, who set Hercules upon his twelve Labours, commanded him, as if it had been a thing utterly impossible to bring him the Armour of the Queen of Amazons. So he sail’d thither in nine Ships, several of the young Grecian Princes accompanying him in this Expedition, and invaded them unawares. At that time two Sisters jointly governed the Amazons; Antiope and Orithya: But the latter was then engaged in Wars abroad; so that when Hercules landed there was but a small Body of them with their Queen Antiope, who had not the least Apprehensions of an Hostile Invasion: By which means only a few that were alarmed in the Hurry could take Arms, and these gave a cheap and easy Victory to the Enemy. Many were slain and taken Prisoners. Amongst the rest the two Sisters of Antiope were made Captives, Menalippe by Hercules; Hyppolite by Theseus. But Theseus obtaining her for his Reward, took her to Wife, and of her begot Hippolytus. Hercules after his Victory restored his Prisoner Menalippe to her Sister, and received the Queen’s Armour as his Recompence. Thus having performed what he was commanded, he returned back to the King.

But Orithya, so soon as she understood that War had been made upon her Sister, and that the Prince of the Athenians was chiefly concerned in it, persuades her Companions to revenge this Affront, telling them that they had in vain conquered Pontus and Asia, if they lay thus exposed, not so much to the Wars as the Rapines of the Grecians. Then she desired Sagillus King of Scythia to assist her with some Forces representing to him that they were of Scythian Extraction, the Loss of their Husbands, the necessity of their taking Arms, and the Reasons of the War; Lastly, that to their Bravery it was owing that the Scythian Women were not inferiour to the Men. This Prince, touch’d with the Glory of his own Nation, sent his Son Panasagorus with a great Body of Horse to her assistance, but a Quarrel happening between them before the Battle, they were deserted by their Auxiliaries, and soon overcome by the Athenians. However they took Sanctuary[441] in the camp of their late Allies, by whose Protection, other Nations not daring to meddle with them, they returned safe to their own Country.

After Orithya, Penthesilea reign’d, who signalized herself by several gallant Actions in the Trojan War, whom she assisted against the Grecians: But being slain at last, and her Army quite destroyed, some few which tarried at Home, defending themselves with much ado from the Insults of their Neighbours, continued till the time of Alexander the Great. Minithya or Thalestris was then their Queen, who lay with Alexander thirteen Nights successively, in order to have Issue by him, and then returned to her Kingdom, where she dy’d, and with her the whole Name of the Amazons.

But the Scythians in their Third Expedition into Asia, having been absent eight Years from their Wives and Children, were received on their return by a War with their own Slaves. For their Wives, weary of expecting their coming so long, and imagining that they were not detained by the War, but were all destroyed, married their Slaves that were left at Home to look after the Cattle, and these Fellows when they heard that their Masters were returning with Victory, marched to the Frontier, and would suffer them to come no farther, as if they had been Strangers to the Country. Several Skirmishes happen’d on both sides with different Success.

At last the Scythians were advised to alter their Method of fighting, calling to mind that they had not to do with the Enemy, but their own Slaves, who were not to be overcome by the Right of Arms, but the Authority of Masters: That therefore they should bring Whips and Rods, and such other Instruments that Slaves are used to be frightened with, into the Field. All approve of this advice, and being accordingly provided, when they came upon the Enemy, they surprised them so, with showing them their Whips that those People whom they could not overcome by Dint of Sword, they routed by the pure apprehensions of Stripes, so that they fled not like a vanquished Enemy, but run-away Slaves. All that could be taken of them were rewarded for this Insolence with the Gallows. The Women, too, being conscious to themselves that they had done amiss, partly Stab’d and partly Hang’d themselves.

After this, the Scythians lived in Peace till the time of Jancyrus their King. Upon whom, as we have already related, Darius, King of Persia, made War, after he could not obtain his Daughter in Marriage, and invaded Scythia with an Army of Seven Hundred Thousand fighting Men. But not being able to bring them to a pitch’d Battle, and fearing lest if his Bridge over the Ister was broken down, he should be disabled from making a Retreat after the loss of Eighty Thousand Men, which, however, made no show in so prodigious a Multitude, he retired in great Precipitation. Then he Conquer’d Asia and Macedonia, overcame the Ionians in an Engagement at Sea, and finding that the Athenians had assisted them against him, he turned the whole Force and Fury of the War upon them.b

POMPONIUS MELA ON THE SCYTHIANS AND OTHER TRIBES

The marches and situation of Asia extending to our Sea and the River Tanais are suche as I have shewed afore. Nowe to them that rowe backe againe downe the same river into Mæotis, on the right hand is Europe which was directlie on the left side of them as they sayled up the streame, it butteth upon the mountain Rhipæ, for the same also extendeth hither. The snow which falleth continually, dooth make y^e Countrie so ontraivellable that a man is not able to see any farnesse into it.

[442]

Beyond is a Countrie of very rich soyle, but oninhabitable not withstanding, because the Griffins (cruell and eger kinde of wild Beastes) do wonderfully love the golde which lieth altogether discovered above the ground and doo wonderfully keep it, and are very fierce oppon them that touch it. The first men are Scythians, and of the Scythians, the first are the Arimaspi; which are reported to have but one eye a-piece. From thence are the Essedones onto Mæotis. The River Buges cutteth the compasse of the Lake, and the Agathyrsi, and the Sauromatæ, inhabite about it, who because they dwell in Cartes, are named Hamaxobii. Then the coast that runneth out askew to the Bosphorus is enclosed betweene Pontus and Mæotis. The side to-ward the Lake is possessed by the Satarchæ. The brest toward the Bosphorus of Cimmeria, hath the Townes of Myrmecium, Panticapæum, Theodosia, and Hermisium. The other side toward Pontus Euxinus, is possessed by the Taurians. Above them is a Bay full of Havens, and therefore is called the Fayre Haven, and it is enclosed betweene two Forelands whereof the one called the Rammes head butteth against the Foreland of Carambis, which we saide before to be in Asia: and the other called Parthenium hath neere onto it a towne called Chersonesus builded (if it may be beleeved) by Diana, and is very famous fore the cave Nymphæum in the toppe thereof hallowed to the nymphes. When the Sea fleeteth onder a banke and following continually oppon the shores flying backe (which the Satarchæ and Saurians possesst) ontyl he be but five miles from Mæotis, maketh a Recesse. That which is betweene the Lake and the Bay it selfe is called Taphræ and the Bay it selfe is called Carcinites. In the same is the Cittie Carcine by the which doo run two rivers Gerhus and Hypacyris, which fall into the sea in one mouth, but come from sevral heads, and from two sevral places. For Gerhus, sweepeth betweene the Basilads and Nomades. Then are there woods whereof those countries beare very great store, and there is the river Panticapes, which dissevreth the Nomades and Georgians. From thence the land wideneth far, and ending in a slender shanke joineth with the sea shore, afterward enlarging againe measurably, it sharpeneth it selfe by little and little and gathering his long sides as it were into a point, groweth into the likeness of the blade of a sworde laide flatlinges.

Achilles entering the Sea of Pontus with a Navie lyke an enimie after he had gotten victorie is reported to have made a gaming in the same place for ioy thereof, and to have exercised himselfe and his men in running while they rested from warre and therefore the place is called Achilles race. There runneth Boristhenes by a nation of the same name, the pleasantest of all the Rivers of Scythia. For whereas all the Other are thicke and muddie: he runneth exceeding cleere, more gentle than the rest, and most pleasant to drinke of. It cherisheth most fine and fatting pasture, and great Fishes which are of very delicat taste and have no bones. He commeth from farre, and springing from an unknown head, beareth in his channel forty daies jorney: and being all that way able to beare shippes, he falleth into the sea, hard by Borysthenis and Olbia, Greeke Citties.

Hypanis, rising out of a great Poole, which the dwellers by call the mother of Hypanis, incloseth the Callipeds, and along while together rinneth the same that he was at his head. At length not farre from the Sea, he taketh so bytter waters out of a little Fountaine called Exampæus, that from thenceforth he runneth onlike himselfe and altogether onsaverie. The next which is called Axiaces, commeth downe among the Callipedæ and Axiacæ. The River Tyras separateth these Axiacæ from the Istrians: it springeth among the Neures, and falleth into the sea by a Towne of his own name.[443] But that famous River which parteth the nations of Scythia from the Nations following, rysing from hys spring in Germanie, hath an other name at his head, than at his falling into the Sea. For through huge Countries of great Nations, a long while together he beareth the name of Danow. Afterwarde being diversely termed by the dwellers by, hee taketh the name of Ister, and receiving many rivers into him, wereth huge, and giving place in greatnesse to none of all the Rivers that fall into our Sea, saving onelie to Nile, he runneth into the sea with as many mouths as he, whereof three are but final. The rest are able to beare shippes.

The natures and behaviours of the Nations differ. The Essedones solemnise the deaths of their Parents merilie, with sacrifices and feasting of their neighbours and acquaintances. They cutte their bodies in pieces, and chopping them finelie with the inwards of beasts make a feast of them and eate them up. The heads of them, when they have cunningly polished them, they bind about with gold and occupie them for cups. These are the last dueties of naturall love amonge them. The Agathyrsies paint their faces and their lims: and as any of them cometh of better Auncestors, so dooth he more or less die himself: but all that are of one lineage are died with one kinde of marke and that in such sort as it cannot be gotten out. The Sarmatæ, being altogether onacquainted with golde and silver, the greatest plagues in the world, doo in stead thereof oft exchange of one thing for another. And because of the cruell coldnesse of the winter which lasteth continually, they make them houses within the ground, and dwell together in Caves or else in Sellars. They goe in longe side garments downe to the ground, and are covered face and all, saving onelie their eies. The Taurians (who be chiefly renowned with the arrivall of Iphigenia, and Orestes) are horrible of conditions and have a horrible report going of them, namely that they are wont to murder strangers, and to offer them up in sacrifice.

The originall of the Nation of the Basilides, commeth from Hercules and Echidna. Theyr manners are Prince-like, their weapons are onelie arrows. The wandering Nomades, follow the pastures for their cattell and as feeding for them lasteth so is their continuance of abiding in one place. The Georgi occupy tillage of y^e ground and husbandrie. The Axiacæ knowe not what stealing means; and therefore they neither keep theyr own nor touch another man’s. They that dwel more upland live after a hard sort, and have a country less husbanded. They love warre and slaughter, and it is their custome to sucke the bloode cleane out of the wounds of him they kill first. As everie of them hath slain most, so is he counted the joliest fellowe among them. But to be cleere from slaughter, is of all reproaches the greatest. Not so much as their love-daies are made without blood-shed. For they that ondertake the matter, wound themselves, and letting their blood drop out into a vessel, wher they have stird it together they drinke of it thinking that to be a most assured pledge of the promise to be performed. In their feasting their greatest myrth and commonest talke, is in making report what everie man hath slaine, and they that have told of most, are set betweene two cuppes full of drinke, for that is the cheefe honour among them. As the Essedones make cuppes of the heads of their Parents; so doo these of the heads of their enimies.

Among the Androphagi, the daintiest dishes are made of mens’ fleshe. The Geloni apparell themselves and their horses, in the skins of their enimies heads, themselves with the skinnes of the rest of their bodies. The Melanchlæni goe in blacke cloathes, and thereof they have their name. The Neuri[444] have a certain time to evrie of them limited wherein they may (if they will) be chaunged into Woolves, and returne to their former shape againe. The God of them all is Mars, to whome in steade of Images they dedicate Swords and Tents, and offer to him men in Sacrifice. The Countries spread verie large, and by reason that the rivers doo divers times over flow their bankes there is everie where great store of good pasture. But some places are in all other respects so barreine that the inhabiters, for lacke of Woodde, are fayne to make fyre of bones.c

DIODORUS ON THE AMAZONS AND THE HYPERBOREANS

The Scythians anciently enjoy’d but a small Tract of Ground, but (through their Valour) growing stronger by degrees, they inlarg’d their Dominion far and near, and attain’d at last to a vast and glorious Empire.

At the First a very few of them, and those very despicable for their mean original seated themselves near to the River Araxes. Afterwards one of their Ancient Kings, who was a warlike Prince, and skilful in Arms, gain’d to their Country all the Mountainous Parts as far as to Mount Caucasus, and all the Champain Country, to the Ocean, and the Lake Mæotis, and all the rest of the plain to the River Tanais. Then they tell a Story, That a Virgin was born among them of the Earth, of the shape of a Woman from the Middle upwards, and of a Viper downwards: and that Jupiter begot of her a Son call’d Scythes: they say, that from this Prince (being more eminent than any of his Ancestors) the People were call’d Scythians: There were Two Brothers that descended from this King, that were remarkable for Valour, the one call’d Palus and the other Napas. These Two Brothers, after many Glorious Actions done by them, divided the Country between them, and from their own Names call’d one part of the Inhabitants Palians, and the other Napians.

Some time afterwards their Posterity becoming famous and eminent for Valour and martial affairs, subdu’d many Territories beyond Tanais.

Then turning their Arms the other way they led their Forces as far as to the River Nile in Egypt, and having subdu’d many Nations lying between, they inlarg’d the Empire of the Scythians as far as to the Eastern Ocean one way, and to the Caspian Sea and the Lake of Mæotis another.

This Nation prosper’d still more and more, and had Kings that were very famous; from whom the Sacæ, the Massagetæ, and the Arimaspani, and many others call’d by other Names derive their Original. Amongst others, there were two remarkable Colonies that were drawn out of the conquer’d Nations by those Kings; the one they brought out of Assyria, and settl’d in the Country lying between Paphlagonia and Pontus; the other out of Media, which they placed near the River Tanais, which People are call’d Sauromatians, who many Years after increasing in number and power, wasting the greatest part of Scythia, and rooting out all that they conquer’d, totally ruinated the whole Nation. Afterwards the Royal Line failing, they say, Women remarkable for Courage and Strength of Body reign’d instead of Kings. For in these Nations, Women like Men, are train’d up for the Wars, being nothing inferior to Men for Courage.

Henceforward many and great things were done by famous Women, not only in Scythia, but in the Neighbouring Nations. For when Cyrus King of Persia the most Powerful Prince in his Age, led a mighty Army into Scythia, the Queen of Scythia routed the Persian Army, and taking Cyrus[445] himself in the Battel Prisoner, afterwards Crucify’d him. And such was the Valour of the Amazons, after they had strengthened themselves, that they not only overran their Neighbours, but conquer’d a great part both of Europe and Asia. But since now we have begun to speak of the Amazons, we conceive it not impertinent if we here relate cursorily those things concerning them which for the strangeness of the matter may seem to resemble Romantic Fables.

There was heretofore a Potent Nation seated upon the River Thermodon, govern’d always by Women, as their Queens; in which the Women, like Men, manag’d all their Martial Affairs. Amongst these Female Princes (they say) there was one that excell’d all the rest for strength and valour, who got together an Army of Women, and having train’d them up in Martial Discipline, first subdued some of her Neighbouring Nations; afterwards by her Valour growing more fam’d and renown’d, she led her Army against the rest, and Fortune favouring her Arms, she was so puft up, that she call’d herself The Daughter of Mars, and ordered the Men to spin Wool, and do the Womens Work within Doors.

She made Laws also, whereby she in join’d the Women to go forth to the Wars, and the Men to be as Slaves, and do all the Servile work at Home. Therefore when any Male Child was born, they broke their Thighs and Arms, to render them useless and unfit for War: And for the Females they sear’d off the right Breast, lest it should be an hinderance to them in Fight: And hence they were call’d Amazons. At length grown eminent for Policy and Skill in Military Affairs, she built a large City call’d Themiscyra, at the Mouth of the River Thermodon, and beautify’d it with a stately Palace. She was very exact in Martial Discipline, and keeping good Order: She first conquer’d all the Neighbouring Nations, as far as to the River Tanais; and having perform’d all these noble Exploits (they say) in a Battel, she afterwards fought, (having first signallized her Valour) she ended her Days like an Hero. Upon her Death her Daughter succeeded her in the Kingdom, who imitating her Mother’s Valour, in some Exploits excell’d her: For she caus’d the Girls from their very Infancy to be exercis’d in Hunting, and daily train’d up in Martial Discipline. Then she instituted solemn Festivals and Sacrifices to be offer’d to Mars and Diana, call’d Tauropoli. She advanc’d her Arms beyond Tanais, and brought under all the Nations as far as to Thrace. Then returning to her own Country with a rich Booty, she erected stately Temples to those Deities before mention’d, and gain’d the Hearts of her Subjects by her easie and gentle Government. Afterwards she undertook an Expedition against them that lay on the other side of the River, and added a great part of Asia to her Dominion, and extended her Arms as far as to Syria.

After her Death, the Crown descended still to the next of Kin, and every one in their time govern’d with great Commendation, and advanc’d the Honour and Renown of the Amazons Kingdom.

Many Ages after (the Fame and Renown of the Amazons being spread Abroad all the World over) they say, that Hercules, the Son of Jupiter and Alcmena, was enjoin’d by Eurystheus to fight Hippolyta, the Amazon Queen, and to strip her of her Belt. Upon which, he made War upon the Amazons, and in a great Battel routed them, and took Hippolyta, and her Belt together, which so weaken’d them, that the Neighbouring Barbarians knowing their low Condition, despis’d them; and remembring what ruin and destruction they had formerly made amongst them, so wasted them with continual War, that not so much as the Name of Amazons is now to be found[446] any where in the World. For a few Years after Hercules’s Time, the Trojan War broke forth, at which time Penthesilia, Queen of those Amazons that were left, and Daughter of Mars (having committed a cruel Murther among her own People) for the horridness of the Fact fled, and after the Death of Hector, brought aid to the Trojans; and though she bravely behav’d her self, and kill’d many of the Greeks, yet at last she was slain by Achilles, and so in Heroick Actions ended her Days. This, they say, was the last Queen of the Amazons, a brave spirited Woman, after whom the Nation (growing by degrees weaker and weaker) was at length wholly extinct: So that these later Ages look upon all those old Stories concerning the valiant Acts of the Amazons, to be but meer Fictions and Fables.

Now since we have thus far spoken of the Northern Parts of Asia, it’s convenient to observe something relating to the Antiquity of the Hyperboreans.

Amongst them that have written old Stories much like Fables, Hecateus and some others say, that there is an Island in the Ocean over against Gall, (as big as Sicily) under the Artick Pole, where the Hyperboreans inhabit, so call’d, because they lye beyond the Breezes of the North Wind. That the Soyl here is very rich, and very fruitful; and the Climate temperate, insomuch as there are Two Crops in the Year.

They say that Latona was born here, and therefore they that worship Apollo above all other Gods; and because they are daily saying Songs in praise of this God, and ascribing to him the highest Honours, they say that these Inhabitants demean themselves, as if they were Apollo’s Priests, who has there a stately Grove, and renown’d Temple of a round Form, beautify’d with many rich Gifts.

That there is a City likewise consecrated to this God, whose Citizens are most of them Harpers, who playing on the Harp, chant Sacred Hymns to Apollo in the Temple, setting forth his glorious Acts. The Hyperboreans use their own natural Language: But of long and ancient time, have had a special Kindness for the Grecians; and more especially for the Athenians, and them of Delos. And that some of the Grecians pass’d over to the Hyperboreans, and left behind them divers Presents, inscrib’d with Greek Characters; and that Abaris formerly travell’d thence into Greece, and renew’d the ancient League of Friendship with the Delians.

They say moreover, that the Moon in this Island seems as if it were near to the Earth, and represents in the face of it Excrescences like Spots in the Earth. And that Apollo once in Nineteen Years comes into the Island; in which space of time, the Stars perform their Courses, and return to the same Point; and therefore the Greeks call the Revolution of Nineteen Years, the Great Year. At this time of his appearance (they say) that he plays upon the Harps, and sings and daunces all the Night from the Vernal Equinox, to the rising of the Pleiades, solacing himself with the Praises of his own successful Adventures. The Sovereignty of this City, and the care of the Temple (they say) belongs to the Boreades, the Posterity of Boreas, who hold the Principality by Descent in a direct Line from that Ancestor.d

HERODOTUS ON THE LEGENDARY GYGES

The family of Crœsus were named the Mermnadæ, and it may be proper to relate by what means the empire descended to them from the Heraclidæ. Candaules, whom the Greeks call Myrsilus, was king of Sardis, and of the family of Alcæus the son of Hercules. The first of the Heraclidæ was[447] Agron, who reigned also at Sardis; he was the son of Ninus, the grandson of Belus, the great-grandson of Alcæus. Candaules, the son of Myrsus, was the last of this race. The people of this district were in ancient times called Mæonians; they were afterwards named Lydians, from Lydus the son of Attys. From him, before the time of Agron, the princes of the country derived their origin. The Heraclidæ, descended from Hercules and a female slave of Jardanus, enjoyed a delegated authority from these princes, and afterwards obtained the supreme dignity from the declaration of an oracle. They retained their power, in regular and uninterrupted succession, from father to son, to the time of Candaules, a period equal to twenty-two ages of man, being no less than five hundred and five years.

Candaules was so vehemently attached to his wife that in his passion he conceived her beauty to be beyond all competition.[15] Among those who attended near his person, Gyges, the son of Dascylus, had rendered him essential service, and was honoured by his particular confidence. To him he frequently extolled the beauty of his wife in exaggerated terms. Under the influence of a most fatal delusion he took an opportunity of thus addressing him:

“Gyges, I am satisfied that we receive less conviction from what we hear than from what we see, and as you do not seem to credit all I tell you of my wife’s personal accomplishments, I am determined that you shall see her naked.”

Gyges replied, much agitated, “What you propose is exceedingly improper. Remember, sir, that with her clothes a woman puts off her modesty. Many are the precepts recorded by wise men for our instruction, but there is none more entitled to our regard than that ‘it becomes a man to look into those things only which concern himself.’ I give implicit confidence to your assertions; I am willing to believe my mistress the most beautiful of her sex; but I entreat you to forbear repeating an unlawful request.”

Gyges, from apprehension of the event, would have persevered in his refusal; but the king could not be dissuaded from his purpose.

“Gyges,” he resumed, “you have nothing to fear from me or from your mistress; I do not want to make experiment of your fidelity, and I shall render it impossible for the queen to detect you. I myself will place you behind an open door of the apartment in which we sleep. As soon as I enter, my wife will make her appearance. It is her custom to undress herself at leisure, and to place her garments one by one on a chair near the entrance. You will have the best opportunity of contemplating her person. As soon as she approaches the bed, and her face is turned from you, you must be careful to leave the room without being discovered.”

Gyges had no alternative but compliance. At the time of retiring to rest he accompanied Candaules to his chamber, and the queen soon afterward[448]s appeared. He saw her enter, and gradually disrobe herself. She approached the bed; and Gyges endeavoured to retire, but the queen saw and knew him. She instantly conceived her husband to be the cause of her disgrace, and determined on revenge. She had the presence of mind to restrain the emotions of her wounded delicacy, and to seem entirely ignorant of what had happened; although, among all the Barbarian nations, and among the Lydians in particular, it is deemed a matter of the greatest turpitude even for a man to be seen naked.

The queen preserved the strictest silence; and in the morning having prepared some confidential servants for the occasion, she sent for Gyges. Not at all suspicious that she knew what had happened, he complied with the message, as he had been accustomed to do at other times, and appeared before his mistress. As soon as he came into her presence, she thus addressed him:

“Gyges, I submit two proposals to your choice: destroy Candaules and take possession of me and of the Lydian kingdom, or expect immediate death. From your unqualified obedience to your master, you may again be a spectator of what modesty forbids: the king has been the author of my disgrace; you also, in seeing me naked, have violated decorum; and it is necessary that one of you should die.”

Gyges, after he had somewhat recovered from his astonishment, implored her not to compel him to so delicate and difficult an alternative. But when he found that expostulations were vain, and that he must either kill Candaules or die himself by the hands of others, he chose rather to be the survivor.

“Since my master must perish,” he replied, “and, notwithstanding my reluctance, by my hands, tell me how your purpose shall be accomplished?”

“The deed,” she answered, “shall be perpetrated in that very place where he exhibited me naked; but you shall kill him in his sleep.”

Their measures were accordingly concerted: Gyges had no opportunity of escape, nor of evading the alternative proposed. At the approach of night, the queen conducted him to her chamber, and placed him behind the same door, with a dagger in his hand. Candaules was murdered in his sleep, and Gyges took immediate possession of his wife and of the empire. Of the above event, Archilochus of Paros, who lived about the same period, has made mention in some trimeter iambics.

A declaration of the Delphic oracle confirmed Gyges in his possession of the sovereignty. The Lydians resented the fate of Candaules, and had recourse to arms. A stipulation was at length made betwixt the different parties, that if the oracle decided in favour of Gyges, he should continue on the throne; if otherwise, it should revert to the Heraclidæ. Although Gyges retained the supreme authority, the words of the oracle expressly intimated, that the Heraclidæ should be avenged in the person of the fifth descendant of Gyges. To this prediction, until it was ultimately accomplished, neither princes nor people paid the smallest attention. Thus did the Mermnadæ obtain the empire to the injurious exclusion of the Heraclidæ.

THE STORY OF CRŒSUS AS TOLD BY HERODOTUS

On the death of his father Crœsus succeeded to the throne; he began to reign at the age of thirty-five, and he immediately commenced hostilities with the Ephesians. Whilst he besieged Ephesus with an army, the inhabitants made a solemn dedication of their city to Minerva, connecting with a[449] rope their walls to the temple of the goddess. This temple is at a distance of about seven stadia from the old town, which was then besieged. These Crœsus attacked first. Soon afterwards he made war on every state, both of the Ionians and the Æolians: the motives which he assigned were various, important in some instances; but when such could not be found, frivolous pretexts sufficed.

Not satisfied with compelling the Asiatic Greeks to pay him tribute, he determined to build a fleet, and attack those who lived in the islands. He was deterred from this purpose, although he had made great preparations by the memorable reply of Bias of Priene, who was at that time in Sardis; or, as others say, of Pittacus of Mytilene. The king was inquiring of this person whether there was any news from Greece: “The Islanders, Sir,” he replied, “are collecting a body of ten thousand horse to attack you and Sardis.” The king, supposing him serious, said, he hoped the gods might put it into the minds of the Islanders to invade the Lydians with Cavalry. The other thus interrupted him: “Your wish to see the inhabitants of the islands pursue such measures is certainly reasonable; but do you not imagine that your building a fleet to attack the Islanders must give them equal satisfaction? They can wish for no better opportunity of revenging the cause of those Greeks on the continent, reduced by you to servitude, than by meeting the Lydians on the ocean.” The wisdom of the remark was acceptable to Crœsus; he declined all thoughts of constructing a fleet, and entered into an amicable alliance with the Ionians of the Islands.

He afterwards progressively subdued almost all the nations which are situate on this side the river Halys. The Cilicians and the Lycians alone were not brought under his yoke; but he totally vanquished the Lydians, Phrygians, Mysians, Mariandinians, Chalybians, Paphlagonians, Thracians, Thynians, Bithynians, Carians, Ionians, Dorians, Æolians, and Pamphylians.

After Crœsus had obtained all these victories, and extended the power of the Lydians, Sardis became the resort of the great and the affluent, as well as of those who were celebrated in Greece for their talents and their wisdom. Among these was Solon: at the request of the Athenians, he had formed a code of laws for their use. He had then engaged in a course of travels, which was to be of ten years’ continuance; his avowed purpose was of a philosophical nature; but his real object was to avoid the necessity of abrogating the laws he had enacted. The Athenians were of themselves unable to do this, having bound themselves, by the most solemn oaths, to preserve inviolate, for ten years, the institutions of Solon.

Crœsus and Solon

On account of these laws, as well as to see the world, Solon in his travels had visited Amasis [Aahmes], in Egypt, and came now to Crœsus, at Sardis. He was received on his arrival with the kindest hospitality, and entertained in the palace of Crœsus. In a few days, the king directed his servants to attend Solon to the different repositories of his wealth, and to show him their splendid and valuable contents. When he had observed them all, Crœsus thus addressed him:

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“My Athenian guest, the voice of fame speaks loudly of your wisdom. I have heard much of your travels; that you have been led, by a truly philosophic spirit, to visit a considerable portion of the globe. I am hence induced to inquire of you what man, of all whom you have beheld, seemed to you most happy?”

The expectation of being himself esteemed the happiest of mankind, prompted his inquiry. Solon proved by his reply, his attachment to truth, and abhorrence of flattery.

“I think,” said he, “O king, that Tellus the Athenian best deserved the appellation of happy.” Crœsus was astonished. “On what,” he asked, “were the claims of Tellus, to this distinction, founded?”

“Because,” answered Solon, “under the protection of a most excellent form of government, Tellus had many virtuous and amiable children; he saw their offspring, and they all survived him: at the close of a prosperous life we celebrated his funeral, with every circumstance of honour. In a contest with some of their neighbours, at Eleusis, he flew to the assistance of his countrymen: he contributed to the defeat of the enemy, and met death in the field of glory. The Athenians publicly buried him, in the place where he fell; and his funeral pomp was magnificently attended.”

Solon was continuing to make respectful mention of Tellus, when Crœsus anxiously interrupted him, and desired to know whom, next to Tellus, he esteemed most happy, not doubting but the answer would now be favourable to himself.

“Cleobis and Bito,” replied Solon; “they were Argives by birth, fortunate in their circumstances, and so remarkable for their bodily prowess that they had both of them been crowned as conquerors in their public games. It is further related of them, that on a certain festival of Juno their mother was to have been carried to the temple in a chariot drawn by oxen. The beasts were not ready for the purpose; but the young men instantly took the yokes upon themselves, and drew their mother in the carriage to the temple, through a space of forty-five furlongs. Having performed this in the presence of innumerable spectators, they terminated their lives in a manner which was singularly fortunate. In this event the deity made it appear that death is a greater blessing to mankind than life. The surrounding multitude proclaimed their praise; the men commended their prowess; the women envied their mother, who was delighted with the deed itself and the glory which attended it. Standing before the shrine, she implored the divinity, in whose honour her sons’ exertions had been made to grant them the greatest blessing man could receive. After her prayers, and when the succeeding sacrifice and festival was ended, the young men retired to rest within the temple; but they rose no more. The Argives have preserved at Delphi the figures of Cleobis and Bito, as of men deserving superior distinction. This, according to Solon’s estimate, was happiness in the second degree.”

Crœsus was still dissatisfied. “Man of Athens,” he resumed, “think you so meanly of my prosperity as to place me even beneath men of private and obscure condition?”

“Crœsus,” he replied, “you inquire of me my sentiments of human nature; of me, who consider the divine beings as viewing men with invidious and malignant aspects. In the space of a protracted life, how many things occur which we see with reluctance and support with anguish. I will suppose the term of human life to extend to seventy years; this period, if we except the intercalatory months, will amount to twenty-five thousand two hundred days: to make our computation regular and exact, suppose we add this month to each alternate year, we shall then have thirty-five additional months, or one thousand two hundred and fifty days. The whole seventy years will therefore consist of twenty-six thousand two hundred and fifty days, yet of this number every day will be productive of some new incident. Thus, Crœsus, our nature appears a continued series of calamity. I see you[451] as the sovereign of many nations, and possessed of extraordinary affluence and power. But I shall not be able to give a satisfactory answer to the question you propose, till I know that your scene of life shall have closed with tranquillity. The man of affluence is not, in fact, more happy than the possessor of a bare sufficiency; unless, in addition to his wealth, his end of life be fortunate. We often discern misery in the midst of splendid plenty, whilst real happiness is found in humbler stations. The rich man, who knows not happiness, surpasses but in two things the humbler but more fortunate character, with whom we compare him. Yet there are a variety of incidents in which the latter excels the former. The rich man can gratify his passions, and has little to apprehend from accidental injuries. The poor man’s condition exempts him entirely from these sources of affliction. He, moreover, possesses strength and health; a stranger to misfortune, he is blessed in his children, and amiable in himself. If at the end of such a life his death be fortunate, this, O king, is the truly happy man; the object of your inquiry.

“Call no man happy till you know the nature of his death; he is at best but fortunate. All these requisites for happiness it is in no man’s power to obtain, for no one region can supply them; it affords, perhaps, the enjoyment of some, but it is remarkable for the absence of others. That which yields the more numerous sources of gratification, is so far the best: such also is the imperfection of man, excellent in some respects, weak and defective in others. He who possesses the most advantages, and afterwards leaves the world with composure, he alone, O Crœsus, is entitled to our admiration. It is the part of wisdom to look to the event of things; for the Deity often overwhelms with misery those who have formerly been placed at the summit of felicity.”

To these words of Solon, Crœsus refused both his esteem and praise, and he afterwards dismissed the philosopher with indifference. The sentiment which prompts us not to be elate with temporary bliss, but to look beyond the present moment, appeared to Crœsus neither wise nor just.

The Vision of Crœsus

Solon was no sooner departed than, as if to punish Crœsus for his arrogance in esteeming himself the happiest of mankind, a wonderful event befell him, which seemed a visitation from heaven. He saw in his sleep a vision, menacing the calamity which afterwards deprived him of his son; Crœsus had two sons: the one marked by natural defect, being dumb; the other, whose name was Atys, was distinguished by his superior accomplishments. The intimation of the vision which Crœsus saw, was, that Atys should die by the point of an iron spear. Roused and terrified by his dream, he revolved the matter seriously in his mind. His first step was to settle his son in marriage: he then took from him the command of the Lydian troops, whom he before conducted in their warlike expeditions; the spears and darts, with every other kind of hostile weapon, he removed from the apartments of the men to those of the women, that his son might not suffer injury from the fall of them, as they were suspended.

Whilst the nuptials of this son employed his attention, an unfortunate homicide arrived at Sardis, a Phrygian by nation, and of the royal family. He presented himself at the palace of Crœsus, from whom he required and received expiation with the usual ceremonies. The Lydian mode of expiation nearly resembles that of the Greeks. When Crœsus had performed what custom exacted, he inquired who and whence he was.

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“From what part,” said he, “of Phrygia do you come? why are you a suppliant to me? what man or woman have you slain?”—“O king,” replied the stranger, “I am the son of Gordius, who was the son of Midas. My name is Adrastus: unwillingly I have killed my brother, for which I am banished by my father, and rendered entirely destitute.”—“You come,” replied Crœsus, “of a family whom I esteem my friends. My protection shall, in return, be extended to you. You shall reside in my palace, and be provided with every necessary. You will do well not to suffer your misfortune to distress you too much.” Crœsus then received him into his family.

There appeared about this time near Olympus, in Mysia, a wild boar of an extraordinary size, which, issuing from the mountain, did great injury to the Mysians. They had frequently attacked it; but their attempts to destroy it, so far from proving successful, had been attended with loss to themselves. In the extremity, therefore, of their distress, they sent to Crœsus a message of the following import: “There has appeared among us, O king, a wild boar of a most extraordinary size, injuring us much; but to destroy which all our most strenuous endeavours have proved ineffectual. We entreat you, therefore, to send to us your son, at the head of a chosen band, with a number of dogs, to relieve us from this formidable animal.” Crœsus, remembering his dream, answered them thus: “Of my son you must forbear to make mention; him I cannot send; he is lately married, and his time and attention sufficiently employed. But a chosen band of Lydians, hunters and dogs, shall attend you; and I shall charge them to take every possible means of relieving you, as soon as possible, from the attacks of the boar.”

This answer of Crœsus satisfied the Mysians; but the young man hearing of the matter, and that his father had refused the solicitations of the Mysians for him to accompany them, hastened to the presence of the king, and spoke to him as follows: “It was formerly, sir, esteemed, in our nation, both excellent and honourable to seek renown in war, or in the hunting of wild beasts; but you now deprive me of both these opportunities of signalizing myself, without having reason to accuse me either of cowardice or sloth. Whenever I am now seen in public, how mean and contemptible shall I appear! How will my fellow-citizens, or my new wife, esteem me? what can be her opinion of the man whom she has married? Suffer me, then, sir, either to proceed on this expedition, or condescend to convince me that the motives of your refusal are reasonable and sufficient.”

“My son,” replied Crœsus, “I do not in any respect think unfavourably of your courage or your conduct. My behaviour towards you is influenced by a vision, which has lately warned me that your life will be short, and that you must perish from the wound of an iron spear. This, first of all, induced me to accelerate your nuptials, and also to refuse your presence in the proposed expedition, wishing by my caution to preserve you at least as long as I shall live. I esteem you as my only son; for your brother, on account of his infirmity, is in a manner lost to me.”

“Having had such a vision,” returned Atys to his father,[453] “I can easily forgive your anxiety concerning me; but as you apparently misconceive the matter, suffer me to explain what seems to have escaped you. The vision, as you affirm, intimated that my death should be occasioned by the point of a spear; but what arms or spear has a wild boar, that you should dread? If, indeed, it had been told you that I was to perish by a tusk, or something of a similar nature, your conduct would have been strictly proper; but as a spear’s point is the object of your alarm, and we are not going to contend with men, I hope for your permission to join this party.”

“Son,” answered Crœsus, “your reasoning, concerning my dream, has induced me to alter my opinion, and I permit you to go to this chase.”

Crœsus Loses His Son

The king then sent for Adrastus the Phrygian, whom, on his appearing, he thus addressed: “I do not mean to remind you of your former calamities; but you must have in memory that I expiated you in your distress, took you into my family, and supplied all your necessities. I have now, therefore, to solicit that return of kindness which my conduct claims. In this proposed hunting excursion, you must be the guardian of my son: preserve him on the way from any secret treachery, which may threaten your common security. It is consistent that you should go where bravery may be distinguished, and reputation gained; valour has been the distinction of your family, and with personal vigour has descended to yourself.”

“At your request, O king,” replied Adrastus, “I shall comply with what I should otherwise have refused. It becomes not a man like myself, oppressed by so great a calamity, to appear among my more fortunate equals; I have never wished, and I have frequently avoided it. My gratitude, in the present instance, impels me to obey your commands. I will therefore engage to accompany and guard your son, and promise, as far as my care can avail, to restore him to you safe.”

Immediately a band of youths were selected, the dogs of chase prepared, and the train departed. Arriving in the vicinity of Olympus, they sought the beast; and having found his haunt, they surrounded it in a body, and attacked him with their spears. It so happened, that the stranger Adrastus, who had been purified for murder, directing a blow at the boar, missed his aim, and killed the son of Crœsus. Thus he was destroyed by the point of a spear, and the vision proved to be prophetic. A messenger immediately hastened to Sardis, informing Crœsus of the event which occasioned the death of his son.

Crœsus, much as he was afflicted with his domestic loss, bore it the less patiently, because it was inflicted by him whom he had himself purified and protected. He broke into violent complaints at his misfortune, and invoked Jupiter, the deity of expiation, in attestation of the injury he had received. He invoked him also as the guardian of hospitality and friendship; of hospitality, because, in receiving a stranger, he had received the murderer of his son; of friendship, because the man whose aid he might have expected had proved his greatest enemy.

Whilst his thoughts were thus occupied, the Lydians appeared with the body of his son; the homicide followed. He advanced towards Crœsus, and, with extended hands, implored that he might suffer death upon the body of him whom he had slain. He recited his former calamities, to which was now to be added that he was the destroyer of the man who had expiated him; he was consequently no longer fit to live. Crœsus listened to him with attention; and, although oppressed by his own paternal grief, he could not refuse his compassion to Adrastus, to whom he spake as follows: “My friend, I am sufficiently revenged by your voluntary condemnation of yourself. You are not guilty of this event, for you did it without design. The offended deity, who warned me of the evil, has accomplished it.” Crœsus, therefore, buried his son with the proper ceremonies; but the unfortunate[454] descendant of Midas, who had killed his brother and his friend, retired at the dead of night to the place where Atys was buried, and, confessing himself to be the most miserable of mankind, slew himself on the tomb.

Crœsus Consults the Oracles

The two years which succeeded the death of his son were passed by Crœsus in extreme affliction. His grief was at length suspended by the increasing greatness of the Persian empire, as well as by that of Cyrus, son of Cambyses, who had deprived Astyages, son of Cyaxares, of his dominions. To restrain the power of Persia before it should become too great and too extensive, was the object of his solicitude. Listening to these suggestions, he determined to consult the different oracles of Greece, and also that of Libya; and for this purpose he sent messengers to Delphi, the Phocian Abæ, and to Dodona: he sent also to Amphiaraus, Trophonius, and the Milesian Branchidæ. The above-mentioned are the oracles which Crœsus consulted in Greece; he sent also to the Libyan Ammon. His motive in these consultations was to form an idea of the truth of the oracles respectively, meaning afterwards to obtain from them a decisive opinion concerning an expedition against the Persians.

He took this method of proving the truth of their different communications. He settled with his Lydian messengers, that each should consult the different oracles, on the hundredth day of their departure from Sardis, and respectively ask what Crœsus, the son of Alyattes, was doing: they were to write down and communicate to Crœsus the reply of each particular oracle. Of the oracular answers in general we have no account remaining; but the Lydians had no sooner entered the temple of Delphi, and proposed their questions, than the Pythian answered thus, in heroic verse:

They wrote down the communication of the Pythian, and returned to Sardis. Of the answers which his other messengers brought on their return, Crœsus found none which were satisfactory. But a fervour of gratitude and piety was excited in him, as soon as he was informed of the reply of the Pythian; and he exclaimed, without reserve, that there was no true oracle but at Delphi, for this alone had explained his employment at the stipulated time. It seems that on the day appointed for his servants to consult the different oracles, determining to do what it would be equally difficult to discover or explain, he had cut in pieces a tortoise and a lamb, and boiled them together in a covered vessel of brass.

Crœsus, after these things, determined to conciliate the divinity of Delphi, by a great and magnificent sacrifice. He offered up three thousand chosen victims; he collected a great number of couches decorated with gold and silver, many goblets of gold, and vests of purple; all these he consumed together upon one immense pile, thinking by these means to render the deity more auspicious to his hopes: he persuaded his subjects also to offer up, in like manner, the proper objects for sacrifice they respectively possessed. As, at the conclusion of the above ceremony, a considerable quantity of gold had run together, he formed of it a number of tiles. The larger of these were[455] six palms long, the smaller three, but none of them were less than a palm in thickness, and they were one hundred and seventeen in number: four were of the purest gold, weighing each one talent and a half; the rest were of inferior quality, but of the weight of two talents. He constructed also a lion of pure gold, which weighed ten talents. It was originally placed in the Delphian temple, on the above gold tiles; but when this edifice was burned, it fell from its place, and now stands in the Corinthian treasury: it lost, however, by the fire, three talents and a half of its former weight.

Crœsus, moreover, sent to Delphi two large cisterns, one of gold, and one of silver: that of gold was placed on the right hand, in the vestibule of the temple; the silver one was placed on the left. These also were removed when the temple was consumed by fire: the golden goblet weighed eight talents and a half and twelve minæ, and was afterwards placed in the Clazomenian treasury: that of silver is capable of holding six hundred amphoræ; it is placed at the entrance of the temple, and used by the inhabitants of Delphi in their Theophanian festival; they assert it to have been the work of Theodorus of Samos, to which opinion, as it is evidently the production of no mean artist, I am inclined to accede. The Corinthian treasury also possesses four silver casks, which were sent by Crœsus, in addition to the above, to Delphi. His munificence did not yet cease: he presented also two basins, one of gold, another of silver. An inscription on that of gold, asserts it to have been the gift of the Lacedæmonians; but it is not true, for this also was the gift of Crœsus. To gratify the Lacedæmonians, a certain Delphian wrote this inscription: I know his name, but forbear to disclose it. The boy through whose hand the water flows, was given by the Lacedæmonians; the basins undoubtedly were not. Many other smaller presents accompanied these; among which were some silver dishes, and the figure of a woman in gold, three cubits high, who, according to the Delphians, was the person who made bread for the family of Crœsus. This prince, besides all that we have enumerated, consecrated at Delphi his wife’s necklaces and girdles.

To Amphiaraus, having heard of his valour and misfortunes, he sent a shield of solid gold, with a strong spear made entirely of gold, both shaft and head. These were all, within my memory, preserved at Thebes, in the temple of the Ismenian Apollo.

The Reply of the Oracles

The Lydians, who were entrusted with the care of these presents, were directed to inquire whether Crœsus might auspiciously undertake an expedition against the Persians, and whether he should procure any confederate assistance. On their arrival at the destined places, they deposited their presents, and made their inquiries of the oracles precisely in the following terms: “Crœsus, sovereign of Lydia, and of various nations, esteems these the only genuine oracles; in return for the sagacity which has marked your declarations, he sends these proofs of his liberality: he finally desires to know whether he may proceed against the Persians, and whether he should require the assistance of allies.” The answers of the oracles tended to the same purpose; both of them assuring Crœsus, that if he prosecuted a war with Persia, he should overthrow a mighty empire; and both recommended him to form an alliance with the most powerful states of Greece.

The report of these communications transported Crœsus with excess of joy: elated with the idea of becoming the conqueror of Cyrus, he sent again[456] to Delphi, inquired the number of inhabitants there, and presented each with two golden staters. In acknowledgment for his liberality, the Delphians assigned to Crœsus and the Lydians the privilege of first consulting the oracle, in preference to other nations; a distinguished seat in their temple; together with the immutable right, to such of them as pleased to accept it, of being enrolled among the citizens of Delphi.

After the above-mentioned marks of his munificence to the Delphians, Crœsus consulted their oracle a third time. His experience of its veracity increased the ardour of his curiosity; he was now anxious to be informed whether his power would be perpetual. The following was the answer of the Pythian:

When the above verses were communicated to Crœsus, he was more delighted than ever: confident that a mule would never be sovereign of the Medes, and that consequently he could have nothing to fear for himself or his posterity. His first object was to discover which were the most powerful of the Grecian states, and to obtain their alliance.

Crœsus Makes an Alliance with Sparta

Crœsus accordingly sent messengers to Sparta with presents, at the same time directing them to form an offensive alliance with the people. They delivered their message in these terms: “Crœsus, sovereign of Lydia, and of various nations, thus addresses himself to Sparta: I am directed by the oracles to form a Grecian alliance; and, as I know you to be pre-eminent above all the states of Greece, I, without collusion of any kind, desire to become your friend and ally.” The Lacedæmonians having heard of the oracular declaration to Crœsus, were rejoiced at his distinction in their favour, and instantly acceded to the proposed terms of confederacy. It is to be observed, that Crœsus had formerly rendered kindness to the Lacedæmonians: they had sent to Sardis to purchase some gold for the purpose of erecting the statue of Apollo, which is still to be seen at Mount Thornax; Crœsus presented them with all they wanted.

Influenced by this consideration, as well as by his decided partiality to them, they entered into all his views: they declared themselves ready to give such assistance as he wanted; and, farther to mark their attachment, they prepared, as a present for the king, a brazen vessel, capable of containing three hundred amphoræ, and ornamented round the brim with the figures of various animals. This, however, never reached Sardis; the occasion of which is thus differently explained. The Lacedæmonians affirm, that their vessel was intercepted near Samos, on its way to Sardis, by the Samians, who had fitted out some ships of war for this particular purpose. The Samians, on the contrary, assert, that the Lacedæmonians employed on this business did not arrive in time; but, hearing that Sardis was lost, and Crœsus in captivity, they disposed of their charge to some private individuals of Samos, who presented it to the temple of Juno. They who acted this part, might perhaps, on their return to Sparta, declare that the vessel had been violently taken from them by the Samians. Such is the story of this vessel.

Crœsus, deluded by the words of the oracle, prepared to lead his forces into Cappadocia, in full expectation of becoming conqueror of Cyrus and of[457] Persia. Whilst he was employed in providing for this expedition, a certain Lydian, named Sardanis, who had always among his countrymen the reputation of wisdom, and became still more memorable from this occasion, thus addressed Crœsus: “You meditate, O king! an attack upon men who are clothed with the skins of animals; who, inhabiting a country but little cultivated, live on what they can procure, not on what they wish: strangers to the taste of wine, they drink water only; even figs are a delicacy with which they are unacquainted, and all our luxuries are entirely unknown to them. If you conquer them, what can you take from such as have nothing? but if you shall be defeated, it becomes you to think of what you, on your part, will be deprived. When they shall once have tasted our delicacies, we shall never again be able to get rid of them. I indeed am thankful to the gods for not inspiring the Persians with the wish of invading Lydia.” Crœsus disregarded this admonition: it is nevertheless certain, that the Persians, before their conquest of Lydia, were strangers to every species of luxury.

The Cappadocians are by the Greeks called Syrians. Before the empire of Persia existed, they were under the dominion of the Medes, though at this period in subjection to Cyrus. The different empires of the Lydians and the Medes were divided by the river Halys; which rising in a mountain of Armenia, passes through Cilicia, leaving in its progress the Matienians on the right, and Phrygia on the left: then stretching towards the north, it separates the Cappadocian Syrians from Paphlagonia, which is on the left of the stream. Thus the river Halys separates all the lower parts of Asia from the sea, which flows opposite to Cyprus, as far as the Euxine, a space over which an active man could not travel in less than five days.

Crœsus Invades Cappadocia

Crœsus continued to advance towards Cappadocia; he was desirous of adding the country to his dominions, but he was principally influenced by his confidence in the oracle, and his zeal for revenging on Cyrus the cause of Astyages. Astyages was son of Cyaxares, king of the Medes, and brother-in-law to Crœsus; he was now vanquished, and detained in captivity by Cyrus, son of Cambyses. The affinity betwixt Crœsus and Astyages was of this nature: Some tumult having arisen among the Scythian Nomads, a number of them retired clandestinely into the territories of the Medes, where Cyaxares, son of Phraortes, and grandson of Deioces, was at that time king. He received the fugitives under his protection, and, after showing them many marks of his favour, he entrusted some boys to their care, to learn the language, and the Scythian management of the bow. These Scythians employed much of their time in hunting, in which they were generally, though not always, successful. Cyaxares, it seems, was of an irritable disposition, and meeting them one day, when they returned without any game, he treated them with much insolence and asperity. They conceived themselves injured, and determined not to acquiesce in the affront. After some consultation among themselves, they determined to kill one of the children entrusted to their care, to dress him as they were accustomed to do their game, and to serve him up to Cyaxares. Having done this, they resolve to fly to Sardis, where Alyattes, son of Sadyattes, was king. They executed their purpose. Cyaxares and his guests partook of the human flesh, and the Scythians immediately sought the protection of Alyattes.

Cyaxares demanded their persons; on refusal of which, a war commenced betwixt the Lydians and the Medes, which continued five years. It was[458] attended with various success; and it is remarkable that one of their engagements took place in the night. In the sixth year, and in the midst of an engagement, when neither side could reasonably claim superiority, the day was suddenly involved in darkness. This phenomenon, and the particular period at which it was to happen, had been foretold to the Ionians by Thales the Milesian. Awed by the solemnity of the event, the parties desisted from the engagement, and it further influenced them both to listen to certain propositions for peace, which were made by Syennesis of Cilicia, and Labynetus of Babylon. To strengthen the treaty, these persons also recommended a matrimonial connection. They advised that Alyattes should give Aryenis, his daughter, to Astyages, son of Cyaxares, from the just conviction that no political engagements are durable, unless strengthened by the closest of all possible bonds. The ceremony of concluding alliances is the same in this nation as in Greece, with this addition, that both parties wound themselves in the arm, and lick each other’s blood.

Astyages, therefore, was the grandfather of Cyrus, though at this time vanquished by him, and his captive. This was what excited the original enmity of Crœsus, and prompted him to inquire of the oracle, whether he should make war upon Persia. He interpreted the delusive reply which was given him, in a manner the most favourable to himself, and proceeded in his concerted expedition. When he arrived at the river Halys, he passed over his forces on bridges, which he there found constructed; although the Greeks in general assert that this service was rendered him by Thales the Milesian. Whilst Crœsus was hesitating over what part of the river he should attempt a passage, as there was no bridge then constructed, Thales divided it into two branches. He sunk a deep trench, which commencing above the camp, from the river, was conducted round it in the form of a semicircle till it again met the ancient bed. It thus became easily fordable on either side. There are some who say, that the old channel was entirely dried up, to which opinion I can by no means assent, for then their return would have been equally difficult.

Crœsus in Conflict with Cyrus

Crœsus having passed over with his army, came into that part of Cappadocia which is called Pteria, the best situated in point of strength of all that district, and near the city of Sinope, on the Euxine. He here fixed his station, and, after wasting the Syrian lands, besieged and took the Pterians’ principal city. He destroyed also the neighbouring towns, and almost exterminated the Syrians, from whom he had certainly received no injury. Cyrus at length collected his forces, and, taking with him those nations which lay betwixt himself and the invader, advanced to meet him. Before he began his march, he despatched emissaries to the Ionians, with the view of detaching them from Crœsus. This not succeeding, he moved forward, and attacked Crœsus in his camp; they engaged on the plains of Pteria, with the greatest ardour on both sides. The battle was continued with equal violence and loss till night parted the combatants, leaving neither in possession of victory.

The army of Crœsus being inferior in number, and Cyrus on the morrow discovering no inclination to renew the engagement, the Lydian prince determined to return to Sardis, intending to claim the assistance of the Egyptians, with whose king, Amasis, he had formed an alliance, previous to his treaty with the Lacedæmonians. He had also made an offensive and[459] defensive league with the Babylonians, over whom Labynetus was then king. With these, in addition to the Lacedæmonian aids, who were to be ready at a stipulated period, he resolved, after spending a certain time in winter quarters, to attack the Persians early in the spring. Full of these thoughts, Crœsus returned to Sardis, and immediately sent messengers to his different allies, requiring them to meet at Sardis, within the space of five months. The troops which he had led against the Persians, being chiefly mercenaries, he disembodied and dismissed, never supposing that Cyrus, who had certainly no claims to victory, would think of following him to Sardis.

Whilst the mind of Crœsus was thus occupied, the lands near his capital were infested with a multitude of serpents; and it was observed, that to feed on these, the horses neglected and forsook their pastures. Crœsus conceiving this to be of mysterious import, which it certainly was, sent to make inquiry of the Telmessian priests concerning it. The answer which his messengers received, explaining the prodigy, they had no opportunity of communicating to Crœsus, for before they could possibly return to Sardis, he was defeated and a captive. The Telmessians had thus interpreted the incident:—that a foreign army was about to attack Crœsus, on whose arrival the natives would be certainly subdued; for as the serpent was produced from the earth, the horse might be considered both as a foreigner and an enemy. When the ministers of the oracle reported this answer to Crœsus, he was already in captivity, of which, and of the events which accompanied it, they were at that time ignorant.

Cyrus was well-informed that it was the intention of Crœsus, after the battle of Pteria, to dismiss his forces; he conceived it therefore advisable, to advance with all imaginable expedition to Sardis, before the Lydian forces could again be collected. The measure was no sooner concerted than executed; and conducting his army instantly into Lydia, he was himself the messenger of his arrival. Crœsus, although distressed by an event so contrary to his foresight and expectation, lost no time in preparing the Lydians for battle. At that period no nation of Asia was more hardy or more valiant than the Lydians. They fought principally on horseback, armed with long spears, and were very expert in the management of the horse.

The field of battle was a spacious and open plain in the vicinity of Sardis, intersected by many streams, and by the Hyllus in particular, all of which united with one larger than the rest, called the Hermus. This, rising in the mountain, which is sacred to Cybele, finally empties itself into the sea, near the city Phocæa. Here Cyrus found the Lydians prepared for the encounter; and as he greatly feared the impression of their cavalry, by the advice of Harpagus the Mede, he took the following means to obviate the danger. He collected all the camels which followed his camp, carrying the provisions and other baggage; taking their burdens from these, he placed on them men accoutred as horsemen. Thus prepared, he ordered them to advance against the Lydian horse; his infantry were to follow in the rear of the camels, and his own cavalry closed the order of the attack. Having thus arranged his forces, he commanded that no quarter should be granted to the Lydians, but that whoever resisted should be put to death, Crœsus himself excepted, who, whatever opposition he might make, was at all events to be taken alive. He placed his camels in the van, knowing the hatred which a horse has to this animal, being neither able to support the smell nor the sight of it. He was satisfied that the principal dependence of Crœsus was on his cavalry, which he hoped by this stratagem to render ineffective. The engagement had no sooner commenced, than the horses seeing and smelling the[460] camels, threw their own ranks into disorder, to the total discomfiture of Crœsus. Nevertheless the Lydians did not immediately surrender the day: they discovered the stratagem, and quitting their horses, engaged the Persians on foot; a great number of men fell on both sides; but the Lydians were finally compelled to fly, and, retreating within their walls, were there closely besieged.

The Siege of Sardis

Crœsus, believing the siege would be considerably protracted, sent other emissaries to his different confederates. The tendency of his former mission was to require their presence at Sardis within five months. He now entreated the immediate assistance of his other allies, in common with the Lacedæmonians.

Whilst the Spartans found themselves in a precarious situation, the Sardian messenger arrived, relating the extreme danger of Crœsus, and requesting their immediate assistance. This they without hesitation resolved to give. Whilst they were making for this purpose, preparations of men and ships, a second messenger brought intelligence that Sardis was taken and Crœsus in captivity. Strongly impressed by this wonderful calamity, the Lacedæmonians made no further efforts.

Sardis was thus taken: On the fourteenth day of the siege, Cyrus sent some horsemen round his camp, promising a reward to him who should first scale the wall. The attempt was made, but without success. After which, a certain Mardian, whose name was Hyræades, made a daring effort on a part of the citadel where no sentinel was stationed, it being so strong and so difficult of approach as seemingly to defy all attack. Around this place alone Meles had neglected to carry his son Leon, whom he had by a concubine, the Telmessian priests having declared that Sardis should never be taken if Leon were carried round the walls. Leon, it seems, was carried by his father round every part of the citadel which was exposed to attack. He omitted taking him round that, which is opposite to Mount Tmolus, from the persuasion that its natural strength rendered all modes of defence unnecessary. Here, however, the Mardian had the preceding day observed a Lydian descend to recover his helmet, which had fallen down the precipice. He revolved the incident in his mind. He attempted to scale it; he was seconded by other Persians, and their example followed by greater numbers. In this manner was Sardis stormed, and afterwards given up to plunder.

The Fate of Crœsus

We have now to speak of the fate of Crœsus. He had a son, as I have before related, who, though accomplished in other respects, was unfortunately dumb. Crœsus, in his former days of good fortune, had made every attempt to obtain a cure for this infirmity. Amongst other things, he sent to inquire of the Delphic oracle. The Pythian returned this answer:

During the storm of the city a Persian, meeting Crœsus, was, through ignorance of his person, about to kill him. The king overwhelmed by his calamity, took no care to avoid the blow or escape death; but his dumb son, when he[461] saw the violent designs of the Persian, overcome with astonishment and terror, exclaimed aloud, “Oh, man, do not kill Crœsus!” This was the first time he had ever articulated, but he retained the faculty of speech from this event, as long as he lived.

The Persians thus obtained possession of Sardis, and made Crœsus captive, when he had reigned fourteen years and after a siege of fourteen days; a mighty empire, agreeably to the prediction which had deluded him, being then destroyed. The Persians brought him to the presence of Cyrus, who ordered him to be placed in chains upon the summit of an huge wooden pile, with fourteen Lydian youths around him. He did this, either desirous of offering to some deity the first-fruits of his victory, in compliance with a vow which he had made; or, perhaps, anxious to know whether any deity would liberate Crœsus, of whose piety he had heard much, from the danger of being consumed by fire. When Crœsus stood erect upon the pile, although in this extremity of misery, he did not forget the saying of Solon, which now appeared of divine inspiration, that no living mortal could be accounted happy. When the remembrance of this saying occurred to Crœsus, it is said, that rousing himself from the profoundest silence of affliction, he thrice pronounced aloud the name of Solon. Cyrus, hearing this, desired by his interpreters to know who it was that he invoked. They approached and asked him, but he continued silent. At length, being compelled to explain himself, he said, “I named a man with whom I had rather that all kings should converse, than be master of the greatest riches.” Not being sufficiently understood, he was solicited to be more explicit; to their repeated and importunate inquiries, he replied to this effect: That Solon, an Athenian, had formerly visited him, a man who, when he had seen all his immense riches, treated them with disdain; whose sayings were at that moment verified in his fate—sayings which he had applied not to him in particular, but to all mankind, and especially to those who were in their own estimation happy. While Crœsus was thus speaking the pile was lighted, and the flame began to ascend. Cyrus being informed of what had passed, felt compunction for what he had done. His heart reproached him, that being himself a mortal, he had condemned to a cruel death by fire, a man formerly not inferior to himself. He feared the anger of the gods, and reflecting that all human affairs are precarious and uncertain, he commanded the fire to be instantly extinguished, and Crœsus to be saved with his companions. They could not, however, with all their efforts, extinguish the flames.

In this extremity, the Lydians affirm, that Crœsus, informed of the change of the king’s sentiments in his favour by seeing the officious but seemingly useless efforts of the multitude to extinguish the flames, implored the assistance of Apollo, entreating, that if he had ever made him any acceptable offering, he would now interpose and deliver him from the impending danger. When Crœsus, with tears, had thus invoked the god, the sky, which before was serene and tranquil, suddenly became dark and gloomy, a violent storm of rain succeeded, and the fire of the pile was extinguished. This event satisfied Cyrus that Crœsus was both a good man in himself and a favourite of Heaven: causing him to be taken down from the pile, “Crœsus,” said he, addressing him, “what could induce you to invade my territories, and become my enemy rather than my friend?” “O king,” replied Crœsus,[462] “it was the prevalence of your good and of my evil fortune which prompted my attempt. I attacked your dominions, impelled and deluded by the deity of the Greeks. No man can be so infatuated as not to prefer tranquillity to war. In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature, and causes parents to inter their children. It must have pleased the gods that these things should so happen.”

Cyrus immediately ordered him to be unbound, placed him near his person, and treated him with great respect; indeed, he excited the admiration of all who were present. After an interval of silent meditation, Crœsus observed the Persians engaged in the plunder of the city. “Does it become me, Cyrus,” said he, “to continue silent on this occasion, or to speak the sentiments of my heart?” Cyrus entreated him to speak without apprehension or reserve. “About what,” he returned, “is that multitude so eagerly employed?”—“They are plundering your city,” replied Cyrus, “and possessing themselves of your wealth.”—“No,” answered Crœsus, “they do not plunder my city, nor possess themselves of my wealth; I have no concern with either; it is your property which they are thus destroying.”

These words disturbed Cyrus; desiring, therefore, those who were present to withdraw, he asked Crœsus what measures he would recommend in the present emergence. “The gods,” answered Crœsus, “have made me your captive, and you are therefore justly entitled to the benefit of my reflections. Nature has made the Persians haughty but poor. If you permit them to indulge without restraint this spirit of devastation, by which they may become rich, it is probable that your acquiescence may thus foster a spirit of rebellion against yourself. I would recommend the following mode to be adopted, if agreeable to your wisdom: station some of your guards at each of the gates; let it be their business to stop the plunderers with their booty, and bid them assign, as a reason, that one-tenth part must be consecrated to Jupiter. Thus you will not incur their enmity by any seeming violence of conduct; they will even accede without reluctance to your views, under the impression of your being actuated by pious motives.”

Cyrus was delighted with the advice, and immediately adopted it; he stationed guards in the manner recommended by Crœsus, whom he afterwards thus addressed: “Crœsus, your conduct and your words mark a princely character. I desire you, therefore, to request of me whatever you please, and your wish shall be instantly gratified.”—“Sir,” replied Crœsus, “you will materially oblige me by permitting me to send these fetters to the god of Greece, whom, above all other gods, I have most honoured; and to inquire of him, whether it be his custom to delude those who have claims upon his kindness.” When Cyrus expressed a wish to know the occasion of this reproach, Crœsus ingenuously explained each particular of his conduct, the oracles he had received, and the gifts he had presented, declaring that these inspired communications had alone induced him to make war upon the Persians. He finished his narrative with again soliciting permission to send and reproach the divinity which had deceived him. Cyrus smiled: “I will not only grant this,” said he, “but whatever else you shall require.” Crœsus accordingly despatched some Lydians to Delphi, who were commissioned to place his fetters on the threshold of the temple, and to ask if the deity were not ashamed at having, by his oracles, induced Crœsus to make war on Persia, with the expectation of overturning the empire of Cyrus, of which war these chains were the first-fruits: and they were farther to inquire if the gods of Greece were usually ungrateful.

