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Title: The Historians' History of the World in Twenty-Five Volumes, Volume 2 - Israel, India, Persia, Phoenicia, Minor Nations of Western Asia
Author: Various
Language: English
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THE HISTORIANS’ HISTORY OF THE WORLD
[Illustration: CHEYNE]
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.
[Illustration]
IN TWENTY-FIVE VOLUMES
VOLUME II--ISRAEL, INDIA, PERSIA, PHOENICIA,
MINOR NATIONS OF WESTERN ASIA
The Outlook Company
New York
The History Association
London
1905
COPYRIGHT, 1904,
BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.
_All rights reserved._
THE TROW PRESS
201-213 E. 12TH ST.
NEW YORK
U. S. A.
Contributors, and Editorial Revisers.
Prof. Adolf Erman, University of Berlin.
Prof. Joseph Halévy, College of France.
Prof. Thomas K. Cheyne, Oxford University.
Prof. Andrew C. McLaughlin, University of Michigan.
Prof. David H. Müller, University of Vienna.
Prof. Alfred Rambaud, University of Paris.
Capt. F. Brinkley, Tokio.
Prof. Eduard Meyer, University of Berlin.
Dr. James T. Shotwell, Columbia University.
Prof. Theodor Nöldeke, University of Strasburg.
Prof. Albert B. Hart, Harvard University.
Dr. Paul Brönnle, Royal Asiatic Society.
Dr. James Gairdner, C.B., London.
Prof. Ulrich von Wilamowitz Möllendorff, University of Berlin.
Prof. H. Marczali, University of Budapest.
Dr. G. W. Botsford, Columbia University.
Prof. Julius Wellhausen, University of Göttingen.
Prof. Franz R. von Krones, University of Graz.
Prof. Wilhelm Soltau, Zabern University.
Prof. R. W. Rogers, Drew Theological Seminary.
Prof. A. Vambéry, University of Budapest.
Prof. Otto Hirschfeld, University of Berlin.
Dr. Frederick Robertson Jones, Bryn Mawr College.
Baron Bernardo di San Severino Quaranta, London.
Dr. John P. Peters, New York.
Prof. Adolph Harnack, University of Berlin.
Dr. S. Rappoport, School of Oriental Languages, Paris.
Prof. Hermann Diels, University of Berlin.
Prof. C. W. C. Oman, Oxford University.
Prof. I. Goldziher, University of Vienna.
Prof. W. L. Fleming, University of West Virginia.
Prof. R. Koser, University of Berlin.
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 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
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.
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 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
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 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
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._
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 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 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.
[Illustration: BRAZEN FOUNTAIN USED FOR SUPPLYING WATER TO THE TEMPLE,
ANCIENT JUDEA]
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 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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 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 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, 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.
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. 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 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 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
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,
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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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, 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 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 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. 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.
“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.)
B.C. The so-called judges are tribal chiefs, military leaders,
who in this period stand at the head of the state. There
is no regular transmission of authority, and no one is at
the head of all the tribes at once. Sometimes they rule
contemporaneously. In this age of settlement the bonds
between the different tribes gradually become dissolved
as they attain to security and peace. The earlier judges
carry on the conquest of Canaan, and repel some outside
invaders. Barak of Kadesh prompted by the prophet Deborah
deals a crushing blow on the banks of the Kishor to a strong
coalition of northern Canaanites under the leadership of
Sisera. Gideon, one of the judges, puts a stop to the
frequent incursions of the Midianites. The need of a
monarchy begins to be felt. Gideon refuses a crown offered
by the tribes of central Palestine, but his son Abimelech,
aided by Shechemite kinsfolk, attempts to found a kingship.
He is unsuccessful owing to internal dissension among his
followers.
Jephthah leads the Gileadites in a successful campaign
against the Ammonites, and this leads to a bloody tribal
conflict between the Gileadites and Ephraimites. There are
short wars with Philistia, with which the name of Samson the
Danite is connected. In one of them the Israelites are
1040 badly beaten at Aphek and the Ark of the Covenant captured.
The latter is returned after seven months, and sent to
Kirjath-jearim for safe keeping. The tribes are rapidly
becoming disorganised, though by conquest and fusion with
the Canaanites they have become a large and vigorous people.
The old religion is almost forgotten. In this age probably
belongs the beginning of Hebrew literature, and the use of
writing becomes common.
About twenty years after the battle of Aphek, Samuel, the
last of the judges, calls an assembly of the tribes at
Mizpeh. Law and order are restored in the community, and
the covenant with Yahveh renewed. To complete the work of
unification, Saul of Benjamin is elected king of Israel, and
anointed by Samuel. Samuel also establishes schools of the
prophets (Nebiim) in various parts of the land, whose main
duties are to keep the light of religion from dying out, and
to preserve the feeling of national unity.
THE MONARCHY TO THE DIVISION OF ISRAEL (1020-930 B.C.)
1020 =Saul.=--He delivers Jabesh-Gilead from the besieging
Ammonites, and assisted by his son Jonathan, conducts a
successful war against the Philistines. His leniency towards
Agag, king of the Amalekites, brings about his rejection
by Samuel. David, an unknown youth, becomes attached to
the king’s person, probably on account of his skill as a
musician. Saul finally regards David as a rival, and exiles
him. David gathers his tribesmen and many malcontents about
him, and makes the Cave of Adullam his stronghold. He attacks
1010 the Philistines and the Amalekites. Saul and three sons are
slain at Mount Gilboa in a battle with the Philistines, and
=Eshbaal= (=Ishbosheth=), a surviving son, is made king
by Abner, Saul’s general. David returns to Hebron and is
anointed king of Judah. After several conflicts between the
forces of the rival kings, Abner quarrels with Eshbaal and
makes overtures to David, but is shortly assassinated by
Joab.
1002 Murder of Eshbaal. =David= is invited to the throne of all
Israel. Judah becomes the leading tribe. The Philistines
revolt. David defeats them at Baal-perazim and Rephaim. Gath
becomes tributary. David dislodges the Canaanites from Jebus
and refounds the city, now Jerusalem. Royal palace on Mount
Zion built. The Ark is brought from Kirjath-jearim to the
new capital. David goes to war to defend and consolidate his
kingdom. Campaigns against Edom, Moab, and Ammon. Rabbath
Ammon captured, and inhabitants barbarously put to death.
His son =Absalom= rebels and receives such support that
David flees from Jerusalem, and Absalom takes possession.
The king returns after Absalom’s death. The revolt of
Sheba is suppressed and punished. Through her influence,
Bathsheba succeeds in having her son Solomon appointed heir
over Adonijah, the eldest son. The kingdom now extends from
the borders of Egypt to the Euphrates on the west, and the
Orontes on the north.
970 =Solomon.=--King at David’s death. He puts Adonijah, Joab,
and Shimei to death at once. Banishes Abiathar the high
priest, and installs Zadok. Marries daughter of the Pharaoh
(probably Pasebkhanu II). Makes alliance with Hiram of Tyre.
Builds fortresses and institutes an elaborate system of
taxation, which arouses discontent and jealousy.
966-959 Building of the temple at Jerusalem. In the luxuries
of the court various forms of heathen worship creep in,
and the oppression of the people to support the king’s
splendour, paves the way to disruption. Hadad of Edom and
Rezon of Damascus become powerful rivals.
940 Jeroboam of Ephraim, revolts with the help of Ahijah of
Shiloh. The plot fails, and Jeroboam seeks refuge with
Shashanq I of Egypt.
930 At death of Solomon, the ten northern tribes which get
no promise of better treatment from his successor, openly
revolt, and sending for Jeroboam, elect him their king.
Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, retains Judah and Benjamin only.
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM
JUDAH (930-586 B.C.) ISRAEL (930-722 B.C.) (Judah and Benjamin) (The
Ten Northern Tribes)
930 =Rehoboam= attempts to win back 930 =Jeroboam I= becomes leader of
the ten tribes; finally prevented a democratic movement looking
by the prophet Shemaiah. to the abolishment of the
elective monarchy. Makes Dan
925 Invasion of Judah by Shashanq I and Bethel the chief centres
of Egypt. of religion, where Yahveh
is worshipped in the form of a
Capture and sack of Jerusalem. bull. A new non-Levitical
priesthood started. Ahijah,
920 =Abijam=, king of Judah. the prophet, denounces these
reactionary measures.
917 =Asa=, king of Judah. Wars 917 =Nadab= succeeds his father,
with Israel continue. Asa is murdered after two years by
allies himself with Ben-Hadad 915 =Baasha=, a captain of
I of Damascus. 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
890 by =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. 875 =Ahab=, king of Israel. Defeats
Alliance of Judah and Israel the Syrians twice, and then, to
through marriage of Jehoram the offence of the prophets,
and Athaliah, daughter of allies himself with them,
Ahab. probably to resist Assyria.
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, Elisha, servant and successor
succeeds his father. Athaliah of Elijah, comes into
attempts to introduce the prominence, and makes fierce
heathenism and profligacy of war upon Baal worship, and in
Israel into Judah. The Edomites the course of this anoints
successfully revolt. The Jehu, an officer of the army,
Philistines invade and pillage king. Jehu in revolt at once
Jerusalem. attacks Jehoram and Ahaziah,
who are visiting him, and slays
them both.
844 =Ahaziah= succeeds his father. 843 =Jehu.= Roots out Baal worship
Is killed by Jehu. by fire and sword. The house of
Omri is entirely exterminated.
842 =Athaliah= usurps throne. Kills Comes to terms and pays tribute
all the royal house except Joash, to Shalmaneser II, to protect
who is concealed by the high his kingdom from Syria.
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.
802 =Jehoash.= Defeats Syrians and
recovers lost cities. Israel
797 =Amaziah.= The Edomites defeated delivered from the Syrian yoke.
in the valley of Salt. Death of Elisha. Defeat and
Declares war upon Israel and capture of Amaziah at
is badly defeated. Assassinated Beth-shemesh. Enters Jerusalem.
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 An era of peace and prosperity
of Elath. Era of commercial begins, although the attitude
prosperity. Kingdom made of Assyria is threatening.
secure against the Philistines.
Uzziah dies a leper. 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 740 =Shallum=, a conspirator,
king, after a short regency. 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, 736 =Pekah=, an officer at the head
succeeds his father. In spite of a military plot, slays the
of the prophet Isaiah’s warnings, king and seizes the throne.
calls upon Tiglathpileser Allies himself with Rezin of
III to help resist Pekah and Damascus to attack Judah.
Rezin. Religion is in a state
of corrupt decay. Prophecies 734 =Hoshea=, supported by
of Isaiah and Micah. Isaiah Tiglathpileser, slays Pekah,
preaches against the consequences and becomes an Assyrian vassal.
of the Assyrian alliance
to the nation and religion
of Judah, and advises a policy
of quietness; Micah against
the condition of the poor.
727 =Hezekiah.= Carries out moderate
religious reforms in early
years of reign. The religion 725 Hoshea, on Shabak’s advice,
centralised at Jerusalem. withholds tribute from
Many administrative Shalmaneser IV, who at once
improvements in the kingdom. 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.
Growing strength, in spite of Isaiah’s warning of the
702 anti-Assyrian party until finally Hezekiah withholds
tribute from Assyria; his example is followed by other
vassal states of Palestine.
701 Sennacherib invades Palestine. Battle of Eltekeh
(Altaku). Tirhaqa of Egypt comes to Hezekiah’s assistance.
The Assyrians, disabled by great pestilence, return to
Nineveh without taking Jerusalem, but Hezekiah resumes
payment of tribute.
695 =Manasseh= succeeds Hezekiah. Revival of Baal worship.
Reaction against disciples of the prophets who are
persecuted. Adoration of the sun and stars introduced from
Assyria, where Manasseh spends some time as a hostage to
Asshurbanapal.
641 =Amon=, king of Judah. Persecution of the faithful Jews
continues.
639 =Josiah=, son of Amon, succeeds at age of eight.
Terrible social and moral conditions exposed in prophecies
of Zephaniah and Nahum.
621 Pretended discovery by Hilkiah of the “Book of the Law”
leading to religious reforms. Idolatrous emblems are cast
out and local sanctuaries abolished.
608 Neku II of Egypt enters Palestine on a career of
conquest. Josiah meets him at Megiddo and is slain.
=Jehoahaz= elected king by the people over his elder
brother, Jehoiakim.
607 Jehoahaz made prisoner by Neku, and =Jehoiakim= placed
on the throne. Judah, weakened and in disorder, becomes an
Egyptian province.
605 Defeat of Neku by Nebuchadrezzar at Carchemish, in
consequence whereof
601 Jehoiakim becomes a vassal of the Babylonian king.
597 Jehoiakim slain in a Chaldean invasion; his son
=Jehoiachin= succeeds. After three months’ reign is carried
captive to Babylon, after the surrender of Jerusalem to
Nebuchadrezzar. The flower of the population is deported
also. =Mattaniah=, Jehoiachin’s uncle, is appointed king and
his name changed to =Zedekiah=. Jeremiah counsels complete
submission to Babylon, but,
588 Zedekiah rebels, relying on the vain promise of Uah-ab-Ra
[Hophra] of Egypt, and as a consequence
588-586 Siege and capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadrezzar.
586 The Jews “except the poorest of the land” are carried
into captivity at Babylon. Gedaliah is appointed governor
over the remnant left behind. A few surviving leaders flee
and settle in Egypt, among them Jeremiah. End of the Hebrews
as a nation. Henceforth they exist as a religious community.
Beginning of Judaism.
THE EXILE AND RESTORATION TO THE HEREDITARY HIGH PRIESTS (586-415 B.C.)
586-536 The Period of Exile. The Jews form the nucleus
of a new people. Jehoiachin is released by Amil Marduk
(Evil-Merodach) and treated with kindness. Ezekiel labours
with his people to bear their burden and cheers them with
the hope of restoration. They spend much time in compiling
and revising the literary records of the past. The “Priestly
Code” is compiled.
538 Conquest of Babylon by Cyrus. Persian dominion.
536 Cyrus issues decree permitting Jews to return to
Jerusalem with their sacred vessels and to rebuild the
temple. A band sets out at once headed by Zerubbabel and
Jeshua.
534 The rebuilding of the temple is begun, but interrupted
on account of the opposition of the Samaritans. Haggai and
Zechariah exhort the Jews to complete the temple.
520 The rebuilding is renewed.
516 The temple is dedicated.
510-460 A period whose history is unknown. Zerubbabel may
have been crowned king, but this is doubtful. Judea now
an insignificant province of the empire, controlled by
Persian satraps whose rulers are corrupt and oppressive.
Religious faith again begins to decay. The Law is evaded
and disobeyed, and in this condition of things a small
reactionary and zealous party increase in numbers and
influence.
483 Ezra, a Zadokite priest, is encouraged to visit
Jerusalem on a mission of reform, by Artaxerxes I, who
wishes to conciliate the Jews in Babylon, who are uneasy at
the condition of religion in Judea. His mission fails.
445 Nehemiah, a Babylonian Jew, arrives in Jerusalem with
Artaxerxes’ permission to repair the city’s walls. Ezra
reappears. The Law Book is published and the covenant
between Israel and Yahveh is renewed. The foundation stone
of Judaism is laid. The Law is now the possession of each
Israelite. Nehemiah improves the social condition of the
poor and returns to Persia (433).
432 Second visit of Nehemiah. He finds some of the old
abuses again in practice. The founding of the Samaritan
colony gets rid of those opposed to Nehemiah, and unifies
the loyal Jews.
415 Death of Nehemiah. The internal administration of Judea
passes to the line of hereditary high priests.
THE HIGH PRIESTS TO THE MACCABÆAN RISING (415-167 B.C.)
415 =Eliashib=, high priest. He and his successors direct
the affairs of Judea assisted by a council of elders and
priests.
413 =Joiada= becomes high priest.
373 =Johanan= murders his brother Joshua, who attempts to
seize the high-priesthood. The Persian satrap interferes
and fines the Jews.
350 Judea ravished by Artaxerxes III, while suppressing a
Syrian revolt. The temple destroyed. Many Jews deported.
341 =Jaddua= becomes high priest. The age of “Wisdom”
literature (Khokmah).
333 Overthrow of the Persian Empire by Alexander at the
battle of Issus. Israel has a new master.
323 At death of Alexander, Judea becomes a part of the
satrapy of Syria.
321 =Onias I= becomes high priest.
320 Conquest of Jerusalem by Ptolemy Lagus. He deports some
of the inhabitants to Egypt.
314-302 Judea a Syrian province.
302 Ptolemy Lagus retakes Judea.
300 =Simon the Just= becomes high priest. He repairs the
temple and strengthens the fortifications of the city.
294-280 Judea nominally a Seleucid province.
285 Ptolemy Philadelphus succeeds his father, who abdicates.
The Septuagint version of the Bible begun under his
patronage.
250 =Onias II= becomes high priest. Tries to withhold
tribute from Ptolemy.
247 Ptolemy Euergetes succeeds his father.
222 Ptolemy Philopator succeeds his father.
219 In the war between Antiochus the Great and Ptolemy
Philopator, Jerusalem is pillaged and the temple profaned
by the latter.
217 =Simon II= becomes high priest.
204 Judea lost to the Ptolemies, under whom she has been
happier than any time since she lost her independence,
and comes under the rule of the Seleucidæ.
198 =Onias III= becomes high priest. Antiochus makes a
bloodless capture of Jerusalem. His treatment of the
Jews is very favourable.
187 Seleucus Philopator succeeds Antiochus.
176 Attempt of Heliodorus, instigated by the viceroy
Apollonius, to plunder the temple.
175 Antiochus Epiphanes succeeds Seleucus.
175 =Onias=, friendly to the Egyptian party, is deposed by
Antiochus IV, and retiring to Egypt with his followers
founds Leontopolis. =Jason= becomes high priest. A Greek
gymnasium established at Jerusalem.
172 =Menelaus= ousts Jason from the priesthood.
Antiochus intervenes in the resulting quarrel. Menelaus
is forcibly installed as high priest and Apollonius takes
Jerusalem. Profanation of the temple. Daily sacrifice and
other rites suspended.
THE MACCABÆAN RISING TO THE FALL OF JERUSALEM (167 B.C.-70 A.D.)
167 There is a rising at Modin, under the priest Mattathias,
because Syrian officers try to compel the Jews to worship
heathen deities. Many desperate adherents flock to
Mattathias’ standard, and a large band is soon roaming
the country destroying heathen altars and enforcing
circumcision. Mattathias dies (166) making Judas Maccabæus
his successor. A systematic campaign is now decided upon.
166 Judas Maccabæus defeats the Syrians at Emmaus.
165 Judas Maccabæus defeats the Syrians at Bethzur,
reconsecrates the temple and restores daily sacrifice.
164 Antiochus Eupator. The Book of Daniel is written.
162 Judas attempts to expel the Syrian garrison from Acra,
meets a crushing defeat from the Syrians at Bethzur.
=Alcimus=, leader of the Hellenistic party, becomes high
priest, to the resentment of the Maccabæans.
Demetrius I usurps the Syrian throne, and has Antiochus
killed.
161 Judas defeats Nicanor, the Syrian, at Beth-horon
(Adasa). Nicanor slain. Judas defeated and killed at Elasa.
He had made secret overtures to Rome. Judas’ brother
Jonathan succeeds to the leadership of the party.
159 Death of Alcimus. An interregnum in the high-priestship.
Jonathan establishes himself at Michmash as governor of the
Jewish nation.
153 Alexander Balas, a pretender to the Syrian throne, makes
=Jonathan= high priest.
150 Death of Demetrius.
145 Alexander Balas killed by Ptolemy Philometor. Demetrius
II succeeds. Confirms Jonathan in the priesthood.
142 Trypho, the general of Alexander Balas, and his son
Antiochus, seize Jonathan and put him to death. Simon, son
of Mattathias, assumes the leadership, and induces Demetrius
to release Judea from tribute. Capture of Acra by Simon.
Judea free from Syrian control.
141 =Simon= confirmed as high priest. A time of peace and
prosperity. The Law finally re-established.
135 Murder of Simon and his two sons by his son-in-law,
Ptolemy. The third son, =John Hyrcanus=, succeeds to the
high-priesthood. The position becomes one of practically
independent sovereignty. Antiochus VII attempts to recover
Judea. He devastates the country and Hyrcanus is obliged to
purchase the withdrawal of the army, and the immunity of the
capital.
128 Antiochus killed in Parthia. Hyrcanus annexes new
territory. Captures Shechem and Samaria. Era of grandeur for
the Jewish commonwealth.
105 John Hyrcanus dies. His son =Aristobulus= imprisons
his mother, kills two brothers, and assumes title of king.
Conquest and annexation of Ituræa.
104 =Alexander Jannæus= succeeds his brother. The growing
opposition of the Scribes and Pharisees to the development
of the Maccabæan commonwealth into a kingdom, leads to civil
war, during which the Pharisees summon assistance from Syria
and drive Alexander from Jerusalem, but he recovers the
throne and works bloody revenge upon the Pharisees.
79 =Hyrcanus II= succeeds his father Alexander.
78 Alexandra (widow of Jannæus) makes terms with the
Pharisees.
69 =Aristobulus II= wrests power from his brother Hyrcanus.
Antipater, governor of Idumæa, sides with the latter.
Aristobulus defeated, and Hyrcanus nearly succeeds in
65 regaining the throne, but the Romans appear in Syria,
and take sides with Aristobulus.
63 Pompey, appealed to by both princes, captures Jerusalem;
Hyrcanus retains his title, but Judea is made tributary to
Rome.
47 =Antipater= made procurator of Judea, Samaria, and
Galilee by Julius Cæsar. Hyrcanus assumes title of ethnarch.
43 Assassination of Antipater. His son =Phasael= is governor
of Jerusalem. His son =Herod= is governor of Galilee.
40 Phasael captured by Antigonus, son of Aristobulus II, and
commits suicide. Herod flees to Rome and is made king of the
Jews.
37 Herod captures Jerusalem in his war against Antigonus.
He reorganises the sanhedrim, and the Pharisees become
nearly as numerous in it as the priests and elders.
35-25 Herod removes the surviving members of the Asmonæan
family from his path.
20 Herod begins reconstruction of the temple. He founds the
cities of Antipatris and Cæsarea.
7-6 Herod causes the sons of Mariamne to be condemned and
strangled.
4 Birth of Jesus--Death of Herod. He wills his dominions to
his surviving sons, =Herod Antipas= and =Archelaus=.
6 A.D. The Jews appeal to Rome on account of Archelaus’
misgovernment. Augustus deposes the ethnarch, and Judea
becomes a Roman province.
7 The census of Quirinius takes place. =Coponius= is
procurator. He is followed by =Marcus Ambivius= and =Annius
Rufus=.
15 =Valerius Gratus= appointed procurator.
26 =Pontius Pilate= appointed procurator. The procurators
are subordinate to the Imperial Legates of Syria and reside
at Cæsarea.
29 Jesus begins his ministry.
33 Death of Jesus.
36 =Marcellus= appointed procurator.
37 =Marullus= appointed procurator.
38 Persecution of the Jews for refusing to worship Caligula.
41 The emperor Claudius commits the former kingdom of Herod
to the latter’s grandson, =Agrippa=.
44 Death of Agrippa. =Cuspius Fadus= appointed procurator.
The insurrection of Theudas takes place.
46 =Tiberius Alexander= appointed procurator.
48 =Cumanus= appointed procurator. Signs of revolt among the
Jews appear.
52 =Felix= appointed procurator. The state of anarchy
increases. The Zealots become the dominant party.
60 =Porcius Festus= appointed procurator.
62 =Albinus= appointed procurator.
64 =Gessius Florus=, the last procurator, appointed.
66 =Florus= seizes the temple treasure. After other
atrocities the Jews revolt. The Syrian legate appears before
Jerusalem, but quickly raises the siege. The emperor then
appoints Vespasian to conduct the war.
67 Vespasian arrives in Galilee. Siege and capture of
Jotapata. Josephus the insurgent general taken.
68 Siege of Jerusalem begins.
70 Fall of Jerusalem.
[Illustration: JERUSALEM]
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 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 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. “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]
[Illustration: ANCIENT JOPPA]
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, 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 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 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:
‘Come into Heshbon, let the city of Sihon be built and prepared:
For there is a fire gone out of Heshbon, a flame from the city of Sihon:
It hath consumed Ar of Moab, and the lords of the high places of Arnon.
Woe to thee, Moab! thou art undone, O people of Chemosh:
He hath given his sons that escaped, and his daughters into captivity,
(unto Sihon, king of the Amorites.)
We have shot at them; Heshbon is perished even unto Dibon.’”
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 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 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 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]
[Illustration: HEBREW DOLMEN AT ALA-SAFAT]
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: “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
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 2300 B.C.]]
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
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 2300-1270 B.C.]]
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 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
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1270-1250 B.C.]]
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 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 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, 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.
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.
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, 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 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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1250-1200 B.C.]]
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 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.
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. “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. “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_, “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 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]
[Illustration: TIBERIAS, LOOKING TOWARD HERMON]
[Illustration: ANCIENT THEBEZ]
CHAPTER III. THE JUDGES
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1200-1020 B.C.]]
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
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 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
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.
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]
[Illustration: A PALACE OF ANCIENT ISRAEL]
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, “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
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1020 B.C.]]
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.
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
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1020-1010 B.C.]]
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 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 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: “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: “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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1010-1002 B.C.]]
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 [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. “Thy
hands were not bound, nor thy feet put into fetters; as a man falleth
before the sons of iniquity fellest thou.”
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1002 B.C.]]
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
[1] _Histoire du Peuple d’Israel_, Paris, 1889, p. 175.
[Illustration: ANCIENT JEWISH FOUNTAIN]
CHAPTER V. DAVID’S REIGN
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1002-990 B.C.]]
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.
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 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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 990 B.C.]]
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.
[Illustration: DAVID SENDING URIAH TO JOAB]
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 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.
[Illustration: JEWISH KING PERFORMING A RELIGIOUS RITE]
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; David’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.
FURTHER WARS BREAK OUT
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 990-980 B.C.]]
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 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 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
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 990-970 B.C.]]
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.
[Illustration: GATE OF JOPPA, JERUSALEM]
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.
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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 970 B.C.]]
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.