The Lydians proceeded on their journey, and executed their commission; they are said to have received the following reply from the Pythian priestess:[463] “That to avoid the determination of destiny was impossible even for a divinity; that Crœsus, in his person, expiated the crimes of his ancestor in the fifth descent; who, being a guardsman of the Heraclidæ, was seduced by the artifice of a woman to assassinate his master, and without the remotest pretensions succeeded to his dignities; that Apollo was desirous to have this destruction of Sardis fall on the descendants of Crœsus, but was unable to counteract the decrees of fate; that he had really obviated them as far as was possible, and, to show his partiality to Crœsus, had caused the ruin of Sardis to be deferred for the space of three years; that of this Crœsus might be assured that if the will of the fates had been punctually fulfilled, he would have been three years sooner a captive: neither ought he to forget that when in danger of being consumed by fire Apollo had afforded him his succour; that with respect to the declaration of the oracle, Crœsus was not justified in his complaints; for Apollo had declared that if he made war against the Persians a mighty empire would be overthrown; the real purport of which communication, if he had been anxious to understand, it became him to have inquired whether the god alluded to his empire, or to the empire of Cyrus; but that, not understanding the reply which had been made, nor condescending to make a second inquiry, he had been himself the cause of his own misfortune: that he had not at all comprehended the last answer of the oracle, which related to the mule; for that this mule was Cyrus, who was born of two parents of two different nations, of whom the mother was as noble as the father was mean; his mother was a Mede, daughter of Astyages, king of the Medes; his father was a Persian, and tributary to the Medes, who, although a man of the very meanest rank, had married a princess, who was his mistress.” This answer of the Pythian, the Lydians, on their return, communicated to Crœsus. Crœsus, having heard it, exculpated the deity, and acknowledged himself to be reprehensible. Such, however was the termination of the empire of Crœsus, and this the recital of the first conquest of Ionia.e

FOOTNOTES

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[464]

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter a is reserved for Editorial Matter.]

Chapter I. The Hittites

b Charles W. Super, from an article “A Decade of Hittite Research,” in the American Antiquarian. Chicago, 1891. Vol. XXI.

c Fritz Hommel, Die Semitischen Völker und Sprachen.

d Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums.

e Ernest Babelon, Manuel d’archéologie orientale.

f Paul Karolides, Die sogenannte Assyro-Chaldäer und Hittiten von Kleinasien.

g A. H. Sayce, Monuments of the Hittites.

h Anonymous so-called Poem of Pentaur.

i H. C. Brugsch, Thesaurus Inscriptionum Ægyptiarum.

j Perrot and Chipiez, Histoire de l’art dans l’antiquité.

k Xanthus, Lydiaca.

Chapter II. Scythians and Cimmerians

b Paul Karolides, op. cit.

c George Grote, History of Greece.

d Herodotus, The History of Herodotus (translated from the Greek by William Beloe).

e Eduard Meyer, op. cit.

f Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War (translated from the Greek by Hobbes).

g Strabo, Γεωγραφικά.

Chapter III. Some Peoples of Syria, Asia Minor, and Armenia

b Max Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums.

c A. Socin, the article on “Syria,” in the Encyclopædia Britannica.

d The Holy Bible.

e Strabo, op. cit.

f Herodotus, op. cit.

g Xanthus, op. cit.

h Xenophon, Anabasis.

Chapter IV. The Lydians

b Paul Karolides, op. cit.

c George Radet, La Lydie et le monde grec au temps des Mermnades.

d A. H. Sayce, from the article on “Lydia,” in the Encyclopædia Britannica.

e Nicolas of Damascus, in Fragmenta Historicorum Græcorum, Fragment 4.

f J. A. Cramer, Description of Asia Minor.

g Herodotus, op. cit.

h Plinius Secundus, Historia Naturalis.

i Strabo, op. cit.

j Stephanus Byzantinus, Ethnica.

k Demetrius of Scepsis, Τρωικὸς διάκοσμος.

l Xanthus, op. cit.

m H. C. Brugsch, Geschichte Ægyptens unter den Pharaonen.

n H. Schliemann, Ilios.

Appendix A. Classical Traditions

b Justin, History of the World (translated from the Latin by T. Brown).

c Pomponius Mela, The Rare and Singular Works of Pomponius Mela (translated from the Latin byA. Golding).

d Diodorus Siculus, The Historical Library (translated from the Greek by G. Booth).

e Herodotus, op. cit.

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[465]

A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE HISTORY OF THE MINOR NATIONS OF WESTERN ASIA

BASED ON THE WORKS QUOTED, CITED, OR EDITORIALLY CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF THE PRESENT HISTORY

The nations of Asia Minor, having a relatively unimportant position, have naturally not attracted the attention of historians to any such extent as their more important contemporaries. The Hittites, as already noted, are mentioned a few times in the Hebrew writings, and are referred to explicitly in the Egyptian records of Ramses the Great. But they had passed from the scene before the advent of the Greek historians, which fact accounts largely for the infrequent reference to them in modern times, until the decipherment of the Egyptian and Assyrian records brought them again to notice. A peculiar interest attaches to the Hittites now, since their own monuments have shown that they possessed a unique form of hieroglyphic writing. Professor Sayce has investigated this perhaps more fully than any other scholar; but various others have entered into controversies as to its exact character,—controversies which as yet have led to no very definite conclusion.

Of the other nations of Asia Minor, the Lydians have received most attention from the historian. The chief known sources for Lydian history were the native historian Xanthus, whose works have mostly failed to come down to us; and Herodotus, whose stories of the Lydian kings, no doubt somewhat embellished, have been a source of interest to all subsequent investigators. In recent times special works on the Lydians have been written by Radet and by Schubert. Numerous travellers have given us more or less valuable notes on Asia Minor, chiefly of a geographical and archæological character. The best general treatment of the subject is to be found in the histories of antiquity of Duncker and Eduard Meyer. Duncker’s treatment is more popular, but in some respects not quite up to date. Eduard Meyer’s treatment is at once scientific and philosophical, but the first volume of his work has been out of print for some time, and the promised new edition is not yet forthcoming. The new archæological finds have given a fresh interest to the nations of Asia Minor, which will probably result in a much more voluminous literature on the subject in the near future.

[466]

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[469]

PART VII

THE HISTORY OF ANCIENT INDIA

BASED CHIEFLY UPON THE FOLLOWING AUTHORITIES

ARRIAN, GUSTAV LE BON, EUGENE BURNOUF, MOUNTSTUART
ELPHINSTONE, A. H. L. HEEREN, W. W. HUNTER,
SIR W. JONES, FERDINAND JUSTI, SALOMAN
LEFMANN, JAMES MILL, THE VEDAS,
H. H. WILSON

WITH ADDITIONAL CITATIONS FROM

CESARE CANTU, H. T. COLEBROKE, T. W. RHYS DAVIDS, MAX
DUNCKER, FA-HIAN AND HWEN TSANG, J. FERGUSSON,
HANNO, HERODOTUS, B. H. HODGSON, CHRISTIAN
LASSEN, PLINIUS SECUNDUS, GEORG WEBER

[470]

Copyright, 1904,
By HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.

All rights reserved.

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[471]

PART VII.—ANCIENT INDIA

TABLE OF CONTENTS

	Page
Indian History in Outline	475
Chapter I. Land and People	482
Chapter II. Indian History—Legend and Reality	493
Chapter III. Manners and Customs of the Ancient Hindus	508
Chapter IV. Brahmanism and Buddhism	525
Brief Reference-List of Authorities by Chapters	549
A General Bibliography of Indian History	550

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[472]
[473]

INDIAN HISTORY IN OUTLINE

A PRELIMINARY SURVEY, COMPRISING A CURSORY VIEW OF THE SWEEP OF EVENTS AND A TABLE OF CHRONOLOGY

The important place which India holds in recent history combines with the fascination of its mysteries to give this country an interest in the eyes of the modern historian which it never held previously to the last century. Thus one finds that in the most recent German Weltgeschichte the history of ancient India is given almost as much space as is devoted to the entire history of ancient Greece or Rome. Whereas, to point a contrast, it may be noted that in the classical Weltgeschichte of Schlosser, written half a century ago, the history of India is allotted only about a dozen pages. It may fairly be held that in each of these cases there is a lack of true historical perspective, for, whereas it would be absurd to claim that India receives anything like just treatment in the condensed summary of Schlosser, it would be equally absurd to claim that the actual world-historic merit of India is at all comparable—from a European standpoint—to that of Greece or Rome. But questions of exact importance aside, the facts just cited evidence a growing realisation of the importance of the oriental branch of the great Aryan tree. They show among other things that the Western mind is being aroused from that standpoint of insular dogmatism on which it placed itself with such seeming security.

It is a hopeful sign of the times, for it suggests that the hour is near at hand when it will be generally demanded of the historian who attempts to deal with general history that he shall look out upon the world not with the eyes of a narrow European partisanship, but with true cosmopolitanism. When this is done it will become more and more evident that a great people of the Orient, who had attained the highest stage of culture, had developed an extraordinary literature, and achieved the height of an amazing practical philosophy at least half a millennium before the beginning of our era, are not to be treated with contempt because their conceptions of religion and their estimate of the right ideals of practical civilisation differ from our own. To such a clarified view the position given to the history of India in the work just referred to must manifestly tend.

It must be admitted, however, that whatever the interest attaching to Indian history, almost insuperable difficulties stand in the way of a clear interpretation of that history. The country itself is of enormous size, comprising about a million and a half of square miles, and giving residence to a population estimated at some two hundred and forty millions. This enormous population is made up of a great variety of races, the origin of which is altogether obscure. When one speaks of the history of ancient India, one[474] practically ignores all these indigenous races, and refers merely to the invading hosts of so-called Aryans that came into the country from the northwest and finally became dominant there. How greatly these invaders were modified as a race by their contact with the native hordes of India, is evidenced in the wide gap that separates the Aryan of India to-day from the Aryan of Europe.

As to the exact time when the Aryan invasion occurred, all is obscure. Nor is anything definite known of the history of conquest, and the subsequent development of the race in India, except such merely inferential glimpses as may be gained through study of the Vedas. India was indeed known to the western world from a very early period. We have seen that the Assyrian monuments depict animals unmistakably of Indian origin, as being brought in tribute to the court of Shalmaneser II. But neither these nor any other records of the western world suffice to throw any light whatever upon the real history of India or give us any knowledge of the country beyond the mere proof that its existence was known, until so relatively late a period as the conquest of Alexander. After that time the West and the East were in closer contact.

Seleucus, a general of Alexander’s and the inheritor of the chief part of his Asiatic territories, entered into diplomatic relations with an Indian Raja, Chandragupta by name, who had driven the Macedonian garrisons from the Punjab and proved himself too formidable to be conquered. The ambassador sent by Seleucus to the court of the Raja was named Megasthenes. The Greek appears to have been greatly impressed with what he saw of Indian life, for he wrote an enthusiastic description of the manners and customs of the Indian people. This account would appear to have circulated widely in the Grecian world, and to have afforded one of the sources for the accounts of India given at a later day by Diodorus and Arrian; but, unfortunately, the original has not come down to us. Its loss was probably due, in part, at any rate, to the excellence of Arrian’s work. Arrian drew also upon the account of India written by Nearchus, the general who commanded Alexander’s fleet.

No doubt there were other writers of the time of Alexander and the immediately succeeding period who wrote on India, but if so, their works, like those of Megasthenes and Nearchus, were superseded by the famous work of Arrian, which, as has been pointed out by Professor Lefmann, was for many centuries regarded as the most authoritative book on the subject. Arrian, it will be recalled, was also the author of the most authoritative life of Alexander the Great. It is not quite clear that his Indica was originally intended as a separate production; in any event, it naturally grew out of the history of Alexander. There is no reason to suppose that Arrian had visited India, but his recognised merits as a careful historian give a high degree of reliability to his work as evidencing the best knowledge of his time. It must be understood, however, that this knowledge had referred almost exclusively to the manners and customs of India, throwing almost no light whatever on the sweep of historical events.

Turning to India itself, we find that almost no historical documents except the religious books have come down from antiquity. The one bright spot in Indian history of a relatively early period is furnished by the reign of King Asoka.[16] Asoka lived about the middle of the third century B.C. He was a great conqueror, and appears to have brought a large part of India under his [475]sway. His famous edict was engraved on rocks and pillars throughout his domain. These edicts are chiefly concerned with the practical enforcement of the duties enjoined by the Buddhist faith.

“Seventeen versions of the edicts of Asoka have been discovered,” says Taylor. “They are engraved on rocks and pillars in all parts of India, and there are several inscriptions of dedication on caves or rock-cut temples which were constructed by him. There are also six pillar inscriptions, of which the best known are those at Delhi and Allahabad. On five of the pillars are inscribed the six edicts promulgated in the year 236 B.C., while the rock inscriptions contain copies, more or less complete, of the fourteen earlier edicts which date from 251 B.C. One of the most perfect covers the face of a huge granite boulder, seventy-five feet in length and twelve in height, at Girnar, near Junagarh, in Gujarat. There is another copy at Dhauli; a fourth, in a different alphabet, at Kapur-di-giri, on the frontiers of Afghanistan; and a fifth, four hundred miles to the southeast, at Khalsi. There are also six rock inscriptions, containing single edicts. An imperfect fragment, on which the well-known title of Asoka can however be read, has been brought from Ceylon.

“The wide range of these inscriptions shows the extent of the dominion or supremacy of Asoka. They are found from Gujarat on the western coast to Orissa on the east; as far north as Peshawar, as far south as the boundary of the Madras Presidency, if not even in Ceylon. They range over fifteen degrees of longitude, and twenty-seven of latitude.”[17]

Aside from their interest as historical documents, these inscriptions of Asoka had the greatest importance in giving an insight into the literature of India; for it was through them that the Indian alphabet was interpreted by Princeps. “The Delhi pillar and the granite boulder at Girnar,” says Taylor, “may fairly take their place in the history of epigraphy beside the bilingual inscription of Malta, the Rosetta Stone, and the rock of Behistun.” Unfortunately, the later rulers of India did not follow the example of Asoka, and his inscriptions are almost unique among the epigraphic remains of India.

It will be evident then, that classical literature and monumental remains give but brief glimpses of the actual history of early India. It follows that no full knowledge of this subject is, or perhaps ever can be, available.

FOOTNOTES

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[482]

CHAPTER I. LAND AND PEOPLE

India like China and Egypt is reputed to be a land of evasive mysteries. Like them it had a self-contained civilisation with apparently no desire to reach out from it to the greater world. To be sure, India was not shut off from outside contact as fully as China, for the Phœnicians were early drawn by its fabled treasures to visit it in a commercial capacity, and tradition relates that, at least once, Assyrian forces had invaded its bounds on a less peaceful mission. But, nevertheless, the share of the Indians themselves in such intercourse was largely passive. They received foreign traders, unlike the early Egyptians; and they repelled foreign invaders; but they themselves seemed just as little inclined as before to spread beyond national bounds. Even the Egyptians had their periods of foreign conquests, when they penetrated Asia, at least as far as the Tigris, but if the Hindus ever yielded to a like impulse there is no record of it preserved to us. Yet their influence upon the nations that traded with them must have been considerable and they thus have a larger share in the scheme of ancient history than China. Even so, however, their place is a minor one compared with that of Egypt and Babylonia. Even were it greater, the records from which to reconstruct its history are meagre and we shall be obliged to content ourselves with a sketch that is at best but fragmentary.

There is another point of view from which the Hindus have an interest exceeding that of even the most important of ancient nations that we have hitherto studied. For with them we come for the first time in contact with the great Aryan race. Hitherto we have traced the history of the Hamitic, Semitic, and Turanian races, but now with the Aryan race we enter upon what may be considered the direct channel of European history, for practically all subsequent history has to do with this race.

Turning then to the Hindus, the easternmost branch of the great Indo-Germanic or Aryan race, we find, as was to be expected, the same utter obscurity as to origin that we have seen encompassing all questions of racial beginnings elsewhere. One perhaps is justified, however, in feeling that in the case of the Hindus secure traditions carry us one stage farther back than is the case, for example, with such races as the Egyptians and Chinese. For it is accepted as a clear historic fact that the Aryan race, who came to be at a very early day,—at least 1000 B.C.,—the absolutely dominant force practically throughout the vast territory of India, had invaded this territory from the northwest; had come, in short, from that Central-Asiatic centre of distribution which we have just spoken of as the long accepted traditional cradle of the Aryan races. Whether at a still earlier period this migration had its source in more distant lands, including ultimately the Atlantic borders of Europe, is altogether problematical, but that the immediate source of invasion was Central Asia is not to be doubted.

[483]

The beginning of this invasion in which the Central-Asiatic Aryan people descended upon the northwestern regions of the land, which we now term India, date from a vaguely determined period, which can hardly be more recent than 2000 years B.C. From this beginning the invaders spread farther and farther beyond the Ganges, occupying the great fertile plains of Central India, and ultimately the plateau of the Deccan, and crowding the original inhabitants into out-of-the-way corners of the land till they seemed almost exterminated. This extermination of the original or non-Aryan population of India, however, was only relative, as even now there are many millions of their descendants still living in India; but the invaders became so utterly dominant and so enormously preponderant in numbers that the original inhabitants may practically be disregarded in treating of Indian history.

The exact details of the early history of the Aryans in India are quite unknown. So far as the history of this period can be reconstructed at all, materials for it are furnished, as in the case of the early history of almost all other nations, solely by traditions, which came ultimately, and that at a very early day, to be woven into a system of theology. Here, as elsewhere, those tales and myths of godlike heroes and hero-gods which embalmed the spirit of many aspiring generations, came ultimately, when gathered into books, to be accepted as a divine revelation made to a single early prophet. Here, as among several other nations, there was also built up a great system of national epic poetry. Parts of this are preserved to us under the titles of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, and are in themselves, as is always the case with the great national epics, important sources of history if properly interpreted.

The great religious books bore the name of Vedas, and these at a relatively late stage of national evolution,—yet, perhaps as early as 800 or 900 B.C.,—were gathered into a document, which came to be known as Manu’s Code, Manu being a name which signified ethnologically the first man, and the code being of course the supposed divine revelation delivered to that first man. This code in its various departments is the chief source on which historians must draw in interpreting the early history of India. At the time when this code was written, society in India had already reached a relatively high grade of civilisation; in particular, the priests had fixed their firm hold upon the national life, and that strange system of castes, which is so typical a feature in Indian life, had become firmly established.

Some centuries later, the power of the Brahmans was for a time threatened through the advent of a new prophet and philosophical teacher in the person of the prince Buddha. This reformer lived about the 6th century B.C. He was of royal blood, but he early threw aside the prerogatives of his birth and became a peripatetic philosopher. His aim was essentially the same as that which actuated another Aryan, Socrates by name, in the distant land of Greece, at a slightly later period. He strove to inculcate lessons of right living, of practical morality. With religion, as such, he professed to have little concern, yet soon after his death his teachings served as the foundations for a new religious system, which spread rapidly under stimulus of persecution and waged a long, fierce warfare with the established creeds of Brahmanism.

As regards India itself, this religious rebellion did not prove a revolution, for the established religion of Brahmanism remained in firm possession of the field, expelling the would-be usurper. But the doctrines of Buddha thus renounced in the land of their origin, spread rapidly to the east, into Tibet[484] and China, and are to-day accepted as the one true faith by some scores of millions of people—an appreciable proportion of the total population of the globe: perhaps as large a number as subscribe to the tenets of any other single form of religious belief.

As to the political history of India, in a narrower sense, comparatively little need be said, so closely is this history bound up with the growth and struggles of religious doctrines. The land was early divided into lesser principalities ruled by petty sovereigns, who themselves were more or less dominated by the priesthood. There were, of course, times when one or another of these principalities was aggrandised through the efforts of an unusual sovereign, and, as we shall see, there were periods and places where memorials of the power of princes and of priests were left in the form of extraordinary temples and grottos of unique design and execution. But beyond the fact of the gradual sweep of the Aryan civilisation from the northwest toward the south and east, until it gradually encompassed the entire Indian peninsula, and the further fact of the growth of Brahmanism, with all that it implied, until it dominated the entire race, there is no single main current in the evolution of the people of ancient India, which the present-day historian can trace in any such clean-cut way, as, for example, he can trace the succession of dominant dynasties in Egypt, or in Assyrio-Babylonia. a

THE LAND

On the southern border of that central highland which, like “a high firm rocky islet in the storm-tossed sea,” forms the centre of the Asiatic continent, rise the Himalayas, the highest mountain-range on earth, in parallel chains broken by wild abysses. Boundless fields of snow and ice which even the power of the tropical sun cannot affect and white mountain tops of shimmering brilliance surround the Himavat, “the King of rocks,” as it is termed in the Indian epic, where “nothing blooms, not a spear of grass puts forth its green, and no bird soars through the air, where not a living thing stirs save the wind alone.” The dead silence of ice-bound nature reigns everywhere, no plant, no moss springs from the steep snow-covered slopes. Vegetation commences only at the third ridge of mountains, and, making its first appearance in oaks, birches, and pines and in a scanty cultivation of corn, soon shows its full power in the mighty tree-growth of the lower forest region, which then passes into a highland on the west, and on the east into a richly watered plain, where in the tree-high jungle grass of the impenetrable primeval forest, tigers, elephants, and huge snakes abound, and in the stagnant waters and swamps the plants rot and “the air is filled with foul pestilence.” “This mountainous wall,” says Duncker, “which extends about 1750 miles from west to east, determines the nature and life of the country that stretches out southward from it as the peninsula of Italy does from the European Alps,” and gives it the character of a “continent isolated geographically, climatically, and historically.”

The Himalaya Mountains protect highland and plains from the rough north winds which blow cold and devastating over the highland of central Asia; but they also check the rain clouds, the collected moisture of the ocean which the monsoons drive hither from the southern sea. So these clouds have to pour forth their store of water on the plains at the foot of the Himalayas, “turning the sun’s heat into coolness and the parched vegetation into a luxuriant green.” Hence arises that variety of climate and[485] vegetation which has ever caused India to appear the most blessed part of the earth, the fruit-garden of the world.

The shape of India can be compared to two triangles, which, coinciding at their base, extend their two apexes to opposite points of the compass, northward and southward. The northern triangle, whose sides are intersected by lofty chains of mountains, while broad lowlands and plains stretch over the middle, is Hindustan proper. Across it the mightiest rivers in the country, the Indus in the west, the Brahmaputra in the east, and the Ganges in the middle, after bursting forth from the icefields of the Himalayas, follow their tortuous courses to the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal.

The southern triangle, on the other hand, the sides of which consist of flat coast and the middle of broad plateaus and chains of mountains, is formed by the Deccan, the middle one of the three great peninsulas which extend from the mainland of Asia toward the south.

Hindustan is composed of the two river valleys of the Indus and Ganges, which are quite distinct in nature and history. Both rivers have their source in the northern mountains, in the vicinity of the sacred lakes, where Kailasa, the mountain of the gods, rises to an unmeasured height, in the same district where the three other great streams of India, the Sutlej, the Brahmaputra, and the Jumna, have their rise.

The Indus at first turns westward, then, not far from the famous vale of Kashmir, it takes a southerly direction, and increased by the Jhelum, Sutlej, and three other tributaries, it flows on through the Punjab (“Land of the Five Rivers”) to the Indian Ocean.

The Ganges, on the contrary, which with its tributary the Jumna takes a southerly course, soon reaches the Indian plains, but, checked in its course by the rugged Vindhya Mountains, it turns to the east, and increased by many tributaries from north and south, it pours its fertilising waters over its low banks, producing that luxuriant vegetation which manifests itself both in the mighty tree-growth with its shady boughs and tops, and in the richness of the splendid products and the tropical flora.

With this fertility, however, is combined an enervating sultry atmosphere and a foul pestilential air, arising from the heat and moisture of the climate, which has most disastrous effects in the alluvial district of Bengal, where the waters of the Brahmaputra in their southerly course approach the wide stream of the Ganges.

“The district above the Delta,” says Lassen, “where the still undivided Ganges is so wide that one can scarcely see from bank to bank, is a most rich and fertile country, but of an enervating and sultry climate. In the Delta itself an even more luxuriant power of production manifests itself. The earth brings forth such mighty, impenetrable thickets of trees and climbing plants that man, unable to contend with it, is obliged to give it over to the wild beasts for a dwelling, to the tiger for sovereignty.”

The Indus first follows, in a westerly direction, the great rock-gorge which runs with a depth of ten thousand feet between the parallel mountain chains of the Karakoram (Muz-Tagh) and the Himalayas. After breaking through the Hindu Kush mountains in a narrow bed, it flows in a southerly direction from the point where, not far from the city of Attock, at the west of the flowery Vale of Kashmir, its waters are increased by the river Kabul.

The Vale of Kashmir, which from snowfield to snowfield has a width of only ten to twelve miles, once enjoyed a great fame as the seat of the original paradise of the human race. And although more exact investigations have stripped off much of its poetic charm, it may nevertheless, on account of the fertility[486] of its soil, its glorious climate, and the beauty of its mountain scenery be regarded as one of the most blessed spots upon earth. It forms an isolated world by itself, is favourably situated for trade with the north and the west, and was in earliest times one of the principal seats of Indian culture. In the mountains of Kashmir rises the Jhelum (Hydaspes) [the ancient Vitasta], one of those famous four rivers which together with the Indus have given the country the name of Punjab (or Land of the Five Rivers). The most easterly river is the Sutlej, called in its lower course Garra, and by the Greeks, Hyphasis.

After the Indus has received these rivers, its valley is bounded on the west by the mountain chains of Persia, and on the east by a wide waterless steppe, which extends from the foothills of the Himalayas to the sea, and which gives only sparse nourishment to the buffalo herds, asses and camels. Near the mouth of the river, inundations of the sea, the dense growth of rushes and reeds and the want of fresh water prevent better cultivation and a denser population.

Westward of the upper Indus lies the rich beautiful mountain land of Afghanistan, intersected by branches of the Hindu Kush Mountains, and since remote antiquity the great caravan route—“a long gateway between Iran and India, through which the products of the land as well as those of the spirit passed for exchange.” In the south of Afghanistan the western boundary of India is formed by some chains of mountains that tower above the low narrow banks of the Indus; first by the Sulaiman chain, with the “Throne of Solomon,” 11,317 feet high, many narrow passes and bare heights, and then by the Brahui Mountains with a southern branch stretching to the sea, and harbouring in its roadless, secluded valleys a black race of strange form and language. In the west these mountains traverse the plateau of Kelat, whose narrow rocky gorges afford the sole pass to the traveller who desires to go from the central Indus valley to Persia. The eastern side of the mountains as far as the bank of the Indus, Sewestan and Kakha Gardara, with its splendid date palms, is still reckoned as Indian territory.

The southern triangle, the Deccan, a tableland of a tropical character, is quite different from Hindustan, which with the exception of the mountainous district in the south of the Himalayas and in the north of Vindhyas, mainly embraces the plains in the two river valleys of the Indus and the Ganges.

From the girdle of the Vindhya Mountains which lie like a great bulwark in front of the Deccan, the bold rugged chain of the Aravalli, rich in myths, branches off to the northwest, while the Ghats stretch along the western coast, leaving only a narrow strip of land with small, westerly flowing streams. The tableland slopes gradually to the east until it forms a rich, well-watered, sea-washed valley near the Bay of Bengal, which receives most of the rivers, like the Mahanadi, the Godavari, the Krishna [Kistna], the Kaveri, etc. Only two of the rivers of the Vindhya, the Narbada and the Tapti, flow westward.

As Lassen says: “The Deccan can be described as a strip of coast in the west, another in the east and in the middle among the Ghats, a mountainous land cut up by streams into several small districts.” The highland in the centre, intersected by many river valleys and wild defiles, “has on the whole no very great elevation, and still it is entirely within the cooler mountain district and removed from the sultry heat of the lowlands; it is only quite in the south that it is high enough for the formation of snow.”

The peninsula, therefore, presents an extremely varied natural aspect, a[487] “grand alternation of waste shifting sands and rich alluvial deposits, of bare mountain-sides and densely wooded swampy lowlands, of narrow defiles and open river beds; and yet it lacks the many indentations of the sea with their navigable rivers which have made western Europe such a populous land.”

The Vindhya Mountains, although only of moderate height, formed a wide barrier between Hindustan and the Deccan, and with their impassable ruggedness, luxuriant forests, and wild beasts afforded the aborigines a safe refuge from the northern conquerors. And thus, even in the splendid period of Brahmanism, unconquered races maintained themselves in independence in these impenetrable defiles and wild forests of the central country, and did not give up their language, their savage nature, and their rude religious cult with its human sacrifices, for the orderly life, the settled state, and the mild Brahmanic religion of the Aryan Hindu.

The alternation of highland and valley, the pleasant mixture of mountain air and tropical heat, the invigorating influence of the moisture, which the nearness of the sea, the countless streams, and the regularly recurring rains of the monsoon season spread over the whole land, produced that richness of vegetation, that fertility of soil, and that fulness and variety of every kind of natural product which even in antiquity caused India to be praised as a land of happiness and blessing, made it the aim of the world’s commerce, but at the same time aroused the cupidity of the conqueror.

Whilst the snow valleys and mountain districts of the Himalayas with their temperate climate, produce plants and cereals, fruit and forest trees corresponding to southern European species, in the plains of the Jumna and the Ganges the vegetation of the tropical climate grows along with that of the temperate zones. By the side of corn, legumes, and fruit in most luxuriant abundance there is here rice and cotton, sugar and indigo, and a wonderful southern flora of a marvellous richness of colour; and in the districts of the Deccan, where, as on the coast of Malabar, the monsoons and the mountain streams bring an abundance of moisture, the noble products of India ripen to a threefold harvest.

Here the most varied tropical plants thrive in rare abundance, here with industry three rice harvests can be obtained, here grow the sugar-cane and the pepper plant, the banana and the mango; here rise stately forests of the Indian oak, called teak, of the precious sandal-wood, of palm and fig trees with their cool shady avenues; this is the home of the betel-nut tree and the nutmeg tree; here the land is redolent of spices and sweet odours; here blooms the vari-coloured water lily, the sacred lotus plant in whose seed the form of the future plant is visible, wherefore it was to the Indian a symbol of the evolution of the world from its original germ.

The streams carry gold sand, in the mountains are diamond mines, and precious stones and crystals of the most beautiful brilliancy, the seas furnish pearls for the adornment of temples and for jewelry. A numerous fauna, particularly the cow, the horse and the elephant, has the most varied relations with man, and hence also occupies an important place in the religious conceptions of the Hindu; the goat of the Himalayas supplies the fine wool for the cashmere shawls, the musk deer gives perfume, the silkworm spins the noble thread for the most costly fabric; and the great dogs of some of the western states were trained by the Indians and Persians for the chase and for war. The bright-feathered birds (parrots), which even learn the language of man, the peacocks with their broad tails of dark blue and emerald, and the countless family of monkeys excited the admiration of Greek antiquity from Herodotus and Ctesias down to the authors of the Alexandrian period[488] [Megasthenes]. India was always the land of wonders, where fancy established her kingdom, where legend and poetry loved to tarry.b

This then is the theatre of India’s history. What of the strange people who have dwelt there so little changed by time? The ethnology of the Indians has been debated fiercely and long.

THE EARLY PEOPLES OF INDIA

The population of India amounts to about a fourth part of that of the globe and consists of various races. In the Vindhyas the Munda tribes are still to be found to a great extent in their original condition and without the knowledge of the use of metal. They seem to be the original inhabitants, related to the other coloured peoples of southern Asia, and appear to have been driven from the plains into the mountains by nations who immigrated at a later period. Their religion is fetish-worship. Their clothing is limited to what is absolutely indispensable.

To them belong the Kols who inhabit the highlands of Chota Nagpur in southern Behar, northwest of Calcutta: they are divided into various sections, the Santals, the Kols of Singbum or Larka Kols, the Kols of Bhumij, and the Munda Kols south of Ranchi in the Kolhan, and others; the Khamti, a kindred people, live on the borders of further India: the Ramusi, who live between Poona and Kolapur and the Warali, southeast of Damaun (between Bombay and Surat), speak the Sanskrit tongue of the Mahrattas; the Bhils dwell in the woods on the Tapti and Nerbudda and in Guzerat, but have also adopted civilisation together with the Aryan language. The Mairs in the Aravalli hills southwest of Ajmir and the Mina in the neighbourhood of the Jumna are also Munda tribes.

The Deccan is inhabited mainly by the Dravidians, whose languages are entirely different from the Munda and Sanskrit tongues. Like the Munda they have dark skins, but with the exception of a few mountain peoples they are civilised and they possess voluminous writings. They include the Tamil in the southernmost part of the Deccan, extending from Palikat (north of Madras) to Cape Comorin and east of a line drawn to the same cape from Bangalore through Coimbatore. The Telinga or Telugu (Sanskrit, Andhra) inhabit the country between Palikat and Orissa, and are bordered on the northwest by the Mahratta country. Inscriptions tell us of Andhra kings of the first century B.C. The Telugu names of many towns on the east coast show that this people were once extended over an area which reached much further north and even to Bengal. Like the Tamil they have both a popular and a literary language. The Tulu in the neighbourhood of Mangalore, formerly also reached to the coast, where the Malabar are now to be found; the latter received Christianity from Persia at an early period and wrote their language in Syrian characters called Karshunish.

North of them are the Kanarese, inhabiting the coast and the inland districts towards Mysore, where they join uncivilised mountain peoples, the Kota, Badaga, and Koduga (Coorg). The Toda in the Nilgiris north of Coimbatore, represent the unmixed type of the race; they are taller than the other peoples and practise polyandry. Their religion consists in the fear of spirits, whose malignity is opposed by magic; the grand function of the village priest is the milking of the cows. The Uraon Kols and the Rajmahal Kols of the Lower Ganges as far as Gondwana are also of Dravidian origin. They are the pariahs of the social system; the Gonds speak Hindi,[489] a Sanskrit language. They worship two gods, from whom proceed the good and evil in creation.

Other Dravidian peoples are the Ku or Kandhs in the mountains of Orissa, and finally, the Brahuis in the mountains of Baluchistan, south of Kelat in eastern Iran—the Ethiopians of the Greeks. Their presence in this remote territory is a token of the wide extension of the race in former times, and they perhaps migrated from the highlands of Asia.

Yet another nationality is represented by the original inhabitants of Ceylon (called in Sanskrit Sinhaladvipa, or the Island of the Sinhalas), the Vaddas, i.e. hunters, east of the Mahawalliganga who are still preserved from the admixture of foreign blood; ethnologically they show a resemblance to the ancient Dravidian peoples, but their language, the Elu, is quite peculiar to themselves.

It is supposed that about the year 2000 the immigration of Aryan (Indo-European) tribes started from the northwest. At some undefined period these Aryans formed one people with the Iranians, and their language, Sanskrit, is closely related to the Iranian. About 1500 years before Christ they had spread over the territory of the Indus, but it was not till five hundred years later that they began to conquer the plain of the Ganges, and the severe struggles which they had to sustain against the population are reflected in the epic as well as in countless legends; for in virtue of a peculiar love of the fantastic and thanks to the diligence of Brahman priests, the Aryan Indians have enveloped their ancient history in a cloud of myths and literally revelled in the construction of chronological systems covering immeasurable periods of time.

At the time of the Ophir voyage, when Solomon sent to India for ivory, apes, and peacocks, there were as yet no Aryans in southern India, for the name for apes, in Hebrew “qof,” and in Sanskrit “kapi,” cannot be an Aryan word; it first comes to hand in the latest book of the Rig-Veda, but also appears in the form “qaf” as early as the IVth Dynasty in Egypt, and the name for peacocks, “tuki,” has been borrowed from the Malabar “togei.” From an ethnological point of view the Aryans of India are not a pure race, as they appear to have been when they dwelt in the valley of the Indus; for in the Veda a contrast is often drawn between a clear complexion and the dark skin of the indigenous peoples. They must on the contrary have mixed with natives at some period when a peculiar civilisation and, in consequence, an increasing separation of the different classes was in course of development; and not only has the physical type greatly altered its original Indo-European character, but the whole civilisation of the Indians has received the stamp of southern and eastern Asia, which makes them appear to us even stranger than the Asiatic Semites or the Egyptians. This fact is often overlooked, because the use of the Aryan speech continually reminds us of the close relationship between the Indian Aryans and the Persians and Europeans. And it is not merely that the Aryans have assumed the racial marks of the Dravidian, but on the other hand the pure type of the indigenous population has only been preserved in the uncivilised mountain peoples. In later centuries the course of history introduced still further elements, as the Indo-Scythians in the northwest, the Persians and Arabians, and, finally, the Europeans, including those Mohammedans who have had so much influence on religious development.

In the territory in which the Aryan population preponderated, the Sanskrit language superseded the native one. The most widely diffused language of India is the Hindi, whose sphere is bordered in the west by[490] the languages of the Punjab and of Sind with that of Cutch, in the south by the Guzerati language, the Mahratta, and the Telinga, and in the east by the tongues of Orissa and Bengal, to which the Asami is added. With the exception of Telinga, these are all Aryan languages.

In the north, Hindi reaches as far as the Terai, a vast prairie and forest inhabited by elephants, rhinoceros, tigers and other wild beasts, beyond which, extended over the southern slope of the Himalayas, dwells a whole series of peoples. In the high mountains and beyond them these peoples adjoin the Tibetans; the Rong or Lepcha in Sikkim, whose language, a Tibetan dialect, became known a few years ago; the Kiratis and Limbus of eastern Nepal; the Murmis and Newars in Nepal; the Kumaunis, and others.

The Mohammedan Indians have enriched Hindi with Arabic and Persian words and make use of the Arabic writing. This language which differs greatly from Hindi in grammar and syntax, is called Hindustani and is the chief speech current in India. Within the Hindi, Kellogg distinguishes eleven idioms, and these are again subdivided into dialects. Besides the Sanskrit languages already mentioned which border on Hindi, there are also some to be found in the Himalayas, especially in Kashmir and in Dardistan, a country bordered on the north by Muztagh (Karakoram), on the west by the mountain chain which divides it from the country of Chitral in the north, on the east by a similar range between the Indus and Krishnaganga, and on the northeast by the territories of Rongdo and Baltistan. According to Ujfalvy the inhabitants of the latter are also Aryans who have adopted the Tibetan language. Dardistan is inhabited by various races, who only immigrated in the Middle Ages and at a still later period, and even now are still in an unsettled condition. It was not explored till recent times by Schlagintweit, Leitner, Hayward and Biddulph. Whilst in ancient times the Darada (Dardæ) were spread over the valley of the Indus as far as the gold-fields of Thok Jalung, the name of Dard was found by Biddulph only opposite the entrance to the Kandia valley, where the Indus turns its course southward.

Another widespread people are the Shins, whose special seat is Gilgit and their language a Sanskrit tongue, closely related to those of the Punjab and Kashmir and to Hindustani. These people found their way from Shinkari between the Indus and Krishnaganga, and form the main population of the Indus valley from Ghor to Ghorband: their language has several dialects and in Baltistan they call themselves Rom, as the gypsies do.

Another daughter-language of Sanskrit is spoken by the tribes in the southwest of Dardistan, who claim to have come from Swat. This language has also different dialects as the Gowro, the Narisati and the language of the Siah-posh in Wamastan. On the other hand the people in Hunza, Nagar and Yassin speak Burishki, which Biddulph regards as the language of the Yuechi. The Yidghah, a Persian idiom, is also found in Dardistan.

The oldest monuments of Indo-Aryan literature, namely the Veda hymns, contain many allusions to historical conditions, which the poet, however, assumed to be well known, or they may have been related in prose passages inserted between the verses which are all that now remain. They mention five peoples, the Turwasa, Jadu, Anu, Druhju and the Puru, who finally won the upper hand after the battle of the ten kings and are called Kuru in the epic. Besides this they mention a series of kings and priests who can, however, be assigned to no definite time or place.

The social conditions are primitive, and whilst the original inhabitants had advanced so far in civilisation that they possessed fortified towns and[491] great wealth in herds, furniture, metal ornaments and good weapons, the Aryans were still in the condition of cattle-breeders, to whom the possessions of the enemy were a welcome spoil. Even in the epic, the Danawa Maja, a Daitja, or enemy of the (Aryan) gods, and architect of the Asuras, builds a palace for the sons of Pandu; for it was from the natives that the Aryans learnt the art of building in stone, they themselves, like other Indo-Europeans, understanding only how to build in wood and piles, or they dwelt in caves.

The Aryan prayers for the prosperity of their own cows, for a rich produce of butter, grass and crops, were directed to divine beings in whom natural phenomena and the elements are personified, but which also embody moral conceptions. But the songs of the Rig-Veda date from such various periods that, side by side with these ideas of a simple age, we also discern a detailed picture of sacrificial rites and an advanced culture, and even the appearance of doubt of the religious verities; it is quite comprehensible that new poems might at any time come into existence, or new families of singers (Rishis) appear on the scene with their store of hymns for sacrificial purposes, until a general collection of songs had been drawn up and adapted to a form of worship regulated in perpetuity by agreement between all the families of Rishis whom their class interests made anxious to be reconciled with one another.

The four Vedas (or collections of ceremonial songs), were supplemented by an enormous mass of literature proceeding from various sections, or schools. This includes, first the Brahmana, works serving to guide the priests in the procedure relating to sacrifices, then those explaining and justifying the application of the verses to each separate part of the service on mythological or symbolic grounds. Here the view taken attains the region of philosophical speculation, so that in these Upanishads, some one hundred and fifty in number, lie the beginnings of a philosophy of religion, and the later works of this class contain a regular philosophical system. The inexhaustible knowledge laid up in these numerous works was finally epitomised in the shortest conceivable form in the so-called Sutra (manuals), which, however, are frequently written only in a language of technical symbols so that they require an explanation from the teacher or a commentary. They are intended to be learnt by heart.

The Vedas cannot have been committed to the Indian writing at a very early period, since we know of none older than the inscriptions of Asoka, which date from the middle of the third century B.C.; one of the writings which here appear, and which runs from left to right, is the Watteluta alphabet, derived from those Arabic alphabets to be seen in the inscriptions found in Harra or Safa in eastern Hauran and deciphered by Halévy in 1877. This character belongs to the Alexandrian period. In the northwest of India a second alphabet is to be found on the Asoka inscriptions and on coins. It runs from right to left and is considered to be the same which was brought here in the Persian epoch and was derived from the Aramaic used in the Persian empire; however, it too may have been introduced later, for it strongly resembles the alphabet of the Blacas papyrus (assigned to the age of the Ptolemies, or, with more probability, to that of the later Persians), and other papyruses of the Alexandrian epoch. It is not conceivable that Asoka and those who issued the coins would have made use of these alphabets if an older and more perfect one had existed in India and been used for the Vedas; but in order to commit the Vedas to writing and to fix their form in all the details of phonetics and accentuation, a character was required[492] whose perfection is only attained by the cultured Devanagari writing, which appears to have been first used in Malwa, the kingdom of Vikramaditya: it is still less conceivable that, for instance, the Pratisakhya sutras of the four Vedas should have had before them a work in a more imperfect writing, since these compendiums of phonology descend to the most extreme subtleties and in doing so presuppose the precise text which we now possess and which must consequently have received a fixed form at least at the epoch of these grammatical works.

If we fix the conquest of the territory of the Ganges in the period at the beginning of the first millennium B.C., we do so on no historical evidence but only on the grounds of the probability that that conquest extended over hundreds of years and that in the first centuries before Christ it was an accomplished fact. The Mahabharata, that vast epic compared with which Homer seems a mere pocket-book, only received its present form some centuries after Christ, and the lists we have of the kings of those peoples who figure in the poem, especially those of the country of Magadha (Behar), are unreliable and vary in the different copies in which they are found.

The spread of the Aryans along the coast of the Deccan and as far as Ceylon, of which the Ramayana gives a fabulous account, is also not chronologically definable, for this poem in twenty-four thousand distiches is also a very late product, and that extension lay far behind it, for in the ancient geographers we already find Aryan names affixed to towns in southern India.

The first piece of information concerning Indian history whose date is certain is that of Darius’ conquest of the territory of the Indus, which formed a Persian satrapy. Since then the western countries of India have been under foreign rulers, first under the Bactrian and Indo-Scythian kings, later on under the Sassanids, as is shown both by Indian coins of contemporary kings with a Sassanian stamp and legends in Pahlavi and Sanskrit and by historical notices concerning the relations of the kings of Marwar to Peroz and Anoscharwan, so that the conquest of Mahmoud of Ghazni and later rulers only renewed the ancient claims of Iran upon Indian possessions.c

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CHAPTER II. INDIAN HISTORY—LEGEND AND REALITY

CHRONOLOGY AND ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE HINDUS

Rude nations seem to derive a peculiar gratification from pretensions to a remote antiquity. As a boastful and turgid vanity distinguishes remarkably the oriental nations, they have in most instances carried their claims extravagantly high. We are informed, in a fragment of Chaldaic history, that there were written accounts, preserved at Babylon, with the greatest care, comprehending a term of fifteen myriads of years. The pretended duration of the Chinese monarchy is still more extraordinary. A single king of Egypt was believed to have reigned three myriads of years.

The present age of the world, according to the system of the Hindus, is distinguished into four grand periods, denominated yugas. The first is the Satya yuga comprehending 1,728,000 years; the second the Treta yuga comprehending 1,296,000 years; the third the Dwapar yuga, including 864,000 years; and the fourth the Kali yuga, which will extend to 432,000 years. Of these periods, the first three are expired; and, in the year 1817 of the Christian era, 4911 years of the last. From the commencement, therefore, of the Satya yuga, to the year 1817, is comprehended a space of 3,892,911 years, the antiquity to which this people lay claim.

The contempt with which judicious historians now treat the historical fables of early society, must be indulged with caution when we explore the ancient condition of Hindustan; because the legendary tales of the Hindus have hitherto, among European inquirers, been regarded with particular respect; and because, without a knowledge of them, much of what has been written in Europe concerning the people of India, cannot be understood. It is necessary, therefore, to relate, that at the commencement of the Satya yuga,[494] or 3,892,911 years ago, lived Satyavrata, otherwise denominated Vaivaswata, and also the seventh Manu. He had escaped with his family from an universal deluge, which had destroyed the rest of the human species. Of his descendants, were two royal branches: the one denominated the children of the sun; the other, the children of the moon. The first reigned at Ajodhya or Oudh; the second at Pratisht’hana or Vitora. These families, or dynasties, subsisted till the thousandth year of the present or Kali yuga, at which time they both became extinct; and a list of the names of the successive princes is presented in the Sanskrit books.

Satyavrata, the primitive sire, prolonged his existence and his reign through the whole period of the Satya yuga or 1,728,000 years. From this patriarchal monarch are enumerated, in the solar line of his descendants, fifty-five princes, who inherited the sovereignty till the time of Rama. Now it is agreed among all the Brahmans that Rama filled the throne of Ajodhya at the end of the Treta yuga. The reigns, therefore, of these fifty-five princes, extending from the beginning to the end of that epoch, filled 1,296,000 years, which, at a medium, is more than 23,000 years to each reign. During the next, or Dwapar yuga of 864,000 years, twenty-nine princes are enumerated, who must, at an average, have reigned each 29,793 years. From the beginning of the present, or Kali yuga to the time when the race of solar princes became extinct, are reckoned 1000 years, and thirty princes. There is a wonderful change, therefore, in the last age, in which only thirty-three years, at a medium, are assigned to a reign.

Beside the two lines of solar and lunar kings, a different race, who reigned in Magadha, or Behar, commence with the fourth age. Of these, twenty in regular descent from their ancestor Jarasandha extended to the conclusion of the first thousand years of the present yuga, and were cotemporary with the last thirty princes of the solar and lunar race. At the memorable epoch of the extinction of those branches, the house of Jarasandha also failed; for the reigning prince was slain by his prime minister, who placed his son Pradyota on the throne. Fifteen of the descendants of this usurper enjoyed the sovereignty, and reigned from the date of his accession 498 years, to the time of Nanda, the last prince of the house of Pradyota. He, after a reign of 100 years, was murdered by a Brahman, who raised to the throne a man of the Maurya race, named Chandra Gupta. This prince is reckoned, by our oriental antiquarians, the same with Sandracottus or Sandracuptos, the cotemporary of Alexander the Great. Only nine princes of his line succeeded him, and held the sceptre for 137 years. On the death of the last, his commander in chief ascended the throne, and, together with nine descendants, to whom he transmitted the sovereignty, reigned 112 years. After that period the reigning prince was killed, and succeeded by his minister Vasudeva. Of his family only four princes are enumerated; but they are said to have reigned 345 years. The throne was next usurped by a race of Sudras, the first of whom slew his master, and seized the government. Twenty-one of this race, of whom Chandrabija was the last, reigned during a space of 456 years. The conclusion of the reign of this prince corresponds therefore with the year 2648 of the Kali yuga, and with the year 446 before the birth of Christ. And with him, according to Sir William Jones, closes the authentic system of Hindu chronology.

It is a most suspicious circumstance in the pretended records of a nation, when we find positive statements for a regular and immense series of years in the remote abyss of time, but are entirely deserted by them when we descend to the ages more nearly approaching our own. Where annals[495] are real, they become circumstantial in proportion as they are recent; where fable stands in the place of fact, the times over which the memory has any influence are rejected, and the imagination riots in those in which it is unrestrained. While we receive accounts, the most precise and confident, regarding the times of remote antiquity not a name of a prince in after ages is presented in Hindu records. A great prince named Vikramaditya, is said to have extended widely his conquests and dominion, and to have reigned at Magadha 396 years after Chandrabija. From that time even fiction is silent. We hear no more of the Hindus and their transactions, till the era of Mohammedan conquest; when the Persians alone become our instructors.

After the contempt with which the extravagant claims to antiquity of the Chaldeans and Egyptians had always been treated in Europe, the love of the marvellous is curiously illustrated by the respect which has been paid to the chronology of the Hindus. We received indeed the accounts of the Hindu chronology, not from the incredulous historians of Greece and Rome, but from men who had seen the people; whose imagination had been powerfully affected by the spectacle of a new system of manners, arts, institutions, and ideas; who naturally expected to augment the opinion of their own consequence, by the greatness of the wonders which they had been favoured to behold; and whose astonishment, admiration, and enthusiasm, for a time, successfully propagated themselves. The Hindu statements, if they have not perhaps in any instance gained a literal belief, have almost universally been regarded as very different from the fictions of an unimproved and credulous people, and entitled to a very serious and profound investigation. Yet they are not only carried to the wildest pitch of extravagance, but are utterly inconsistent both with themselves and with other established opinions of the Brahmans.

Of this a single specimen will suffice. The character which the Brahmans assign to the several yugas is a remarkable part of their system. The Satya yuga is distinguished by the epithet of golden; the Treta yuga by that of silver; the Dwapar yuga by that of copper; and the Kali yuga is denominated earthen. In these several ages the virtue, the life, and the stature of man exhibited a remarkable diversity. In the Satya yuga, the whole race were virtuous and pure; the life of man was 100,000 years, and his stature 21 cubits. In the Treta yuga one-third of mankind were corrupt; and human life was reduced to 10,000 years. One-half of the human race were depraved in the Dwapar yuga, and 1000 years bounded the period of life. In the Kali yuga, all men are corrupt, and human life is restricted to 100 years. But though in the Satya yuga men lived only 100,000 years, Satyavrata, according to chronological fiction, reigned 1,728,000 years; in the Treta yuga human life extended only to 10,000 years, yet fifty-five princes reigned, each at a medium, more than 23,000 years; in the Dwapar yuga, though the life of man was reduced to 1000 years, the duration of the reigns was even extended, for twenty-nine princes held each the sceptre in this period for 29,793 years.b

If we turn from such traditions as these and seek more secure records, our quest is futile. Ancient India has no history proper. Its books furnish no document on its past chronology, and its monuments cannot supply the place of books, since the oldest are scarcely three centuries anterior to our era. But for a small number of religious books, in which the historical facts are embedded under masses of legends, the past of India would be as unknown as that of that lost Atlantis, which was destroyed by a geological cataclysm and whose story is related in the ancient traditions preserved by Plato.

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THE AUTHORITY OF THE VEDAS

The only ancient documents which we can consult for the purpose of recovering some trace of this vanished past, are supplied by the Vedas, religious poems written at various epochs, and the oldest of which seem to date from fifteen centuries before our era. After them, but much later, come the epic poems, known under the names of Mahabharata and Ramayana, and the religious and social code of Manu.

Viewed from a purely historical standpoint, the Hindu literature of our own era is not richer than that which preceded it. In fact the Puranas constitute the only sources which can be consulted, and these consist of collections drawn up at different periods, the most ancient of them going no further back than the eighth century after Christ. They are, moreover, too much interspersed with marvellous legends, and too devoid of chronological sequence to permit of modern science deriving much benefit from them. Practically it is only after the Mohammedan invasions of the eleventh century, that, thanks to the Mohammedan writers, the historical period of India begins.

To the very insufficient sources of written information just enumerated, we have to add the accounts of travellers who visited India during ancient times. These accounts are very few in number, since for the period preceding Jesus Christ we possess only some extracts from the narrative of the Greek ambassador, Megasthenes, who stayed at the court of Magadha about the year 300 before our era. For the period of more than thirteen centuries, which separates this remote epoch from the Mohammedan invasions, we possess, besides the scanty references of classical authors, only the narratives of the two Chinese pilgrims, Fa-Hian and Hwen Tsang, who visited India, the first in the fifth, the second in the seventh century. Their works, especially that of the second, undoubtedly constitute the most valuable documents which we possess concerning India before the Mohammedan invasions.

MONUMENTAL RECORDS

The extreme inadequacy of the historical books on India gives a very great importance to the plastic works, monuments, medals, and statues, which the peninsula possesses. The most ancient are the columns on which Asoka had his edicts engraved, 250 years before Christ. After them come the bas-reliefs of the great monuments at Bharhut, Sanchi, etc., constructed at the commencement of our era, or in the two or three centuries which preceded it. They give interesting details respecting the manners, customs, beliefs, and arts of the peoples who constructed them, and show us the degree of civilisation to which these people had attained.

Besides these monuments, of which the oldest date from scarcely three centuries before our era, there are subterranean temples, statues, coins, which combine to throw some light on the history of each of the regions where they came into existence. It is only the remains of buildings and statues that have revealed to us the profound influence of the Greeks in certain countries several centuries after first Alexander, and then all the Greeks, had been expelled from India. Similarly it is the bas-reliefs of the temples which can alone tell us of the history of the origin and transformations of the beliefs which succeeded one another in ancient India.d

[497]

The Indians had learnt the art of writing, and if the Brahmans still handed down the traditions of their schools by word of mouth, they nevertheless did not hesitate to record donations and transfers in legible characters on stone as was done by others. Within the last few years search and investigation directed to these records have brought a great deal to light, cleared up much obscurity, securely established what was doubtful, and passed judgment on what was false; legends from older and versions of later times, have in various instances had their authenticity and truth put to the test. But these investigations are really only beginning.

It has now been decided on the authority of coins and inscriptions that Kanishka or Kanerki was succeeded by one Huvishka or Hoverki (Doerki), and the latter had as a contemporary or co-ruler (Bazodeo or Vasudeva). The dates of the inscriptions of Mathura confirm this last relation. But Vasudeva, “having the Vasu as gods,” points by this name, so renowned in legend, to a Brahmanical belief in the gods. His Okro coins, similar to some which were already in existence in Kanerki’s day, and bearing the image of the triple, three-headed or six-armed Okra deity, strongly remind us of the images of that Trinity, the world-creating, world-preserving, and world-destroying god,—Brahma, Vishnu, Siva,—the so-called Trimurti in the rock temples of Ellora and Elephanta. The Turushka king who, rightly or wrongly, appears according to this to have followed Bazodeo, already exhibits in the images on his coins the type of the Sassanid rule.

At the close of a century the Scythian power in India was broken and gradually thrust back to the territory whence it came, beyond the northern mountain-peaks and, in India itself, to the west and south of the Punjab as far as Guzerat. But the after effects of that power and of the century-long invasion still continued. A Scythian population, united with the aboriginal hill peoples who had been thrust back at an earlier period, remained, and in great part still remains, in those regions. The Jats and the wandering tribes of Sikhs which belong to them are believed to be of non-Aryan origin, and in religion, language, and customs differ from the Brahmans and are opposed to them. The Rajput families of the “king’s sons,” who afterwards founded independent kingdoms in the south, are also considered to be foreign importations into the caste system and as the successors to the Scythian power. The route of these migrations and conquests from the north to the southwest is marked by ruins, and it was on the sites of[498] such ruins that the later Saracens erected their citadels, palaces, and mosques. These too are now nothing but magnificent remains. But we can here treat of older conditions alone, and of those only in brief.

LEGENDS OF THE EARLY HEROES

Legends have arisen concerning the immigration of Saka princes to Surashtra or Guzerat, and stories of an alleged liberation from foreign rule. A celebrated hero of such legends is Vikramaditya, a king of Ujjain in Malwa, and another, with whose birth the Saka era was connected, is Salivahana, the opponent of the first, who is not less renowned than he in legend, and defeated him in the struggle. But though legend has so much to say of these two, history has little or nothing to tell us of them.

On the western side of the Girnar rock near Junagarh, whose eastern side bears Asoka’s inscriptions, and on whose northern side is engraved that of one Skanda Gupta, we may read that of one Rudra Dama. It tells of the buildings erected by this king, or great satrap, for the protection of the country against the destructive power of the waters of the river Palasini, and another inscription, which extols his name in the midst of those of four others, his predecessors and successors, is found on a pillar at Jasdan in Kathiawar or Surashtra, a part of the present Guzerat. The names of the others are—on the one side of his, Chashtana and Jaya Dama—and on the other side Rudra Sinha and Rudra Sena, and the inscription belongs to the year 127 of the era of these princes.

These kings, or great satraps, of whom we possess both inscriptions and coins, beside many others whose names cannot here be given, have been called Sah or Saha or Sinha kings, from a termination added to many of their names. We should perhaps do best in accordance with a good precedent to designate them Xatrapa (Satrap) kings, as not only did they call themselves so, but also actually were, at least in name, governors for the Mauryas and their successors.

The series begins with a certain Nahapana, who with one or two others preceded Chashtana and his sons and grandsons, and ends with one Svami Rudra Sena, the twenty-sixth mentioned. They ruled, roughly speaking, three hundred years from the beginning of the Saka era (in which we may safely place Chashtana) down to somewhere between 284 and 272 of our era. In its best days (which seem to have been under Rudra Dama, as his inscription indicates), their dominions embraced the peninsula of Guzerat, Surashtra, and Malwa, reaching north as far as the middle of the Indus valley and so onward to the sea.

Inscriptions and coins are certainly safe authorities for history: but they are somewhat inadequate when, as here, little else and nothing certain is added to them. Thus we know but little of the history of this great western or Xatrapa kingdom, not much more than the legend which has grown up round its first beginnings and its final overthrow by the Gupta power.

The Sah or Xatrapa kings, so runs the legend, were overthrown by the Guptas, who ruled between the Jumna and the Ganges. That is, they had independent and viceregal honours, and the man who prepared their downfall is called Kamara Gupta, and was succeeded by his son Skanda Gupta, whose inscription we read on the north side of the Girnar rock.—But we must begin at the beginning.

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AN INSCRIPTION OF ASOKA

An inscription on the Asoka pillar at Allahabad, that of Samudra Gupta, mentions the ancestors of his family. Sri Gupta, the “august, noble, great king” and “splendour of the world,” was a petty lord who had successfully raised himself to the government from the Vaisya or middle class and, from 319, had his residence at Allahabad or in Ajodhya, and his dominion to the east of the river.

After a reign of fifteen years he was succeeded by his son Ghatotkacha. On the coins of the latter a reference has been found to his namesake the son of Bhima, of the epic legend. He proudly calls himself “Destroyer of all Kings,” and was probably really “Augmenter of the Kingdom” westward as far as the territory of the Indus. After another fifteen years he was in his turn succeeded by his son Chandra Gupta, and an inscription belonging to the latter has been found in the Sanchi Stupa at Bilsa, besides coins with his half-length portrait,—the earliest we have belonging to these kings. His realm was subsequently extended to Malwa and his rule was also friendly to the children of Sakya. He must have ruled for the space of thirty years, but his son Samudra Gupta, who is spoken of in the great inscription on the lion pillar of Allahabad, far surpassed him in fame, power, and magnificence.

The inscription is a great historical record, one of the greatest which we have for this period. It speaks by name of kings whom Samudra Gupta deposed, of others whom he made tributary to himself, of the extent and frontiers of his dominion. Since we cannot go into details we will here only mention that he subdued almost the whole Aryavarta between the northern and southern ranges to his immediate rule, made subject the hill princes in the north, the Vaudheya, Madraka, and Abhira in the Land of the Five Rivers and in Malwa, brought kings south of the Vindhya under his protectorate and ruled over the east as far as to the sea. In all this there is probably a good deal of boasting—the inscription was made after his death—but it is certain that there is also not a little that is true. He is also renowned as a ruler of high and noble disposition, as a patron of the arts and sciences, of music and poetry, which he himself cultivated. His coins, which have been found in great numbers and scattered over a wide area, some bearing the image of the lion hero and others of the king playing on the vina (harp) confirm to some extent what the long eulogy asserts.

After a reign of some thirty years he was followed by another Chandra Gupta, his son, who ruled for about ten years. The dominion of the Guptas then passed to his son, “the far-famed lord of the earth,” Kumara Gupta, who, according to the dates on coins and to tradition, reigned twenty-three years, to about the year 130 of the era of this line of kings. And after him came his son Skanda Gupta, with whom a certain Buddha Gupta is also mentioned, and who was the seventh and last king of his famous house. This is the Gupta whom we mentioned first, and who attained to a dominion to which an inscription on the western peninsula bears witness. After him there seems to be a reference to one Mahendra Gupta, perhaps his co-ruler or the successor to a part of his empire, and of one Narayana Gupta. But a monolith at Kuhan, in the district of Gorakhpur in the northwest of India, asserts that[500] “in the year, or towards the end of the year 141 (i.e., 470 of our era), the empire of Skanda Gupta, in whose hall a hundred kings bowed the head in homage, the empire of the royal line of the Gupta was taken away from those who had been so far renowned, rich above all men, comparable to Indra, the lord of hundreds of kings.”

TRADITIONAL KINGS

Tradition tells of kings in various places in the south and north who had declared themselves independent of the Gupta rule. It tells of a scion of an ancient family, whose forefathers had settled in former times on the banks of the Ganges, a certain Pandu-Sakya, who at that time had established himself on the throne of the Mauryas at Pataliputra (the modern Patna). But it is averred that one of Skanda Gupta’s generals, Bhattaraka, of the family of Ballabhi or Valabhi, had overthrown this personage in Kathiawar, i.e., Guzerat, and had seized the reins of government for himself. He became the founder of a new series of Surashtra kings, the third, which was called after him the Valabhi dynasty. We may place the beginning of this dynasty about the year 480 A.D.

Bearing this in mind we might now, of course, again follow the chronicles, and relate something from that of the kings of Kashmir and from the two of Sinhaladvipa. From the former we might tell of one Damodhara who succeeded Turushka, then of a certain Meghavahana, a Sreshta or Pravarasena, and his two sons, Hiranya or Toramana, until a time came when the throne of Kashmir stood empty, and the “noble” Harsha Vikramaditya sent one of his followers, a Brahman named Matri Gupta who was appointed king. But we will not go through the history of dynasties and dynastic lists, at least not when the authorities are so uncertain. And, as to the other two, it is related in a history of Buddhism, how after Vrishabha came a century in which sanctuaries were built and rebuilt, how under King Tishya there arose heresy and strife and divisions, that some short reigns then followed down to Abhayanaga and again down to Mahasena with whom the later chronicle closes. Again we read of more than one Meghavarna, of a Upatishya who succeeded Mahanaman, under whom a certain Fa Hian came to Ceylon and the Buddhist hermits lived and worked. It is sufficient to give here a brief outline of what is important.

A number of brass tablets or copper plates have been found on the ruined site of the ancient Valabhi (the modern Vala), records of donations to Brahman and Buddhist monks, which give fairly authentic information concerning the period and order of the first Surashtra or Valabhi kings. According to these Bhatarka or Bhattaraka was succeeded by his four sons, Dharasena, the eldest, Dronasena who was already called Great King and was solemnly crowned as ruler of the earth, Dhruvasena the third, and Dharapatta the youngest son. They had brought the peninsula and a great part of the coast and the mainland as far as Malwa under their rule, which in the case of the third certainly lasted to the year 534. The youngest was succeeded by his son Guhasena, who bestowed whole villages on the disciples of the Sakya and on their cloisters, he by his son Sri Dharasena, the second of the name and certainly not later than the end of the sixth century (595) and he again by his son Siladitya or Dharmaditya who continued reigning on into the seventh century. But we need not pursue the series of these kings any further.