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 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.
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.
[Illustration: THE PILLAR OF ABSALOM]
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]
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]
[Illustration: TIBERIAS, LOOKING TOWARD LEBANON]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 970-960 B.C.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 960-950 B.C.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 950-940 B.C.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 940-930 B.C.]]
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. 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 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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 930 B.C.]]
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]
[Illustration: EXTERIOR OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE, JERUSALEM]
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
[Illustration: JEWISH SHRINE]
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 930-875 B.C.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 875-860 B.C.]]
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 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 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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 860-850 B.C.]]
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: “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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 850-840 B.C.]]
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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 840-815 B.C.]]
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.
[Illustration: THE MOABITE STONE]
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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 815-780 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 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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 780-740 B.C.]]
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 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.
[Illustration: JERUSALEM]
DESTRUCTION OF THE TWO KINGDOMS
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 780-722 B.C.]]
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.
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.
[Sidenote: [722-700 B.C.]]
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 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.”
[Sidenote: [700-680 B.C.]]
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
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.
[Sidenote: [680-610 B.C.]]
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 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.”
[Sidenote: [610-605 B.C.]]
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
[Sidenote: [605-597 B.C.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [597-586 B.C.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [586 B.C.]]
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:
“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
[2] [That is according to the Usher chronology. The probable real date
is about 930 B.C.]
[3] [Professor Sayce says: “Dodah must have been a deity who received
divine honours in the northern kingdom of Israel by the side of the
national god.” Arel signifies a hero. So probably there were certain
“heroes” who acted as champions of the deity to whom they were
attached.]
[Illustration: CONVENT OF TERRA SANTA, NAZARETH]
CHAPTER VIII. THE RETURN FROM CAPTIVITY
THE PROPHECY OF THE RETURN
Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.
Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her
warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she
hath received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the
way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our
God.
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill
shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and
the rough places plain.
And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh
shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken
it.--_Isaiah_ xl. 1-5.
Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers? did not
the Lord, he against whom we have sinned? for they would not
walk in his ways, neither were they obedient unto his law.
Therefore he hath poured upon him the fury of his anger, and
the strength of battle: and it hath set him on fire round
about, yet he knew not; and it burned him, yet he laid it not
to heart.--_Isaiah_ xlii. 24-25.
But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and he
that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee,
I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.
For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour:
I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee.
Fear not: for I am with thee: I will bring thy seed from the
east, and gather thee from the west;
I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not
back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of
the earth.--_Isaiah_ xliii. 1, 3, 5, 6.
Thus saith the Lord, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from
the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things; that stretcheth
forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by
myself;
That frustrateth the tokens of the liars, and maketh diviners
mad; that turneth wise men backward, and maketh their knowledge
foolish.
That confirmeth the word of his servant, and performeth the
counsel of his messengers; that saith to Jerusalem, Thou shalt
be inhabited; and to the cities of Judah, Ye shall be built,
and I will raise up the decayed places thereof:
That saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers:
That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all
my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and
to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid.--_Isaiah_ xliv.
24-28.
Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand
I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose
the loins of kings, to open before him the two-leaved gates;
and the gates shall not be shut;
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.--_Isaiah_ xlv. 1-2.
Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, their idols were upon the
beasts, and upon the cattle; your carriages were heavy loaden;
they are a burden to the weary beast.
They stoop, they bow down together; they could not deliver the
burden, but themselves are gone into captivity.--_Isaiah_ xlvi.
1-2.
Come down, and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon,
sit on the ground: there is no throne, O daughter of the
Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be called tender and
delicate.--_Isaiah_ xlvii. 1.
Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, O daughter of
the Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be called, The lady of
kingdoms.
I was wroth with my people, I have polluted mine inheritance,
and given them into thine hand: thou didst shew them no mercy;
upon the ancient hast thou very heavily laid thy yoke.
And thou saidst, I shall be a lady for ever: so that thou didst
not lay these things to thy heart, neither didst remember the
latter end of it.
Therefore hear now this, thou that art given to pleasures, that
dwellest carelessly, that sayest in thine heart, I am, and none
else beside me; I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I
know the loss of children:
But these two things shall come to thee in a moment in one day,
the loss of children, and widowhood: they shall come upon thee
in their perfection for the multitude of thy sorceries, and for
the great abundance of thine enchantments.--_Isaiah_ xlvii. 5-9.
Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the
astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand
up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee.
Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them;
they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame:
there shall not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to sit before it.
Thus shall they be unto thee with whom thou hast laboured, even
thy merchants, from thy youth: they shall wander every one to
his quarter; none shall save thee.--_Isaiah_ xlvii. 13-15.
Hear ye this, O house of Jacob, which are called by the name of
Israel, and are come forth out of the waters of Judah, which
swear by the name of the Lord, and make mention of the God of
Israel.--_Isaiah_ xlviii. 1.
[Sidenote: [586-536 B.C.]]
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 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]
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.
THE COMING OF CYRUS
[Sidenote: [538 B.C.]]
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.
[Illustration: THE DAMASCUS GATE, JERUSALEM]
THE RETURN TO JERUSALEM
[Sidenote: [536-515 B.C.]]
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.
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.”
[Sidenote: [515-450 B.C.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [450-445 B.C.]]
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 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
[Sidenote: [445-415 B.C.]]
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: “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.
[Sidenote: [415 B.C.]]
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 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
[4] [It should perhaps be mentioned that some critics and historians
are not inclined to accept the statements of the writers of Ezra and
Nehemiah _en masse_.]
[Illustration: THE DEAD SEA, LOOKING TOWARDS MOAB, WITH THE CONVENT OF
MAR SABA IN FOREGROUND]
CHAPTER IX. FROM NEHEMIAH TO ANTIOCHUS
[Illustration: JEWISH PRIEST AND ALTAR]
[Sidenote: [415-332 B.C.]]
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 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
[Sidenote: [332-312 B.C.]]
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
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
[Sidenote: [312-204 B.C.]]
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 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 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.
[Illustration: ANCIENT JERUSALEM (A RESTORATION)]
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.
[Sidenote: [204-200 B.C.]]
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.
THE SYRIAN DOMINION; ANTIOCHUS THE GREAT
[Sidenote: [300-187 B.C.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [187-175 B.C.]]
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
[Sidenote: [175 B.C.]]
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. 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
[Sidenote: [175-170 B.C.]]
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. “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.”
[Illustration: ROBES OF THE HIGH PRIEST]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [170 B.C.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [170-167 B.C.]]
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.
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.
[Illustration: GREAT JEWISH ALTAR FOR MAKING SACRIFICES]
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.
[Sidenote: [167-166 B.C.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [166 B.C.]]
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
[5] [See also the chapter in the later books devoted to Greece and
Alexander.]
[6] [A similar appellation was given to Charles of France, who was
surnamed _Martel_, or, “the hammer.”]
[Illustration: SEPULCHRE AT SILOAM, THE SO-CALLED MONOLITH]
CHAPTER X. THE MACCABÆAN WAR
[Sidenote: [166-165 B.C.]]
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.”
[Illustration: HEBREW WARRIOR
(After Bardon)]
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 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. 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 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).
[Sidenote: [165-164 B.C.]]
“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.
[Sidenote: [164-163 B.C.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [163-162 B.C.]]
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.
[Sidenote: [162-161 B.C.]]
“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.
“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.
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.
[Sidenote: [161 B.C.]]
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.).
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 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.
[Sidenote: [161-153 B.C.]]
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.
[Sidenote: [153-142 B.C.]]
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 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.”
[Sidenote: [142 B.C.]]
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 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]
[Illustration: COINS OF ANCIENT JUDEA]
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.)
[Illustration: JEWISH TOMB, JUDEA]
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.) “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.”
[Sidenote: [135-126 B.C.]]
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
[Sidenote: [126-108 B.C.]]
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 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 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.
[Sidenote: [108-65 B.C.]]
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.
ANTIPATER
[Sidenote: [65-47 B.C.]]
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.
[Sidenote: [47-40 B.C.]]
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. 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
[Sidenote: [40-4 B.C.]]
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 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 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 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]
[Sidenote: [4 B.C.]]
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]
[Illustration: SEBASTE, IN SAMARIA]
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.
[Sidenote: [33 A.D.]]
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, 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 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 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.
[Sidenote: [37-41 A.D.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [41-44 A.D.]]
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.
[Sidenote: [44-52 A.D.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [52-62 A.D.]]
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, 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_ (Origen[f] 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 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.
[Sidenote: [62 A.D.]]
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, 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]
[Illustration: JEWISH HEADDRESSES]
CHAPTER XIII. THE REVOLT AGAINST ROME
[Sidenote: [62-67 A.D.]]
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 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
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 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 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 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 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.
[Sidenote: [67 A.D.]]
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.
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 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 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 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 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.
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]
[Illustration: THE GOLDEN GATE, JERUSALEM]
CHAPTER XIV. THE FALL OF JERUSALEM
[Sidenote: [68-70 A.D.]]
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 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 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.
[Sidenote: [70 A.D.]]
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 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 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 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 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 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.
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.
[Sidenote: [70-73 A.D.]]
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]
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE TOMB OF THE KINGS, JERUSALEM]
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 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]
[Illustration: THE TOWER OF DAVID, JERUSALEM]
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.
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, 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, 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 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.
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.
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 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.
[Illustration: MOVABLE VESSEL OF THE TEMPLE
(After Mangeant)]
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 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 strangest of all national fates. To the Christian it is as the
escape of the soul from the corruption and death of the body. Newman[e]
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:
‘Behold, darkness covereth the earth,
And thick mist the peoples;
But Jehovah riseth upon thee,
And his glory shall be seen on thee:
And the Gentiles shall come to thy light,
And kings to the brightness of thy rising.…
The Gentiles shall see thy righteousness,
And all kings thy glory;
And thou shalt be called by a new name,
Which the mouth of Jehovah shall name.
Thou shalt be a garland of glory in the hand of Jehovah,
And a royal diadem in the hand of thy God.
Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken,
Nor shall thy land any more be termed Desolate;
For Jehovah delighteth in thee,
And thy land shall be married to him.’”[e]
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.
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.
1) Thus the Lord God shewed me:
And, behold, he formed locusts in the beginning of the shooting up
after the latter growth;
And, lo, it was the latter growth after the king’s mowings.
2) And it came to pass that when they made an end _of eating_ the grass
of the land,
Then I said, O Lord God, forgive, I beseech thee:
How shall Jacob stand? for he is small.
3) The Lord repented concerning this:
It shall not be, saith the Lord.
4) Thus the Lord God shewed me:
And, behold, the Lord God called to contend by fire;
And it devoured the great deep,
And would have _devoured_ up the land.
5) Then said I, O Lord God, cease, I beseech thee:
How shall Jacob stand? for he is small.
6) The Lord repented concerning this:
This also shall not be, saith the Lord God.
7) Thus he (the Lord God) shewed me:
And behold he stood beside a wall made by a plumbline, with a
plumbline in his hand.
8) And the Lord said unto me, Amos, what seest thou?
And I said, A plumbline.
Then the Lord said, Behold, I will set a plumbline in the midst of
my people Israel;
I will not again pass them by any more:
9) And the high places of Isaac shall be desolate, and the sanctuaries
of Israel shall be laid waste.
And I will _rise against_ the house of Jeroboam with _the sword_.
1) Thus the Lord God shewed me:
And, behold, [there was] a basket of summer [ripe] fruit.
2) And he said, Amos, what seest thou?
And I said, A basket of summer [ripe] fruit.
3) Then said the Lord unto me,
The end [ripeness] is come upon my people Israel;
I will not again pass by them any more.
And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day.
The _dead bodies_ shall be many; in every place have they cast them
forth: be silent.
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 6) _And the word of the Lord
unto me, saying,_ 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 _And drop thy word_ toward the
South, Sanctuaries,
_And prophesy against_ the forest _And prophesy against_ the land
of the field in the South; of Israel;
3) _And say to the_ forest of the 8) _And say to the_ land of Israel:
South:
Hear the word of the Lord;
_Thus saith the Lord God:_ _Thus saith the Lord:_
Behold I will _kindle a fire_ Behold I am against thee,
in thee And will _draw forth_ my _sword_
from its sheath
And it shall _devour_ every _green_ And will _cut off from thee_ the
tree in thee and every _dry_ tree. _righteous_ and the _wicked_.
9) Seeing that I will _cut off
from_ thee the _righteous_
and the _wicked_.
The flaming fire _shall not be Therefore shall my _sword_ go
quenched_, forth out of its sheath
And all faces shall _be burnt against all flesh
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 _That I the Lord_ have drawn
_kindled_ it: forth my _sword_ out of its
_sheath_;
_It shall not be quenched._ _It shall not return any more._
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 And _few_ be they that find it.
thereby.
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 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,
The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib:
But Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.
And Amos ix. 2,
Though they dig into hell, thence shall my hand take them;
And though they climb up into heaven, thence will I bring them down.
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--
_Hear_, O heavens, and _give ear_, O earth, for the _Lord hath spoken_--
and ends--
We should have been as _Sodom_, we should have been like unto _Gomorrah_.
The second strophe-column begins--
_Hear the word of the Lord_, ye rulers of _Sodom_;
Give ear unto the Lord our God, ye people of _Gomorrah_.
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)
For the _stone_ shall cry out of the _wall_,
And the _beam_ out of the _timbers_ shall answer it.
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)
Woe to him that _buildeth_ a _town_ with blood
And _stablisheth_ a _city_ by iniquity.
And as an example of the inclusion we may quote Jeremiah xlvi. 20-24:
(beginning of strophe)
_Egypt_ is a very fair heifer; but destruction out of the _north_ is
come, it is come.
(end of strophe)
The daughter of _Egypt_ shall be put to shame, she shall be delivered
into the hand of the people of the _north_.
In the second chapter of Zephaniah, we find an example of the two-lined
inclusion:
(beginning of strophe)
8) I have heard the _reproach_ of Moab, and the _revilings_ of the
children of Ammon,
Wherewith they have reproached _my people_ and _magnified_ themselves
against my border.
(end of strophe)
10) This shall they have for their _pride_,
Because they have _reproached_ and _magnified themselves_ against
the people of the Lord of hosts.
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 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 Whom shall I send, and who will
lifted up, 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 And see ye indeed, but perceive
feet, not.
And with twain he did fly.
3) And one cried unto another, and 10) How fat is the heart of this
said, people
Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord And their ears how heavy,
of hosts. And their eyes as it were shut.
The whole earth is full of his Else might they see with their
glory. eyes
4) And the foundations of the And hear with their ears
thresholds were moved at the And understand with their heart,
voice of him that cried, 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 And he answered, Until the
lips, etc. 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.
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),
The _glorious house_, the _house of the gods_, in a glorious place had
not been made,
A plant had not been brought forth, a tree had not been created, etc.
Str. I (end),
(As for) the _glorious house, the house of the gods_, its seat had
not been made,
The whole of the lands were _sea_.
Str. II (beginning),
When within the _sea_ there was a stream
In that day Eridu was made, Ê-sagila was constructed, etc.
Str. II (end),
The _gods_ were to be caused to sit in a _seat of joy of heart_,
_He made mankind._
Str. III (beginning),
Aruru _had made the seed of mankind_ with him.
He made the beasts of the field and the living creatures of the
desert; etc.
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.
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.
v. 28. There was only one _cry_ (of Gabriel from heaven), and behold,
they became utterly extinct.
v. 49. They only wait for one _sounding_ (of the trumpet), which shall
overtake them while they are disputing together.
Between these two lie five strophes of four lines each.
Str. I, begins (v. 29),
Oh, the misery of men! no apostle cometh unto them but they laugh him
to scorn.
Str. II, begins (v. 33),
_One sign [of the resurrection] unto them_ is the dead earth, we quicken
the same, etc.
Str. III, begins (v. 37),
_The night also is a sign unto them_, we withdraw the day from the
same, etc.
Str. IV, begins (v. 41),
_It is a sign also unto them that_ they carry off their offspring in the
ship filled with merchandise, etc.
Str. V (v. 45), takes up the burden of the first, and begins,
And if it is said unto you, Fear that which is before you and that
which is behind,
It may be ye shall find mercy, etc.
I will also subjoin an example of the falling strophe combined with the
responsion, from _sura_ 56, vv. 57-72.
57) _We have created you_, will ye not therefore believe.…
58) _What think ye?_ _The seed_ that ye emit.
59) _Do ye_ create the same or are we the creators thereof?
60) We have decreed death unto you all, and we shall not be prevented.
61) We are able to substitute others like you in your stead, and to
produce you again in the condition or form which ye know not.
62) Ye know the original production by creation; will ye not therefore
consider.…
63) _What think ye_ the grain which ye sow?
64) _Do ye_ cause the same to spring forth, or _do we_ cause it to
spring forth?
65) _If we pleased, we could render_ the same dry and fruitless, so
that you would not cease to wonder, saying,
66) Verily we have contracted debts for seed and labour, but we are not
permitted to reap the fruit thereof.
67) _What think ye?_ The _water_ which ye drink,
68) _Do ye_ send down the same from the clouds, _or are we_ the senders
thereof?
69) _If we pleased we could_ render the same brackish: will ye not
therefore give thanks?
70) _What think ye?_ The _fire_ which ye strike,
71) _Do ye_ produce the tree whence ye obtain the same, _or are we_ the
producers thereof?
72) _We have ordained_ the same for an admonition, and an advantage to
those who travel through the deserts.
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.
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.
_Strophe_
I _mourn_ thy grievous fate,
Prometheus! From my tender eyes pours forth a flood of _tears_,
Wetting my cheeks from the springs of weeping. 400
For thus harshly Zeus,
Ruling in the law of his own will, displays
An imperious sceptre to the _gods_ of old.
_Antistrophe_
And now all the earth _mourns_,
And for that grand and ancient sway she _weeps_,
With mourning for the empire thou and thy brothers held. 410
And all who have abodes
On holy Asia’s borders, in thy loud mourned woes
Those _mortals_ suffer with thee.
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
That _reverent purity_ of tyrant, _Insolence_,
word and deed, etc. foolishly puffed up, etc.
Conclusion.
870) Ne’er shall forgetfulness 880) Rivalry that brings
lull them to rest: Weal to the state I ask not
God to end:
A great _god_ in them dwells, Never shall I depart from
nor ever waxeth old. _God_ my champion.
_Strophe II_ _Antistrophe II_
Beginning.
883) But a man who walks in 897) Never shall I more in reverence
haughty _insolence_ of go to Delphi’s holy place
word or deed,
Fearing not the hand of Nor the _shrine_ of Abæ, nor
Justice, nor revering Olympia.
_shrines_ of gods.
Conclusion.
895) But if such deeds as these 909) No longer in Apollo’s worship
are held in honour manifest,
What offerings need I bring But honours to the _gods_ go
the _gods_? 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_.
_Strophe._ 862-870
All night in choric dances my white foot shall beat
The Bacchic rout; my head I will toss in the dewy air,
As the fawn that sports among the pleasures of green fields,
_When in fear it flees_ the chase,
Escaping the trap, overleaping the well-wrought toils.…
_Antistrophe._ 882-890
Slowly, yet surely moves the power divine,
It punisheth mortals who go the way of folly,
And madly fail to reverence the gods.
But _subtly the gods still_ wait
_Long time in hiding, and hunt down_ the impious man.…
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 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.
AUTHORITIES.--_Die Propheten in ihrer ursprünglichen Form.
Die Grundgesetze der ursemitischen Poesie erschlossen und
nachgewiesen in Bibel Keilinschriften und Koran und in ihrer
Wirkung erkannt in den Chören der griechischen Tragödie_, by D.
H. Müller. 2 vols. Vienna, 1896.
_Strophen und Responsion._ Neue Beiträge. By D. H. Müller.
Vienna, 1898. (Cf. also Felix Perles in the _Wiener Zeitschrift
für Kunde des Morgenlandes_, X, 112, 71; and J. Zeenner in the
_Zeitschrift für Katholische Theologie_, XX, p. 378.)
_Untersuchungen zur altchristlichen Epistolographie_, by D. P.
Thomas M. Wehofer. Vienna, 1901.
[Illustration: ANCIENT QUARRY NEAR JERUSALEM]
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_.
[f] Assyrian 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).
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.
[Illustration: RAMLA, ONCE THE FINEST CITY IN PALESTINE]
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
=Abbott=, I. K., Essays chiefly on the original texts of the Old and
New Testament, London, 1901.--=Adams=, H. C., The History of the Jews,
London, 1887.--=Alker=, E., Die vortrojanische ägyptische Chronologie
im Einklang mit der biblischen, Leobschütz, 1894.--=Amitai=, L.
K., Étude sur les rapports qui ont existé entre les romains et les
juifs jusqu’à la prise de Jerusalem, Paris, 1893.--=Andrée=, R., Zur
Volkskunde der Juden, Bielefeld and Leipsic, 1881.--=Andrée=, J.,
L’esclavage chez les anciens Hébreux, Genève, 1892.--=Andrian=, E.
von, Höhenkult asiat. und europ. Völker, Wien, 1895.--=Archinard=,
Étude d’histoire et d’archéologie d’Israël et ses voisins asiatiques:
la Phénicie, l’Aram et l’Assyrie de l’époque de Salomon à celle de
Sanherib, Genève, 1890.
* * * * *
=Babelon=, E., Manuel d’archéologie orientale, Paris, 1888.--=Back=,
S., Das Synhedrion unter Napoleon I, Prag, 1879; Die relig. gesch.
Litteratur der Juden in dem Zeitraum v. 15-18 Jahrhundert, Trier,
1893.--=Basnage=, T. de Beauval, Histoire des juifs depuis J. C.
jusqu’à présent, pour servir de continuation à l’histoire de Josephus,
La Haye, 1716.--=Bauer=, G. L., Manual of the History of the Hebrew
Nation, Nürnberg and Altdorf, 1880, 3 vols.--=Baxter=, W. L.,
Sanctuary and Sacrifices, London, 1895.--=Bellange=, C., Le judaïsme
de l’histoire du peuple juif, Paris, 1889.--=Bennett=, W. H., Economic
conditions of the Hebrew Monarchy (in _The Thinker_, 8, II, 9, I),
New York, 1893.--=Benzinger=, J., Hebräische Archæologie, Freiburg,
1894.--=Bestmann=, H., Entwicklungsgeschichte des Reiches Gottes unter
dem Alten und Neuen Bunde, Berlin, 1895.--=Berliner=, A., Geschichte
der Juden in Rom, Frankfurt, 1893.--=Bender=, A., Vorträge über die
Offenbarung Gottes auf alttest. Boden.--=Bertholet=, Die Stellung der
Israeliten und der Juden zu den Fremden, Freiburg, 1896.--=Bettany=,
G. T. A., Sketch of Judaism and Christianity in the Light of Modern
Research, London, 1892.--=Bible=, The Holy (“authorised version”),
London, 1611; (“revised version”), London, 1884.--=Blaikie=, W. G.,
Heroes of Israel, Gütersloh, 1891.--=Bloch=, J. S., Der nationale
Zwist und die Juden in Österreich, Wien, 1886.--=Bois=, H., Essais
sur les origines de la philosoph. judéo-alexandrine, Paris, 1895;
Alexandre le Grand et les juifs en Palestine, (in Revue de Théol. et
Philos., Paris, 1890-91).--=Boralevi=, E., Civiltà e Culto giudaico,
Livorno, 1893.--=Borselli=, F., Introduction in libros prophetarum,
Neapolis, 1893.--=Boscawen=, W. St. C., The Bible and the Monuments,
London, 1895.--=Braun=, M., Geschichte der Juden und ihrer Litteratur,
vom Auszug aus Ægypten bis Talmud, Breslau, 1896.--=Brooks=, J.
W., The History of the Hebrew Nation from its First Origin to the
Present Time, London, 1841.--=Brownlee=, W. C., The History of the
Jews, from the Taking of Jerusalem by Titus to the Present Time,
New York, 1842.--=Bruce=, W. S., The Ethics of the Old Testament,
Edinburgh, 1895.--=Brugsch=, H., Die biblischen sieben Jahre der
Hungersnoth, etc., Leipsic, 1891; Steininschrift und Bibelwort, Berlin,
1891.--=Budde=, K., Die Religion des Volkes Israel, Giessen, 1900;
Die Ebed-Jahwe-Lieder und die Bedeutung des Knechtes Jahwes (in Jes.
40-55), Giessen, 1900; Der Kanon des Alten Testamentes: Ein Abriss,
Giessen, 1900; Israel und Ägypten (in Deutsches Wochenblatt, No.
26).--=Buhl=, F. P. W., Det israelitiskhe Folks historie, Copenhagen,
1893.--=Buhl=, F., Kanon und Text des Alten Testamentes, Leipsic,
1891; Die Geschichte der Edomiter, Leipsic, 1893; Geographie des alten
Palästina, Freiburg, 1894; Die socialen Verhältnisse der Israeliten,
Berlin, 1898.--=Baudissin=, Count, W. H. F. C., Geschichte des
alttestamentlichen Priestertums, Leipsic, 1889; Studien zur semitischen
Religionsgeschichte, Leipsic, 1876-78, 2 vols.