During the reign of a nephew of the last named, another Dhruvasena (632-640), the Chinese pilgrim Hwen Tsang came to India (627-645) and to the Valabhi kingdom in the west. His account of his journey has an astonishing amount to say of the riches of the country, of its numerous inhabitants, of the many cloisters with thousands of monks,—some of them Buddhist but he also speaks of others, and mentions Jain monks whom he had seen,—and of the numbers of columns and the magnificent stupas, etc. The kings of that time, one traveller reports, are Xatriya, all relations of the king[501] Siladitya of Malwa; the son-in-law of the reigning king Siladitya at Kanyakubja (Kanauj) is called T’u-lu-p’o-po-tu (Dhruvabhata). And here our pilgrim incidentally describes that ruler as pious, wise, and virtuous and as so open-handed that he redeemed his charitable gifts at double their value. He speaks with all reverence and respect of this prince, to whose brilliant court he went by invitation.c

The relations of the Indian dynasties to the successive hordes of Scythians who poured down on northern India, are obscure. There is abundant evidence of a long-continued struggle but the attempt to assign dates to its chief episodes has not yet reached results which can be accepted as final. Two Vikramaditya Sakaris, or vanquishers of the Scythians, are required for the purposes of chronology. The truth seems to be that, during the first six centuries of the Christian era, the fortunes of the Scythian or Tatar races rose and fell from time to time in northern India. They more than once sustained great defeats; and they more than once overthrew the native dynasties.e

The latest authorities are now agreed that the great and victorious king Vikramaditya who, as Lefmann says, “together with his battle of Korur has hitherto wandered incessantly like a wavering and restless shadow” from 57 B.C. to 560 A.D., may now be definitely assigned to a reign dating from 510 to 560 A.D. in which time, at Korur, he annihilated the Scythian army.a

BRAHMANIC LEARNING

Down to the time of Buddha and beyond, the Brahman schools were still in course of completing and elaborating their sacred knowledge (Veda), the triple science. Their later Upanishads worked up to the Vedanta, “an end or conclusion” of the Veda. Undoubtedly the Brahmans also learnt with and from their opponents. Their systems of mental investigation (nyaya, mimamsa) and pious exercises (yoga) can witness to this if to nothing else. And as the sons of Sakya taught in the language of the people and as Asoka had his admonitions engraved on stone tablets, so Brahmans had long before this begun to exhibit the laws and art of their sacred language side by side with logic and grammar.

Scholasticism, speculative inquiry, the narrow or strict sciences, in general, have in all ages shown themselves opposed and inimical to free artistic creation. This the Brahmans also demonstrated. For centuries they produced no really new poetic work. With care and diligence, unsurpassed elsewhere, they preserved and kept together the inheritance and possessions of antiquity, and imitated them on the same lines but produced nothing new. They needed to pass through the period of foreign dominion in order to receive a new impulse.

Then came the comparatively brief but brilliant period of the Guptas’ rule, under which the coins are first inscribed in Sanskrit. To this period belongs much that was formerly regarded as ancient and even primitive, and was probably really new, but built up on an ancient foundation. A single, but eloquent example, is the collection of the laws of Manu in the form in which it has come down to us. A great deal might be said on this subject. Here we will only remark that at this time the Brahmanical spirit received a fresh impulse and flourished anew.

At the court of King Vikramaditya of Ujjain were nine who are mentioned as the pearls of his age and dominion. An old and famous verse[502] celebrates their names. Amongst them were Dhanvantari, the great physician and healer, Amarasinha, the renowned philologist and lexicographer, Varahamihira, the astronomer and architect, and some add Kalidasa, the poet of the Sakuntala.

It was shortly after the peace of Mangalore in 1783, that Sir William Jones became Judge of the Supreme Court in Bengal and first president of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta. In the “edifying letters” of the French Jesuits he had read that there were many books in the north of India which were called Natak, and of which the Brahmans said that they contained a great deal of ancient history without any admixture of fable. He became eager to gain possession of these books in order that he might make himself acquainted with them either by means of translations, if such existed, or by himself learning their language; but he had no sooner come to an understanding with the Brahmans than he learnt from them that the statements were like many others made in those letters.

Natak, he was assured, were not histories at all, but fables, favourite popular books, discourses in prose and verse, such as had formerly been held, in various idioms, at the courts of the Rajahs. Jones thought they were probably treatises on matters of morals, or learning; others of his countrymen concluded from what they had heard that they might perhaps deal with dancing, music, and poetry, when an intelligent Brahman remarked that the Englishmen also possessed something of the nature of the Natak, which were performed publicly in the cold season (meaning dramas).

This was enough. On the question being asked as to which of these Natak was most highly prized, the man unhesitatingly answered “Sakuntala,” and Brahmanlike, had also a verse ready, which “unfolded,” it was said, “all the transcendent riches of the genius of Kalidasa.” A copy having been procured, it was literally translated into Latin with the assistance of his Pandit Ramalocan—of course through Persian—and from Latin into English. From this to publishing it was the work of the first leisure moment, and a noble example of Indian genius from the Sanskrit and Prakrit original was given to the world.

Jones’ English “Sakuntala” appeared in the year 1789, the year of the French revolution. It would be almost impossible to describe the enthusiasm called forth especially amongst the romantic school in Germany, by the “maiden from abroad,” in the foreign dress on a foreign soil, and the “ecstatic transports” over the gentle child from the penitential groves of ancient India. And it was at the fire of this enthusiasm that the lamp was lighted which shed its rays ever further and deeper into the hidden recesses of the Indian spirit, the Indian language, art, and science. And this was effected a hundred years ago by the alluring charm of the Sakuntala.c

THE EPOCHS OF INDIAN HISTORY

The history of India has been conveniently, if somewhat arbitrarily, separated into epochs by Le Bon. His classification, which is necessarily very general, and in which the epochs are very far from being clearly defined since they encroach upon one another or exist side by side, embraces the following periods:

1. The Vedic period; 2. The Brahmanical period; 3. The Buddhist period; 4. The period of the revival of Brahmanism or neo-Brahmanic; 5. The Mohammedan period; 6. The European period.

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VEDIC PERIOD

The commencement of the Vedic period is about fifteen centuries earlier than our era. It is marked by the invasion of India by the Aryans.

The Vedic period is that age of Indian history which is wholly legendary. The little that we know concerning it is revealed solely by religious books, known under the name of Vedas, the most important of which, the Rig-Veda, has been called, with reason, the Bible of the Aryans of the northwest of India.

Established at first round the Himalayas, as far as the Vindhya Mountains, the primitive Aryans lived in the state of wandering pastoral tribes, and it is to be supposed that their invasion must have taken place gradually. Their most ancient books seem to have been written about fifteen centuries before our era. In that remote age they had no castes, they worshipped the forces of nature and erected neither temples nor statues; to the people on whom they descended they brought a new language and a new religion, but they did not bring them architecture. These primitive Aryan peoples knew how to write books, but they did not know how to build monuments of stone, and nothing in the most ancient of their works indicates that they built either temples or palaces.

We will not here linger over the Aryan civilisation, any more than over the Brahmanical period which terminates it. Historical documents properly so called are lacking for both. The epics which are connected with the Brahmanical period are confirmed by the stories of Megasthenes, and prove that India was then beginning to be covered with towns, temples, and palaces; but of the monuments of this period no remains whatever have come down to us.

THE BUDDHIST PERIOD

The epoch of the birth of Buddhism in India belongs a great deal to legend and very little to history. We know nothing of the beginnings of this period save what is told us in the fantastic stories of the Buddhist books. It is only after Alexander’s invasions, and especially when, about 250 years after Christ, Buddhism became the official religion, that definite facts stand out and the darkness begins to disperse. Unfortunately it soon reappears, and reigns for long centuries.

Alexander’s invasion took place 327 years before our era. After having completed the conquest of Persia, the Macedonian hero made up his mind to undertake the conquest of India, that he might attain to the sovereignty of Asia.

The division of the Punjab into small independent and rival states must have rendered the conquest easy at the outset. Alexander made his appearance with one hundred and twenty thousand men, of whom the Greeks formed the kernel, while the rest of the number was made up by Persians. He had Indian guides and an understanding with some native chiefs, notably with the king of Taxila, a state situated on the left bank of the Indus, and which stretched between that river and the stream then known under the name of Hydaspes and to-day under that of Jhelum.

Alexander marched from Bactriana on the town which now bears the name of Kabul. Continuing his way to India, he crossed the Indus and encountered Porus, sovereign of a state enclosed between the Hydaspes and the Chenab: he beat him, but made him an ally by leaving him his kingdom.[504] Various sovereigns, notably the sovereign of Kashmir, then sent him their submission.

After several battles against native chiefs, he marched on the Hyphasis (the present Beas); but the army refusing to follow him farther, he raised, on the banks of this stream, twelve commemorative altars, intended to mark the end of the expedition. Having returned to the banks of the Hydaspes, he constructed a fleet which descended that stream as far as the Indus, into which it passed. Fighting continually, Alexander arrived at Patala, at the mouth of the Indus, and then sent his fleet, under the orders of Nearchus, along the coast into the Persian Gulf, after which he divided his army into two corps. The one was sent back to Persia through Caramania, under the leadership of Craterus; the other, under his own direction, made its retreat by way of Gedrosia. The fleet having reached the Persian Gulf, and he himself having rejoined Craterus, the return of the expedition was celebrated with festivities.

Regarded solely from the standpoint of conquest, it may be said that the results of Alexander’s invasion were absolutely nil, since a few years after his departure not a single one of the Greek garrisons he had left behind remained in India. But this expedition, which for the first time put Europe in communication with India, was to have indirect consequences that were not without importance.

CHANDRA GUPTA

After the departure of Alexander, a Hindu king, Chandra Gupta, the Sandracottus of the Greeks, son of one of the petty chiefs of the Punjab, whom Alexander had scattered, gradually extended his empire over the whole of the north of the peninsula, and expelled or totally destroyed the Macedonian garrisons. He fixed the seat of his empire at Pataliputra (the modern Patna), capital of the kingdom of Magadha. Soon his renown became so great that, about the year 200 before our era, Seleucus Nicator, who, since Alexander’s death, was reigning in Syria, Babylonia, and all the provinces between the Euphrates and the Indus, sent to his court a Greek ambassador, named Megasthenes, for the purpose of making alliance with him. This ambassador stayed at Pataliputra for a long time, and it is from his narrative, part of which has been preserved, that we gain our first definite notions of the manners and customs of the Hindus of this epoch.

But the relations between the Greeks and Hindus were not confined to Alexander’s invasion and the embassy of Megasthenes; in default of the accounts of historians, we now know, from coins and the ruins of monuments, that the successors of the Græco-Bactrian empire of Seleucus Nicator conquered the Punjab, founded several kingdoms, and penetrated as far as Muttra. One hundred and twenty-six years before Christ an adventurer of the name of Menander founded a kingdom reaching from the Jumna to the mouth of the Nerbudda.

The sculptures and medals are the only relics which have come down to us from the Greek kingdoms of India. These kingdoms disappeared just about the beginning of our era, before the invasions of the Scythians. These invasions had commenced in the century before Christ. A Scythian people descended on the northwest of India and founded a kingdom comprising Bactriana, the banks of the Indus, the Punjab, and a part of Rajputana. This kingdom had a very ephemeral duration, since the Scythians were probably expelled from India in the early days of our era.

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Setting aside this obscure part of the history of India, which recent researches have revived, let us go back to Chandra Gupta and his successors.

Chandra Gupta’s grandson was the celebrated Asoka, who reigned about 250 years before Christ. After having, according to certain Buddhist legends, massacred the hundred sons whom his father had had by sixteen different wives and thus prevented rivalries, he extended his empire throughout the north of India. Its limits are marked by inscriptions which still exist. They are to be found from Afghanistan to Bengal and from the Himalayas to the Nerbudda. In the west Asoka’s empire touched the Greek kingdom of Bactriana.

It is with this prince that the architectural history of India begins. Several of the columns he caused to be erected are still standing, and the most celebrated monuments, such as those of Bharhut, Sanchi, and Buddha Gaya, whose bas-reliefs are so valuable for the history of Buddhism, are contemporary with his reign or very little later. Nothing remains of the palaces which he himself constructed, but we may suppose that they must have been very handsome, for the pilgrim Fa-Hian, who saw in the fifth century the ruins of the buildings and the tower of the one belonging to him at Pataliputra, asserts that it was too admirable to have been the work of a mortal.

It was this same Asoka who made Buddhism the official religion of India. His religious zeal was very great, for he sent missionaries to all kinds of places, to Ceylon, and even as far as to Ptolemy Philadelphus in Egypt.

The dynasty called that of Maurya, of which Asoka was the most illustrious representative, lasted about a century and a half, i.e., from 312 to 178 B.C. Afterwards the empire founded by Asoka soon split up into petty independent kingdoms under different sovereigns. The kingdom of Magadha, however, continued to exist down to the sixteenth century of our era; but it now included only the very confined district corresponding to the present Behar. The Puranas give lists of the kings of Magadha for a thousand years, but they are very unreliable.

TWELVE CENTURIES OF OBSCURITY

After Asoka, the only Hindu authorities that we have on India down to the time of the Mohammedan invasion, besides the legendary narratives of the Puranas, are furnished by the monuments. These, with the stories of the Chinese pilgrims of which we have spoken, are the only sources from which we may in some sort reconstitute the civilisation of India during that long period.

During this night of something like twelve centuries, the important personages whose memory the Hindu chroniclers have preserved to us are few in number. The most celebrated is the legendary Vikramaditya, prince of Malwa, who lived at Ujjain, near the Nerbudda. According to the chronicles, he extended his empire over the whole of India, as far as the southern point of the Deccan. Although his history is nothing but a tissue of fabulous legends, he must certainly have fulfilled an important rôle, since the Hindus date a new era, the Samvat era, from his accession, which they suppose to have taken place 57 B.C.

Unfortunately the Hindu chronicles, according to their wont, have paid little respect to chronology, for an attentive study of the inscriptions and[506] the monuments appears to prove that Vikramaditya reigned six hundred years after the epoch indicated by the books.[18]

It is to the same hero that the Hindu legends attribute the expulsion of the Scythians from India. These people had penetrated to the Greeks of Bactriana two centuries before Christ, and had gradually subdued them. One of their kings, Kanishka, a convert to Buddhism, had shortly before our era founded an empire comprising Afghanistan, the Punjab, and Rajputana. We know nothing of the history of the Scythians in India, unless it be that they propagated the artistic influence of the Greeks, as we see by some statues at Muttra.

According to the inscriptions interpreted by Cunningham, we should probably include amongst the contemporaries of Vikramaditya [see footnote] the Rajah Harshavardhara, who reigned from 607-648 and of whom the Chinese pilgrim, Hwen Tsang, who visited India in 634, speaks as one of the most powerful sovereigns of the north of India. His capital was Kanauj, one of the most ancient cities of India, for a long time the seat of the Gupta dynasty, and supposed to have been one of the cradles of Aryan civilisation. Ptolemy mentions it, 140 years after Christ, under the name of Kanogiya. The kingdom of which it was the capital in the days of Hwen Tsang extended from Kashmir to Assam and from Nepal to the Nerbudda.

Kanauj lies east of Agra, a few miles from the Ganges. All the traditions agree in extolling its splendour. It filled Mahmud of Ghazni with admiration when he attacked it in 1016 A.D. Ferishta says that as he approached it, he saw “a city which raised its head as high as heaven, and which, in fortifications and architecture, could justly boast that it had no rival.”

Of this ancient capital which, if we are to believe Hwen Tsang, was three miles in length, there remains not a stone to tell its history. As in the case of many famous old capitals, the destruction of the monuments anterior to the Mohammedan invasion was so complete that, in spite of all his investigations, Cunningham could not succeed in recovering a single relic. The oldest thing which he observed at Kanauj is an inscription dating only from 1136 and consequently later than the Mohammedan invasion. All the existing monuments of this town are exclusively Mohammedan, though sometimes constructed from the débris of ancient Hindu monuments.

Kanauj is one of those great ancient capitals whose history we know only from vague traditions and a few inscriptions. To those who have seen the remains of the small number which have escaped destruction, as, for instance, Khajurao, it is impossible to ascribe the enthusiastic descriptions of the splendour of these antique cities solely to the writers’ imagination.

Kanauj, Khajurao, Mahoba, and many other famous towns of which the name and the ruins are all that now survive, were the seats of mighty empires. Of these the most celebrated were governed by kings of the Rajput race, the only one whose dynasties still exist and which has preserved, if not its independence, at least its institutions and its customs. Unfortunately, we know almost nothing of the history of the Rajputs till the time whe[507]n they entered into conflict with the Mohammedans. The latter succeeded in destroying their capitals and in thrusting them back to the steep and mountainous regions of Rajputana, but they only obtained from them a purely nominal submission.

The whole of this period, which extends from the successors of Asoka to the revival of Brahmanism and even to the Mohammedan invasions, is thus almost as obscure as that which preceded it, and but for the monuments it has left us we should know practically nothing about it. Historical documents are equally lacking for the period of the revival of Brahmanism, or the neo-Brahmanical period. Coins and monuments are about the only authorities which we can consult concerning it.d

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER III. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE ANCIENT HINDUS

The first complete picture of the state of Hindu society is afforded by the code of laws which bears the name of Manu, and which was probably drawn up in the ninth century before Christ. But to gain accurate notions even of the people contemporary with the supposed Manu we must remember that a code is never the work of a single age, some of the earliest and rudest laws being preserved and incorporated with the improvements of the most enlightened times. To take a familiar example, there are many of the laws in Blackstone, the existence of which proves a high state of refinement in the nation; but those relating to witchcraft, and the wager of battle, afford no correspondent proof of the continuance of barbarism down to the age in which the commentaries were written.

Even if the whole code referred to one period, it would not show the real state of manners. Its injunctions are drawn from the model to which it is wished to raise the community, and its prohibitions from the worst state of crime which it was possible to apprehend. It is to the general spirit of the code, therefore, that we must look for that of the age; and even then, we must soften the features before we reach the actual condition of the people. We have adhered to the usual phraseology in speaking of this compilation; but, though early adopted as an unquestionable authority for the law, we should scarcely venture to regard it as a code drawn up for the regulation of a particular state under the sanction of a government. It seems rather to be the work of a learned man, designed to set forth his idea of a perfect commonwealth under Hindu institutions. On this supposition it would show the state of society as correctly as a legal code; since it is evident that it incorporates the existing laws, and any alterations it may have introduced, with a view to bring them up to its preconceived standard of perfection, must still have been drawn from the opinions which prevailed when it was written. These considerations being premised, we shall now give an outline of the information contained in Manu.

DIVISION AND EMPLOYMENT OF CLASSES

The first feature that strikes us in the society described by Manu is the division into four classes or castes (the sacerdotal, the military, the industrial, and the servile). In these we are struck with the prodigious elevation[509] and sanctity of the Brahmans, and the studied degradation of the lowest class.

The three first classes, though by no means equal, are yet admitted into one pale: they all partake in certain sacred rites, to which peculiar importance is attached throughout the code; and they appear to form the whole community for whose government the laws are framed. The fourth class and the outcasts are no further considered than as they contribute to the advantage of the superior castes.

A Brahman is the chief of all created beings; the world and all in it are his: through him, indeed, other mortals enjoy life; by his imprecations he could destroy a king, with his troops, elephants, horses, and cars; could frame other worlds and regents of worlds, and could give being to new gods and new mortals. A Brahman is to be treated with more respect than a king. His life and person are protected by the severest laws in this world, and the most tremendous denunciations for the next. He is exempt from capital punishment, even for the most enormous crimes. His offences against other classes are treated with remarkable lenity, while all offences against him are punished with tenfold severity.

Yet it would seem, at first sight, as if the Brahmans, content with gratifying their spiritual pride, had no design to profit by worldly wealth or power. The life prescribed to them is one of laborious study, as well as of austerity and retirement.

The first quarter of a Brahman’s life he must spend as a student; during which time he leads a life of abstinence and humiliation. His attention should be unremittingly directed to the Vedas, and should on no account be wasted on worldly studies. He should treat his preceptor with implicit obedience, and with humble respect and attachment, which ought to be extended to his family. He must perform various servile offices for his preceptor, and must labour for himself in bringing logs and other materials for sacrifice, and water for oblations. He must subsist entirely by begging from door to door.

For the second quarter of his life, he lives with his wife and family, and discharges the ordinary duties of a Brahman. These are briefly stated to be, reading and teaching the Vedas; sacrificing and assisting others to sacrifice; bestowing alms, and accepting gifts.

The most honourable of these employments is teaching. It is remarkable that, unlike other religions, where the dignity of the priesthood is derived from their service at the temples, a Brahman is considered as degraded by performing acts of worship or assisting at sacrifices, as a profession. All Brahmans are strongly and repeatedly prohibited from receiving gifts from low-born, wicked, or unworthy persons. They are not even to take many presents from unexceptionable givers, and are carefully to avoid making it a habit to accept of unnecessary presents. When the regular sources fail, a Brahman may, for a mere subsistence, glean, or beg, or cultivate, or even (in case of extreme necessity) he may trade; but he must in no extremity enter into service; he must not have recourse to popular conversation, must abstain from music, singing, dancing, gaming, and generally from everything inconsistent with gravity and composure.

He should, indeed, refrain from all sensual enjoyments, should avoid all wealth that may impede his reading the Vedas, and should shun all worldly honour as he would shun poison. Yet he is not to subject himself to fasts, or other needless severities. All that is required is, that his life should be decorous and occupied in the prescribed studies and observances. Even his[510] dress is laid down with minuteness; and he may easily be figured (much as learned Brahmans are still), quiet and demure, clean and decent, “his hair and beard clipped, his passions subdued, his mantle white, and his body pure”; with a staff and a copy of the Vedas in his hands, and bright golden rings in his ears. When he has paid the three debts, by reading the scriptures, begetting a son, and performing the regular sacrifices, he may (even in the second portion of his life) make over all to his son, and remain in his family house, with no employment but that of an umpire.

The third portion of a Brahman’s life he must spend as an anchorite in the woods. Clad in bark or in the skin of a black antelope, with his hair and nails uncut, sleeping on the bare earth, he must live “without fire, without a mansion, wholly silent, feeding on roots and fruit.” He must also submit to many and harsh mortifications, expose himself, naked, to the heaviest rains, wear humid garments in winter, and in summer stand in the midst of five fires under the burning sun. He must carefully perform all sacrifices and oblations, and consider it his special duty to fulfil the prescribed forms and ceremonies of religion.

In the last period of his life, the Brahman is nearly as solitary and abstracted as during the third. But he is now released from all forms and external observances: his business is contemplation; his mortifications cease. His dress more nearly resembles that of ordinary Brahmans; and his abstinence, though still great, is not so rigid as before. He is no longer to invite suffering, but is to cultivate equanimity and to enjoy delight in meditation on the Divinity; till, at last, he quits the body “as a bird leaves the branch of a tree at its pleasure.”

Thus it appears that during three-fourths of a Brahman’s life, he was entirely secluded from the world, and during the remaining fourth, besides having his time completely occupied by ceremonies and in reading the Vedas, he was expressly debarred from the enjoyment of wealth or pleasure and from the pursuit of ambition. But a little further acquaintance with the code makes it evident that these rules are founded on a former condition of the Brahmans; and that, although still regarded as the model for their conduct, they had already been encroached on by the temptations of power and riches.

The king must have a Brahman for his most confidential counsellor; and by Brahmans is he to be instructed in policy as well as in justice and all learning. The whole judicial authority (except that exercised by the king in person) is in the hands of Brahmans; and, although the perusal of the sacred writings is not withheld from the two nearest classes, yet the sense of them is only to be obtained through the exposition of a Brahman.

The interpretation of the laws is expressly confined to the Brahmans; and we can perceive, from the code itself, how large a share of the work of legislation was in the hands of that order.

THE PROPERTY OF THE BRAHMAN

The property of the sacred class is as well protected by the law as its power. Liberality to Brahmans is made incumbent on every virtuous man, and is the especial duty of a king. Sacrifices and oblations, and all the ceremonies of religion, involve feasts and presents to the Brahmans, and those gifts must always be liberal:[511] “the organs of sense and action, reputation in this life, happiness in the next, life itself, children, and cattle, are all destroyed by a sacrifice offered with trifling gifts to the priests.” Many penances may be commuted for large fines, which all go to the sacred class. If a Brahman finds a treasure, he keeps it all; if it is found by another person, the king takes it, but must give one-half to the Brahmans. On failure of heirs, the property of others escheats to the king, but that of Brahmans is divided among their class. A learned Brahman is exempt from all taxation, and ought, if in want, to be maintained by the king.

Stealing the gold of Brahmans incurs an extraordinary punishment, which is to be inflicted by the king in person, and is likely, in most cases, to be capital. Their property is protected by many other denunciations: and for injuring their cattle, a man is to suffer amputation of half his foot.

The military class, though far from being placed on an equality with the Brahmans, is still treated with honour. It is indeed acknowledged that the sacerdotal order cannot prosper without the military, or the military without the sacerdotal; and that the prosperity of both in this world and the next depends on their cordial union.

The military class enjoys, in a less degree, with respect to the Vaisyas, the same inequality in criminal law that the Brahman possesses in respect to all the other classes. The king belongs to this class, as probably do all his ordinary ministers. The command of armies and of military divisions, in short, the whole military profession, and in strictness all situations of command, are also their birthright. It is indeed very observable, that even in the code drawn up by themselves, with the exception of interpreting the law, no interference in the executive government is ever allowed to Brahmans.

The duties of the military class are stated to be, to defend the people, to give alms, to sacrifice, to read the Vedas, and to shun the allurements of sensual gratification.

The rank of Vaisyas is not high; for where a Brahman is enjoined to show hospitality to strangers, he is directed to show benevolence even to a merchant and to give him food at the same time with his domestics. Besides largesses, sacrifice, and reading the Vedas, the duties of a Vaisya are to keep herds of cattle, to carry on trade, to lend at interest, and to cultivate the land.

The practical knowledge required from a Vaisya is more general than that of the other classes; for in addition to a knowledge of the means of breeding cattle, and a thorough acquaintance with all commodities and all soils, he must understand the productions and wants of other countries, the wages of servants, the various dialects of men, and whatever else belongs to purchase and sale.

THE DESPISED SUDRA

The duty of a Sudra is briefly stated to be to serve the other classes, but it is more particularly explained in different places that his chief duty is to serve the Brahmans; and it is specially permitted to him, in case of want[512] of subsistence and inability to procure service from that class, to serve a Kshattriya; or if even that service cannot be obtained, to attend on an opulent Vaisya. It is a general rule that, in times of distress, each of the classes may subsist by the occupations allotted to those beneath it, but must never encroach on the employments of those above it. A Sudra has no class beneath him; but, if other employments fail, he may subsist by handicrafts, especially joinery and masonry, painting, and writing.

A Sudra may perform sacrifices with the omission of the holy texts; yet it is an offence requiring expiation for a Brahman to assist him in sacrificing. A Brahman must not read the Veda, even to himself, in the presence of a Sudra. To teach him the law, or to instruct him in the mode of expiating sin, sinks a Brahman into the hell called Asamvrita.

It is even forbidden to give him temporal advice. No offence is more repeatedly or more strongly inveighed against than that of a Brahman receiving a gift from a Sudra: it cannot even be expiated by penance, until the gift has been restored. A Brahman, starving, may take dry grain from a Sudra, but must never eat meat cooked by him. A Sudra is to be fed by the leavings of his master, or by his refuse grain, and clad in his worn-out garments.

He must amass no wealth, even if he has the power, lest he become proud, and give pain to Brahmans.

If a Sudra use abusive language to one of a superior class, his tongue is to be slit. If he sit on the same seat with a Brahman, he is to have a gash made on the part offending. If he advise him about his religious duties, hot oil is to be dropped into his mouth and ears.

These are specimens of the laws, equally ludicrous and inhuman, which are made in favour of the other classes against the Sudras.

The proper name of a Sudra is directed to be expressive of contempt, and the religious penance for killing him is the same as for killing a cat, a frog, a dog, a lizard, and various other animals.

Yet, though the degraded state of a Sudra be sufficiently evident, his precise civil condition is by no means so clear. Sudras are universally termed the servile class; and, in one place, it is declared that a Sudra, though emancipated by his master, is not released from a state of servitude, “for,” it is added, “of a state which is natural to him, by whom can he be divested?”

Yet every Sudra is not necessarily the slave of an individual; for it has been seen that they are allowed to offer their services to whom they please, and even to exercise trades on their own account: there is nothing to lead to a belief that they are the slaves of the state; and, indeed, the exemption of Sudras from the laws against emigration shows that no perfect right to their services was deemed to exist anywhere.

Their right to property (which was denied to slaves) is admitted in many places. Their persons are protected, even against their masters, who can only correct them in a manner fixed by law, and equally applicable to wives, children, pupils, and younger brothers.

That there were some Sudra slaves is indisputable; but there is every reason to believe that men of the other classes were also liable to fall into servitude.

The condition of Sudras, therefore, was very much better than that of the public slaves under some ancient republics, and, indeed, than that of the villeins of the Middle Ages, or any other servile class with which we are acquainted.

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MIXTURE OF CLASSES

Though the line between the different classes was so strongly marked, the means taken to prevent their mixture do not seem to have been nearly so much attended to as in after times. The law in this respect seems rather dictated by jealousy of the honour of the women of the higher classes than by regard for the purity of descents.

Men of the first three classes are freely indulged in the choice of women from any inferior caste, provided they do not give them the first place in their family. But no marriage is permitted with women of a higher class; criminal intercourse with them is checked by the severest penalties, and their offspring is degraded far below either of its parents. The son of a Brahman, by a woman of the class next below him, takes a station intermediate between his father and mother; and the daughters of such connections, if they go on marrying Brahmans for seven generations, restore their progeny to the original purity of the sacerdotal class; but the son of a Sudra by a Brahman woman is a Chandala, “the lowest of mortals,” and his intercourse with women of the higher classes produces “a race more foul than their begetter.”

The classes do not seem to have associated at their meals even in the time of Manu; and there is a striking contrast between the cordial festivity recommended to Brahmans with their own class, and the constrained hospitality with which they are directed to prepare food after the Brahmans for a military man coming as a guest.

But there is no prohibition in the code against eating with other classes, or partaking of food cooked by them (which is now the great occasion for loss of caste), except in the case of Sudras; and even then the offence is expiated by living on water gruel for seven days.

Loss of caste seems, in general, to have been incurred by crimes, or by omitting the prescribed expiations for offences.

It is remarkable that, in the four classes, no place is assigned to artisans: Sudras, indeed, are permitted to practise mechanic trades during a scarcity of other employment, but it is not said to whom the employment regularly belongs.

From some of the allotments, it would appear that the artisans were supplied, as they are now, from the mixed classes: a circumstance which affords ground for surmise that the division into castes took place while arts were in too simple a state to require separate workmen for each; and also that many generations had elapsed between that division and the code, to allow so important a portion of the employments of the community to be filled by classes formed subsequently to the original distribution of the people.c

This distribution of the whole people into four classes only, and the appropriation of them to four species of employment,—an arrangement which, in the very simple state of society in which it must have been introduced, was a great step in improvement,—must have become productive of innumerable inconveniences, as the wants of society multiplied. The bare necessaries of life, with a small number of its rudest accommodations, are all it prepares to meet the desires of man. As those desires speedily extend beyond such narrow limits, a struggle must have early ensued between the first principles of human nature and those of the political establishment. The different castes were strictly commanded to marry with those only of their own class and profession; and the mixture of the classes from the[514] union of the sexes was guarded against by the severest laws.[19] This was an occurrence, however, which laws could not prevent. Irregularities took place; children were born, who belonged to no caste, and for whom there was no occupation. No event could befall society more calamitous than this. Unholy and infamous, on account of that violation of the sacred law to which they owed their unwelcome birth, those wretched outcasts had no resource for subsistence, excepting either the bounty of the established classes, to whom they were objects of execration and abhorrence; or the plunder of those same classes, a course to which they would betake themselves with all the ingenuity of necessitous, and all the atrocity of much injured, men. When a class of this description became numerous, they must have filled society with the greatest disorders. In the preface of that compilation of the Hindu Laws, which was translated by Mr. Halhed, it is stated that, after a succession of good kings, who secured obedience to the laws, and under whom the people enjoyed felicity, came a monarch evil and corrupt, under whom the laws were violated, the mixture of the classes was perpetrated, and a new and impious race were produced. The Brahmans put this wicked king to death, and, by an effort of miraculous power, created a successor endowed with the most excellent qualities. But the kingdom did not prosper, by reason of the Burren Sunker, so were this impure brood denominated; and it required the wisdom of this virtuous king to devise a remedy. He resolved upon a classification of the mixed race, and to assign them occupations. This, accordingly, was the commencement of arts and manufactures. The Burren Sunker became all manner of artisans and handicrafts; one tribe of them weavers of cloth, another artificers in iron, and so on in other cases, till the subdivisions of the class were exhausted, or the exigencies of the community supplied.

Thus were remedied two evils at once. The increasing wants of an improving society were provided for; and a class of men, the pest of the community, were converted to its service. This is another important era in the history of Hindu society; and having reached this stage, it does not appear that it has made, or that it is capable of making, much further progress. Thirty-six branches of the impure class are specified in the sacred books, of whom and of their employments it would be tedious and useless to present the description. The highest is that sprung from the conjunction of a Brahman with a woman of the Kshattriya class whose duty is the teaching of military exercises. The lowest of all is the offspring of a Sudra with a woman of the sacred class. This tribe are denominated Chandalas, and are regarded with great abhorrence. Their profession is to carry out corpses, to execute criminals, and perform other offices, reckoned to the last degree unclean and degrading. If, by the laws of Hindustan, the Sudras are placed in a low and vile situation, the impure and mixed classes are placed in one still more odious and degrading. Nothing can equal the contempt and insolence to which it is the lot of the lowest among them to see themselves exposed. They are condemned to live in a sequestered spot by themselves, that they may not pollute the very town in which they reside. If they meet a man of the higher castes, they must turn out of the way, lest he should be contaminated by their presence.

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“Avoid,” says the Tantra, “the touch of the Chandala, and other abject classes. Whoever associates with them undoubtedly falls from his class; whoever bathes or drinks in wells or pools which they have caused to be made, must be purified by the five productions of kine.”[20] From this outline of the classification and distribution of the people, as extracted from the books of the Hindus, some of the most intelligent of our British observers appeal to the present practice of the people, which they affirm is much more conformable to the laws of human welfare, than the institutions described in the ancient books. Of this, the author is aware; so inconsistent with the laws of human welfare are the institutions described in the Hindu ancient books, that they never could have been observed with any accuracy; it is, at the same time, very evident, that the institutions described in the ancient books are the model upon which the present frame of Hindu society has been formed; and when we consider the powerful causes which have operated so long to draw, or rather to force, the Hindus from their inconvenient institutions and customs, the only source of wonder is, that the state of society which they now exhibit should hold so great a resemblance to that which is depicted in their books. The President de Goguet is of opinion, that a division of the people into tribes and hereditary professions similar to that of the Hindus existed in the ancient Assyrian empire, and that it prevailed from the highest antiquity over almost all Asia. Cecrops distributed into four tribes all the inhabitants of Attica. Theseus afterwards made them three by uniting, as it should seem, the sacerdotal class with that of the nobles, or magistrates. They consisted then of nobles and priests, labourers or husbandmen, and artificers; and there is no doubt that, like the Egyptians and Indians, they were hereditary. Aristotle expressly informs us that in Crete the people were divided by the laws of Minos into classes after the manner of the Egyptians. We have most remarkable proof of a division, the same as that of the Hindus, anciently established among the Persians. In the Zendavesta, translated by Anquetil Duperron, is the following passage: “Ormuzd said: There are three measures (literally weights, that is, tests, rules) of conduct, four states, and five places of dignity.—The states are: that of the priests; that of the soldier; that of the husbandman, the source of riches; and that of the artisan or labourer.” There are sufficient vestiges to prove an ancient establishment of the same sort among the Buddhists of Ceylon, and by consequence to infer it among the other Buddhists over so large a portion of Asia.d

THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE

As Manu’s code mapped out Hindu life in fine detail, it gives especially definite rules for the laws and the courts. Justice is to be administered by the king in person, assisted by Brahmans and other counsellors; or that function may be deputed to one Brahman, aided by three assessors of the same class.

The king is entitled to five per cent. on all debts admitted by the defendant on trial, and to ten per cent. on all denied and proved. This fee probably went direct to the judges, who would thus be remunerated without infringing the law against Brahmans serving for hire. A king or judge in trying causes is carefully to observe the countenances, gestures, and mod[516]e of speech of the parties and witnesses. He is to attend to local usages of districts, the peculiar laws of classes and rules of families, and the customs of traders: when not inconsistent with the above, he is to observe the principles established by former judges. Neither he nor his officers are to encourage litigation, though they must show no slackness in taking up any suit regularly instituted.

A king is reckoned among the worst of criminals who receives his revenue from his subjects without affording them due protection in return. The king is enjoined to bear with rough language from irritated litigants, as well as from old or sick people, who come before him. He is also cautioned against deciding causes on his own judgment, without consulting persons learned in the law; and is positively forbidden to disturb any transaction that has once been settled conformably to law. In trials he is to adhere to established practice.

Criminal Law

The criminal law is very rude, and this portion of the code, together with the religious penances, leaves a more unfavourable impression of the early Hindus than any other part of the institutes.

It is not, however, sanguinary, unless when influenced by superstition or by the prejudice of caste; and if punishments are, in some cases, too severe, in others they are far too lenient. Mutilation (chiefly of the hand) is among the punishments, as in all Asiatic codes. Burning alive is one of the inflictions on offenders against the sacerdotal order; but it is an honourable distinction from most ancient codes that torture is never employed either against witnesses or criminals.

The punishments, though not always in themselves severe, are often disproportioned to the offence; and are frequently so indistinctly or contradictorily declared as to leave the fate of an offender quite uncertain; such are the punishments for adultery and what are called overt acts of adulterous inclination. Among these last are included, talking to the wife of another man at a place of pilgrimage, or in a forest, or at the confluence of rivers; sending her flowers or perfumes; touching her apparel or her ornaments, and sitting on the same couch with her; yet the penalty is banishment, with such bodily marks as may excite aversion.

For adultery itself, it is first declared, without reserve, that the woman is to be devoured by dogs, and the man burned on an iron bed; yet, in the verses next following, it appears that the punishment of adultery without aggravation is a fine of from 500 to 1000 panas.

The punishment, indeed, increases in proportion to the dignity of the party offended against. Even a soldier committing adultery with a Brahman woman, if she be of eminently good qualities, and properly guarded, is to be burned alive in a fire of dry grass or reeds. These flat contradictions can only be accounted for by supposing that the compiler put down the laws of different periods, or those supported by different authorities, without considering how they bore on each other.

There is no express punishment for murder. From one passage it would appear that it (as well as arson and robbery attended with violence) is capital, and that the slighter punishments mentioned in other places were in cases where there was no premeditation; but, as the murder of particular descriptions of persons is afterwards declared capital, it remains doubtful what is the punishment for the offence in simple cases.

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Theft is punished, if small, with fine; if of greater amount, with cutting off the hand; but if the thief be taken with the stolen goods upon him, it is capital. Receivers of stolen goods, and persons who harbour thieves, are liable to the same punishment as the thief. It is remarkable that, in cases of small theft, the fine of a Brahman offender is at least eight times as great as that of a Sudra, and the scale varies in a similar manner and proportion between all the classes. A king committing an offence is to pay a thousand times as great a fine as would be exacted from an ordinary person. Robbery seems to incur amputation of the limb principally employed. If accompanied with violence it is capital; and all who shelter robbers, or supply them with food or implements, are to be punished with death.

Abusive language is still more distinguished for the inequality of punishments among the castes, but even in this branch of the law are traces of a civilised spirit. Men reproaching their neighbours with lameness, blindness, or any other natural infirmity, are liable to a small fine, even if they speak the truth. Assaults, if among equals, are punished by a fine of 100 panas for blood drawn, a larger sum for a wound, and banishment for breaking a bone. The prodigious inequalities into which the penalty runs between men of different classes have already been noticed.

The offences of physicians or surgeons who injure their patients for want of skill; breaking hedges, palisades, and earthen idols; mixing pure with impure commodities, and other impositions on purchasers, are all lumped up under a penalty of from 250 to 500 panas. Selling bad grain for good, however, incurs severe corporal punishment; and, what far more passes the limits of just distinction, a goldsmith guilty of fraud is ordered to be cut to pieces with razors.

Some offences not noticed by other codes are punished in this one with whimsical disregard to their relative importance; forsaking one’s parents, son, or wife, for instance, is punished by a fine of 600 panas; and not inviting one’s next neighbour to entertainments on certain occasions by a fine of one masha of silver.

Gamesters, public dancers, and singers, revilers of scripture, open heretics, men who perform not the duties of their several classes, and sellers of spirituous liquors, are to be instantly banished the town.

Civil Law

The laws for civil judicature are very superior to the penal code, and, indeed, are much more rational and matured than could well be expected of so early an age.

The law of evidence in many particulars resembles that of England: persons having a pecuniary interest in the cause, infamous persons, menial servants, familiar friends, with others disqualified on slighter grounds, are in the first instance excluded from giving testimony; but, in default of other evidence, almost every description of persons may be examined, the judge making due allowances for the disqualifying causes.

Two exceptions which disgrace these otherwise well-intentioned rules have attracted more attention in Europe than the rules themselves. One is the declaration that a giver of false evidence, for the purpose of saving the life of a man of whatever class, who may have exposed himself to capital punishment, shall not lose a seat in heaven; and, though bound to perform an expiation, has, on the whole, performed a meritorious action.

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The other does not relate to judicial evidence, but pronounces that, in courting a woman, in an affair where grass or fruit has been eaten by a cow, and in case of a promise made for the preservation of a Brahman, it is no deadly sin to take a light oath. From these passages it has been assumed that the Hindu law gives a direct sanction to perjury; and to this has been ascribed the prevalence of false evidence, which is common to men of all religions in India: yet there is more space devoted in this code to the prohibition of false evidence than to that of any other crime, and the offence is denounced in terms as awful as have ever been applied to it in any European treatise either of religion or of law.

“Naked and shorn, tormented with hunger and thirst, and deprived of sight, shall the man who gives false evidence go with a potsherd to beg food at the door of his enemy.”—“Headlong, in utter darkness, shall the impious wretch tumble into hell, who, being interrogated on a judicial inquiry answers one question falsely.”

A creditor is authorised, before complaining to the court, to recover his property by any means in his power, resorting even to force within certain bounds. This law still operates so strongly in some Hindu states, that a creditor imprisons his debtor in his private house, and even keeps him for a period without food and exposed to the sun, to compel him to produce the money he owes. Interest varies from two per cent. per mensem for a Brahman to five per cent. for a Sudra.

The rules regarding man and wife are full of puerilities; the most important ones shall be stated after a short account of the laws relating to marriage. Six forms of marriage are recognised as lawful. Of these, four only are allowed to Brahmans, which (though differing in minute particulars) all agree in insisting that the father shall give away his daughter without receiving a price. The remaining two forms are permitted to the military class alone, and are abundantly liberal even with that limitation. One is, when a soldier carries off a woman after a victory, and espouses her against her will; and the other, when consummation takes place by mutual consent, without any formal ceremony whatever. Two sorts of marriage are forbidden: when the father receives a nuptial present; and when the woman, from intoxication, or other cause, has been incapable of giving a real consent to the union.

A girl may be married at eight, or even earlier; and, if her father fails to give her a husband for three years after she is marriageable (i.e., capable of being a parent), she is at liberty to choose one for herself. Men may marry women of the classes below them, but on no account of those superior to their own. A man must not marry within six known degrees of relationship on either side, nor with any woman whose family name, being the same, shows her to be of the same race as his own. The marriage of people of equal class is performed by joining hands; but a woman of the military class, marrying a Brahman, holds an arrow in her hand; a Vaisya woman a whip; and a Sudra, the skirt of a mantle. The marriage of equals is most recommended, for the first wife at least: that of a Brahman with a Sudra is discouraged; and, as a first wife, it is positively forbidden.

Marriage is indissoluble, and the parties are bound to observe mutual fidelity. From the few cases hereafter specified, in which the husband may take a second wife, it may be inferred that, with those exceptions, he must have but one wife. A man may marry again on the death of his wife; but the marriage of widows is discouraged, if not prohibited (except in the case of Sudras). A wife who is barren for eight years, or she who has produced no male children in eleven, may be superseded by another wife.

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It appears, notwithstanding this expression, that the wife first married retains the highest rank in the family. Drunken and immoral wives, those who bear malice to their husbands, or are guilty of very great extravagance, may also be superseded. A wife who leaves her husband’s house, or neglects him for a twelvemonth, without a cause, may be deserted altogether.

A man going abroad must leave a provision for his wife. The wife is bound to wait for her absent husband for eight years, if he be gone on religious duty; six, if in pursuit of knowledge or fame; and three, if for pleasure only. The practice of allowing a man to raise up issue to his brother, if he died without children, or even if (though still alive) he have no hopes of progeny, is reprobated, except for Sudras, or in case of a widow who has lost her husband before consummation.

The natural heirs of a man are the sons of his body, and their sons, and the sons of his daughters, when appointed in default of heirs male to raise up issue to him. The son of his wife, begotten by a near kinsman, at some time when his own life had been despaired of, according to the practice formerly noticed (which, though disapproved of as heretical, would appear to be recognised when it has actually taken place), is also entitled to inherit as a son. On the failure of issue of the above description, an adopted son succeeds: such a son loses all claim on the inheritance of his original father; and is entitled to a sixth of the property of his adoptive one, even if, subsequently to his adoption, sons of the body should be born. On failure of the above heirs follow ten descriptions of sons, such as never could have been thought of but by Hindus, with whom the importance of a descendant for the purpose of performing obsequies is superior to most considerations. Among these are included the son of a man’s wife by an uncertain father, begotten when he himself has long been absent, and the son of his wife of whom she was pregnant, without his knowledge, at the time of the marriage. The illegitimate son of his daughter by a man whom she afterwards marries, the son of a man by a married woman who has forsaken her husband, or by a widow, are also admitted into this class; as are, last of all, his own sons by a Sudra wife. These and others (ten in all) are admitted, by a fiction of the law, to be sons, though the author of the code himself speaks contemptuously of the affiliation, even as affording the means of efficacious obsequies.c

HINDU COMMERCE

The Hindus in their most ancient works of poetry are represented as a commercial people. And it is one evidence of the prosperity and well-being of a country, that its merchants can travel from one place to another with perfect security to themselves and their merchandise. But further, the regulations of society appear to have awarded a high rank to persons who were employed in the business of commerce. In the Ramayana we are informed, that at the triumphal entry of Rama into his capital, “all the men of distinction, together with the merchants and chief men of the people,” went out to meet him; and the procession is closed by the warriors, tradesmen, and artisans.

The internal commerce of India could not have been inconsiderable, as it was in a certain degree prescribed by nature herself. For the sandy shores of the peninsula, not producing in sufficient quantity the first necessaries of life, and particularly rice, the importation of these articles from the country bordering on the Ganges became absolutely indispensable. In return for[520] which the latter received chiefly spices; and among other valuables, precious stones, and the fine pearls only to be procured in the ocean which surrounds the former. Although cotton, one of the most important materials used for clothing, is common all over India, and manufactured with the same activity on the coasts of the peninsula as in the land of the Ganges, yet the fabric of the two countries differs so much in texture, that a commercial interchange of both kinds would naturally be introduced.

Precious Metals

The great quantity of the precious metals, particularly gold, possessed by India, may well excite our attention and surprise. Though it had neither gold nor silver mines, it has always been celebrated even in the earliest times for its riches. The Ramayana frequently mentions gold as in abundant circulation throughout the country. And the nuptial present made to Sita, we are told, consisted of a whole measure of gold pieces, and a vast quantity of the same precious metal in ingots. Golden chariots, golden trappings for elephants and horses, and golden bells, are also noticed as articles of luxury and magnificence; and it has been already shown, in the course of our inquiries into Phœnician commerce, that the Hindus were the only people subject to that empire who paid their tribute in gold and not in silver. The quantity of this metal then current in India will therefore enable us to infer, with reason, the existence of a considerable foreign commerce and trade with the gold countries.

Without doubt commercial transactions with India during the time of the Romans, and for some time afterwards, were principally carried on in ready money, which is more than once mentioned as an article of importation. And who does not recollect the complaints of the elder Pliny, of the vast sums annually absorbed by the commerce with India? How, indeed, could the case have been otherwise, when a country, which produced in superabundance every possible article, whether required for the necessaries of life or the refinements of luxury, would of course export a great deal, while it imported little or nothing in return; so that the commercial balance would always be in its favour. Hence it followed, that from the moment she possessed a foreign commerce, India would enrich herself with the precious metals by a necessary consequence from the very nature of things, and not by any fortuitous concourse of circumstances.

Coinage; Precious Stones; Weaving

This naturally brings us to the question, whether the Hindus possessed a regular coinage, and how far back the use of it extends. There is no doubt that the precious metals, gold and silver, particularly gold, were in very ancient times the established medium of exchange in India; but this, however, will not prove it to have been coined. If we can repose any confidence in the published translations of native works, the use of coined money would appear to have prevailed in very remote times; for it is expressly mentioned in the fable of Krishna.

Precious stones and pearls, both of them indigenous productions, may be comprised among the most ancient objects of Hindu luxury, and, therefore, of commerce; and they are even expressly recommended by Manu, together with coral and woven stuffs, as the most important articles on which the Vaisyas were carefully to inform themselves as to price, etc. It would be[521] superfluous to adduce proofs on this head from native works; for even the oldest specimens of Hindu sculpture, found in the rock temples, sufficiently attest it. According to the Periplus, precious stones of every kind were brought from the interior to the port of Nelkynda; among these, diamonds and rubies are particularly noticed; and as the former is a native of India, we may reasonably conclude that some of the mines where they are found must have been worked at a very remote period.

The use and manufacture of ornamental works in ivory is equally ancient throughout India. Pendants for the ear, and necklaces, both of that material, form the ordinary decorations of the divinities of Elephanta, as was observed to be the case even in Alexander’s time. Above all, the art of working in ivory must have attained a high degree of perfection, from the circumstance, that the ornamental chains above noticed seem to have been carved out of a single piece.

According to the unanimous report both of history and tradition, weaving is reckoned among the most important manufactures of ancient India; a country which nature has abundantly furnished with all kinds of raw material for the purpose, and especially cotton. We are not informed, however, who was the inventor of the simple loom used by the Hindus, which from its first origin does not appear to have undergone any alteration. The variety of cloth fabrics mentioned even by the author of the Periplus, as articles of commerce, is so great, that we can hardly suppose the number to have increased afterwards. We there read of the finest Bengal muslins; of coarse, middle, and fine cloths, either plain or striped; of coarse and fine calicoes; of coloured shawls and sashes; of coarse and fine purple goods, as well as pieces of gold embroidery; of spun silk and furs from Serica. The cotton garments of the Hindus were the first to draw the attention of the Greeks, from the extraordinary whiteness of the cloth; and they are described as being made and worn in the same manner as at the present day. The accounts we find of this cloth in the prophet Ezekiel would lead us to similar conclusions. That the “coloured cloths and rich apparel” brought to Tyre and Babylon from distant countries were partly of Indian manufacture will scarcely be doubted, after what has been already said of the extent of the Phœnician and Babylonian commerce.

Intoxicants; Spices; Perfumery

Of strong and intoxicating liquors, ancient India was acquainted with more than one sort; the use of them, however, was by no means general. The Ramayana distinguishes the Surs, who indulged themselves in these liquors, from the Asurs, who abstained from them; two sects which even at that time must have been of pretty ancient standing, as they are noticed in the old fable about the descendants of Aditi (who are the Surs) and Diti (who are the Asurs).

Under the head of strong liquors, wine is more than once mentioned in the Ramayana. If we suppose this to mean wine made from grapes, it must, in that case, have been imported; because, to the best of our knowledge, they do not press the grape in India itself. It is very doubtful, however, whether this sort of wine is to be understood in the passages alluded to; and even admitting it to have been introduced into the country as early as the time of the Ramayana, it would scarcely be the usual drink of common soldiers, any more than it is at the present day. It appears, indeed, much more probable that palm-wine is intended by the expression; as this could[522] be easily made in any part of India, and was, moreover, in the time of the Periplus, imported from Arabia, which is the reason of its being called Arabian wine.

The strong liquors, however, in most general use throughout India, appear to have been those obtained by distillation. The Ramayana mentions a beverage of this sort procured from fruits and the sugar-cane; and in Manu we find three principal kinds distinguished, according as the liquors in question were distilled from molasses, bruised rice, or the Madhuca-flower. Of the last we know nothing beyond the mere name; the two former are most likely equivalent to the arrack and rum of modern times. The Brahmans are forbidden the use of all three.

India is the mother country of spices; and we have already shown, in the course of our inquiries into Phœnician commerce, that, from the most ancient times, she supplied the whole Western world with that article. Although in the few native works at our present disposal there is no particular mention made of spices, yet we cannot possibly doubt of their consumption in the country itself. This silence, however, is merely the effect of accidental causes; for neither Manu or the Ramayana had any special occasion of alluding to the subject. But it is quite certain that pepper was very early known to the Western world as an article of commerce; for Theophrastus even distinguishes several varieties of it. Together with the spice itself, the name also of pepper seems to have migrated, probably through Persia, into the countries of the West. There is little doubt that it came originally from the southern parts of Malabar, from Cochin and the neighbourhood; which was noticed for its growth of pepper by Cosmas in the sixth century, and indeed is so at the present day.

With respect to articles of perfumery, we are enabled to speak more decisively. These are of various kinds, partly foreign, as frankincense, and partly indigenous, as the sandal-wood, which is frequently mentioned in the Ramayana and the Gitagovinda, and was in common use throughout India as well as China.

Perfumes in general, and particularly frankincense, were from the most ancient times not confined solely to the purposes of sacrifice; they were also indispensable requisites in Hindu private life, and above all on festal occasions; an example of which will be found in the Ramayana, where the poet describes the solemn entry of Bharata into his grandfather’s capital: “The inhabitants, after having watered the streets, had sprinkled them with sand, and garnished them with flower-pots, ranged in order, and containing fragrant plants in full blossom. The city was adorned with garlands, and exhaled the odours of frankincense and sweet-smelling perfumes.” The quantity of frankincense consumed in India deserves to be particularly remarked, as it is not an indigenous production, but imported from Arabia. Many other kinds of perfume are mentioned in the Periplus as being of native growth; we can scarcely, therefore, doubt their having been used in very remote antiquity.

This is not the place for enumerating in detail all the objects of commerce mentioned in the earliest accounts of India; such, for instance, as female slaves, destined for the replenishing of harems; different sorts of colours, as lac and indigo; together with base and precious metals; not forgetting the celebrated Indian steel, and many other valuable productions. But enough has been already said for the purpose of showing the extent of ancient Hindu commerce, considered with reference to its principal objects.

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Commercial Routes

The nature of the country, however, rendered the internal commerce of India different from that of the rest of Asia, in respect of transportation; for it was not necessary, nor indeed was it always possible, to employ caravans, as in the extensive tracts of inner Asia. That this mode of conveyance was nevertheless occasionally resorted to, we learn from the beautiful episode of Nala, where Damayanti in her flight is represented to have joined a caravan of merchants. But the beasts of burden made use of, in this instance, are tame elephants, which were therefore attacked in the night and dispersed by their wild brethren of the forest; and besides, the caravan in question appears to have belonged to some royal personage, rather than to a company of private merchants. The greatest part of India, that is to say, the whole of the peninsula, being traversed with rocky mountains, would scarcely, if at all, admit of the employment of camels; and the moderate distances between one town and another, and the general spread of civilisation, would enable merchants to travel alone with perfect security, while river navigation and the coasting trade afforded unusual facilities for transporting merchandise.

The Ganges and its tributary streams were the grand commercial routes of northern India; and mention is also made of navigation on the rivers of the peninsula in the south. It is not improbable, indeed, that artificial routes between the Ganges and the Indus, as we find to have been the case in aftertimes, existed even at an earlier period. The great high-roads across the country are not only frequently mentioned in the Ramayana; but we also read of a particular class of men who were commissioned to keep them in repair. According to Arrian, the commercial intercourse between the eastern and western coasts was carried on in country-built vessels; and when we consider the high antiquity of the pearl-fisheries in the straits of Ceylon, together with the necessary requisites thereto, we can hardly doubt that such was also the case many hundred years before his time. It would appear, then, that conveyance of merchandise by means of a caravan, as in other countries of the East, continued always foreign to the practice of India, unless the multitudes of pilgrims and penitents, that were continually resorting to places of sanctity, may be said to have compensated for the want of it. The almost innumerable crowds that yearly flock to Benares, Jagannath, and elsewhere, amounting to many hundred thousands of souls, would obviously give rise to a species of commerce united with devotion; and markets and fairs would be a natural, and indeed an indispensable requisite to satisfy the wants of such throngs of people. And consequently, too, the establishments called choultries, the erection of which was considered a religious duty, and whose forms not unfrequently displayed all the magnificence of native architecture, might be said to have a similar destination with the caravanseries of other Eastern countries, without, however, the resemblance between the two being exactly perfect.

The nature of the country and its productions, together with the peculiar genius of the people themselves, both contributed to render Hindu commerce of a passive rather than an active character. For as the productions of India were always in high request with the Western world, the Hindus would clearly have no occasion to transport them to foreign countries themselves; they would of course expect the inhabitants of the latter to come and fetch what they wanted. And again, the Hindu national character has no pretensions to that hardy spirit of adventure, which is capable of achieving[524] the most extraordinary undertakings. While their fables abound with prodigious enterprise, the people themselves are content to lead a quiet and peaceful life, with just so much activity as is requisite to guide the plough or direct the shuttle, without running the risk of hazardous and unnecessary adventure. Their India—their Jambu-dvipa, comprised in their estimation the limits of the known world. Separated from the rest of Asia by a chain of impassable mountains on the north; while on all other sides the ocean formed a barrier, which, if their laws are silent on the subject, yet at least their habits or their customs would not permit them to transgress; we can find no certain proof that the Hindus were ever mariners.b

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER IV. BRAHMANISM AND BUDDHISM

THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF BRAHMANISM

In the vast highlands formed by the conjunction of the great mountain chains of Bolor-Tagh in the northwest of the Himalayas, where, not far from the sources of the Oxus and other great rivers the tableland of Pamir, “the roof of the world,” extends, a well-built nomadic race, possessing the rudiments of civilisation and calling themselves the “excellent” Aryans, in prehistoric times pastured their horses and flocks. Shut off on the north and east by impassable mountains from Central Asia, the country on the west and south was appointed them for the evolution of their natural capacities. When the Aryans, following the inborn wandering instinct of all pastoral races, left their home, one part of them settled in the mountain districts north and west of the Hindu Kush (Paropamisus), which in the Greek writers bore the names of Sogdiana, Bactriana, Hyrcania, and Arachosia; another part went farther, wandered through the southwestern passes of these mountains, and took possession of the rich, fertile country on the banks of the Indus (Sindh). The former, called the Iranians, or according to their sacred language, the Zend people, evolved in time the state of culture which their conquerors—the Medes and Persians—adopted from them. The latter, called among the other nations of the ancient world, Indians or Hindus, after the principal river of their land, became the creators of that perfected system of religion, of those peculiar political and legal forms, and of that Sanskrit literature, which we still admire in its remains and traditions.

The aborigines, dark-skinned races, of rude customs and wild mode of life, were partly exterminated or pushed back into the forests by the Aryan immigrants, partly subjugated and reduced to the condition of servitude and slavery, and in this way an impassable barrier was erected between the two races.

The deep contempt with which the conquerors looked down upon the conquered increased in the Indian consciousness that self-satisfied conceit which led the Brahmans to consider all people who spoke another language, or who were under other laws, as barbarians, called by them Mlechcha (i.e., weak), with whom they must avoid all intermixture and all social intercourse.

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There is no trustworthy historical information of antiquity to throw light on the development and gradual evolution of the culture of the Aryans, and so until the chronicles and legends of the Buddhists in the sixth and fifth and the records of the Greeks in the fourth and third centuries, it can only be gathered from a few traces and analogies. The Brahmans had not the slightest interest in records; on the other hand they endeavoured to blot out all recollection of earlier times and other conditions, so that the conditions and views which developed later might appear to the people as the original ones. So the chronological order of the accounts, derived from the national poems and religious writings, is necessarily so very deficient and intermittent that the more ancient periods can only be surmised.

From the years of their immigration into the district of the Indus, which must have occurred in the third millennium before our era, until the fifteenth century, the Aryans lived in the Land of the Five Rivers as far as the sacred Saraswati. Divided into many tribes, they led a settled pastoral and agricultural life under the leadership of elders, chiefs, and kings, worshipping the sun-god Indra and the other powers of nature with songs and sacrifices, and hardening themselves by battle and tribal feuds. In the oldest portions of the Vedas are still preserved some of the songs and invocations sung at the festivals of the gods or at the sacrificial feasts of the dead.

In their gradual expansion towards the south, they may have reached the mouth of the Indus by the fourteenth or thirteenth century, and on the southern seacoast they may have made commercial alliances with the Babylonians and Phœnicians. Diodorus’ account, taken from the Greek historian Ctesias, of the journey of Queen Semiramis to the Indus, and her battle with the “Lord of the Earth” (Stabrobates-Sthavarapatis) seems, in spite of its fabulous exaggeration, to rest upon historical tradition, which, combined with the report that Semiramis founded the city of Kophen on the river Kabul tends to prove, that at this time the country on the right bank of the Upper Indus was subject and paid tribute to the Assyrians.[21]

A second stage of evolution is connected with the conquest of the land of the Ganges, beginning about the fourteenth century before our era, when an heroic period commenced full of warlike deeds, the traces of which are retained in the oldest legends of the national epic, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, and in the names of some tribal princes and ruling families. We should have more accurate information about this period of heroic activity had not the heroic poems later undergone complete transformation under the hands of the Brahmans, but even in their present form they still retain a core of historical truth although more concealed and veiled than among other peoples. The farther the Aryans went to the east, the more the forsaken home on the Indus and its tributaries was regarded as the sacred mother country where the Aryan race was unmixed with foreign elements and where the sacred Sanskrit language maintained its original purity. But the patriarchal institutions and the old nature-religion were in the course of time so eliminated from the memory of the race that the remaining tribes, which had not kept pace with the evolution of the people of the Ganges, or had clung to the old forms, were excluded from the religious communion and the legal system of the worshippers of Brahma as impure and of low degree. Some of these tribes on the Upper Indus were under Persian dominion and marched as far as the plains of Eleusis in the army of Xerxes.

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The national strength of the Indians seems to have been shattered by these centuries of long-continued struggles, first against the aboriginal population, and then after their subjugation or expulsion, among the Aryan races themselves, the first settlers seeking to defend the territory they had gained against later immigrants. Therefore it was not difficult for the priests, when arms were at last laid down, to repress the warlike portion of the population, which had been supreme in the heroic period, but had lost its best forces and its most capable leaders in the bloody battles, especially as the enervating climate and the fertility of their new abode on the Ganges and Jumna were more conducive to religious contemplation and peaceful courses than to martial excitement and military life.

These circumstances combined with the more passive and vegetative nature of the people, were favourable to the efforts of the Brahmans to subjugate the whole external and internal life of the nation to priestly dominion. They supplanted the old nature-religion by the pantheistic emanation doctrine of Brahma as the soul of the world, and gave the heroic Indra and his crowds of gods a subordinate place as guardians of the world. They restricted the free development of national power by a strict exclusive order of caste, in which they took the foremost place; and they repressed all natural activity by endless ceremonial and ritualistic laws, by sacrifices and purifications. They cast a gloom over life on earth and suppressed all pleasure in life and joyous impulse by the terrifying doctrine of rebirth and hell punishment. They taught a gloomy asceticism full of expiations and penances, the mortification of the flesh and all sensual pleasure by absorption in an imaginary Divine Being as the surest way to free the soul from the bonds of the body and to restore it to its heavenly home from this miserable earthly life.

Moreover the Brahmans not only obtained dominion over the domain of religion, and endowed it with its peculiar spiritualistic character, but they tried to gain power over and regulate with their precepts the state and law, and civil life in all its manifestations. With this end in view, they put into effect a code of law, ostensibly coming from Manu, which was to have authority in all Indian states and which by dint of severe punishments, and a strict royal despotism, based upon the power of officials and police, kept the people in a state of obedient submission.

The Brahmans were more anxious for the Indians to lead a uniform existence according to the precepts of the law, than for the separate kingdoms to unite into a political whole, and form a power with strong external relations. Therefore the Indian nation was never united by a common alliance, but just as the different castes existed side by side, but separated and without any common interest, so the Indian country was broken up into a lot of smaller or greater states without any external connection. They never formed a federal state, nor even a confederation of states. Separated and asunder, and not seldom in hostile relations, the different kingdoms were as distinct as the castes, and the kingdoms themselves consisted in turn of a lot of disunited villages and city communities only loosely connected together for convenience of taxation and supervision.

These political and social divisions and disruptions were not calculated to turn the attention of the Indian race to political life, so it recoiled from the wretched régime in which gloomy tyranny suppressed all joy in life, and watched over every spiritual activity and sought its happiness and salvation in the realm of faith and fantasy, in the world of imagination and dreams. It submerged itself in the divine, it filled heaven and earth with spirits and[528] higher beings of every kind, and in the fascinating world of legends and stories of saints, of fables of miracles, and myths of penitents, it forgot the real world with its oppression of castes, its despotism of princes and officials, and its blood-sucking system of taxation. Thus did the Indians on the Ganges withdraw more than any other race from real practical life, for the “realm of fantasy was their fatherland, and heaven was their home.”

This was the line taken by Indian culture until the sixth century before our era, and it spread over a great part of the peninsula of the Deccan more by the Brahmanical missions and colonisation, than by force of arms. Then Buddhism developed out of Brahmanism and became a mighty ferment for the whole of eastern Asia. Moreover, the new doctrine was not without its influence on the Brahmanic religious system. The perception that the people were so much attached to the doctrine of Buddha because it cherished the belief that a god had appeared in human form on earth, led the Brahmans to the development of the doctrine of incarnations. They divided the creator Brahma, who always remained an incomprehensible idea to the popular mind, into three forms, and taught that the most popular and beneficent form of this triune deity, Vishnu, the vivifying, supporting spirit of nature, appeared from time to time on earth in human form, to restore order to the disturbed arrangement of the world and to lead back erring humanity to the right road. Rama and Krishna, the heroes of the national epics, were represented as such incarnations of Vishnu and the songs of the heroes were reconstructed according to this idea. Therefore, the profound speech of Bhagavad-gita was incorporated in the Mahabharata, in which the attempt to reconcile the faith of the Buddhists with the doctrine of Brahma is evident.

Hellenic culture then found its way to India, and it may have been through Greek influence that many sciences and arts, such as knowledge of the zodiac, scientific astronomy, minting, etc., were first adopted in the land of the Ganges. The Hellenic spirit seems to have been influential in the development of poetry and plastic arts, at least in that of the drama and architecture. Greek culture also led to an early introduction of Christian opinions into India; in the idea of a personal god, which later became prominent and in the evolution of the doctrine of Vishnu-Krishna the influence of Christian ideas is not to be ignored.

In the Macedonian and Alexandrian period, when India came in contact with western Asiatic and Greek culture, Indian spiritual life had come to a standstill, the creative spirit was extinct. The speculative and inquiring spirit had brought forward an abundance of theories and systems, and applied them to life with astonishing consistency; and now it was exhausted, and left to posterity the wonderful images as strict forms and categories for the inner and outer life.

With the peculiar tenacity of the oriental nature, the Indians have retained throughout all centuries, down to the present time, the religious conceptions, the fantastic doctrine of the gods, the oppressing order of caste, the strict asceticism, the faith in the second birth, and in short all the forms and theories, which crippled and broke the moral and productive force of the nation. However many conquerors put their iron heel on the neck of the people, however many storms and wars spread death and desolation over the sacred land, these principles of Indian life survived all changes, and withstood all oppression, persecution, and attempts at conversion.

The despotism and caste power, impregnating the Indian nature, have imbued it with a force of endurance and passive resistance which could not be[529] broken by any outside power. Cunning, artifice, dissimulation, lying, and deceit, the weapons and vices of all the weak and oppressed, helped the Indian to bear his painful position. He bowed under dominion without being broken in character; and as death always appeared to him a gain, and asceticism deadened him to suffering, he always suffered death with composure and stoicism.b

Having read an account of the rise of Brahmanism we may well examine its code of morals somewhat more fully before passing on to Buddhism.

The Vedas

The religion taught in the Institutes is derived from the Vedas, to which scriptures they refer in every page. There are four Vedas; but the fourth is rejected by many of the learned Hindus, and the number reduced to three.

The primary doctrine of the Vedas is the Unity of God. “There is in truth,” say repeated texts, “but one Deity, the Supreme Spirit, the Lord of the Universe, whose work is the universe.”

Among the creatures of the Supreme Being are some superior to man, who should be adored, and from whom protection and favours may be obtained through prayer. The most frequently mentioned of these are the gods of the elements, the stars, and the planets; but other personified powers and virtues likewise appear. “The three principal manifestations of the Divinity (Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva), with other personified attributes and energies, and most of the other gods of Hindu mythology, are indeed mentioned, or at least indicated, in the Veda; but the worship of deified heroes is no part of the system.” Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, are rarely named, enjoy no preëminence, nor are they ever objects of special adoration; and Mr. Colebrooke could discover no passage in which their incarnations were suggested. There seem to have been no images and no visible types of the objects of worship. The doctrine of monotheism prevails throughout the Institutes; and it is declared towards the close that, of all duties, “the principal is to obtain from the Upanishads a true knowledge of one supreme God.” But although Manu has preserved the idea of the unity of God, his opinions on the nature and operations of the Divinity have fallen off from the purity of their original. This is chiefly apparent in his account of the creation. There are passages in the Vedas which declare that God is “the material, as well as the efficient, cause of the universe; the potter by whom the fictile vase is formed; the clay out of which it is fabricated”: yet those best qualified to interpret conceive that these expressions are not to be taken literally, and mean no more than to assert the origin of all things from the same first cause. The general tendency of the Vedas is to show that the substance as well as the form of all created beings was derived from the will of the Self-existing Cause.

The Institutes on the contrary, though not very distinct, appear to regard the universe as formed from the substance of the Creator, and to have a vague notion of the eternal existence of matter as part of the divine substance. According to them, “the Self-existing Power, himself undiscerned, but making this world discernible, with five elements and other principles, appeared with undiminished glory dispelling the gloom.”

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“He, having willed to produce various beings from his own divine substance, first with a thought created the waters, and placed in them a productive seed.”

From this seed sprung the mundane egg, in which the Supreme Being was himself born in the form of Brahma. By similar mythological processes, he, under the form of Brahma, produced the heavens and earth, and the human soul; and to all creatures he gave distinct names and distinct occupations. He likewise created the deities “with divine attributes and pure souls,” and “inferior genii exquisitely delicate.” This whole creation only endures for a certain period; when that expires, the divine energy is withdrawn, Brahma is absorbed in the supreme essence, and the whole system fades away. These extinctions of creation, with corresponding revivals, occur periodically, at terms of prodigious length.

The inferior deities are representatives of the elements, as Indra, air; Agni, fire; Varuna, water; Prithivi, earth: or of heavenly bodies, Surya, the sun; Chandra, the moon; Vrispati and other planets: or of abstract ideas, as Dharma, God of Justice; Dhanvantari, God of Medicine. None of the heroes who are omitted in the Vedas, but who now fill so prominent a part in the Hindu Pantheon (Rama, Krishna, etc.), are ever alluded to. Even the deities of which these are incarnations are never noticed. Brahma is more than once named, but Vishnu and Siva never. These three forms of the Divinity occupy no conspicuous place among the deities of the Vedas; and their mystical union or triad is never hinted at in Manu, nor probably in the Vedas. The three forms, into some one of which all other deities are there said to be resolvable, are fire, air, and the sun.

Altogether distinct from the gods are good and evil genii, who are noticed in the creation rather among the animals than the divinities: “benevolent genii, fierce giants, blood-thirsty savages, heavenly choristers, nymphs and demons, huge serpents and birds of mighty wing, and separate companies of Pitris, or progenitors of mankind.”

Man is endowed with two internal spirits, the vital soul, which gives motion to the body, and the rational, which is the seat of passions and good and bad qualities; and both these souls, though independent existences, are connected with the divine essence which pervades all beings. It is the vital soul which expiates the sins of the man. It is subjected to torments for periods proportioned to its offences, and is then sent to transmigrate through men and animals, and even plants; the mansion being the lower the greater has been its guilt, until at length it has been purified by suffering and humiliations, is again united to its more pure associates, and again commences a career which may lead to eternal bliss.

The practical part of religion may be divided into ritual and moral. The ritual branch occupies too great a portion of the Hindu code, but not to the exclusion of the moral. There are religious ceremonies during the pregnancy of the mother, at the birth of the child, and on various subsequent occasions, the principal of which is the shaving of his head, all but one lock, at the first or third year. But by far the most important ceremonial is the investiture with the sacred thread, which must not be delayed beyond sixteen for a Brahman, or twenty-four for a merchant. This great ceremony is called the second birth, and procures for the three classes who are admitted to it the title of “twice-born men,” by which they are always distinguished throughout the code. It is on this occasion that the persons invested are taught the mysterious word om, and the gayatri, which is the most holy verse of the Vedas, which is enjoined in innumerable parts of the code to be repeated either as devotion or expiation; and which, indeed, joined to universal benevolence, may raise a man to beatitude without the aid of any other religious exercise. This mysterious text, though it is now confined to the[531] Brahmans, and is no longer so easy to learn, has been well ascertained by learned Europeans, and is thus translated by Mr. Colebrooke, “Let us meditate the adorable light of the Divine Ruler; may it guide our intellects.”

From fuller forms of the same verse it is evident that the light alluded to is the Supreme Creator, though it might also appear to mean the sun. It is not easy to see on what its superior sanctity is founded, unless it may at one time have communicated, though in ambiguous language, the secret of the real nature of God to the initiated, when the material sun was the popular object of worship.

Every Brahman, and perhaps every twice-born man, must bathe daily; must pray at morning and evening twilight, in some unfrequented place near pure water; and must daily perform five sacraments, viz., studying the Veda; making oblations to the manes and to fire in honour of the deities; giving rice to living creatures; and receiving guests with honour. The gods are worshipped by burnt-offerings of clarified butter, and libations of the juice of the moon plant, at which ceremonies they are invoked by name; but although idols are mentioned, and in one place desired to be respected, yet the adoration of them is never noticed but with disapprobation; nor is the present practice of offering perfumes and flowers to them ever alluded to.

The reading of the Vedas is a serious task. They must be read distinctly and aloud, with a calm mind and in a respectful posture. The reading is liable to be interrupted by many omens, and must be suspended likewise on the occurrence of various contingencies, which, by disturbing the mind, may render it unfit for such an occupation. Wind, rain, thunder, earthquakes, meteors, eclipses, the howling of jackals, and many other incidents are of the first description: the prohibition against reading where lutes sound or where arrows whistle, when a town is beset by robbers, or when terrors have been excited by strange phenomena, clearly refers to the second. The last sacrament, that of hospitality to guests, is treated at length, and contains precepts of politeness and self-denial which would be very pleasing if they were not so much restricted to Brahmans entertaining men of their own class.

Besides the daily oblations, there are monthly obsequies to the manes of each man’s ancestors. These are to be performed “in empty glades, naturally clean, or on the banks of rivers, and in solitary spots.” The sacrificer is there to burn certain offerings, and with many ceremonies to set down cakes of rice and clarified butter, invoking the manes to come and partake of them. He is afterwards to feast a small number of Brahmans (not, however, his usual friends or guests). He is to serve them with respect, and they are to eat in silence. “Departed ancestors, no doubt, are attendant on such invited Brahmans, hovering around them like pure spirits, and sitting by them when they are seated.” Innumerable are the articles of food from which a twice-born man must abstain: some for plain reasons, as carnivorous birds, tame hogs, and other animals whose appearance or way of living is disgusting; but others are so arbitrarily fixed that a cock, a mushroom, a leek, or an onion occasions immediate loss of caste; while hedgehogs, porcupines, lizards, and tortoises are expressly declared to be lawful food. A Brahman is forbidden, under severe penalties, to eat the food of a hunter or a dishonest man, a worker in gold or in cane, or a washer of clothes, or a dyer. The cruelty of a hunter’s trade may join him, in the eyes of a Brahman, to a dishonest man; but, among many other arbitrary proscriptions, one is surprised to find a physician, and to observe that this learned and beneficent profession is always classed with those which are most impure.[532] What chiefly surprises us is to find most sorts of flesh permitted to Brahmans, and even that of oxen particularly enjoined on solemn festivals. Brahmans must not, indeed, eat flesh, unless at a sacrifice; but sacrifices, as have been seen, are among the daily sacraments; and rice pudding, bread, and many other things equally innocent are included in the very same prohibition.

It is true that humanity to animals is everywhere most strongly inculcated, and that abstaining from animal food is declared to be very meritorious, from its tendency to diminish their sufferings; but, though the use of it is dissuaded on these grounds, it is never once forbidden or hinted at as impure, and is in many places positively declared lawful. The permission to eat beef is the more remarkable as the cow seems to have been as holy in those days as she is now. Saving the life of a cow was considered to atone for the murder of a Brahman, killing one required to be expiated by three months’ austerities and servile attendance on a herd of cattle.

Besides these restraints on eating, a Brahman is subjected to a multitude of minute regulations relating to the most ordinary occupations of life, the transgressing of any of which is nevertheless to be considered as a sin. Drinking spirits is classed in the first degree of crime. Performing sacrifices to destroy the innocent only falls under the third. Under the same penance with some real offences come giving pain to a Brahman and “smelling things not fit to be smelled.” Some penances would, if compulsory, be punishments of the most atrocious cruelty. They are sufficiently absurd when left, as they are, to the will of the offenders, to be employed in averting exclusion from society in this world or retribution in the next. For incest with the wife of a father, natural or spiritual, or with a sister, connection with a child under the age of puberty, or with a woman of the lowest class, the penance is death by burning on an iron bed, or embracing a red-hot metal image. For drinking spirits the penance is death by drinking the boiling hot urine of a cow.

The other expiations are mostly made by fines and austerities. The fines are almost always in cattle to be given to Brahmans, some as high as a bull and a thousand cows. They, also, are oddly enough proportioned: for killing a snake a Brahman must give a hoe; for killing an eunuch, a load of rice straw. Saying “hush” or “pish” to a superior, or overpowering a Brahman in argument, involve each a slight penance. Killing insects, and even cutting down plants and grass (if not for a useful purpose), require a penance, since plants also are supposed to be endued with feeling. One passage about expiation is characteristic in many ways. “A priest who should retain in his memory the whole Rig-Veda would be absolved from all guilt, even if he had slain the inhabitants of the three worlds, and had eaten food from the foulest hands.”

The effect of the religion of Manu on morals is, indeed, generally good. The essential distinction between right and wrong, it has been seen, is strongly marked at the outset, and is in general well preserved. The well-known passages relating to false evidence, one or two where the property of another may be appropriated for the purposes of sacrifice, and some laxity in the means by which a king may detect and seize offenders, are the only exceptions noted. On the other hand, there are numerous injunctions to justice, truth, and virtue; and many are the evils, both in this world and the next, which are said to follow from vicious conduct. The upright man need not be cast down, though oppressed with penury, while[533] “the unjust man attains no felicity, nor he whose wealth proceeds from false evidence.”

The moral duties are in one place distinctly declared to be superior to the ceremonial ones. The punishments of a future state are as much directed against the offences which disturb society as against sins affecting religion. One maxim, however, on this subject, is of a less laudable tendency; for it declares that the men who receive from the government the punishment due to their crimes go pure to heaven, and become as clean as those who have done well.

It may be observed, in conclusion, that the morality thus enjoined by the law was not, as now, sapped by the example of fabled gods, or by the debauchery permitted in the religious ceremonies of certain sects. From many passages cited in different places it has been shown that the code is not by any means deficient in generous maxims or in elevated sentiments; but the general tendency of the Brahman morality is rather towards innocence than active virtue, and its main objects are to enjoy tranquillity and to prevent pain or evil to any sentient being.c

Soul Transmigration

It is well known that the metempsychosis, or the transmigration of the soul into various orders of being, reviving in one form when it ceases to exist in another, is the tenet of the Hindus. The Brahmans grafted upon it, in their usual way, a number of fantastic refinements, and gave to their ideas on this subject a more systematic form than is usual with those eccentric theologians. They describe the mind as characterised by three qualities—goodness, passion, darkness. According as any soul is distinguished by one or another of those qualities in its present life, is the species of being into which it migrates in the life to come.

Souls endued with goodness attain the condition of deities; those filled with passion receive that of men; those immersed in darkness are condemned to that of beasts. Each of these conditions, again, is divided into three degrees—a lower, a middle, and a higher. Of the souls distinguished by darkness, the lowest are thrust into mineral and vegetable substances, into worms, reptiles, fishes, snakes, tortoises, cattle, jackals; the middle pass into elephants, horses, Sudras, Mlechcha (a word of very opprobrious import, denoting men of all other races not Hindu), lions, tigers, and boars; the highest animate the forms of dancers, singers, birds, deceitful men, giants, and blood-thirsty savages.

Of the souls who receive their future condition from the quality of passion, the lowest pass into cudgel-players, boxers, wrestlers, actors, those who teach the use of weapons, and those who are addicted to gaming and drinking; the middle enter the bodies of kings, men of the fighting class, domestic priests of kings, and men skilled in the war of controversy; the highest become gandharvas (a species of supposed aerial spirits, whose business is music), genii attending superior gods, together with various companies of apsaras, or nymphs. Of the souls who are characterised by the quality of goodness, the lowest migrate into hermits, religious mendicants, other Brahmans, such orders of demigods as are wafted in airy cars, genii of the signs and lunar mansions, and Daityas, another of their many orders of superior spirits; the middle attain the condition of sacrificers, of holy sages, deities of the lower heaven, genii of the Vedas, regents of stars, divinities of years, Pitris, and Sadhyas, two other species of exalted intelligence; the highest ascend to the condition of Brahma with four faces, of creators of[534] worlds, of the genius of virtue, and the divinities presiding over the two principles of nature.

Besides this general description of the future allotment of different souls, a variety of particular dooms are specified, of which a few may be taken as an example. “Sinners in the first degree,” says the ordinance of Manu, “having passed through terrible regions of torture, for a great number of years, are condemned to the following births at the close of that period. The slayer of a Brahman must enter the body of a dog, a boar, an ass, a camel, a bull, a goat, a sheep, a stag, a bird, a Chandala, or a Pucassa. He who steals the gold of a priest shall pass a thousand times into the bodies of spiders, of snakes, and chameleons, of crocodiles, and other aquatic monsters, or of mischievous blood-sucking demons. He who violates the bed of his natural or spiritual father migrates a hundred times into the forms of grasses, of shrubs with crowded stems, or of creeping and twining plants, carnivorous animals, beasts with sharp teeth, or cruel brutes.” After a variety of other cases, a general rule is declared for those of the four castes who neglect the duties of their order: “Should a Brahman omit his peculiar duty, he shall be changed into a demon, with a mouth like a firebrand, who devours what has been vomited; a Kshattriya, into a demon who feeds on ordure and carrion; a Vaisya, into an evil being who eats purulent carcases; and a Sudra, who neglects his occupations, into a foul embodied spirit, who feeds on lice.” The reward of the most exalted piety, of the most profound meditation, of that exquisite abstemiousness which dries up the mortal frame, is peculiar; such a perfect soul becomes absorbed in the Divine essence, and is forever exempt from transmigration.

We might very easily, from the known laws of human nature, conclude, notwithstanding the language held by the Hindus on the connection between future happiness and the virtue of the present life, that rewards and punishments, very distant and very obscure, would be wholly impotent against temptations to crime, though at the instigation of the priests they might engage the people in a ceaseless train of wretched ceremonies. The fact corresponds most exactly with the anticipation. An admirable witness has said, “The doctrine of a state of future rewards and punishments, as some persons may plead, has always been supposed to have a strong influence on public morals: the Hindus not only have this doctrine in their writings, but are taught to consider every disease and misfortune of life as an undoubted symptom of moral disease, and the terrific appearance of its close-pursuing punishment. Can this fail to produce a dread of vice, and a desire to merit the favour of the Deity? I will still further,” he adds, “assist the objector; and inform him that the Hindu writings declare that till every immoral taint is removed, every sin atoned for, and the mind has obtained perfect abstraction from material objects, it is impossible to be reunited to the great spirit; and that to obtain this perfection, the sinner must linger in many hells, and transmigrate through almost every form of matter.” Our informant then declares: “Great as these terrors are, there is nothing more palpable than that, with most of the Hindus, they do not weigh the weight of a feather compared with the loss of a rupee. The reason is obvious: every Hindu considers all his action as the effect of his destiny; he laments, perhaps, his miserable fate, but he resigns himself to it without a struggle, like the malefactor in a condemned cell.” This experienced observer adds, which is still more comprehensive, that the doctrine of future rewards and punishments has, in no situation and among no people, a power to make men virtuous.d

[535]

Fate, as understood by the Hindus, is something very different from that of other people. It is necessity, as the consequence of past acts; that is, a man’s station and fortunes in his present life are the necessary consequences of his conduct in his pre-existence. To them he must submit, but not from despair. He has his future condition in his own power, and it depends upon himself in what capacity he shall be born again. He is not therefore the helpless victim of an irresistible and inscrutable destiny, but the sufferer for his own misdeeds, or the possessor of good which his own merits have secured him.e

BUDDHISM

When Buddhism was first made known to Europe, not so very many years ago, by means of translations of philosophic writings dated six centuries after Buddha, profound astonishment was felt at taking cognisance of the fact that a religion which had brought three hundred million souls under its law should acknowledge no god; should look upon the world as vain illusion, and should offer nothing but annihilation to the aspirations of man.

The examination of the bas-reliefs, with which the ancient monuments of India are covered, proves that the religion of Buddha, as practised by the Hindus during a period of one thousand years, differs completely from the representation of it given us by written documents. Not in books, in fact, but in a close study of the monuments themselves, can be learned what Buddhism was in former days; and the message these monuments deliver to us is a totally different one from that contained in books. The monuments reveal that this religion, which modern scientists have distorted into an atheistic belief, was, on the contrary, the most polytheistic of all religions.

It is true that in the first Buddhist monuments, eighteen to twenty centuries old, such as the balustrades of Bharhut, Sanchi, Buddha-Gaya, etc., the reformer figures solely as an emblem. Worship is accorded to the imprint of his feet, and to the image of the tree under which he entered the state of supreme wisdom; but we shortly begin to see Buddha represented as a god, having a place in all the sanctuaries. At first he is represented as alone, or nearly so, as in the most ancient temples of Ajunta; then gradually he appears in company with Brahman gods: Indra, Kali, Sarasvati, etc., as is to be seen in the Buddhist temples of the Ellora series of monuments. Completely lost a little later in the crowd of gods that he had at first dominated, he comes, after a few centuries, to be regarded as nothing more than an incarnation of Vishnu. From that day Buddhism has been extinct in India.

The disappearance, or rather the transformation which has just been indicated in a few lines, required a thousand years for its accomplishment. The numerous monuments which retrace its history were erected during the period extending from three centuries B.C. to the seventh of our era. During this long interval of time Buddha was constantly worshipped by his followers as an all-powerful god. Legends show him to us appearing before his disciples and according them favours. One of the men most deeply learned in Buddhist practices, the pilgrim, Hwen Tsang, who visited the peninsula in the seventh century and entered a long novitiate, relates having seen Buddha appear before him in a sacred grotto. Legends and monuments are perfectly clear in their teachings, and had the study of Buddhism been primarily based upon them, an entirely different impression of the religion would have gained ground from that which now prevails. Unfortunately, the European writers on India had never visited that country, gaining all their knowledge of[536] Buddhism from books; and ill chance had directed them upon the works of certain philosophical sects, written five or six centuries after the death of Buddha, and containing little or nothing of the religion as actually practised.

Neither did the metaphysical speculations, which so astonished Europe by their depth, contain anything new. Now that the works of Indian writers are better known, the same theories have been found in the writings of the philosophical sects which developed during the Brahmanic period. Atheism, the contempt for life, morality as existing apart from religion, the world considered as illusion—all these had already appeared in certain philosophical works known under the name of Upanishads, of which there exist about two hundred and fifty, dating from all the epochs. In some are found the same doctrines that are presented in the philosophical writings of the Buddhists. Their authors also profess the doctrine of Karma, the fundamental belief of Buddhism as of all the religions of India—a doctrine according to which the acts accomplished by man in this life determine his condition in a future existence, this forming also the base of the code of Manu. The ultimate purpose of these successive reincarnations is absorption in the universal principle of things, the Brahma of which Manu speaks, parent to the Nirvana of Buddhism. Then, and then only is the soul absolved from reincarnation.

For the attainment of this final state of absorption, Buddhists and Brahmanists lay down the same rules; namely, suppression of all desire, renunciation of the things of this world, and a life passed in solitude and contemplation.

The philosophical theories of the age of Buddhism were thus the same as those held in the Brahmanic age which had preceded it. They are theories which developed parallel with the religion that was taught by the priests and practised by the people, yet they differed from it essentially. To look upon these doctrines as being identical with Buddhism would be to commit an error as great as though we were to confound the theories of certain Upanishads with Brahmanism; nevertheless it is these philosophical utterances of some of the disciples of Buddha which have been received in Europe as Buddhism itself.

It would seem to suggest itself at once as improbable that a religion counting five hundred million believers could be founded solely on cold philosophical reasoning; but perhaps an error of such a nature is excusable in the case of learned men who, having passed their lives in the study of books, have had no time to pursue the deeper study of men. In two or three thousand years, when the centre of civilisation shall have again shifted and our present languages and the books written in them have been forgotten, it is quite probable that some professor who has come upon the English language in his researches shall translate the first works that come to his hand, such as Spencer’s First Principles, or Darwin’s Origin of Species, and give them to the world as the beliefs professed by the Christian peoples in the nineteenth century.

It is only necessary to observe Hindus closely to perceive that they are not the people to adopt the tenets of any religion that is without divinity. The Hindu not believe in gods? Why, the world is full of them for him. He addresses prayers to the tiger that devours his flocks, to the railroad bridge constructed by the European, to the European himself if occasion arises. Make him learn by heart the catechism of the southern Buddhists, recently composed with the assistance of Europeans, which teaches that the universe has no creator, that all is illusion, and you will see that that will not prevent him from feeling the need of still offering up worship to the great Buddha and all the gods of his sanctuary. The most ancient of all books on Buddhism, the Lalita Vistara written some eighteen centuries ago, six centuries[537] later than Buddha himself, contains a number of dissertations on the illusiveness and vanity of the things of this world. But to whom is Buddha teaching these truths? To the gods, principally, to those innumerable gods of whom mention is made on every page and who, Brahma at their head, presided at the birth of the reformer who was to be god in his turn, accompanied him wherever he went and finally came to offer him worship. Naturally contradictions abound in this book; but they are no contradictions to the Hindu. His thought is formed in an entirely different mould from ours, for him our European logic does not exist. Not a single one of his books, from the antique epics of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata to the philosophical works previously referred to, is free from glaring contradictions. Doubtless logic is not always lacking, but it is that feminine form which carries its deductions to their extreme limit without concerning itself with contradictions.

It is quite necessary, if one wishes to comprehend Buddhism, to consider alongside of the philosophical speculations superimposed upon it the multitude of gods which no religion of India can do without. Buddha no more tried to shake the foundations of the Brahmanic Pantheon than he tried—an oft-repeated error notwithstanding—to set at naught the laws of caste. Indeed there has never been a reformer powerful enough to dislodge this corner-stone of India’s social constitution.

The preceding goes to make plainly apparent that Buddhism is simply an evolution of Brahmanism, preserving its multiplicity of gods, and altering merely its moral teachings. Nor was it until the expiration of several centuries that it began to be clearly differentiated from the ancient faith; probably at the outset it was not even looked upon as in the nature of a new cult. There is nothing to indicate that Asoka believed himself to be adhering to doctrines hitherto untaught; mention is made but once or twice of Buddha in all the religious edicts which this king spread over India and of which a great number remain to us. He recommends the widest tolerance towards all religious sects, and Buddhism must have presented itself to him simply as one of these, to be esteemed principally on account of the spirit of charity displayed by the king’s son who founded it.

We shall shortly prove that Buddhism disappeared from India by being gradually absorbed into ancient Brahmanism. In the countries other than India in which it became established, Cambodia, Burmah, the Brahmanic Pantheon was a part of it; but the Brahmanic gods never having previously been worshipped in these countries, there were no sects interested in maintaining their supremacy, and Buddha always retained there the dominant position which in India he was to lose.

Discussion was for a long time rife as to whether, by reason of the commingling upon them of the emblems of Buddha and of Siva, the celebrated monuments of Angkor were Buddhist or Brahmanic. No disputes on this point would have arisen if the scientists who examined the monuments of Cambodia had first studied those of India—of Nepal in particular. On these they would have found the same intermingling of the two sets of emblems; they would also have observed the same peculiarity in a neighbouring country, Burmah. Mr. Wheeler, a former English functionary there, calls attention to the fact that the Burmans, Buddhists as is well known, also worshipped the Vedic gods, notably Indra and Brahma; and that the king of Burmah had many Brahmans at his court. He also makes a remark that the Mogul Khans of Asia, those in the neighbourhood of Mount Altai, worship the Vedic gods to this day.

[538]

The facts which we have brought forward show conclusively that the wide gulf which was supposed, at a time when the first was known solely through books, to separate Buddhism from Brahmanism has never existed, and it is only the preconceived idea of this separation that has prevented the close bond that in reality unites them from being seen. One of the keenest European observers who has ever made his home in India, Hodgson, in citing certain Sivaic images which are to be seen in the Buddhist temples of India, goes to infinite pains to explain their presence. Not for an instant is it to be admitted, he says, that there could be fusion between cults as widely separated as heaven and earth. Yet Hodgson was a resident in Nepal and had only to cast his eyes about him to see, the point to which Brahmanic and Buddhist gods were intermingled in the temples of the land in which he lived. At this epoch the two religions were held to be so wholly distinct that it was impossible that the idea of their having the least thing in common should arise in any mind.

This instance, showing how a preconceived belief can blind to evidence, is the more curious inasmuch as there exists a work (on the extreme resemblance that prevails between many of the symbols of Buddhism and Sivaism) in which the author shows, by numerous examples, how frequently the Hindu writers and learned men themselves confound the Buddhist and Brahmanic images contained in the ancient temples; a confusion that is instantly made clear if one takes into account what we have said regarding the final merging into one of Buddhism and Brahmanism.

Disappearance of Buddhism in India

No one is ignorant of the fact that after having spread from India all over the rest of Asia, China, Russian Tatary, Burmah, etc., Buddhism, now the religion of three hundred million people, that is to say, of one-fifth of the world’s inhabitants, disappeared almost entirely towards the seventh or eighth century of our era from the country that gave it birth. It still subsists in India only upon the two extreme frontiers of that vast empire; Nepal in the north, and Ceylon in the south. Hindu books being absolutely silent on the subject of this disappearance, recourse has been had until now, in order to explain it, to the hypothesis of violent persecution. Admitting the tolerant character of the Hindus to be compatible with the idea of religious persecution, also granting that the effect of persecution is to destroy a religion instead of facilitating, as history teaches, its propagation, there would still be this difficulty: why, in a country divided as was formerly India into a hundred petty kingdoms, should all the reigning princes have suddenly decided at the same time to renounce the religion practised for centuries by their ancestors, and to force upon their people the adoption of another?

One begins to perceive the cause of the transformation of Buddhism as soon as one applies himself to the study of the monuments of India. After having studied attentively the greater part of the important monuments of India, one arrives at the conclusion that Buddhism disappeared simply because it gradually became reabsorbed into the religion from which it originally sprang.

This transformation was effected very slowly; but in a country which has no history, where are to be encountered periods of five or six centuries concerning which no knowledge has been handed down, there is no possible way of knitting together the loose ends of phases which appear to us alone[539] and unconnected. In relation to these we are in the situation of the ancient geologists who, seeing the transformations that had taken place in the different layers of the earth and their inhabitants, and knowing nothing of the periods that had intervened between these transformations, supposed them all to be the result of violent cataclysms. A more advanced science would have shown them that it was by means of a series of insensible evolutions that these gigantic changes had been wrought.

The monuments of India relate to us plainly, when we examine with care the statues and bas-reliefs with which they are covered, the history of the transformation of Buddhism. They show us how the founder, who disdained all gods, finally became a god himself and figured, after having been absent from all, in every sanctuary. How, after having been the head of the crowd of Brahmanic divinities, he gradually became confounded with them until he finally passed out of sight entirely among their number.

In order to place beyond dispute the theory just advanced in explanation of this transformation and disappearance of Buddhism from India, it will be necessary to place ourselves back in the seventh century of the Christian era, or to discover a country which is undergoing a phase similar to that which India passed through at that epoch. Nepal, one of the cradles of Buddhism, is the region which has opposed the strongest resistance to the transforming forces by which it was menaced as soon as it came in contact with ancient Brahmanism, and has now reached the very moment of transformation at which Buddhism has become mingled with Brahmanism without having been entirely swallowed up. The Hindu and Buddhist gods are so closely intermingled in the temples of Nepal, that it is often impossible to determine to which religion a particular temple belongs. This peculiarity has been remarked, though nothing has been offered in the way of explanation by those English scientists who have made a study of Nepal. The fact, so inexplicable when not made clear by a study of the ancient monuments of India, is perfectly apparent when they have been given careful examination. One notes, as was said a little earlier, that the same confusion of divinities prevails everywhere at a certain period, and it is easy to comprehend how ancient temples could be attributed, even by learned Hindus, first to one religion and then to the other.

The same explanation makes clear to us the fact, so strange at a first glance, of Buddhist-Jain and Brahmanic temples being constructed side by side during the same period. Looking now on the phase when the two intermingled religions were on the point of merging into one, it will be at once comprehended how a sovereign can have distributed his liberalities between them with as much impartiality as a king of the Middle Ages displayed towards churches dedicated to different saints.

There remains to us but the account of a single traveller relative to the epoch of which we speak, that of the Chinese pilgrim Hwen Tsang; and in this we are told how a Hindu sovereign on the occasion of some festival, divides his generosity equally between the two dominant religions of that time; giving presents to Buddhist sectarians the first day, to those of Brahmanism the second. The phase had already been arrived at when the cults were entirely reconcilable, a phase which preceded that of their being united into one. The study of the religion of Nepal at the present time shows exactly how this fusion came about.

The date of the introduction of Buddhism into Nepal is a very ancient one. According to tradition Buddha himself visited the land. In any case[540] it is in the ancient monasteries of Nepal that have been discovered the oldest known writings on Buddhism. To follow the same tradition, Asoka, king of Magadha, who reigned three centuries before Christ, made a pilgrimage to Nepal for the purpose of visiting the temples of Symbhunatha, Pashupatti, etc. He is also said to have founded the city of Patan, of which the Newar name is Lalita Patan, a corruption presumably of Pataliputra, the name given in India to the capital of Asoka. Several tumulus-formed temples have, from time immemorial, been attributed to him.

In Nepal, one of its cradles, the religion of Buddha has reigned for more than two thousand years. The isolation of this region of India may have preserved Buddhism to it for a longer period than is observable in the rest of the peninsula, but it has not prevented its undergoing,—like causes producing always the same effects,—a process of transformation analogous to that preceding its disappearance elsewhere. By reason of certain circumstances the gradual absorption has taken place more slowly in Nepal, and it is thanks to this slowness that we are able to learn what Buddhism was in India during the seventh or eighth century of our era, when its antique monastical institutions had disappeared, when its sacerdotal functions had once more become hereditary, and the ancient divinities had resumed their sway.

Buddhism and Brahmanism form to-day in Nepal, as they did in India in the seventh century, two religions nominally distinct, but having one for the other that tolerance which, according to the facts already cited, must have existed in the rest of India before the disappearance of Buddhism. This tolerance, explained sufficiently by the analogy between the two beliefs, is carried to such a point that their respective followers possess in common a certain number of pagodas, divinities, and feasts.

Instead of holding, with certain philosophical Buddhist sects, that the world is formed of matter alone, imperishable, possessing creative power and constituting the sole divinity of the universe, the Buddhism of Nepal offers for the worship of its followers a supreme trinity. This comprises 1st, Ali-Buddha, who is its principal personage, representing spirit; 2nd, Dharma, representing matter; 3rd, Sangha; representing the visible world, produced by the union of spirit and matter. This trinity, nearly enough related, as one sees, to that of Brahmanism, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, has for symbol a triangle with a point at its centre. This point is the emblem of Ali-Buddha, looked upon definitively as the first cause.

Below this superior trinity are placed the gods of the old Brahmanic pantheon—Vishnu, Siva, Ganesa, Lakshmi, etc. Simple emanations of supreme power, they were created by it to govern the world. Fallen somewhat from the elevated rank they occupied in the Brahmanic religion, they are still sufficiently high to have the right to the worship of mortals.

The theories of the Nepal Buddhists concerning the human soul, do not differ sensibly from the old Brahmanic theories. It is looked upon, as is also the soul of all animals, as an emanation of Ali-Buddha, which, after numerous transmigrations, passes back to the bosom of the supreme being who gave it life. Deliverance from this long series of transmigrations by reabsorption into Ali-Buddha, is the supreme end proposed as recompense to all believers. The number and the nature of these transmigrations depend entirely on the conduct during life, the acts of men determining irrevocably their future destiny.

As for the founder of Buddhism himself; he is looked upon as are all the other Buddhas who have preceded him, as a holy personage purified[541] by long anterior existences, and on the point of attaining the supreme absorption.

The most important of the temples of Nepal, notably that of Symbhunatha, are dedicated to Ali-Buddha. In all, the Buddhist trinity (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha) is represented in the form of a statue seated, with legs crossed upon a lotus-leaf; Buddha having two arms, Dharma and Sangha generally four. Of this trinity, Dharma alone, the goddess of matter, is given the form of woman.

After the Buddhist trinity the most common objects of worship are the images of the founder of Buddhism and of his predecessors, both mortal and divine. Next came the gods of the Hindu Pantheon, Mahenkal, avatar of Siva; Kali, wife of Siva; Indra, king of Heaven; Garuda, god of birds, having a bird’s head; Ganesa, divinity of wisdom, having an elephant’s head, etc. The last is the most venerated, his image being found at the entrance to every temple, and it is with the worship of this purely Brahmanic divinity that all the Buddhist ceremonies commence.

The Hindu lingam has also been adopted by the Nepal Buddhists, but with the complete alteration of its significance. Instead of looking upon it as the male creative power of Siva, it is held to be the emblem of the lotus in which Ali-Buddha manifested himself in the form of a flame. Its shape is also modified. Four figures of Buddha are sculptured upon its lateral parts, and its summit is surmounted in the manner of the Buddhist chaityas.

It is to be seen from the preceding how intermingled with Brahmanism is Buddhism in Nepal. The religion of that part of the population which calls itself Brahmanic is equally tinged with Buddhism. Buddha is frequently represented in the temples dedicated to Siva, and several temples containing divinities common to the two religions are frequented alike by Brahmans and Buddhists.

This fusion of the two religions to be observed in the temples is also found in the legends with which the literature of Nepal abounds during the religious festivals. In the case of some of these it is really impossible to decide whether they are Buddhist or Brahmanic. Pilgrims also visit with equal confidence the shrines of the two religions.

Such is Buddhism at present in Nepal, and it is easy to predict from what has taken place in the past, that with the expiration of two or three centuries it will have been swallowed up in Brahmanism. The traveller of the future, ignorant of the phase of evolution through which Nepal is now passing will attribute, as do modern writers who treat of Buddhism in India, its disappearance to violent causes. The temple ruins with which Nepal will at that time no doubt be strewn, will also be invoked to attest the mercilessness of the persecutions.

But if the traveller whose existence we have supposed, has not confined himself to the study of a single region in India, but has had the patience to go over all the diverse lands of the immense peninsula, the idea of a religious evolution having taken place will have penetrated too deeply in his mind to allow him to commit such an error. In this respect the study of India itself immeasurably exceeds in value the perusal of history in books; it is the one country in the world where by means of a simple passing from one place to another, can be looked upon anew the successive forms that humanity has taken on from prehistoric times to the present day. This living study reveals rapidly to the observer the anterior transformations experienced by institutions and beliefs, of which books but show us the extremest phases.f

[542]

New Light on Buddhism

Recent discoveries and researches have greatly modified our notions of early India. In the last few years nearly the whole of the works composed in the earliest period of Buddhism have been edited in the original Pali, chiefly through the Pali Text Society. A few works of the second period have been edited in the original Pali or Sanskrit, and a number of books of later Buddhism have appeared in the various languages of eastern Asia. To appreciate the additions thus made to our knowledge it is necessary to remember that the Buddha, like other Indian teachers of his period, taught by conversation only. A highly-educated man (according to the education current at the time), speaking constantly to men of similar education, he followed the literary habit of his day by embodying his doctrines in set phrases (sutras), on which he enlarged, on different occasions, in different ways. Writing was then widely known. But the lack of suitable writing materials made any lengthy books impossible. Such sutras were therefore the recognised form of preserving and communicating opinion. They were catch-words, as it were, memoria technica, which could be easily remembered, and would recall the fuller expositions that had been based upon them.

In the Buddha’s time the Brahmans had their sutras in Sanskrit, already a dead language. He purposely put his into the ordinary conversational idiom of the day, that is to say, into Pali. When the Buddha died these sayings were collected together by his disciples into what they call the Four Nikayas, or “collections.” These cannot have reached their final form till about fifty or sixty years afterwards. Other sayings and verses, most of them ascribed, not to the Buddha, but to the disciples themselves, were put into a supplementary Nikaya. We know of slight additions made to this Nikaya as late as the time of Asoka, third century B.C. And the developed doctrine, found in certain portions of it, shows that these are later than the four old Nikayas. For a generation or two the books so put together were handed down by memory, though probably written memoranda were also used. And they were doubtless accompanied from the first, as they were being taught, by a running commentary.

About one hundred years after the Buddha’s death there was a schism in the community. Each of the two schools kept an arrangement of the canon—still in Pali, or some allied dialect. Sanskrit was not used for any Buddhist work till long afterwards, and never used at all, so far as is known, for the canonical books. Each of these two schools broke up, in the following centuries, into others. Several of them had their different arrangements of the canonical books, differing also in minor details. These books remained the only authorities for about five centuries, but they all, except only our extant Pali Nikayas, have been lost in India. These then are our authorities for the earliest period of Buddhism. Now what are these books?

We talk necessarily of Pali books. They are not books in the modern sense. They are memorial sentences or verses intended to be learnt by heart.

In depth of philosophic insight, in the method of Socratic questioning often adopted, in the earnest and elevated tone of the whole, in the evidence they afford of the most cultured thought of the day, these dialogues constantly remind the reader of the dialogues of Plato. But not in style. They have indeed a style of their own; always dignified, and occasionally rising into eloquence. But it is entirely different from the style of Western writings, which are always intended to be read.

[543]

The striking archæological discoveries of the last few years have both confirmed and added to our knowledge.

The principal points on which this large number of older and better authorities has modified our knowledge are as follows:—1. We have learnt that the division of Buddhism, originating with Burnouf, into northern and southern, is misleading. He found that the Buddhism in his Pali manuscript, which came from Ceylon, differed from that in his Sanskrit manuscript which came from Nepal. Now that the works he used have been made accessible in printed editions, we find that, wherever the existing manuscript came from, the original works themselves were all composed in the same stretch of country, that is, in the valley of the Ganges. The difference of the opinions expressed in the manuscript is due, not to the place where they are now found, but to the difference of time at which they were originally composed. Not one of the books mentioned above is either northern or southern. They all claim, and rightly claim, to belong, so far as their place of origin is concerned, to the Majjhima Desa, the middle country. It is undesirable to base the main division of our subject on an adventitious circumstance, and especially so when the nomenclature thus introduced (it is not found in the books themselves) cuts right across the true line of division. The use of the terms northern and southern as applied, not to the existing manuscript, but to the original books, or to the Buddhism they teach, not only does not help us, it is the source of serious misunderstanding. It inevitably leads careless writers to take for granted that we have, historically, two Buddhisms—one manufactured in Ceylon, the other in Nepal. Now this is admittedly wrong. What we have to consider is Buddhism varying through slight degrees, as the centuries pass by, in almost every book. We may call it one, or we may call it many. What is quite certain is that it is not two. And the most useful distinction to emphasise is, not the ambiguous and misleading geographical one—derived from the places where the modern copies of the manuscripts are found; nor even, though that would be better, the linguistic one—but the chronological one. The use, therefore, of the inaccurate and misleading terms northern and southern ought no longer to be followed in scholarly works on Buddhism.

2. Our ideas as to the social conditions that prevailed, during the Buddha’s life-time, in the eastern valley of the Ganges have been modified. The people were divided into clans, many of them governed as republics, more or less aristocratic. In a few cases several of such republics had formed confederations, and in four cases such confederations had already become hereditary monarchies. The right historical analogy is not the state of Germany in the Middle Ages, but the state of Greece in the time of Socrates. The Sakyas were still a republic. They had republics for their neighbours on the east and south, but on the western boundary was the kingdom of Kosala, the modern Oudh, which they acknowledged as a suzerain power. Gotama, the Buddha’s father, was not a king. There were rajahs in the clan, but the word meant at most something like consul or archon. All the four real kings were called Maha-rajah. And Suddhodana, the teacher’s father, was not even rajah. One of his cousins, named Bhaddiya, is styled a rajah; but Suddhodana is spoken of, like other citizens, as Suddhodana the Sakyan. As the ancient books are very particular on this question of titles, this is decisive.

3. There was no caste—no caste, that is, in the modern sense of the term. We have long known that the connubium was the cause of a long and determined struggle between the patricians and the plebeians in Rome. Evidence has been yearly accumulating on the existence of restrictions as to[544] intermarriage, and as to the right of eating together (commensality) among other Aryan tribes, Greeks, Germans, Russians, and so on. Even without the fact of the existence now of such restrictions among the modern successors of the ancient Aryans in India, it would have been probable that they also were addicted to similar customs. It is certain that the notion of such usages was familiar enough to some at least of the tribes that preceded the Aryans in India. Rules of endogamy and exogamy; privileges, restricted to certain classes, of eating together, are not only Indian or Aryan, but world-wide phenomena. Both the spirit, and to a large degree the actual details, of modern Indian caste-usages are identical with these ancient, and no doubt universal, customs. It is in them that we have the key to the origin of caste.

At any moment in the history of a nation such customs seem, to a superficial observer, to be fixed and immutable. As a matter of fact they are never quite the same in successive centuries, or even generations. The numerous and complicated details which we sum up under the convenient, but often misleading, single name of caste are solely dependent for their sanction on public opinion. That opinion seems stable. But it is always tending to vary as to the degree of importance attached to some particular one of the details, as to the size and complexity of the particular groups in which each detail ought to be observed.

Owing to the fact that the particular group that in India worked its way to the top, based its claims on religious grounds, not on political power, nor on wealth, the system has, no doubt, lasted longer in India than in Europe. But public opinion still insists, in considerable circles, even in Europe, on restrictions of a more or less defined kind, both as to marriage and as to eating together. And in India the problem still remains to trace, in the literature, the gradual growth of the system—the gradual formation of new sections among the people, the gradual extension of the institution to the families of people engaged in certain trades, belonging to the same group, or sect, or tribe, tracing their ancestry, whether rightly or wrongly, to the same source. All these factors, and others besides, are real factors. But they are phases of the extension and growth, not explanations of the origin of the system.

There is no evidence to show that at the time of the rise of Buddhism there was any substantial difference, as regards the barriers in question, between the peoples dwelling in the valley of the Ganges and their contemporaries, Greek or Roman, dwelling on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The point of greatest weight in the establishment of the subsequent development, the supremacy in India of the priests, was still being hotly debated. All the new evidence tends to show that the struggle was being decided rather against than for the Brahmans. What we find in the Buddha’s time is caste in the making. The great mass of the people were distinguished quite roughly into four classes, social strata, of which the boundary lines were vague and uncertain. At one end of the scale were certain outlying tribes and certain hereditary crafts of a dirty or despised kind. At the other end the nobles claimed the superiority. But Brahmans by birth (not necessarily sacrificial priests, for they followed all sorts of occupations) were trying to oust the nobles from the highest grade. They only succeeded, long afterwards, when the power of Buddhism had declined.

4. It had been supposed on the authority of late priestly texts, where boasts of persecution are put forth, that the cause of the decline of Buddhism in India had been Brahman persecution. The now accessible older authorities,[545] with one doubtful exception, make no mention of persecution. On the other hand, the comparison we are now able to make between the canonical books of the older Buddhism and the later texts of the following centuries, shows a continual decline from the old standpoint, a continual approximation of the Buddhist views to those of the other philosophies and religions of India. We can see now that the very event which seemed, in the eyes of the world, to be the most striking proof of the success of the new movement, the conversion and strenuous support, in the third century B.C., of Asoka, the most powerful ruler India had had, only hastened the decline. The adhesion of large numbers of nominal converts, more especially from the newly incorporated and less advanced provinces, produced weakness rather than strength in the movement for reform. The day of compromise had come. Every relaxation of the old thoroughgoing position was welcomed and supported by converts only half converted. And so the margin of difference between the Buddhists and their opponents gradually faded almost entirely away. The soul theory, step by step, gained again the upper hand. The popular gods and the popular superstitions are once more favoured by Buddhists themselves. The philosophical basis of the old ethics is overshadowed by new speculations. And even the old ideal of life, the salvation of the Arahat to be won in this world and in this world only, by self-culture and self-mastery, is forgotten, or mentioned only to be condemned. The end was inevitable. The need of a separate organisation became less and less apparent. The whole pantheon of the Vedic gods, with the ceremonies and the sacrifices associated with them, passed indeed away. But the ancient Buddhism, the party of reform, was overwhelmed also in its fall; and modern Hinduism arose on the ruins of both.g

THE ACTUAL PIETY OF THE HINDUS AND THE HINDU SEPARATION OF RELIGION FROM FINE MORALS

We have now examined the elaborate doctrines of the Hindus in some detail. It remains to be seen how far they affected the real life of the people.

The works of modern science have not yet been able to dispel the false ideas that prevail concerning the religions of India. It is only after studying the practice of these religions on the soil of the peninsula itself that one can begin to have a conception of its contradictions that seem to us so strange, and to comprehend that the word religion has totally different meanings for the Hindu and the European. In the buoyant, illogical, dreamy soul of the Hindu the most contrary beliefs are associated in a manner quite incomprehensible to us. The same man who will believe firmly in the speculations of the most daring atheism will prostrate himself with equal conviction before thousands of strange, grotesque, or terrible divinities, or respectfully kiss the footprint of Buddha or Vishnu. In India, not only do all religions dwell in perfect harmony, but the most contrary dogmas exist side by side in the same religion.

The innumerable sects of Neo-Brahmanism or Hinduism all share in the two dominant cults of Siva the destroyer and Vishnu the preserver, the two great divinities worshipped by every pious Hindu, who, together with the great creator Brahma, make up the Hindu trinity or trimurti. Although Brahma is conceived as the most powerful of these three gods, he has no special worshippers, and there is hardly a temple in all India dedicated to[546] him. While the symbols of Siva and the incarnations of Vishnu, people the temples with a crowd of forms and images, Brahma is not represented in visible form, and remains the great impalpable soul that animates all creatures and in whose bosom the Hindu dreams of being absorbed.

Siva, the god of destruction, or rather of transformation, the god of birth and of death, whose symbol is the lingam or phallus and to whom victims are sacrificed, the god of the seed that produces beings and of the death that dissolves them—Siva is the true god of India, the true creation of its racial genius.

The female counterpart of Siva is his spouse, Parvati or Kali, goddess of life and death, the great mother of whom the universe was born, and by whom it will finally be swallowed up again. No cult has been the source of more monstrous scenes than that of the terrible Kali. Her worship was a mixture of obscenity and cruelty. On her altars flowed the blood of the last human sacrifices, which have now been abolished forever among the Brahmanic populations. Scenes of debauchery impossible to describe, gloomy or obscene mysteries are still practised in her temples, especially in those frequented by the sect called “Sivaites of the left hand.”

While Siva appeals rather to the intellect and represents the particular form in which Hindu genius has conceived the universe, Vishnu responds to the eternal needs of the heart. He is the god of love and of faith. He is without question a monistic god; but in order to manifest himself to mortals he has assumed so many different forms that it would be quite impossible to define, or even simply to enumerate them. These incarnations, called the avatars of Vishnu, represent so many special divinities, the worship of each belonging to a particular country, age, or social condition. While the principal ones are only ten in number, there is no limit to the multiplication of the others. One can fearlessly preach to the Hindus whatever god one will, as sublime or as coarse as the imagination of man can conceive; they will very likely adopt it, making it at once an avatar of Vishnu. Thus, Christ, whose history has some analogy with that of Krishna, has become one of these avatars; and to all the representations of the missionaries the Hindus reply that they have nothing to learn from them, being already more Christian than the Christians themselves.

As to external forms, they have always changed, and are still changing. The prodigious imagination of the Hindu, which has so multiplied them, is continually altering them. The Hindus love images and material symbols; they are great formalists in the practice of their religion, whatever it may be. Their temples are full of emblems, the principal ones being the lingam and the yoni, symbols of the male and female natures. Vows, penances, mortifications, the reading of sacred books, litanies, prayers, pilgrimages, are regarded as very meritorious and are very scrupulously observed. No other people has ever shown itself so strict in the performance of religious duties.

The pilgrims of Benares, of Jagannath, and of the great pagodas of the south of India, must still be estimated at hundreds of thousands annually. The celebrated places of pilgrimage are most frequently common to the two great sects. Vishnuites and Sivaites mingle on the solemn day; even Mussulmans sometimes come, not through a motive of curiosity, but for a pious end and to perform a meritorious work.

No place in India is more celebrated for its pilgrimages than Jagannath (popularly known as Juggernaut) or Puri on the coast of Orissa; nowhere, moreover, can one prove so well the singular fraternity of the cults of India, and at the same time their enormous diversity. There is not one of them[547] that is not represented here. To whatever religion a Hindu belongs, at whatever distance his residence, and whatever the difficulties of the journey, he strives to go at least once in his life to Jagannath. In the rites of this temple Vishnu [called here Jagannath] shares with the gloomy and fatal Siva the adorations of the multitude whose over-excited piety rises to the point of delirium. His pagoda on wheels is drawn through the city, and such enthusiasm was aroused in the bosoms of the noisy multitudes that fanatics used to throw themselves beneath the wheels with cries of joy.[22]

There are many other places of pilgrimage in India, generally of less importance than Benares and Jagannath. The shores of the Ganges are sacred from source to mouth, and many of the faithful come from afar to visit them. The water of the river is sacred and is carried at great expense from one end of the peninsula to the other. The Hindus attribute a sacred character to all watercourses, but none approaches the holy Ganges in the veneration it inspires. This cult of waters, like that of the clouds and the monsoons, goes back to a very remote antiquity; it is entirely natural in a country of drought, where water brings life and whole populations die of famine when it fails.

Between the religion and the morals of the Hindu there is an abyss which it is difficult for the occidental mind to comprehend. It has been truthfully said that the Hindus are the most religious of all peoples. From the point of view of European ideas it might be said with no less justice that they are perhaps the least moral.

To please the gods and gain their favour is the end that the Hindu has ever before his eyes. But he would be greatly astonished if one should try to persuade him that the gods have the least particle of interest in the honesty of his relations with his fellowmen, the chastity of his life or the integrity of his word and his conduct, or that these all-powerful beings have the slightest disposition to be angry when he steals his neighbour’s goods or practices infanticide.

Their vengeance will smite him severely if he neglects to say his prayers, if he does not read the sacred books, if he is absent from the religious ceremonies, if he kills a cow, or if he does not perform the required purifications. These are the faults that arouse the anger of the gods. They demand sacrifices, pilgrimages, penances, prayers, the performance of a thousand external rites; they are concerned about nothing else. The rest is man’s affair, the material, utilitarian, practical side of life, quite beneath divine care.

If we turn to the laws of Manu, we find that the infraction of apparently puerile rites constitutes for the Hindu a fearful crime that can be atoned only by torture or even death, while robberies and murders may be expiated by the lightest penances. With the exception of adultery, which so deeply disturbs the constitution of families and consequently that of the race, all the sins of the flesh are of little importance to the Hindus. The voluptuous cults which they practice, rather impel them to license, and love becomes criminal only when its object is a being of an inferior caste. Murder derives its culpability from the rank of the person upon whom it is committed. If the victim is a cow or a Brahman, the crime is a grave one; in any other case it becomes a peccadillo. Certain murders, like the infanticide of girls, are not even faults.

[548]

The only great moral element that has penetrated the nature of the Hindu is the spirit of Buddhist charity. This spirit has even crept into the rigid code invented for the pleasure of fantastic and cruel gods and not for the true good of mankind. It has softened it and added precepts of love and liberality to its harsh and severe directions. The Buddhist period was the most moral in the history of India, and its beneficent influence still makes itself felt. The good qualities that the Hindu possesses, such as gentleness, faithfulness to his masters, love of family, an admirable spirit of tolerance, belong to his character and are independent of his morals. The most of his virtues are, moreover, altogether passive; he can obey, and he is never so good as when he yields to the yoke of a master. Let him command in his turn and he quickly becomes unjust, arrogant, and tyrannical. One could not say of a single one of his virtues that it is the fruit of a morality grounded upon the powerful base of religious faith and strengthened by ages of development.

The Hindu is, then, an essentially religious being, but he is not a moral being. His yielding and gentle nature is accustomed to submit to the force of a climate that has sapped all his energy and to a long slavery. If he had no curb but his moral conscience, he would perhaps be one of the most fierce and dangerous peoples of the globe. His character alone has made him one of the most inoffensive.f

FOOTNOTES

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BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter a is reserved for Editorial Matter.]

Chapter I. Land and People

b Georg Weber, Allgemeine Weltgeschichte.

c Ferdinand Justi, Geschichte der Orientalischen Völker im Alterthum.

d The Mahabharata and Ramayana.

e The Vedas.

f Max Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums.

g Christian Lassen, Commentatio geographica atque historica de Pentapotamia Indica.

h Herodotus, Histories.

Chapter II. Indian History—Legend and Reality

b James Mill, History of British India.

c Solomon Lefmann, Geschichte des alten Indiens.

d Gustave le Bon, Les civilisations de l’Inde.

e W. W. Hunter, from the article “India” in the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

f W. W. Hunter, Brief History of the Indian People.

g J. Fergusson, “On the Sakaa and Samvat and Gupta Eras” (Journal R. As. Soc., N. S. XII).

h Cesare Cantù, Storia universale.

i Sir Wm. Jones, Dissertations.

j Fa-Hian and Hwen-Tsang, Chronicles of Voyages in India.

Chapter III. Manners and Customs of the Ancient Hindus

b A. H. L. Heeren, Historical Researches into the Politics, Intercourse, and Trade of the Principal Nations of Antiquity (Asiatic Nations).

c Mountstuart Elphinstone, The History of India.

d James Mill, op. cit.

e H. H. Wilson, Editor of James Mill’s History of British India.

f H. P. Colebroke in Asiatic Researches, Vol. LIII.

g Hanno, Periplus.

h Plinius Secundus, Historia Naturalis.

i Arrian, Indica.

j Colebroke, in Transactions of the Asiatic Society.

Chapter IV. Brahmanism and Buddhism

b Georg Weber, op. cit.

c Mountstuart Elphinstone, op. cit.

d James Mill, op. cit.

e H. H. Wilson, op. cit.

f Gustave le Bon, op. cit.

g T. W. Rhys Davids, from the article “Buddhism” in the New Volumes of the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

h Eugène Burnouf, Introduction à l’histoire du bouddhisme indien.

i W. W. Hunter, op. cit.

j B. H. Hodgson, Essays on Indian Subjects.

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A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF INDIAN HISTORY

BASED ON THE WORKS QUOTED, CITED, OR EDITORIALLY CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF THE PRESENT HISTORY

The following bibliography contains in the main only works relating to ancient India, as the bibliography of modern India, and particularly of India under British rule, will be specially treated in a later volume. A few works, however, on modern India are here included, inasmuch as they have a certain bearing on the historical, political, and religious development of ancient India.

It will be observed that a large number of the works here cited have referred to the social and religious conditions, rather than to the history proper. This selection is a very natural outgrowth of the conditions; the obscurity of the history on the one hand, and the fascinating interest that attaches to the customs and the esoteric religion of the Hindu on the other. Reference has already been made to the classical historians, Megasthenes and Arrian. Of modern writers who have interpreted for us the available reminiscences, the earliest was James Mill, the famous author of the Analysis of the Human Mind, who published in the year 1817 the History of India, upon which he had been engaged for twelve years. The philosopher turned historian is no less a philosopher still, and Mill’s History of India, together with the author’s personal efforts in the governmental position to which he was soon called, availed practically to revolutionise the method of governing India. Notwithstanding the almost numberless books on the subject that have since been written, the work of Mill has by no means been superseded.

The next important contribution to the subject was that of Mountstuart Elphinstone. If Mill treated the history of India from the standpoint of a philosopher, Elphinstone viewed it from the point of view of the statesman. His work had the peculiar merit of being written by one who had the fullest first-hand knowledge of his subject, for Elphinstone entered the civil service of the East India Company, when he was hardly more than a boy, and continued to reside in India in one official capacity or another throughout most of his life, having come finally for a good many years to hold the position of governor of Bombay. His history, therefore, was at once recognised as having a peculiar authority, and even now there is no work to which one can turn with greater confidence.

The general histories of Duncker and Heeren should also be consulted by anyone wishing to familiarise himself with the subject. Heeren’s views have a particular interest, because of his advocacy of the theory that the Egyptian race was really of Indian origin. Without professing to be able to demonstrate the truth of this theory, Heeren advances numerous arguments, based partly upon the physiological characteristics of the two races, and partly upon the similarity of their customs and their religions. It may be added that no marked advances in the direction of solving this problem have been made since Heeren wrote; the theory, however, is not advocated by any recent authority. Among other works on the history proper of India that have taken a high rank are the books of Sir W. W. Hunter, and the admirably written works of Le Bon; the latter however, refers rather to the civilisation based on the monuments, than to the political history of the country.

Among older works having to do with the language and religions of India, the writings of Eugène Burnouf and of W. Ward have very high authority; among the more recent works those of Max Müller and Sir Monier-Williams have perhaps been given wider currency and contributed more to the general distribution of the knowledge of Brahmanism and Buddhism than almost any others.

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[555]

PART VIII

THE HISTORY OF ANCIENT PERSIA

BASED CHIEFLY UPON THE FOLLOWING AUTHORITIES

CTESIAS, A. H. L. HEEREN, HERODOTUS, G. C. C. MASPERO, EDUARD
MEYER, THEODOR NÖLDEKE, H. C. RAWLINSON

WITH ADDITIONAL CITATIONS FROM

THE HOLY BIBLE, BEROSUS, MAX DUNCKER, VICTOR FLOIGL, JAS.
MORIER, POLYÆNUS, R. K. PORTER, J. V. PRASEK, R. W.
ROGERS, A. H. SAYCE, XANTHUS, XENOPHON

[556]

Copyright, 1904,
By HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.

All rights reserved.

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[557]

PART VIII.—ANCIENT PERSIA

TABLE OF CONTENTS

	Page
Persian History in Outline	559
Chapter I. Land and People	565
Chapter II. The Median or Scythian Empire	573
Chapter III. The Early Achæmenians and the Elamites, Cyrus and Cambyses	587
Chapter IV. The Persian Dynasty: Darius I to Darius III	605
Chapter V. Persian Civilisation	634
Brief Reference-List of Authorities by Chapters	662
A General Bibliography of Persian History	663

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[558]
[559]

PERSIAN HISTORY IN OUTLINE

A PRELIMINARY SURVEY COMPRISING A CURSORY VIEW OF THE SWEEP OF EVENTS, AND A TABLE OF CHRONOLOGY

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[565]

CHAPTER I. LAND AND PEOPLE

The Persians were the first Aryans to achieve a great world empire within historic times. With them the Aryan race became dominant in the Western world, and it has so continued to the present time. The Persians themselves maintained first place among the nations only for about two centuries, or from the time of Cyrus until the Asiatic conquests of Alexander the Great. And the sceptre which they laid down was taken up by Western nations akin to them in speech, and passed on from one to another people of the same great Indo-Germanic race throughout the two and a half millenniums which separate the time of Cyrus from our own. But it is not only because of their kinship with European nations that the Persians are of interest. Their history has intrinsic importance. Theirs was unquestionably the mightiest empire the world had seen since secure history began. It extended from India on the east, to the extreme confines of Asia on the west and the northwest, and beyond them to include Egypt. It even threatened at one time, through the subjugation of Greece, to invade Europe as well, and numberless writers have moralised on the great change of destiny that would have fallen to the lot of Western civilisation, had this threat been made effective. All such moralising of course is but guess-work, and it may be questioned whether most of it has any validity whatever. For the truth seems to be that the Persians were much more nearly akin to the European intellect than a study of their descendants of recent generations would lead one to suppose. It is everywhere conceded that they sprang from the same stock, and their most fundamental traits show many points of close resemblance. Thus it is matter of record that the Persians differed widely from the Hamitic or Semitic conquerors, both in their methods of warfare and in their treatment of conquered enemies. The Semites, in particular, were notoriously cruel and unimaginative in their treatment of fallen foes. The word “unimaginative” is here used advisedly, for it would seem as if nothing but curiously defective imagination could permit one human being to treat another in the atrocious manner which characterised the conquerors of the Semitic race—not merely the Babylonians and Assyrians, but the Hebrews as well, as the history of David only too amply illustrates.

The paragraph in which David’s treatment of the people of the conquered city of Rabbah, as recorded, is a fair sample of the usual fortunes of war that fell to the lot of the victims of a Semitic nation.