* * * * *
=Capefigue=, B. H. R., Histoire philosophique des juifs, Paris,
1833.--=Casabo y Pages=, P., La España Judia, Barcelona,
1891.--=Cassel=, D., Lehrbuch der jüdischen Geschichte und Litteratur,
Leipsic, 1879.--=Castelli=, D., Storia degl’ Israeliti dalle origini
fino della monarchia, Milano, 1887; Gli ebrei sunto di storia politica
e letteraria, Florence, 1899.--=Cavagnaro=, C., Gli ebrei in Egitto,
Genova, 1890.--=Cazes=, D., Essai sur l’histoire des Israélites de
Tunisie, Paris, 1888.--=Chaikin=, A., Étude historique sur l’état des
juifs, etc., Paris, 1887.--=Chastel=, E., Histoire du Christianisme,
Paris, 1881, 4 vols.--=Cheyne=, T. K., From Isaiah to Ezra: A Study of
Ethanites and Jerahmeelites (in Am. Journ. of Theology, Vol. V., p. 433
_et seq._); Founders of Old Testament Criticism: biogr., descript.,
and critical studies, London, 1893; The Origin and Religious Contents
of the Psalter in the Light of Old Test. Criticism and the History of
Religions, London, 1894.--=Cheyne=, T. K. and Sutherland, =Black=, J.,
Encyclopædia Biblica: A Critical Dictionary of the Liter., Polit., and
Relig. History, the Archæol., Geography, and Natural History of the
Bible, London, 1899, etc.--=Chmerkin=, X., Les juifs en Russie, Paris,
1893.--=Cobb=, W. F., Origines Judaicæ.--=Cohen=, L., Chronologische
Beiträge zur jüdischen Geschichte, Breslau, 1892.--=Commilito=,
Luther und die Juden, Leipsic, 1881.--=Conder=, C. R., The Hebrew
Tragedy, Edinburgh, 1900.--=Cordier=, H., Les juifs en Chine, Paris,
1891.--=Corneilhan=, G., Le Judaïsme en Egypte et en Syrie, Paris,
1889.--=Cornill=, Entstehung des Volkes Israel und seiner nationalen
Organisation, Hamburg, 1888 (Virchow, Samml. wissenschaftl. Vorträge,
n. F. 3 Serie, Heft 60); Einleitung, C. H., in das Alte Testament,
Freiburg, 1896.--=Costa=, I. de, Israel en de volken overzicht van de
geschiedenis der Toden tot op owzen tijd, Utrecht, 1876.
* * * * *
=Daly=, C. P., Settlement of the Jews in North America, New York,
1893.--=Davies=, T. W., Magic Divination and Demonology among
the Hebrews and their Neighbors, London, 1898.--=Davis=, M. D.,
Hebrew Deeds of English Jews before 1290, London, 1888.--=Day=, E.,
The Social Life of the Hebrews, New York, 1901.--=Deane=, W. I.,
Pseudepigrapha: An Account of Certain Apocryphal Sacred Writings
of the Jews and Early Christians, Edinburgh, 1894.--=Dédié=, M.,
Les esséniens dans leur rapports avec le judaïsme et christianisme,
Montauban, 1894.--=Deissmann=, G. A., Beiträge zur Geschichte der
Sprache, etc., des hellenistischen Judenthums, Marburg, 1895; Die
sprachliche Erforschung der griechischen Bibel, ihr gegenwärtiger
Stand und ihre Aufgaben, Giessen, 1898.--=Delattre=, R. P., Le pays
de Chanaan, province de l’ancien empire égyptien (in Revue des
questions historiques, Paris, July, 1896, pp. 5-94).--=Delitzsch=,
Franz, Geschichte der jüdischen Poesie, Leipsic, 1836; Beiträge zur
mittelalterlichen Scholastik unter Juden und Moslemen, Leipsic, 1841;
Jesus und Hillel, mit Rücksicht auf Renan und Geiger verglichen,
Erlangen, 1879; Jüdisch-arabische Poesien aus vormuhammedanischer
Zeit., Leipsic, 1874; Die biblisch-prophetische Theologie, Leipsic,
1845; Die Bücher des Alten Testaments aus dem Griechischen ins
Hebräische übersetzt, Berlin, 1885; Das System der biblischen
Psychologie, Leipsic, 1861; Physiologie und Musik in ihrer
Bedeutung für die Grammatik, besonders die hebräische; Leipsic,
1868.--=Delitzsch=, Friedrich, Wo lag das Paradies? Leipsic, 1881. The
Hebrew Language viewed in the Light of Assyrian Research, London, 1883;
Prolegomena eines neuen hebräisch-aramäischen Wörterbuchs zum Alten
Testament, Leipsic, 1886.--=Dérenbourg=, J., Essai sur l’histoire de la
Palestine, Paris, 1867.--=Dessauer=, J. H., Geschichte der Israeliten
mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Culturgeschichte derselben,
Breslau, 1870.--=Destinon=, J. v., Die Chronologie des Josephus, Kiel,
1880.--=Dillmann=, A., Über die Herkunft der urgesch. Sagen der Hebräer
(in Sitz. Ber. d. Berliner Acad. d. Wiss.), Berlin, 1882; Über den
Ursprung der alttest. Religion, Giessen, 1865; Über die Propheten des
Alten Bundes nach ihrer politischen Wirksamkeit, Giessen, 1868.--=Dion
Cassius=, History of Rome, London, 1704.--=Driver=, S. R., Introduction
to the Literature of the Old Testament, London, 1894.--=Drumont=,
E. A., La France juive, Paris, 1886.--=Duncker=, M., Geschichte des
Alterthums, Leipsic, 1877, 6 vols.--=Dutt=, A., Old Test. Theology,
London, 1900.
* * * * *
=Edersheim=, A., Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, London, 1884; Law
and Policy of the Jews, London, 1880; Sketches of Jewish Social Life
in Days of Christ, London, 1876; History of the Jewish Nation after
the Destruction of Jerusalem under Titus, London, 1890.--=Emil=, E.,
Erinnerungen eines alten Pragers, Ghettogeschichten, etc., Leipsic,
1893.--=Errera=, L., Les juifs russes, Brussels, 1893.--=Eusebius=, F.,
Chronicon.--=Ewald=, G. H. A., Geschichte des Volkes Israel, Göttingen,
1864-1867, 7 vols. Die Altertümer des Volkes Israel, Göttingen, 1866.
_Georg Heinrich August Ewald_ was born at Göttingen, November
16, 1803; died at Göttingen, May 4, 1875. He was professor
of oriental languages in Göttingen from 1827 to 1837 and
from 1848 to 1867. Professor Ewald was one of the most
stalwart figures in that company of great men who took part
in reorganising the attitude of nineteenth-century thought
toward Hebrew literature. But while delving to the very depths
of oriental scholarship, he took no less keen an interest
in the politics of the Germany of his own time; and it was
this interest, rather than the other, which determined most
of the important steps in his personal history. Thus the
interruption of his first course as professor at Göttingen
was due to his association with that famous company known as
the “Göttingen Seven,” who protested so vigorously against
what they regarded as a political outrage that it was no
longer possible for them to retain their connection with the
university there. Subsequently Ewald was recalled to his old
post, but again a conflict came, in which he needs must say his
mind, with a result much as before. And even later in life,
when the world-famed orientalist was past his seventy-first
year, he was tried, convicted, and condemned to three weeks’
imprisonment for having expressed his honest opinions of the
actions of Prince Bismarck and the Imperial Government which
that statesman dominated. With these biographical details in
mind it can never be in question that the great orientalist was
a man of the firmest convictions, who always stood ready to
battle for the faith that was in him, which was the keynote of
his very existence. He was a controversialist, a reformer--as
has been said--another Luther. A student of oriental literature
from his early childhood, he came in after life to be
recognised everywhere as one of the greatest authorities upon
this subject; and his writings, nearly all of them having to
do with Hebrew history, mark an epoch in the progress of the
religious and historical thought of his age. The _Geschichte
des Volkes Israel_, especially, must always stand at once as
a monument of learning and as a milestone of the intellectual
progress of a generation. When it appeared, and for many years
afterwards, it seemed to the generality of scholars of the time
an iconoclastic work--a work tending to shake the foundations
of faith, though written by one whose own faith was of the
profoundest character. It was, indeed, a forerunner of that
work of biblical exegesis which has since become famous under
the popular name of the “The Higher Criticism.” But so swift
were the changes during the later decades of the nineteenth
century that what seemed iconoclasm--almost scepticism--in 1840
must be classed as conservatism in 1900. Ewald himself would
have stood aghast could he have seen whither the road on which
he had entered was sure to lead.
* * * * *
=Fenton=, J., Early Hebrew Life: a Study of Sociology, London,
1880.--=Fergusson=, J., The Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored,
London, 1851.--=Fiske=, A. K., The Jewish Scriptures: the Books of
the Old Testament in the Light of their Origin and History, New York,
1894.--=Flöckner=, Über den Character der alttest. Poesie; Beuthen,
1898.--=Floigl=, V., Chronologie der Bibel, Leipsic, 1880.--=Fowle=,
E., Short Papers on Jewish History, London, 1880.--=Fox=, A.,
Patriarchs and Leaders of Israel, London, 1890.--=Frederic=, H., The
New Exodus: Study of Israel in Russia, London, 1892.--=Fresco=, Hist.
des Israélites, Paris, 1898.
* * * * *
=Garredi=, M., Catholicisme et Judaïsme, Paris, 1888.--=Gautier=,
L., La mission du prophète Ezéchiel, Lausanne, 1895.--=Geneste=,
Max, Parallel Histories of Judah and Israel, with explanatory notes,
London, 1843.--=Geikie=, C., Landmarks of Old Testament History,
London, 1893.--=Gibbon=, Edward, The Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, (ed. by W. Smith), London, 1872, 8 vols.--=Gilbert=, I.,
Nature, the Supernatural and the Religion of Israel, London,
1893.--=Gindraux=, F., À la suite des Israélites d’Egypte au Sinai,
Lausanne, 1895.--=Ginsburg=, C. D., The Moabite Stone, London, 1891
(contains translations by Dermbourg, Gannean, Geiger, Hang, Hayes,
Hitzig, Kaempf, Neubauer, Noeldeke, Schlottmann and Wright).--=Girard=,
R. de, Études de géologie biblique, Freiburg, 1893.--=Glover=, A. K.,
Jewish Chinese Papers, 1894.--=Goethe=, Wolfgang von, Dichtung und
Wahrheit, Weimar, 1811-1812, 1814.--=Goldschmidt=, S., Geschichte
der Juden in England, Berlin, 1890.--=Goodspeed=, G. S., A Sketch
of Canaanitish History to about the Year 1000 (in Bibl. World, 7,
II, Chicago, 1896).--=Gordon=, R. A., Old Testament History, London,
1890.--=Gourgeot=, E., La Domination juive en Algérie, Alger,
1894.--=Grant=, M., L’Orient et la Bible, Genève, 1897.--=Grätz=, H.,
Geschichte der Juden von den ältesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart,
Leipsic, 1853-1875; Volkstümliche Geschichte der Juden, Leipsic,
1888.--=Green=, General Introduction to the Old Testament: The
Canon, London, 1899.--=Grünbaum=, M., Neue Beiträge zur semitischen
Sagenkunde, Leiden, 1893.--=Grüneisen=, Der Ahnenkultus und die
Urreligion Israels, Halle, 1899.--=Guthe=, Geschichte des Volkes
Israel, Freiburg, 1899.
* * * * *
=Haneberg=, Die religiösen Altertümer, Stuttgart, 1869.--=Harper=,
E. J., Important Movements in Israel Prior to the Establishment of
the Kingdom (in Bibl. World, 7, II, Chicago, 1896).--=Harris=, M. H.,
The People of the Bible, New York, 1890.--=Hastings=, F. E., Biblical
Chronology, The historical period, kings, judges (in Proc. Soc. of
Bibl. Archæol., Vol. XXII, p. 10 _et seq._, London).--=Havet=, E.,
Étude d’histoire religieuse, Paris, 1894.--=Heath=, D. J., On the
Jewish Exodus, as illustrated by Certain Egyptian Papyri (in Journ.
Brit. Archæol. Assoc., Vol. XI, p. 238, London).--=Hegel=, G. W. F.,
Lectures on the Philosophy of History, London, 1857.--=Henderson=,
A., Palestine, its Historical Geography (2nd edition), Edinburgh,
1894.--=Hengstenberg=, E. W., Geschichte des Reiches Gottes unter
dem alten Bunde, Berlin, 1870-1871.--=Henne Am Rhyn=, O., Allgemeine
Kulturgeschichte, Leipsic, 1877-1879, 6 vols; Kulturgeschichte des
jüdischen Volkes von den ältesten Zeiten bis zur Gegenwart, Jena, 1892.
_Otto Henne am Rhyn_ was born August 26, 1828, at Zürich.
We have already had occasion to refer to the advantageous
point of view of the historian who is also a practical man of
affairs. The case of Henne am Rhyn is another illustration
in point. In his early days, and even till well on in life,
he was a practical journalist, and he abandoned this field
for the position of professor in the University of Zürich.
As a journalist he attained notable distinction, and the
fact of obtaining a professorship speaks for itself as to
his scholarship. The briefest glance at his _Allgemeine
Kulturgeschichte_ makes it clear that he was a man of a
broad sweep of mind, fully conversant with the great subject
which he attempted to treat. German scholarship has given us
several “culture” histories of the widest type, notably those
of Wachsmuth and Osman, but among them all there is perhaps
none of higher or more various merit than that of the Swiss
journalist-professor.
=Herzfeld=, L., Geschichte des Volkes Israel, Braunschweig, 1847-1857,
3 vols.; Handelsgeschichte der Juden des Altertums, Braunschweig,
1879.--=Hitzig=, F., Geschichte des Volkes Israel, Leipsic,
1869.--=Holtzmann=, V., Religionsgeschichtliche Vorträge, Giessen,
1902.--=Holzinger=, H., Einleitung in den Hexateuch, Freiburg,
1895.--=Hoonacker=, A. van, Nouvelles études sur la restauration
juive d’après l’exit de Babylone, Paris-Louvain, 1893.--=Hommel=,
F., The Ancient Hebrew Tradition, as illustrated by the Monuments,
London, 1897.--=Hosmer=, J. K., Jews in Ancient and Modern Times,
London, 1866; The Story of the Jews, Ancient, Mediæval, and Modern,
New York, 1891.--=Hudson=, E. H., History of the Jews in Rome, London,
1882-1884.--=Hutton=, L., Literary Landmarks of Jerusalem, New York,
1895.
* * * * *
=Inman=, Dr. T., Ancient Faiths, Liverpool, 1868-1869, 2 vols.
* * * * *
=Jacobs=, J., Studies in Biblical Archæology, London, 1894; The Jews
of Angevin History, London, 1893; Inquiry into the Sources of the
History of the Jews in Spain, London, 1894.--=Jahn=, Johann, The Hebrew
Commonwealth, London, 1829.--=Jellinek=, A., Franzosen über Juden,
Wien, 1880.--=Johnson=, W. E., Our Debt to the Past, or Chaldean
Science, London, 1890.--=Josephus=, F., Περι τοῡ Ἰουδαϊκοῡ πολέμον,
Basel, 1554; Ἰουδαϊκὴ ἀρχαιολογία, Oxford, 1720; Κατὰ Ἀπίωνος, Leipsic,
1691; Antiquities of the Jews, Edinburgh, 1843; The Wars of the Jews,
Edinburgh, 1843.
_Flavius Josephus_, a Jew, was born about the year 37 A.D.
and died about 95 A.D. He is the one secular historian whose
writings had great importance in perpetuating the knowledge
of the Jewish history throughout later classical and mediæval
times. Indeed, thanks to the subject upon which he wrote,
Josephus has continued to be better known to the general public
than almost any other classical author. Josephus, though a Jew,
spent most of his life in Rome, and he appears to have taken it
as his mission to justify his race to his western associates.
As is well known, the Jews were not favourably regarded among
the Greeks and Romans; hence the character of the narrative of
Josephus. His chief work on the history of the Jews is based
very manifestly upon the sacred records of his people. It is,
in short, in the main a bald transcript, with certain additions
and omissions, of the biblical record. It can hardly be
maintained that the transcript was made with entire candour and
honesty. In the nature of the case, these merits were hardly to
be expected of Josephus. He was a Jew, a member of a despised
and insignificant race, striving to prove to the most cultured
people in the world that the contempt in which they held his
compatriots was not merited. His whole effort, therefore,
is to magnify the importance of the Jews, to minimise their
faults. It is true he introduces into his narrative, here
and there, much matter that is not to be found in the Bible
records. To a certain extent such matter may be drawn from
other Jewish sources that have not come down to us; but it is
quite impossible to draw the line between such matter and other
matter which the imagination of Josephus may have invented, not
indeed as to bald facts, but as to the elaboration of details.
The work of Josephus has an added importance in that it brings
the history of his race down to his own time; that is to say,
to the latter part of the first century A.D. For later events,
in some of which the author himself participated as a military
leader, the work of Josephus is the highest, if not indeed the
sole authority, and we have quoted from him frequently. For the
earlier period, Josephus depended upon the traditions of his
race.
=Jost=, Israel Marcus, Geschichte der Israeliten, Berlin, 1820-1847,
12 vols.; Allgemeine Geschichte des israelitischen Volkes, Leipsic,
1850; Geschichte des Judentums und seiner Sekten, Leipsic, 1857-1889,
3 vols.--=Justinius=, Historiæ Philippicæ et totius Mundi Origenes
et Terræ Situs, Venice, 1470.--=Jungfer=, H., Die Juden unter
Friedrich dem Grossen, Leipsic, 1880.--=Justi=, F., Geschichte der
altorientalischen Völker im Altertum, St. Petersburg, 1884.
* * * * *
=Kahn=, L., Histoire de la communauté israélite à Paris, Paris,
1894.--=Kalischer=, E., Parabel und Fabel bei den alten Hebräern,
Berlin, 1894.--=Kamphausen=, A., Das Lied Moses, Leipsic, 1862; Das
Gebet des Herrn, Elberfeld, 1866; Die Chronologie der hebräischen
Könige, Bonn, 1883; Das Buch Daniel und die neuere Geschichtsforschung,
Leipsic, 1893; Bleek’s Einleitung ins Alte Testament, Berlin,
1870.--=Karpeles=, G., A Sketch of Jewish History, Philadelphia, 1897;
Jewish Literature and Other Essays, Philadelphia, 1895.--=Kautzsch=,
An Outline of the History of the Literature of the Old Testament, New
York, 1899.--=Keil=, Handbuch der biblischen Archæologie, Frankfurt,
1875.--=Kellner=, Max, The Assyrian Monuments (illustrating the Sermons
of Isaiah), Boston, 1900.--=Kellogg=, S. H., The Jews, or Prediction
and Fulfilment, New York, 1883.--=Kennard=, H. M., Philistines and
Israelites: A New Light on the World’s History, London, 1895.--=Kent=,
C. F., A History of the Hebrew People, New York, 1896; A History
of the Jewish People during the Babylonian, Persian, and Greek
Periods, New York, 1899.--=Kirkpatrick=, A. F., The Doctrine of the
Prophets, London, 1897.--=Kittel=, R., Die Anfänge der hebräischen
Geschichtsschreibung im Alten Testament, Leipsic, 1895; Geschichte der
Hebräer, Gotha, 1884.--=Klostermann=, Geschichte des Volkes Israel bis
zur Restauration unter Esra und Nehemia, München, 1896.--=Koehler=,
A., Lehrbuch der Geschichte des Alten Bundes, Erlangen,
1875-1881.--=Kohlbauer=, A., Geschichte des alttestamentlichen
Bundesvolkes, Regensburg, 1886.--=König=, Ed., Einleitung in das Alte
Testament mit Einschluss der Apokryphen und Pseudepigraphen des Alten
Testamentes, Bonn, 1893.--=Kosters=, W. H., Die Wiederherstellung
Israels (in der Pers. Studie), Heidelberg, 1895.--=Kuehnen=, A.,
Gottesdienst von Israel, Haarlem, 1869-1870; Hist. critisch onderzoek
naar het ontstaan en de verzameling van de boeken des ouden Verbonds.
2 uitgave. Leyden, 1885-1893; Die Profeten und die Profetie in Israel,
Leyden, 1875, 2 vols.; Volksreligion und Weltreligion, Berlin, 1883;
Skizzen aus der Geschichte Israels, Nimwegen, 1882-1892, 2 vols.;
Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur biblischen Wissenschaft, Freiburg,
1894.--=Kurtz=, J. H., Geschichte des alten Bundes, Berlin, 1848-1855,
2 vols.
* * * * *
=Landau=, R., Geschichte der jüdischen Ärzte, Berlin, 1895.--=Laroche=,
E., Chronologie des Israélites, Angers, 1892.--=Latimer=, Judæa: from
Cyrus to Titus, 537 B.C.-70 A.D., London, 1894.--=Lazarus=, M., Die
Ethik des Judentums, Frankfurt, 1898.--=Leathes=, S., The Law in the
Prophets, London, 1894.--=Ledrain=, E., L’histoire d’Israël, avec
append. par J. Oppert, Paris, 1879.
_Eugène Ledrain_ was born at St. Suzanne (Mayenne), France, in
1844. Professor Ledrain is a distinguished member of that large
coterie of French scholars who have devoted their lives to the
study of biblical history. His works have for some reason not
been translated, and his name is therefore not very familiar to
the English reader. His particular field has been the history
of the Jews in all its phases. His industry is illustrated not
only by the long list of his writings, but particularly by the
fact that these included a new translation of the Bible. So
much said, it is clear that his investigations have been of
a kind to give him the fullest familiarity with his subject,
and it is no surprise to find that he is able to present his
knowledge in an acceptable form.
=Leitner=, F., Die prophetische Inspiration, Freiburg,
1894.--=Lidzbarski=, Handbuch der nordsemitischen Epigraphik nebst
ausgew. Inschrift., Weimar, 1898.--_Lieblein_, J., L’exode des hébreux
(in Proc. Soc. of Bibl. Archæol., Vol. XX, p. 277; Vol. XXI, p. 53,
London, 1898).--=Lincke=, V., Die Entstehung des Judentums (in Ztschr.
für Wissenschaftl. Theologie, Jahrg. 44, p. 481 _et seq._, Leipsic,
1901).--=Linden=, G. v., Der Sieg des Judentums über das Germanentum,
Leipsic, 1879.--=Lindo=, E. H., History of the Jews of Spain and
Portugal, London, 1848.--=Lippe=, Ch. D., Biblisches Lexicon der
gesammten jüd. Litteratur der Gegenwart, Wien, 1881.--=Löhr=, M.,
Geschichte des Volkes Israel, Strassburg, 1900.--=Lotz=, W., Geschichte
und Offenbarung im Alten Testament, Leipsic, 1894.--=Löwenstein=,
L., Beiträge zur Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland, Frankfurt,
1895.--=Lury=, I., Geschichte der Edomiter im biblischen Zeitalter,
Bern, 1897.--=Lyon=, Sketch of Babylonian and Assyrian History with
special reference to Palestine (in Bibl. World, 7, II, Chicago, 1896).
* * * * *
=McCurdy=, F. F., History, Prophecy, and the Monuments to the Fall
of Nineveh, London, 1894; To the Downfall of Samaria, London,
1894.--=MacDonald=, M., Harmony of Ancient History and Chronology of
the Egyptians and the Jews, Philadelphia, 1891.--=Magdeleine=, J.
de, La France catholique et la France juive, Paris, 1888.--=Magnus=,
Lady Philip, Outlines of Jewish History, London, 1892.--=Mally=, J.,
Historia sacra antiqui Testamenti, Strigonii, 1890.--=Margoliouth=, G.,
Hebrew-Babylonian Affinities, London, 1899.--=Marquart=, J., Fundamente
israelitischer und jüdischer Geschichte, Göttingen, 1896.--=Marti=, K.,
Geschichte der israelitischen Religion, Strassburg, 1897.--=Masse=, E.,
La Révolution française et la Rabbinat, Paris, 1890.--=Mayers=, M., The
History of the Jews: from their Origin to their Ultimate Dispersion,
London, 1824.--=Mears=, J. W., From Exile to Overthrow: a History of
the Jews from Babylonian Captivity, Philadelphia, 1881.--=Ménard=, L.
N., Histoire des Israélites, Paris, 1883; Histoire des anciens peuples
de l’Orient, Paris, 1883.
_Louis Nicolas Ménard_ was born at Paris, October 15, 1822.
The celebrated French professor of art is better known to
the general public through his historical writings than
through those that pertain to his own speciality. But,
indeed, it would be perhaps keeping in too narrow a vein to
speak of Ménard as pre-eminently a specialist in the field
of art, for his interests are cosmopolitan, and he is quite
as much at home in the field of history pure and simple as
in that of his favourite study. As a writer, Ménard has the
merit of comprehensiveness of view and of unusual felicity
of presentation. His history of the Israelites is, on some
accounts, the best brief popular presentation of the subject
that has been written in any language. It is at once free from
the idolatrous prejudice which has marred the works of certain
historians, and from the iconoclastic prejudice which has
disfigured certain others. It is a work, therefore, which every
earnest student of ancient history who would wish to view the
Israelites in their proper historic perspective, may read with
interest and profit.
=Mendelssohn=, M., Jerusalem, Berlin, 1783.--=Merx=, Adalbert, Zur
Geschichte des Stammes Levi, 1870.--=Meyer=, Ed., Die Entstehung des
Judentums, Halle, 1896; Geschichte des Altertums, Stuttgart, 1884-1902,
5 vols.--=Mills=, A., The ancient Hebrews, New York and Chicago,
1874.--=Milman=, H. H., The History of the Jews from the Earliest
Period to the Present Time, London, 1878.--Moabite Stone. (For numerous
translations see Christian D. Ginsburg.)--=Moebius=, H., Die Kinder
Israel nie in Ägypten, Ilmenau, 1884.--=Monasch=, M., Geschiedenis
van het volk Israel, Amsterdam, 1891.--=Montefiore=, C. G., Lectures
on the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by the Religion
of the Ancient Hebrews (Hibbert Lectures, 1892), London, 1893 (2nd
edition).--=Montet=, J., Le Deutéronome et la question de l’Hexateuque,
Paris, 1895.--=Morrison=, W. D., The Jews under Roman rule, London,
1890.--=Moulton=, H. G., The Literary Study of the Bible, London,
1895.--=Munk=, Salomon, La Palestine, Paris, 1845.
* * * * *
=Naville=, E., The Store City of Pithom, London, 1885.--=Neil=, J.,
Pictured Palestine, London, 1893.--=Nestle=, E., Marginalien und
Materialien, Tübingen, 1893.--=Neteler=, B., Stellung der alttest.
Zeitrechnung in der altorientalischen Geschichte, Münster, 1893; Die
Zeitstellung des israelitischen Auszugs, Münster, 1895.--=Neubauer=,
A., Mediæval Jewish Chronicles, London, 1887.--=Neubauer=, A., and
=Stern=, M., Hebräische Berichte über die Judenverfolgungen, Berlin,
1888.--=Newman=, F. W., A History of the Hebrew Monarchy, London, 1847.
_Francis William Newman_ was born at London, June 27, 1805.
Professor Newman had the misfortune to be the brother of
a man more famous than himself. His name, partly on this
account, is comparatively little known to-day, while that of
the Cardinal is almost a household word. Nevertheless, he was
a man of distinguished scholarship, and traces of that same
stalwart character of mind which characterised his brother are
manifest everywhere in his writings. His history of the Hebrew
monarchy, written about the middle of the century,--when,
as we have already noted, the higher criticism was making
itself felt,--remains to this day one of the clearest and most
interesting and authoritative accounts of that people. To most
readers of the time of its first publication it must have
seemed a daringly iconoclastic work, and even now there are
many who would follow some of its pages with bated breath. Yet
neither its fairness, its lack of prejudice, nor its scholarly
foundations can be in question, and combined with these traits
it has qualities of style which must give it a lasting value
for the popular reader.
=Niebuhr=, C., Die Chronologie der Geschichte Israels, Ägyptens,
etc., Leipsic, 1894; Geschichte des Hebräischen Zeitalters, Berlin,
1894.--=Nikel=, I., Der Monotheismus Israels in der vorexil. Zeit,
Paderborn, 1893.--=Nöldeke=, Th., Die Amalekiter, Göttingen, 1864;
Alttestamentliche Litteratur, Leipsic, 1868: Untersuchungen zur Kritik
des Alten Testamentes, Kiel, 1869; Inschriften des Königs Mesa von
Moab, Kiel, 1870; Die semitischen Sprachen, Leipsic, 1887.--=Novikov=,
T., Das jüdische Russland, Berlin, 1892.--=Nowack=, W., Die sozial.
Probleme in Israel, Strassburg, 1892; Die Entstehung der israelitischen
Religion, Strassburg, 1895.
* * * * *
=Öhler=, G. F., Theologie des Alten Testamentes; (3 ed.), Stuttgart,
1893.--=Oppert=, J., Salomon et ses successeurs: solution d’un
problème chronologique, Paris, 1877.--=Origen=, φιλοσοφουμενα (in
Jac. Gronovius’ Theasaurus Antiquitatem Græcorum, Vol. X, p. 349,
_et seq._ Leyden, 1697).--=Ottley=, R. L., A Short History of the
Hebrews to the Roman Period, Cambridge, 1901; Hebrew Prophets, London,
1898.--=Oxford=, A. W., Introduction to the History of Ancient Israel,
London, 1887.
* * * * *
=Palmer=, E. H., History of the Jewish Nation, London,
1874.--=Paludan-Muller=, B., Bibelhistorien og den gameltestamentlige
Kritik, Copenhagen, 1893.--=Perreau=, P., Gli ebrei in Inghilterra
nel secole XI e XII, Trieste, 1887.--=Philipson=, D., Old European
Jewries, Philadelphia, 1894.--=Picciotto=, J., Sketches of Anglo-Jewish
History, London, 1875.--=Piepenbring=, C., Histoire du peuple d’Israël,
Paris, 1898.--=Pomeranz=, B., La Grèce et la Judée dans l’antiquité,
Paris, 1891.--=Post=, G. E., Essays on the Sects and Nationalities of
Syria and Palestine (in Quart. Statement of Eg. Explor. Fund, London,
1890).--=Prévost-Paradol=, L. A., Essai sur l’histoire universelle,
Paris, 1890.
_Lucien Anatole Prévost-Paradol_ was born at Paris, August 8,
1829; died by his own hand, in Washington, U.S.A., July 20,
1870. The celebrated author of the _Essay on Universal History_
was not primarily a historian--certainly not a great historian.
He was a professional writer and practical politician. But
practical politics is, after all, nothing more or less than
contemporary history, and from the earliest times the men who
have taken part in the events of their epoch have been regarded
as the most competent to describe these; one need but mention
the names of Thucydides, Xenophon, and Polybius as cases in
point. Not that Prévost-Paradol can be justly compared to these
great historians, not that it can in any sense be claimed
that he wrote a great history, but that the practices of a
professional politician in any age necessarily give him, on
some accounts, a better point of view from which to look out
upon the events of universal history than can be attained by
the mere closet student. The great difficulty with the large
mass of modern historical literature is that the men who have
produced it have been impractical closet students, who knew
next to nothing of the actual life of the practical everyday
diplomatist and statesman; hence so much infantile criticism
and childish credulity in estimating the motives of the men who
in all ages have made history; hence also, on the other hand,
the value of the estimate of any man who, having had forced
upon him a practical realisation of the motives that control
men in modern history, shall attempt to estimate, from the
point of view thus gained, the deeds of men of other times.
Doubly valuable must be such work if the practical statesman
who makes it is also an accomplished writer. Such was the
status of Prévost-Paradol. His work has the charm of a polished
literary style, and his estimate of peoples and of events is
that of one who is at once artist and man of affairs. What he
says of the Hebrews or any other people is not to be considered
as the estimate of a scholar who has devoted his life to
studying the original sources for his history, yet it is the
estimate of a littérateur of scholarly habits, who is fully
in touch with his subject, at least at second hand, and whose
skill as a writer enables him to bring it more vividly before
his public than the more scholarly investigator is usually able
to do.
=Price=, J. M., Important Movements in Israel Prior to 1000 B.C.
(in Bibl. World, 7, II, Chicago, 1896); The Monuments and the Old
Testament, Chicago, 1900.--=Prideaux=, H., History of the connection of
the Old and New Testaments, London, 1715-1717, 6 vols.
* * * * *
=Rabelleau=, M., Histoire des Hébreux, Paris, 1825.--=Racah=, L., Gl.
Israeliti. Storia politico-litteraria, Roma, 1898.--=Reinach=, T.,
Histoire des israélites, etc., Paris, 1884.--=Renan=, J. E., Histoire
du peuple d’Israël, Paris, 1887-93, 4 vols.
_Joseph Ernest Renan_ was born at Tréguier, Côtes-du-Nord,
France, January 27, 1823; died at Paris, October 2, 1892.
Doubtless no other name that we have occasion to cite in
connection with Hebrew history is so widely known to the
general public as that of Renan. The famous ex-priest, who
till the end of his life contended that he was still at heart
a priest, early gained the ear of the public and maintained
it to the end, partly through the eloquence of his discourse,
partly through the seemingly startling character of his
message. As a stylist, even in the land of stylists, Renan,
from the first, took a foremost rank; as a littérateur, his
position was assured, whatever subject he might choose to
treat. But he also attained a corresponding distinction as
a scholar pure and simple. He devoted himself early to the
fullest investigation of Hebrew history, and his whole life
was bound up with this task. Starting out with the intention
of becoming a priest, he found himself presently lacking in
sympathy with some of the dearest tenets of the church, and
was led to retire from his prospective profession to devote
himself purely to his literary pursuits. He became known, and
for a time at least it seemingly pleased him to be known, as a
sceptic, and his name has been mentioned with opprobrium from
many a pulpit. Yet whoever reads his work from the standpoint
of our own generation will find in it but little that is
startlingly iconoclastic, and will be almost prepared to admit
that Renan was right when he said--perhaps half jestingly--that
he was still a priest to the end. In his later years, Renan
himself came to feel that he had, perhaps, in so far that he
had combated ancient beliefs, been doing little more than to
fight a man of straw, and at last regretted that he had not
turned his attention to some field of science rather than to
the narrower channel of the history of an ancient nation. Yet
perhaps this regret was ill-advised; for after all, Renan’s
cast of mind was essentially theological, and it must be at
least an open question whether he could have accomplished more
in any field of science than he was able to accomplish in the
field of history and of literature. Had he, on the other hand,
chosen a purely literary field, without the hampering weight
of historical traditions, he might very probably have produced
something of more lasting merit than any of his existing
histories. Be that as it may, however, his histories remain as
a monument of industry and of artistic presentation which the
biblical student of our generation cannot neglect.
=Rendu=, A., The Jewish Race in Ancient and Roman History, London,
1895.--=Reville=, A., Herodes der Grosse: Cap. aus der jüdischen
Geschichte des l. Halbjahres vor Christus (in Deutsche Revue, Berlin,
Mai-Juli, 1892).--=Riehm=, C. A., Handwörterbuch des biblischen
Altertums, Bielefeld, 1892-1894; Die Gesetzgebung Mosis im Lande
Moab, Gotha, 1854; Die besondere Bedeutung des Alten Testamentes für
die religiöse Erkenntniss, Halle, 1864; Die messianische Weissagung,
Gotha, 1875; Der Begriff der Sühne im Alten Testament, Gotha, 1877;
Der biblische Schöpfungsbericht, Halle, 1881; Einleitung in das Alte
Testament (ed. by Brandt), Halle, 1889; Alttestamentliche Theologie
(ed. by Pahncke), Halle, 1889.--=Riggs=, T. S., History of the Jewish
People during Maccabean and Roman Periods (Incl. New Test. Times),
1900.--=Robert=, U., Les signes d’infamie au moyen age, juifs, etc.,
Paris, 1817.--=Robertson=, James, The Early Religion of Israel as
set forth by Biblical Writers and by Modern Critical Historians,
London, 1892; The Poetry and Religion of the Psalms, London,
1899.--=Rodocanachi=, E., Le Ghetto à Rome, Paris, 1891.--=Röhricht=,
R., Bibliotheca geographica Palæstinæ Chronolog. (Verzeichniss der
auf Palästinas Geographie bezüglichen Litteratur von 338 bis 1878),
Berlin, 1890.--=Rosenmüller=, Handbuch der biblischen Altertumskunde,
Leipsic, 1823-1827, 2 vols.--=Roskoff=, Die hebräischen Altertümer,
Wien, 1857.--=Rothschild=, C. de and R. de, The History and Literature
of the Israelites according to the Old Testament and the Apocrypha,
London, 1871.--=Rougé=, E. de, Moïse et les hébreux d’après les
monuments, Paris, 1869.--=Rupprecht=, E., Beitr. zur richtigen Lösung
des Pentateuchrätsels, Gütersloh, 1896.
* * * * *
=Saalschütz=, J. L., Archæologie der Hebräer, Königsberg, 1855-1856,
2 vols.--=Sack=, I., Israël et Juda (in Revue d’études juives, Vol.
XXXVIII, p. 172 _et seq._ Vol. XXXIX, Paris, 1898).--=Sailer=, F., Die
Juden und das Deutsche Reich, Berlin, 1876.--=Sanday=, W., The Oracles
of God, London, 1891.--=Sayce=, A. H., The Higher Criticism and the
Verdict of the Monuments, London, 1894; Patriarchal Palestine, London,
1895; Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations, London, 1899; The Early
History of the Hebrews, London, 1897; Fresh Light from the Ancient
Monuments (Religious Tract Society), London, 1893.--=Scaliger=, J. J.,
Thesaurus Temporum, Leyden, 1606.--=Schäfer=, Die religiösen Altertümer
der Bibel, Münster, 1892.--=Schalin=, Z., Der Aufenthalt der Israeliten
in Ägypten, Helsingfors, 1894.--=Schall=, E., Staatsverfassung der
Juden, Leipsic, 1894.--=Scharling=, H., Hauran, Reisebilder aus
Palästina, Bremen, 1890.--=Schenkel=, Bibellexicon für Geistliche
und Gemeindeglieder, Leipsic, 1869-1875, 5 vols.--=Schlatter=,
Zur Topographie und Geschichte Palästinas, Calw and Stuttgart,
1894.--=Schlosser=, F. C., Weltgeschichte, Frankfurt, 1844-1854, 19
vols.--=Schmidt=, N., Moses, his Age and his Work (in Biblical World,
7, II, Chicago, 1896).--=Scholz=, A., Zeit und Ort der Entstehung
der Bücher des Alten Testamentes, Würzburg, 1893.--=Scholz=, P.,
Die heiligen Altertümer des Volkes Israel, Regensburg, 1869-1870, 2
vols.--=Schrader=, Eberhard, Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament,
Berlin, 1872, 2 vols.; 2nd edition, 1883 (English translation, London,
1885-1889, 2 vols.); Studien zur Kritik und Erklärung der biblischen
Urgeschichte, Berlin, 1863.
_Eberhard Schrader_ was born at Brunswick, Germany, January 5,
1836. Professor Schrader is known to scholars everywhere as one
of the leaders among modern Hebrew scholars. In particular,
his investigations have looked to the elucidation of Hebrew
history from the Mesopotamian side, so to speak. He early took
up the study of the cuneiform writing, and became known as
one of the foremost authorities in that new field. From this
standpoint he has investigated, as far as might be, the origin
of the Hebrew people, and has compared the biblical records
with the similar ones which the exhumations at Nineveh and
Babylon have revealed. The scholarship of Professor Schrader is
essentially of the German type, in the more ponderous meaning
of that word. There is little in his writings to appeal to
the popular audience, except that the subject has universal
interest. Nevertheless, some of them have been translated into
English and widely read; in particular, the translations of the
so-called Chaldean Genesis have interested a wide public.
=Schultz=, H., The Theology of the Old Testament, London, 1895
(2nd edition).--=Schürer=, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im
Zeitalter Christi, Leipsic, 1885; Der Kalender und die Æra von
Gaza (in Sitz. Ber. d. Berliner Acad. d. Wiss. no. 41).--=Scott=,
C. A., The Making of Israel, from Joseph to Joshua, Edinburgh,
1895.--=Seinecke=, L. C., Geschichte des Volkes Israel, Göttingen,
1876-1884.--=Sellin=, Beitr. zur isr. und jüd. Religionsgeschichte,
Leipsic, 1895.--=Sharpe=, S., History of the Hebrew Nation and its
Literature, London, 1882.--=Shuckford=, S., The Sacred and Profane
History of the World, London, 1728-1754.--=Sime=, J., The Kingdom
of all Israel: its History, London, 1883.--=Smend=, R., Lehrbuch d.
alttest. Religionsgeschichte, Freiburg, 1899.--=Smith=, George, The
Hebrew People.--=Smith=, G. A., The Historical Geography of the Holy
Land, London, 1901.--=Smith=, W., Illustrated History of the Bible,
1871; Dictionary of the Bible, London, 1860-1863, 3 vols.--=Smith=,
W. R., The Prophets of Israel and their Place in History, to the
Close of the Eighth Century: with Additional Notes by T. K. Cheyne,
London, 1895.--=Soares=, Th. G., Hebrew Historiography (in Bibl.
World), Chicago, September, 1893.--=Solly=, H. S., Antiquities of
Israel, London, 1876.--=Somerville=, R., The Parallel History of the
Jewish Monarchy, Cambridge, 1895.--=Spanier=, M., Quellenbuch für den
Unterricht in jüdischer Geschichte, Frankfurt, 1890.--=Spence=, H. D.
M., and =Exell=, J. S., Pulpit Commentary, London, 1880.--=Spiro=, S.,
Étude sur le peuple samaritain, Paris, 1897.--=Stade=, B., Geschichte
des Volkes Israel, Berlin, 1887, 2 vols.; Die Entstehung des Volkes
Israel, Giessen, 1899.
_Bernhard Stade_ was born at Arnstadt, May 11, 1848; professor
of Old Testament history in the University of Giessen.
Scholarship is so universally a pre-requisite to the holding of
a professorship in German universities that the iteration of
the fact becomes tiresome. One might almost say that no German
dares to think of writing a book on history or science without
having first made himself fully master of his subject. When
a book comes from a German press one is usually justified in
assuming that it will be found to have all the authority that
can come from mere knowledge of the subject of which it treats.
The Germans are proverbially linguists and philologists.
Scholarship with them is traditional, and the tradition was
never more amply sustained than in the present generation.
But there is one other question to be asked in taking up a
German book, the answer to which is by no means so secure,
and that is the question as to the style of the author; for
unfortunately German scholarship is not more proverbial among
the writers of history than is German lack of literary mastery.
The German language peculiarly lends itself to a manner of
presentation that seems to the Frenchman or the Englishman
obscure; and there is only here and there a writer in the long
list of German historians who has achieved that distinction of
style which, it must be freely admitted, is almost a national
heritage with the Frenchman and which is by no means unusual
with the writers of English. Among this select company we at
once recall the name of Heeren, and it will be remembered that
such men as Curtius and Mommsen have done their full share
to create a new standard of literary excellence for their
countrymen. It seems clear that the admirable examples thus
given have not been lost upon the German historians of the
present generation. Among these it will, perhaps, hardly be
claimed that Professor Stade has attained in this regard a
peculiar distinction, but at least he has secured an honourable
place; and there is, perhaps, no other work on the history
of Israel which, as a whole, can claim a better average of
desirable qualities, at once of knowledge and of style, than
the work now before us.
=Staerk=, W., Studien zur Religions- und Sprachgeschichte des Alten
Testamentes, Berlin, 1899.--=Stanley=, A. P., Lectures on the
History of the Jewish Church, London, 1884, 3 vols.--=Stapfer=,
E., La Palestine au temps de Jésus-Christ, (5th edition), Paris,
1892.--=Stave=, Über den Einfluss des Parsismus auf das Judentum,
1898.--=Steinschneider=, M., Die hebräischen Übersetzungen des
Mittelalters, Berlin, 1893.--=Stern=, M., Urkundliche Beiträge über
die Stellung der Juden, Kiel, 1893; Die israelitische Bevölkerung
der deutschen Städte, Frankfurt, 1890-1896.--=Steuernagel=,
Der Rahmen des Deuteronomiums, Halle, 1894; Die Entstehung des
deuteronom. Gesetzes, Halle, 1895.--=Stosch=, G., Alttest. Studien,
Gütersloh, 1895.--=Strange=, Guy de, Palestine under the Moslems. A
Description of Syria and the Holy Land from A.D. 650 to 1500, London,
1896.--=Sulzbach=, A., Die religiöse und weltliche Poesie der Juden
vom 7, bis zum 16, Jahrhundert, Trier, 1893.--=Sunderland=, I. T., The
Bible: its Origin and Growth, New York, 1893.
* * * * *
=Tacitus=, Cornelius, Historiæ Venice, 1470.--=The Talmud=,
Venice, 1520-23.--=Tineo=, H. A., Los Judios en España, Madrid,
1881.--=Tristram=, H. B., Land of Israel, London, 1865.
* * * * *
=Uhlemann=, M. A., Israeliten und Hyksos in Ägypten: eine histor.
kritische Untersuchung, Berlin, 1856.--=Unger=, G. F., Die
Seleucidenära der Makkabäerbücher, München, 1895; Die Regierungsjahre
der makkab. Fürsten (Abhdl. Acad. München, Heft. 2).
* * * * *
=Vatke=, W., Die biblische Theologie wissenschaftlich dargestellt,
Berlin, 1835.--=Vernes=, M., Du prétendu polythéisme des hébreux,
Paris, 1893, 2 vols.--=Visser=, I. Th. de, Hebreeuwsche Archæologie,
Utrecht, 1894.
* * * * *
=Ward=, A., Hebrew Monarchy: its History and Purpose, London,
1900.--=Weber=, G., Allgemeine Weltgeschichte, Leipsic,
1857-1880.--=Weber=, G., and =Holtzmann=, H. J., Geschichte des Volkes
Israel und der Entstehung des Christentums, Leipsic, 1867.--=Weber=,
J. B., and =Kempter=, W., La Situation des Juifs en Russie, Paris,
1893.--=Wedgwood=, J., The Message of Israel in the Light of Modern
Criticism, London, 1894.--=Weill=, A., Les cinq livres (mosaïstes)
de Moïse, Paris, 1893; Le centenaire de l’émancipation des Juifs,
Paris, 1888.--=Weinstein=, N. I., Beiträge zur Geschichte der Essäer,
Bern, 1892.--=Wellhausen=, J., Geschichte Israels, Berlin, 1878;
Sketch of the History of Israel and Judah, (3rd edition), London,
1895; Compos. d. Hexateuchs, Berlin, 1889; Skizzen und Vorarbeiten,
vol. V., Berlin, 1895; Ansicht über den Gang der Geschichte Israels,
Berlin, 1878. (_Julius Wellhausen_ was born in Hameln, Germany, May
17th, 1844. At present, holds a professorial chair at Göttingen. He
is one of the best known of the critical investigators of the Bible
narratives.)--=Wendland=, P., Die Therapeuten und die philon. Schrift
vom beschaulichen Leben: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des hellen.
Judentums, Leipsic, 1894.--=Westphal=, R., Allgemeine Metrik der
indogermanischen und semitischen Völker, Berlin, 1893.--=Wete=, Henry
Barclay, The Old Testament in Greek according to the Septuaginta,
Cambridge, 1898.--=Wiener=, L., The history of Yiddish Literature
in the XIXth Century, New York, 1889.--=Wilberforce=, B. F., Heroes
of Hebrew History, London, 1895.--=Wildeboer=, G., De Letterkunde
des Ouden Verbonds naar de tijdsorde van haar ontstaan, Groningen,
1893; Die Litteratur des Alten Testamentes, Göttingen, 1895; Die
Entstehung des alttestamentlichen Kanons, Gotha, 1894.--=Willrich=, H.,
Judaica: Forschungen zur hellen.-jüdischen Geschichte und Litteratur,
Göttingen, 1900; Juden und Griechen vor der makkabäischen Erhebung,
Göttingen, 1895.--=Wilson=, A. M., The Wines of the Bible, London,
1877.--=Winckler=, Hugo, Geschichte Israels in Einzeldarstellungen,
Leipsic, 1895; Altorientalische Forschungen, Leipsic, 1893;
Alttestamentliche Untersuchungen, Leipsic, 1892.--=Winer=, G. B.,
Biblisches Realwörterbuch, Leipsic, 1847-1848.--=Wright=, G. H. B., Was
Israel ever in Egypt? London, 1895.
* * * * *
=Xenophon=, Κυροπαιδεία, Florence, 1516.
* * * * *
=Zahn=, A., Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte; Beurtheilung der
Schrift, Gütersloh, 1895.--=Zeller=, P., Biblisches Handwörterbuch
(2nd edition), Calw and Stuttgart, 1893.--=Zenos=, A. C., The Elements
of the Higher Criticism, New York, 1895.--=Zöckler=, Die Apokryphen
des Alten Testamentes, nebst Anhang über Pseudepigraphenlitteratur,
München, 1893.--=Zunz=, L., Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden,
Frankfurt, 1892.
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
COPYRIGHT, 1904,
BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.
_All rights reserved._
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
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 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 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.
[Illustration: PHŒNICIAN TERRA-COTTAS IN THE LOUVRE]
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.
FIRST PERIOD--TO THE SUPREMACY OF TYRE (3800-1100 B.C.)
3800 B.C. The empire of Sargon of Agade is believed to have
included Syria and the shores of the Mediterranean.
2750 Foundation of Tyre, according to Herodotus’ account.
1950 One of the Elamite sovereigns of Babylon appears to have
reduced a large part of Syria to subservience, which
state of affairs does not last long.
1635 Aahmes I visits Zahi (southern Phœnicia) in his invasion
of Asia, after the expulsion of the Hyksos.
1590 Tehutimes I appears to have made the Phœnicians pay tribute.
1530 Tehutimes III lays waste the land of Zahi; again in 1516.
1506 Arka (Akko) destroyed by Tehutimes III. Phœnicia is made
tributary.
1500 Settlement of the Phœnicians in Cyprus. From this time on
colonisation of the shore of the Mediterranean becomes
active. Rhodes, the Cyclades, the islands of the Thracian
coast, Samothrace, and Thasos are occupied. The stations on
the Ægean are early abandoned--but the Phœnicians remain in
Cyprus until ousted by the Dorians.
In the twelfth century B.C. the later Ramessides lose their
dominion over Phœnicia. Egyptian culture and civilisation
left little trace on Phœnicia, whereas the influence of
Babylonia was very strong. After the loss of Phœnicia by
Egypt, a number of petty feeble states arise.
About this time the colonists have reached the western shore
of the Mediterranean, and Gades (Cadiz) and Tarshish in
Spain are founded. The Atlantic is discovered, and according
to classical accounts tin is brought from the mines of the
Cassiterides, which by some authorities is said to mean the
Scilly Isles and Cornwall, by others the island near Vigo in
Spain.
1110 Tiglathpileser I of Assyria visits Phœnicia in his
military campaigns.
SECOND PERIOD (1100-538 B.C.)
Up till now Sidon has stood at the head of the Phœnician
cities, but the hegemony is lost to Tyre. The first king of
1020 whom we have any knowledge is =Abibaal.=
980 [or 969] =Hiram I=, his son, succeeds. He fortifies the
island of Tyre; makes war against the Cypriotes who have
refused tribute, and again subjugates them. Is the friend of
Solomon.
936 =Baalbazer=, Hiram’s son, succeeds him.
929 =Abdastarte=, his son, succeeds.
920 Is killed by a conspiracy of his foster-brothers.
=Metuastarte=, the eldest of the assassins seizes the throne.
908 =Astarte=, a scion of Hiram’s house, reigns in conjunction
with Metuastarte.
896 =Astarym=, brother of Metuastarte, succeeds.
887 Is murdered by another brother, =Phelles=, who takes the
throne, but the same year he also is killed by =Ithobaal= or
=Ethbaal=, a priest of Astarte, who thereby becomes king.
In after years Jezebel, Ithobaal’s daughter, marries Ahab of
Israel.
876 Asshurnazirpal of Assyria invades Phœnicia and erects
a stele at the Nahr-el-Kelb, near Berytus. Tyre, Sidon,
Tripolis, and Aradus hasten to send presents, and he does
not trouble them further. Ithobaal founds Botrys, probably
as a means of defence against the Assyrians, also Aoza in
Africa.
855 =Baalazar=, Ithobaal’s son, succeeds to the throne of Tyre.
854 Battle of Qarqar. Victory of Shalmaneser II over Ben-Hadad
II of Damascus and his allies. King =Mettenbaal= of Aradus
takes part with the Syrians in the battle.
849 =Metten I=, Baalazar’s son, succeeds.
842-839 According to Shalmaneser’s record he takes tribute from
Tyre, Sidon, and Byblus, but this may mean that voluntary
presents are sent.
820 =Pygmalion=, Metten’s son, succeeds at age of nine.
812 He slays his uncle Sicharbas, the regent.
813 Flight of Elissa, Pygmalion’s sister and Sicharbas’
wife. She founds Carthage.
804-803 Adad-nirari III’s armies reach Phœnicia, and exact
tribute from Tyre and Sidon.