[566]

“And he brought forth the people that were therein, and put them under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick-kilns, and thus he did unto all the children of Ammon.”

But the Persians, on the other hand, be it recorded to their credit, did not as a rule resort to such atrocities. Such rules as this must indeed always be taken with certain qualifications, for there were, unfortunately, cases in which the Persian conqueror inflicted upon an enemy a vengeance almost comparable to the Semitic type. But this was rare, except in the case of rebels; and not usual even with these, and it must be remembered on the other hand, that the records of Western nations are not altogether free from similar charges of cruelty. On the whole, the conduct of such great Persian leaders as Cyrus the Great and Darius I, will perhaps compare favourably with that of any European conqueror.

Another very essential point in which the Persians of the early day bore a close resemblance to Europeans of the later generation, is in regard to their religion. It is admitted on all hands that in its original or uncorrupted form the religion of the Persians was of a very high type. It was embodied in a creed at a very early day, possibly not later than 1000 B.C., by the great prophet Zoroaster. Like the other great religions, it grew by accretion, and came to have linked with it a set of myths and fables that are difficult to ascribe to their particular periods of origin. We are not even sure within perhaps five hundred years of the exact time when Zoroaster lived, but this is of comparatively little consequence when one reflects that a great religion is always a slow growth, and that any particular religious teacher to whom it may be ascribed, after all, has done nothing more than focalise the national tendency, or form a centre about which the ideas and tendencies of an epoch may crystallise.

In the case of the Zoroastrian religion, it was finally given tangible and permanent expression in the pages of the Zendavesta or sacred book of the Persians. The national spirit given expression is, as has been said, in many ways of a high order. It has sometimes been doubted whether any religion in its last analysis is ever otherwise than monotheistic. Be that as it may, it seems quite clear that the early religion of the Persians was almost a pure monotheism, nor did it in its later stages depart more widely from the monotheistic type than has been the case, at some stage of its development, with every other great religion of which we have any knowledge. Thus the Zoroastrian system admits a sun-god, Mithra, who is the creator of the god of Light, Ormuzd, and of the god of Darkness, Ahriman. Here, at first glance, there seems to be clearly a trinity of gods of practically equal power. But when we try to get close to the thought of this creed, we find that Ormuzd is regarded as equal to Mithra, even though created by him, and that, on the other hand, Ahriman is supposed ultimately to be conquered by the God of Light, notwithstanding the ages of time throughout which he wields malevolent power.

If we consider dispassionately the fundamental character of the creeds of Christendom, there must be apparent a strange similarity to this Zoroastrian creed. To a Persian who should attempt to gain an insight into this creed of the Western world, the conception of an omnipotent father creating a son, who, after all, is said to be co-eternal with the father, must seem in closest possible analogy with his own Mithra and Ormuzd, while nothing could be clearer than that a Satan of such godlike power as to be able to combat successfully against the powers of good, age after age, must[567] be no other than Ahriman or his counterpart. To this Zoroastrian investigator, then, it must seem clear,—even though he were to take no note of the third member of the orthodox trinity and of the saints, who must seem minor gods to a foreign intelligence,—that this Western religion is a polytheism closely similar to the creed of Zoroaster, and, like that, despite its galaxy of deities, showing evidence of a basal conception of monotheism. Indeed, in whatever candid view the subject is considered, it must be clear that this early Aryan faith of which we have any present record is closely similar in its fundamentals to the faith which the main body of Aryans of the Western world profess to this day; and this fact, as has been said, furnishes a close link between Persian and European, and gives an added interest to the history of this great people.

RACIAL AND DYNASTIC ORIGINS

As to the origin of the Medo-Persians, nothing need be added beyond what has already been said of the origin of the Indians. There must have been a time, probably at a relatively late period, when the ancestors of the Indians and the ancestors of the Persians formed a single colony or group of colonies, which had its seat, it may reasonably be inferred, somewhere in the region which was afterwards known as Bactria. Thence the tide of migration swept to the southeast, as we have seen, into India, and to the southwest across the tableland of Iran, or, as we more generally term it, Persia. The vast territory of Iran came early to be divided between two peoples of this same stock, of which the one inhabiting the northeastern part of the territory was called by Greek writers the Medes, although recent investigation has tended to establish the fact that the so-called Median nation was really that of the Scythians and not that of the Medes, who lived farther to the west. Nevertheless, it seems advisable to retain the phrase Medo-Persian empire. The other, or the southeastern nation, had the name of Persian. The Scythians first gained world-historic importance and entered the field of secure history by their share in the overthrow of the Assyrian empire, in which enterprise, as we have seen, they were associated with the Babylonians. For a short period after this, the Scythians divided with the Babylonians the honours of world imperialism; then their power was snatched from them by their kindred on the south and west, and the great Medo-Persian empire came into existence.

The builder of this empire was the mighty Cyrus, one of the most powerful, and, if tradition is to be credited, one of the best of the great conquerors of history. He was an Elamite prince, but is more familiar to history as the king of Persia, which land he added to his domains early in his career of conquest. When Cyrus was born, Persia was an insignificant territory, the name of which had not yet impressed itself upon history; and before Cyrus died he had made himself absolute master of all southern Asia west of the Ganges, and the name of the minor border country, Persia, had been given to the greatest empire in the world. Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, extended the sway of this empire over Egypt, and his successor and kinsman, Darius, crossed the Hellespont and precipitated that conflict between the East and the West which for two centuries continued to be perhaps the most important factor in world history. But before we turn to the specific incidents of this great drama, we must see something more in detail of this parent land of Aryan civilisation and its gifted people. a

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THE LAND

The centre of the Iranian tableland consists of a great salt steppe, destitute alike of vegetation and fresh water, torrid and almost impassable by the foot of man in summer. The only spots fit for permanent habitation and agriculture are where the rainfall from lofty mountain ranges collects to form short watercourses, as in the provinces of Kerman and Jezd, and where, in the northeast, the rivers that flow down from the Hindu Kush, the Etymander (Helmund) and many like it, carry life farther into the interior, until they end in the shallow and swampy lake (Zireh or Hamun) in the land of the Drangians. With these exceptions, no more than the borders of Iran are habitable. It is hemmed in by lofty mountain ranges to the north and south, and from the Hindu Kush to the snow-clad heights of Mount Elburz to the south of the Caspian Sea, extends the hill country of Chorasan, in ancient times the abode of the Hyrcanian, Parthian, Aryan, and Drangian tribes. It forms the watershed of numerous rivers, which flow down on either side, making oases in the central desert and the Turanian lowlands, until they succumb in the struggle with the waste of sand. Chorasan constitutes the bridge between the mountain country of Bactria and Sogdiana, in the east, the region about the Oxus and Jaxartes, and Media in the west, where the ranges that run up from the south approach more and more closely to the mountains of the northern frontier, enclosing fertile highlands, rich in lakes and watercourses, where the summer is temperate and the winter severe. Here, in conflict with the Assyrians the Iranians first evolved their political system. From Media the Zagros Mountains run southeast to the Persian Gulf.

The Iranian shores of this arm of the sea present an aspect no less dreary than the Arabian. Navigation is impeded by reefs and shoals, the coast is low, and ill-provided with harbours. Torrid sunshine beats down upon it, making it almost uninhabitable for man and beast; nothing but the palm tree flourishes. In the rainy season the torrent brooks that descend from the highlands merely hurry their more copious supply of water to the sea, and serve no purpose of irrigation or navigation. In the east, on the coast of Mekran, a poverty-stricken fishing population (the Ichthyophagi) ekes out a scanty livelihood, while even the higher land of the interior, Gedrosia, which extends to the regions about the Etymander (Baluchistan) is absolutely desert except for a few well-watered and fertile valleys, and lies so remote from all civilised nations that hardly a single European has trodden it from the time of Alexander to the present century. It is the haunt of nomadic tribes like the Mykians and Parikanians, some of whom are not even of Iranian descent, but are more nearly akin to the earliest inhabitants of India, the progenitors of the Brahuis of to-day, to whom the Greeks sometimes applied the name of Ethiopians.

The west, the land of the Persians, is of a different type. At the distance of a few miles from the coast the spurs of the Zagros Mountains rise one above the other, and the valleys and plains between them, having an elevation of fifteen hundred to two thousand metres above sea-level, enjoy a more temperate climate and a more copious rainfall. “Here a mild climate prevails,” says Nearchus,[569] “the land is rich in herbs and well-watered pastures, it produces abundance of wine and of all other fruits except the olive. Therein are flourishing pleasure grounds; rivers of clear water and lakes, well stocked with water-fowl, irrigate the country. The breeding of horses and beasts of burden prospers; forests full of wild animals are plentiful.” The forests are gone from the mountains; the brooks and rose gardens of Shiraz look wretched enough to the traveller from a more bounteous clime, but the Persian poets are never weary of praising the loveliness of their native land, and King Darius boasts that it is “a fair land of excellent horses and excellent men, which by Ahuramazda’s protection and mine, trembles before no foe.” Persia is bounded on the south by the sea, on the east and north by the desert; the northwest is its only door of communication with other nations. The road leads by mountain passes down to Elam (Susiana) and Babylon; and along the Zagros Mountains lies the way, almost impracticable in the snow-storms of winter, through the rugged highlands of Paretacena (near Ispahan), which already count as a part of Media (Herod. I. 101), to Ecbatana.

THE PEOPLE

The leading tribes of Persia were the Pasargadæ, the Maraphians, and the Maspians, who clustered about the κοιλὴ Πέρσις, that is, the wide and fertile valleys of the Araxes (the Kur or Bendamir) and its principal tributary the Medos or Cyros (Palwar)—a fine and vigorous type of humanity, living by agriculture and cattle rearing and skilled in the use of the spear and bow. Horse breeding, on which the tribes of Iran prided themselves, was assiduously pursued, and hunts in the mountains offered rich gains and hardened the sinews of men for war. Other agricultural tribes were the Panthialæans and the Derusiæans, who probably dwelt farther to the east, the Germanians or Karmanians in the highlands of Kerman. The wilder parts of the mountains and the steppes and deserts of the coast were occupied by predatory nomads, some of them very barbaric, the majority of whom must be ranked under the head of Persians. Such were the Mardans, the neighbours of the Elymæans [Elamites], Uxians (Persian Uvadza, now Chuzistan) and the Kossæans in the Zagros; the Sagartians (Persian Asagarta) in the central desert, the Utians (Persian Jutija) in the Karmanian coast districts, and the Dropicians; the name Dahæ, or “robbers,” is also found here, as in the Turanian steppe. These tribes no more constituted a political unity than did those of Media; divided amongst various districts, the peasants lived in patriarchal conditions under hereditary princes, and were continually at war with the robbers and nomads, while they were protected by the “household gods” who sheltered them from sterility and foes. The influence of Babylonian culture had certainly already penetrated through Susa [Shushan] into the mountain lands of Persia; but that of the kindred race of the Medes was far more powerful. The tribes may have reached their abodes in remote antiquity by the Parætakenian mountain road. By this same route came to them the religion of Zarathustra [Zoroaster], which is the property of all stationary tribes of Iran. In Media the Mazda teaching had already won the mastery as early as the eighth century and perhaps long before; presumably roving priests of the Median priestly caste of the Magi brought it thence to the Persians. Consequently we find the Magian names amongst the Persians in opposition to the “fire kindlers,” (athravan) of the East. In Persia the Magi observed many usages prescribed by the religion which had been borrowed from the Persian people, as the extermination of all unclean beasts and the barbarous custom of allowing corpses to be consumed by dogs and birds of prey. The Persian kings, on the other hand, had their bodies buried.

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CHARACTER OF THE EMPIRE OF THE ACHÆMENIDES

Our estimate of the significance of the empire of the Achæmenides in the history of the world has been greatly impaired by its being contrasted mainly with Greece and measured by Greek civilisation, not by the earlier and later kingdoms of the East. To this is added the circumstance that our information is often scanty and uncertain, and derived in great part from the period of decadence. An impartial eye cannot fail to perceive that the Persian empire was a great civilised state. This agrees with the profound impression which it made on its contemporaries and enemies like Æschylus, Herodotus, and Xenophon. A sickly despot like Cambyses might allow himself to be carried away by savage whims,—Persian tradition condemns his actions sharply enough, although never forgetting that he was the hereditary sovereign,—but still the Persians always remained faithful to the example of the great founder of the empire. They conducted their wars in an energetic but not blood-thirsty fashion, and although they occasionally dragged conquered foes away from their own countries, yet, down to the time of Artaxerxes III their name was never stained by the annihilation of a great centre of civilisation, though towns like Sardis, Memphis, Babylon, and Shushan repeatedly revolted; the burning of the deserted city of Athens was a political and military necessity, not to be avoided in time of war. The empire of the Achæmenides is distinguished by a breadth of view, a great and humane spirit. Under its rule Anterior Asia was able to enjoy, for more than a century, a peace which was almost undisturbed (save by a few frontier wars like the struggles with the Greeks and the risings in Egypt), a benevolent and just government, and a secure prosperity; and the disintegration of the empire which then began was not brought about by the revolts of subjects but by the quarrels amongst the rulers themselves and the effect of the superior civilisation and military power of the Greeks.

The empire of the Achæmenides is the first of all the states with which history is acquainted, to advance a claim to a universal character. “To be ruler far over this great earth, him the one, to be the lord over many,” “to be king over many lands and tongues,” “over the mountains and plains this side and beyond the sea, this side and beyond the desert,” to this had Ahuramazda, the creator of heaven and earth, appointed the Persian king. He may call himself “the lord of all men from the sunrise to the sunset.” All the nations whose representatives are pictured on the seat of his throne obey him, bring him tribute, and yield him military service.

At the same time it is said that the empire is sensible of being a civilised state. The king has to perform the task which Ahuramazda has laid on him, to exercise justice, to punish injustice and falsehood, to reward friends, to chastise enemies, and “under the shelter of Ahuramazda to impose his laws on the countries.” “King of the countries” (Khshajathija dahjunam, Bab sar matati) is his most characteristic title. Still more usual is “king of kings,” although with the exception of the king of Cilicia, he has no vassals properly so-called; for the town princes and tribal chiefs, of whom there is no lack amongst the subjects of the Persian empire, stand so far below him that they give no true meaning to the title. It may therefore be that the designation which, as is well known, has remained the regular appellation of the Persian king, is not of Median origin at all (the Assyrians and Babylonians were also unacquainted with it); but it would rather seem to express the summit of royalty, like the Greek appellation Basileus without the article, which gives expression to the idea that this[571] conception has only one representative in the world. For this very reason the partition of the empire amongst the sons of a king, so frequent in other ages, could not take place here; and the attempt of Cyrus to give his younger son a position of his own by investing him with several provinces under the suzerainty of the elder, was not again repeated in the same fashion, after its unfortunate results. The universal empire was a united state and knew only one master.

Regarded from the standpoint of the East, universality attained a similar range through the conquests of Cyrus and Cambyses as in the imperial dominion of Rome. If on the borders of the earth there dwelt turbulent peoples at a lower level of civilisation or one which was incomprehensible to that of the East, that was of no more importance to the Persian empire than the independence of the Germans and Getæ or of the Parthian kingdom was to the Roman Orbis terrarum. All the civilised peoples of the East were joined together to form one state. From the time of the restoration of the unity of the empire by Darius the dominion of the Achæmenides ceases to be a conquering state: all that was left to subsequent ages was the task of organising and completing and maintaining what had been acquired.

In the civilised states that they had subdued, the Persian kings had as far as possible preserved the ancient forms which had been consecrated by a tradition preserved for thousands of years. Cyrus in Babylon and Cambyses in Egypt appeared as the divinely appointed successors of the native rulers, and nominally the two kingdoms still continued to exist under their successors. It is true that this was no more than a form; the kingdoms annexed had neither privileges nor a special administration; and Persian governors resided at Babylon and Memphis as in every other province of the empire. In Western Asia there is no trace of a similar spirit of concession nor is there in Lydia. On the other hand much greater consideration was shown to the Medes [Scythians] and the rest of the Iranian peoples. It was through the treachery of Median magnates and by the desertion of the Median army of Astyages that Cyrus’ victory was rendered possible. So in the empire the Medians take rank next to the Persians. “Persia, Media, and the other countries,” so Darius calls his empire; and in Babylon Xerxes is referred to as “King of Persia and Media.”[23]

The kernel of the army consisted of Persians and Medes, the imperial officials were drawn from them, and under Cyrus and Darius the Medes appear in the highest places of trust at the head of the army. The royal apparel and the order of the court was taken by Cyrus from the Medes, and Ecbatana was one of the residences of the Great King. Thus the Median kingdom continues to exist, not like Babylonia and Egypt, as the shadow of a once independent state, but transformed into the Persian empire. Those at a distance were scarcely aware of the internal changes in face of the continued subsistence of a powerful Iranian empire: consequently the Greeks, like other nations, transferred the Median names to the Persian empire.

The other Iranian peoples, who had been in part already subject to the Medes, in part only subdued by Cyrus, were in a similar position to the rest of the Iranian tribes. They were now all united in one kingdom; the rising of the Medes, Sagartians, Parthians, Hyrcanians, Margians, Sattagydes, and of a part of the Persians after the assassination of the Magian, was the last attempt to maintain the ancient independence of the race. All stationary and many nomadic Iranian, or as they call themselves, Aryan tribes, [572]speak the same Aryan language, varying little in dialect, serve the same pure and true god Ahuramazda, “the god of the Aryans,” as the Susan translation of the Behistun inscription calls him.

The list of the subject districts which Darius enumerates, shows how much more his interests were directed to these nations than to his subjects in the west. In the inscription on his tomb he calls himself with pride, not only a Persian but also “an Aryan of Aryan race.” It is remarkable that the Babylonian translation omits this addition while the Susan retains the Persian words: he boasts that he was the first to draw up Aryan inscriptions and to send them into all countries [only retained in the Susan]. Thus the tribal distinctions were not yet abolished, but were repressed; the empire of the Achæmenides was not, like that of the Sassanides, the “empire of Iran and Extra-Iran”; but it had paved the way for the event that the Aryans of Iran, unlike their brothers in India, were to become a united nation.b

FOOTNOTES

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[573]

CHAPTER II. THE MEDIAN OR SCYTHIAN EMPIRE

Before taking up the history of Persia proper the story of the Medes must be told. Our account of the Median empire will give the reader an excellent idea of what modern historians have done in co-ordinating and straightening out the accounts of the classical authors. Two of these only wrote about the Medes—Herodotus and Ctesias; and although the latter claims to have founded his Persica,—written to refute Herodotus,—on the royal archives of Persia, modern criticism and the testimony of the monuments have proved his account to be far the less trustworthy of the two.

We begin, therefore, with the ancient account of Herodotus, after which the reader will find a masterly critique of the Father of History by Dr. Theodor Nöldeke, the greatest modern authority on Persian history. That, however, the last word is not yet spoken on the Medes will be seen from the concluding portion of the chapter in which results obtained from recent decipherments of Assyrian and Persian monuments are set forth. So startling and revolutionising is the knowledge thence obtained, so wholly different is the historical aspect thus revealed, that the term “Median empire” is probably destined to disappear from the historian’s phraseology. Indeed, Professor Sayce in his latest writings has already discarded it.a

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE MEDIAN EMPIRE ACCORDING TO HERODOTUS

The Assyrians had been in possession of the Upper Asia for a period of five hundred and twenty years. The Medes first of all revolted from their authority, and contended with such obstinate bravery against their masters, that they were ultimately successful, and exchanged servitude for freedom.[24] Other nations soon followed their example, who, after living for a time under [574]the protection of their own laws, were again deprived of their freedom, upon the following occasion.

There was a man among the Medes, of the name of Deioces, son of Phraortes, of great reputation for his wisdom, whose ambitious views were thus disguised and exercised: The Medes were divided into different districts, and Deioces was distinguished in his own, by his vigilant and impartial distribution of justice. This he practised in opposition to the general depravity and weakness of the government of his country, and conscious that the profligate and the just must ever be at war with each other. The Medes who lived nearest him, to signify their approbation of his integrity, made him their judge. In this situation, having one more elevated in view, he conducted himself with the most rigid equity. His behaviour obtained the highest applauses of his countrymen; and his fame extending to the neighbouring districts, the people contrasted his just and equitable decisions with the irregularity of their own corrupt rulers, and unanimously resorted to his tribunal, not suffering any one else to determine their litigations.

The increasing fame of his integrity and wisdom constantly augmented the number of those who came to consult him. But when Deioces saw the pre-eminence which he was so universally allowed, he appeared no more on his accustomed tribunal, and declared that he should sit as a judge no longer; intimating that it was inconsistent for him to regulate the affairs of others, to the entire neglect and injury of his own. After this, as violence and rapine prevailed more than ever in the different districts of the Medes, they called a public assembly to deliberate on national affairs. As far as I have been able to collect, they who were attached to Deioces delivered sentiments to this effect: “Our present situation is really intolerable, let us therefore elect a king, that we may have the advantage of a regular government, and continue our usual occupations, without any fear or danger of molestation.” In conformity to these sentiments, the Medes determined to have a king.

After some consultation about what person they should choose, Deioces was proposed and elected with universal praise. Upon his elevation he required a palace to be erected for him suitable to his dignity, and to have guards appointed for the security of his person. The Medes, in compliance with his request, built him a strong and magnificent edifice in a situation which he himself chose, and suffered him to appoint his guards from among the whole nation. Deioces, as soon as he possessed the supreme authority, obliged the Medes to build a city, which was to occupy their attention beyond all other places. They obeyed him in this also, and constructed what we now call Ecbatana.[25] Its walls were strong and ample, built in circles one within another, rising each above each by the height of their respective battlements. This mode of building was favoured by the situation of the place, which was a gently rising ground. They did yet more: the city being thus formed of seven circles, the king’s palace and the royal treasury stood within the last. The largest of these walls is nearly equal in extent to the circumference of Athens; this is of a white colour, the next to it is black, the next purple, the fourth blue, the fifth orange: thus the battlements of each were distinguished by a different colour. The two innermost walls are differently ornamented, one having its battlements plated with silver, the other with gold.

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Such were the fortifications and the palace which were erected under the direction of Deioces, who commanded the body of the people to fix their habitations beyond the walls which protected his residence. After which, he was the first who instituted that kind of pomp, which forbids access to the royal person, and only admits communication with him by intermediate agents, the king himself being never publicly seen. His edict also signified, that to smile or to spit in the king’s presence, or in the presence of each other, was an act of indecency. His motive for this conduct was the security of his power; thinking, that if he were seen familiarly by those who were educated with him, born with equal pretensions, and not his inferiors in virtue, it might excite their envy, and provoke them to sedition. On the contrary, by his withdrawing himself from observation, he thought their respect for him would be increased.

When Deioces had taken these measures to increase the splendour of his situation and the security of his power, he became extremely rigorous in his administration of justice. They who had causes to determine, sent them to him in writing, by his official servants, which, with the decisions upon each, he regularly returned. This was the form which he observed in judiciary matters. His proceeding with regard to penal offences was thus: Whenever he heard of any injury being perpetrated, and for this purpose he appointed spies and informers in different parts of his dominions, the offender was first brought to his presence, and then punished according to his offence.

Deioces thus collected the Medes into one nation, over which he ruled: they consisted of the Busæ, the Paretaceni, the Struchates, the Arizanti, the Budii, and the Magi.

Deioces reigned fifty-three years, and at his decease, his son Phraortes succeeded to the throne. Not satisfied with the government of the Medes alone, he singled out the Persians as the objects of his ambition, and reduced them first of all under the dominion of the Medes. Supreme of these two great and powerful nations, he overran Asia, alternately subduing the people of whom it was composed. He came at length to the Assyrians, and proceeded to attack that part of them which inhabited Nineveh.[26] These were formerly the most powerful nation in Asia: their allies, at this period, had separated from them; but they were still, with regard to their internal strength, respectable. In the twenty-second year of his reign, Phraortes, in an excursion against this people, perished, with the greater part of his army.

He was succeeded by his son Cyaxares, grandson of Deioces. He is reported to have been superior to his ancestors in valour, and was the first who regularly trained the Asiatics to military service, dividing them, who had before been promiscuously embodied, into companies of spearmen, cavalry, and archers. He it was who was carrying on war with the Lydians, when the engagement which happened in the day, was suddenly interrupted by nocturnal darkness. Having formed an amicable connection with the different nations of Asia beyond the Halys, he proceeded with all his forces to the attack of Nineveh, being equally desirous of avenging his father, and becoming master of the city. He vanquished the Assyrians in battle; but when he was engaged in the siege of Nineveh, he was surprised [576]by an army of Scythians, commanded by Madzas, son of Protothyas.[27] Having expelled the Cimmerians from Europe, the Scythians had found their way into Asia, and, continuing to pursue the fugitives, had arrived at the territories of the Medes.

After possessing the dominion of Asia for a space of twenty-eight years, the Scythians lost all they had obtained, by their licentiousness and neglect. The extravagance of their public extortions could only be equalled by the rapacity with which they plundered individuals. At a feast, to which they were invited by Cyaxares and the Medes, the greater part of them were cut off when in a state of intoxication. The Medes thus recovered their possessions, and all their ancient importance; after which they took Nineveh; the particulars of which incident we shall hereafter relate. They, moreover, subdued the Assyrians, those only excepted which inhabited the Babylonian district. Cyaxares reigned forty years, and then died; but in this period is to be included the time in which the Scythians possessed the empire.

His son Astyages succeeded to the throne: he had a daughter whom he called Mandane; she, in a dream, appeared to make so great a quantity of water, that not only his principal city, but all Asia, was overflowed. The purport of this vision, when explained in each particular by the magi, the usual interpreters, terrified him exceedingly. Under this impression, he refused to marry his daughter, when she arrived at a suitable age, to any Mede whose rank justified pretensions to her. He chose rather to give her to Cambyses, a Persian, of a respectable family, but of a pacific disposition, though inferior in his estimation to the lowest of the Medes.

The first year after the marriage of his daughter, Astyages saw another vision. A vine appeared to spring from the womb of Mandane, which overspread all Asia. Upon this occasion also he consulted his interpreters: the result was, that he sent for his daughter from Persia, when the time of her delivery approached. On her arrival, he kept a strict watch over her, intending to destroy her child. The magi had declared the vision to intimate that the child of his daughter should supplant him on his throne. Astyages, to guard against this, as soon as Cyrus was born, sent for Harpagus, a person whose intimacy he used, upon whose confidence he depended, and who indeed had the management of all his affairs. He addressed him as follows: “Harpagus, I am about to use you in a business, in which if you either abuse my confidence, or employ others to do what I am anxious you should do yourself, you will infallibly lament the consequence. You must take the boy of whom Mandane has been delivered, remove him to your own house, and put him to death: you will afterwards bury him as you shall think proper.” “Sir,” he replied, “you have hitherto never had occasion to censure my conduct; neither shall my future behaviour give you cause of offence: if the accomplishment of this matter be essential to your peace, it becomes me to be faithful and obedient.”b

According to Herodotus, Harpagus realising that as Astyages had no son, Cyrus was his sole male descendant, was fearful of Mandane’s vengeance when the king should be dead. So, resolved not to have the child’s blood on his hands he gave him to a herdsman, Mithridates by name, with the injunction that young Cyrus be exposed to the wild beasts in an unfrequented part of the mountains among which the herdsman lived. Now it so happened that the wife of Mithridates had the day before been delivered of [577]a still-born child, and when the woman saw the beautiful infant and knew its origin, she proposed that her own dead child be exposed on the mountain, and that she keep the one put into her husband’s hands for destruction. Mithridates approved. His own child, “dressed in the other’s costly clothing, was exposed on a desert mountain.” Proof of this was brought to Harpagus, and then “the herdsman’s child was interred: the other, who was afterwards called Cyrus, was brought up carefully by the wife of the herdsman and called by some other name.”

When the boy was ten years old Astyages suspected the deceit that had been practised upon him. Chance threw the child and his foster-father in the king’s way, and a confession was wrung from the terrified Mithridates. Harpagus was sent for, who told what he believed to be the truth. The sequel had best be told in the language of Herodotus.a

Harpagus related the fact without prevarication; but Astyages, dissembling the anger which he really felt, informed him of the confession of the herdsman; and finished his narration in these words, “The child is alive, and all is well: I was much afflicted concerning the fate of the boy, and but ill could bear the reproaches of my daughter. But as the matter has turned out well, you must send your son to our young stranger, and attend me yourself at supper. I have determined, in gratitude for the child’s preservation, to celebrate a festival in honour of those deities who interposed to save him.”

Harpagus, on hearing this, made his obeisance to the king, and returned cheerfully to his house, happy in the reflection that he was not only not punished for his disobedience, but honoured by an invitation to the royal festival. As soon as he arrived at his house, he hastily called for his only son, a boy of about thirteen, ordering him to hasten to the palace of Astyages, and to comply with whatever was commanded him. He then related to his wife, with much exultation, all that had happened. As soon as the boy arrived, Astyages commanded him to be cut in pieces, and some part of his flesh to be roasted, another part boiled, and the whole made ready to be served at table. At the hour of supper, among other guests, Harpagus also attended. Before the rest, as well as before Astyages himself, dishes of mutton were placed, but to Harpagus all the body of his son was served, except the head and the extremities, which were kept apart in a covered basket. After he seemed well satisfied with what he had eaten, Astyages asked him how he liked his fare: Harpagus expressing himself greatly delighted, the attendants brought him the basket which contained the head and extremities of his child, and desired him to help himself to what he thought proper. Harpagus complied, uncovered the vessel, and beheld the remains of his son. He continued, however, master of himself, and discovered no unusual emotion. When[578] Astyages inquired if he knew of what flesh and of what wild beast he had eaten, he acknowledged that he did, and that the king’s will was always pleasing to him. Saying this he took the remnants of the body, and returned to his house, meaning, as I should suppose, to bury them together.

As Cyrus grew up, he excelled all the young men in strength and gracefulness of person. Harpagus, who was anxious to be revenged on Astyages, was constantly endeavouring to gain an interest with him, by making him presents. In his own private situation he could have but little hope of obtaining the vengeance he desired; but seeing in Cyrus when a man, one whose fortunes bore some resemblance to his own, he much attached himself to him. He had, some time before, taken the following measure: Astyages having treated the Medes with great asperity, Harpagus took care to communicate with the men of the greatest consequence among them, endeavouring, by his insinuations, to promote the elevation of Cyrus, and the deposition of his master. Having thus prepared the way, he contrived the following method of acquainting Cyrus in Persia with his own private sentiments, and the state of affairs. The communication betwixt the two countries being strictly guarded, he took a hare, opened its paunch, in which he inserted a letter, containing the information he wished to give, and then dexterously sewed it up again. The hare, with some hunting nets, he entrusted to one of his servants of the chase, upon whom he could depend. The man was sent into Persia, and ordered to deliver the hare to Cyrus himself, who was entreated to open it with his own hands, and without witnesses.

The man executed his commission; Cyrus received the hare, which having opened as directed, he found a letter to the following purport: “Son of Cambyses, Heaven evidently favours you, or you never could have risen thus superior to fortune. Astyages meditated your death, and is a just object of your vengeance; he certainly determined that you should perish; the gods and my humanity preserved you. With the incidents of your life I believe you are acquainted, as well as with the injuries which I have received from Astyages, for delivering you to the herdsman, instead of putting you to death. Listen but to me and the authority and dominions of Astyages shall be yours: first prevail upon the Persians to revolt, and then undertake an expedition against the Medes. If I shall be appointed by Astyages the leader of the forces which oppose you, our object will be instantly accomplished, which I may also venture to affirm of each of our first nobility; they are already favourable to your cause, and wait but the opportunity of revolting from Astyages. All things being thus prepared, execute what I advise without delay.”

Cyrus, on receiving this intelligence, revolved in his mind what would be the most effectual means of inducing the Persians to revolt. After much deliberation he determined on the following stratagem: He dictated the terms of a public letter, and called an assembly of his countrymen. Here it was produced and read, and it appeared to contain his appointment by Astyages to be general of the Persians: “And now, O Persians,” he exclaimed, “I must expect each of you to attend me with an hatchet.” There are many tribes of the Persians: certain of these Cyrus assembled, and persuaded to revolt from the Medes. These are they upon which all the other Persians depend, namely, the Pasargadæ, the Maraphii, and the Maspii: Of these, the Pasargadæ are the most considerable; the Achæmenidæ are those from whom the Persian monarchs are descended. The Panthialæi, Derusiæi, and Germanians follow laborious employments; the Dai, Mardi, Dropici, and Sagartians are feeders of cattle.

[579]

They all assembled in the manner they were commanded, and Cyrus directed them to clear, in the space of a day, a certain woody enclosure, which was eighteen or twenty furlongs in extent. When they had executed their task, they were desired to attend the following day to feast and make merry. For this purpose Cyrus collected and slew all the goats, sheep, and oxen, which were the property of his father; and further to promote the entertainment of the Persians, he added rich wines and abundance of delicacies. The next day, when they were met, he desired them to recline on the grass and enjoy themselves. When they were satisfied, he inquired of them which day’s fare delighted them the most: They replied, the contrast betwixt the two was strong indeed, as on the first day they had nothing but what was bad, on the second everything that was good. On receiving this answer, Cyrus no longer hesitated to explain the purpose which he had in view: “Men of Persia,” he exclaimed, “your affairs are thus circumstanced; if you obey me, you will enjoy these and greater advantages, without any servile toils: if you refuse what I propose, you must prepare to encounter worse hardships than those of yesterday. By following my advice you will obtain liberty; Providence appears to have reserved me to be the instrument of your prosperity; you are, doubtless, equal to the Medes in everything, and most assuredly are as brave: this being the case, immediately revolt from Astyages.”

The Persians, who had long spurned at the yoke imposed on them by the Medes, were glad of such a leader, and ardently obeyed the call of liberty. Astyages was soon informed of the proceedings of Cyrus, and commanded his attendance. He returned for answer, that he should probably anticipate the wish of Astyages to see him. Astyages upon this collected the Medes, and, urged by some fatal impulse, appointed Harpagus to command his forces, not remembering the injury he formerly had done him. His army was embodied, the Medes met and engaged the Persians; they who were not privy to the plot fought with valour, the rest went over to the Persians; the greater part discovered no inclination to continue the combat, and hastily retreated.

Astyages, hearing of the ignominious defeat of his army, continued to menace Cyrus; and exclaimed that he should still have no reason to exult. The first thing he did was to crucify the magi, the interpreters of dreams, who had prevailed upon him to send Cyrus away. He then armed all his citizens, young and old, without distinction. He led them against the Persians, and was vanquished: he himself was taken prisoner, and the greater part of his army destroyed.

In his captivity, Harpagus was present to insult and reproach him. Among other things, he asked him what was his opinion of that supper, in which he had compelled a father to feed on the flesh of his child, a supper which had reduced him from a monarch to a slave. In reply Astyages requested to know if he imputed to himself the success of Cyrus? He confessed that he did, explained the means, and justified his conduct. Astyages told him that he was then the most foolish and wicked of mankind;—most foolish, in acquiring for another the authority he might have enjoyed himself; most wicked, for reducing his countrymen to servitude, to gratify his private revenge. If he thought a change in the government really necessary, and was still determined not to assume the supreme authority himself, justice should have induced him to have raised a Mede to that honour, rather than a Persian. The Medes, who were certainly not accessory to the provocation given, had exchanged situations with their servants; the Persians, who were formerly the servants, were now the masters.

[580]

After a reign of thirty-five years Astyages was thus deposed. To his cruelty of temper the Medes owed the loss of their power, after possessing, for the space of one hundred and twenty-eight years, all that part of Asia which lies beyond the Halys, deducting from this period the short interval of the Scythian dominion. In succeeding times, being dissatisfied with their condition, they took up arms against Darius; their attempt proved unsuccessful, and they were a second time reduced to servitude. From this period the Persians, who, under the conduct of Cyrus, had shaken off the power of the Medes, remained in undisturbed possession of Asia. Cyrus detained Astyages in captivity for the remainder of his life, but in no other instance treated him with severity. Such is the history of the birth, education, and success of Cyrus. He afterwards, as I have before related, subdued Crœsus, who had attacked him unjustly; from which time he remained without a rival, sovereign of Asia.b

Such is the picturesque narrative of Herodotus—the narrative on which all subsequent studies of the subject have been largely based. We take up now a critical analysis of this famous story.

THE MEDIAN EMPIRE: A MODERN INTERPRETATION

The series of the great Iranian monarchies begins for us with the Median empire of Ecbatana. According to Herodotus the Medes freed themselves from the Assyrians, and lived for a time without a master till Deioces obtained the kingly power by stratagem. There reigned then

Deioces	53 years	} 75 years	} 150 years.
Phraortes	22 years
Cyaxares	40 years	} 75 years
Astyages	35 years

The totals show how the figures are arranged on an artificial system. The duration of the kingdom is exactly a century and a half, divided into two exactly equal portions, each of which is occupied by the reigns of two kings. But further, according to Herodotus, the rule of the Medes over Upper Asia, i.e., the land east of the Halys, lasted one hundred and twenty-eight years, save only (πάρεξ) the twenty-eight years during which the Scythians ruled. It is easy to see that “save only” means “minus,” and that thus the foreign supremacy of the Medes is reckoned at exactly one hundred years, or two-thirds of the total duration of the kingdom. Obviously such figures can at most be only approximately correct. But the names of the kings in Herodotus are now all authenticated, directly or indirectly, by the inscriptions lately discovered. Probably, too, the reckoning of the total duration of the empire at a century and a half is about right. Indeed, such chronological systems sometimes correspond better, on the whole, with the facts than their artificiality would lead us to expect.

We have listened to Herodotus’ naïve story of the foundation of the Median kingdom by Deioces, son of Phraortes, a story in which Greek and oriental colours are charmingly blended. We may assume as certain that Deioces possessed a principality, the central point of which was Ecbatana (or Agbatana; old Persian Hagmatana, now Hamadan), a place which for thousands of years has held the rank of a capital. This principality probably never embraced the whole of Media (i.e., nearly the present provinces of Irak Adjemi and Azerbijan with a portion of Turkish Kurdistan), but by his successors it was enlarged into the great Median empire. Of course[581] there was no smooth and formal constitution, no fixed frontier, no exact determination of the prerogatives of different chiefs in the particular districts. From of old the Assyrians had made frequent attempts to subjugate the country of the Medes, but perhaps never quite possessed the whole land with its numerous inaccessible mountains and warlike robber tribes. Nevertheless they made successful expeditions into the interior of Media even down to the time at which Herodotus regards Media as independent. Neither the liberation of Media nor the foundation of the monarchy is an event which can be limited to a particular year, the thing took place gradually. In the period not long before Deioces, according to Herodotus’ reckoning, very many tributary Median chieftains are mentioned in the Assyrian inscriptions; this confirms, in some measure at least, the statement that “anarchy” then prevailed. In 715 B.C. there was carried off as prisoner one Daiaukku; this is certainly the same name, perhaps the same person (for his captivity may have been brief), as Daiokes, which appears in Herodotus in the Ionic form Deiokes. We can certainly identify Herodotus’ first king with the prince whose land, called Bit Daiaukku (i.e., land of Daiaukku), King Sargon of Assyria conquered in 713 B.C. The man who thus gave his name to the land must have occupied a high station. The date is not very remote from that assigned by Herodotus to Deioces; for we get from Herodotus as the date of Deioces 709-656, or, if we correct his error in dating the end of the empire, 700-647. Deioces was not a king of kings; he was forced to bow to the Assyrians repeatedly, but he was the founder of the empire. Three kings followed him. It is possible that there were really more, and that in the summary list the shorter reigns are passed over. Nor can we place much reliance on Herodotus’ assertion that each successive ruler was the son of his predecessor.

In perfect harmony with the conditions of development of a small state into a great power is the statement of Herodotus that the second king of the Medes, Phraortes (Frawarti; according to Herodotus’ reckoning 656-634 [647-625]), extended his sway beyond the limits of Media, and first of all subjugated Persis, or Persia proper, the secluded mountain-land southeast of Media. During all this time indeed, as we learn from Darius’ great inscription, Persis had kings of its own; but these were simply vassals of the sultan who had his seat in Ecbatana. After conquering the Persians, Phraortes, says Herodotus, subjugated piece after piece of Asia, until he was discomfited and slain in the attempt to conquer the Assyrians in Nineveh, whose empire was by that time completely lost. Allowing for some exaggerations with respect to the extent of the empire, there is nothing in these statements that need excite suspicion. Independent evidence seems to show that towards the middle of the seventh century the Assyrian empire had fallen very low; and that the inhabitants of the cluster of vast cities to which Nineveh belonged were able to repel the first attack of an enemy who could hardly have been their match in the art of siege-warfare is perfectly natural. Besides, the stability of the Median military, political, and court institutions, which were afterwards taken over unaltered by the Persians, must surely have required for its development a longer time than some modern inquirers, following exclusively the cuneiform inscriptions, have assumed for the actual duration of the Median empire.

Phraortes’ successor, Cyaxares (Huwakhshatara; according to Herodotus’ reckoning 634-594 [625-585]), brought the empire to the highest pitch of power. He is said to have introduced fixed tactical arrangements into the army. It was to him that the pretenders whom Darius had to[582] overcome traced their descent, as he tells us himself. Cyaxares, according to Herodotus, took the field successfully against Nineveh, but as he was besieging the city the inroad of the “Scythians” compelled him to forego for a time all the fruits of victory. Who these Scythians were is unknown. Herodotus took them for the people tolerably familiar to the Greeks, whose true name was Scolotæ; but his evidence does not go for much, since he often falls into the popular misuse of the term “Scythian” as a name for all the peoples of the steppes, and brings the inroads of these Scythians into a most unlikely connection with the desolating raids of Thracian tribes (the Trares or Treres, commonly called Cimmerians) in Asia Minor. We must content ourselves with assuming that we have here one of those irruptions of northern barbarians into Iran of which we hear so often in later times. Probably these nomads came, as Herodotus indicates, through the natural gate between the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, the pass of Derbend, though it is quite possible that they came from the east of the Caspian, from the steppes of Turkestan. Whether these Scythians are really the same people who made their way as far as Palestine and Egypt is, indeed, far from being as certain as is commonly supposed, nor can the date of the irruption into these countries be determined. At any rate, the barbarians overthrew the Medes and flooded the whole empire. From what we know of the doings of Huns, Khazars, Turks, and Mongols in later times we can infer how these Scythians behaved in Iran. Cyaxares must have come to some sort of terms with them: and at last he rid himself of them in a truly Eastern fashion, by inviting most of them (i.e., of their chiefs) to a feast, where he made them drunk and slew them at their wine. It is not in the least surprising that Cyaxares afterwards had Scythians in his service; savages like these have no steady national feeling, and serve any potentate for pay.

With the Scythian disorders we might combine the contests which, according to Ctesias, the Parthians and Sacæ (i.e., the inhabitants of the Turkoman desert, who are also called “Scythians” by the Greeks) waged with Cyaxares, or Astibaras, as Ctesias calls him. But it is not safe to do so, as the whole narrative is only the framework for a pretty romance.

Cyaxares marched a second time against Nineveh and destroyed it about 607. Not only Ctesias but also Berosus asserts that the king of the Medes achieved this great success in league with the king of Babylon. In order to protect himself against his ally, who by the fall of the Assyrian empire had grown too powerful, the Chaldean had recourse to a double precaution: he married his son, afterwards the potent Nebuchadrezzar, to Amyite or Amyitis, daughter of the Median king; but he also erected extensive fortifications. After the fall of Nineveh, Nebuchadrezzar made himself master of Syria and Palestine, and Cyaxares acquired most of the rest of the Assyrian territory. Probably Assyria proper belonged to him also, and we can thus explain Xenophon’s error that the Assyrian cities before their destruction belonged to the Medes (Anab., III, 4, 7-10). When Cyaxares afterwards began the war with the Lydians he was already master of Armenia and Cappadocia, though he probably did not acquire them until after he had got rid of the Scythians and destroyed Nineveh.

The pretext for the war was afforded by the flight of some Scythians in Cyaxares’ service to Alyattes, king of Lydia; but the real cause was doubtless thirst of conquest. The war lasted for five years with varying fortune, and was ended by the battle during which the eclipse of the sun, said to have been predicted by Thales, took place. The terrified combatants saw in this a divine warning and hastily concluded peace. An impression so profound[583] could be produced by nothing short of a total eclipse. Now, according to Airy’s calculation, of all the eclipses of that period the only one which was total in the east of Asia Minor (where we must necessarily look for the seat of war) was that of May 28th, 585. The 28th of May 585 B.C. is perhaps the oldest date of a great event which can be fixed with perfect certainty down to the day of the month. The conclusion of peace which followed affords us a remarkable instance of diplomatic mediation in very ancient times. The peace was brought about by Syennesis, prince of Cilicia, and Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon. Astyages, son of Cyaxares, married Aryenis, daughter of Alyattes. But according to Herodotus’ calculation the above date does not fall within the time of Cyaxares; and even with the necessary correction Astyages ascended the throne in this same year. We might suppose that the battle fell in the father’s, the peace in the son’s time. But, as we saw above, the dates of these reigns are not of a sort in which we can place much confidence, and it is more likely that the reign of Astyages did not last so long as tradition asserts. Thus Cyaxares probably died after 585.

Of the reign of his son Astyages (in Ctesias, Astyigas; in a Babylonian inscription Ishtuvegu) we have no particulars. It is not even certain that he was cruel, for Herodotus’ account of him and of the revolt of Cyrus is not impartial, based as it is on the narratives of the descendants of Harpagus, who had an interest in portraying in unfavourable colours the prince whom their ancestor had betrayed. On the other hand, Ctesias’ Median authority (Nicolaus Dam., 64 et seq.), which sets Astyages in a very favourable light, has no better claim to credence on this point.c

NEW LIGHT ON THE MEDES

In our account of the capture of Nineveh, mention was made of a philological error of the Greeks which endured until the very end of the nineteenth century. Now that the matter has been cleared up, we are in possession of the somewhat startling fact that Cyaxares was not a Median prince and that the Medes had nothing whatever to do with the tragic end of the Assyrian capital. The Medes were indeed the people whose cities Shalmaneser II laid waste and from whom he exacted tribute; against whom Tiglathpileser III led an expedition in 737; whose princes asked the help of Esarhaddon to repel the nomadic invasion which was threatening their land and the neighbouring kingdom of Urartu; but they were not the nation that came only too willingly to the assistance of Nabopolassar. They were, in fact, closely akin to the very people whom Esarhaddon was implored to drive back, and are known as the Manda.

Thus a readjustment of a very important period of ancient history has been made possible within the last few years; and it is proposed here to orient the reader and to outline what is now regarded as the true state of affairs. It seems inadvisable entirely to discard that universally used phrase “the Median empire,” and to a certain degree its retention is justifiable, but it is equally important that the remarkable results of recent research should be carefully explained and that the ancient misconceptions as to the Medes shall be entirely swept away.

First of all it must be understood that the political situation of Western Asia, even as late as the reign of Esarhaddon, differed very materially from that of the time of Nabonidus, only a little more than a century after. Babylonia was held fast under the Assyrians’ heel. The power of Elam was[584] still a thing of the future. But to the north and east of Assyria there were several countries which, however much they were tributary to the government at Nineveh, were still kingdoms of some power and importance.

Urartu, concerning whose history much has already been told, in the region around Lake Van was one of these, and beyond it, north and east, lay the land known in ancient geography as Media. Its people first appear upon the Assyrian monuments as the Amada, but later and more frequently they are called Mada. “The Mada,” says Professor Sayce, “were the Kurdish tribes who lived eastward of Assyria and whose territory extended as far as the Caspian Sea. They were for the most part Indo-European in language and Aryan in descent, and lived like the Greeks, in small states, each of which obeyed a ‘city lord’ of its own.”

Such was the status of the “true Medes.” There is nothing in their condition or history to distinguish them from many other insignificant peoples whose destiny it was to come in contact with the world-empires of antiquity. Their influence on history has been nothing, and their political condition—that of a number of petty independent principalities—naturally worked against the attainment of any great degree of importance. Such information as we have of the rulers and cities of this land that had no central government and was never completely a portion of the Assyrian empire, comes from the inscriptions of the Ninevite kings. Esarhaddon tells of three, Uppis of Partakka, Sanasana of Partukka, and Ramateya of Urakazabarna, who asked his help against the invading nomads.

Sargon II seems to have had the country under heavy tribute, and we may read how, after a rebellion in the north had been put down, there arrived at the conqueror’s new city of Kar-Sharrukin no less than twenty-eight princes from different parts of Media bringing rich presents. But beyond these and a few other citations there is nothing in the story of Media to attract the attention of even a close student of world-history.

Southeast of Urartu was the little kingdom of Man or Minni, whose people were the Manna of the Assyrian texts. We hear of it at the close of the eighth century B.C. when Iranzu was king, and Rusas, the sovereign of Urartu, attacked it, taking two cities. Sargon II came to the rescue of his small neighbour, and Rusas gave up his spoil. After Iranzu’s death, his son Aza was promptly slain by Rusas, but another son, Ullusunu, who gave oath of fidelity to Assyria, was put on the throne by Sargon. Ullusunu, however, soon broke his vows, and there ensued the bloody conflict whose story has been related in the history of Assyria. The Manna, with the Cimmerians and the people of Urartu, formed a great coalition against Esarhaddon of which the nomad chief Kashtariti was head; but this fell to pieces through internal dissension.

Only one other matter of interest concerning these countries need detain us, and that is the fact that they are the nations which Jeremiah believed would work the vengeance of the Lord upon Babylon. The prophet undoubtedly thought that a period of greatness was in store for these peoples, and he looked to them, and not to Elam and Persia, to fulfil his prophecies.

[585]

“Make bright the arrows; gather the shields; the Lord hath raised up the spirit of the kings of the Medes.… Set ye up a standard in the land, blow the trumpet among the nations, prepare the nations against her [Babylon], call together against her the kingdoms of Ararat [Urartu], Minni, and Ashchenaz.[28] … Prepare against her the nations with the kings of the Medes, the captains thereof and all the rulers thereof.…” (Jeremiah li. 11, 27, 28.)

It is clear that Jeremiah had the “true Medes” in mind when he uttered these words, since he speaks of the “kings of the Medes,” whereas the Manda, as we shall presently see, had a strongly organised government under one king.

Modern investigation is tending to establish the fact that this prophecy of Jeremiah is one originally uttered against Nineveh and subsequently changed to apply to the capital of Nebuchadrezzar, since the mention of Urartu and Minni with at least a possible future describes conditions that could scarcely have existed at a date much later than the fall of Nineveh. There are other examples of this sort of adaptation in the Bible; for example, Isaiah’s prophecy of Moab’s doom.

We come now to that recently discovered people, of great importance as the first of the Indo-European family to affect the current of world-history in Western Asia, but of whose story the modern world has remained in complete ignorance until the present day.

By the time of Esarhaddon the wave of Indo-European migration had begun to assume threatening proportions to the Semitic nations of Mesopotamia, although from southern Russia the tide had been pouring in for many centuries. Media was populated, and then the nomadic stream parted, one great mass moving westward into Asia Minor, and another to the east, and then south as far as Elam, neither making any disturbance in the Assyrian empire. Nevertheless the Semites soon found themselves surrounded, peacefully but positively, by an alien race.

Northeast of Assyria, and extending to the southern shores of the Caspian, was the ancient kingdom of Ellipi, with its capital at Ecbatana—the Achmetha of the Bible. Of its fortunes we got a glimpse now and then in the course of Assyrian history: Sargon laid it under tribute, and it entered into alliance with Elam in the desperate struggle with Sennacherib—and then the curtain of oblivion falls. We know its fate—the nomads descended upon it. In this region the new-comers seem quickly to have effected the organisation of a new state. To the Assyrians they are known as the Manda, and there is little doubt that they are identical with the Scythians of classical history.

As far back as Esarhaddon’s day there are allusions to this people on the monuments. That monarch perceived the danger threatening his country, and made at least one successful effort to prevent the Scythian or Cimmerian stream from pouring into Mesopotamia. At a battle fought in Cilicia he boasts that he conquered the Cimmerian leader, Teuspa or Teispes, whom he calls a “Manda.” Asshurbanapal, too, in a recently discovered inscription, expresses gratitude to the gods for a victory over “that limb of Satan,” Tuktammu of the Manda. “It is possible,” says Professor Sayce, “that Tuktammu is the Lygdamis of Strabo, who led the Cimmerians into Cilicia, from whence they afterward marched westward and burned Sardis.”

In the course of a single century, therefore, new political conditions had rapidly developed. In the border regions of Assyria[586] “was enacted the same drama which centuries later took place in Italy, as the northern barbarians came southward over the mountains and seized the plains of Lombardy. Rome could only make a feeble resistance, and a little later even the capital went down before them. The parallel goes even that far also, for Nineveh likewise was done to destruction through the help of these same barbarians who now settled in her outlying provinces.”

The first Scythian invasion of Assyria took place in the reign of Asshurbanapal’s successor, Asshur-etil-ili. The Manda burned Calah, and swept on as far as the border of Egypt, when they were turned back only by Psamthek’s gold. The next visit was at the invitation of Nabopolassar, and it is not necessary to repeat here how the Scythian king of Ecbatana, the Cyaxares of the Greeks, came to the help of the king of Babylon, nor indeed how, in the division of the Assyrian empire, the Manda found themselves lords of the land north from the Babylonian frontier. Suffice it to say that the thirst for empire-making was now strong upon them, and we will quote Professor Rogers’ brief account of the short-lived Scythian empire: “To them [the Manda] had fallen in the partition of the Assyrian empire the whole of the old land of Assyria with northern Babylonia. The very ownership of such territory as this was itself a call to the making of an empire. To this the Manda set themselves with extraordinary and rapid success. … As early as 560 B.C. their border had been extended as far west as the river Halys, which served as a boundary between them and the kingdom of Lydia, over which Crœsus, of proverbial memory, was now king (560-546 B.C.). If no violent end came to a victorious people, such as the Manda now were, it could not be long before the rich plains, the wealthy cities, and the great waterways of Babylonia would tempt them southward and the great clash would come. If to such brute force of conquest as they had already abundantly shown they should add gifts for organisation and administration, there was no reason why all their possessions should not be welded again into a great empire.… Their king was now Astyages, or, as the Babylonian inscriptions name him, Ishtuvegu. Our knowledge of him is too scant to admit of a judgment as to his character. A man of war of extraordinary capacity he certainly was, but perhaps little else. However that may be, he was not to accomplish the ruin of Nabonidus.”

Thus we get an idea of the ambitions and achievements of the Manda after the fall of Nineveh. The petty kingdoms in the north—Media, Man, Urartu, and others—were all theirs. The next logical step was “the ruin of Nabonidus.”

To accomplish this, as we know, was the destiny of Cyrus, since in the year 550 B.C., as is told elsewhere, the Scythian empire, called the Median by the Greeks, after less than a century of existence came to an end.

It is, perhaps, worthy of note how this extraordinary confusion of names came about. Professor Sayce thus explains it: “When in the generations which succeeded Darius Hystaspes, Cyrus became the founder of the Persian empire, the Medes and the Manda were confounded one with the other. Astyages, the suzerain of Cyrus, was transformed into a Mede, and the city of Ecbatana into the capital of a Median empire. The illusion has lasted down to our own age. There was no reason for doubting the traditional story; neither in the pages of the writers of Greece and Rome, nor in those of the Old Testament, nor even in the great inscription of Darius at Behistun, did there seem to be anything to cast suspicion upon it. It was not until the discovery of the monuments of Nabonidus and Cyrus that the truth at last came to light, and it was found that the history we had so long believed was founded upon a philological mistake.”a

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER III. THE EARLY ACHÆMENIANS AND THE ELAMITES, CYRUS AND CAMBYSES

When we speak of the political history of Persia, our thoughts turn naturally enough to Greece also. Yet there was a period of Persian history, which was brilliant, even though brief, in which Greece had no share even as a participant or objective point. And indeed the interest which Greece had for the Persian monarchs during the something more than two hundred years of Persian supremacy has no doubt been exaggerated in the minds of subsequent generations, because the whole picture has been seen through the eyes of Greek and not of Persian historians. The first great profane history that was ever written—the history, namely, of Herodotus—had for its main subject the Græco-Persian war.

The earliest pages of this history gave expression to the then current notion that almost from time immemorial there had existed a deadly feud between Greece and Persia, and the realm even of mythology is invaded in the effort to explain the origin of this feud, and to fix the responsibility for it upon an Asiatic nation. Yet, in point of fact, it is probable that no such widely prevalent feeling of antagonism between the representative nations of Asia and Europe had existed for any very great length of time, before the period at which Herodotus wrote. Indeed it is clear that a feud between the Persians, as such, and the Greeks could not have dated earlier than from about the year 550 B.C., since it was only then that the Persian empire came into existence. Nor is there anything to show that the first two rulers of the empire, namely, Cyrus and Cambyses, had turned their attention particularly to the region beyond the Hellespont. Cyrus indeed invaded Asia Minor, and in so doing necessarily came closely into contact with a Greek civilisation; but the express object of this invasion was the conquest of Lydia, which was accomplished through the overthrow of Crœsus, and Cyrus himself then turned back to conquer Babylonia, and whatever plans he may have had looking to the extension of his power in Asia Minor or beyond the Ægean Sea, he did not live to execute them. The short reign of Cambyses was occupied almost exclusively with the Egyptian conquest. Still it was inevitable that a conquering Asiatic power that had extended its bounds to the very walls of the Greek cities of Asia Minor must go farther in the same direction. It was equally certain that[588] Greece must resent the infringement of its territories and thus the feud between the East and West was at once as inevitable and as bitter as if it had been much more ancient in origin than it really was.

The fullest details of the wars which grew out of this feud we shall have occasion to examine when we turn to Grecian history; nor can we quite disregard them here. Our chief concern for the moment, however, is with the history of the Medo-Persian empire in its Asiatic and African aspects. It is interesting to reflect that this empire was the greatest in mere geographical extent that the world had ever seen, far greater than Egypt, greater than the Assyrian empire at its widest reach, and greater than any empire that was to succeed it until modern times, except for the brief decade when Alexander the Great held the destinies of the East and the West subject to his master will.

It should be remembered, too, that this empire of the Medes and Persians held sway for a much longer period than is sometimes assumed. Cyrus, the founder of the Medo-Persian empire, came into power in the year 550 B.C., and the battle of Platæa, in which the army of Xerxes was completely overthrown and the last Persian force that ever attempted to invade Europe completely shattered, took place less than three-quarters of a century later. One is prone at first thought to date the fall of the Persian empire from this latter event; but to do so is to take a very narrow or European view of history. The Persians did not again invade Greece, it is true, but Persian money became a disturbing influence in Greek political life and continued such for a century and a half, or as long as Greece maintained independent national existence.

So powerful has been the influence of Greece in an intellectual way that one is prone to forget how insignificant a people the Hellenes were in regard to those matters which are usually made the test of national supremacy. Once, and once only, a united Greece became a mighty factor in international warfare; that exceptional time was the all-essential one, when Greece drove back the Persian invaders. But the territory of Greece remained unchanged after this momentous factor, and neither then nor at any subsequent period had the Greeks any thought of making wide conquests until the day of Agesilaus; and the aspirations of that Spartan chief, who at one time seemed likely to anticipate Alexander in a Persian conquest, were cut short by those suicidal internal dissensions which were the bane of the political life of Greece at all periods of her history. Meantime, while Rome was waxing strong in the West, she had not yet reached the horizon of a world-influence, Persia remained, notwithstanding her defeat on Grecian territory, the undisputed mistress of Asia and therefore the most powerful nation in the world, for more than two centuries after the death of Cyrus. And then it was no Greek, but the conqueror of Greece, the Macedonian Alexander, who wrested the sceptre from the Persian hand.

Two centuries and a half of supremacy! That does not seem a long period when one has the thousands of years of Egyptian history in mind or the other thousands when the plain of Mesopotamia was the centre of the Asiatic world. Yet after all in the narrow view it will be apparent that very few times in the world’s history has a single nation maintained supremacy for a much longer period than two or three centuries. Egyptian history is very far from being a record of unbroken power, and the centre of Mesopotamia shifted from south to north and back again at intervals of a few centuries at longest. When, therefore, one considers the two and a half centuries of unbroken Persian power, and reflects how enormously wide was the[589] extent of that dominant influence, it is clear that he has to do with one of the greatest nations of which history has any record.

Of the very early history of Persia there is almost nothing known. From the obelisk of Shalmaneser II we learn how after successfully invading the land of Namri, the Assyrian king marched into the territory of Parsua (Persia) and received tribute. This was in the year 836 B.C. Again tribute was collected in 830, and in the following year the country was plundered and ravaged by the Assyrian army. About 813 Shamshi-Adad IV paid an unwelcome visit to his province. From these and other references we may conclude that from the time the Indo-Europeans were fairly settled in the land, Parsua was a dependency of the Assyrian empire, regaining its liberties whenever the fortunes of Assyria were at low ebb, and losing them in a corresponding degree when a strong brain and hand held the reins in the capitals on the Upper Tigris. Then, as we have seen, Persia fell into the hands of the Scythian or Median emperor that ruled at Ecbatana, from whom it was delivered by Cyrus the Great.

But before taking up the history of Persia, it is necessary to say something about the kingdom of Elam, for as we shall presently see, that was the land from which Cyrus came. Elam lay to the east and across a mountain range from Babylonia. Of the early fortunes of the country—the time of Chedorlaomer and other Elamite invaders of Babylonia we have now nothing to do; what concerns us is that in the eighth century B.C., Teispes, the king of Persia obtained possession of the Elamite province of Anshan. In all probability the Persian conqueror gave the new territory to his son Cyrus I; for according to Professor Sayce, “While Cyrus I, the great-grandfather of Cyrus the Great, reigned in Anshan, it is probable that Ariaramnes, the great-grandfather of Darius, succeeded his father, Teispes, in Persia. Both Ariaramnes and Cyrus I were sons of Teispes, and since Darius in his inscription at Behistun declares that ‘eight’ of his predecessors had been kings before him ‘in two lines,’ it is clear that both Ariaramnes and his son Arsames must have enjoyed royal power. We must assume, therefore, with Sir Henry Rawlinson, that Teispes was the conqueror of Anshan and that upon his death his kingdom was divided, the newly acquired conquest being assigned to Cyrus I, and his ancestral dominion to Ariaramnes.” (Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 519.)

Thus we see that a piece of the oldest history has become the newest. It must be clearly understood that Cyrus was not originally a king of Persia, but of the Elamite province of Anshan—a district that by his time included Shushan, the old Elamite capital, as well. Three years after the conquest of Astyages, that is in 546 B.C., he first calls himself king of the Parsu (Persians), but not before. How he came to be lord of Persia, we do not know, since this land was a totally different country from Elam, but it is extremely probable that his new title had some connection with the overthrow of the Scythian emperor. It is on the statement of Darius I that Cyrus has gone down in history as a Persian prince. Why this is so seems clear enough. Darius had to reconquer the disintegrated empire of Cyrus and Cambyses, and in doing so he wished to make himself appear the legitimate successor of his two great predecessors; therefore he makes Cyrus, like himself, a Persian prince, and we have seen how far this is true. But from Cyrus to Darius, ought we not to speak of the Elamite empire?

With the reader in possession of these facts, we now turn to an account of the origins of the Achæmenian dynasty and the reign of Cyrus the Great.a

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Cyrus’ father was, just as Herodotus tells us, Cambyses (Kambujiya), his grandfather Cyrus, his great-grandfather Sispis (i.e., the Persian Chaispi, Greek Teispes). We can combine the contents of a cylinder of his, on the one hand with the list of Darius’ ancestors in Herodotus (VII, 11), and on the other hand with Darius’ own statement in the great Behistun inscription. The last list is shorter by three than that of Herodotus; but, as Darius says that eight of his family were kings, and that they reigned in two lines, while neither he nor his successors in their inscriptions give the title of King to his immediate predecessor, we must assume that the Behistun list of ancestors is somewhat curtailed; and we can with some probability draw out the complete list in exact harmony with Herodotus. We shall indicate the kings by figure and give the names in the ordinary Greek form.

Achæmenes (Persian Hakhamani), ancestor of the whole family, is perhaps not an historical personage, but a heros eponymus. According to our calculation Teispes, the first king, flourished about the year 730, therefore somewhat earlier than the foundation of the Median empire, but somewhere about the time which Herodotus assigns for the beginning of the independence of Media. Perhaps the rise of the provincial dynasty is connected with the weakening of the Assyrian power in Iran. Now on the cylinder Cyrus calls himself and his forefathers up to Teispes not kings of Persia but kings “of the city of Anshan.” Similarly on a lately discovered monument of still greater importance, a Babylonian tablet, he is called “king of Anshan,” but also “king of Persia.” It may be that the Achæmenians ruled in a part only of Persis; but we have just as good a right to assume that, as Herodotus and Ctesias assert, Cyrus’ father at least was governor of the whole province. His mother, according to Herodotus, was the daughter of Astyages. This may very well be historical, though the confirmation by the oracle which describes him as a “mule” (Herod., I, 55) does not go for much, since these oracles are tolerably recent forgeries, and it is conceivable that we have here nothing more than an example of the well-known tendency of lords of new empires in the East to claim descent, at least in the female line, from the legitimate dynasty. Ctesias, indeed, tells us that Cyrus afterwards married a daughter of the dethroned Astyages, Amytis (which was also the name of Astyages’ sister, wife of Nebuchadrezzar). Of course this does not absolutely exclude the possibility of Cyrus being the son of another daughter of the king.

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Stripped of its romantic features, Herodotus’ narrative of the rise of Cyrus is in fundamental harmony with the new document which we possess on the subject, in the shape of annals inscribed on a Babylonian tablet. According to Herodotus, Cyrus and the Persians revolted; Harpagus the Mede, who was in league with him, was despatched against him. A part of the Median army fought, but another part went over to Cyrus or fled. In a second battle Astyages was defeated and taken prisoner. Now the tablet tells us among other things: “and against Cyrus king of Anshan, … went and … Ishtuvegu, his army revolted against him and in hands took, to Cyrus they gave him.” Thereupon, it proceeds, Cyrus took Ecbatana and carried off rich booty to Anshan. This summary account of the Babylonian annalist by no means excludes the supposition that Cyrus had fought a previous battle against Astyages. Both accounts say that the treachery and faithlessness of the army procured Cyrus the victory. We might even harmonise the Babylonian document with Ctesias’ narrative that Cyrus was at first hard pressed and driven back as far as Pasargadæ, if there were not other grounds, quite apart from its fabulous embellishments, which render this account improbable.

The date of the overthrow of Astyages and the taking of Ecbatana is, according to the Babylonian tablet, the sixth year; and, as it is in the highest degree probable that the years in this memorial are those of the Babylonian king Nabunaid [Nabonidus] we must place these events in the year 550. Hitherto it has been supposed, following Herodotus, that the reign of Cyrus (559-529) was to be reckoned from the fall of the Median empire, and that accordingly the latter event was to be placed in 559. But now we see that Cyrus numbered his years from the time when he ascended the throne in Persia.[29] Whether the revolt against Astyages began when he ascended the throne, we do not know. We may very well believe Herodotus (I, 330), that Cyrus treated Astyages well, down to his death. On this point Ctesias agrees with Herodotus.

After the taking of Ecbatana, which made Cyrus the Great King, he must have had enough to do to subdue the lands which had belonged to the Median empire. Little reliance can be placed on Ctesias’ account of these struggles. Herodotus (I, 153) states that the Bactrians, who according to Ctesias were soon subdued, were, like the Sacæ, not subjugated until after the conquest of Babylon.

The next war was against the powerful and wealthy king Crœsus of Lydia, who ruled over nearly the whole western half of Asia Minor. It was a continuation of the war between the Medes and Lydians which had been broken off in 585. Here again the story in Herodotus is embellished with many marvellous incidents, and is employed to exemplify moral doctrines.

If Crœsus really began the war, he assuredly did so not frivolously but deliberately, in order to anticipate the inevitable attack. A fierce struggle seems to have taken place in Cappadocia (Herod., I, 76, and especially Polyænus, VII, 8, 1 et seq.), which already belonged to Cyrus. Crœsus retreated to prepare for another campaign, but Cyrus followed hard after him, routed him when he offered battle, and captured his capital Sardis after a short siege. Not only Herodotus, but also apparently his contemporary Xanthus the Lydian, quite independently of Herodotus, told how Cyrus would have burned Crœsus alive. However, Crœsus was pardoned, after all, perhaps because some external circumstance interposed (because a sudde[592]n shower prevented the fire from burning?), or because the conqueror changed his mind before it was too late. The pious and believing saw in the event a direct intervention of Apollo on behalf of the man who had honoured the Delphic shrine so highly.

The date of Crœsus’ fall is not quite certain. It may have been 547 or 546. When Cyrus had marched away, the Lydian Pactyas, whom Cyrus had appointed guardian of the treasures, raised a revolt, but it was speedily put down by the king’s generals. From that time forwards the Lydians never made the slightest attempt to shake off the Persian rule.

But now began that struggle of the Persians with the Greeks which has had so much importance for the history of the world. The Lydian kings had subdued a number of Greek cities in Asia Minor; but even these latter shrank from submitting to the still barbarous Persians, whose rule was far more oppressive, inasmuch as they ruthlessly required military service. But Harpagus, and other Persian leaders, quickly took one Greek town after the other; some, like Priene, were razed to the ground. Some of the Ionians, such as the Teians, and most of the Phocæans, avoided slavery by emigrating. Miletus alone, the most flourishing of all these cities, had early come to an understanding with Cyrus, and the latter pledged himself to lay no heavier burden on it than Crœsus had before him. In most of the cities the Persians seem to have set up tyrants, who gave them a better guarantee of obedience than democratic or aristocratic governments. In other respects they left the Greeks alone, just as they left their other subjects alone, not meddling with their internal affairs so long as they paid the necessary contributions, and supplied men and ships for their wars. Most of the other peoples in the west of Asia Minor submitted without much resistance, except the freedom-loving Lycians. Driven into Xanthus, the capital, they perished in a body rather than surrender. Some Carian cities also defended themselves stoutly. This may have given a Persian here and there an inkling, even then, that the little peoples on the western sea were, after all, harder to manage than the nations of slaves in the interior of Asia. Sardis became and remained the mainstay of the Persian rule in western Asia Minor. The governorship was one of the most influential posts in the empire, and the governor seems to have exercised a certain supremacy over some neighbouring governorships.

Though Cyrus had made, and continued to make, conquests in the interior of Asia, he was still without the true capital of Asia, Babylon, the seat of primeval civilisation, together with the rich country in which it lay, and the wide districts of Mesopotamia, Syria, and the border-lands over which it ruled. Before the capture of the city, in the summer of 539, a great battle took place, in consequence of which Cyrus occupied the capital without any further serious fighting, since the Babylonian troops had mutinied against their king. Late in the autumn of 539 Cyrus marched into Babylon, Nabonidus, the king, having previously surrendered himself. The entrance of Cyrus took place on the 3rd Marsheshwan, which month corresponds nearly to our month of November. If, as the strict rule requires, we make the small remainder of the year after the taking of the city to be the first year of Cyrus’ reign, then the events in the text fall in 538. According to Berosus, Cyrus appointed Nabonidus governor of Karmania, east of Persis; but in the annals inscribed on the tablet it is said to be recorded that Nabunaid died when the city was taken. Cyrus certainly did not put down the Babylonian worship, as the Hebrew prophets expected; he must even have been impressed by the magnificence of the service in the richest city of the[593] world, and by the vast antiquity of the rites. But he was no more an adherent of the Babylonian religion, because the priests said he was, than Cambyses and the Roman emperors were worshippers of the Egyptian gods, because Egyptian monuments represent them as doing reverence to the gods exactly in the style of Egyptian kings. Sayce doubts whether Cyrus could read their documents; we doubt whether Cyrus understood their language at all, and regard it as inconceivable that he learned their complicated writing; indeed, on the strength of all analogies, we may regard it as scarcely probable that he could read and write at all.

The countries subject to Babylon seem to have submitted without resistance to the Persians. The fortress of Gaza alone, in the land of the Philistines, perhaps defended itself for a time. On the other hand, some of the Phœnician cities, which offered a sturdy resistance to other conquerors, submitted immediately, and remained steadily obedient to the Persians down almost to the end of the empire. It seems, however, that, as the real prop of the naval power of Persia, they were almost always treated with special consideration by the latter. In the very first year of his reign in Babylon (538) Cyrus gave the Jewish exiles in Babylon leave to return home. Comparatively few availed themselves of this permission, but these few formed the starting-point of a development which has been of infinite importance for the history of the world.

How far to the east Cyrus extended his dominion we do not know, but it is probable that all the countries to the east which are mentioned in the older inscriptions of Darius as in subjection or rebellion were already subject in the time of Cyrus. In this case Chorasmia (Kharezm, the modern Khiva) and Sogdiana (Samarcand and Bokhara) belonged to him. Agreeably with this, Alexander found a city of Cyrus (Cyropolis) on the Jaxartes, in the neighbourhood of the modern Khokand. He doubtless ruled also over large portions of the modern Afghanistan, though it is hardly likely that he ever made his way into the land of the Indus. The story of his unsuccessful march on India seems to have been invented by way of contrast to Alexander’s fortunate expedition.

THE DEATH OF CYRUS

Different accounts of Cyrus’ death were early current. Herodotus gives the well-known didactic story of the battle with Tomyris, queen of the Massagetæ, as the most probable of many which were told.b His account is much too picturesque to be omitted here, notwithstanding its somewhat doubtful authenticity.

“When Cyrus considered the peculiar circumstances of his birth, he believed himself more than human. He reflected also on the prosperity of his arms, and that wherever he had extended his incursions, he had been followed by success and victory.

“The Massagetæ were then governed by a queen, who was a widow, and named Tomyris. Cyrus sent ambassadors to her with overtures of marriage; the queen, concluding that his real object was the possession, not of her person, but her kingdom, forbade his approach. Cyrus, on finding these measures ineffectual, advanced to the Araxes, openly discovering his hostile designs upon the Massagetæ. He then threw a bridge of boats over the river, for the passage of his forces, which he also fortified with turrets.

“Whilst he was engaged in this difficult undertaking, Tomyris sent by her ambassadors this message:[594] ‘Sovereign of the Medes, uncertain as you must be of the event, we advise you to desist from your present purpose. Be satisfied with the dominion of your own kingdom, and let us alone, seeing how we govern our subjects. You will not, however, listen to this salutary counsel, loving anything rather than peace: If, then, you are really impatient to encounter the Massagetæ, give up your present labour of constructing a bridge; we will retire three days’ march into our country, and you shall pass over at your leisure; or, if you had rather receive us in your own territories, do you as much for us.’ On hearing this, Cyrus called a council of his principal officers, and, laying the matter before them, desired their advice how to act. They were unanimously of opinion, that he should retire, and wait for Tomyris in his own dominions.

“Crœsus the Lydian, who assisted at the meeting, was of a different sentiment, which he defended in this manner: ‘I have before remarked, O king! that since Providence has rendered me your captive, it becomes me to exert all my abilities in obviating whatever menaces you with misfortune. I have been instructed in the severe but useful school of adversity. If you were immortal yourself, and commanded an army of immortals, my advice might be justly thought impertinent; but if you confess yourself a human leader, of forces that are human, it becomes you to remember that sublunary events have a circular motion, and that their revolution does not permit the same man always to be fortunate. Upon this present subject of debate I dissent from the majority. If you await the enemy in your own dominions, a defeat may chance to lose you all your empire; the victorious Massagetæ, instead of retreating to their own, will make farther inroad into your territories. If you conquer, you will still be a loser by that interval of time and place which must be necessarily employed in the pursuit. I will suppose that, after victory, you will instantly advance into the dominions of Tomyris; yet can Cyrus the son of Cambyses, without disgrace and infamy, retire one foot of ground from a female adversary? I would therefore recommend, that having passed over with our army, we proceed on our march till we meet the enemy; then let us contend for victory and honour. I have been informed that the Massagetæ lead a life of the meanest poverty, ignorant of Persian fare, and of Persian delicacies. Let these therefore be left behind in our camp: let there be abundance of food prepared, costly viands, and flowing goblets of wine. With these let us leave the less effective of the troops, and with the rest again retire towards the river. If I err not, the foe will be allured by the sight of our luxurious preparations, and afford us a noble occasion of victory and glory.’

“The result of the debate was, that Cyrus preferred the sentiments of Crœsus: he therefore returned for answer to Tomyris, that he would advance the space into her dominions which she had proposed. She was faithful to her engagement, and retired accordingly: Cyrus then formally delegated his authority to his son Cambyses; and above all recommended Crœsus to his care, as one whom, if the projected expedition should fail, it would be his interest to distinguish by every possible mark of reverence and honour. He then dismissed them into Persia, and passed the river with his forces.

“As soon as he had advanced beyond the Araxes into the land of the Massagetæ, he saw in the night this vision: He beheld the eldest son of Hystaspes having wings upon his shoulders; one of which overshadowed Asia, the other Europe. Hystaspes was the son of Arsamis, of the family of the Achæmenides; the name of his eldest son was Darius, a youth of about twenty, who had been left behind in Persia as not yet of age for[595] military service. Cyrus awoke, and revolved the matter in his mind: as it appeared to him of serious importance, he sent for Hystaspes to his presence, and, dismissing his attendants, ‘Hystaspes,’ said the king, ‘I will explain to you my reasons, why I am satisfied beyond all dispute that your son is now engaged in seditious designs against me and my authority. The gods, whose favour I enjoy, disclose to me all those events which menace my security. In the night just passed, I beheld your eldest son having wings upon his shoulders, one of which overshadowed Asia, the other Europe; from which I draw certain conclusions that he is engaged in acts of treachery against me. Do you therefore return instantly to Persia; and take care, that when I return victorious from my present expedition, your son may give me a satisfactory explanation of his conduct.’

“The strong apprehension of the treachery of Darius induced Cyrus thus to address the father; but the vision in reality imported that the death of Cyrus was at hand, and that Darius should succeed to his power. ‘Far be it, O king!’ said Hystaspes in reply, ‘from any man of Persian origin to form conspiracies against his sovereign: if such there be, let immediate death be his portion. You have raised the Persians from slavery to freedom; from subjects, you have made them masters: if a vision has informed you that my son designs anything against you, to you and to your disposal I shall deliver him.’ Hystaspes, after this interview, passed the Araxes on his return to Persia, fully intending to watch over his son, and deliver him to Cyrus.

“Cyrus, advancing a day’s march from the Araxes, followed, in all respects, the counsel of Crœsus; and leaving behind him the troops upon which he had less dependence, he returned with his choicest men towards the Araxes. A detachment of about the third part of the army of the Massagetæ attacked the Persians whom Cyrus had left, and, after a feeble conflict, put them to the sword. When the slaughter ceased, they observed the luxuries which had artfully been prepared; and yielding to the allurement, they indulged themselves in feasting and wine, till drunkenness and sleep overcame them. In this situation the Persians attacked them: several were slain, but the greater part were made prisoners, among whom was Spargapises, their leader, the son of Tomyris.

“As soon as the queen heard of the defeat of her forces, and the capture of her son, she despatched a messenger to Cyrus with these words: ‘Cyrus, insatiable as you are of blood, be not too elate with your recent success. When you yourself are overcome with wine, what follies do you not commit? By entering your bodies, it renders your language more insulting. By this poison you have conquered my son, and neither by your prudence nor your valour. I venture a second time to advise what it will be certainly your interest to follow. Restore my son to liberty, and, satisfied with the disgrace you have put upon a third part of the Massagetæ, depart from these realms unhurt. If you will not do this, I swear by the Sun, the great god of the Massagetæ, that, insatiable as you are of blood, I will give you your fill of it.’

“These words made but little impression upon Cyrus. The son of Tomyris, when, recovering from his inebriated state, he knew the misfortune which had befallen him, entreated Cyrus to release him from his bonds: he obtained his liberty, and immediately destroyed himself.

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“On the refusal of Cyrus to listen to her counsel, Tomyris collected all her forces: a battle ensued, and of all the conflicts which ever took place amongst barbarians, this was I believe by far the most obstinately disputed. According to such particulars as I have been able to collect, the engagement began by a shower of arrows poured on both sides, from an interval of some distance; when these were all spent, they fought with their swords and spears, and for a long time neither party gained the smallest advantage: the Massagetæ were at length victorious, the greater part of the Persians were slain, Cyrus himself also fell; and thus terminated a reign of twenty-nine years. When after diligent search his body was found, Tomyris directed his head to be thrown into a vessel filled with human blood, and having insulted and mutilated the dead body, exclaimed, ‘Survivor and conqueror as I am, thou hast ruined my peace by the successful stratagem against my son: but I will give thee now, as I have threatened, thy fill of blood.’—This account of the end of Cyrus seems to me most consistent with probability, although there are many other and different relations.”c

If we accept Herodotus’ statements, we must look for the Massagetæ beyond the Jaxartes. In Ctesias Cyrus is mortally wounded in battle with the Derbices, who probably dwelt near the Middle or Upper Oxus. A fragment of Berosus says that Cyrus fell in the land of the Dai (Dahæ), i.e., in the modern Turkoman desert, perhaps in the southern or southwestern portion of it; this account may very well be derived from contemporary Babylonian records. Be that as it may, Cyrus met his death in battle with a savage tribe of the northeast. The battle was probably lost, but the Persians rescued his body, which was buried at Pasargada, in the ancient land of his race. To this day there is to be seen at Murghab, north of Persepolis (on the telegraph line from Abushehr to Teheran), the empty tomb and other remains of the great mausoleum, which Aristobulus, a companion of Alexander, described from his own observation; and on some pillars there the inscription is to be read: “I am Cyrus, the king, the Achæmenian.” Till lately the same inscription was also to be found high on the pillar which bears in bas-relief a winged figure of a king. This figure is furnished with a “pshent,” i.e., such an ornamented crown as is worn by kings and gods on Egyptian monuments. This was no doubt meant by Cambyses as a special mark of honour to his father, whose monument must have required years to finish. It is quite natural that the ancient art of Egypt should have made a deep impression even upon those of its conquerors who in other respects had little liking for Egyptian ways.b

CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF CYRUS

Cyrus played too great a part in the world and did too much for the progress of humanity that we should leave him without some account of the character and influence on history of a man of whom even so cynical a historian as Eduard Meyer has said, tersely but in words that demand special emphasis, “To honour and spare an adversary of equal birth, once he had been conquered, remained a privilege of all his successors.” After this we must indeed expect eulogy, but the short extracts given here, the first ancient and the last modern, are both founded on careful and loving study of the man’s character.a

Xenophon’s Estimate of Cyrus

The reflection once occurred to me, how many democracies have been dissolved by men who chose to live under some other government rather than a democracy; how many monarchies, and how many oligarchies, have been overthrown by the people; and how many individuals, who have tried to[597] establish tyrannies, have, some of them, been at once entirely destroyed, while others, if they have continued to reign for any length of time, have been admired as wise and fortunate men. I had observed, too, I thought, many masters, in their own private houses, some indeed having many servants, but some only very few, and yet utterly unable to keep those few entirely obedient to their commands. While I was reflecting upon these things, I came to this judgment upon them; that to man, such is his nature, it was easier to rule every other sort of creature than to rule man. But when I considered that there was Cyrus the Persian, who had rendered many men, many cities, and many nations, obedient to him, I was then necessitated to change my opinion, and to think that to rule men is not among the things that are impossible, or even difficult, if a person undertakes it with understanding and skill. I knew that there were some who willingly obeyed Cyrus, that were many days’ journey, and others that were even some months’ journey, distant from him; some, too, who had never seen him, and some who knew very well that they never should see him; and yet they readily submitted to his government; for he so far excelled all other kings, as well those that had received their dominion from their forefathers, as those that had acquired it by their own efforts, that the Scythian, for example, though his people be very numerous, is unable to obtain the dominion over any other nation, but rests satisfied if he can but continue to rule his own; so it is with the Thracian king in regard to the Thracians, and with the Illyrian king in regard to the Illyrians; and so it is with other nations, as many as I have heard of; for the nations of Europe, at least, are said to be independent and detached from each other. But Cyrus, finding, in like manner, the nations of Asia independent, and setting out with a little army of Persians, obtained the dominion over the Medes by their own choice, and over the Hyrcanians in a similar manner; he subdued the Syrians, Assyrians, Arabians, Cappadocians, both the Phrygians, the Lydians, Carians, Phœnicians, and Babylonians; he had under his rule the Bactrians, Indians, and Cilicians, as well as the Sacians, Paphlagonians, and Magadidians, and many other nations of whom we cannot enumerate even the names. He had dominion over the Greeks that were settled in Asia; and, going down to the sea, over the Cyprians and Egyptians. These nations he ruled, though they spoke neither the same language with himself nor with one another; yet he was able to extend the fear of himself over so great a part of the world that he astonished all, and no one attempted anything against him. He was able to inspire all with so great a desire of pleasing him, that they ever desired to be governed by his opinion; and he attached to himself so many nations as it would be a labour to enumerate, which way soever we should commence our course from his palace, whether towards the east, west, north, or south.d

A Modern Estimate of the Character and Importance of Cyrus

The giant figure of Cyrus the Great appears all the more splendid in the sunlight [by contrast with the surrounding gloom]. He is fitly called the Great, as belonging to the small number of the immortals to whom humanity cannot deny this highest title. If he be great, it is because he attained unheard-of success with insignificant means. With the assistance of his son and his comrades he founded an empire such as the Assyrians never possessed even in the day of their highest power: an empire which stretched from the Pontus Euxinus to Meroë, from Cyrene to the Oxus and the Indus; the first world-empire, the realm of Alexander before Alexander’s time.

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But he was not, like the latter, opposed to a huge and crumbling monarchy, already in the death agony, an easy prey to any leader of mercenaries, and proved to be so by Agesilaus in Asia Minor, and by Amyntas in Egypt; he was not, like Alexander, victorious over a small, dominant nation, which, in recompense for its narrow-minded policy, stood alone in the last decisive struggle, while he himself had an army of better morale and greater skill, with better weapons and superior numbers—a really overwhelming force. On the contrary, he led a handful of Persians against four nations, the largest and most powerful of their time; against the two powers which had overcome the greatest of all military states, the powers which had destroyed Asshur. The two rising kingdoms of Media and Lydia were in the full vigour of their youth, and had hurried from victory to victory, from conquest to conquest; the power and prosperity of the two ancient civilised peoples of the Nile and Euphrates dated from the very beginning of history and had risen anew and more formidable from every defeat; but he flung them all in the dust forever.

He was great, too, if it be great to fight and even to fall for the sake of justice. He is no proconsul, to turn, like a matricide, against the republic the sword with which she had entrusted him; no Albanian chief, Frankish king, or Mongolian khan to fall on foreign countries for the purpose of satisfying the greed for prey and lust of war proper to his race; but a king who, attacked by Media, attacked by the coalition of Lydia with Babylon and Egypt, only draws the sword in defence of the double crown of his ancestors—the most legitimate of all conquerors.

More than this, he was the most humane. His shield is stained by no horrible deeds of blood, of frightful revenge and cruelty, such as disgrace the son of Olympias. He spared, and made gifts to conquered enemies. Even after the second subjugation of the treacherous Lydians, he would not permit them to be destroyed by thousands, as Alexander did in the case of the heroes of Tyre, of the Pasargadæ who were faithful even unto death, of the nobility of Persia, or of the Sogdianians in revenge for their victory, as even the great Roman slaughtered his enemies at Thapsus and the betrayed Usipetii, and as the Franks slew the Saxons at the massacre on the Aller. He did not, like the Macedonian at Persepolis, burn and destroy hostile capitals; he did not mutilate captive kings and leaders, nor drag them round the walls as the latter did Bessus and the lion of Gaza; nor send them to the scaffold as the Roman sent the chivalrous king of the Arvernians; he did not basely murder his own countrymen as the “crazy god,” Alexander, murdered the Branchidæ, Clitus, and the grey-haired Parmenio. Oriental as he was, and belonging to a savage people and a far earlier period, he is still always far more humane.

Thus he was the greatest, far beyond the spirit of his nation and his age, anticipating the remotest future both as man and statesman. Because no wide stream of blood separated him from the vanquished, he found the only possible basis for his giant structure in the raising of conquerors and conquered to equal privileges. With the certainty of victory, the daring trust which belongs to the greatest, he could see and spare the subject in the enemy, raise the conquered at once to the rank of citizen, entrust his army to Mazares the Mede, and to Harpagus the Median grandee, prince, and general; in the newly conquered Lydia he could venture to invest the Lydian dynasts, with the civil power, and to set up as rulers in Ionia the native aristocracy, in Judea the descendant of the ancient kings and high priests.

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It was in accordance with his teachings that his son marched in the festive procession of the people in newly conquered Babylon, and after the conquest of Egypt entrusted the civil administration, with the capital Saïs, to an Egyptian, Psamthek’s admiral, Uzahorsem, the son of the high priest of Saïs, who held it as “the king’s cousin,” i.e., viceroy, and on whose withdrawal the Egyptian prince Aahmes was associated with the Persian Aryandes.

Thus Cyrus divided the civil and military administration, a new departure amongst orientals, and long uncomprehended and unimitated. The military power he reserved to his faithful Medes and Persians; the civil he bestowed on native princes, and so arranged an automatic system which created the best bulwark against the loss of the border provinces, a bulwark which all the mistakes and crimes and all the cowardice of his successors destroyed only after the expiration of two hundred years—a result different indeed from the ephemeral creation which Alexander cemented with the blood of whole nations.

But gentleness and mercy constituted also the best policy. For defeating opponents without a battle they were the sharpest of weapons, carried by a commanding personality who not only compelled the admiration of his own people, but also brought his enemies to their knees, and showed his victory in the light of an inevitable decree of fate, thus infusing dejection and treachery into the ranks of the enemy. Who is there that approaches him? He is not only beloved by his own people as a father incomparable in every way, not only does all the splendour of story play round him as round Alexander and Charlemagne, but legends also have clustered about him, and the poetry of Xenophon and Antisthenes glorifies and idealises him. The Median prince and the Egyptian admiral, the nobility and priesthood of Babylon, as well as the Greek captains of the kings of the Lydians and Egyptians, with Eurybates of Ephesus and Phanes of Halicarnassus, throw themselves at his feet voluntarily, and to the betrayal of their own rulers; without a struggle the greatest empires, the two conquerors of Nineveh, surrender to him both themselves and their own kings in chains, as had been done to none other; even Tyre, that proud and mighty city, unconquered and unconquerable, with whose lion courage his predecessor and his successor, Nebuchadrezzar and Alexander alike, wrestled so fiercely and so long, did homage to him of her own free will, as did the sea-king of Samos, which was as far beyond reach as Tyre herself. Above all, the little people of the Jews hailed him at the waters of Babylon as they have done no mortal before or since, as the victor and rescuer, the liberator and saviour, the favoured of God and lord of the earth.

He rewarded them for it and so purchased for himself the most exalted, the most undying greatness: amongst all the rulers of the East whom we see conquering, destroying, murdering, and deporting, he is the only one who raised a downtrodden people from the dust, snatched it from its brethren’s fate of annihilation, restored it to its existence as a nation under princes of its own race, to its own peculiar development and its mission in the history of the world. He saved it, as he did his own people, which owed to him its consecration to eternal youth in history; so that, in spite of all the storms which have raged over it, it has escaped the fate of the thousand tribes which traversed the wide country of Iran before and after it, and are now vanished and forgotten.

Thus the consequences of his achievements are lasting, though in the course of thousands of years these achievements themselves have vanished,[600] like all earthly things. He was not the product and child of his age, like the son of Philip, the nephew of Marius, the son of Pepin, or the offspring of the Revolution: but he was its creator and father, solitary and unique in the world’s history; he took firmer grip of the wheel of time than any other mortal; in the term of his life he brought an epoch to its close, snatched the lordship of the earth from the Semites and Egyptians, and won it for the Aryans for all time.f

CAMBYSES

Cyrus bequeathed the crown to his eldest child, Kambujiya, called by the Greeks Cambyses, and the government of several provinces to Bardius (Smerdis), his second son. He thought that this pre-settlement of the succession would prevent the disputes usually accruing to the succession of a new king in the East. But this hope was disappointed. Cambyses had hardly ascended the throne when he murdered his brother: but the crime was committed with such care and secrecy that it passed unnoticed by the people, and it was thought by the subjects and court that Bardius was shut up in some distant palace in Media, from whence he would shortly reappear.

Freed from a rival who might have been dangerous, Cambyses then gave his full attention to war. Alone among the great nations of the old world, Egypt, protected by the desert and the marshes of the Delta, was able to withstand the power of the Persians, and followed in peace the course of her development. Since his unfortunate intervention in Lydia, Aahmes had always avoided any ground for strife with his neighbours. His ambition went no further than the establishment of the old suzerainty of Egypt in Cyprus. Thanks to this prudence, he lived on amicable terms with Cyrus, and profited by twenty-five years of tranquillity to develop the natural resources of his country. The course of the canals was repaired and enlarged, agriculture was encouraged, and commerce extended.

But it was impossible to withstand the hatred of his subjects, and it compassed his ruin. Cyrus dead, Aahmes resigned himself to war. There was no lack of serious counts against him: he had made an alliance with Lydia; he had intrigued with Chaldea; and Cambyses, being young, was more disposed to excite than to calm the warlike spirit of his compatriots. According to the Persians, Cambyses asked the daughter of the old king in marriage, hoping that his refusal would furnish him with an insult to avenge. But Aahmes substituted Nitetis the daughter of Uah-ab-Ra for his own daughter. Sometime afterwards, when Cambyses was with her, he called her by the name of her pretended father; whereupon she said: “I see, O king! that thou dost not suspect how thou hast been deceived by Amasis [Aahmes]; he took me, loaded me with jewels, and sent me to thee as his own daughter. It is true I am the child of Apries [Uah-ab-Ra] who was his lord and master, until he rebelled and was put to death with the other Egyptians.” The anger of Cambyses, son of Cyrus, was thus roused, and he took up arms against Egypt.

In Egypt the story was different: Nitetis was sent to Cyrus, and she was the mother of Cambyses, and the conquest was only the re-establishment of the legitimate family against the usurper Aahmes; and thus Cambyses ascended the throne, less in the character of a conqueror, than in that of Uah-ab-Ra’s grandson. It was by an equally puerile fiction that the Egyptians in their decadence consoled themselves for their weakness and disgrace. Always proud of their past glory, but henceforth powerless to[601] conquer, they pretended that they were only vanquished and governed by themselves. It was not Persia that imposed her king upon Egypt, but Egypt who loaned hers to Persia and thence to the rest of the world. The desert and marshes formed a perfect bulwark for the Delta against the attacks of the Asiatic princes. There were ninety leagues of distance, which no army could traverse in less than three weeks, between the last important garrison of Syria and Lake Serbon, where the Egyptian outposts were encamped. In times past the stretch of desert was less, but the incursions of the Assyrians and Chaldeans had depopulated the country and given over to the nomadic Arabs regions which had been formerly quite accessible. An unforeseen event, however, showed Cambyses a way out of the difficulty. Phanes of Halicarnassus, one of the generals of Aahmes, deserted, and fled to Persia. He was a man of judgment and energy, and fully acquainted with Egypt. He advised the king to make friends with the sheikh who governed the coast, and get a passport from him; so the Arab had camels, loaded with sufficient water for the whole army, stationed all along the road.

On arriving at Pelusium, the Persians learned that Aahmes was dead, and that he had been murdered by Psamthek III. In spite of their confidence in their gods and themselves, the Egyptians now began to be alarmed. They were not only threatened by the nations of the Tigris and Euphrates, but the whole of Asia and the Hellespont also seemed ready to invade them. The allies upon whom Aahmes had counted, such as Polycrates of Samos, and old subjects like those of Cyprus, had abandoned his cause, which now seemed hopeless, and supplied the Persians with forces. The people, consumed with fear of the invader, regarded the slightest phenomenon of nature as a bad sign. Rain is rare in the Thebaïd, and storms rarely come more than once or twice in a century; so, as some days after the accession of Psamthek, “rain fell in torrents at Thebes, which was a rare event, the battle before Pelusium was fought with the bravery of despair.”

Phanes had left his children in Egypt. His old soldiers, the Carians, and the Ionians in the service of the Pharaoh, killed them before his eyes, poured their blood into a goblet half full of wine, and after drinking the mixture, they dashed like madmen into the thickest of the fight. Towards evening the Egyptian line began to waver, and the rout began. Instead of rallying the rest of his forces, and defending the passage of the canals, Psamthek lost his head and took refuge in Memphis. Cambyses sent to demand his surrender, but the maddened people killed the envoys. After a siege of some days, the town opened the gates, and Upper Egypt submitted without further resistance; and the Libyans and Cyrenians offered a tribute without even waiting for it to be demanded. It is said that ten days after the surrender of Memphis, the conqueror wishing to test the imperturbability of his prisoner, gave orders for his daughter, who was dressed as a slave, his sons, and the sons of the chief Egyptians to march past him on their way to their execution. But Psamthek saw the procession without evincing a sign of emotion; when, however, one of his old boon companions went by, dressed in rags like a beggar, he burst into tears and struck his forehead in despair. Cambyses, astonished at this display of despair in a man who had seemed so self-controlled, sent to ask him the reason of his grief, whereupon he said: “O son of Cyrus, my personal misfortunes are too great for tears, but not so with those of my friend. When a man falls from luxury and plenty into misery on the threshold of old age, one can but weep for him.” When the messenger repeated these words to Cambyses, he saw their truth, and Crœsus was moved to tears, for he was with Cambyses in Egypt, and[602] all the Persians present also began to weep. So Cambyses, touched with compassion, treated his prisoner like a king, and would probably have replaced him as a vassal on the throne, had he not learned that a conspiracy was being formed against him; so he entrusted the government of Egypt to Aryandes, the Persian.

Thus, for the first time in the memory of man, the Old World was under one master; but it was impossible to keep the people of the Caucasus and those of Egypt, the Greeks of Asia Minor and the Iranians of Media, the Scythians of Bactriana and the Semites of the Euphrates, under one ruler, so the empire dissolved as quickly as it had been formed.

At first Cambyses tried to win over his new subjects by complying with their customs. He adopted the double cartouche, the protocol, and the royal costume of the Pharaohs; and in the double hope of appeasing their personal rancour and of conciliating the loyalist party, he repaired to Saïs, violated the tomb of Aahmes, and burnt his mummy; and after accomplishing this posthumous act of justice, he treated Ladike, the widow of the usurper, with deference and sent her back to her parents. He gave orders for the evacuation of the great temple of Nit, where Persian troops were installed to the great distress of the devotees, and repaired the harm they had done at his own expense. His zeal even led him to receive instruction in the Egyptian religion, and to be initiated in the mysteries of the goddess, by the priest Uzaharrasenti. In fact, he acted in Egypt as his father had done in Babylon, and he had his reasons for this condescension to the vanquished, for he hoped to make Memphis and the Delta the basis for his operations in southern Africa. He seemed to care little about the voluntary submission of Cyrene; at least Dorian tradition maintains that he scorned the gifts of Arcesilaus III and gave to his soldiers, in handfuls, the five hundred minas (Egyptian measure) of gold which the prince had paid him as a tribute. The Greeks of Libya were not rich enough to arouse interest, but the fame of Carthage, exaggerated by time and distance, excited his cupidity. Carthage was then at the height of her grandeur. She commanded the old Phœnician settlements in Sicily, Africa, and Spain, her navy had unrivalled sway over the western basin of the Mediterranean, and her merchants penetrated into the distant fabulous regions of southern Europe and Mauretania.

At first Cambyses wished to attack the city by sea, but the Phœnicians who manned her fleet declined to act against their colony. Forced therefore to approach it by land, he sent to Thebes an army of fifty thousand men to take possession of the oasis of Ammon, and to clear the road for the rest of the troops. The fate of this avant-garde was never clearly learnt. It crossed the great oasis, and took a northeasterly course towards the temple of Ammon. The natives relate that when halfway, it was surprised by a Sudanese storm, and was buried under the heaps of sand. This story was probably true, for it never reached the oasis, and never returned to Egypt. The expedition towards the south promised to be more fortunate, for it seemed that there would not be great difficulty in reaching the heart of Africa if it went up the Nile. Cambyses had the country explored by spies, and their account led him to start off from Memphis at the head of an army. The expedition was partially a success, and partially a failure. It seems that the invaders went up the Nile as far as Napata, and then pushed right across the desert in the direction of Berua; their provisions were exhausted when they were a quarter of the way there, and famine forced them to retreat, after having lost several lives. The result of the expedition was the subjugation of the cantons of Nubia, nearest to Syene, to the Persian dominion;[603] however, the Egyptian people, always disposed to believe unfavourable reports of their masters, only took the failure at Berua into consideration.[30]

Cambyses had from his infancy been subject to epileptic fits, during which he was quite furious and unconscious of his actions. The failure of his efforts in Africa increased his illness, and added to the frequency and length of the attacks; he lost his former political power, and gave full fling to his naturally violent temper. The Apis bull had died during his absence, and after the expiration of the regulation number of days of mourning for the departed, a new Apis had been installed, when the Persian army returned from Memphis.

Finding the town en fête, Cambyses thought it was rejoicing at his misfortunes, and he sent for the magistrates and priests, and condemned them to punishment without listening to their explanations. The ox was brought to him, and he stabbed it with his dagger in the thigh. The animal expired a few days later, and the sacrilege caused more excitement amid the devotees, than the ruin of the country. The rancour of the people was increased when they saw the conqueror now as active in offending their deities as he had previously been anxious to conciliate them. He entered the temple of Ptah and mocked at the grotesque forms under which this god was worshipped. He violated the ancient tombs so as to examine the mummies. Even the Aryans and the people of his court were not safe from his rage. He killed his own sister, whom he had married in spite of the law forbidding marriage between children of the same father and mother. He killed the son of Prexaspes [by shooting an arrow into his heart as a proof that his aim was not the unsteadier for drink[31]], he buried twelve of the Persian generals alive, ordered the execution of Crœsus, and then, repenting of his precipitancy, condemned the officers who had not executed the order, which he regretted having given. The Egyptians maintained that the gods struck him with madness as a punishment for his sacrilegious conduct.

As there was nothing to detain him longer on the banks of the Nile, he started on his return to Asia. On arriving at the north of Syria, he was met by a herald, who proclaimed, within earshot of the whole army, that Cambyses, son of Cyrus, had ceased to reign, and Bardius, son of Cyrus, was now king in his place. Cambyses thought at first that his orders had not been obeyed, and that his brother’s life had been spared by the man sent to assassinate him. But he soon learned that his orders had been only too faithfully fulfilled, and he bemoaned the useless crime, when he found that the usurper was a certain Gaumata, or Gometes, so strikingly like Bardius that the people were easily deceived. This Gaumata had a brother Patizeithes, to whom Cambyses had entrusted the care of his household. They were both cognisant of the death of Bardius, but they knew that the majority of the Persians were still ignorant of his death, and believed that the prince was still alive.

Gaumata therefore incited the rebellion in the town of Pasargada at the beginning of March, 522, and after a little hesitation Persia and Media and the body of the empire declared in his favour and solemnly accepte[604]d him on the 9th Garmapada (July), 522. Utterly overwhelmed at the turn of affairs, Cambyses took the head of the troops which had remained faithful to him, but he died in a mysterious way. The inscription of Behistun seems to intimate that he lost his life by his own hand in a fit of despair. Herodotus says that as he was mounting his horse his dagger entered his thigh at the same spot as he had stabbed the Apis bull.

“Feeling that his death was at hand, he asked the name of the place where he was, and he was told it was Ecbatana.” Now, some time before he had been told by the oracle of Buto that he would end his days at Ecbatana. He had always thought that Ecbatana was in Syria, so when he heard the name of the place, he recollected the words of the oracle, and said, “It is here that Cambyses, son of Cyrus, is destined to die”; and he expired twenty days later without leaving any posterity, or nominating a successor.g

FOOTNOTES

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CHAPTER IV. THE PERSIAN DYNASTY: DARIUS I TO DARIUS III

The rebellion of Gaumata or Gometes has often been considered a sort of national movement which restored their ancient supremacy to the Medes, and robbed the Persians for a moment of the empire of Asia. But Gaumata was not a Mede; he was born in Persia in the little town of Pasargada near Mount Arakadris. At first he was only accepted by the central and eastern provinces; but on the death of Cambyses, he was acknowledged by the rest of the empire. He claimed to be Bardius (Smerdis), and that was sufficient to gain him the respect and fidelity of the Persians. Moreover, he lost no time in suppressing all those whom he suspected of being better informed, and fear shut the mouths of the rest. “So nobody, amid either Persians, or Medes, or even amid the Achæmenian race, dreamed of disputing his right.” He exempted the conquered people from three years’ taxation and military service, so as to win them over to his side; and he reigned for six months without anybody suspecting the imposture, and was quite regarded as the legitimate heir to the throne, and as the son of the great Cyrus, and the brother of Cambyses.

But the public credulity was at last shaken, for certain circumstances occurred which gave credence to the revelations made by Cambyses shortly before his death, and which had at the time been imputed to hatred of his brother. According to the usual custom, Gaumata had received the harem of his predecessor with the crown; it was known that the women were sequestered, and could not communicate, either with each other, or with the outside world, except by secret messengers, and at the peril of their lives. The report, however, spread from the harem that the pretended Bardius had had his ears cropped, and this fact showed he was not the son of Cyrus. Darius, son of Hystaspes, the satrap of Hyrcania, who claimed relationship with the royal family, joined with six of the boldest of the highest Persian families, and surprised and killed Gaumata in his palace of Sikathahnvati in Media, 521.

DARIUS I

It is said that the seven agreed to elect as sovereign the one amongst them whose horse should neigh first at sunrise, and by an artifice of his groom the crown was gained by Darius. Then, after being proclaimed king, Darius purified the temples which his predecessor had defiled, and[606] instituted the Feast of the Magophonia in memory of the murder which had made him king.

Two revolutions in such quick succession had shaken the power of the Persians. The empire founded by Cyrus differed but little from those of the Egyptians and Assyrians. It was the same collection of provinces administered by semi-independent governors, feudal kingdoms, and half-subjugated towns and tribes. These turbulent subjects hailed with delight any pretext for revolt. Rebellion broke out first in Susiana, under the lead of a certain Athrina, a descendant of the last national dynasty. From Susiana the contagion quickly spread to Babylon, where Nadintabaira, son of Nabonidus, came forward as a claimant to the throne, which he ascended under the glorious name of Nebuchadrezzar [III]. After entrusting his generals with the comparatively easy task of subjugating Athrina, Darius himself took command of the expedition to Chaldea. But Nebuchadrezzar III had made good use of the short time occupied by the Persians in crossing the Assyrian plain. He was already in possession of the strong positions on the right bank of the Tigris, and a fleet of armed boats protected his army. Darius, not venturing to attack him from the front, divided his army into little parties, some on horseback, and some on camels, and escaping the notice of the enemy by the multiplicity of his movements, he succeeded in crossing the river. The Chaldeans tried in vain to cast him back into the water. They formed up in good order, and six days later engaged in a second battle at Zazanu on the banks of the Euphrates (December, 521).

Nebuchadrezzar was completely defeated, and escaped with some officers to Babylon, where he was taken, and executed by the conqueror’s command (519). Legend was not slow to embellish the events of this war, and in less than half a century it was reported that when Darius reached Babylon it was prepared for resistance. The inhabitants had repaired the walls, cut the canals, filled their magazines and barns, and relieved themselves of all useless and superfluous mouths by a general massacre, including all women except those necessary for bread making. At the end of twenty months the Persians were no further than at the beginning, when Zopyrus, one of the seven, conceived a plan to insure them success. After having his nose and ears cut off, and his body lacerated with whip blows, he presented himself in the city as a fugitive, commanded some sorties with success, and after thus gaining the confidence of the besieged, he was able, when on guard, to open the gates to the enemy. Three thousand Babylonians were crucified, the walls razed to the ground, and the city was repeopled with foreign colonists. The treachery of Zopyrus, as reported by Herodotus, was the admiration of olden times; but is only another of the stories which have to be eliminated from history.

In the midst of his triumph, Darius learned that the war was not over. Martiya, a Persian, tried to excite a second rebellion in Susiana, but it was promptly quelled by the Susians themselves. Media, however, rose under a certain Fravartish (Phraortes), who claimed to be a descendant of Cyaxares, and proclaimed himself king under the name of Phraortes II. Sufficient time had not elapsed since the rule of Astyages in Media for the Median nobility to renounce hope of recovering the supremacy, of which they had been robbed by the victory of Cyrus; and they seized the opportunity to rebel when Darius, after the murder of Gaumata, left with the flower of his troops for Babylon. Some of the nomadic tribes remained faithful, but all settled Medians joined the pretender, and the rebellion extended to Armenia and Assyria; and even where the authority of Phraortes was not recognised,[607] the example of revolt was followed. Chitratahma also gave himself out as a descendant of Cyaxares, and incited Sagartia to rebellion; and Frada headed a revolt in Magiana. It would have been fatal for Darius if the rebellion had extended to the western satrapies, but, fortunately, they remained faithful. Orœtes, governor of Lydia, assumed an independent demeanour and threatened to become dangerous; and Bagæus conveyed to Sardis the royal command relieving the governor of his office, upon which all pikes were immediately lowered. So, encouraged by this success Bagæus handed a letter to the secretary, in which it was written, “King Darius orders the Persians at Sardis to kill Orœtes,” so they drew their swords and slew him.

Several engagements of his generals with the troops of the pretender failed to attain any great success; Phraortes kept his position in Armenia, and his obstinate rebellion encouraged Parthia and Hyrcania to espouse his cause. Persia herself began to despair of success and to think of having another king; and many people would not believe that the line of direct descent from Cyrus had ended with Cambyses.

The usurpation and the fall of Gaumata and the accession of Darius had not shaken their faith in the existence of Bardius. The imposture of Gaumata did not necessarily involve the fact of the death of Bardius. So when a certain Vahyazdata appeared as the youngest son of Cyrus, he was received with enthusiasm.

The imminence of the danger impelled Darius himself to take the field; he left Babylon, penetrated Media by the defile of Kerend, and defeated the enemy near the town of Kundorus (520). Phraortes fled towards the north, doubtless with the intention of continuing the struggle in the mountains. He was captured not far from Raga, and taken to Ecbatana. His punishment was horrible: his nose and ears were cut off, his tongue cut out, and his eyes taken out, he was chained to the gate of the palace, and after the people had had enough of that spectacle, he was impaled; and his chief followers were also either impaled, or beheaded. Success was just as complete and rapid in Persia itself. Vahyazdata made the mistake of dividing his troops, and sending one part to Arachosia; so whilst Artavardija, the conqueror at Racha and then at Paraga (520), made him prisoner in the castle of Uvadeshaya, the satrap of Arachosia victoriously repulsed the invasion (519).

But it seemed as if one war engendered another. The ephemeral success of the second pseudo-Smerdis evoked a second false Nebuchadrezzar, for Darius had hardly left Babylon, when the Armenian Arakha presented himself to the people as the son of Nabonidus, but was easily conquered and was executed. The subjugation of the other provinces was quite easy. Chitratahma expiated his rebellion on the stake; Hystaspes, the father of Darius, soon quelled Hyrcania, (519) Dadarshis, the satrap of Bactriana, easily overcame the resistance of Frada (519); and the wars were concluded.

Organisation of Darius’ Empire

The lesson of these first years was not lost on the conqueror. The empire of Cyrus had comprised, besides the countries governed by Persian officers, vassal kingdoms and cities and tributary people who were under the direct rule of the sovereign, and not under the satraps of the province which was the seat of their domain. It was the system of government practised by Tiglathpileser III and adopted by Persia from Babylon and Ecbatana.

Darius did not attempt to subjugate the races that peopled his domains; on the contrary, he encouraged the people to retain their languages, customs,[608] and religions, their laws and their particular constitutions. The Jews received permission to finish the building of the temple; the Greeks of Asia retained their various governments; Phœnicia kept her kings and suffets, and Egypt her hereditary nomarchs. But over all these local powers, there was a single authority, superior to all, and the same everywhere. The territory was divided into governments, the number of which varied with the times. There were originally twenty-three. The number of these governments, or satrapies, was increased to thirty-one by the conquests of Darius.

If each of these satrapies had been governed by a separate governor invested with royal power, and sovereign in all but name and title, the empire would have run the risk of soon being broken up into a chaotic assembly of principalities, in incessant struggle against Persia. But Darius avoided uniting civil and military power in one person. He placed in each government three officers sent directly from the court and quite independent of each other—the satrap, the royal secretary, and the general. The satraps were chosen by the king. They could be taken from any class in the nation, from the poor as well as the rich, from foreigners as well as Persians; but it was customary to confer the most important satrapies on persons united by blood or marriage to the royal family. They were not nominated for any special time, but remained in office as long as the king pleased. They had full civil power, with palaces, parks, a court, bodyguards, and well-filled harems; they imposed taxes as they liked, administered justice, and had power over life and death.

They had a royal secretary at their disposal, and this personage, charged ostensibly with the duties of chancellor, was in reality a spy who watched everybody’s actions and conduct, so as to be able to report them in the right quarter.

The Persian soldiers, the native troops, and the mercenaries cantoned in the province were under the command of a general, who was often inimical to the satrap and secretary. These three rivals, therefore, equalised and kept each other in check, and thus a revolt was, if not impossible, at least difficult. They were in perpetual communication with the court by means of regular couriers, who took their despatches from one end of the country to the other, in a few weeks. As an additional precaution Darius sent to the provinces every year officers whom he called his “eyes and his ears” because they were commissioned to see and hear for him what went on in the most distant parts of the kingdom. They appeared at the most unexpected moments, examined the state of affairs, reformed any details of administration, reprimanded and suspended the satrap, when necessary, and they were attended by a body of troops to support their decisions and give weight to their councils, which might otherwise have been wanting. An unfavourable account, a slight disobedience, or even the mere suspicion of disobedience, was enough to ruin a satrap, for he was then deposed, or more often condemned to death without a trial, the people of his suite being ordered to do the deed. A courier arrived suddenly, the guard received orders to kill their chief, and they at once fulfilled the royal decree.

This administrative reform did not please the Persians, and they tried to pay off their enforced obedience by scoffing jests at the king’s expense. “Cyrus,” they said, “had been a father and Cambyses a master, but Darius was only an innkeeper greedy of gain.” For the division of the empire was done less for a political object than for financial profits and the chief duty of the satraps was to assess, collect and turn over the taxes. Persia proper was exempt from a regular taxation, and the people were only required to[609] make the king a present every time he crossed the country. The present was in proportion to the fortune of the individual, and sometimes merely consisted of an ox, or a sheep, or even a little milk or cheese, a few dates, a handful of flour or some vegetables; but the other provinces were taxed according to their extent and wealth with a tribute payable partly in kind, and partly in money. The revenue in money went up to 1460 Eubœic talents or nearly £28,000,000. To facilitate the payments Darius circulated gold and silver coins named after himself. These darics were stamped with a figure of the king, bearing a bow, or a javelin. They were thick, irregular, and clumsy, but of pure metal. The coins were not in common circulation, but they were used in the payment of the soldiers and sailors, and were current on the coasts of the Mediterranean. In the interior of Asia, metals were valued according to their weight for transactions of commerce and daily life, and kings themselves preferred to have them in their rough state, for they had them melted down and put into earthen vases, and coined according to the needs or the caprice of the moment. The tribute in kind was not less than that in money. Egypt supplied the corn for the 120,000 military men who occupied it; the Medians gave annually 100,000 sheep, 4000 mules, and 3000 horses; the Armenians 30,000 chickens, the people of Babylon 500 young eunuchs; Cilicia 365 white horses, one for each day of the year. The royal taxes were not excessive, but the satraps received no salary from the state, and they and their suites lived and received their heavy remunerations at the expense of the satrapies. The government of Babylon alone had to give a full artaba of silver every day. Egypt, India, Media, and Syria gave not much less; and the poorest provinces were not those least heavily taxed, for the satraps counted on having at least as much as the king.

In spite of its drawbacks, this system was preferable to that hitherto employed in the East, for it gave the king a regular budget, kept the provinces under his power, and made national revolts very difficult. The death of each king was no longer followed by insurrections which took a great part of the following reign to quell. Darius had not only the glory of organising the Persian empire, but he invented a form of government which served henceforth as a pattern to the great oriental states. His fame as an administrator has even obscured his military renown, for it is often forgotten that he increased his empire while regulating its administration.

Later Conquests of Darius

Darius’ victories left the Persians with only India on the east, and Greece on the west, in which to expand, as their territory in other directions extended to the seas, or to obstacles untraversable by the heavy armies of the period. The empire was bounded on the north by the Black Sea, the Caucasus Mountains, the Caspian Sea, and the steppes of Tartary, and on the south by the Erythræan Sea, the sandy tableland of Arabia, and the desert of Africa.

About the year 512 the Persians seem to have penetrated farther east. From the heights of Iran they commanded the immense plains of the Punjab. Darius invaded and conquered this country, and formed thereof the satrapy of India. Then, instead of fulfilling his intention of going beyond the Ganges, he had the southern regions explored. A fleet constructed at Peukala and placed under the command of a Greek admiral, Scylax a Carian, descended the Indus to its mouth and subjugated the tribes who[610] lived on the banks of the river, and when he reached the sea, he turned to the west and in less than thirty months reached the coasts of Gedrosia and Arabia.

The Persians might have had a brilliant and lucrative career in India. It is not known what prevented them from following up their first success and turned their attention to the West, where Darius planned to conquer the Greeks of Europe. But before setting out on that expedition, prudence warned him to conquer, or at least to frighten, the people who might disturb his course, so he attacked the Scythians.

The first expedition, commanded by Ariaramnes, satrap of Cappadocia, crossed the Pontus Euxinus, landed some thousands of men on the opposite coast, and made some prisoners, who furnished the Persian generals with the information they needed. With this knowledge, Darius crossed the Bosporus with eight hundred thousand men, subjugated the eastern coast of Thrace, and crossed the Danube on a bridge of boats, made by the Greeks of Ionia. The Scythians would not fight, but having destroyed the fodder, and filled up the wells, they drove off their cattle and took refuge in the interior, leaving the enemy to fight against famine, and the impassability of the country.[e]

We cannot pause to dwell upon the details of this campaign. But there is one incident chronicled by Herodotus that must be transcribed because of the interesting light it throws upon the relations of the antagonists.

“The Scythians,” says Herodotus, “discovering that the Persians were in extreme perplexity, hoped that by detaining them longer in their country, they should finally reduce them to the utmost distress: with this view, they occasionally left exposed some of their cattle with their shepherds, and artfully retired; of these, with much exultation, the Persians took possession.

“This was again and again repeated; Darius nevertheless became gradually in want of almost every necessary: the Scythian princes, knowing this, sent to him a messenger, with a bird, a mouse, a frog, and five arrows, as a present. The Persians inquired of the bearer, what these might mean; but the man declared that his orders were only to deliver them and return: he advised them, however, to exert their sagacity, and interpret the mystery.

“The Persians accordingly held a consultation on the subject. Darius was of opinion, that the Scythians intended by this to express submission to him, and give him the earth and the water which he required. The mouse, as he explained it, was produced in the earth, and lived on the same food as man; the frog was a native of the water; the bird bore great resemblance to a horse; and in giving the arrows, they intimated the surrender of their power: this was the interpretation of Darius. Gobryas, however, one of the seven who had dethroned the Magus, thus interpreted the presents: ‘Men of Persia, unless like birds ye shall mount into the air, like mice take refuge in the earth, or like frogs leap into the marshes, these arrows shall prevent the possibility of your return to the place from whence you came.’ This explanation was generally accepted.”

This quaint recital suggests that the Persians were in dire straits; but the result was less disastrous than the Scythians anticipated. Darius managed to provision his army, and for some weeks he traversed the steppes, even penetrating, it has been supposed, to the heart of Russia, burning and sacking all the villages on the road, and then returning south with no reverses.a During his absence, the barbarians begged the Greeks to destroy their bridge of boats and return to their own country. Miltiades of Athens, tyrant of the Thracian Chersonesus, wished to accede to this request, but Histiæus of Miletus opposed the plan, and his advice was followed. So[611] Darius returned safe and sound to Asia, after having left Megabazus with an army of eighty thousand men, with which he subjugated in Thrace one tribe and town after another, and in 506, the king of Macedonia became a vassal to the Persian empire.

The Scythian expedition is generally regarded as the caprice of a despot, but it really was a well-conceived and well-carried out plan. It gave Persia the additional province of Thrace, and also brought about a state of peace which was of great consequence. For the Scythians now held the Persians in such fear that the frontiers were henceforth quite freed from their incursions, and Darius was at liberty to pursue his plans of conquest in the West.

As Thrace and Macedonia were conquered, the Persians were now in direct contact with Greece proper. The invasion which had been planned was prevented by a revolt of Asiatic Greece. It is needless to give the details of the rebellion in Ionia. For the first time since the accession of Cyrus, the Persian empire met a serious reverse which threatened its safety. Sardis was burned, Caria, the people of the Hellespont, and Cyprus shook off the yoke of the Great King, and if they had been less disunited the Greeks of Asia might probably have remained free. After their defeat Darius thought of avenging himself on the Athenians and Eretrians for having taken part in the struggle. The first expedition under Mardonius came to grief (492), and two years later Datis and Artaphernes landed in Attica where they were beaten at Marathon.[32] But the old king did not lose heart, and after devoting three years to collecting arms, provisions, soldiers, and ships, he set out on the expedition in 487, when he was stopped by an unexpected event. Egypt broke out in revolt. The Persians were expelled and a native ruler, Khabbash, placed on the Egyptian throne, which he managed to hold for three years.

Affairs in Egypt since the Persian Conquest

In order to understand the situation, we must take a brief backward glance. Cambyses had entrusted the government of Egypt to Aryandes, the Persian, and Darius was at first quite satisfied with his predecessor’s choice, for not only did Aryandes remain faithful to his king, but he tried to continue the conquest of Libya at the point at which Cambyses had left it. The Dorians of Cyrene, disapproving of the easy submission of their king, Arcesilaus III, to the foreign yoke, banished him from the country, the[612]n recalled him, and then banished him again to Barca, where he was killed. His mother, Pheretima, then came to Egypt, and related to the satrap how Arcesilaus had fallen a victim to his friendship with the Persians. So Aryandes seized the opportunity of enlarging his satrapy at the expense of the Greeks, and sent all his available ships and men against them. Barca held out for nine months, and fell at last through treachery, and some detachments of the advance guard then pushed on to Euesperides. On their return the generals thought of occupying Cyrene, and they would probably have done so had not an official order recalled them to Egypt. The passage across the desert proved nearly fatal, for the nomads of the Mormarica made continual raids upon them for the sake of spoil, but in spite of serious losses they succeeded in taking back to Barca some of the people as prisoners. Aryandes despatched the unhappy creatures as a trophy to Darius, who had them sent to Bactriana, where they founded a new Barca. But a prince, who carried out victorious campaigns on his own account, necessarily incurred the disfavour of such a jealous man as the Great King, so Aryandes was soon put to death, and different reports were spread of the reason of his demise. Some said he was killed for having coined a purer money than that issued by the royal mint; others maintained that having incurred the hatred of the Egyptians by his malpractices, Egypt was on the point of revolting when he was killed.

After the removal of his rival, Darius did nothing to win the affection of his Egyptian subjects, or even to render his rule supportable. The best means of succeeding with a self-sufficient, religious people like the Egyptians, would have been to manifest a great respect for the gods and national kings, but, unlike Cambyses, he took the side of the persecuted priests. Cambyses had exiled the head of the priesthood of Saïs to Elam, but Darius bade him return and repair the disasters caused by the folly of his predecessor. So the high priest was escorted back to his native town, where he founded a college of hierogrammatics, and restored to the temple of Nit the property and revenues, of which it had been deprived. Greek tradition exceeds the national tradition, for it reports that Darius was initiated into the mysteries of Egyptian theology, and studied the sacred books. It maintains, moreover, that, when arriving at Memphis, after the death of a sacred bull, he took part in the universal mourning, and promised one hundred talents to the discoverer of the new Apis. Before leaving the country, he visited the temple of Ptah, and commanded his statue to be put up by the side of that of Sesostris. But the priests refused to do it, saying, “Darius has not equalled the deeds of Sesostris, he has not conquered the Scythians that he conquered,” to which Darius replied “that he hoped to do as much as Sesostris if he lived as long as Sesostris had lived,” so he submitted to the exclusive pride of his subjects, and the Egyptians expressed their gratitude by adding him to the six legislators, whose memory they venerated.

Egypt certainly prospered under the rule of Darius, and with Cyrene and Barca, she formed the sixth satrapy of the empire, and the Nubian tribes nearest to the southern frontier were included in this province. The governor installed at the White Wall, in the old palace of the Pharaohs, was in command of an army of one hundred and twenty thousand men occupying the three entrenched camps of the kings of the Saïtes Nomes, which were Daphne and Memphis on the confines of the Delta, and Elephantine on the south.

Beyond these great posts, where the authority of the Great King was in full sway, the ancient organisation of Egypt still continued: the temples[613] had their property, the vassals were free of the ordinary charges, and the nobles were as independent in their principalities and as ready to revolt as they were before. The annual tribute which was the heaviest next to that of Chaldea and Assyria, was not more than seven hundred talents of silver. Add to this sum the value of the fisheries of the Lake Mœris (which, according to Diodorus, were worth a talent a day the whole year round, and according to Herodotus, during the six months of high water) the 120,000 medimni of corn for the subsistence of the army of occupation, and the provision of the palace with nitre, and water from the Nile, and the whole of the assessment was far from being disproportionate to the resources of the country. But they had several advantages to compensate for the expense of the tribute. For, being now consolidated with an empire stretching into three continents, regions which had been hitherto inaccessible to them were now opened up for their industrial exports, and they profited greatly by the commodities of the Sudan having to pass through their territory before arriving at the great depots of Babylon or Susa, as the Isthmus was one of the shortest routes to the districts of the Mediterranean for merchandise from India or Arabia.

Darius completed the canal of the Nile to the Gulf of Suez, and reopened the road from Coptos to the Red Sea. He fortified the oases, and built in the little town of Hib a grand temple to Ammon, the ruins of which remain to this day. But gratitude could not extinguish the Egyptians’ strong desire for liberty. The defeat of the Persians at Marathon encouraged them to try and shake off the yoke, and, in 486, they sent off the foreign garrisons and proclaimed as king, Khabbash, who was probably descended from Psamthek. But Darius did not wish to stop the invasion of Greece on this account, and he collected a second army and had made preparations for the two wars, when he died in the thirty-sixth year of his reign in 485.e

For his epitaph we can hardly do better than quote one of his own inscriptions, that at Behistun, as translated by Sir Henry Rawlinson.

I am Darius, the great King, the King of Kings, the King of Persia, the King of (the dependent) provinces, the son of Hystaspes, the grandson of Arsames, the Achæmenian.

Says Darius the King: My father was Hystaspes; of Hystaspes the father was Arsames; of Arsames the father was Ariaramnes; of Ariaramnes the father was Teispes; of Teispes the father was Achæmenes.

Says Darius the King: On that account we have been called Achæmenians; from antiquity we have been unsubdued (or we have descended); from antiquity those of our race have been Kings.

Says Darius the King: There are eight of my race who have been kings before me, I am the ninth; for a very long time we have been kings.

Says Darius the King: By the grace of Ormuzd I am (I have become) king; Ormuzd has granted me the empire.

Says Darius the King: These are the countries which have fallen into my hands—by the grace of Ormuzd I have become king of them—Persia, Susiana, Babylonia, Assyria, Arabia, Egypt; those which are of the seas, Sparta and Ionia; Armenia, Cappadocia, Parthia, Zarangia, Aria, Chorasmia, Bactria, Sogdiana, the Sacæ, the Sattagydes, Arachosia, and the Mecians, the total amount being twenty-one (twenty-three?) countries.

Says Darius the King: These are the countries which have come to me; by the grace of Ormuzd they have become subject to me—they have brought tribute to me. That which has been said unto them by me, both by night and by day, it has been performed by them.

[614]

Says Darius the King: Within these countries whoever was of the true faith, him have I cherished and protected; whoever was a heretic, him have I rooted out entirely. By the grace of Ormuzd these countries, therefore, being given to me, have rejoiced. As to them it has been said by me, thus has it been done by them.

Says Darius the King: Ormuzd has granted me the empire. Ormuzd has brought help to me until I have gained this empire. By the grace of Ormuzd I hold this empire.d

XERXES I

Before coming to the throne Darius had had three children by his first wife, the daughter of Gobyras, and Artabazanes, the eldest, had long been regarded as the heir presumptive, and had probably undertaken the regency during the Scythian campaign. But at the time of the rebellion of Khabbash, when Darius had to name his successor, Atossa (daughter of Cyrus) showed him the advantages of choosing her eldest child Xerxes, who had been born in the purple and had the blood of Cyrus in his veins. As the old king was quite under her influence, Atossa’s advice was followed, and Xerxes ascended the throne without any opposition. He was then thirty-five years of age, and was considered the handsomest man of his time, but he was indolent and weak of character.

He at first wished to give up the idea of the campaigns, but his father’s counsellors showed him that he could not leave the defeat at Marathon unavenged; and he was wise enough to see that he could do nothing in Europe until he had restored Egypt to order.