773 Death of Pygmalion. The list of Phœnician kings given by
Menander comes to an end.
738 Tiglathpileser III invades Syria, where a coalition has
been formed to evade tribute. He returns to Assyria with
rich treasure; amongst it the tribute of =Hiram (II)= of
Tyre and =Sibittibi’li= of Byblus.
734 Byblus and Aradus pay tribute. Tyre does so under force.
Tyre is still practically an independent state.
728 =Elulæus=, king of Tyre, rules under the name of =Pylas=.
Revolt of the Cittæi in Cyprus subdued.
727 According to Josephus, Shalmaneser IV attacks Elulæus.
Sidon, Akko, and Palætyrus submit, and Tyre is captured
after a five years’ siege. But there is no mention of this
in Shalmaneser’s records, and it is extremely probable that
Josephus confuses these events with those that actually took
place in the reign of Sennacherib.
In his annals, Sargon II speaks of Tyre as of a town that
belongs to him.
701 Sennacherib invades Syria where Hezekiah of Judah and
other princes are planning a strong rebellion against
Assyria. =Elulæus= (=Luli=), king of Sidon, flees at the
Assyrian’s approach. Sennacherib makes the city the capital
of a new province, and =Ithobaal= its king. The cities
of the coast are ravaged, and Phœnician commerce greatly
interfered with.
The colonial power of Tyre now begins to decay. The
Assyrians settle themselves in Cyprus, and the Dorian
migration has already driven the Phœnicians from the
Grecian islands.
695 An independent kingdom is established at Tarshish.
690 The Phœnicians begin to lose their hold on Sicily.
680 =Abd-milkot=, king of Sidon, with Sandurri of Kundu
and Sizu, revolts against Assyria. Abd-milkot flees at
Esarhaddon’s approach and the latter besieges Sidon.
678 Fall of Sidon after a siege of nearly three years. The
city is destroyed, and a new one, Kar-Asshur-akhe-iddin
built on its ruins.
Abd-milkot beheaded.
Phœnician and Cypriote kings make submission to Assyria.
671 =Baal I= of Tyre revolts unsuccessfully against Esarhaddon.
In submission he sends his own son Yahi-melek to the
Assyrian court.
668 Asshurbanapal succeeds Esarhaddon on the Assyrian
throne. With the help of Tyre he compels =Yakinlu=, king
of Aradus, to submit. Subsequently Yakinlu is deposed
and his son =Azebaal= given the throne. After this time
the Phœnicians begin to throw off the Assyrian yoke, an
achievement made easy by Asshurbanapal’s struggle with
Shamash-shum-ukin in Babylonia. The recovery of
independence is a peaceable one.
636 Is the last date we possess of an Assyrian governor in
Phœnicia.
625 The Scythian tribes invade Phœnicia from the northeast.
610 Africa circumnavigated for Neku II by Phœnician seamen.
608 Battle of Megiddo, and submission of Syria to Neku II.
Phœnicia once more under Egyptian dominion.
605 Battle of Carchemish. Defeat of Neku by Nebuchadrezzar.
Phœnicia comes under the rule of Babylonia. Phœnicia now
remains docile to Nebuchadrezzar until stirred up by
Uah-ab-Ra, Pharaoh of Egypt, who enters into an alliance
against Babylonia with Tyre and Sidon, after proceeding
against them by land and sea.
587 Nebuchadrezzar besieges Tyre, of which =Ithobaal II= is
king.
574 Fall of Tyre. Ithobaal removed to Babylon and =Baal II=
put in his place.
564 Death of Baal II. The government of Tyre is reorganised,
and a suffet is placed over the city.
563 A three months’ interregnum in which the high priest
=Abba= is at the head of affairs, then a rule of two
suffets--one for the island and one for Palætyrus. A
state of anarchy arises.
557 =Balatorus=, an elected king, rules for one year.
556 =Maharbaal= (or =Merbaal=), a member of the exiled royal
family is sent from Babylon to be king.
552 =Hiram III= succeeds his brother Maharbaal.
538 Capture of Babylon by Cyrus of Persia. Phœnicia becomes
a Persian province. Tyre sinks into insignificance and Sidon
becomes the leading city. Aahmes II of Egypt occupies Cyprus.
THIRD PERIOD (538-332 B.C.)
532 Death of Hiram III. Phœnicia, Palestine, and Syria
become the fifth Persian satrapy.
530 Carthage becomes an independent power.
525 The Phœnicians furnish a fleet for Cambyses’ war in
Egypt.
496 Phœnician fleet shares in the Persian victory off Lade.
480 =Tetranestus=, king of Sidon, =Mapen= of Tyre and
=Merbaal= of Aradus accompany Xerxes to Greece. Phœnician
fleet takes part in the expedition.
466 Battle of Salamis. Phœnician and Persian fleet defeated
by the Greeks at Eurymedon.
455 Phœnician fleet is sent to aid Persians to reconquer
Egypt for Artaxerxes I.
449 Defeat of the Phœnician fleet by the Athenians off
Cyprus.
405 Battle of Ægospotami. Phœnician fleet aids Athens to
defeat the Spartans.
400 =Straton I= comes to the throne of Sidon. He is the son
of =Tabnit= (=Tennes I=), and grandson of =Eshmunazer I=, a
descendant of Tetranestus, and succeeds his elder brother
=Eshmunazer II=, who has died a minor.
394 Phœnician fleet helps the Athenians to defeat the
Spartans at Cnidus. Friendly relations between Sidon and
Athens.
390 Evagoras of Salamis in Cyprus storms Tyre, which is
now in an enfeebled condition.
361 Straton I of Sidon joins Tachus of Egypt against the
Persians and is killed by his wife to prevent falling into
the hands of the enemy. =Tabnit (Tennes) II= succeeds him.
352 Tennes leads a revolt of Phœnicia against Persia, Cyprus
joins him.
345 Tennes betrays Sidon to Artaxerxes III, who afterwards
puts the king of Sidon to death. Cyprus subdued. Tyre
resumes the leading position in Phœnicia.
333 Battle of Issus. Aradus and Byblus and Sidon join
Alexander the Great. Tyre besieged by Alexander.
332 Capture of Tyre by Alexander. =Azemilcus=, the king, is
spared, but eight thousand Tyrians are slain, and thirty
thousand sold as slaves. End of Tyre’s political existence.
The foundation of Alexandria also makes it lose much trade.
The Phœnicians cease to be a great nation.
FOURTH PERIOD (332 B.C.-636 A.D.)
331 Alexander forms Phœnicia, Syria, and Cilicia into one
province, over which he places Menes.
323 Death of Alexander. Phœnicia occupied alternately by
Ptolemy and by Antigonus and his son Demetrius. Ptolemy
finally retains possession (287).
315 Siege of Tyre by Antigonus.
246-198 Struggle between the Seleucidæ and Ptolemies for
Phœnicia.
The Seleucidæ left in possession of Phœnicia after the
surrender of Sidon (198).
The trade of Media and the Red Sea is diverted to Alexandria
in Egypt.
125 Tyre and Sidon are practically independent after the
Tyrians put Demetrius II to death.
86 Syria, worn out by the civil wars of the Seleucidæ puts
itself under the dominion of Tigranes, king of Armenia.
67 Phœnicia and Syria return for a short time to the
Seleucidæ after the victories of Lucullus.
63 Pompey reduces Syria to a Roman province.
44-42 Cassius divides Phœnicia into small principalities.
Antony gives Phœnicia to Cleopatra, but reserves freedom of
Tyre and Sidon.
20 Augustus deprives Tyre and Sidon of their liberties. He
founds a Roman colony called Augustana, at Beirut (Berytus),
which has a famous law school under the dominion of Rome.
Tyre and Sidon have no political importance, but retain
their commercial and manufacturing interests. They continue
to have no historical importance until
193-194 A.D. Tyre and Laodicea take part in the struggle of
Septimius Severus and Pescennius Niger for the emperorship.
Niger sends troops to Tyre, which burn and pillage the city.
201 Severus recruits the population of Tyre and gives it
a colonial title. Tyre and Berytus enjoy the monopoly of
producing that dye known as the imperial purple. As part
of the second Syrian province of Rome, their prosperity
616 increases until the Persian king, Chosroes II, subjugates
Syria (including Phœnicia) and rules it until
622 when the Byzantine emperor regains control.
636 Battle of the Hieromax. As a result the Emperor
Heraclius abandons Syria to the Mohammedans.
FIFTH PERIOD (633-1516 A.D.)
Under the rule of the caliphs Phœnician civilisation suffers
no decay. Tyre maintains its commercial importance.
1100-1110 Baldwin and the Crusaders capture all the
Phœnician cities except Tyre.
1111 Siege of Tyre begun by Baldwin. He abandons it during
the winter.
1124 Siege and capture of Tyre by the Crusaders.
1187 Saladin overthrows the kingdom of Jerusalem.
Tyre begins a heroic defence against him.
1189 Relief of Tyre by Guy de Lusignan. Capture of Acre
(Akko) by Philip Augustus and Richard Cœur-de-Lion.
1192 Treaty of peace with the Mohammedans. The Christian
territory extends from Joppa to Tyre.
Acre becomes the chief commercial centre of the Phœnician
coast and 1291 is taken by the sultan of Egypt, to whom
other Syrian towns also submit.
1516 Selim I conquers the whole of Syria, which since then
has been included in the Ottoman empire.
CARTHAGINIAN HISTORY IN OUTLINE
FIRST PERIOD (813-410 B.C.)
814-813 B.C. Carthage, according to tradition, is founded by
Elissa, sister of King Pygmalion of Tyre, who fled from her
brother. The Phœnicians find the land occupied by Libyans
whom they dispossess. They also manage to get some kind of
control over the nomads in the outlying regions of their
new domain. The official heads of the government were the
suffets, similar to the Roman consuls. There may have been
only two in office at a time, serving for one year, but
capable of re-election.
600-550 Malchus, mentioned by Justin, who calls him “king”
of Carthage. Successful wars in Africa and Sicily undertaken
to extend the city’s commerce. Malchus defeated in Sardinia;
he turns against Carthage.
550-500 Decline of Tyre after Persian conquest. Carthage
becomes independent (530). Mago, father of Hasdrubal and
Hamilcar succeeds Malchus. It is to the efforts of this
family that Carthage owed her supremacy. Hasdrubal’s sons
are Hannibal, Hasdrubal, and Sappho; Hamilcar’s are Himilco,
Hanno, and Gisco. Carthaginian supremacy established over
Sardinia, Balearic Isles, parts of Sicily, Liguria, and
Gaul; in the course of which conquests there occurred a
536 sea-fight of the Etruscans and Carthaginians against
the Phocæans of Aleria, in Corsica. Phocæans victorious,
but their losses oblige them to abandon Corsica.
509 Commercial treaty between Carthage and Rome restricting
Roman commerce in Punic waters.
500 Expedition of Hanno and Himilco to colonise west
African coast, and to explore the Atlantic. Britain
discovered.
480 Expedition against Agrigentum and Syracuse in
conjunction with Persian invasion of Greece. Battle of
Himera. Hamilcar defeated with great loss by Gelo of
Syracuse.
SECOND PERIOD (410-264 B.C.)
410 Renewal of attempts of Carthage to reduce Sicily. Hannibal,
son of Gisco, storms Selinus. Agrigentum destroyed by
Hannibal and Himilco. Death of Hannibal. Himilco attacks
Gela.
405 Treaty between Carthage and Dionysius of Syracuse
secures Carthaginian conquests in Sicily.
398 Dionysius attempts to expel Carthaginians from Sicily.
In the ensuing war all Sicily falls before the Punic arms.
Dionysius is besieged in Syracuse, but pestilence breaks
out among the Carthaginians, and they are defeated. Himilco
starves himself to death.
397 Libyans revolt against Carthage. The city has a narrow
escape.
396-392 Mago leads an expedition against Syracuse, which is
not successful.
380 Mago’s second Sicilian expedition defeated at Cabala.
The whole of Sicily is nearly lost, but Mago’s victory
at Corsica restores the Carthaginian power. The Halycus
recognised as boundary to Carthaginian possessions in Sicily.
368 Dionysius again tries to expel the Carthaginians.
Is unsuccessful and dies. Dionysius II makes peace with
Carthage.
345 Timoleon of Corinth, having liberated Syracuse from her
tyrants, makes war on Carthage.
340 Battle of the Crimissus. Carthaginians defeated with
severe loss. Peace restores the boundary on the Halycus.
Greek cities declared free.
333 Carthaginians send help to the Tyrians besieged by
Alexander the Great.
310 Agathocles of Agrigentum besieges Carthage, but is
recalled by revolt of Agrigentum.
306 Peace between Carthage and Agrigentum. It lasts
until Agathocles dies (289). His death encourages the
Carthaginians to extend their dominions, until
277 the Syracusans call on Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, for help
against Carthage, and he aids them to drive the
Carthaginians from the west of Sicily and besieges them
in Lilybæum. Carthage and Rome united against him.
276 Pyrrhus quits Sicily.
265 Carthaginians go to the aid of Campanian mercenaries
besieged in Messana (Messina) by Hiero of Syracuse. Another
party in Messana appeals to Rome.
THIRD PERIOD (264-146 B.C.)
264 First Punic war (for the possession of Sicily). Romans
occupy Messana. Retreat of the Carthaginians and Syracusans.
Hiero joins the Romans. Roman successes in Sicily.
260 Sea-fight off Mylæ. Carthaginians defeated by Romans.
256 Sea-fight off Ecnomus. Carthaginian fleet defeated.
Romans invade Africa.
255 Carthaginians under Xanthippus defeat the Romans under
Regulus. Loss of Roman fleet on homeward voyage.
254 Roman victory at Panormus.
253 Roman fleet destroyed in a storm.
249 Battle of Drepanum. Carthaginian victory.
248-243 Success of Carthaginians under Hamilcar Barca on
Italian coast and in Sicily.
242 Battle off Ægates islands. Romans under Catulus defeat
Carthaginian fleet.
241 Hamilcar Barca makes peace, agreeing to evacuate Sicily
and to pay indemnity. Sicily lost to the Carthaginians.
241-237 Civil war in Carthage. Mercenaries rise against the
citizens.
238 Sardinia and Corsica lost by Carthage to Rome.
236-219 Carthaginian conquests in Spain under Hamilcar,
Hasdrubal, and Hannibal. Attempt to convert Spain into a
Carthaginian province. By an understanding with the Romans,
the Ebro is recognised as the Carthaginian boundary.
219 Saguntum captured by Hannibal.
218 Second Punic war (for the possession of Italy). Roman
army despatched to Africa.
218 Hasdrubal opposes the Scipios in Spain. Hannibal crosses
the Alps and wins victories of the Ticinus and the Trebia.
Hannibal crosses the Apennines.
217 Battle of Lake Trasimene. Hannibal defeats the Romans
and ravages the country as far as Apulia.
216 Battle of Cannæ. Roman army annihilated. Hasdrubal
ordered to join Hannibal in Italy. He is prevented by a
defeat on the Ebro.
215 Philip of Macedon allies himself with Carthage.
214 Carthaginians land in Sicily.
212 Romans recover their position in Sicily. Carthaginian
successes in Spain.
211 Philip of Macedon’s attention occupied by a coalition
against him in Greece. Romans besiege Capua. Hannibal fails
to relieve Capua. Hannibal at the gates of Rome. Hannibal’s
retreat from Rome. Fall of Capua.
209 New Carthage in Spain taken by the Romans. Battle of
Bæcula and defeat of Hasdrubal. Hasdrubal crosses the
Pyrenees and Gaul, and appears in the north of Italy.
207 Battle of Metaurus. Hasdrubal defeated and slain. The
last hope of the Carthaginians is gone.
206 Carthaginians finally expelled from Spain.
204 Scipio invades Africa.
203 Scipio defeats the Carthaginians. Hannibal recalled to
Carthage.
202 Battle of Zama. Scipio defeats Hannibal.
201 Peace with Rome. Carthage resigns the right to wage
foreign wars and promises to pay a heavy indemnity. The
supremacy of the West passes to Rome. Hannibal governs
Carthage, and reforms the Constitution. He plans an
alliance with Antiochus of Syria against Rome.
195 Hannibal expelled from Carthage.
183 Death of Hannibal.
183-150 Internal dissensions between the Roman and
national parties. Encroachments of Masinissa of Numidia.
151 War between Carthage and Masinissa. The Romans claim
this a breach of treaty and prepare for a siege of Carthage.
149 Third Punic war. Siege of Carthage.
146 Carthage taken and destroyed. Her territories become
Roman provinces, and are organised as such.
FOURTH PERIOD (146 B.C.-697 A.D.)
122 Caius Gracchus leads a colony which founds the city of
Junonia on the site of Carthage. The colony is unsuccessful.
29 Augustus sends out a colony which attains to great
prosperity.
439 A.D. Genseric captures Carthage and makes it the capital of
the Vandal kingdom.
533 Carthage is stormed by Belisarius and incorporated in
the eastern Roman empire.
697 Carthage destroyed by the general of caliph
Abdul-malik.
[Illustration: PHŒNICIAN VASE]
[Illustration: AQUEDUCT OF TYRE]
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 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 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.
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.
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 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 “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.
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]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 2750 B.C.]]
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 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.
[Illustration: THE STAR OF THE EAST]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 2800 B.C.]]
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.
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, 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.
[Illustration: PHŒNICIAN VASE]
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
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
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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1500 B.C.]]
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 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 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 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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1400-1200 B.C.]]
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 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 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.
[Illustration: PHŒNICIAN BOTTLE WITH TRIPLE BODY]
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 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 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 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.
[Sidenote: [1100 B.C.]]
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]
[Illustration: TYRE FROM THE MAINLAND]
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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 980-936 B.C.]]
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 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 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.
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.
[Illustration: THE SO-CALLED “TOMB OF HIRAM”]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 980-887 B.C.]]
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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 887-723 B.C.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [723-671 B.C.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [671-586 B.C.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [586-532 B.C.]]
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
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 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
[7] [Pietschmann makes the beginning and end of his reign 969 and 936
B.C.]
[Illustration: PHŒNICIAN VASES]
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
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.
[Sidenote: [525-466 B.C.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [466-390 B.C.]]
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.
[Sidenote: [390-350 B.C.]]
The cities of Phœnicia were involved in the consequences of the war
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.
[Sidenote: [350-345 B.C.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [345-333 B.C.]]
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.
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.
[Illustration: THE SIEGE OF 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.
[Sidenote: [333-332 B.C.]]
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 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, 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 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 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, 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.
[Illustration: DEATH OF ADMETUS]
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.
[Sidenote: [332-323 B.C.]]
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
[8] [Other authorities attribute this end to Tennes’ father, Strato,
and its cause to the failure of an alliance with Tachus of Egypt
against the Persians.]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [301-63 B.C.]]
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.
[Sidenote: [63 B.C.-636 A.D.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [636-1124 A.D.]]
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.
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.
[Sidenote: [1124-1187 A.D.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [1187-1453 A.D.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [1479-1516 A.D.]]
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 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]
[Illustration: PHŒNICIAN SARCOPHAGUS
(In the Metropolitan Museum, New York)]
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.
[Sidenote: [813-600 B.C.]]
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 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 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 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.
[Sidenote: [600-520 B.C.]]
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.
[Sidenote: [480 B.C.]]
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 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, 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) 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.
[Sidenote: [450 B.C.]]
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 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 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.
[Sidenote: [450-350 B.C.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [350-283 B.C.]]
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 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 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.
[Illustration]
WAR IN SICILY BETWEEN ROME AND CARTHAGE
[Sidenote: [283-264 B.C.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [264 B.C.]]
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 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
[Sidenote: [264-241 B.C.]]
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 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 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 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]
[Sidenote: [241-195 B.C.]]
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).
[Sidenote: [195 B.C.-697 A.D.]]
After that Carthage was ruined within by controversies between the
aristocratic and the popular parties, and threatened from without by
Massinissa 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 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.
[Sidenote: [697 A.D.]]
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:
“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 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
[9] For a detailed account of the Punic wars, see Vol. V.
[Illustration: Phœnician Terracotta Chariot]
[Illustration: PHŒNICIAN BOTTLE IN FORM OF A GOURD]
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]
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, 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 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.
[Illustration: GROUP OF PHŒNICIAN STONE FIGURES]
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 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 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 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.
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.
[Illustration: PHŒNICIAN VASE
(In the Louvre Museum)]
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: “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 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
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.
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.
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 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 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 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 17_s._ 8_d._ ($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 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.
[Illustration: A PHŒNICIAN AND CYPRIOTE INSCRIPTION]
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]
[Illustration: BAS-RELIEF FROM CARTHAGE]
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 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 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 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 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.
[Illustration: PHŒNICIAN PRIEST
(From a statuette in the Metropolitan Museum, New York)]
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 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.
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. 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.
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 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]
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. 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.
“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 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]
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]”
[Illustration: RUINS OF TOMB IN PAPHLAGONIA
(After Hirschfeld)]
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_.
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_.
[Illustration: PHŒNICIAN WORKMEN]
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
=Åkerblad=, J. D., Inscriptions Phœniciæ Oxoniensis nova Interpretatio,
Parisiis, 1802; Notice sur deux inscriptions en caractères puniques,
trouvées à Venise et sur les Varangues, Paris, 1804.--=Appianus=,
Ῥωμαϊκὴ ιστορία, Leipsic, 1785, 3 vols. (Book 7 deals with the
Hannibalic Wars, and contains matter of great value to the student
of Carthaginian history, chiefly because it is based on lost
authorities.)--=Aristotle=, Πολιτικφων, (ed. J. G. Schlossa), Lübeck,
1798.--=Arri=, Giannantonio, Lapide fenicia di Nora in Sardegna
dichiarata (in Memorie della Reale Acad, di Torino, Vol. XXXVIII, pp.
59-106); Lettre à Quatremère sur une inscription latino-phénicienne de
Leptis (in Journ. Asiat., Ser. III, Vol. 2, pp. 142-176).--=Arrianus=,
Ιστορίαι αναβάσεως Αλεξάνδρον, Lemgo, 1792-1811.--=Avienus=, R. F.,
Ora Maritima (a poem describing the shores of the Mediterranean from
Marseilles to Cadiz, only a fragment of which is extant. The mention
of Himilco’s voyage of discovery gives it pertinence in the present
connection. Avienus lived in the 4th century A.D.).
* * * * *
=Babelon=, E., et =Lenormant=, F., Histoire ancienne de l’orient,
Paris, 1881-1888, 6 vols, (see particularly Vol. VI.); Manuel
d’archéologie orientale, Paris, 1888; Carthage et l’archéologie
punique en Tunisie (in Am. Journ. of Archæol., Vol. I, p. 173
_et seq._). (The works of Lenormant all have a high degree of
authority, and are noteworthy for their admirable style.)--=Baier=,
J. J., Dissertatio historica de Phoenicibus eorum studiis et
inventis, Jenæ, 1709.--=Ball=, C. J., The Origin of the Phœnician
Alphabet (in Proceedings of the Soc. of Bibl. Arch., Vol. XV,
pp. 392-408).--=Bargès=, J. J. L., Mémoire sur le sarcophage et
l’inscription funéraire d’Eschmunazar, roi de Sidon, Paris, 1856;
Mémoires sur trente-neuf nouvelles inscriptions puniques, Paris,
1852; Temple de Baal à Marseilles, ou grande inscription phénicienne
découverte dans cette ville dans le courant de l’année 1845, Paris,
1847; Mémoire sur deux inscriptions puniques découvertes dans l’île
du port Cothon à Carthage, Paris, 1849; Nouvelle interprétation
de l’inscription phénicienne découverte par M. Mariette, dans le
serapéum de Memphis (in Revue de l’orient, nouv. sér. III, p. 190);
Observations sur les inscriptions phéniciennes du musée Napoléon III
(in Journ. Asiat., Sér. VI, Vol. 2, 1863, pp. 161-195); Recherches
archéologiques sur les colonies phéniciennes établies sur le littoral
de la Celtoligurie, Paris, 1878. (Though somewhat antiquated, these
works still possess a certain value for the student of palæography.
The interest of the described inscriptions is largely due to the
fact that the Phœnician alphabet is “the mother of all existing
alphabets.”)--=Barthélémy= (l’Abbé), Réflexions sur quelques
monuments Phéniciens et sur les alphabets qui en résultent (in
Mémoires de littérature, tirés des registres de l’acad. royale des
inscr., Vol. XXX, 1764, pp. 405-426).--=Baudissin=, W. W. F. von,
Studien zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte, Leipsic, 1876-1878
(a very important contribution to the subject, based on original
researches).--=Bellermann=, J. J. L., Phœniciæ linguæ vestigiorum
in Melitensi specimen, Berolini, 1809; Versuch einer Erklärung der
punischen Stellen im Pœnulus des Plautus, Berlin, 1808; Bemerkungen
über die phönizischen und punischen Münzen, Berlin, 1812.--=Bérard=,
Victor, Les Phéniciens et les poèmes homériques (in Revue de
l’hist. des religions, Vol. XXXIX, pp. 173-228, 419-460, Paris,
1899).--=Berger=, P., La Phénicie pour faire suite à l’écriture et
les inscriptions sémitiques, Paris, 1881 (Extrait de l’Encyclopédie
des sciences religieuses); Rapport sur les inscriptions puniques
récemment découvertes à Carthage, Paris, 1877 (Extract from Archives
des missions scientifiques et lit., Ser. III, Vol. 4, p. 145); La
Bible et les inscriptions (Leçon d’ouverture), Paris, 1890.--=Bertin=,
G., On the Origin of the Phœnician Alphabet, (in Orientalia Antiqua,
I, 1, 1882).--=Bertow=. Typographie de Tyr.--=Beulé=, Nachgrabungen
in Karthago, Leipsic, 1863.--=Bible, The Holy= (authorised version),
London, 1611.--=Bloch=, A., Phönic. Glossar, Berlin, 1891.--=Bockh=,
Aug., Urkunde über das attische Seewesen, Berlin, 1840.--=Bonnemère=,
L., L’influence orientale en Bretagne, (in Soc. d’anthropol. de Paris,
Bulletins, Sér. IV, Vol. 10, pp. 389-397).--=Bourgade= (l’Abbé) F.,
Inscriptions Phéniciennes, Paris, 1852; Toison d’or de la langue
Phénicienne, Paris, 1856.--=Bovet=, F., Egypt, Palestine, and
Phœnicia--a Visit, London, 1882.--=Bredow=, G. G., Untersuchungen über
einzelne Gegenstände der alten Geschichte, Altona, 1800.--=Brown=,
R., Researches into the Origin of the Primitive Constellations of the
Greeks, Phœnicians, and Babylonians, Oxford, 1900, 2 vols.--=Brugsch=,
H., Geographische Inschriften altägyptischer Denkmäler, Leipsic,
1857-1860, 3 vols.--=Budd=, Th., From the Deluge to the Christian Era,
Norwich, 1890.