Khabbash had done his best to prepare a hot reception for him: he had spent two years in fortifying the coast of the Delta, and had placed strongholds at the mouth of the river to prevent any attack by sea. But all these precautions were in vain when the moment of action came, and he was easily conquered by Xerxes. The nomes of the Delta which had taken part in the rebellion were severely punished, the priests were freed, and the temple of Buto deprived of its treasures, and Khabbash disappeared in the midst of the disaster, without anybody knowing what became of him. Achæmenes, the king’s brother, was then appointed satrap, and took measures to prevent a second rising, but again nobody seemed to think of changing the political constitution of the country, and the nomes remained in the hands of the hereditary princes. Xerxes does not appear even to have suspected that in respecting the local dynasties he retained chiefs always ready to take part in future Egyptian revolts. The defeat and disappearance of Khabbash did not give Xerxes full power. Classic tradition reports that he shocked the polemical sentiment of the Chaldeans by ill-judged curiosity, for he entered the tomb of Belus, but, in spite of his efforts, did not succeed in filling the vessel therein with oil. If this strange story be not true, there is no doubt about the rebellion. Megabyzus, the son of Zopyrus, who was satrap of the province by hereditary right, treated the town with unusual severity, the temple of Belus was pillaged, the statue of the god taken away, and its priests massacred, the royal tombs were violated and sacked, and part of the population was reduced to slavery.

At last Xerxes started for Europe at the head of the largest army ever seen, and we know the result of the expedition. After having witnessed the destruction of his fleet from the heights of Cape Colias, he fled precipitately, and returned to Asia Minor without waiting to see his troops routed[615] on land. It is said that the victories of Salamis and Platæa saved Europe from barbarism. But this is unjust to both countries, as the Persians were not barbarians in the usual acceptation of the word, for, although, in some respects, they were less cultivated than the Greeks, in others they were superior to them and their culture was of an utterly different type. Moreover it is not saying much for the vitality and genius of Greece if its evolution could have been arrested by defeat and subjugation. The Hellenic race would have had to be utterly annihilated by the invasion of Asia, for Hellenic civilisation to have been exterminated. The Persians did not care about destroying whole nations, they only insisted on tribute and obedience, and then each country could do as it pleased. If Xerxes had been victorious, Hellas would have become a satrapy like Syria and Chaldea, and she would not have lost her characteristics any more than those countries did, but, like Egypt, she would soon have found an opportunity to recover her liberty. The Persian conquest would have changed the political course of Greek history, but it would have been powerless to arrest the general march of civilisation. The defeat of Xerxes resulted in his immediate retreat from the Persian frontier, but some of his garrisons were allowed to remain at Byzantium, till 478, at Eion, till 477; and at Doriscus till 450 and even later. But this concession was granted more as a sop to the pride of the Great King, than from any political or military necessity. Xerxes liked to think that he still had a foothold in Europe, so that he could recommence the war at any time, but Thessaly, Macedonia and Thrace soon ceased to recognise his authority and Athenian fleets now sailed menacingly where Phœnician vessels had hitherto had undisputed course. If Greece had been less disunited, and followed up her newly won advantages, all the colonies of Asia Minor would probably have shaken off the Asiatic yoke. But Sparta had no interest in distant enterprises, and Athens had enough to do to rebuild her walls and to organise her fleet, so Persia was spared an invasion.

And during all this time, whilst the fate of his empire hung in the balance, Xerxes was wasting what little courage and intelligence he had, in the intrigues and debauches of his harem. The war went on for twelve years without his attempting to make any effort to invade or even to prevent an invasion. About 466 an Athenian fleet cruising along the coasts of Caria and Lycia encountered the fleet of the Great King anchored at the mouth of the Eurymedon. It was another Mycale—the vessels were destroyed and the Athenian crews landed and routed the Persian army hard by. The conqueror then turned to Cyprus, scattered a second fleet of eighty sailing vessels, and returned to the Piræus laden with booty. Xerxes did not long survive this humiliation; he was assassinated by Aspamithres the eunuch and by Artabanus the captain of the guards in 465.

THE SUCCESSORS OF XERXES

The same night the murderers went to the younger son, Artaxerxes, and after accusing another son, Darius, of the crime, they killed him under pretext of punishing the parricide. They then made an attempt on the life of Artaxerxes himself, but they were betrayed by one of their accomplices and executed. Then the sons of Artabanus, wishing to avenge their father, collected a force together, but they perished arms in hand. Hystaspes, the rightful heir to the throne, the eldest brother of the new king, who was in[616] Bactriana at the death of Xerxes, now arrived at the head of an army to claim his rights, but he and his followers were defeated in 462 in two bloody battles.

Every incident which threatened the existence or the integrity of the empire, affected Egypt, and before the generation, which had taken up arms for Khabbash, had passed away, a fresh generation, weary of the Persian yoke, rose up against Artaxerxes. Since the fall of the Saïd, Libya was the most important of the fiefs of the Delta. Being masters of the Marea, and the fertile districts between the Canopic branch of the Nile and the mountain and lake of Mareotis, her rulers probably had suzerainty over the Adyrmachidæ, the Giligammas, the Asbystæ, and the majority of the nomadic tribes of the desert. Inarus, son of a Psamthek, who was then in power, declared war against the Persians, and the population of the Delta, being ill-treated by Achæmenes, received him warmly, drove off the tax-collectors and flew to arms. Since their victory on the Eurymedon, the Athenians always kept a squadron by Cyprus, and its two hundred vessels now had orders to set sail for Egypt and to remain there at the disposal of the insurgent chiefs. Artaxerxes then prepared to take personal command of the naval and military forces, but he finally submitted to the advice of his counsellors who advised him to let his place be taken by Achæmenes, his uncle, who had fled to the court in alarm at the first successes of Inarus. Achæmenes had not much difficulty in thrusting back the Libyans, but the arrival of the Greeks put quite another face on the matter; and he was beaten at Papremis, and his army almost entirely exterminated. Inarus killed him with his own hand in the battle, and sent the corpse to Artaxerxes perhaps out of bravado, and perhaps out of respect for the blood of his victim. Some days later the Athenian squadron under the command of Charitimides encountered the Phœnician fleet hastening to the succour of the Persians, and sank thirty ships, and took twenty. The allies then went up the river and appeared at Memphis, where the rest of the Persians had taken refuge, as the natives had remained faithful to the Great King. The town soon surrendered, but the fortress of the White Wall shut its gates and its resistance gave Artaxerxes time to collect fresh forces.

Before risking his generals in the Delta, the Great King sent his envoys to Greece to try and buy the Lacedæmonians’ assistance for the invasion of Attica. But Spartan virtue happened just then to be proof against the Persian darics, so the troops of the Great King were assembled in Phœnicia and Cilicia, and the three hundred thousand foot-soldiers and the fleet of three hundred vessels were placed under the command of Megabyzus. On the approach of the enemy, the allies raised the siege of the White Wall, and beaten in a first engagement, in which Charitimides was killed, and Inarus wounded in the thigh, they entrenched themselves in the island of Prosopitis, where they sustained a long siege of eighteen months, which ended by Megabyzus succeeding in turning off one of the arms of the river, and the Athenian fleet thus stranded, an opportunity was afforded of storming the place. The majority of the Greek allies perished in the battle, but some succeeded in getting back to Cyrene, and returning thence to their country, and others fled with Inarus, and were forced to give themselves up a little later. To add to their misfortunes, a reinforcement of fifty ships, which arrived at the Mendesian mouth of the Nile, was more than half destroyed by the Phœnician fleet. When laying down his arms, Inarus had stipulated that his life and that of his companions should be saved. Artaxerxes seemed at first inclined to respect the capitulation, but five years later[617] he gave over the prisoners to his mother Amestris, who had Inarus crucified to avenge the death of Achæmenes.

The victory of Prosopitis concluded the rebellion, and Thannyras, the son of Inarus, was made king of Libya in his father’s place. But some bands of refugees retired to the marshes on the seacoast, which had often been a sanctuary to the people of the Saïd, and having proclaimed Amyrtæus king, they successfully repelled all the attacks of the Persians. The integrity of the empire was re-established, but the war with the Greeks went on.

Six years after their defeat, the Athenians equipped a fleet of two hundred sail, and put it under the command of Cimon, with orders to conquer Cyprus or at least occupy several of its towns. Cimon, wishing to divide the force of the enemy, sent a squadron of sixty ships to King Amyrtæus, as if he were going to recommence the campaign in Egypt, and then, with the remaining men and ships, he laid siege to Citium. He died soon afterwards from a wound, and for want of provisions his successors were forced to raise the siege; but in sailing past Salamis they defeated the Phœnician and Cilician fleet, and then landed and routed a Persian army stationed near the town. Artaxerxes was overcome by this last reverse, and fearing that the Athenians, if once they had Cyprus, would take possession of Egypt, which was always disaffected, he decided to treat for peace at any price. Peace was therefore concluded on condition of freedom being granted to the Greeks of Asia, no Persian army was to approach the Ionian coast within a distance of three days’ journey, no Persian man-of-war was to sail in Greek waters, which extended from the eastern point of Lycia to the entrance of the Bosporus.

This treaty in 449 terminated the first war between the Persians and Greeks, after it had lasted from the burning of Sardis to the seventeenth year of the reign of Artaxerxes, from 501 to 449.

Eastern empires could not exist without the excitement of constant wars and victories, and directly they gave up their aggressive policy they began to go down—they were conquerors, or nothing—and Persia was no exception to the rule. Darius I had been a very great king, greater perhaps than Cyrus himself. The vigour and skill with which he organised armies, conceived plans of campaigns, and chose his officers, and the promptitude with which he quelled the revolts on his accession to the throne, show us that he was at least equal to the best generals of his time, and as a ruler he was superior to the whole line of the Achæmenidæ.

Both Darius and Xerxes turned to Europe when their conquests in Asia had extended their empire to where their frontiers were bounded by the almost impassable barrier of the deserts of Africa and Arabia, the mountains of India and the Caucasus, and the steppes of central Asia; but when the Greek victories obliged them to retire, the day of Persia’s decadence dawned. Her fall was not so sudden as had been that of Assyria, Chaldea, and Media, for the administrative organisation of Darius had been too skilfully adjusted to fall at a single blow, but the nonchalance and inaptitude of the sovereigns finally destroyed its action. Several satrapies were now governed by a single satrap, who commanded the armies and acted as king, and there was not only an incessant succession of rebellions in the provinces and in Egypt, where the national sentiment was not attuned to peace, but in Chaldea, Bactriana, and Asia Minor; and tragedies in the palaces, where the dagger and poison made havoc in the royal family, were as common as civil wars between the satraps.

[618]

Peace was hardly signed with Greece when Megabyzus, governor of Syria, discontented with the way the king had treated Inarus after his victory, raised an army under his command. He defeated two generals, one after the other, and only disbanded his force after having dictated the terms of peace.

Some years later his son Zopyrus headed a rebellion in Caria and Lydia, and the success of the revolt was so fatal to the other satraps that their fidelity henceforth was only a question of caprice or circumstance. Artaxerxes died in 424, and the intrigues which had cost so much blood at the beginning of his reign now recommenced. His eldest legitimate son, Xerxes II, was assassinated at the end of forty-five days by Sogdianus, one of his illegitimate brothers; he in his turn was dethroned and killed after a reign of six months and a half by Ochus, another bastard of the old king, who, on ascending the throne, took the name of Darius, and whose life was one long tissue of miseries and crimes. His reign from the beginning was disturbed by the rebellion of his brother Arsites and Artyphius, son of Megabyzus, who took up arms in Asia Minor, enrolled Greek mercenaries, and gained two important victories. Persian gold now compassed what was beyond Persian bravery, and the rebels, abandoned by their soldiers, surrendered on condition that their lives should be spared.

DARIUS II

Darius II had married his aunt Parysatis, one of the cruellest and most depraved women that ever entered an Eastern harem, and it was by her advice that he broke his word and Arsites was burnt to death. But this example did not deter Pissuthenes, the satrap of Lydia, who had been in office for twenty months, from rebelling; however, he, like Arsites, fell by treachery; for Tissaphernes having bribed the mercenaries in his pay to desert him, he was obliged to surrender. Darius had him put to death, and made his conqueror his successor.

But this was not the last of the troubles in Asia Minor, for Amorges, the natural son of Pissuthenes excited Caria to revolt, and after abrogating the title of King, he held out till 412.

It was at this time that the whole of Greece was laid waste by the Peloponnesian war. Athens had just lost in Sicily the best part of her fleet and the bravest of her soldiers, and when the news of her defeat reached the East, Darius saw that it was a favourable time to break the treaty of 449. He sent orders to the satraps of Mysia and Lydia to collect the taxes from the Greek towns on the coast and to treat with the Lacedæmonians. Sparta accepted the alliance offered her, and henceforth the different Hellenic states were but playthings in the hands of the Great King and his agents. Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus tried at first to keep the balance equal between the Dorians and Athenians, without allowing either of the rival races to deal the mortal blow; but this equalising policy did not last long. Darius had two sons, and the second one, named Cyrus after the founder of the empire, obtained through the influence of Parysatis the supreme rulership of the provinces of Asia Minor.

Cyrus was ambitious of reigning, and he hoped that his mother would manage by intrigues to obtain for him the succession which rightfully belonged to his eldest brother, Arsaces; and in the event of failure by those means he intended to win the throne by force of arms.

[619]

Athens being a maritime power was not likely to help him in an expedition against the provinces of Upper Asia, so he turned to Sparta and supported her so efficaciously that in two years the war ended in favour of the Peloponnesians, by their decisive victory at Ægospotami in 405.

ARTAXERXES II

The satraps of Asia Minor seem to have suspected young Cyrus of these secret intrigues, for Darius summoned his son to Susa. But Cyrus arrived only in time to be present at the king’s death, and in spite of the efforts of Parysatis, Arsaces, the new king, ascended the throne under the royal name of Artaxerxes (Artakhshathra). Cyrus tried to kill his brother at the foot of the altar during the coronation ceremony, but Tissaphernes and one of the priests having denounced him, he was seized and would have been executed had not his mother saved him from the hands of the executioner.

His pardon being granted after some trouble, Cyrus returned to Asia Minor, determined to seize the first opportunity for revenge. Having managed, in spite of the surveillance of Tissaphernes, to collect under divers pretences 13,000 Greek mercenaries and 100,000 native soldiers, he suddenly left Sardis (401), crossed Asia Minor, Syria, and Mesopotamia, without being molested; but encountering the imperial army at Cunaxa, some miles north of Babylon, he was killed in the engagement. He was brave, active, ambitious, and endowed with all the qualities which would have made him a good oriental monarch. His intercourse with the Greeks had opened his eyes to the weak sides of his country which he tried to remedy; and if he had been successful he would probably have momentarily arrested the empire on its downward course. When he was gone, the native army which had followed him, immediately dispersed, but the mercenaries did not lose courage and gained the shores of the Pontus Euxinus by crossing Assyria and Armenia. The old state of affairs was quite changed when the retreat of the Ten Thousand showed that a handful of men, treacherously deprived of their leaders, without guides and without allies, could brave the empire with impunity and return to Greece without any considerable loss.

Victorious Sparta had now succeeded Athens in her protection of the Greeks of Ionia, and the death of Cyrus having broken her bonds with Persia, she had complete liberty of action. She continued the war with Asia for four years, her king, Agesilaus, even penetrated into the heart of Phrygia, and would have proceeded in the road taken by the Ten Thousand if Persian gold had not turned the course of affairs. For Athens again took up arms, and having united her fleet to that of Persia, she patrolled the Ægean Sea, the island of Cythera was taken by Conon, and the long walls were rebuilt at the expense of the Great King.

Whilst Hellas, divided against herself, sought favour in the eyes of the satraps of Asia Minor, Egypt, united in hatred of the foreigner, succeeded in expelling him. There had been no serious disturbance since the defeat of Inarus, and the Persian governors had quietly succeeded each other in the palace of Memphis, the aged Amyrtæus had disappeared, and his son Pausiris had been the docile vassal of the Persians. Many little incidents, however, had shown that the old spirit of rebellion was only waiting for an opportunity to break out again. The rebellion of Megabyzus in Syria had shown how easily the Great King could henceforth be defied, and the rebellions of Zopyrus and Pissuthenes, following one upon another, sapped the strength[620] of the empire for several years, and a grandson of Amyrtæus, who bore his name, proclaimed the independence of Egypt. He did not utterly expel the Persians, for Artaxerxes still had Egyptian troops in his army in 401, at the time of the campaign against Cyrus, and he also had to endure rival princes, for the monuments record that a Psamthek, descendant of the old family of the Saïtes was his contemporary and bore the title of “King of the Egyptians.” This feudalism was too strong and turbulent to permit the sceptre to remain long in one family, so the XXVIIIth Dynasty only lasted six years, which was the length of the reign of Amyrtæus [Amen-Rut], and it was followed by the Mendesian dynasty.

Niafaarut I completed the work of deliverance, and under his rule, Egypt recovered her old activity. Her course was controlled by circumstances, for the disproportion of the forces of an isolated province and an empire almost covering the west of Asia was too apparent for the Pharaohs to think of going to war without outside help, so they instinctively followed the policy of Psamthek and his successors. Egypt tried to establish lines of posts along the front which would bear the brunt of the enemy’s first attack. Then she intrigued in Syria and Cyprus, hoping to win over the allies, or even to re-establish the ancient suzerainty of the Theban princes there, and if beaten on this outlying front of their lines, she would have time to muster an army, or even a fleet, before the conqueror arrived on the frontier. All the revolts of the different races, and all the quarrels of the satraps were to the advantage of Egypt, and as they obliged the Great King to divide his troops, she assiduously fomented them and on occasions even provoked them, and managed so well, that for some time only the weakest part of the Persian armies were stationed in her country. Mercenaries were now substituted in Greece for troops raised from the citizens, and war had become a lucrative occupation to those competent to excel in it. The Pharaohs never hesitated to lavish their treasures on the purchase of these formidable companies. Iphicrates, Chabrias, Timotheus, and all the celebrated generals appeared in turn at the head of the Egyptian or Persian masses, engaged on the banks of the Nile, sometimes with the consent, and sometimes against the will of their country. When Niafaarut ascended the throne, Sparta was at the height of her grandeur and had even declared war against Persia, and Agesilaus was commanding his campaign in Phrygia; so Niafaarut concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with the Lacedæmonians, and sent them a fleet laden with arms, corn, and ammunition, but it was intercepted by Conon, the Athenian, who commanded the Persian squadron. The recall of Agesilaus and the abandonment of Asia Minor chilled the good will of the king of Egypt, and the forces which he had seemed disposed to send to Sparta’s assistance were now probably stationed on the frontier of Syria to repel the attack which he thought was imminent.

The attack, however, did not come as quickly as was expected. The retreat of the Lacedæmonians had not terminated the affairs of Asia Minor, for since the rising of Cyrus the majority of the indigenous races, such as the Mysians, Pisidians, and the people of the Black Sea regions and of Paphlagonia, had asserted their independence; so Artaxerxes sent against them the army which he had meant to despatch to Egypt, but it was only at Cyprus that much stand was made. The island was now divided between two races, the Phœnician and the Greek, and since the Achæans settled there after uniting with the maritime people, vanquished by Meneptah, the Greek influence had increased. All the adventurers, in quest of fresh countries to occupy, assembled on this frontier of the Eastern world.

[621]

As time went on the Semitic constituent decreased still more as the Phœnicians, driven back slowly but surely, concentrated themselves around Citium, or Cition, and Amathus. But, albeit diminished, the number of the Semitic forces was sufficient to prevent the princes of Soli, or Salamis, uniting the whole island into one state. It had been successively subjugated, by the Assyrians under Sargon II, the Babylonians under Nebuchadrezzar, the Egyptians under Aahmes II, and the Persians under Cyrus and Cambyses, and each of these conquests left profound traces on the customs and the arts of the country.

But if the external side of civilisation often followed Eastern models, internally it became more and more Hellenic. The people of Cyprus had been the earliest among the people of their race to possess the art of writing. They had adopted, doubtless soon after their arrival, a particular system of spelling, and they retained it, even when the Greeks were beginning to use the Cadmean alphabet.

Onasilas, the king of Salamis, in Cyprus, united with Miletus, and, with the exception of the king of Amathus, all the other princes joined the alliance, which resisted the forces of the Great King for a year. But when the rebellion was quelled, Darius made the Greek population pay for its disaffection; its commerce was stopped, its ports were shut to the ships coming from Hellas, and in many towns, like Salamis, the tyrants of the old race were replaced by those of Phœnician descent. In fact, the Great King now looked to the Semitic race for respect for his authority. Citium, almost ruined by its vicinity to Salamis, recovered her old position as the head and chief market of the island; and, in spite of the intermittent appearance of Athenian fleets on her coasts, more than a century elapsed before the Cypriotes found an opportunity of freeing themselves from their crushing bondage.

It was Evagoras who delivered them. He was descended from the old kings of Salamis, and after having driven away Abdemon, the Tyrian, who was in command of the town, he took the whole of the island, with the exception of Citium and Amathus. Artaxerxes soon took umbrage at his ambition and activity, and not without reason, for in 391 he was in open war against Evagoras. If he had not been assisted, the struggle would have been short, but both Greece and Egypt helped him with both money and arms. Haker had succeeded Niafaarut in 393, and after protecting his western frontier by making an alliance with the Libyans at Barca, he made a treaty with Evagoras and the Athenians. He gave corn, ammunition, vessels, and money to Athens in return for several thousands of men under Chabrias, one of her best generals; and not only was the first Persian expedition under Autophradates utterly beaten, but after taking Citium and Amathus, Evagoras crossed the sea, took Tyre by assault, and laid waste Phœnicia and Cilicia.

The princes of Asia Minor then became alarmed, and Hecatomnus of Caria joined the allies. Sparta, weakened by the war, then made a sudden treaty with the Persians, and Antalcidas went to Susa to arrange this Peace, so celebrated in the history of Greece, and thereupon a decree from Asia notified to all the people of Hellas that hostilities were to be suspended and the liberty of all sides was henceforth to be respected; and as no state was in a position to resist the united kingdoms of Sparta and Persia, the command was obeyed. A little more than half a century before, Athens by a treaty with an Artaxerxes, forced him to acknowledge the independence of the Greeks of Asia; and now Sparta, treating with a second Artaxerxes, gave the Hellenes back into his power.

[622]

The Great King, being now free to turn his whole attention to the rebellious countries, Evagoras was the one to be first attacked; Cyprus was in effect a sort of open road to Egypt and the people possessing it had command of the sea and could intercept an army on its way to the Delta from Palestine. So Artaxerxes mustered three hundred ships and three hundred thousand foot-soldiers, and after placing them under the command of Tiribazus he despatched them to the island. The Cypriote corsairs intercepted the convoy and reduced it to such a wretched condition that a mutiny broke out. However, Evagoras was finally beaten at sea near Citium, and his fleet was destroyed. But still hopeful, he left his son to find a way out of the difficulty and repaired to Egypt to implore the help of the Pharaoh (385).

But Haker had enough to do for his own safety without risking the best part of his forces in a distant expedition; so Evagoras and the subsidies he brought back from Egypt were very insufficient. Reduced to an army of three thousand men, he shut himself up in Salamis, where he was besieged for years. The treachery of one of the Persian generals, Gaos, son-in-law of Tiribazus, gave him a moment’s hope, for Gaos, after joining Haker, asked for the help of the Lacedæmonians, but he died without having done anything, so Evagoras was again alone in the presence of the enemy. Whilst the officers of the Great King were engaged in besieging him, Artaxerxes himself nearly lost his life in an unfortunate campaign against the Cadusians. A brave soldier, but an incompetent general, his troops, worn out with hunger and fatigue, would have perished in their march across the mountains by the hand of an implacable enemy had not Tiribazus cleverly persuaded the barbarians to sue for peace at the moment of their triumph.

As the defeat of Evagoras showed Haker that the submission of Cyprus was only a question of time, he went meanwhile to Asia Minor, where he made a not very advantageous alliance with the Pisidians, who were then in full revolt. He found more assistance in Greece, for the Peace of Antalcidas having left a number of mercenaries without employment, he soon mustered twenty thousand men. The Persians, being still busy in Cyprus, offered no opposition to the arrival of the reinforcements, and this was fortunate for Egypt, for as Haker died in 380 and as his heirs Psamut and Niafaarut II succeeded each other on the throne within a short time, the settlement of the succession plunged the country into two years’ warfare.

The turbulence of the great feudal chiefs which had robbed the Saïtes of their power was equally fatal to the Mendesians, and the prince of Sebennytus, Nekht-Hor-heb (Nectanebo I), was borne to the throne by the soldiers. According to Ptolemaic tradition, he was the son of Niafaarut I, and had been kept from the throne by the jealousy of the gods. But whatever was his origin, Egypt had no cause to repent his coronation. Feeling that a continuance of the supplies which had been allowed by Haker to Evagoras would be waste of money, he stopped them, and the inevitable fall of the tyrant of Salamis ensued. Although abandoned by all, and weary of a six years resistance, he would only surrender on the most advantageous terms. Not only was Artaxerxes to pardon his rebellion, but he was to retain his title and prerogatives for the payment of an annual tribute. Nectanebo, now brought in contact with the Great King, redoubled his activity. The events of the last few years having proved the talents of Chabrias, the Athenian, Nectanebo invited him to organise his army. Chabrias accepted the offer, albeit without his government’s authority, and he soon transformed the Delta into a regularly fortified camp. The Persians[623] strove to measure their attack according to the means of the enemy’s defence. Akko, on the southern coast of Syria, was the only port large enough to harbour the Persian fleets against tempests and surprises, so Pharnabazus made it his headquarters and the base of his operations. For three years it was the place of muster for provisions and ammunition, sailors and soldiers, and the Phœnician and Greek fleets. The advance of the enterprise was several times nearly arrested by the rivalries of the Persian chiefs, Tithraustes, Datames, and Abrocomas, and the intrigues of the court, but Pharnabazus always succeeded in getting rid of his rivals; and at the beginning of 373 the expedition was ready to start. It consisted of 200,000 soldiers, 20,000 mercenaries, 300 picked men, 200 twenty-oared galleys and many transport ships.

But at the last moment Egypt lost her best commander, for Artaxerxes asked Athens by what right she authorised Chabrias to serve against him in the Egyptian ranks; and at the same time he begged his friends, the Athenians, to lend him their general, Iphicrates, for a time. So the Athenians ordered the return of Chabrias, and sent Iphicrates to Syria, where he took command of the Greek auxiliaries; and thus reinforced, the Persians started in 373.

On arriving at Pelusium, Iphicrates saw he had but slight chance of forcing its surrender, for not only had the fortifications of the town been increased, but the inhabitants had cut the canals, and inundated the approaches. Iphicrates advised the Persians to take it by surprise. So three thousand men were secretly despatched to the Mendesian mouth of the Nile, where they attacked the entrenchments which guarded it. The garrison, imprudently sallying forth, was beaten and pursued with such vigour that victors and vanquished entered pell mell into the fort. The breach being made, the Persians could have promptly taken possession of the place, but the opportunity was lost through the dissensions of the generals. Iphicrates having learned from the prisoners that Memphis was short of soldiers, advised Pharnabazus quickly to reascend the Nile and take the capital before Nectanebo’s reinforcements arrived. But Pharnabazus thought the plan too dangerous and decided to wait for the whole army to rejoin him. Iphicrates then suggested attempting the venture with his own company; but the Egyptians, suspicious of his having some secret design upon Egypt, declined the offer. As these delays gave the enemy time to recover from the first reverse, Nectanebo again took the offensive, attacked the Persians, and obtained the victory in several skirmishes.

In the meanwhile summer arrived, the land was inundated, and Iphicrates and Pharnabazus beat a retreat and returned to Syria, from whence Iphicrates, weary of the recriminations of his Asiatic colleagues, secretly fled to Greece, and the remainder of his fleet and army dispersed soon after his departure; thus Egypt was saved for a quarter of a century.

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But this failure in no way deflected from the influence exercised by the Great King over Greece since the Peace of 387; and Sparta, Athens, and Thebes disputed for his alliance more hotly than ever.

In 372 Antalcidas reappeared at Susa to again beg for the king’s interposition in Greece, so in 367 Pelopidas and Ismenias obtained a rescript bidding the Greeks keep the peace; upon which Athens sent ambassadors to obtain subsidies from Persia. The Great King seems to have become a sort of supreme arbiter to whom each city came to plead her cause. But capable as was this arbiter in imposing his will abroad, he was not master in his own domains, for, kind and easy-going, and more inclined to give than to exact, Artaxerxes had not the energy necessary to repress the ambition of the provincial governors.

Ariobarzanes of Pontus was the first to rebel, and Datames and Aspis of Cappadocia soon followed suit, and defied their sovereign for years.

When these leaders were defeated by treachery, all the satraps of the western provinces from the frontiers of Egypt to the Hellespont, entered into an offensive and defensive alliance; and the empire was in danger of foundering; for Egypt, always on the watch, had profited by this revolt to exhibit her hatred of Persia, and to add to her own security. Nectanebo had died in 364 and Tachus, who had succeeded him, did not hesitate to negotiate with the rebels, who despatched Rheomithres to him to discuss the terms of the treaty.

Tachus having inherited from Nectanebo a fine fleet and a full treasury loaned the ambassador five hundred talents of silver, and fifty ships with which he sailed for Leucas on the coast of Asia Minor, where his colleagues were waiting for him delighted with the success of the mission. But not having confidence in the issue of the struggle, Rheomithres sought an early opportunity of reconciliation with the Great King, and he had scarcely arrived when he joined with Orontes in despatching the insurgents to Susa in chains. Tachus had thus benevolently assisted the Persian king to fill his coffers and to master his armies, but in spite of this last disappointment the position of Egypt was so brilliant and that of Persia so wretched that he decided to take the offensive and invade Syria. In this design he was supported by Chabrias, whom the reverses of an adventurous life had again brought back to Egypt; but Tachus had not sufficient funds for a long campaign in a foreign country, so the Greek pointed out the means of procuring them.

The Egyptian priesthood was rich, so Chabrias told the king that as the money disbursed annually for the sacrifices and for the support of the temples, would be better spent in the service of the state, he advised him to demolish the majority of the sacerdotal colleges. The priests, however, retained them at the expense of their personal property, and after the king had graciously accepted this sacrifice, he told them that in the future, and during the expedition against the Persians, he would exact from them nine-tenths of the sacred revenues. This tax would have sufficed for the needs had it been fully paid, but the priests doubtless found means to avoid paying the whole sum.

Chabrias then advised the increase of the capitation tax and the tax on houses, the exaction of an obole on each ardeb of grain sold, the levying of a tenth on navigation, fabrics, and manual trades. These charges soon added to the resources, but another difficulty ensued, which the Greek overcame with equal energy.

Egypt had little coin and the system of exchange was used by the people in the ordinary transactions of life.

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The Greek mercenaries, however, declined to be paid in kind or in metals uncoined, and they demanded ringing pieces of money as the price of their blood. So the order was issued that the people should bring to the treasury all the minted or unminted gold and silver in their possession with the understanding that they were to be gradually reimbursed from the taxes of the future.

If these measures cost Tachus his popularity, they empowered him to raise 24,000 native soldiers and 10,000 Greeks to equip a fleet of two hundred sail and to hire the best generals of the period. But he was too emulative to succeed, he was not contented with Chabrias and the alliance with Athens, but he also wanted Agesilaus and the alliance of Sparta. In spite of his infirmities and his eighty years, Agesilaus was not insensible to gain and flattery; and tempted by the promise of supreme command, he set out with a thousand soldiers. On his arrival he was met by a disappointment, for Tachus only gave him the command of the mercenaries, as he kept the chief leadership for himself and put the fleet in the hands of Chabrias.

The old hero, after showing his vexation by an exhibition of Spartan temper, was appeased by the presents he was given, and he consented to accept the proffered post. However, disputes of a more serious character soon broke out between him and his allies, for he wished Tachus to remain in Egypt, and leave the conduct of the operations to his generals. But the facility with which the captains of the troops passed from one camp to another was not calculated to inspire the Egyptian with confidence, so he refused, and after nominating his brother-in-law, who also bore the name of Tachus, regent, he repaired to the camp. The Persians were not strong enough to appear in the open, so Tachus commanded his cousin Nekht-neb-ef (Nectanebo II), the son of the regent, to besiege them in their fortresses. The war then dragged along and discontent broke out among the troops, and treachery lurked in the army. The financial expedient of Chabrias had exasperated the priests and the common people, and the complaints which had been stifled by fear of the mercenaries, were voiced as soon as the expedition had crossed the frontier. The regent, instead of quelling this discontent, secretly fomented it, and wrote to tell his son to claim the crown.

Nectanebo soon won over to his side the Egyptians under his command, but they were insufficient so long as the Greeks had not declared for him. Chabrias refused to withdraw from his engagements with the king; but Agesilaus was not so scrupulous. His vanity had been deeply wounded whilst in Egypt, for not only had he been refused the command to which he considered he was entitled, but his small figure, his infirmities and his rough Lacedæmonian ways had been made fun of by the courtiers. When Tachus begged Agesilaus to take the field against the rebels, he ironically replied that he had been sent to help the Egyptians, not to fight against them. However, before finally deciding which side to take, he consulted the ephores, and, as they permitted him to do his best to advance the interests of the country, he declared himself for Nectanebo, in spite of the entreaties of Chabrias.

Tachus, thus abandoned by his allies, took refuge at Sidon, and from thence he repaired to Artaxerxes, who received him kindly and placed him at the head of a fresh expedition against Egypt in the year 361.

The news of the king’s application to Persia excited general revolt in the valley of the Nile, and as the support of the foreigner aroused the suspicion of the native races, they joined the prince of Mendes.

[626]

Nectanebo having abandoned the conquests of his predecessors brought back his forces to Egypt, and arrived at Pelusium, where he found himself at the head of a large and resolute army with which, albeit undisciplined, Agesilaus advised the king to attack the insurgents before they had time to take the field. But unfortunately the Spartan was not in favour, for the prince of Mendes had tried to corrupt him, and although he had on that occasion shown unhoped-for loyalty, he was not trusted. Nectanebo made Tanis his headquarters, and his enemies hoped to besiege him there. The circle of ditches encompassing the town was almost completed, and provisions were getting scarce, when Agesilaus received orders to attempt a sortie, but he forced the blockade under shadow of the night, and a few days later, gained a decisive victory.

Nectanebo would gladly have kept him with him, for he was in fear of a surprise by the Persians, but the Spartan, being tired of Egypt and her intrigues, left the country, and died of exhaustion on the coast of Cyrenaica [probably 360].

The onset soon followed, as Pharaoh had anticipated, but it was weak and uncertain: Tachus, who was to have led it, died before it began, and the discords of the royal family prevented the other generals from acting in concert. The old Artaxerxes had three sons by his wife Statira—Darius, Ariaspes, and Ochus. Darius the eldest had been solemnly recognised as heir presumptive, but threatened with seeing himself supplanted by Ochus, he conspired the death of his father; however, he was discovered, imprisoned, and executed in his cell. So Ariaspes became the successor-elect, but Ochus told him that his father intended to have him put to an ignominious death, and he persuaded him to commit suicide so as to escape it. Arsames, a bastard son of one of the harem ladies, still remained as an heir to the throne, but he was assassinated by Ochus, and Artaxerxes succumbed to this last misfortune and died of sorrow, after a reign of forty-six years [358].

ARTAXERXES III

Artaxerxes III (Ochus) opened his reign with a massacre of all the princes of the royal family; then, thus freed from the pretenders who might have disputed the crown, he continued the war preparations, which had been interrupted by the death of his father and his own accession. Never had it been more important to re-establish the Persian dominion on the banks of the Nile. Egypt had been a source of continual trouble to the Great King ever since the recovery of her independence sixty years before.

The first attack of Ochus was repelled with loss. Two adventurers who commanded the troops of Nectanebo, Diophantes of Athens and Lamius of Sparta, gained a complete victory over the assailants, and obliged them to retire with loss.

The provinces on the coast of the Mediterranean, always unquiet since the campaign of Tachus and the revolt of Evagoras, took advantage of the seemingly favourable opportunity, and Artabazus revolted in Asia Minor, and nine of the little kings of Cyprus proclaimed their independence. Phœnicia still hesitated, but the satrap’s insolence, the rapacity of the generals, and the want of discipline of the soldiers returned from Egypt decided her. At a meeting held at Tripolis the representatives of the Phœnician cities conferred on Tennes, the prince of Sidon, the perilous honour of directing the military operations, and his first act was to destroy the royal park,[627] which the Persians had in the Lebanon Mountains, and to burn the provisions stored in the ports for the war in Egypt. At first Ochus thought that his lieutenants would soon avenge these acts, and, indeed, it was not long before Idrieus, tyrant of Caria, supported by eight thousand mercenaries, quelled the Cypriotes. But in Asia Minor, Artabazus, aided by Athens and Thebes, withstood the troops sent against him, and Tennes gained an important victory in Syria. He had naturally implored the help of Nectanebo, and he had sent him four thousand Greeks under his best general, Mentor, the Rhodian; and Belesys, the satrap of Syria, and Mazæus, the satrap of Cilicia, were beaten. Then enraged at these reverses Ochus convened his vanguard and rear-guard of thirty thousand Asiatics and ten thousand Greeks for a final effort; and the Sidonians, on their side, surrounded their city with a triple moat, increased the height of their walls and burnt their ships. Their leader was, unfortunately, wanting in energy, for Tennes, until the day of revolt, had lived a life of pleasure, surrounded with dancers and musicians, whom he had brought from Ionia and Greece at great expense.

The approach of Ochus robbed him of the little courage he possessed, and he tried by treachery to his subjects to atone for the treason of which he was guilty to his sovereign. His confidential minister was a certain Thessalion, and he sent him to the Persian camp and offered to betray Sidon, and act as a guide to Egypt, in return for the retention of his life and rank.

Ochus had accepted the conditions of his rebellious vassal when a moment of pride nearly compromised the affair. For Thessalion asked the king to give him his right hand on the promise of the fulfilment of the engagement; and this presumption so enraged Ochus, that he gave orders for his execution. As they were taking him away, Thessalion cried out that if the Great King forfeited the proffered assistance of Tennes, he would fail in his efforts against Phœnicia and Egypt; whereupon, Ochus granted the request made of him.

When the Persians were only a few days’ march from the city, Thessalion lured the hundred chief citizens to the camp on the pretext of a general meeting, and they were put to death by javelin blows. The Sidonians, although abandoned by their king, still wished to hold out, but Mentor told them that their mercenaries would bring the enemy into the place at a moment’s notice; so after deciding to throw themselves on the mercy of the conqueror, five hundred of them were sent as deputies with olive branches in their hands. But Ochus was the cruellest, most blood-thirsty king Persia had ever had, and he treated the envoys in his usual way. The rest of the population, therefore, seeing that death was inevitable, shut themselves up in their houses and set fire to them. Forty thousand persons perished in the fire, and such was the wealth of the best houses, that the right of extracting from the ruins the ingots of gold and silver was sold at a high price. The punishment of the town was followed by the execution of Tennes, and the other cities, alarmed at his fate, opened their gates without striking a blow.

After the settlement of Syria, Ochus marched to Egypt without further delay. The Great King’s victories recalled the vacillating provinces to submission.

The army was divided into three parts, each one commanded by a barbarian and by a Greek. In passing through the marsh lands, several battalions were lost in the shifting sands; and on arriving at Pelusium, the enemy was found ready. Nectanebo had fewer men than his adversary, his force consisting of sixty thousand Egyptians, twenty thousand Libyans, and as many[628] Greeks, but the recollection of his own successes and those of his predecessors, in spite of unequal numbers, inspired him with courage in the issue of the struggle. His squadron was likewise unequal to the combined fleets of Cyprus and Phœnicia, but he had sufficient flat-bottomed boats to defend the mouths of the Nile. The weak points of his position were defended by fortresses or entrenched camps; in short, all measures were taken for a defensive war.

The imprudent ardour of his Greek auxiliaries, however, spoiled his plan. Pelusium was occupied by five thousand men, under the command of Philophron. Some of the Thebans, who had served under Lacrates in the Persian army, desirous of again justifying their renown for bravery gained in the campaigns of Epaminondas, crossed a deep canal, which separated them from the town, and provoked the garrison to an encounter in the open field. Philophron accepted the challenge, and disputed the victory till nightfall. The following day Lacrates, having bridged the canal with a dike, led his company to the attack, and began storming the town. In a few days a breach was made, but the Egyptians, being as clever in the use of the pickaxe as the sword, built a new wall crowned with towers, whilst the old one was being demolished. Nectanebo, accompanied by thirty thousand native soldiers, five thousand Greeks, and half of the Libyan contingent, followed the course of the siege from a distance; and his presence prevented the Persians from approaching nearer.

Weeks elapsed, and it seemed that the tactics of temporisation would have their usual result, when an unforeseen incident complicated the situation. Among the chiefs of companies who fought under Ochus, there was a certain Nicostratus from Argos, whose personal strength likened him to Hercules, and who, like the traditional hero, was equipped with a lion’s skin and a club.

In imitation, doubtless, of the plan formerly proposed by Iphicrates to Pharnabazus, Nicostratus forced some peasants, whose wives and children were in his power, to guide him to one of the mouths of the Nile, which had been left unfortified, and there he landed his body of troops, and fortified himself in the rear of Nectanebo. The enterprise, undertaken with too few men, was more than rash, and if the mercenaries had contented themselves with harassing Nicostratus, without coming to an open battle, they would have forced him to re-embark or surrender. But their impatience spoilt everything, for the five thousand men forming the garrison of the neighbouring town marched under Clinias of Cos against the Argive and were beaten. The breach was at last made and the Persians, encouraged by the success of Nicostratus, ran the risk of being separated from the troops on the eastern frontier and utterly destroyed, for he had turned back to the Delta. Whilst he was trying to muster a fresh army at Memphis, Pelusium surrendered to Lacrates; Mentor took possession of Bubastis, and the strongest cities fearing the same fate as Sidon opened their gates almost without resistance.

Nectanebo, in despair at these successive defections, fled to Ethiopia with his treasures, and the successful coup de main of Nicostratus re-established the empire of the Great King.

Egypt had certainly prospered under the administration of her latter indigenous kings. From the reign of Amyrtæus to that of Nectanebo, the sovereigns had conscientiously worked to efface the traces of the foreign invasions and to restore the kingdom to its old prosperity. The two capitals Thebes and Memphis, were not forgotten, and the cities of the Delta,[629] Sebennytus, Bubastis, and Pithom were also embellished. And in spite of the short time given to the work, the majority of these works bear no trace of haste or carelessness; and the artists being quite conversant with the methods of ancient art, knew how to produce chefs d’œuvre comparable to those of the Saïtic period.

But now the victory of Ochus was a more fatal blow to Egypt than the invasion of Cambyses had been. Ochus had personal feelings of hate against his new subjects, and he has been compared to Typhon for cruelty, and he was dubbed an ass, because it is the animal consecrated to the god of evil.

Arrived at Memphis, he gave orders for the Apis bull to be roasted for a banquet, and he enthroned and worshipped an ass in the temple of Ptah.

The goat of Mendes shared the fate of Apis, the temples were sacked, the sacred books carried off to Persia, the walls of the city razed to the ground, and the chief partisans of the indigenous royalty were massacred.

When these acts were over, the Greek mercenaries returned to their country, laden with booty, and the Great King returned to Susa, leaving the reconquered satrapy in charge of Pherendates. The success of the expedition had been mainly due to the eunuch Bagoas and Mentor the Rhodian; and to them Ochus entrusted the government of the empire. Bagoas directed the politics of the interior, and Mentor, placed at the head of the maritime provinces, soon reduced them to order.

Artabazus retired from the struggle and sought refuge with Philip of Macedon. Some tyrants on the coast of the Ægean Sea willingly submitted to the new dominion, and others resisting, like Hermias of Atarneus, the friend of Aristotle, were seized and put to death.

Thus Persia in a few years seemed to regain the widespread power which she had lost since the accession of Artaxerxes II, and Ochus ranked as high in the minds of his contemporaries as her great conquerors, Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius. But Ochus himself was only an oriental despot of the common type. His empire still had the appearance of strength, but the races, strangers to each other, and with difficulty suppressed by the satraps, inclined more and more to detachment from him, and already some of the governments of the previous century only existed in name. In the north towards the sources of the Euphrates, Tigris, and Halys, there was nothing but a confused mass of kingdoms and tribes, of which some like the Armenians still recognised the suzerainty of the Persians, and others, like the Chalybes and the Tibareni retained their independence. The kings of Bithynia, Paphlagonia, and Pontus still paid tribute in an intermittent fashion; but the Mysians, Pisidians, Lycaonians, had ceased payment. The countries beyond the Tigris were in the same disorder. The Cadusians, the Amardians, and the Tapuri, protected by the mountains of the Caspian Sea, withstood every effort to dislodge them. India and the Sacæ had passed from the state of subjects to that of friendly allies, and the savage hordes of Gedrosia and Paropamisus rebelled against all authority. During the dismemberment of the empire the order of administration, so cleverly organised by Darius, was broken by the feebleness of his mercenaries. Not only had the custom of annually sending inspectors to the provinces become a mere formality, which was often omitted, but the distinction between the civil and military power had disappeared. The officer who commanded the troops nearly always filled the post of governor and united several satrapies under one rule.

The army and revenue were still, in spite of everything, the greatest in the world, but, if the darics had retained their value, the battalions had lost in strength. The old powers of the Persians, Medes, and Bactrians, and[630] other races of Iran, were doubtless undiminished, but nobody troubled to make them conversant with the progress made during the century in military tactics. Their contingents were only heavy, undisciplined companies, easy to conquer in spite of the incontestable bravery of the individuals composing them; so, as their training would have taken a long time, it was better to add to their ranks mercenaries at a great price.

Since the time of Artaxerxes II the Greeks formed the kernel of the Persian forces; and the armies of the Great King were commanded by Hellenic generals of the school of Agesilaus, Iphicrates, Epaminondas, and the best tacticians of the time.

The fleets were placed under Greek admirals, and the cruel Ochus entirely owed his victories to this preponderance of European command, and the fact was so well known beyond the Ægean Sea that the question was openly discussed there.

If the decadence of the empire was sudden, the fault did not lie with the people. The Persians had remained as they were at the beginning, sober, honest, and intrepid, but the dynasty had degenerated to an irrecoverable degree. The early Achæmenidæ had themselves ruled all the affairs of the state; then, the campaign in Greece having disgusted Xerxes with militant royalty, he shut himself up in his harem and left the perilous honour of fighting to his generals, and the care of administration to the eunuch Aspamithres. This custom, once established, was followed by his successors, and the sovereigns now rarely intervened in the conduct of military operations. Neither Artaxerxes I nor Darius Nothus appeared on the field of battle, and Artaxerxes II only took part in two of the wars which embittered his long reign. Ochus, who had seemed to wish to recover the traditional power of the founders of the empire, returned to Susa after his victories in Syria and Egypt, and the life of the princes was passed in the midst of the intrigues and crimes of the harem. Brought up by women and eunuchs, and surrounded from infancy with pomp and luxury, they soon wearied of thinking and acting, and mechanically fell under the direction of their familiars. The sanguinary Parysatis reigned under the name of her husband, Darius Nothus, and her son, Artaxerxes II; and Bagoas influenced Ochus for nearly six years, and his power was certainly beneficial to the country.

THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE

Macedonia, which had long remained unconcerned with the general movement, now began to take part in the Hellenic concert. Bagoas saw the danger of letting her take the ascendant, and form a union of all the forces hitherto scattered in Greece. He therefore supported all the enemies of Philip.

Unfortunately, whilst Bagoas was working to prevent the perils menacing the empire, his rivals at Susa lowered him in the esteem of his master, and their intrigues left him no alternative but to strike or die. He therefore poisoned Ochus, gave the throne to Arses, the youngest son of the king, and assassinated all the other children. Egypt was delighted at the news, and saw in the tragic fate of her conqueror a notable revenge of the gods he had outraged.

Arses was at first only a weak tool in the hands of his master, but when years gave him a taste for independence he became impatient at his subjection; so Bagoas sacrificed him to his own safety as he had Ochus. So many[631] successive murders had so completely exhausted the Achæmenian family that he was at loss for a moment to know where to find a king; but he finally decided in favour of one of his friends, Codomannus, who, according to some, was the great-grandson of Darius II, and according to others, was not of royal descent. Codomannus took, on his accession, the name of Darius. Being brave, generous, clement, and desirous of doing well he was superior to the kings who had preceded him, and he deserved to have reigned before the empire was so enfeebled.

When Bagoas saw that his protégé intended to reign by himself, he wished to get rid of him, but, betrayed by one of his people, he was made to drink the poison he had destined for Darius. However, Darius did not long enjoy in peace the power which had been so much envied. Having ascended the throne the same year as Alexander, some days before the battle of the Chersonesus, he saw the dangers threatening him from the Macedonian’s ambition, and he was powerless to prevent them.

He was beaten at the Granicus, beaten at Issus, beaten at Arbela, and then killed in flight by one of his satraps. Alexander then took possession of his empire, and henceforth the Greek race supplanted the Persians in the part they had played for two centuries as the ruling power of the world.e

Bessus the Satrap of Bactria, who murdered the fleeing Darius, assumed the royal title and the name of Artaxerxes IV. His adventures and plans were numerous, but on the farther side of the Oxus he fell into Alexander’s hands and was speedily put to death.a

THE OLD ORIENT AT THE END OF THE PERSIAN EMPIRE

We have followed the political history of the Old Orient and have now seen it swallowed up in Alexander’s empire. Before we turn to the new races that are to demand our attention, let us take a final look at the countries which were the scene of the history of the early world, and see what they had become. On the south, on the ancient frontier of the Semitic races, Elam was divided into the mountainous district, and the district of the plains, and the history of these two districts was quite distinct one from another. For the people of the Oxus mountains, the Elamites and the Kossæans, retained their independence and made raids on the neighbouring territories from their unassailable haunts, whilst the people of the plains gladly submitted to the Persian yoke and readily accepted any ruler that appeared.

The favourable situation of Susa or Shushan had early attracted the attention of the Achæmenians; and the old palace of the Elamites, built upon an artificial elevation and cooled in the summer by the mountain breezes, and warmed in winter by the soft air from the Persian Gulf, became their favourite residence. Darius, son of Hystaspes, finding it too small for him, had it rebuilt and it was burnt in the reign of Artaxerxes I, and restored by Artaxerxes II.

The nations of the tableland of Asia Minor, and the mountains of the Tigris and Euphrates, those of Urartu and Van, Mushke [Moschi], Tubal, and the neighbouring peoples of northern Assyria, being decimated by the Scythian invasions, had submitted to the younger, less tried races. The Mushke and Tubal nations were divided into two branches, many of their tribes, with probably the rest of the Cimmerians, remained in the deep defiles of the Taurus; and the others having pushed towards the north, dwelt with other tribes at the time of Herodotus, on the mountains bordering the Black Sea.

[632]

When the Median conqueror arrived in those parts which are known as Cappadocia, he only found there Leuco-Syrians, the rest of the Hittites, and a new people called Armenians. The Armenians, who had come from Phrygia towards the end of the seventh century, settled at first in the districts adjoining their own country, then they gradually arrived at the source of the Halys, and in the time of Herodotus they were in possession of the districts on the east of the Euphrates (the Asia Minor of Roman geographers), and the western side of the Arsanias. They formed a satrapy of their own (the thirteenth), whilst the people of Urartu, the Alarodians, were included in the eighteenth. During the troubles which followed the campaign of Greece, the aspect of the country changed once more. The Moschi separated themselves from the Tibareni and joined the Colchians in the basin of the Phasis. The Alarodians, pushed back towards the north, joined the half savage races of the Caucasus. The Armenians, driven further to the east, gradually took possession of the imposing mountainous district between Asia Minor and the Caspian Sea, and came down into the plains of the Araxes. At the time of Alexander’s appearance in Asia, they were settled in their new district, having subjugated, or destroyed all the aborigines who had not emigrated, and their princes exercised a truly royal authority under the modest title of satrap.

Cappadocia was divided into two provinces, Cappadocia Proper, and Pontus, of which the hereditary governors, connected with the Achæmenian family, only waited an opportunity for declaring themselves kings. The old dynasties, names and races, and the warlike, barbarous world that the Assyrian conquerors had known between the plain of Mesopotamia and the Black Sea were now extinct, and the three kingdoms evolved from the ruins had even effaced the memory of it. In the domain proper of the Semitic races, between the coasts of the Mediterranean and the last abutment of the plain of Iran, the decadence was less general and apparent. Half of the old races, such as the Ruthennu and the Hittites, had disappeared with the cities of Carchemish, Arpad, and Kadesh, and although Batnæ, Hamath, and Damascus, escaped destruction, they fell into obscurity, and whole districts lapsed into desert land for want of hands to till them.

Phœnicia, impoverished by the destruction of Tyre and Sidon, had trouble to repair her losses; all her colonies were gone, and the little kingdoms of Cyprus with the towns of Citium and Amathus, had enough to do to defend their independence against the Greeks.

Assyria herself was only a vague memory of the past. The district between the Tigris and Euphrates was almost deserted. Some places, as Nisibis, still retained some of their old importance, and existed as well as they could on their own resources, but towards the south the numberless cities discovered in former times by the Ninevite conquerors, as they marched toward Syria, were now only heaps of ruins. On the banks of the Tigris the people were neither plentiful nor prosperous. The Assyrian exiles, liberated by Cyrus after the fall of Babylon, had rebuilt Asshur and enriched themselves by the cultivation of the land, and by commerce, but the district between the Upper and Lower Zabs was quite deserted, while Assyria Proper had not recovered from her ruin.

Calah was inhabited: “Its walls 25 feet wide and 100 long and two parasangs in circumference, were built of brick upon a substratum of stone 20 feet high.” The pyramidal tower of the goat temple, still in existence,[633] “was in stone and one plethrum broad and two high.”

Two hundred years had scarcely elapsed since the death of Saracus [Sin-shar-ishkun] when Xenophon travelled through the country, and the people of the neighbouring small towns were already ignorant of the names of the ruined Calah and Nineveh by which they were living. They called the first Larissa, and the second Mespila, and the historians themselves were not much better informed; for the long line of terrible conquerors, beginning with Tukulti-Ninib and ending with Asshurbanapal, was summed up under the mythical names of Semiramis and Sardanapalus. Semiramis was credited with the victories and conquests, and Sardanapalus with the refined and intellectual qualities of the race. Everything Assyrian was attributed to one or other of these two.

In Babylonia, Ur was now only an insignificant town, but Erech was the seat of a school of theology and science, as celebrated throughout the East as that of Borsippa. Babylon by itself was regarded as the whole of Chaldea by the majority of travellers. Babylon was in fact the second capital of the Persian empire. The court resided there part of the year, as it was the centre of commerce and industry which was wanting in Susa. The city made several attempts during the first century after the conquest to restore her national dynasty, but after she was sacked by Xerxes seems to have submitted to her subjugation. But even in her abjection the city was a source of many surprises to the traveller. Unlike Greek cities, it was built on a regular plan, by which the streets crossed each other at right angles, some parallel, and others at right angles to the Euphrates; and the latter terminated at a gate of brass, which opened on to the works of the quay, and gave access to the river. The street throngs numbered specimens of every Asiatic race brought hither by the demands of commerce, and the natives of the place were distinguished by their elegant dress, consisting of a linen tunic reaching to the feet and surmounted with another tunic made of wool, with a sort of white tippet.

When the Persian rule succeeded the Chaldean, the Aramæan language did not lose its importance. It became the official language of all the western provinces and it is found on the coins of Asia Minor, upon the papyrus and steles of Egypt, in the edicts and correspondence of the satraps, and even on those of the Great King.

From Nisibis to Raphia, and along the banks of the Gulf of Persia to the shores of the Red Sea, it supplanted all languages, Semitic or otherwise, hitherto in use.

The Phœnician language, however, held its own with some success at first, and it was used for a long time on the coast and in the island of Cyprus; but Hebrew, which had begun to fall into disuse during the captivity, gradually disappeared as it came in contact with the dialects spoken by the races near Jerusalem. It existed as the “noble language” of the aristocracy, faithful to the discipline of Judah and then when Aramæan robbed it of this last service, it remained as the literary liturgical language.e

FOOTNOTES

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[634]

CHAPTER V. PERSIAN CIVILISATION

Apart from their sacred books the Persians have left us no great literature, yet they had the signal distinction to invent an alphabet which they used in all their later writings. This alphabet was founded upon or adapted from the syllabary of the Babylonians. That system, as we have seen, is an elaborated and complicated system requiring several hundred characters. The Persians, it would appear, like the Phœnicians, made an analysis of human speech, which shows it to be composed of comparatively few fundamental sounds, and adopted a relatively simple cuneiform character to represent each one of these sounds. In this script the inscriptions of the Persian kings—in particular of Darius and his immediate successors—were written. There was another modification made by the Persians, as witnessed by these inscriptions, which, if not so important, had considerable practical value; namely, the use of a uniform oblique line to separate different words in an inscription. To the modern reader it seems strange that the ancient nations, with the exception of the Persians, should have had the uniform custom of writing their letters or syllabic characters in an unbroken series with no space or sign to indicate the division into words. This was as true of the ancient Greek inscriptions as of those of Egypt and Mesopotamia. It was left to the Persians to discover the practical value or convenience of indicating the separation between words. That such a custom came into vogue in Persia was perhaps due to the fact that the people there were widely educated, it being customary to teach all children of the better classes to read, as was probably never the case with any other of the oriental nations.

We have already seen how valuable this custom of separating the words in their inscriptions has been to the modern investigator of the cuneiform writing. But for the fact of the Persian alphabet and the added fact of division of sentences into words in writing, the cuneiform script, on which the modern science of Assyriology is founded, might much longer have defied attempts to decipher it.

In the field of art, it has been said, with probable justice, the Persians were not originators, though they showed themselves actively receptive of the inventions of others. The relics of their art that have been preserved are very palpably based on Assyrian models. It is believed to have been chiefly through the Persians that Assyrian art was transmitted to Greece. In the following account we aim to give the reader a comprehensive view of Persian culture in all branches of civilisation.a

[635]

RELIGION AND SOCIAL ORDERS

Zoroaster made his appearance in the heart of Asia, among a people whose constitution, religion, and manners are completely different from our own. His doctrines, however, like those of every reformer, were occasioned by present circumstances, and adapted to the times in which he flourished; and consequently we form a just estimate of his character only by contemplating him with a reference to his age. We must forget that we are Europeans, and together with our more advanced knowledge, lay aside our prejudices also. It is no objection to his laws that they contain much that is strange, or even absurd; nay, this very circumstance rather confirms their authenticity, being precisely what was to be expected in a legislative system belonging to so remote an age and country.

In several parts of his writings, Zoroaster speaks of himself as a subject of one of those great despotic governments, which have always abounded in Asia, and consequently was more sensible than a European can be, of the advantages and evils which attend such a form of government in a civilised country.

He could not be blind to the beneficial effects of agriculture, and the other peaceful arts, which flourish only under the shelter of civil society, and his sense of these advantages must have been heightened by the contrast of the lawless and wandering hordes by which his country was overrun. The evils, also, which generally attend despotic governments, must have been no less strikingly presented to his observation: the intolerable oppression of satraps and their subalterns; luxury and debauchery, with the maladies and physical afflictions of another kind, which he himself enumerates and bewails, had so generally crept in, as to excite in him the desire to restore by his religious reform more fortunate and better days.

The picture which an Asiatic forms to himself of such happier days, is different from that which a European would conceive. Bowed down from his youth beneath the yoke of absolute authority, he does not presume to emancipate himself, even in idea; but takes another way of compensating his present grievances. He pictures to himself a despotic government in the hands, not of a tyrant, but a father of his people; under which every class of men and every individual might have his appropriate sphere of action, to which he confined himself, and the duties of which he fulfilled; under whom the peaceful arts of agriculture, tending of flocks, and commerce, were supposed to flourish, riches to increase and abound, as if the hands of the monarch, like those of a divinity, showered blessings on his people.

Such a government and such a sovereign are recorded in the Cyropædia itself; and their image has survived through all the periods of Asiatic history, still continuing to form, as it were, the central point of oriental tradition, and vividly impressed on the code of Zoroaster. According to that sage, the era of Jemshid, the ancient sovereign of Iran, was the golden age of his country. “Jemshid, the father of his people, the most glorious of mortals whom the sun ever beheld. In his days animals perished not: there was no want either of water, or of fruit-bearing trees, or of animals fit for the food of mankind. During the light of his reign there was neither frost nor burning heat, nor death, nor unbridled passions, the work of the Devs. Man appeared to retain the age of fifteen; the children grew up in safety, as long as Jemshid reigned, the father of his people.”

The restoration of such a golden age was the end of the legislation of Zoroaster, who, however, built his code on a religious foundation, agreeably[636] to the practice of the East; and the multifarious ceremonies he prescribed had all reference to certain doctrines intimately associated with his political dogmata; and it is absolutely necessary to bear in mind this alliance, if we would not do injustice to one part or other of his system.

The philosophical system of Zoroaster set out with those speculations with which philosophy, in the infancy of nations, is apt to commence her career, being impelled thereto in the most lively and powerful manner, namely, with discussions respecting the origin of evil, which in so many forms oppresses human nature. It is indifferent to us, whether he was himself the first propounder of the doctrines he maintained on this subject, or whether he borrowed them from more ancient traditions of the East. It is sufficient that in this respect he assumed such high ground that all obscurity which involved the subject seemed to disappear, as long as no clouds of metaphysics obscured the horizon. The doctrine of a good and evil principle, the sources of all good and ill, is the foundation-stone of the whole structure, both of his religious and political philosophy.

This leading idea was, however, modified by the character of a legislator which its author assumed. He asserted the existence of a kingdom of light and a kingdom of darkness: in the former reigns Ormuzd, the author and giver of all good; in the latter, Ahriman, the source of all evil, moral as well as physical. The throne of Ormuzd is surrounded by the seven Amshaspands, the princes of light, of whom the sage himself was the first. Subordinate to these are the Izeds, the genii of good, of whatever kind. The kingdom of darkness subject to Ahriman, contains the same sort of hierarchy; his throne being surrounded by the seven superior Devs, the princes of evil, while an infinite number of inferior Devs are subordinate to the former, as the Izeds to the Amshaspands. The kingdoms of Ormuzd and Ahriman are eternally opposed to each other, but at a future period Ahriman shall be overthrown, and the powers of darkness destroyed; the dominion of Ormuzd shall become universal, and the kingdom of light alone shall subsist and embrace the universe.

It is apparent that this ideal system was copied from the constitutions of the oriental monarchies, and conversely, the forms of the first were applied to the latter: the whole being obviously adapted to the place and circumstances of time in which the legislator appeared. He lived in a country situated on the borders of the nomad tribes, where he had opportunities of comparing the advantages of civil society with the striking contrast presented by the wandering and lawless hordes, which incessantly laid waste his native land. He beheld, as it were, his kingdoms of light and of darkness realised on the earth: Iran, the Medo-Bactrian kingdom, subject to Gustasp, being the image of the kingdom of Ormuzd, and the monarch, of Ormuzd himself; while Turan, the land of the nomad nations to the north, of which Afrasiab was king, was the picture of the kingdom of darkness under the rule of Ahriman. The leading ideas, originally distinct, have been so intimately mixed up together, that if not absolutely confounded, at all events many of the subordinate images have been transferred from one to the other. For instance, as Turan lay to the north of Iran, the kingdom of Ahriman is made to occupy the same relative position; thence descend the Devs, which at all times inflict infinite mischiefs on Iran. As the inhabitants of Turan led a lawless, unsettled life, causing continual mischief by their incursions, so the Devs wander in all directions from their abodes in the north, and seek occasions of inflicting mischief everywhere. Nevertheless, as Ahriman shall eventually be overcome, and his kingdom annihilated,[637] so shall the power of the chiefs of the Turanians be broken; the laws of Zoroaster prevail, and the golden age of Jemshid return.

Such are the principal ideas on which the system of Zoroaster turns. He did not, however, confine himself to generalities, but applied his principles to the different species of created beings. All that exists appertains either to the kingdom of Ormuzd or to that of Ahriman, whether rational or irrational, animate or inanimate. There are pure men, pure animals, pure vegetables (all these the creation of Ormuzd); and again, there are impure men, impure animals, impure vegetables, subject to the dominion of the Devs, and appertaining to the kingdom of Ahriman.

All men are accounted impure (kharfasters), who by thought, word, or deed despise the laws of Zoroaster; all poisonous and pernicious animals or reptiles (which in the countries bordering on Media are much more abundant and formidable than in Europe), with all plants and vegetables possessing the same qualities. On the other hand, in the country where the law of Zoroaster is revered, everything is pure, everything is holy: so that his precepts extend their influence not only over the human race, but even to the brute and inanimate creation. It is the duty of the servant of Ormuzd (mazdryesnan) to foster everything in nature which is pure and holy, as all such things are the creations of Ormuzd, at the same time that the enmity he has vowed against Ahriman and his creation make it incumbent on him to attack and destroy all impure animals. On these principles Zoroaster built his laws for the improvement of the soil by means of agriculture, by tending of cattle, and gardening, which he perpetually inculcates, as if he could not sufficiently impress his disciples with a sense of their importance.