* * * * *
=Cara=, Cav. Gaetano, Sulla genuità degli idoli sardo-fenicii
esistenti nel museo archæol. della regia università di Cagliari,
Cagliari, 1875.--=Carnena=, A. A., Report on the Phœnician and
Roman Antiquities in the Group of the Islands of Malta, Malta,
1882.--=Cesnola=, General Louis Palma di: Cyprus, Its Ancient Cities,
Tombs, and Temples; A Narrative of Researches and Excavations, London,
1877; Salaminia, Cyprus, etc., London, 1882.--=Chabas=, F., Études
sur l’antiquité historique d’après les sources égyptiennes, Paris,
1873, 2nd ed.--=Church=, A. J., Carthage, the Empire of Africa,
London, 1886.--=Clarke=, J. C. C., The Origin and Varieties of the
Semitic Alphabet, Chicago, 1887.--=Clercq=, de: Notice sur une stèle
Phénico-Hittite (in Acad. des inscr., Comptes rendus, 1901).--=Colonna
Ceccaldi=, G., Monuments antiques de Cypre, Paris, 1882.--=Court de
Gobelin=, Allégories orientales ou le fragment de Sanchoniathon, Paris,
1773. (The alleged Phœnician History of Sanchoniathon has come in
for a large share of attention from students both of history and of
literature. Fragments of what purported to be a translation of this
work into Greek by Philo Byblius, who lived in the first century A.D.,
are preserved by Eusebius. It is in dispute whether such an author
as Sanchoniathon really lived or whether the alleged translation was
a forgery. Mention of the work will be found in other references of
the present bibliography.)--=Crespin=, V., Catalogo illustrato della
raccolta di antichita sarde del Signor Raimondo Chessa, Cagliari,
1868.--=Cumberland=, B. R., Sanchoniathon’s Phœnician History, with
Eratosthenes’ continuation, London, 1720.--=Curtius=, Quintus, History
of Alexander the Great, Venice, 1471.
* * * * *
=Davis=, N., Inscriptions in the Phœnician character, London, 1863;
Carthage and Her Remains, London, 1861; Ruined Cities within Numidian
and Carthaginian Territories, London, 1862.--=Deecke=, W., Der
Ursprung der kyprischen Silbenschrift, Strassburg, 1877.--=Delattre=,
R. P., Carthage et la Tunisie au point de vue archéologique, Tunis,
1883.--=Dérenbourg=, J. and H., Les inscriptions phéniciennes du temple
de Seti à Abydos, publiées et traduites d’après une copie inédite
de M. Sayce (in Revue d’assyriol. I, 3, pp. 81-101).--=Desjardins=,
E., Géog., histr., et administr. de la Gaule romaine, Paris, 1878
(Punic Inscr.).--=Dietrich=, F. E. C., Zwei sidonische Inschriften:
eine griechische aus christlicher Zeit und eine altphönikische
Königsinschrift, Marburg, 1855.--=Diodorus Siculus=, βιβλιοθήκε
ἰστορική, Amsterdam, 1746.--=Donop=, W. G. L. von: Das Magasanische
Europa, Meiningen, 1819-1821, 3 vols.--=Doughty=, C. M., Travels in
Arabia Deserta, Cambridge, 1888, 2 vols.--=Drummond=, Sir William, An
Essay on a Punic Inscription found in the Island of Malta, London,
1810.--=Duncker=, M., Geschichte des Alterthums, Leipsic, 5th ed.,
1878-1883, 7 vols.--=Dureau dela Malle=, A. J. C. A., Recherches sur
la topographie de Carthage, avec des notes par M. Dusgate, Paris,
1835.--=Duvivier=, F. F., Les Inscriptions Phéniciennes, Puniques,
Numidiques, expliquées par une méthode incontestable, Paris, 1846, and
ed. g. Nauck, Leipsic, 1871.
* * * * *
=Euripides=, φοινισσαι, Florence, 1496.--=Eusebius=, Ευσεβιου περι
της Θεοφανειας (edited by J. Migne), Paris, 1857.--=Euting=. J.,
Inschriftliche Mitteilungen (in Zeitschr. d. Deutschen Morgenländ.
Ges., Vol. XXIX, 1875); Sammlung der karthagischen Inschriften,
herausg. mit Unterstützung der K. Academie d. Wissensch. zu Berlin,
Strassburg, 1883; Phoenikische Inschriften aus Idalion, Strassburg,
1875; Nabatäische Inschriften aus Arabien, Berlin, 1885; Sinaitische
Inschriften (in Verhdlg. d. Gesellschaft für Erdkunde), Berlin,
1886.--=Ewald=, G. H. A., Über das Phönikische der Inschriften und im
Plautus (in Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, Vol. IV, pp.
400-418); Erklärung der grossen phönikischen Inschrift von Sidon und
einer ägyptisch-aramäischen, mit den zuverlässigen Abbildern beider
(in Abhdlg. der Ges. d. Wiss. zu Göttingen, Vol. VII), Göttingen,
1856; Über die phönikischen Ansichten von der Weltschöpfung und den
geschichtlichen Wert Sanchuniathons, Göttingen, 1857. (The author is
known everywhere as one of the greatest interpreters of the traditions
of the Hebrews; his opinions concerning this allied neighbouring people
have, therefore, peculiar interest.)
* * * * *
=Fabricy=, G., De literaturæ Phœniciæ fontibus, Romæ, 1803.--=Falbe=,
C. T., Recherches sur l’emplacement de Carthage suivies de
renseignements sur plusieurs inscriptions puniques inédites, Paris,
1833.--=Fischer=, C., De Hannonis Carthaginiensis periplo, Leipsic,
1893.--=Fontane=, M., Histoire Universelle, Paris, 1883.--=Frankel=,
Phöniz. Altertümer (in Monatschrift für Gesch. und Wissensch. d.
Judenthums, Vol. V, 1856, p. 447 _et seq._).
* * * * *
=Gesenius=, F. H. W., Palæogr. Studien über phöniz. und punische
Schrift, Leipsic, 1835; De inscriptione Phœnicio-Græca in Cyrenaica
nuper reperta ad Carpocratianorum hæresin pertinente commentatio,
Halæ, 1825; Scripturæ linguæque Phœniciæ monumenta quotquot supersunt
edita et inedita, Leipsic, 1837. (Like all the works of this author,
of great value for the student of Semitic philology. The last-named
work comprises the first important collection of Phœnician inscriptions
ever published.)--=Gilbert=, O., Rom und Karthago, Leipsic,
1876.--=Gibbon=, E., The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (ed. by
W. Smith), London, 1872, 8 vols.--=Gosselin=, R. F. J., Recherches
sur la géographie systématique, Paris, 1790-1813, 4 vols.--=Graux=,
C., Les fortifications de Carthage, Paris, 1878.--=Grote=, G.,
History of Greece, London, 1871, 10 vols.--=Grotefend=, G. F., Die
Sanchuniathonische Streitfrage nach ungedruckten Briefen gewürdigt,
Leipsic, 1836. (The position of Grotefend as an originator in the
field of oriental philology gives peculiar interest to his views on
the much-mooted question of the authenticity of the alleged writings
of Sanchoniathon. Grotefend, it will be recalled, first gained a
clew to the phonetic values of certain characters of the old Persian
cuneiform writing, thus taking the first step toward the interpretation
of the Assyrian and Babylonian records.)--=Guerin=, H. V., Inscription
bilingue de Thugga (in Voyage archéol. dans la régence de Tunis, Paris,
1862).--=Gutschmid=, A. von, Beiträge zur Geschichte des alten Orients,
Leipsic, 1858; Neue Beiträge zur Geschichte des alten Orients, Leipsic,
1876; Kleine Schriften, edited by Rühl, Leipsic, 1889-1894, 5 vols.
(The second volume of the last-named work contains the original version
of the monumental article on Phœnicia contributed by the author to the
ninth edition of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_.)
* * * * *
=Halévy=, J., Mélanges d’épigraphie et d’archéologie sémitiques,
Paris, 1874; Mélanges de critique et d’histoire relatifs aux
peuples sémitiques, Paris, 1883. (The opinion of one of the most
original thinkers and greatest authorities among students of Semitic
philology.)--=Hamaker=, H. A., Lettre à M. Raoul-Rochette sur une
inscription en charactères phéniciens et grecs, récemment découverte
à Cyrène, Leyden, 1825.--=Hamdy-Bey= et Th. =Reinach=, Une nécropole
royale à Sidon, Paris, 1892.--=Hanno=, Ἀρριὰνοῦ περίπλους, κ. τ. λ.,
Ἅννωνος περίπλους Λιβίης κ. τ. λ., Basle, 1533.
(The remarkable document here cited tells us all that is known
to posterity of the life of Hanno the explorer who lived
probably in the fifth century, B.C. The document itself was
found in the ruins of Carthage. As to whether it was written
by Hanno himself we have no evidence, unless with Professor
Rawlinson we feel that so direct and clean-cut an account must
come from the hand of the man of action whose deed it records.
Be that as it may, it is a most important historical document,
as evidencing an early expression of that desire to reach out
beyond the limits of the then known world, which almost two
thousand years later was to culminate in the discoveries of
Columbus.)
=Heeren=, A. H. L., Historical Researches, Oxford, 1834-1846, 5 vols.
(The author is particularly happy in his treatment of Phœnician
and Carthaginian civilisation.)--=Hegel=, G. W. F., Lectures on
the Philosophy of History, London, 1857.--=Hengstenberg=, E. W.,
Commentatio de rebus Tyriorum, Berlini, 1832.--=Henzen=, G., Iscrizione
Greco-fenicia d’Atene (in Annali dell’ instituto di corresp. arch.
XXXIII, 1859, p. 321 _et seq._).--=Herder=, G., Ælteste Urkunde des
Menschengeschlechts (in his Werke zur Theol.).--=Hérisson=, Comte d’,
Relation d’une mission archéol. en Tunisie, Paris, 1881.--=Herodianus=,
Ἡρωδιανοῦ τῆς μετὰ Μάρκον βασιλείας ἱστοριῶν βιβλία ὀκτώ, Leipsic,
1789-1805, 5 vols.--=Herodotus=, Historiæ, Strasburg, 1816, 5
vols.--=Hittell=, J. T., History of the Mental Growth of Mankind in
Ancient Times, New York, 1893.--=Hitzig=, F., Zur ältesten Volks-und
Mythengeschichte, Leipsic, 1845; Epigraphische Miscellen. (in Zeitschr.
d. Deutschen Morganländ. Ges. Vol. XII, 1858, p. 695).--=Hogg=, J.,
On Some Inscriptions from Cyprus, copied by Commander Leycester,
R. N., London, 1862. (Reprint from Transactions of Royal Society
of Literature.)--=Homer=, Ὀδυσσεία, Florence, 1488.--=Hommel=, F.,
Geschichte Assyriens und Babyloniens, Berlin, 1885. (Contains a
tolerably full exposition of the author’s reasons for upholding
the theory of the Babylonian--_versus_ the Egyptian--origin of the
Phœnician alphabet, a subject regarding which authorities are not
agreed.)
* * * * *
=Jeremias=, J., Tyrus bis zur Zeit, Nebukadnezars, Leipsic,
1891.--=Josephus=, κατὰ Ἀπίωνος, Basle, 1544.--=Judas=, A. C., Étude
démonstrative de la langue Phénicienne et de la langue Libyque, Paris,
1847; Essai sur la langue Phénicienne avec deux inscriptions puniques
inédites, Paris, 1842; Nouvelles études sur une série d’inscriptions
numidico-puniques, Paris, 1857.--=Justinus=, _Historiarum Philippicarum
Libri XLIV_, Venice, 1470. (The account of the early history of the
Phœnicians contained in the work of Trogus Pompeius--which Justin
condensed--is believed to have been based on the lost “Book of Kings”
of Timagenes, and to have been quite extensive. Justin’s remnant is
very meagre, but is rendered relatively valuable by the paucity of
other sources.)
* * * * *
=Kenrick=, J., Phœnicia, London, 1855. (A work which attempts to do for
the Phœnicians what Wilkinson did for the Egyptians, and with a large
measure of success. Still very valuable.)--=Kidder=, D. P., Tyre: Its
Rise, Glory, and Desolation, with Notices of the Phœnicians Generally,
New York, 1852.--=Kiepert=, H., Die geogr. Stellung der nördl. Länder
in der phöniz.-hebr. Erdkunde (in Berl. Acad. d. Wiss. 1859, p. 191 _et
seq._).--=Kopp=, N. F., Palæographia critica, Mannheim, 1829 (see pp.
90-240, Inscr. Semiticæ); Bilder und Schriften der Vorzeit, Mannheim,
1819-1821, 2 vols.--=Kruse=, F., Ulrich Jasper Seetzen’s Reisen durch
Syrien, Palästina, Phönizien, die Transjordanländer, Arabia, Petræa,
und Unter-Ægypten, Berlin, 1854, 2 vols.
* * * * *
=Lajard=, F., Introduction à l’étude du culte public et des mystères
de Mithra en orient et en occident, Paris, 1847.--=Lanci=, M.,
Osservazioni sul bassorelievo fenico-egizio che si conserva in
Carpentrasso, Rom, 1825; La sacra scrittura illustrata con monumenti
fenico-assirii ed egiziani, Rom, 1827; Paralipomeni alla illustrazione
della sagra scrittura per monumenti assirii ed egiziani, Paris, 1845;
Ragionamento di M. Lanci intorno a nuova stela fenicia discoperta in
Malta, Rom, 1855.--=Landau=, W. von: Beiträge zur Altertumskunde des
Orients. Part I: Belagerung von Tyros. Part II: Die phöniz. Inschr.,
Leipsic, 1899.--=Lang=, R. H., Cyprus: Its History, its Present
Resources and Future Prospects, London, 1878.--=Lasalle=, Ch., Origin
of Western Nations and Languages showing the Construction and Aim
of Punic, etc., London, 1883.--=Layard=, A. H., Discoveries in the
Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, London, 1853.--=Laval=, L. de, Voyage
dans la péninsule arabique du Sinai et l’Egypte moyenne, Paris,
1855-1859.--=Ledrain=, M., Cours d’épigraphie sémitique et d’archéol.
assyrienne, Paris, 1883; Notice sommaire des monuments phéniciens
du musée du Louvre, Paris, 1888.--=Leemans=, C., Gedenksteenen
met Phönicische, Karthagische, Numidische en Liby-Phönicische
Opschriften, Leyden, 1842.--=Lenormant=, F., Le légende de Cadmus et
les établissements phéniciens en Grèce, Paris, 1867.--=Lenthéric=,
Ch., La Grèce et l’Orient en Provence, Paris, 1878.--=Lessert=, Pallu
de: Les fastes de la Numidie, Constantine, 1888.--=Levy=, M. A.,
Phöniz. Studien, Breslau, 1856-1870, 4 parts; Phöniz. Wörterbuch,
Breslau, 1864; Siegel und Gemmen mit aram., phöniz., althebr., himjar.,
nabatæischen und altsyrischen Inschr., Breslau, 1869.--=Lichtenstein=,
A. A. H., Tentamen palæographiæ Assyrio-Persicæ, Helmstädt,
1803.--=Lidzbarski=, M., Handbuch der semitischen Epigraphik, Weimar,
1898, 2 vols.; Ephemeris, Giessen, 1900.--=Livy=, Titus, Historiarum Ab
Urbe Condita libri, London, 1600.--=Longpérier=, A. de: Inscriptions
phéniciennes de Carthage (in Journ. Asiat. Ser. VI, Vol. XIII, p.
343).--=Lortet=, L., La Syrie d’aujourd’hui, Paris, 1884.--=Luynes=,
Duc de, Mémoire sur le sarcophage et l’inscription funéraire
d’Esmunazar, roi de Sidon, Paris, 1856.
* * * * *
=Malte-Brun=, C., Geschichte der Erdkunde von den ältesten bis auf
die neuesten Zeiten, Leipsic, 1816, 2 vols.--=Maltzan=, H. Freiherr
von, Reise auf der Insel Sardinien. Nebst einem Anhang über die
phöniz. Inschr. Sardiniens, Leipsic, 1869.--=Maspero=, G., Histoire
ancienne de l’orient, Paris, 1886.--=Meier=, E., Erklärung phöniz.
Sprachdenkmäler, die man auf Cypern, Malta und Sicilien gefunden,
Tübingen, 1860.--=Mela=, Pomponius, De situ orbis libri III (in
Dionysius Alex. et Pomp. Mela sit. orb. descr.), 1577, and the Rare
and Singular Works, London, 1590.--=Meltzer=, O., Geschichte der
Karthager, Berlin, 1879. (An admirably scientific study of the early
history of Carthage, but only the first volume, bringing the story
to 306, B.C., has appeared.)--=Meyer=, Ed., Geschichte des Altertums,
Stuttgart, 1884-1902, 5 vols.; Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, Leipzig
und Wien, 1894-1897, 17 vols.--=Michaeler=, K., Historisch-kritische
Abhandlung von den Mysterien, Wien, 1796.--=Mommsen=, Theodor,
Römische Geschichte, Berlin, 1853-1856--=Montesquieu=, Baron de,
Esprit des lois, Paris, 1740.--=Montfaucon=, B. de, Palæografia Græca,
Paris, 1708; L’antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures, Paris,
1719.--=Movers=, F. C., Die Phönizier. Vol. I, Bonn, 1841; Vol. II
in three parts, Berlin, 1849-1856; Phönizien (in Allg. Encyclop. von
Ersch und Gruber, Ser. III, Vol. XXIV, pp. 319-443); Phönizische Texte
erklärt, Breslau, 1845-1847, 2 vols.; Die punischen Texte im Poenulus
des Plautus kritisch gewürdigt und erklärt, Breslau, 1845.
_Franz Karl Movers_ was born at Koesfeld, Prussia, July 17th,
1806; died at Breslau September 28th, 1856. Professor Movers
was essentially a man of one idea and one book; but the idea
was a broad one, and the book an epoch-making one. Movers
early in life seems to have selected the history of Phœnicia
as the subject to which he would direct his great energy and
scholarly attention. It was an almost virgin field. Beyond the
vague traditions of the Greeks, comparatively little was known
of that race which had played so great a part in spreading
oriental culture throughout the western world. The subject was
a peculiarly difficult one, because, unlike the Egyptians and
the Babylonians, the Phœnicians had left very few monuments
to tell posterity the story of their greatness. But Professor
Movers followed up with the utmost assiduity such traces as
were to be found, and while he did not live to complete his
work, he gave the world a partial history of the Phœnicians
which no subsequent investigator of their history can ever
neglect. In the main his results have stood the tests of time,
and even now Movers must be considered the foremost authority
on Phœnician history.
=Müller=, F. H., Commentatio de rebus Semiticis, Berolini,
1831.--=Müller=, W. M., Ein Phönik. König (in Mitteil. d. Vorderasiat,
Ges. 1896), Berlin, 1896.--=Munk=, S., L’inscription phénicienne
de Marseilles, trad. et commentée, Paris, 1848.--=Münter=, F., Die
Religion der Karthager, Copenhagen, 1816; Der Tempel der himmlischen
Göttin zu Paphos, Copenhagen, 1824; Om en nyling blandt ruinerne of
Karthago opdaget Punisk gravskrift, Copenhagen, 1824. (Works now having
scarcely more than an antiquarian interest.)
* * * * *
=Oberhummer=, E., Phönizier in Arkadien, München,
1882.--=Ohnefalsch-Richter=, Max, Kypros, die Bibel und Homer. Beiträge
zur Cultur-, Kunst-, und Religionsgeschichte des Orients im Altertume,
Berlin, 1893, 2 vols.--=Olshausen=, J., Phöniz. Ortsnamen ausserhalb
des semitischen Sprachgebietes (in Neues Rheinisches Museum, 1853, p.
321 _et seq._).
* * * * *
=Papier=, A., et =Mélix=, Sur dix-huit inscriptions nouvelles
communiquées à l’académie d’Hippone (in Bulletin de l’Acad. d’Hippone,
1886, no. 21, pp. 81-112).--=Pausanias=, Ἑλλάδος περιήγησις.--=Perrot=,
G., and =Chipiez=, C., History of Art in Phœnicia, London, 1885, Vol.
III of the Series.--=Peters=, J. P., The Babylonian Origin of the
Phœnician Alphabet (in Proceedings of the Soc. of Bibl. Archæol., Vol.
VI, p. 73, _et seq._); Notes on Recent Theories of the Origin of the
Alphabet (in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. XXII,
p. 177, New Haven, 1901); Nippur, or Explorations and Adventures,
etc., New York and London, 1897, 2 vols.--=Philo Byblius=, Phœnician
History in Muller’s Fragmenta Hist. Græc., Vol. III, Paris, 1841-1851.
(This is the alleged translation of Sanchoniathon, already referred
to. It is regarded as indisputable that the author drew upon native
sources, and did not invent the legends he narrates, whether or not
such an author as Sanchoniathon existed.)--=Philostratus=, Zürich,
1844.--=Pietschmann=, R., Geschichte der Phönizier, Berlin, 1889.
_Professor Pietschmann’s_ book, written for the Oncken Series,
is the most recent and the most authoritative work on the
subject. It by no means supplants the great works of Movers and
Kenrick, but it embodies the results of investigations that
were not made when these works were written, and so condenses
into relatively brief space practically all that is at present
known regarding the Phœnicians.
=Pliny, the Younger=, Historiarum Mundi, London, 1826; History of the
World, translated by P. Holland, London, 1601.--=Polybius=, Καθολικὴ
κοινὴ ἱστορία. (Polybius, the personal friend of Scipio, was present
at the destruction of Carthage in 146, B.C. He is the incomparable
authority for the history of the Punic wars, but of his forty books,
only the first five are intact. Of these there are several English
translations.)--=Prutz=, H., Aus Phönizien: geographische Skizzen und
historische Studien, Leipsic, 1876.
* * * * *
=Queipo=, Don V. Vasquez, Essai sur les systèmes métriques et
monétaires des anciens peuples depuis les premiers temps historiques
jusqu’à la fin du Khalifat d’Orient, Paris, 1859.
* * * * *
=Rawlinson=, G., A Manual of Ancient History, Oxford, 1869;
History of Phœnicia, London, 1889.--=Rawlinson=, H. C., Bilingual
Readings--Cuneiform and Phœnician. Notes on some Tablets in the Brit.
Mus. containing Bilingual Legends (Assyria and Phœnicia), (in Journal
of the Royal Asiat. Soc., new Ser. I, pp. 187-247).--=Renan=, J. E.,
Mission de Phénicie, Paris, 1865-1874, 9 pts.; Catalogue des objets
provenant de la mission de Phénicie, Paris, 1862; Histoire générale et
système comparé des langues sémitiques, Paris, 1855.--=Rougé=, Vicomte
Em. de: Mémoire sur l’origine égyptienne de l’alphabet phénicien,
Paris, 1874. (The original memoir was communicated to the Academy some
twenty years earlier, but was accidentally destroyed and hence was
never published. The present paper gave currency to the views of the
author, according to which the Phœnician alphabet is derived from the
hieratic form of the Egyptian writing.)
* * * * *
=Saalschütz=, J. L., Zur Geschichte der Buchstabenschrift, in
besonderer Beziehung auf Hebräer, Phönizier, Griechen und Ægypter,
Königsberg, 1838.--=Saint-Martin=, Vivien de, Le Nord d’Afrique
dans l’antiquité, Paris, 1863.--=Saulcy=, F. de, Mémoire sur une
inscription phénicienne déterrée à Marseilles, Paris, 1847.--=Sayce=,
A. H., Ancient Empires of the East, London, 1884; New Phœnician
and Israelitic Inscriptions (in Babylonian and Oriental Record,
Vol. I, p. 193, London, 1886-1887).--=Scholz=, P., Götzendienst und
Zauberwesen, Regensburg, 1877.--=Schröder=, A., Conspectus chorog.
insigniorum locorum et geographia veterum populorum delineatus,
Sundiae, 1831.--=Schröder=, P., Die phöniz. Sprache, Halle, 1869; Über
einige Fragmente phönikischer Inschriften aus Cypern (in Monatsber.
d. Berl. Acad. d. Wiss. 1872, p. 330 _et seq._, Berlin, 1872);
Phönizische Miscellen. (in Zeitschrift d. Deutschen Morgenländ.
Ges., Vol. XXXIV, p. 675, Halle, 1880).--=Seere=, P., Les marines de
guerre de l’antiquité et du moyen age, Paris, 1886.--=Smith=, R.,
Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, Cambridge, 1885.--=Smith=,
R. B., Carthage and the Carthaginians, London, 1878.--=Socin=, A.
and =Gutschmid=, A. von, Phœnicia (in Encycl. Brit., Vol. XVIII,
Ninth ed.).--=Spiro=, F., Les inscriptions et les stèles votives de
Carthage, Lausanne, 1895.--=Stade=, B., Erneute Prüfung des zwischen
dem Phönizischen und Hebräischen bestehenden Verwandtschaftsgrades ein
Beitrag zur morgenländ. Sprachkunde (in Morgenländ. Forschg. 1875, pp.
167-232, Leipsic, 1875).--=Stadthagen=, D., De quibusdam marmoribus
Phœnicis præmisso specimine de Scripturæ alphabeticæ origine, Berlin,
1846.--=Strabo=, Geographica, Venice, 1516.
* * * * *
=Tatianus=, Oratio ad Græcos, edited by Worth, Oxford, 1700.--=Temple=,
Sir G., Phœnician Tombstone found in Maghrawah in Tunis (in
Transactions of the Roy. Asiat. Soc., Vol. III, p. 548).--=Tiele=, C.
P., La Religion des Phéniciens (in Revue de l’histoire des religions,
Vol. III, Paris, 1881).--=Tissot=, Géographie comparée de la province
romaine d’Afrique, Paris, 1884-1888, 2 vols.--=Turner=, W. W., Remarks
on the Phœnician Inscriptions of Sidon (in Journal of Am. Oriental
Soc., 1862, p. 48 _et seq._, New Haven, 1862); The Sidon Inscriptions,
with a Translation and Notes (in Journal of Am. Oriental Soc., 1856, p.
243 _et seq._, New Haven, 1856).
* * * * *
=Vassallo=, C., Dei monumenti antichi nel gruppo di Malta. Periodo
Fenicio ed Egizio, Valetta, 1851.--=Vaux=, W. S. W., Inscriptions
in the Phœnician Character, now deposited in the British Museum,
discovered on the Site of Carthage, London, 1863.--=Vierthaler=,
Philosoph. Gesch. der Menschen und Völker, Salzburg, 1787-1794, 4
vols.--=Vogüé=, M. de, Six inscriptions phéniciennes d’Idalion, Paris,
1875; Mélanges d’archéologie orientale, Paris, 1868.
* * * * *
=Wachsmuth=, K., Stadt Athen im Alterthum, Leipsic, 1874-1890,
2 vols.--=Weber=, G., Allgemeine Weltgeschichte, Leipsic,
1857-1880, 15 vols.--=Weinrich=, De Phœnicum literatura, Meiningæ,
1714.--=Wellhausen=, J., Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, Berlin,
1884.--=Whitney=, W. D., On de Rougé’s Derivation of the Phœnician
Alphabet from the Egyptian Characters (in Journ. of Am. Oriental
Soc., Vol. X, p. 131).--=Williams=, H. S., The History of the Art of
Writing, New York and London, 1902.--=Winckler=, H., Altorientalische
Forschungen, Leipsic, 1893.--=Wuttke=, H., Geschichte der Schrift und
des Schriftthums, Leipsic, 1872.
* * * * *
=Xenophon=, Κύρου Ἀναβάσις, Oxford, 1735; Κυροπαιδεία, Florence, 1516.
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
COPYRIGHT, 1904,
BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.
_All rights reserved._
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
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.
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 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
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 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 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 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.
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
THE HITTITES
An important Mongoloid tribe of Asia Minor descended by tradition from
Heth, son of Canaan, son of Ham. They were one of the seven principal
Canaanite tribes. In the days of their might their power extended over
the greater part of Asia Minor, and perhaps into northern Syria. The
extension of Egypt’s power during the XVIIIth Dynasty soon brought the
Pharaohs into contact with the Hittites, or Kheta, as the Egyptians
called them.
1528 B.C. The Hittites fight against Tehutimes III at the battle
of Megiddo.
1400 The power of the Hittites begins to be formidable. They
threaten the Egyptian provinces in Syria, and join their
forces with those of Babylonia and Naharain. They make their
southern capital at Kadesh.
1360 Hittites attacked by Seti I at Kadesh.
1341 =Mau-than-ar=, son of =Maro-sar=, murdered by his
brother =Kheta-sar=, who succeeds to the throne.
1340 Battle of Kadesh. Great victory of Ramses II over the
Hittites and their allies.
1325 Treaty of peace between Kheta-sar, king of the
Hittites, and Ramses II.
1110 The Hittites, or Khatti, as the Assyrians called them,
are overcome by Tiglathpileser I.
882 The Hittites pay tribute to Asshurnazirpal III, who
carries their princes into captivity.
876 Carchemish, once the Hittite capital, now the capital of
the petty state of Sangara, is entered by Asshurnazirpal.
854 Hittites enter into the alliance formed by Ben-Hadad II
of Damascus. They suffer in the defeat at Qarqar. Most of
the states are annexed to Assyria.
717 By this time Sangara is the sole state of the former
Hittite empire that has retained independence. =Pisiris=,
its king, joins with Mita of Moschi to refuse payment of
tribute to Assyria. Sargon II proceeds against him. The
people of Carchemish are transported to Assyria, and the
city is populated with Assyrian colonists. This is the end
of the last remnant of the Hittite empire. Many monuments
of the Hittites have been discovered of recent years--most
important of all, ruins and sculpture in Cappadocia east
of the Halys. The art exhibited on these works is of a
rude, primitive character, although it was influenced in
succession by Babylonian, Egyptian, and Assyrian culture.
THE KINGDOM OF MITANNI
One of the important kingdoms of antiquity was Mitanni
(called Naharain by the Egyptians, and Aram-Naharaim in the
Bible), but at present we have no connected account of its
history. “The kingdom of Mitanni,” says Rogers, “must take
its place among the small states which have had their share
in influencing the progress of the world, but whose own
history we are unable to trace.”
1580 Tehutimes I of Egypt reaches the kingdom of Mitanni in
his Asiatic campaign. In a battle fought on the borders, the
king of Mitanni is defeated. From this time forth there is
constant intercourse between the Nile and the Euphrates.
1522 Tehutimes III extends his conquest as far as Mitanni,
which is made tributary to Egypt.
1470-1400 From the Tel-el-Amarna letters we know that
=Artatana=, =Artashuma=, =Sutarna=, and =Dushratta= are the
names of some of the ruling kings at this period. Between
these and the Pharaohs there are family ties, since several
of the Egyptian rulers married princesses from Mitanni. This
shows that the kingdom is now of some importance.
1400 We find from now on the forces of Mitanni in alliance
with those of the Hittites, and they doubtless play an
important part in the Hittite conquests. In the last years
of the XVIIIth Egyptian Dynasty, they are instrumental in
driving the Egyptians from the land of the Amorites. The
power of Mitanni is increasing. It is constantly allied with
the Canaanitish and Babylonian princes against Egypt.
1225 =Cushan-rish-athaim=, king of Mitanni, overruns Syria
and holds the Israelites in bondage for eight years. After
this we find Aleppo, Hamath, and even Damascus in the hands
of the Aramæans. Out of this occupation came the kingdoms of
Damascus, Hamath, Zobah, etc. Mitanni and the other Aramæan
states in Mesopotamia begin to lose their power as that of
Assyria increases.
1120 Tiglathpileser I conquers much of their territory, and
by the time of Asshurnazirpal III it has become practically
incorporated in the Assyrian dominions.
THE ARAMÆANS
The Aramæans were a people of Semitic race, language, and
religion, who came from northern Arabia and settled in the
region between the western boundaries of Babylonia and the
highlands of Western Asia.
THE KINGDOM OF DAMASCUS
The Aramæan conquests in Syria gave rise to a number of
small states, among them Zobah, Hamath, Patin, and Damascus.
The latter is the only one that attained world-historic
importance, and is that country referred to in the Bible as
the kingdom of Syria. The kings of Damascus first appear in
history in the reign of David.
1000 David makes the king of Damascus pay tribute.
950 Damascus becomes independent of Solomon. =Rezon= is
king. He is succeeded probably by =Hezion=, and then by the
latter’s son, =Tabrimon=, whose names are known to us only
through the Bible (1 Kings xv. 18), although there is every
reason to believe that Hezion is identical with Rezon.
900 =Ben-Hadad I= succeeds to the throne of Damascus. Asa
of Judah purchases, by means of the temple and palace
treasures, the alliance of Ben-Hadad, in his war against
Baasha of Israel. Ben-Hadad invades Israel and brings the
conflict to a close.
870 =Ben-Hadad II= (=Hadad-idri= of the Assyrian monuments).
The kingdom of Damascus now becomes the active enemy of
Israel. Omri and Ahab ally themselves with Phœnicia to
resist it. Ben-Hadad besieges Samaria, but is driven off by
Ahab. The following year the siege is resumed and Ben-Hadad
is again defeated in a battle near Aphek. Ahab suddenly
changes his policy and makes a friendly alliance with
Ben-Hadad to resist the growing power of Assyria.
854 Ben-Hadad is the head of the alliance of Damascus,
Israel, and Hamath, and other states to resist Shalmaneser
II, who invades Hamath. Battle of Qarqar and defeat of the
allies. The alliance is broken and Damascus and Syria again
go to war.
849 Ben-Hadad and Irkhulina of Hamath oppose Shalmaneser,
who has again invaded the latter country. The result seems
to have been undecisive.
846 Shalmaneser invades Hamath a third time and is prevented
from any decisive conquest by Ben-Hadad.
845 =Hazael= succeeds his father Ben-Hadad; probably
murdered him.
842 Hazael, deserted by his former allies, resolves to fight
alone Shalmaneser, who had proceeded against Syria for the
fourth time. Siege of Damascus, with no decisive result.
839 Shalmaneser again attacks Damascus, but is still unable
to subjugate it completely. Damascus now takes the offensive
against Israel. By the end of the century the land east of
Jordan and north of the Arnon has been annexed by Hazael and
his successor =Ben-Hadad III=. But a fresh onslaught from
Assyria gives the Israelites an opportunity to recover their
lost territory.
806-797 Adad-Nirari III makes expeditions to the west and
Damascus, under King =Mari=, who has succeeded Ben-Hadad
III,[10] is compelled to pay heavy tribute in 797.
773 The king of Assyria (either Asshur-dan III or
Shalmaneser III, probably the former) makes a campaign
against Damascus. The kingdom of Damascus is now in a
thoroughly weak condition. Its decline has been rapid.
Besides its subjection by Assyria, it has probably been
forced to become tributary to Israel, now at the height of
its power. It is probably on account of this connection that
735 Pekah forms an alliance with =Rezin= (the successor
though not the immediate one of Mari or Ben-Hadad III)
against Ahaz of Judah, who is attacked. The Syrio-Ephramitic
war begins. Ahaz appeals to Tiglathpileser III for aid,
which is willingly given.
734 Tiglathpileser marches into Syria and defeats Rezin, who
shuts himself up in Damascus.
732 Fall of Damascus. Rezin slain. The inhabitants deported.
The kingdom of Damascus is merged into the Assyrian empire.
HAMATH AND ZOBAH
There were two of the Aramæan kingdoms of Syria, whose
existence was more or less contemporaneous with Damascus,
although they never attained the power of the latter state.
Zobah lay in northeastern Syria, and probably arose out
of the ruins of the Hittite and Mitannian kingdoms. It
seems to have been in conflict with Hamath. Its last king,
=Hadad-ezer=, leads the Syrian forces against David, but is
overthrown (about 1000 B.C.) and Zobah becomes part of the
kingdom of Judah.
Hamath lay to the west of Zobah. Ramses III mentions taking
the land among his conquests about 1200 B.C. It seems to
have been then in Hittite hands, but later on passed to the
Aramæans.
1000 B.C. Before David’s conquest we find =Toi=, king of Hamath,
in conflict with Hadad-ezer of Zobah. After the latter’s
overthrow we find Hamath always in friendly relations with
Judah. Toi’s son =Joram= succeeds him.
854 =Irkhulina=, king of Hamath, joins the Syrian alliance
against Shalmaneser II. The latter invades Hamath, in which
country the battle of Qarqar is fought.
849-468 Shalmaneser II invades Hamath in these years, but
the combined efforts of Irkhulina and Ben-Hadad II prevent
any decisive Assyrian success. After this, Hamath remains
the faithful ally of Assyria, but not a part of the empire.
720 A national party objects to the payment of tribute to
Assyria. The king of Hamath, =Eni-el=, is deposed, and a
usurper, =Il-ubidi= or =Ya-ubidi=, put on the throne. He
prepares to resist Assyria, aided by Hanno of Gaza. Other
states join the confederation. Sargon II immediately invades
Syria. The city of Hamath is taken, and the kingdom becomes
part of the Assyrian empire.
Among the other states of Western Asia deserving, at least,
of mention are Edom, Moab, Ammon, and Philistia. It is
impossible to give any connected account of their history.
The children of Esau settled in Edom, driving the Horites
out. They come under the sway of Judah, but make a few
attempts to regain their independence.
About 743 Tiglathpileser III makes King =Kaush-malik= of
Edom tributary. In Esarhaddon’s time =Kaush-gabri= is
king. Sennacherib makes =Malik-rammu= pay tribute. In
Nebuchadrezzar’s time Edom is attacked by the Babylonians.
During the captivity the Edomites move into portions of
Judea.
Moab has the same origin as Israel. It is incorporated
into David’s kingdom, but recovers its independence in
a degree after his death. Thereafter the more powerful
kings of Israel make war upon it. About 890 Omri makes
=Sichon=, king of Moab, pay tribute, and sacks the capital
Heshbon. About 885 =Kammush-gad= succeeds Sichon, and he,
in turn, is succeeded by his son =Mesha= (_ca._ 855),
whose inscription, known as the “Moabite” stone, is one of
the most famous monuments of antiquity, and the oldest in
the Semitic alphabet. He shakes off the yoke of Israel,
and is afterwards shut up in Kir-Haresheth by the allied
forces of Judah and Israel, but the assailants retire
without a victory. Later the Moabite king pays tribute to
Assyria. Some of them as mentioned doing so are =Shaman=,
=Kammush-nadab=, and =Mussari=. Nebuchadrezzar subjects the
Moabites in his expedition to Egypt.
The history of Ammon, whose capital was Rabbath or Rabbath
Ammon, is similar to that of the other petty kingdoms with
whose names it is constantly allied. After the Exodus the
Israelites find the Ammonites driven out of their ancient
territory, and settled east of the upper Jabbok. Here
they develop a spirit of intense hostility towards the
Israelites, and unite with the Moabites and Philistines
against them.
In the days of Uzziah and Jotham they pay tribute to Judah,
and assist Nebuchadrezzar against Jehoiakim. They continue
to exist always inimical to Jewish power, at least until the
time of Justin Martyr, who mentions them.
The origin of the Philistines is unknown, though it is
supposed that they came from the Egyptian Delta, or perhaps
from Crete. Their principal cities were Askalon, Ashdod,
Gaza, Gath, and Ekron. During the XVIIIth Egyptian Dynasty
they belonged to Egypt. The Philistines may have recovered
their independence after Khun-aten’s death (_ca._ 1400), but
in Ramses II’s time they are again under Egyptian rule. But
with Ramses III the Philistines join the other enemies of
Egypt against him. Saul has a long struggle with them now
at the height of their power and is killed in a Philistine
victory. David conquers them after an arduous struggle.
In Jehoram’s time, 845 B.C., they and the Arabians invade
Judah and attack Jerusalem. In 797 Adad-nirari III receives
tribute from Philistia, which is a new conquest. In 734 the
Philistine cities are taken by Tiglathpileser III. Hanno,
king of Gaza, flees to Egypt. In 720 Hanno and Il-ubidi of
Hamath form a confederation against Sargon, but are badly
defeated at Raphia. Hanno is captured and borne off to
Assyria. Philistia becomes an Assyrian province.
THE LESSER PEOPLES OF ASIA MINOR
PHRYGIA
So far as we know, the Phrygians were of a race closely akin
to some of the tribes of Macedonia and Thrace. Their country
lay on the central plateau of Asia Minor and extended east
to the river Halys. The date of the origin of the kingdom is
unknown, but Greek tradition tells of rulers at Gordium, on
the Gangerius, among whom the names of =Gordius= and =Midas=
are common. In the ninth century B.C. its power was at its
greatest. About the end of the eighth century B.C. =Midas=,
king of Phrygia, is said to have married Damodice, daughter
of Agamemnon, the last king of Cyme. After this time the
power of Phrygia declines before that of Lydia. About 660
B.C. the Cimmerians sweep over Phrygia, and =Midas= the
king commits suicide. The Cimmerians hold the country until
the end of the seventh century, when it comes under Lydian
rule, the matter being definitely fixed by the treaty of
585. After this the country is ruled by native princes under
subjection to Lydia until the fall of Crœsus in 546, when it
becomes part of the Persian empire.
Phrygian culture is distinctly non-oriental in character and
bears a distinct resemblance to that of early Greece.
Alexander the Great placed Phrygia under the command of
Antigonus; then it passed to Seleucus. The western half of
the country was included in the kingdom of Pergamus. Under
the Roman Empire Phrygia formed part of the province of Asia.
LYCIA
The Lycians were a small nation in the southwest of Asia
Minor, between Caria and Pamphylia. They alone among the
peoples of this region preserved their independence against
the Lydian kings, but they succumbed to Harpagus, the
general of Cyrus, in 545 B.C.
After a while they recovered their independence, and in
a degree maintained it by joining the Athenian Maritime
League. Alexander had no difficulty in conquering this
people, and in his empire they were ruled sometimes by the
Ptolemies and sometimes by the Seleucidæ. Nevertheless, they
managed to preserve their federal institutions, even when
subject to and controlled by Rome. Not until the time of
Claudius was Lycia formally annexed to the Roman Empire.
MYSIA
The Mysians were a race allied to the Lydians. They formed
part of the conquests of Alyattes and Crœsus, and passed
with Lydia into the Persian empire.
At Alexander’s death the country was annexed to the Syrian
monarchy, of which it formed part until the defeat of
Antiochus the Great. The Romans transferred the country to
the dominions of Eumenes of Pergamus as a reward for his
services during the war. Pergamus was the most important
city of Mysia, and under Alexander’s successors became the
seat of a flourishing Greek monarchy. It became prominent
under =Attalus I= in the third century B.C. The successor of
Attalus, =Eumenes II=, greatly extended and beautified the
city. When =Attalus III= died, 133 B.C., he bequeathed the
kingdom to Rome, and thus all Mysia became a portion of the
province of Asia.
CAPPADOCIA
The Cappadocians were originally a Semitic people. They
absorbed a portion of the invading Cimmerians in the eighth
century B.C.
Our real knowledge of them goes back only to the Persian
conquest in the middle of the sixth century. It was
included in the third satrapy of Darius’s empire, although
the satraps succeeded in making themselves virtually
independent. =Ariarathes I= maintained himself on the
throne after the conquest of Alexander. But at the latter’s
death Perdiccas took him prisoner and put him to death. His
son regained the throne, and his descendants ruled more
or less in full possession of the kingdom. They fought
against the Romans and afterwards with them, taking part
in the struggles in Bithynia and Pontus. On the death of
=Archelaus= (17 A.D.) the kingdom of Cappadocia was reduced
to a Roman province.
CILICIA
The Cilicians, like the Cappadocians, were a Semitic or
Aramæan people, ruled by a king with the title of Syennesis
as early as the time of Alyattes of Lydia (about 600 B.C.).
Cilicia passed successively into the Persian and Macedonian
empires and formed part of the Seleucid dominions. Owing
to loose government the western portion of Cilicia became
the stronghold of a great pirate confederation which was
stamped out by Pompey in 66 B.C. Cicero governed the country
as proconsul 51-50 B.C., but it did not formally become a
province until the time of Vespasian.
PAMPHYLIA AND PISIDIA
The peoples of these countries first appear in history in
Xenophon’s _Anabasis_. In fact, Cyrus the Younger gave as
his excuse for raising the army with which he tried to seize
his brother’s throne the necessity of putting down the
Pisidians, who were constantly harrying their neighbours.
At the time of Alexander the Great they made a determined
but unsuccessful resistance to the progress of the great
conqueror. They passed tranquilly to Roman dominion, though
they continued to be governed by their petty chiefs.
CARIA
Of the origin and early history of the Carians there
is practically nothing known. They passed with little
resistance under the Persian yoke, but joined the Ionic
revolt, and were only reduced again with difficulty. Until
the Macedonian conquest, although subject to Persia, the
country had rulers of its own at Halicarnassus, who came
strongly under the influence of Hellenic civilisation. The
last native prince was =Pexodarus=, and after his death
=Orontobates=, a Persian, seized the throne and offered a
vigorous resistance to Alexander. The latter bestowed the
country upon =Ada=, a native princess, but it soon became
a portion of the Macedonian empire, ruled by Syria and
Pergamus. At the extinction of the Pergamanian kingdom,
Caria became a part of the Roman province of Asia.
BITHYNIA
Bithynia was first populated by a tribe of Thracian origin,
first subdued by Crœsus, and then taken into the Persian
empire when the country formed part of the satrapy of
Phrygia. When the Seleucid monarchy fell into decay, the
kingdom of Bithynia arose. =Nicomedes I=, the first king,
founded Nicomedia during his long reign (278-250 B.C.).
His successors were =Prusias I=, =Prusias II=, =Nicomedes
II=, and =Nicomedes III=. This last king was unable to hold
out against Pontus, and was sustained on his throne by the
Romans. At his death (74 B.C.) he bequeathed his kingdom to
Rome.
PAPHLAGONIA
The Paphlagonians play little part in history, although they
were one of the most ancient nations of Asia Minor, and in
all probability belonged to the same Semitic race as the
Cappadocians. Under the Persian dominion they are said to
have had a prince of their own, and were not dependent upon
the Satraps. At Alexander’s death the country was assigned
with Cappadocia to Eumenes, but was still governed by native
rulers until it was absorbed by Pontus (183 B.C.).
GALATIA
The original Galatians were a body of Gauls that invaded
Asia Minor about 277 B.C. It had formed part of Brennus’
army, but separated from him, crossed into Asia Minor, and
ravaged its western portion. Attalus of Pergamus defeated
this people in 239 and compelled them to settle in Galatia,
where they maintained an independent existence and gave
the Romans much trouble in the wars against Antiochus.
But an army was sent directly against them, and they were
completely subjected to Rome, 189 B.C. At first the native
chiefs held power under tetrarchs. This system did not
hold, and soon there was only one ruler. One of the single
tetrarchs, Deiotarus, was styled King by the Roman Senate
for the assistance given in the Mithridatic wars. Galatia
was afterwards united with Lycaonia, Isauria, and their
adjoining districts under a king named =Amyntas=, and when
he died (25 B.C.) the country became a Roman province.
LYCAONIA
The Lycaonian tribes inhabited the interior of Asia Minor in
a district bounded by Galatia, Cappadocia, Cilicia, Phrygia,
and Pisidia. The country is first mentioned by Xenophon.
The people seem to have been a wild and lawless race of
freebooters, practically independent of the Persian and
Macedonian empires. They became, however, subjects of the
king, Amyntas, who ruled in Galatia, and at his death passed
with the latter country into the Roman Empire.
ISAURIA
Isauria lay to the west of Lycaonia. It does not appear
in the early history of Asia Minor, but its people
were undoubtedly similar in manners and customs to the
Lycaonians. Their sole prominence in ancient history is due
to the fact that they took so active a part in the war of
Rome against the Cilician pirates that P. Servilius, the
proconsul, found it necessary to pursue them into their own
country and reduce them to submission, which earned him the
title of Isauricus.
PONTUS
Pontus lay in the northeast corner of Asia Minor, bordering
on Armenia and Colchis. It was originally that part of
Cappadocia known as “Cappadocia on the Pontus,” and its
existence as a separate territory did not begin probably
until after the time of Alexander the Great. Under the
Persian empire the province was governed as a satrapy,
although virtually independent. Finally the satraps began
to call themselves kings. The first was =Ariobarzanes=,
about the middle of the fourth century B.C. His successor,
=Mithridates II=, the first really independent monarch,
began his reign 337 B.C. Then came a line of kings mostly
called Mithridates, who managed to rule independent of the
Macedonian monarchs, and extended their dominions along
the shores of the Euxine or Black Sea. When Sinope fell
(183 B.C.), captured by =Pharnaces I=, Bithynia became the
western boundary of the land, and under =Mithridates VI=
“the Great” nearly the whole of Asia Minor acknowledged
the sceptre of the powerful monarch. Pontus plays a part
in world history only in the wars of Mithridates and Rome,
a full account of which struggle will be found in the
history of the latter country. When Pompey finally subdued
Mithridates (65 B.C.), Pontus was confined to its original
limits, and afterwards united with Bithynia as a Roman
province. Mark Antony placed the government of a portion
of the province in the hands of a Greek rhetorician named
=Polemon=, whose descendants continued to rule until the
time of Nero, when it was finally annexed to the empire.
ARMENIA
This was the Urartu of the Assyrian inscriptions, the Ararat
of the Bible. It seems originally to have been one of the
countries of Nairi, and gradually gained superiority over
the others. It extended northward from Lake Van, between
the Upper Euphrates and Media. The Assyrians began their
assaults on Urartu at the time of Tiglathpileser I (_ca._
1100 B.C.). Asshurnazirpal marched through its southern
districts, but made no attempt to annex it to his dominions.
Shalmaneser II laid the first plan for conquest. In 860 and
857 he invaded Urartu while =Arame= was king, defeating that
monarch and bringing his dynasty to an end. A new house came
to the throne, founded by =Sarduris I=, son of Lutipris.
He immediately extended his borders by conquest and
strengthened his kingdom, so, when the Assyrians came again
in 850, 833, and 829, they went home without making any real
progress in the north and west. Shalmaneser III (782-773)
made six ineffectual campaigns against Urartu, which was
now a real menace to the Assyrian empire. =Argistis= of
Urartu wrested considerable territory from the Assyrians,
and his successor, =Sarduris II=, continued the conquest of
adjacent territory, and, forming a coalition of northern
princes, started on a conquest of Syria. At this moment the
prospects of Armenia becoming a great world-power were very
bright, but Tiglathpileser III, of Assyria, having the same
ambitions, encountered Sarduris and badly defeated him.
The boundaries of Urartu were gradually narrowed to their
original limits by the Assyrian conqueror about 735 B.C.
The capital, Turuspa (Van), was besieged, but not taken;
the spirit of Urartu was now completely broken. =Ursa= or
=Rusas= succeeded Sarduris. Sargon II, of Assyria, had many
conflicts with him, and when his son, =Argistis II=, came
to the throne, he had only a small territory around Lake
Van left to rule over. =Tigranes I= was the contemporary of
Cyrus. After the fall of Assyria Armenia became a portion
of the Persian empire. Alexander the Great conquered it
with the defeat of King =Vahi=, but the Macedonian yoke
was thrown off in 317 B.C. =Ardvates= was chosen king, but
at his death the Seleucidæ again gained possession. When
Antiochus the Great was defeated by the Romans, =Artaxias=,
the governor of Greater Armenia, made himself independent.