In the internal organisation of his kingdom, Zoroaster continued faithfully to copy the character peculiar to the despotic governments of the East. The whole system reposed on a four-fold division of castes: that of the priests, the warriors, the agriculturists, and the artificers of whatever denomination. This is the order in which they are enumerated, but the legislator omits no opportunity of elevating and dignifying that of the agriculturists. These extract plenty from the earth; their hands wield the blade of Jemshid with which he clove the ground, and drew forth the treasures of abundance. It is to be observed, however, that this division into castes is not described as an institution of Zoroaster, but as having existed from the era of Jemshid; an institution which the legislator did not originate, but merely maintained.

The gradation of ranks is conformable to the hierarchy of the kingdom of Ormuzd. We hear of rulers of petty towns, rulers of streets (or portions of cities), rulers of cities, and rulers of provinces; the head of all these potentates being the king. All, as subjects of Ormuzd, are supposed good and upright, especially the highest of all, the monarch. He is the soul of all, on whom all depend, and around whom the whole system revolves. His commands are absolute and irrevocable, but the religion of Ormuzd forbids him to ordain anything but what is just and good.

These are the principal characteristics of the kingdom sketched by Zoroaster; the picture of a despotic government on the principles of the customs of the East. To this he added precepts calculated to advance the moral improvement of his people; nor did it escape his observation, that on the habits of the nation, and in particular on their domestic virtues, must be founded its public constitution. Hence his laws for the furtherance of marriage, his praises of fruitfulness in women, and his condemnation of the[638] unnatural vices which abounded in the countries where he dwelt. He did not, however, venture to proclaim himself a patron of monogamy, either because he himself had not been convinced of its expediency, or because his countrymen were too firmly attached to their existing practices.

The conservation of his ordinances was entrusted to the priestly caste, the Magians, who, under the Medes, formed one of their original tribes, to whom was committed the preservation of such sciences as were known among them, and the performance of the offices of public devotion. Herodotus expressly names them as a distinct tribe of the Medes, and this arrangement, peculiar to the East, with which the Jewish annals have made us familiar, is further illustrated by the observations already offered respecting the priest-caste of the Egyptians. The reform of Zoroaster also addressed itself to these. According to his own professions, he was only the restorer of the doctrine which Ormuzd himself had promulgated in the days of Jemshid: this doctrine, however, had been misrepresented, a false and delusive Magia, the work of Devs, had crept in, which was first to be extinguished in order to restore the pure laws of Ormuzd. He composed the first and best of his treatises, the Vendidad, at a period when his doctrines had only begun to obtain the ascendency, and when the false Magians, the worshippers of the Devs, withstood him; hence the maledictions which he continually heaps upon them. We know from history that in the end his reformation triumphed, though we are not enabled to trace its progress in detail.

Zoroaster, therefore, must not be considered as the founder, but only the reformer of the caste of Magians, and to him must, therefore, be ascribed the internal constitution of this caste, though it may have subsequently received some further development. The three orders of Herbeds (disciples), Mobeds (masters), and Destur Mobeds (complete masters), into which they were divided, occur in his works. They alone were entitled to perform the offices of religion, they alone possessed the sacred formularies or liturgies by which Ormuzd was to be addressed, and were acquainted with the ceremonies by which the offering of prayers and sacrifice was to be accompanied. This was their peculiar knowledge and their study, and it was only by them that prayers and sacrifice could be presented to the deity. In this manner they came to be considered the only interlocutors between God and man; it was to them alone that Ormuzd revealed his will, they alone contemplated the future, and had the power of revealing it to such as inquired into it through them.

On these foundations was reared, both among the Persians and the Medes, the dignity of the priestly caste. The general belief in predictions, especially as derived from observation of the heavenly bodies, and the custom of undertaking no enterprise of moment without consulting those who were supposed acquainted with such oracles, as well as the blind confidence reposed in such pretenders, all conspired to give this class of men the highest influence, not only in the relations of private life, but also over public undertakings. In the days of Zoroaster, as at present, it was esteemed necessary to the dignity as well as the exigencies of an Asiatic court, that the person of the king should be surrounded by a multitude of soothsayers, wise men, and priests, who formed a part of his council. The origin of this persuasion, which has so universally and invariably prevailed in the East, may be left for others to discuss; but the extraordinary influence which it has exercised over the manners of private life and the constitution of the state at large, deserves the closest attention of every one who interests himself in the history of nations and their manners.

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If we take these things into the account, and assume it as proved that Zoroaster flourished under the Median dynasty, we cannot be surprised by the fact, that on the downfall of that monarchy its hereditary religion was adopted by the conquerors. Supposing (what we are not prepared either to assert or deny) that up to that period these doctrines were unknown to the Persians, yet from the nature of things, their reception was an almost necessary consequence of a fact which is indisputable, the adoption by the Persian monarchs of the court-ceremonial of the Medes. The latter had been defined and prescribed by the mixed political and religious code of that nation, and was inseparable from the authority on which it rested. The Magians and wise men formed the most dignified portion of the court; they surrounded the king’s person, and were indispensable to him as soothsayers and diviners. They were distinguished also by their dress; their girdle (costi), which was not passed over the shoulder like the cord of the Brahmans in the manner of a scarf; the sacred cup havan, used for libations; and the barsom, a bundle of twigs held together by a band. Besides, the question was not whether a new religion should be adopted by the mass of the people (the doctrines of Zoroaster being the exclusive inheritance and science of the priest-caste), but only respecting the observance of certain religious forms and modes of worship which were left for the priests to administer.

It is certain from history that the Median priest-caste became established among the Persians as early as the foundation of their monarchy by Cyrus. Not only do Herodotus and Ctesias describe them as an order of priests under the first Persian princes, but the express testimony of Xenophon in the Cyropædia leaves no further question, possessing as it does an historical value from an observation appended by the author. Having described the etiquette of the Persian court as copied from that of the Medes, he adds: “Cyrus also first appointed the Magi to chant sacred hymns at the rising of the sun, and to offer daily sacrifices to the deities, to whom it was enjoined by their law. This state of things continues to be maintained by each successive monarch; and the rest of the Persian nation followed the example of their prince, conceiving that they should in the same way be more likely to prosper, if they worshipped the gods as their monarch did.”

Thus the first consequence of their appointment was the introduction of a certain religious ceremonial in the court of Persia. It by no means, however, follows from this that the Persians at once laid aside the manners and customs of their forefathers, and, as it were, suddenly became converted into Medes; but rather, that a mixture and union of their ancient and newly-adopted opinions and customs took place. The laws of the Persians, in consequence, came to be cited in connection with those of the Medes; their national deities were still reverenced as before; and in his time Herodotus[640] remarks certain diversities observable in the ceremonies of the Persians as compared with those of the Magians. We must not therefore be surprised at not finding a complete correspondence between the precepts of the Zendavesta and the customs of the Persians; on the contrary, this very diversity is one mark of the genuineness of that composition.

Nor are we authorised to conclude from the expressions of Xenophon that the whole Persian nation at once adopted the Magian religion. This appears to be sufficiently contradicted by the totally different way of life of the various Persian tribes; besides, as we have already had occasion to remark, and shall presently see confirmed, by the Persians Xenophon means the nobler tribes, and possibly only that of the Pasargadæ. Far less are we entitled to suppose that the creed of Zoroaster was at once introduced in the conquered countries as the universal religion of the state; for although strongly marked by the character of intolerance, this religion appears never, like that of Mohammed, to have been propagated by fire and sword: its author was himself neither a conqueror nor a warrior, nor did the princes who embraced it esteem it a duty to provide for its dissemination by the power of the sword.

It is much nearer to the truth to suppose that the reception of this religion was at first confined to the court, of which the caste of Magi, as priests, as soothsayers, and as councillors of the king, formed an important part, and next to the wives and eunuchs of the monarch, had nearest access to his person. It was a principal part of the education of the monarch to be instructed in the lore of the Magi, a privilege communicated to very few personages besides, and those highly favoured. This doctrine of the Magi, mixed up with the hereditary opinions of the Persians, was designated as the law of the Medes and Persians, and embraced a knowledge of all these sacred customs, precepts, and usages which concerned, not only the worship of the deity, but the whole private life of every worshipper of Ormuzd, respecting the duties which he was bound to perform, and the penalties which he would incur by transgressing them. In proportion as the ritual prescribed was extensive and multifarious, so was it open to cases of doubtful interpretation, when the counsel of the Magi was needed, and consequently was not neglected. From a comparison of several passages, it appears probable that they composed the council of the king’s judges, of which mention is made as early as the time of Cambyses. The very notion of a religious legislation, such as we have described, implies that the priests should be also judges, and the individual cases which have been recorded as brought before this tribunal appear to fortify such a conjecture. This court of judicature consisted of men distinguished for their wisdom no less than their justice, possessing their places for life, unless proved guilty of some act of injustice. When this happened, they were punished with strictness, and cruelty. Examples, however, are not wanting to prove that although it was esteemed a duty by the monarch to take the opinion of this council, yet he was by no means necessarily bound to abide by their sentence. Cambyses demanded whether it was lawful for him to marry his sister, and the council, knowing that it was his purpose to do so, replied that there was no law which permitted it, but that there did exist a law which made it allowable for the king of the Persians to do what seemed to him good. Notwithstanding, therefore, the apparent limitation set to the royal authority by the separation of the judicial power from the administrative, the answer of this high tribunal makes it plain that the authority of the kings of Persia was as unlimited as that of any other oriental despot at any period.

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In like manner, the idea which has been adopted by several eminent modern authors, that the Persian constitution was modelled after the hierarchy of the kingdom of Ormuzd, appears, at all events, to require strong limitations. Appeal is continually made to the seven princes who stood about the throne of the king, in like manner as the Amshaspands surrounded the throne of Ormuzd; as well as to other less striking analogies. But, at the most, this analogy applied only to the economy of the court and did not extend to the kingdom at large: of the former the Magi composed an important part, and it is very possible that this may have influenced the character of the whole. When, however, we come to compare the picture which Zoroaster has sketched of the constitution of the kingdom in which he lived with that of Persia, we remark similarities which exist in all great despotic governments: a prince, whose mandates are irrevocable, a division of the empire into provinces, and a departmental administration by satraps; while we discover at the same time some striking dissimilitudes. The general distinction of castes, on which the legislative system of Zoroaster is founded, was never completely established among the Persians, although the foundation of such a system was laid in the diversity of occupations and modes of life pursued by the different tribes. We find among them the tribes of nobles or warriors, and of agriculturists, but none of artisans, which indeed could hardly exist among a race of conquerors; nor is it certain that in the cases of the former their occupations were necessarily restricted to individuals of that tribe.

ORGANISATION OF THE PERSIAN COURT

Agreeably to the customs of all the great despotic princes of the East, the court consisted not only of the king’s servants, but also of a numerous army, principally cavalry, which surrounded the person of the king, and formed part of his retinue. This body of cavalry was divided into corps of ten-thousands, according to the nations of which it was composed. The most distinguished were the Persians; the rest succeeded in a fixed gradation. To these were attached the numerous bodyguards posted at the gates of the palace, of whom we have already had occasion to speak in the description of Persepolis. If we compare with these the descriptions of the household troops of the kings of modern Persia, or the Mongol princes in Hindustan and China, we shall perceive that the court establishment of the monarchs of the East is precisely what it was in the days of Cyrus.

It was a natural consequence of the increasing luxury of the Persians that the number of courtiers should be augmented, when the rule had once been established, that for all, even the most trivial duties, special officers were necessary.

As all these officers were supported free of expense, there were daily fed at the king’s table, according to Ctesias, fifteen thousand persons, and Xenophon assures us that a considerable body of men was required only to make the king’s bed. These inferior attendants on the court were marshalled in the same manner as the army, and divided into tens and hundreds. Courtiers, however, of a superior rank were also very numerous, distinguished by the general appellations of the friends, the kinsmen, or the servants of the king, titles which under every despotic government are understood to confer a high degree of importance.

Not only from the analogy which prevails in other courts of the East, but from a comparison of different passages in ancient writers, it appears[642] probable that the household of the Persian monarch was originally composed of the ruling tribe or horde, namely, that of the Pasargadæ, and especially of the family of the Achæmenidæ. For this reason the courtiers of superior rank bore the appellation of the king’s kinsmen, and almost every page of Persian history proves that every trust of importance was confided, if not to this family, at all events to this tribe. The great body of the inferior attendants of the court was, as Xenophon expressly informs us, gradually filled up with the warlike followers of the king.

The very name Pasargadæ, as we have had occasion to remark, betokens that the household of the court was made up of this race, and though it cannot be ascertained to what extent in the end the other noble tribes were gradually admitted to the same privileges, it is certain that the majority of the court at all times was taken from this. The student of Persian antiquity will, accordingly, find reason to adopt the conjecture that the Grecian authors in general meant by “the Persians,” not the entire nation, but only, or principally, the tribe of the Pasargadæ; and this hypothesis applies with especial propriety to the Cyropædia of Xenophon. The details which he affords us, in the commencement of his work, respecting the education and institutions of the Persians, cannot be referred to the whole nation, but only to the ruling tribe, or the king’s household, as is proved by the notices of place which he adjoins. If we adopt this principle of interpretation, the whole picture presents itself under a totally different aspect, and it is no longer necessary to consider it as a romance. It is a description of the education and habits of life which, in compliance with custom, the noblesse of the nation, or the portion of it which composed the household of the king, were obliged to observe; and the very strictness of the discipline prescribed is perfectly in harmony with the customs of oriental courts, where everything is regulated by an exact ceremonial. Accordingly, it must not be looked upon as an account of the national system of education, nor of the manners of the people at large, but the court-education, and court-ceremonial; and in proportion as these are strict under all despotic and especially under all oriental governments, it becomes necessary to accustom to them from their very youth such as are destined to observe them.

The economy of the harem of the Persian monarchs appears to have been precisely the same with the present customs, in that respect, of the Asiatic nations. It was peopled from the different provinces of the empire, and the surveillance of the whole committed to eunuchs, of whom we find traces, long before the Persian monarchy, in the courts of the Median kings, a consequence of the practice of polygamy. His eunuchs and his wives encircled the person of the monarch, and thus easily attained an influence which, under a weak monarch who felt himself unable to shake off the yoke, often became a species of protectorship by which they were enabled to sway the helm of state, and, in the end, to exercise dominion over the throne itself.

The interior of these gynæcea is best described in the narrative of the book of Esther, while the account of a court intrigue in the reign of Xerxes, recorded in the last book of Herodotus, throws great additional light on their history. The harem was divided into two sets of apartments, and the new-comers were transferred from the first to the second on having been admitted to the king’s chamber. Unbounded luxury, which in the end degenerates into wearisome etiquette, imposes of itself a restraint on the passions of arbitrary despots. It is far from being the case that, at the present day, the sultan of Constantinople can select the object of his desire according to his own pleasure; and Persian etiquette demanded that a whole[643] year should be spent in purification by means of aromatics and costly perfumes before the novitiate beauty was thought worthy of approaching the presence of the despot. The number of concubines must therefore have been sufficiently great to present a new victim for every day. The passions of hatred and jealousy, which are apt to become intense in proportion as their sphere is limited, attained in the harem of Persia a degree of rancour which our imaginations can hardly picture. When Amestris, the wife of Xerxes, succeeded at last in getting into her power her sister-in-law, whom she suspected as her rival, she caused her to be mutilated in a manner too horrible for recital.

The legitimate wives of the king stood, however, on a totally different footing from his concubines; a distinction which prevailed also in the inferior conditions of life. As everything in the constitution of the country depended on the distinctions of tribe, the consort was chosen from the family of Cyrus, or that of the Achæmenidæ; though the example of Esther appears to prove that occasionally concubines were elevated to the same rank. In that case they were invested with the insignia of royalty, the diadem and the other regalia. The mode of life, however, of the queen-consort was no less rigidly prescribed and limited than that of the concubines; and it is mentioned as a remarkable instance, that Statira so far overstepped that burdensome system of etiquette as to appear in public without a veil.

Uncertainty of succession is an inseparable consequence of a harem administration. It is true that illegitimate children were altogether excluded from inheriting by the customs of Persia; but the intrigues of their mothers and the treachery of eunuchs, with the help of poison, often prepared the way for them to the throne. Of legitimate sons the rule was, that the eldest should inherit, especially if he was born when his father was king. The selection was, however, left to the monarch; and as his decisions were commonly influenced by his queen, the power of the queen-mother became still more considerable among the Persians than among the Turks. As the education of the heir to the crown was mainly entrusted to his mother, she did not fail early to instil a spirit of dependence on her wishes, from which the future king was rarely able to emancipate himself. The narratives of Herodotus and Ctesias, respecting the tyrannical influence exercised by Parysatis, Amestris, and others, bear ample testimony to the fact.

Another necessary consequence of such a system is the insignificance of anything which could be properly called a council of state. Affairs of public importance are discussed in the interior of the seraglio, under the influence of the queen-mother, the favourite wife, and the eunuchs. It was only on occasions of some great expeditions being meditated, or the like, that councils were held for any length of time, to which the satraps, the tributary princes, and the commanders of the forces were invited. The principal question was, however, for the most part already settled, and the debate respected only the means of carrying it into execution. Even in this point, however, the despotic character of the government manifested itself; since he who gave any advice was obliged to answer for its issue; and in case of ill success the penalty fell on his own head.

All the other circumstances of the king’s private life bore traces of the original condition of the race, and presented the picture of a nomad state of existence carried to the highest excess of luxury. Even after these monarchs had occupied permanent residences, the signs of this did not altogether disappear, especially in their annual migrations from one abode to another, at fixed seasons of the year. Like the chiefs of nomad hordes, the kings of[644] Persia removed with their household at certain seasons, from one chief city of their empire to another. The three capitals, of Susa, Babylon, and Ecbatana, each enjoyed every year the privilege of being for a certain period the residence of the monarch. The spring was spent at Ecbatana, the three summer months at Susa, the autumn and winter in Babylon. The great diversity of climate in so extensive an empire (a diversity which for several reasons is still more perceptible in Asia than in Europe) was the source of enjoyments, which, in our quarter of the globe, we can scarcely appreciate. These removals took place with such a multitude of followers, that the suite of the court resembled an army, and for this reason the poorer provinces were spared a visitation, which would have exposed them to the horrors of famine. A numerous attendance of armed followers constitutes at the present day a permanent part of the household of the great men of the East; and in the cases of their kings these amounted to the numbers of a regular army. The same system is retained unaltered by the rulers of modern Asia, and the accounts of travellers respecting this particular can hardly be read without astonishment.

The traces of the same nomad mode of life may also be detected in the arrangement of the king’s palaces and pleasure-houses. These were universally surrounded with spacious parks, or, as the Persians denominated them, paradises, forming domains sufficiently extensive to allow armies to be reviewed in them, or to assemble for the pursuit of game, of which great numbers and in every variety were collected. Such establishments existed, not only in the three capitals already named, but in several other countries of Asia, in which the king was accustomed to spend a part of his time, or in which his satraps resided.

The king’s palace was styled among the ancient Persians also, as in modern Constantinople, the Porte. Agreeably to the customs of other despots of the East, the kings of Persia resided in the interior of their palaces, seldom appearing in public, and guarding all means of access to their persons. The crowd of ministers and courtiers were consequently obliged to take their stations, according to their degrees of rank, in the court without, or before the gate or porte of the palace; and respect for the monarch prescribed, especially in his actual presence, a rigid system of etiquette, the discipline of which commenced with the early youth of those who were compelled to observe it. The number of courtiers, masters of ceremonies, guards, and others was endless. It was through them alone that access could be gained to the monarch; and they were consequently invested with titles which betokened their relation to him, being styled the king’s ears, the king’s eyes, etc., because no one without permission, or without their intervention, could approach his presence.

The king’s table also was regulated by a system of etiquette no less absolute, which, while it aimed at securing the highest enjoyment, necessarily became in the end more burdensome to the despot himself than to his guests.

As lord and owner of the whole empire, it was thought unworthy of him to taste any but the best and most costly productions of his dominions; no water was fit to be drunk by him but that of the Choaspes, which accordingly was conveyed in silver vessels on a multitude of wagons wherever he might journey. His very salt was brought from the neighbourhood of the temple of Jupiter Ammon in the centre of the African desert; his wine from Chalybon in Syria; the wheat, of which his bread was made, from Æolia, and so forth. Hence arose the custom, that on his journeys the best of the fruits of each country should be presented to the monarch; and according to the testimony[645] of Xenophon there were bodies of men destined to the sole purpose of searching through his spacious dominions for whatever might add to the luxury of the royal table.

Among the pleasures of the court was accounted the chase, which was not only esteemed the highest of all amusements, but a suitable preparation for the toils of war. In the end whole armies were devoted to the pursuit, and such expeditions resembled those occasionally adopted by the monarchs of continental Europe. The Persians were originally a race of hunters as well as shepherds, and one entire tribe among them, the Sagartians, who adhered to their pastoral habits in the time of Herodotus, practised in war the arts of hunting, casting a lasso round the neck of a flying enemy, as of an animal of the chase. In their more advanced stage of civilisation the Persians are still characterised by their fondness for the same pursuits, and the manner in which of old they prosecuted this amusement precisely resembled that adopted by the Mongol princes. A distinction was made between the chase as carried on in the park, and which constituted the favourite recreation of the monarchs and grandees of Persia, and in the open country, which was a nobler species of amusement, and usually pursued in the districts abounding with game of northern Media and Hyrcania.

ADMINISTRATION OF THE PROVINCES; FINANCIAL SYSTEM; SATRAPS

If we reflect upon the original circumstances of the Persians, we must acknowledge that their ideas on the subjects of administration and finance could not have been very refined; and the primitive condition of the race continued to give a tinge to their institutions, notwithstanding their gradual refinement and the development of their first constitution. The forms of European government and finance could have no place in an empire founded by a nomad people; notwithstanding the difficulty which many authors, of great pretensions to an intimate knowledge of the East, have shown in liberating themselves from their European preconceptions.

“The Persians,” says Herodotus, “look upon all Asia as theirs, and as the property of each successive king of Persia.” These few words contain the leading idea, on which all the following discussion must be grounded.

A rude people of conquerors naturally look upon the conquered countries, with all they contain, as their own; and Asiatic history presents several instances of such nations, in order to their own peaceable occupation, entirely depopulating their conquered possessions. The Persians did not fail to adopt the same plan, when no other appeared likely to answer the purpose of repressing their vassals; but when their conquests became very extensive, this was impracticable, and they were compelled to devise other means of securing their dominion.

We have already explained how and when these institutions were first adopted. The conquered nations were compelled to pay a tribute, at first arbitrarily imposed, but under Darius reduced to an annual and regular tax, of which Herodotus has given us a full statement.

Important as this document is, it has nevertheless given occasion to many misapprehensions. The tribute in money has been treated as the only, or, at all events, the principal revenue which the monarch derived from his empire; and, with the customs of Europe before their eyes, authors have imagined the existence of a public exchequer, out of which the expenses of the state were paid, the armies maintained, and the public officers remunerated, etc.[646] Such a mode of proceeding was, however, utterly unknown in the East. The Persian public officers received no appointments in the European sense of the word; the tribute in question furnished nothing more than the private revenue of the king, and, besides his own expenses, was applied to no public purposes whatever, unless, perhaps, to that of conferring presents.

As the end of a financial system adopted by a nation of conquerors must be different from that of all others, so also must the internal regulations belonging to such a system.

The end in question is no other than that of obliging the conquered nations, whose land is esteemed the property of the conquerors, to pay for everything, and provide for the maintenance of the king, the court, and, in some sense, of all the nation.

Herodotus tells us that, independently of the tribute, the whole Persian empire was divided into portions for the support of the king and his army, or his suite, each district being obliged to provide for a certain period. In consequence of this arrangement the payments from the provinces were principally made in the fruits and natural productions of the earth, exacted with a reference to the fertility of each soil and its natural advantages. The best of every country was considered as the property of the king, and was delivered to him by the rulers of the provinces; and as by these means provisions of all sorts were accumulated at the royal residence from every quarter of the empire, there necessarily reigned there an abundance and luxury which corrupted the morals of the court, and introduced those habits of waste and sensuality for which the Persians were so notorious.

Not only, however, was the king’s court to be maintained, but also those of the satraps of each province, which were modelled on that of their master; their suite was often no less numerous, and they kept up a state which often exceeded their income; and as the wants of the monarch were supplied from all parts of his empire, so were theirs from every part of each department. Particular spots were appointed to provide particular necessaries or luxuries, and Herodotus tells us that Masistius, satrap of Babylon, reserved no less than four considerable villages of Babylonia for the support of his Indian hounds.

To these burdens was added the maintenance of the king’s troops, which were quartered in large corps through all the provinces, and which were paid, not out of the king’s private chest, or from the provincial tribute, but by the provinces they occupied.

With these contributions in kind were reckoned the payments in specie, or rather the tributes in uncoined gold and silver, of which Herodotus has afforded us his well-known statement. Whether these were collected by way of a poll-tax, or an income-tax, or in whatever other way, the historian does not inform us; but he assures us that they amounted annually to fourteen thousand five hundred talents. The gold and silver thus collected—the Indians alone paying their tribute in gold—was stored up in ingots, of which the king made use as he found occasion.

We may, however, readily suppose that the sums set down by Herodotus did not always continue the same. The mighty armaments undertaken by the Persian government, especially under Xerxes, called for extraordinary expenses, and necessitated an augmentation of the imposts, as is expressly mentioned. When mercenary troops came to be a part of the Persian establishment, an augmentation of the tribute was a necessary consequence.

Nor were the sums of which the satraps drained the provinces comprehended in those already enumerated. The satrap of Babylon alone received[647] every day more than an Attic medimnus full of silver, which on a moderate computation made up a revenue of more than £100,000 sterling, and the sum paid to the king from the same province amounted to about twice as much.

The conclusion deducible from all this is, that the sums enumerated by Herodotus by no means comprehended all that the provinces had to furnish, but only what the satraps paid over to the king’s exchequer.

These imposts were extended over the whole empire, Persis alone excepted, immunity from tribute being a natural privilege of the victorious nation.

To these principal sources of public revenue were added others, founded partly in the peculiar character of the country, partly in the nature of its constitution.

To the first class belongs the revenue derived from the rights of irrigation. Persia is a very arid country, and, with the finest climate, its fertility depends in consequence on the supply of water. In ancient, as well as modern times, this has furnished its rulers with a pretext for exacting contributions from their subjects, of which Herodotus records a remarkable example. One of the most fertile portions of the country was divided by the river Aces into five distinct branches or arms, which extended up into the mountains; among these mountains the kings of Persia caused to be erected mighty embankments, in order to keep in their own power the water of the river, and employed this power to extract from their subjects an additional tribute.

Another source of revenue to the royal treasury was the right of fishing in the canal which connects the lake Mœris with the Nile. During the six months that the water flowed into the lake, the revenue amounted to a talent each day; during the remaining six, to twenty minæ.

In addition to these, the confiscations of the property of satraps and other grandees was a considerable source of revenue; in Persia, as in all despotic states, the loss of life being accompanied by the forfeiture of property.

The free-will offerings, however, as they were styled, which were presented to the king, were probably still more considerable. It was the universal custom of the East for none to present himself before a superior, more especially the king, without a present. The grandees of the court, the satraps for instance, sought in this manner to purchase or retain the king’s favour, but on certain solemnities, particularly on the king’s birthday, such offerings flowed in from all parts of the empire. These consisted not so much in money, as in rarities and valuables of every description, such as are delineated on the ruins of Persepolis. What treasures must on such an occasion have been accumulated out of the immense empire of Persia!

Such an arrangement with respect to the public revenue shows at the outset that the expenditure also must have been no less peculiar.

We have already remarked, that we must dismiss the idea of anything like a public treasury, out of which the servants of the state were regularly paid, an arrangement equally unknown in ancient as in modern Persia.

All the expenses which could be characterized as public, such as the maintenance of armies, etc., are not met by the resources of the king’s exchequer, but previously provided for in the provinces. The king’s treasure remains a private chest for his personal use, from which he takes what he wants for the purpose of making presents, not in coin, but in ingots, or in vessels of gold, even the expenses of the court and household not being provided for out of it, but defrayed in the two following ways.

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All the inferior attendants in the court, including the bodyguard, which in Europe would receive pay, were not paid in specie at the court of Persia, but in produce; and to this purpose were devoted the provisions of which such abundance was transmitted from the different provinces, and which more than sufficed for the consumption of the court.

On the other hand, all of a more elevated rank, the great officers of the court, the friends or kinsmen of the king, who on account of their birth or offices might aspire to favours or pensions, did not receive anything in money, but were rather in assignments of towns or cities, which the king disposed of at his pleasure, in virtue of his title as sole proprietor of the chattels and lives of his subjects; as the autocrat of all the Russias was in the habit of making a present of some thousands of serfs. The individual to whom such an assignment was made received the revenue of the place in question, and the king possessed accurate accounts of their value, so as to regulate the distribution of his favours. Nevertheless the person thus favoured appears to have been obliged to make over a part of his income to the king in the way of tribute. With individuals of the highest rank, the mother or consort of the monarch, luxury had attained such an excess, that a variety of places were assigned them to provide severally for even the most insignificant of their wants. In this manner a fruitful district, a day’s journey in length, was allotted to furnish the queen’s zone; and thus Themistocles received the city of Magnesia, producing a revenue of fifty talents, to supply him with bread, Lampsacus to furnish wine, and Myus the side dishes of his table.

Besides these allotments of villages and cities, it was usual also to assign, in like manner, houses and lands in the provinces; and donations of this kind were usually coupled with offices at the court, an institution ascribed to Cyrus himself, and which descended to after ages.

Those possessed of such assignments enjoyed them for their lives; on their decease their places and possessions reverted to the king, to dispose of according to his pleasure. Without such an arrangement it would have been impossible for the boundless empire of Persia itself to have sufficed to supply the liberality of the monarch, exercised as it was towards so large a number, and compelled also to provide for many expenses. Nevertheless the possessions attached to places at court became, according to Xenophon, hereditary, and constituted the patrimony of those whose ancestors had been first appointed to the same by Cyrus. Among a people whose constitution, like that of the Persians, was entirely dependent on descent and distinctions of tribe, it was natural that offices should become hereditary, and an immediate consequence that the revenues attached to them should follow the same rule.

These preliminary observations will help us to comprehend the internal administration of the provinces. As the very division into provinces was for the purpose of collecting with greater accuracy the tribute, the political administration of the satrapies connected therewith was not matured at once, but gradually developed. As the age of Xenophon may be considered on the whole the most flourishing period of Persian history, we shall be less likely to err if we confine ourselves to the evidence which he has afforded.

The government by satraps, which was then complete, was common to Persia with other despotic empires; but as it entailed a multitude of abuses, attempts were made as much as possible to mitigate them.

The advantage which, in this particular, the Persian system of administration possessed over all others of the same kind, was the careful separation made between the civil and military powers; the exceptions which occurred[649] in the latter ages of the empire having grown out of abuses. According to Persian ideas the king had a twofold duty to perform, of providing for the security and also for the good government and cultivation, of his empire: to secure the former object, garrisons were established throughout its whole extent; and the civil authorities were appointed to provide for the latter.

The foundation of this beneficial arrangement was laid at the very commencement of the empire, by the appointment of receivers of the royal treasury, together with that of commanders of the forces, and the same continued after the provinces came to be more accurately divided, and satraps to be created. Xenophon gives us the most satisfactory proof of this, when he records the first nomination and appointment of satraps, which, as he tells us, were first made by Cyrus.

“You know,” he is introduced saying to his friends, “that I have left garrisons and their commandants in the conquered countries and cities, to whom I have given in charge to attend to nothing else but their security. Together with these I shall also appoint satraps who may govern the inhabitants, receive the tribute, pay the garrisons, and attend to all other necessary points of business.” This institution continued uninterrupted for a long period, and the satraps are repeatedly mentioned in history together with the commandants of troops. However, in the later ages of the Persian monarchy, it became the custom to appoint the satraps to the command also of the king’s troops, more especially when they happened to be individuals of the royal family. In this manner the younger Cyrus was satrap of Mysia, Phrygia, and Lydia, and at the same time generalissimo of all the forces assembled in the plain of Castolus. The same we find to have been the case with Pharnabazus and others, so much so, that even in the time of Xenophon it had become customary for the satrap of a province to be also commander of the forces there; more especially in the frontier provinces, where such a union of powers was more especially necessary. The pernicious effects of this practice, and its tendency to promote revolt among the satraps, and to prepare the way for the internal dissolution of the empire, are sufficiently proved by the single example of the younger Cyrus. Notwithstanding, however, this abuse, it is not true that a military government was introduced in the provinces, for the other civil officers continued to be independent of the commanders of the forces, and the latter were not allowed to take any part in the civil administration. Xenophon tells us that the satraps were entrusted with the surveillance of the commanders of the troops as well as over the civil magistrates; the king of Persia appointing persons of both descriptions commanders of the forces, and also magistrates to govern the country, the one class being bound to pay deference to the other.

The first duty of the satraps and their deputies (ὕπαρχοι) undoubtedly was the collection of the revenue, whether in kind or in money; their office, however, was not limited to this, but they were at the same time commissioned to promote agriculture and the improvement of the soil; and the remarkable attention which was devoted to these objects constitutes the chief merit of the Persian administration. The code of Zoroaster, as has been already remarked, insisted upon the duty of cultivating the soil, by gardening, rearing of cattle, and tillage, as one of the most sacred duties of his disciples, everything impure being banished from the land where his law was received, and nothing allowed there but pure men, pure animals, and pure vegetables. This idea of the legislator, when applied to a whole empire, presents, doubtless, a magnificent picture, which, though it must needs remain for the most part an ideal picture, was nevertheless, to a great extent, realised[650] under the Persian monarchy. Those parks or paradises, which surrounded not only the palaces of the monarch, but those of his satraps, were so many lively images of the pure kingdom of Ormuzd, realised as far as was possible by the most illustrious of his servants. When the younger Cyrus led the admiring Lysander through his pleasure grounds, and displayed their regularity and beauty, “All these,” he informed him, “I have myself planned, and even planted many of the trees with my own hands;” and when the Spartan general replied by an incredulous glance at his splendid robes, and chains, and armlets of gold, he sware to him by Mithras, as a good servant of Ormuzd, that he never tasted food till he had fatigued himself by labour.

These precepts, therefore, of their religion, made it the sacred duty of the rulers of the provinces to further the cultivation of their several districts; and as the military establishment underwent a review every year, so also did the civil department. Xenophon tells us, that “The king visited every year some part of his empire, and wheresoever he was not able to proceed himself he sent a delegate for the same purpose. Those magistrates in whose territory the ground was found to be well cultivated, and covered with trees or crops, had an augmentation of territory allotted to them by the king, and were rewarded with presents; and those whose provinces were found to be ill cultivated and depopulated, whether through neglect or in consequence of oppression, were rebuked and deprived of their command, and others appointed in their place.”

If these institutions had not been broken down by the abuses which hastened the fall of the Persian monarchy, they would have formed a considerable set-off against all the inevitable evils which accompany despotic governments. However considerable might be the expense occasioned by the maintenance of the king, his satraps, and forces, it cannot have been oppressive in countries blessed with such singular fertility, where the imposts were chiefly paid in kind, so long as wise enactments for the cultivation of the soil tended to lighten these burdens; but the extravagance and luxury of the great, and their frequent revolts and intestine wars, caused these sage laws to fall into disuse, and frustrated the benevolent intentions of the Median legislator.

The disposal of the government of provinces rested with the king, who usually appointed kinsmen of his own, his brothers, or his sons-in-law. The court of the satrap was formed on that of the monarch, and all its ceremonial the same, only less magnificent. The satraps also had their harems, entrusted, like that of the monarch, to eunuchs, and a numerous attendance of household troops, distinct from the king’s soldiers, and consisting in part or altogether of Persians: their residences, like those of the monarch, were surrounded by parks; and occasionally, in the finer months of the year, they (like the monarch) migrated from one place to another, attended by their courts, and spent the summer under tents.

History has afforded us a remarkable instance of the manner in which the imposts were collected by these officers. When the Persians had subdued Ionia the second time, the whole territory was measured out by parasangs, and the tribute apportioned accordingly. In this case it was evidently a land tax, which, however, was paid, it is probable, for the most part in produce. The satrap received these imposts, whether in kind or in money, and after providing for his own expenditure, the support of the king’s troops, and the maintenance of the civil magistrates, the remainder was handed over to the king. The personal interest of the satrap, if he wished[651] to retain the king’s favour, prompted him to make this return as considerable as possible, even if no precise amount was fixed.

To take care of the king’s interests there were also attached to the court of each satrap royal scribes, to whom were issued the king’s commands, and by whom they were communicated to the satrap. The commands thus conveyed required the most prompt obedience, and the smallest resistance was accounted rebellion. Even the suspicion of anything of the kind was sufficient to cause their ruin, and, as in the Turkish empire, their punishment was unaccompanied by any formality whatever. The sovereign despatched an emissary, who delivered the order for the execution of a satrap to his guards, who put it in execution by hewing him down upon the spot with their sabres.

To further the speedy communication with the provinces, a system was adopted which has been compared, but very improperly, with the European institution of posts. Messengers were appointed at different stations, distant from each other a day’s journey, for the purpose of conveying the king’s mandates to the satraps, and the despatches of the latter to the court.

Institutions of this kind are peculiarly essential to despotic governments, in which it is excessively difficult to maintain the dependence of the prefects or governors, and occur in almost every one which possesses anything like an internal organization. The same existed under the Roman monarchy, and was established, at still greater expense, in the empire of the Mongols, by the successors of Jenghiz-Khan.

Another plan was also adopted by the Persian monarchs for securing the allegiance of their satraps. A commissioner at the head of an army was sent every year, with authority, according to circumstances, to uphold or chastise those officers; and Xenophon assures us that this custom, which dated from the commencement of the empire, subsisted in his time. The design at first undoubtedly was, as in other kingdoms similarly governed, to collect the outstanding tribute; but when we consider the power and arrogance of the satraps during the latter half of the Persian monarchy, we may well believe that the custom may have died away.

We have already described in general the causes of the presumption of the satraps and the revolts to which it led. Besides the union in their persons of the civil and military powers, one main cause was the greatness of the command entrusted to some by joining together two or more satrapies. An example of this, and of the arrogance to which it gave rise, occurs as early as the reign of Darius Hystaspes in the person of Orœtes, who was at the same time satrap of Phrygia and Lydia; and in succeeding reigns this practice became still more frequent, especially in the case of the satrapies of Asia Minor. Cyrus the younger was governor of the greater part of that peninsula, and, after his death, Tissaphernes was allowed to hold the governments possessed by him in addition to those which had been all along his own.

From this period Persian history continues to present a constant picture of the perpetually increasing arrogance of these viceroys, who sometimes openly revolted, and sometimes, with the title of satrap, set themselves up as independent sovereigns. Several of them were, in fact, the founders of monarchies, which, like those of Cappadocia, Pontus, and others, gradually became more or less independent. The combinations and dissensions of these governors among themselves contributed to keep alive a spirit of insubordination, which was promoted by the effeminacy and corruption of the court. They began to treat their provinces, not as districts committed to[652] their care, but as territories, the revenues of which they were to enjoy; and as early as the time of Xenophon, we find a satrap of Mysia arbitrarily nominating a vice-satrap, to whom, on payment of a tribute, he committed the management of his province, and after his death continued the same to his widow on security being given of the payment of his revenues. Such arbitrary measures must have gradually destroyed the internal structure of the empire, and the slightness of the adherence of its several parts is effectually proved by the history of its fall.

MILITARY METHODS

The military expeditions undertaken by a nomad nation, such as the Persians once were, are, in their origin, migrations, for the purpose of occupying better and more fruitful spots. Hence the custom of removing at the same time their wives and children and all their movable possessions, which invariably encumbered the march of such armaments. Xenophon expressly tells us that this was the practice of most Asiatic nations, and that it was an old Persian custom would appear from the sequel of their history.

In like manner the habits of nomad nations necessarily causes such armaments to consist altogether or principally of cavalry. The first was the case with the Mongols; the last with the Persians. As the first-mentioned practice retards, so does this greatly accelerate the march of their armies. The limited nature of their wants enables them, when occasion requires, to dispense with any baggage, and the history of the Mongols affords examples of the inconceivable speed with which such armies have accomplished lengthened marches which would have driven a European army to despair.

These are the fundamental points to be observed with regard to the military system of nomad nations in general and the Persians in particular; but as their civil constitution became gradually developed, so did their military institutions undergo at all events considerable modifications, although they never attained the perfection which marks those of Europe. The example of the Turkish empire continues to show with what difficulty an Asiatic, who is always half a nomad, can be inured to discipline. As this is the offspring of a sense of honour and love of country, so, on the other hand, despotism is the parent of license and brutality, which may indeed display their energies in furious onsets, but not in deeds of cool daring like those of Europeans.

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A dominion acquired by conquest can only be maintained by standing armies, and we cannot, therefore, be surprised to find the provinces of Persia constantly occupied by great masses of men, destined to keep them in subjection, as well as to defend them against a foreign invader. Immediately upon the completion of their conquests such forces were suffered to remain in the provinces, supported not by the king but by the conquered. Examples especially occur in the frontier states, in Asia Minor, Egypt, and others, which were especially exposed to assaults from without, or where an insurrection was most to be apprehended. Asia Minor, however, from the commencement of the wars with Greece, became the principal depot for the forces of Persia; it was filled with considerable bodies of men which could be readily drawn together when occasion required, and thus Alexander, on invading it, found there troops drawn together to oppose him on the banks of the Granicus.

In the most flourishing epoch of their history the military system of the Persians was as follows. In every province were kept up two descriptions of forces, those which occupied the open country, and those which kept possession of the cities, as garrisons. These were distinct, and commanded by different generals. Of the first description of forces it was clearly defined how many, and of what class, were to be maintained in each province. The principal strength consisted in cavalry, but there were also bowmen, slingers, and heavy-armed infantry. The care of keeping up the full numbers of these forces was committed to their successive commanders, and they were supported, both as respected food and money, by the revenues of the provinces, and as these were paid into the treasury of the satrap, the latter had to provide for the pay of the soldiery. The commanders, however, of the forces were not subject to the governors, unless by special appointment. On the other hand, they appear to have been immediately dependent on the king, having been appointed by him and deposed at his pleasure, and a catalogue of such offices remaining in his hands. The annual reviews of the forces also, which were extended to all the empire, were not usually held by the satraps, but in the neighbourhood of the capitals, by the king himself, and in remote provinces by persons deputed by him to hold them in his name. Great exactness was exercised on these occasions, and according to the good or bad condition of the forces their commanders were applauded and rewarded with presents, or deprived of their rank, or visited with arbitrary punishments.

To these arrangements was added another, the subdivision of the empire into certain military cantons, independent of the civil administration; formed with a reference to the muster-places of the troops. In this manner the forces stationed in a particular province were always collected at one point, from which the canton derived its appellation. Mention occurs of those in Asia Minor, and as the above institutions extended to the whole of the empire, and reviews were held in every province, it is to be supposed that this custom also was universal. Herodotus expressly mentions the cantons on this side the Halys, and consequently we must conclude the same to have prevailed on the other side. Of the cantons in Asia Minor, Xenophon particularises that of which the muster-place was the plain of Castolus, as that of Thymbra was for the army of Syria; Herodotus also mentions the Aleius Campus in Cilicia.

These troops were distributed through the provinces by thousands, and their commanders consequently denominated Chiliarchs; and not only were they generally dispersed over the country, but bodies of them were posted[654] on the boundaries, where, if the nature of the ground permitted it, the passage from one province to another was strongly fortified. It certainly remains a question what was the strength of these forces in the provinces, but the great facility with which armies were got together proves them to have been very considerable. In Asia Minor alone Cyrus assembled above one hundred thousand men; Abrocomas, who was opposed to him on his march, had three hundred thousand; and the Persian army on the Granicus was forty thousand strong.

From these troops the garrisons in the cities were kept entirely distinct, and the importance attached by the Persians to places of strength was in proportion to the difficulty which (like all other nomad nations, who know nothing about the conduct of sieges) they had experienced in subduing them. They were looked upon as the keys of the provinces in which they were situated, and accordingly provided with ample garrisons. The troops in question were completely different from those mentioned above, not being comprehended in the military divisions alluded to, but being under commanders of their own, and not bound to appear at the general muster.

Both descriptions of forces were, however, comprehended under the title of the king’s army, and were distinct from the household troops of the satraps and grandees, which often amounted to several thousands. By the customs of the East every great man is attended by an armed retinue, proportioned to his rank and wealth, and as the viceregal courts were formed upon the model of the king’s, this became necessarily a part of their establishments, and the more readily as corps of troops were a no less customary present from the monarch to his favourites than were cities.

Originally, it is probable that all these troops may have been Persians, but as these gradually withdrew themselves from martial duties, their places were supplied by mercenaries, Greeks or Asiatics. As cavalry, the nomad nations to the south and east of the Caspian were preferred, the Hyrcanians, Parthians, and Sacæ. The first, especially, had a high character with the Persians for courage, and on this account the latter kept up a good understanding with the wandering hordes of Great Bucharia, though no longer their tributaries. The Greeks, however, were preferred to all the rest, and as early as the time of the younger Cyrus, not only did the flower of the army always consist of them, but towards the end of the Persian monarchy they constituted the garrisons of all the cities of Asia Minor. Before the time of the younger Cyrus their pay amounted to a daric per month (about 1l. 0s. 4d. sterling), which was augmented by Cyrus to a daric and a half. We have already remarked the fatal consequences which this custom had on the warlike temper of the Persians.

In a nation of conquerors every individual is expected to be a soldier, and among the Persians all, especially those in possession of lands, were required to be able to serve on horseback. This necessitated an internal constitution of the whole empire, having for its object the military equipment of the population; and the arrangement adopted has usually been the same in all Asiatic nations, and is the simplest that could have been devised. A decimal system runs through the whole empire, and serves at the same time to mark the rank of the commander. The common people are divided into bodies of ten, having a captain of that number, after whom come the commanders of hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands. Officers of a higher rank are not apportioned to particular bodies of men, but form the general staff. This has been equally the case among the Mongols and the Persians, and this simple arrangement made it possible for both races to[655] assemble large armies with incredible rapidity. All that was required was a mandate from the commander of ten thousand, which was transmitted to the commanders of thousands, and hundreds, and tens, till the forces, already organised, assembled in martial array. In this manner the Mongol princes often got together, in a few days, armies of cavalry to the number of several hundreds of thousands, and we cannot, therefore, be astonished to see the same thing take place among the Persians.

The great multitude of nomad tribes which wandered on the borders of the Persian empire greatly facilitated the assembling of mighty armaments. These tribes readily engaged in such enterprises, either for pay or allured by the hope of plunder. As the Baskirs and Calmucks follow the Russian armies, so did the Mardi, Pericanii, and others, those of Cyrus; and the more widely the dominion of the Persians was extended, the greater became the number of such auxiliaries. The Persians stood the more in need of their aid as their own cavalry was always heavy-armed. With them, as with the Parthians, both man and horse were armed in mail, though, strictly speaking, this appears to have been a distinction confined to a certain number, and the greater part seem to have had no defensive armour, and thus served to swell the carnage which the Greeks wrought among them after the victory of Platæa.

The foregoing sections must have served to explain the way in which these forces subsisted in the provinces. Each province was obliged to furnish to the governor what was necessary to their maintenance, in kind, and the governor caused what was so collected to be distributed among the soldiers. Payment in money was made only to the Grecian auxiliaries, who could not otherwise have been kept together, having been accustomed to the same in their own country; the Persians were bound to serve without pay, and the nomad races of Central Asia, many of whom had never even seen coined money, were as little disposed to require remuneration in that shape as are at the present day many of the auxiliaries of the Russian armies.

In a warlike nation, a military command always confers great distinction, being often regarded as more honourable than the civil magistracies; and this was the case among the Persians. The Myriarchs (commanders of tens of thousands) and Chiliarchs (commanders of thousands) enjoyed a distinguished rank, and the officers above them, the generals, were among the most illustrious of the nation. Of the generality of these we are expressly told that they belonged to the family of the Achæmenidæ, or at all events to the tribe of the Pasargadæ, or were connected by marriage with the royal house, and consequently the officers of rank consisted principally of the king’s kinsmen. Among these generals themselves, however (of whom there were usually several in an army), there existed gradations of rank; and if a king’s son was appointed generalissimo, this was understood as equivalent to his nomination as successor.

Hitherto we have confined our remarks to the troops which were regularly maintained by the Persians to defend the conquered provinces. With the exception of those raised among the Persians themselves, these appear, from what has been stated, to have consisted of mercenary troops, to the exclusion of the natives of the provinces themselves; nevertheless, the latter were by no means free from all military service, but were summoned on occasions of extraordinary expeditions undertaken for the extension of the empire. On such emergencies general mandates were issued throughout all the vast dominion of Persia, the nations of the East and West were gathered together in herds, and one of the most extraordinary spectacles[656] ensued which the history of the world has recorded, and the more deserving of our regard for the accuracy with which Herodotus has described the armament of Darius, and still more that of Xerxes.

When the Persians began their career as conquerors they adopted, and always maintained, the custom that the conquered nations should swell the numbers of their host, and accompany them in their more remote expeditions. When, however, their empire had become consolidated and organised, and stretched from the Indus to the Mediterranean, the drawing together of forces so widely disseminated must have become burdened with endless difficulties, and would consequently, on occasions of minor importance (such as slight internal disturbances, or trifling wars,) have been as futile as impossible. On extraordinary occasions, however, whether of great national undertakings for the aggrandisement of the empire, or of formidable invasions from without, the custom was revived of mustering the whole force of the empire, as is proved by the mighty expeditions of Darius Hystaspes, of Xerxes, and the last Darius.

Even the preliminary steps to such armaments were of vast magnitude. The king’s mandate was addressed to all nations, and specified the number of men, horses, and ships, or the amount of provisions to be furnished by each. The commotion which was excited in all Asia by the preparations made for the expedition of Xerxes, lasted for four years. Time was necessary to enable the remote nations to send in their contingent.

A general rendezvous was then appointed, which, in the case of the armament just mentioned, was Cappadocia in Asia Minor. Hither all the contingents of the different provinces resorted, conducted by leaders of their own race. These, however, were allowed no authority in actual war, the officers being taken exclusively from among the Persians. This was a privilege reserved for the conquering nation, as was the case, also, among the Mongols and Tatars. The subject nations, on the other hand, were treated as bondsmen, and termed slaves, in contradistinction to the Persians, who were denominated freemen. These terms, however, only marked the comparative freedom of the nations to whom they were applied, for with reference to the king, the Persians were as little free as the other subject nations.

The order of the march, as long as the army continued to traverse the dominions of the empire, was remarkable; or rather, it might almost be called an absence of all order. The men were not arranged according to the nations to which they belonged, but formed one vast chaotic mass. In the centre was the king, among his Persians, and the baggage was sent on before. As the troops advanced on their march, the inhabitants of the country were driven on before them, and augmented the numbers of the host, which thus perpetually accumulated; and as most nations took their wives and children with them to war, the baggage must have been immense. Undoubtedly the most inexplicable part of this account, is the way in which the army was supplied with provisions. In the countries through which they had to pass, magazines of corn were necessarily prepared, long before, and further supplies of the same followed the army by sea. The rest of their food the forces were left to find for themselves. For the king and his suite banquets were provided long before, and with such an unbounded expense that this alone sufficed to ruin the cities which furnished them. This also was a consequence of the idea that a monarch was the sole proprietor of all that his provinces contained, and the Persians understood this so literally as to carry away with them the costly utensils of plate which were[657] displayed on these occasions. It is needless to say that the idea of a regular encampment could not be entertained in the case of such enormous hosts; the king and his great men had indeed their tents, but the army at large bivouacked under the open heavens, the necessary consequence being a multitude of diseases.

It was only on their approaching the enemy’s borders that the army was classed according to the nations of which it was composed; and at the same time the host was reviewed at the king’s command. To this custom we are indebted for that precious document, the catalogue of the host of Xerxes, which the Father of History has preserved for us. This review took place just within the confines of Europe, and little as the scene may instruct the soldier, this is one of the most interesting of all the records of history to the philosophical historian. On no occasion have so many and such various races of men been gathered together as were here assembled in one spot, in their appropriate dresses and armour, on the plain of Doriscus. Herodotus has enumerated and described fifty-six, which served some on foot, some on horseback, and others on board the fleet. Here were to be seen the cotton garments of the Indians, and the Ethiopians from above Egypt habited in lions’ hides, the swarthy Baluchis from Gedrosia, and the nomad hordes from the steppes of Mongolia and Great Bucharia; wild races of huntsmen like the Sagartians, who, destitute of weapons of brass or iron, caught their enemies, like animals of the chase, in leathern lassos; and besides these, the rich dresses of the Medes and Bactrians, the Libyans drawn in war chariots of four horses, and the Arabs mounted on camels. Here also were to be seen the fleets of the Phœnicians and the Greeks of Asia Minor, compelled to serve against their kindred. Never did despotic power create a spectacle more glorious at its commencement or more lamentable in its issue. The straits of Thermopylæ first presented to the astonished Asiatics a sight completely novel to them; it was to no purpose that their countless hordes were driven by the scourge against a handful of Spartans; and although treachery at last conducted them over the lifeless bodies of those heroes, the names of Salamis and Platæa remained behind, everlasting monuments of Grecian valour.

THE FINE ARTS

Rude nations which suddenly pass to the condition of conquerors from that of wandering shepherds and herdsmen are not capable of erecting for themselves cities and palaces. For this purpose they are obliged to enlist the services of the conquered, among whom the arts of architecture and sculpture may have already attained some degree of perfection. This was the case with the Mongol tribes in China, the Chaldeans in Babylon, as well as other nations; and it is expressly related of Cambyses, that he transported from Egypt a large number of builders to erect his palaces at Susa and Persepolis. It is certain, however, that we discover at the latter place no traces of Egyptian art, either as regards the general character of the ruins or their details; nor can we reasonably suppose an Egyptian architect to have conceived the plan of structures so completely different from any to be found in his native country, any more than we can suppose that masons accustomed to what we call the Gothic style, if transported into another country, would at once be able to construct buildings in the Grecian taste. The prevailing character of Persian architecture, a fondness for terrace works, a style totally unknown to the ancient Egyptians, was considerably more ancient than the[658] reign of Cambyses, and altogether of Asiatic origin, as is proved by the hanging gardens of Babylon, constructed by Semiramis. Allowing the utmost that in fairness we can to the account of the Egyptian workmen imported by Cambyses, we cannot suppose them to have achieved more than the mechanical parts of the structures erected. The architectural remains of Egypt prove that the Egyptians were very capable of elevating and working large masses of stone, and possibly also of carving relievos after a given design or copy. The question, therefore, may be considered as still unanswered: What was the original country whence this style of architecture was derived? Who were the masters of the Persians in this art, and whence did they borrow their models?

The simple answer is undoubtedly this: from the same quarter that they derived the other rudiments of their civilisation, in short, from Media.

From all that we know of the Medes, and the splendour of the Median court and their principal city Ecbatana (a city which appears originally to have been constructed on terraces elevated successively one above the other), we may conclude that the science of architecture had attained among them a certain degree of perfection—a conjecture which appears carried to certainty by the accounts of recent travellers. The traces of the ancient royal seat Ecbatana, of which we shall have occasion to speak hereafter, presented, according to Morier and Porter, the same characteristic style of architecture with which those travellers had become familiar at Chehl-Menar, the fashion of the columns and even the characters of the inscriptions being the same. We cannot avoid inferring that it was from the Medes that the Persians derived, with the rest of their civilisation, the art of architecture also. It must be added, that the sculptures in these ruins are so obviously derived from the Magian religion, which prevailed among the Medes, that we can hardly doubt that the buildings in question were erected under the influence and according to the ideas of that caste, since the figures in question must not be mistaken for mere idle decorations, but had an intimate relation to the purposes for which the buildings themselves were severally designed. But the Magian religion and the Magian priesthood were not confined to Media, but extended over the countries to the East, especially those upon the Oxus, as far as the mountains bordering on India, the parent country of those fabulous monsters of which, as we have observed, traces are to be seen. Here lay Bactriana, at all times one of the richest countries of the world, in consequence of its position between the Indus and Oxus, and its connection with India, as well as the fertility of its soil, forming an important part of the empire of the Medes, whose monarchs appear to have resided at Bactra long before they occupied Ecbatana. This also was the country where the religion of Zoroaster first took root and flourished, and thus it became the parent land of the civil institutions of the Medes. When, therefore, the Persians are said to have derived their architecture originally from thence, it must be understood that they did so as the disciples of the Medes.

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It is true that the ancients ascribe in part the erection of Pasargada and Persepolis to the two earliest monarchs of the old Persian race—Cyrus and Cambyses; but this is easily reconcilable with the supposition that Darius and Xerxes were their principal founders. Niebuhr has already remarked, that the buildings of Persepolis do not appear all to belong to the same period, nor to have been constructed on one uniform plan, and this is especially true of those situated on the third terrace. It is certain that most of the considerable remains of remote antiquity (as was particularly the case with Egyptian edifices) were much more slowly erected than we might be inclined to suppose; and it is extremely probable that successive kings of Persia may have taken part in the erection of Persepolis, especially as the undertaking assumed the character of a religious duty; not to mention that continual additions must, from time to time, have been found necessary.

We may now pronounce with certainty (what before must have been mere conjecture) that the arts of architecture and sculpture must, long before the dynasty of the Persians, have attained a much higher degree of perfection than men have been generally disposed to admit. If this be doubted, we must be prepared to show that such efforts of art as the edifices of Chehl-Menar could have started at once into existence, as if by enchantment. In these structures we see proofs that architecture must have attained, when they were erected, a wonderful degree of excellence in its mechanical department. No spot on the globe (Egypt perhaps excepted) displays such masonry as the walls of Persepolis. It was unquestionably a prodigious advantage to the architect that the neighbouring mountains afforded him materials on the very spot; but no other nation has left examples of an equally skilful combination of such enormous blocks of marble. The character and style of the building is, however, perhaps still more remarkable, being directly opposed to that of the Egyptians, with which it has been injudiciously compared; if we are not mistaken, the original modes of life of the two races may be traced even in the several styles of their architecture. The observer of Egyptian antiquities can hardly fail to remark the grotto-style of building there prevalent, bespeaking a[660] nation long accustomed to a sort of Troglodyte life, in caverns and hollows of the rock. The gigantic temples of Thebes and Philæ are obviously imitations of excavated rocks; the short and massive pillars representing the props, left to uphold the roof of such excavations, and the whole structure conveying the impression of enormous incumbent weight, and proportionate resistance: on the other hand, the remains of Persepolis indicate a nation not in the habit of occupying the bosoms of their hills, but accustomed to wander free and unconstrained over their heights and among their forests, and who, when they forsook this nomad life, sought to retain in their new habitations as much as possible of their original liberty. Those terrace foundations, which appear like a continuation of the mountain, those groves of columns, those basins, once, no doubt, sparkling with refreshing fountains, those flights of steps, which the loaded camel of the Arab ascends with the same ease as his conductor, forming a sort of highway for the nations whose images are sculptured there—all these particulars are as much in unison with the character of that joyous land which the industry of the Persians converted into an earthly paradise as the gigantic temples of Egypt are appropriate memorials of their old grottos in the rocks. The columns of Persepolis shoot upwards with a slender yet firm elevation, conveying a fit image of the stems of the lotus and palm, from which they were probably copied. As in Egypt everything is closely covered, and, as it were, oppressed by a roof, so here is everything free and unconfined, in admirable harmony with the religion of the nation, whose sole objects of worship were the sun, the elements, and the open vault of heaven.

The art of design also preserves in the ruins of Persepolis a character peculiar to itself, a character of sobriety and dignity. Sculpture here appears formed on the habits of a court, and of an oriental court. No female or naked figure is to be traced, the seclusion of the harem being religiously respected. Of the male figures, none are portrayed in any violent or constrained attitude, not even when the monarch is represented destroying a monster; and it is only in the conflicts of animals with one another that the artist has displayed his power of expressing strong excitement. Where everything had reference to a court, no attitude was admissible which was not sanctioned by court etiquette. At the same time, this air of composure and dignity does not degenerate into stiffness; the design of the artist appears to have been, not to excite an impression of the beautiful, but a feeling of veneration—an end which has been fully attained. It is to be observed that no statue, nor any vestige of one, appears to have been discovered,[661] and Persian sculpture seems to have been confined to the carving of reliefs, more or less prominent; and in the case of the monstrous figures which guard the entrance, amounting to half-relievos. How different are these historical relievos of Persia from those of the Egyptians, the favourite themes of which are battles and triumphal processions! There the object of the artist has been to exhibit the characters of action and energy; here, those of repose. In its subjects, also, the Persian sculpture is distinguished from that of the Egyptians, as well as that of the Indians. While it occasionally delineated superhuman beings, such as feroohers and izeds, it abstained from the deities themselves. On the other hand, it is in close and perfect harmony with the architecture it accompanies. As the latter was lofty and grand, but not colossal, so was the former, and both characterised by a high degree of simplicity. It was the most obvious and natural idea with which the ancient artist could set about his work, to make the one the handmaid of the other, and the sculptor may be said to have given animation to the labours of the architect, by representing under emblematical figures the design of his works. Accordingly, as the different parts of the edifice combined to form a whole, so the various groups of sculpture composed one general design, and all, down to the most minute decorations, were in strict unison with one leading idea, associated with the religious opinions of the nation. With the exception of the fabulous animals, everything was copied from nature; and from the parts of these monsters were borrowed nearly all the ornaments, consisting for the most part of the heads of unicorns and claws of griffins; and chimerical as these fabulous creations may at first sight appear, they are all capable of being reduced to four or five elementary forms of real animals—the horse, the lion, the onager or wild ass, the eagle, and the scorpion, to which we may perhaps add the rhinoceros.

In proportion, however, as the mythology at the command of the sculptor were limited, so his circle of observation, as applied to real nature, was extensive. He appears to have been familiar with the nations of more than one quarter of the globe, and to have distinguished with exactness their features and profiles, the thick lips and woolly hair of the negro being no less accurately marked than the limbs of the half-naked Indian. The same mechanical accuracy also and perfect finish, which distinguishes the architectural details, is observable in the labours of the sculptor. We may still count the nails in the wheels of the chariot in the great relievo; and the hair of the negro is so carefully wrought, that it is impossible to confound it with that of the Asiatics. This sort of scrupulous care, which marks also the inscriptions, appears in all countries to have distinguished the infancy of the art.b

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BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter a is reserved for Editorial Matter.]

Chapter I. Land and People

b Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums.

c Max Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums.

d The Holy Bible.

e Herodotus, The History of Herodotus (translated from the Greek by William Beloe).

f Xenophon, The Cyropædia (translated from the Greek by J.S. Watson and Henry Dale).

Chapter II. The Median or Scythian Empire

b Herodotus, op. cit.

c Theodore Nöldeke, article “Persia,” in the Encyclopædia Britannica.

d A. H. Sayce, The Higher Criticism and the Monuments.

e The Holy Bible.

f R. W. Rogers, History of Babylonia and Assyria.

g Ctesias, Persica.

h Berosus, Βαβυλωνικά.

i Strabo, Γεωγραφικά.

Chapter III. The Early Achæmenians and the Elamites, Cyrus and Cambyses

b Theodore Nöldeke, op. cit.

c Herodotus, op. cit.

d Xenophon, op. cit.

e Ctesias, op. cit.

f Victor Floigl, Cyrus und Herodot nach den neugefundenen Keilinschriften.

g G.Maspero, Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient.

h A. H. Sayce, op. cit.

i H. C. Rawlinson, “Outline of the History of Assyria.”

j Polyænus, Στρατηγήματα.

k Xanthus, Lydiaca.

l Eduard Meyer, op. cit.

m Berosus, op. cit.

n J. V. Prášek, Kambyses und die Ueberlieferung des Altertums.

Chapter IV. The Persian Dynasty: Darius I to Darius III

b Eduard Meyer, op. cit.

c Herodotus, op. cit.

d H. C. Rawlinson, The Persian Cuneiform Inscription at Behistun.

e G. Maspero, op. cit.

f Diodorus, Historical Library.

g Xenophon, op. cit.

Chapter V. Persian Civilisation

b A. H. L. Heeren, Historical Researches into the Politics, Intercourse, and Trade of the Principal Nations of Antiquity (Asiatic Nations).

c H. C. Rawlinson, op. cit.

d Xenophon, op. cit.

e The Holy Bible.

f Herodotus, op. cit.

g Jas. Morier, Journey through Persia, etc.

h R. K. Porter, Travels in Georgia, Persia, etc.

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[663]

A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PERSIAN HISTORY

BASED ON THE WORKS QUOTED, CITED, OR EDITORIALLY CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF THE PRESENT HISTORY.

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Hellenica World - Scientific Library