It was with this prince that the exiled Hannibal found
refuge. =Zadriades=, in Lesser Armenia, followed the example
of Artaxias, and his descendants maintained their position
until the time of Tigranes II, when this country was annexed
to Greater Armenia.
About 150 B.C. the Parthians stepped in, and Mithridates I
established his brother =Valarsaces= in Armenia. Thus a new
branch of the Asarcid dynasty was founded.
=Tigranes II= gave promise of making a great empire, but
his father-in-law, Mithridates of Pontus, brought him in
collision with the Romans. Pompey allowed him to keep
Armenia, and made a new kingdom of Sophene and Gordyene, but
another son, =Artavasdes=, tried to free himself from Rome,
and Mark Antony carried him prisoner to Alexandria, where he
was beheaded by Cleopatra (30 B.C.).
THE LYDIANS
The territory of Lydia was originally confined to the
Plain of Sardis at the foot of Tmolus and Sipylus. Later
it extended to include the Troad and became a maritime as
well as an inland power. The coast of Ionia came under its
dominion and at the time of Crœsus all Asia Minor west of
the Halys, with the exception of Lycia, composed the Lydian
kingdom.
B.C. The Lydian rulers traced their origin back to the sun-god
Hercules, but there was an earlier dynasty which, however,
is purely mythical, founded by Attys, another form of the
sun-god. The Heraclid Dynasty shows Hittite or perhaps
Semitic influence, and was founded by a son of Ninus and a
descendant of Hercules and Omphale. About the end of the
thirteenth century B.C. Lydia was conquered by the Hittites,
and the Heraclid Dynasty seems to have arisen with the decline
of the Hittite rule. It is said to have lasted 505 years and
690 come to an end with =Sadyattes=--the =Candaules= of
Herodotus--who is slain by one of his herdsmen, Gyges,
with the connivance of the queen. =Gyges= founds the
dynasty of the Mermnadæ.
660 The kingdom is overrun by the Cimmerians. They capture
Sardis. Gyges appeals to Asshurbanapal for aid. The latter
beseeches the gods Asshur and Ishtar to aid Gyges, who gains
a great victory over the invaders. But Gyges turns against
Asshurbanapal. He sends aid to Psamthek against the
Assyrians (655 B.C.).
652 The Cimmerians return, retake Sardis, and Gyges is
slain in battle. His son =Ardys= succeeds. He at once gives
allegiance to Assyria.
617 =Sadyattes= succeeds his father Ardys. He ends an eleven
years’ war with Miletus.
612 =Alyattes= succeeds his father Sadyattes. Under him
Phrygia is conquered, and the Greek cities of the coast are
taken. The latter pay heavy duties to the Lydian king, and
he thus becomes the richest monarch of the time.
585 Treaty with the Phrygians fixing boundaries of the two
countries. Lydia is now threatened with the growing power of
the Manda or eastern Scythians, and a six years’ struggle
is ended by the marriage of Alyattes’ daughter, Aryenis,
to Astyages, king of the Manda. The two kingdoms become
friendly.
560 =Crœsus= ascends the throne on the death of his father
Alyattes. He makes friends with Miltiades, the tyrant of the
Thracian Chersonesus.
546 Crœsus heads an alliance with Aahmes II of Egypt,
Nabonidus of Babylon, and the Spartans against Cyrus of
Elam, who has overthrown his suzerain Astyages of the Manda.
He enters Cappadocia on his way to meet Cyrus, is defeated
in two battles and retires to Sardis. The allies do not
send aid and the city falls. Lydia is absorbed into the
Persian empire and then into the Greek. At Alexander’s death
Lydia passed to Antigonus; then Achæus made himself king of
Sardis, but Antiochus put him to death. Eumenes presented
the country to the Romans, and subsequently it formed part
of the province of Asia.
FOOTNOTES
[10] [There still exists an uncertainty as to the chronological order
of these two kings. Meyer places Mari first, although the Biblical
narrative would indicate the reverse to be the true order.]
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 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 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 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 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.
[Illustration: THE HITTITE LION, BEARING AN INSCRIPTION
(Now in British Museum)]
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.
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.
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 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.
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]
[Illustration: HITTITE BAS-RELIEF AT IBREEZ, LYCAONIA]
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 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 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 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.”]
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 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.
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 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: 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 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 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.
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 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
[11] [It is possible that this Lygdamis is the “Tuktammu of the Manda,”
for whose defeat, according to a recently deciphered inscription,
Asshurbanapal returned thanks to the Assyrian gods.]
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
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.
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 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 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 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 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 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]
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 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 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, 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 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.
[Illustration: RUINS OF THE ACROPOLIS OF SARDIS]
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 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
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 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.
“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 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]
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.
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 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]
[Illustration: LYDIAN COINS
(Now in the British Museum)]
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 Phœnician 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.
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.
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 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
[12] Head, _Coinage of Ephesus_, p. 16.
[13] Herodotus, I, 94.
[14] Schliemann, _Ilios_, p. 698.
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 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 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 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 ye
Countrie so ontraivellable that a man is not able to see any farnesse
into it.
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. 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 ye 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 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 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 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 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
afterwards 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 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:
“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 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.
“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, “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 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:
I count the sand, I measure out the sea;
The silent and the dumb are heard by me:
E’en now the odours to my sense that rise,
A tortoise boiling with a lamb supplies,
Where brass below and brass above it lies.
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 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 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 o’er the Medes a mule shall sit on high,
O’er pebbly Hermus then, soft Lydian, fly;
Fly with all haste; for safety scorn thy fame,
Nor scruple to deserve a coward’s name.
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 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 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 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 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:
Wide-ruling Lydian, in thy wishes wild,
Ask not to hear the accents of thy child;
Far better were his silence for thy peace,
And sad will be the day when that shall cease.
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 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,
“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: “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
[15] The story of Rosamond, queen of the Lombards, as related by Mr.
Gibbon, bears so exact a resemblance to this of Candaules, that I am
unable to forego the pleasure of transcribing it.--“The queen of Italy
had stooped from her throne to the arms of a subject: and Helmichis,
the king’s armour-bearer, was the secret minister of her pleasure and
revenge. Against the proposal of the murder he could no longer urge
the scruples of fidelity or gratitude; but Helmichis trembled when he
revolved the danger, as well as the guilt. He pressed, and obtained,
that one of the bravest champions of the Lombards should be associated
to the enterprise: but no more than a promise of secrecy could be drawn
from the gallant Perideus.--The mode of seduction employed by Rosamond
betrays her shameless insensibility both to honour and to love. She
supplied the place of one of her female attendants, who was beloved
by Perideus, and contrived some excuse for darkness and silence, till
she could inform her companion that he had enjoyed the queen of the
Lombards, and that his own death, or the death of the king, must be
the consequence of such treasonable adultery. In this alternative he
chose rather to be the accomplice than the victim of Rosamond, whose
undaunted spirit was incapable of fear or remorse.”--TRANSLATOR.
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._
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.
[Illustration: HITTITE HIEROGLYPHICS]
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.
=Ainsworth=, W. F., Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, London, 1842.
* * * * *
=Babelon=, E. Manuel, d’archéol. orientale, Paris, 1888.--=Baer=, K.
E. von, Historische Fragen, 1873.--=Barkley=, A Ride through Asia
Minor and Armenia, London, 1891.--=Belck=, W., Beiträge zur alten
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* * * * *
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Beiträge zur Geschichte und Topographie Kleinasiens, Berlin, 1872.
* * * * *
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* * * * *
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* * * * *
=Gelzer=, J. H., Das Zeitalter des Gyges (im Rhein. Museum, Vol. XXXV),
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* * * * *
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* * * * *
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* * * * *
=Kärger=, Kleinasien, Berlin, 1892.--=Karolides=, Paul, Die
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Sprache, Göttingen, 1896.
* * * * *
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1890.--=Langlois=, S. A., Voyage dans la Cilicie et dans les montagnes
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Grieksche Opschriften uit Klein-Azie, Amsterdam, 1890.--=Lennep=, H.
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* * * * *
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* * * * *
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* * * * *
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* * * * *
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* * * * *
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* * * * *
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* * * * *
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* * * * *
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* * * * *
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* * * * *
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London, 1890; Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Mysia, London, 1892.
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
COPYRIGHT, 1904,
BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.
_All rights reserved._
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
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 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 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.
[Illustration: A SPECIMEN OF AN ASOKA INSCRIPTION: MATHIA PILLAR]
“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.
2000 B.C. The Indians are that branch of the Indo-European family
which moved from the west into the tableland of Iran, the
valley of the Indus, and the Punjab. Here they were the
first of their family to attain to a higher civilisation
than their brothers. The members of this branch called
themselves Aryans, “the noble” or “the ruling.” In their new
home they found a race of black people, which was enslaved
or expelled.
The sole evidence of their early life is the Rig-Veda, from
which it appears that the knowledge of effectual invocations
and sacrifices to the gods was in possession of certain
families.
1500 They slowly push their way along the spurs of the
Himalayas into the valley of the Ganges, whose aborigines
were enslaved or driven into the Himalayas on the north and
the Deccan on the south.
In the struggle with the natives the separate tribes are
amalgamated into larger communities; the small unions of
tribes become nations, which divide the land of the Ganges
among themselves; the tribal chiefs are changed into
military leaders, and the successful leaders become the
heads of important states. This took a considerable amount
of time. There were the Matsyas on the west bank of the
Jumna; the Surasenas, who lived in the cities of Mathura
and Krishnapura, and the afterwards united kingdoms of the
Bharatas and Panchalas on the Jumna and Ganges. These were
governed at Hastinapura. Farther to the east and north
were the Kosalas whose capital was Ajodhya; the Videhas of
Mithila. On the Ganges were the Kasis, capital Varanasi
(Benares), the Angas at Champa (Bhagalpur), and south of the
river was the kingdom of the Magadhas, the most important on
the Ganges, with the capital at Rajagriha.
1400 This is the approximate beginning of the dynastic
periods for most of the kingdoms on the Ganges. Of the
kingdom of Magadha:
=Brihadratha= reported to be the first king.
His third successor was =Somapi=, the first of the
Barhadrathas.
1300 Somapi, the first of the Barhadratha dynasty.
There are about thirty kings of this dynasty. The last one,
=Ripunjaya=, dies about 800 B.C. They rule at Rajagriha.
1400 =Kuru=, evidently the first dynastic king of the
Bharatas.
The name of the royal family passes over to the people, and
they are henceforth known as the Kurus.
The Kurus are the first to establish extensive dominion over
the tribes of the Upper Ganges, and they drive eastward the
tribes which were once united to them and had followed them
into the Jumna valley,--the Kosalas, Angas, Videhas, and
Magadhas.
It is the struggles of these tribes against the Kurus which
are described in the _Mahabharata_.
The Pandus, a younger race than the Kurus, and who have
become prominent among the Panchalas, rise in rebellion. The
Pandus have many allies. The Kurus disappear in a great war
shortly before 1200 B.C., and the kings of Pandu ascend the
throne of Hastinapura. They hold it for thirty generations,
governing at Hastinapura.
1200 Shortly after the great war, =Parikshit= comes to
the united Kuru (Bharata)--Pandu (Panchala) throne. He
reigns sixty years in Hastinapura, and dies (according to
tradition) from the bite of a snake.
The origin of the kingdom of Kosala was probably of a
somewhat later date than that of Magadha and Bharata. The
people looked to =Manu= as their first king, and reckoned
one hundred and sixteen kings from him to =Prasenajit=
(600-550 B.C.). The age 1400-1200 B.C. is that of the
arrangement of the kingdoms, the establishment of the
position of the nobles, the rise of the Kshattriyas--the
warrior caste.
Their organised kingdoms show a striking contrast to the
condition of those Aryans who remained in the Indus region.
We have no knowledge of their fortunes except that most of
them retained their tribal life without kings. “The people,”
says Duncker, “show not the least interest in preserving the
memory of their actions or fortunes.”
1200-1000 is approximately the period of the formation of
the castes. These were:
(1) The priests or Brahmans--families who had kept to
themselves knowledge of the prayers, rites, and sacrifices
of the religion since the old days.
(2) The Kshattriyas--or warriors (the Rajputs of the present
day), among whom were the rulers of the kingdoms.
(3) The Vaisyas--or husbandmen.
(4) The Sudras--a non-Aryan servile class (the Dasas of the
Rig-Veda), the remnant of the aboriginal tribes.
These castes gradually become separate and distinct.
Intermarriage ceases and each keeps to its hereditary
employments. As yet the Kshattriyas are the most important,
but the priests are slowly influencing the people to the
idea that the relations of men to the gods transcend all the
other relations of life, thereby pushing themselves into the
first place.
The kingdoms on the Ganges continue as in the preceding
epoch. Under king =Nichahra= the capital of the Pandus
(Bharatas) is removed from Hastinapura to Kausambi, lower
down the Ganges.
In the Punjab and the land of the Indus, a considerable
number of principalities have arisen among the kingless
tribes. There are also some nations governed by overseers
of cantons, heads of cities and districts. Among the
states that of Kashmir is the most important. About 1000
B.C. we know there is a brisk trade between the Upper
and Lower Indus. Phœnician ships bring home gold and
sandal-wood, obtained from the Upper Indus. The process
of caste-formation has not gone on to any extent in these
regions, and there are now no links between the people of
the Indus and the Ganges.
1000-800 Era of the struggle for supremacy between the priests
and nobles. At its close the Brahmans have been raised to
the first order, and the severest known class distinctions
in history have become established--distinctions which are
in force at the present day. The supremacy of the priesthood
is due to the new religious view it developed--the discovery
of the idea of Brahma which takes place about 1000 B.C. This
idea was evolved from the mysterious secret of worship, the
spirit of prayer, and the phenomena of birth and decay.
Behind these phenomena lies a single soul--the world soul.
From this soul they arrive at a deity, the cause and basis
of the world. This deity is Brahma. It drives out the
ancient gods. A rigid system of the universe is developed
in which the most spiritual beings stand nearest to Brahma,
while the most material are the most remote. We have no
knowledge as to the resistance made by the Kshattriyas
to these ideas, but they are accepted by the people, and
the Brahmans as being the most spiritual of the people,
attain the first place, and the whole terrible system of
Brahmanism, involving the rise of the people to spirituality
through continuous regeneration, and its complicated
800 system of reward and punishment, comes into effect. Although
they have the first place, the Brahmans do not interfere
with the ruling power in the hands of the Kshattriyas. The
monarchs are in full possession of despotic power, and are
used by the priests to hold their rule. The Brahmans draw
up the customs of family law, marriage and inheritance,
of the rights and duties of the castes. The new system is
not universally adopted. Even on the Ganges some districts
resisted the new system and held to their ancient laws
and customs. In the Indus only a few regions followed the
development.
800 The territory of the Jumna and Ganges has become the
“Sacred Land.”
800-600 Era of development of Indian philosophy. The people
give themselves to the study of worship and dogma under the
Brahmanic system.
800 The dynasty of Pradyota succeeds the Barhadrathas on the
throne of Magadha.
The rulers of this and the other kingdoms are thorough
despots who oppress their people greatly and force severe
taxes and exactions from them.
665 The Saisunaga dynasty succeeds the Pradyota on the
throne of Magadha.
The first two kings are =Kshemadharman= and =Bhattya=.
603 =Bimbisara= succeeds to the throne.
In his reign justice, morals, and religion are regulated in
Magadha and neighbouring states, according to the Brahmanic
system.
560 Birth of Prince Sarvathasiddha (Siddartha) son of
Suddhodana, king of the petty principality of Kapilavastu.
He belonged to the race of the Sakyas, which had emigrated
from the delta of the Indus to the land of the Kosalas.
550 =Ajatasatru= succeeds Bimbisara--is said to have put him
to death.
=Prasenajit=, twenty-third ruler of the Kosalas after the
great war, is their king and rules at Sravasti, a new city
they had built to the north of Ajodhya, the ancient capital.
=Vatsa=, son of Satanika, the twenty-fifth successor of
Parikshit, is king of the Bharatas (Panchalas-Pandus) at
their new capital Kausambi.
The life of these kings is one of great magnificence and
luxury. Their palaces are gorgeous and their harems numerous.
540 According to Arrian, Cyrus the Great reaches the Indus
on his march. This has never been substantiated, though
it is probable that he compelled the nations on the right
bank of the river to pay tribute when he reached Gedrosia
(Baluchistan).
532 Renunciation of the world by Siddartha.
522 He begins to preach his doctrines at Varanasi (Benares).
He is henceforth known as Buddha “the Enlightened.” He
preaches the reformed doctrine known as Buddhism. It points
out a way of escape from the terrible consequences of the
Brahmanical system by the suppression of desire. It ends in
the negation of existence--Nirvana.
It does not thrive in India owing to its abstractness
and morbid views of life as well as by the competition
of Sivaism and Vishnuism. But in modified form it has
flourished in Afghanistan, Tibet, and China.
519 =Udayabhadra= murders his father, Ajatasatru, and
succeeds him.
512 Darius subjugates the tribes on the right bank of the
Indus north of the Kabul. In the reorganisation of the
Persian empire, the territory becomes a satrapy, and is
said to have paid the highest tribute in the whole empire.
The Persian dominion does not seem to have had any deep
influence on the life of the Aryans, and it is uncertain
whether it continued until the coming of Alexander the Great.
503 =Anuruddhaka= murders his father Udayabhadra and
succeeds him.
495 =Nagadasaka= murders his father Anuruddhaka, and
succeeds him.
480 Death of Buddha.
471 Nagadasaka is dethroned by the people and =Sisunaga=, a
son of Ajatasatru, formerly a vassal king of the Vrijis, is
put in his place.
453 =Kalasoka=, his son, succeeds him. He leaves the capital
Rajagriha for a new one he has built--Pataliputra (the
Palibothra of Megasthenes) at the confluence of the Sonu and
Ganges.
After the reign of Ajatasatru the kings of Magadha increase
their power and dominions, and the states to the north and
west of Magadha gradually become a part of that kingdom.
450 The Pandu dynasty of Bharata comes to an end, whereby
the Panchalas and Surasenas become subject to the king of
Magadha.
500-400 The conquests and emigrations of the Aryans extend
to the Deccan and Ceylon.
The pearls and coral found in these localities give a new
impetus to trade.
425 Kalasoka is succeeded by three sons, ruling in
succession.
403 =Nanda=, the head of a robber band, organises an army,
attacks and captures Pataliputra, murders =Pinjamakha=
the king, and ascends the throne. He and his descendants
keeping the kingdom intact, reign until 340, when
340 =Dasasiddhika= is murdered by his wife’s paramour,
Indradatta, who puts his son =Dhanananda= on the throne.
This king is the =Xandrames= or =Agrames= of Greek writers,
and his realm is called the kingdom of the Prasians
(Prachyas or Gangarides). He is said to have acquired great
wealth, and kept an enormous army.
The power of Magadha is at its height.
327 Alexander the Great begins the conquest of the Aryans on
the right bank of the Indus. He captures Pushkala after a
siege of thirty days and overpowers the Gandarians.
After a stubborn resistance, the Asvakas (the Assacanes,
Aspasians, or Hippasians of the Greeks) are subjugated
during the winter.
326 Early in the year Alexander prepares to cross the
Indus. =Mophis=, the ruler of Takahasila (Greek Taxiles),
surrenders without resistance. The king of Kashmir sends his
brother to announce submission, and several smaller princes
come in person to give homage.
Alexander advances to the Vitasta (Hydaspes, modern
Jhelum) river, and meets the army of =King Porus=, whose
territory extends to the Asikni. Porus has been promised the
assistance of the king of Kashmir, in spite of the latter’s
submission to the Macedonian. Before this help arrives
Alexander defeats Porus, but restores him to his throne
and increases his power by assigning him some conquered
territory. The king of Kashmir now comes in person to give
homage. The Asvakas revolt and the Khattias, assisted by
the Kshudrakas and Malavas, make stubborn resistance, but
all are subdued. Other princes submit. The Agalassians are
severely defeated.
325 Alexander sails up the Asikni to the Indus. The tribes
of the Punjab and Indus are easily reduced.
The principalities on the Lower Indus are seized without
difficulty. Alexander fortifies the conquered territory and
establishes satrapies. In August he returns to Persia with
eighty thousand men. In September, Nearchus sails for Persia
with the fleet. After Alexander’s departure =Philippus=, the
satrap of the Punjab, is murdered by mutinous mercenaries.
=Eudemus= and Mophis of Takshasila are made temporary
satraps.
323 June 11, death of Alexander.
321 Antipater appoints =Peithon= satrap of Upper India, and
=Porus= of the Lower Indus. Murder of Porus by Eudemus.
320 This crime instigates =Chandra Gupta= (Sandrocottus), a
man of humble origin, probably a native of the Punjab, to
arouse his countrymen against the Greeks. They flock to his
standard.
317 Chandra Gupta expels the satraps from the land of the
Indus. He proceeds against the kingdom of Magadha.
315 Conquest of Magadha by Chandra Gupta. Dhanananda
probably slain.
312 He ascends the throne of Magadha. Beginning of the
Maurya dynasty.
305 Seleucus attempts to re-establish Greek supremacy in
the Punjab and Indus valley. He encounters army of Chandra
Gupta, is forced to make an unfavourable treaty and alliance
with him.
300 Changes have been introduced into the Brahmanic system
through the influence of Buddhism. Vishnu (the preserver)
and Siva (the destroyer) form a trilogy with Brahma (the
creator). There is a liberation from regeneration.
291 Death of Chandra Gupta. His son =Vindusara= succeeds.
He keeps up the kingdom. Megasthenes is the ambassador of
Seleucus at the court of Magadha.
263 =Asoka= “the Buddhist Constantine,” son of Vindusara,
succeeds to the throne of Magadha.
256-254 Treaty with Antiochus Theos. From being a cruel man
Asoka is converted to Buddhism. Builds monasteries and many
splendid edifices for the new faith. Associates Buddhist
priests with him in the government. Professed by the king
and his family, Buddhism now spreads rapidly throughout
India.
Ceylon under =King Devanampriya-Tishya= (245-205) is also
converted.
The kingdom of Magadha is extended over Surashtra (Guzerat),
Orissa, Kalinga, and in the south beyond the Godavari.
The monumental history of India begins.
226 =Subhagasena= succeeds his father, Asoka. In his reign
or that of his father the columns of Bharhut, Sanchi, and
Buddha Gaya were erected.
180 Eucratides, king of Bactria, conquers the Indus as far
as Patala.
GRÆCO-BACTRIAN DOMINION IN THE INDUS REGION
178 Fall of the dynasty of Maurya.
The Sungas ascend the throne.
Two kings, =Puspamitra= and =Agnimitra=, reign thirty years.
148 The Gupta dynasty succeeds.
125 The Tatar tribe of Su drives the Greeks from Bactria,
and the Græco-Bactrian settlements in the Punjab are
overthrown by Tue-Chi.
The extent of the Scythian invasion has been variously
estimated. Some scholars believe that they virtually
supplanted the previous population of India, and there seems
little doubt that by far the most numerous section of the
Punjab population is of Scythian origin. At all events the
Scythians play an important part in the subsequent history
of northern India, and are the means of Buddhism getting
into central and eastern Asia.
57 Beginning of the era founded in honour of King
Vikramaditya. This name has been borne by several kings in
Indian history--all famous for their struggles against the
Scythians, from which much confusion has arisen.
A.D. 2-78 A.D. By this time the Scythians have established an
empire over which the Kanishka family rules.
78 =Salivahana=, a king of southern India, is supposed
to have checked the advance of the Scythians towards the
south. After this, the fortunes of the invaders undergo many
reverses. From now until the time of the Mohammedan conquest
our knowledge of Indian history is most imperfect. But among
the opponents of the Scythians there are:
60-235 The Sah (or Xatrapa) kings living northwest of Bombay.
319-470 The Gupta kings of Oudh and the northwest provinces.
480-722 The Valabhi kings in Cutch, the northwest districts
of Bombay and Malwa.
510-560 Within the period took place the great battle
of Korur in which King Vikramaditya of Ujjain in Malwa
annihilated the Scythian army.
636 First appearance of the Mohammedans in India.
Osman sends a naval expedition to the Bombay coast.
712 Kasim invades Sind and establishes himself in the Indus
valley.
722 The invaders overthrow the Valabhi dynasty.
828 The Hindus expel the Mohammedans and regain possession
of Sind.
977-1176 Era of Mohammedan invasion.
A portion of the Punjab annexed to the Saracen empire.
1199 Mohammedan conquest of Behar.
1203 Mohammedan conquest of Lower Bengal.
1295-1315 Conquest of southern India.
1398 Tatar invasion of Timur (Tamerlane).
1482 Accession of =Babar=. (The Mogul dynasty.)
1556 Accession of =Akbar the Great=. The Mohammedan empire
of India established.
FOOTNOTES
[16] The word is spelled with various modifications of the second
letter, which is usually pronounced like _s_ in sure.
[17] Isaac Taylor: _The History of the Alphabet_.
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.
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 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 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 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 “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 [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, 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 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 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 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]
[Illustration: RUINS OF OLD INDIAN TEMPLE AT BOMBAY]
CHAPTER II. INDIAN HISTORY--LEGEND AND REALITY
Protected by the highest mountains of the world and traversed
by lovely fertile hills, India is bounded on one side by the
Pacific Ocean and on the other by the Himalayas, watered by a
thousand streams, and great rivers, upon the banks of which
the sun ripens all kinds of delicious fruits which grow of
themselves.
A large population flourishes on the perpetually green, immense
plains sloping down to the sea; the canals are frequented with
navigators who from oldest times have received in exchange for
money the wonderful natural products of the country.
Five harvests are reaped here annually, and the palms,
pine-apples, cinnamon trees, peppers, etc., ripen three times
a year. But by the side of such beauty, steep rocks rise to
the sky, many equalling the Chimborazo in height, and there
are great tracts of arid unwatered sands. The storms are
more violent here than anywhere else, and mountain streams
descend in foaming torrents bearing devastation and ruin as
they traverse the interminable plains on their way to the
sea.--CESARE CANTÙ.
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, 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 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.
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]
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.
[Illustration: ANCIENT INDIAN BAS-RELIEF OF MEN AND ANIMALS]
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
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.
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 “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 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 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.
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. 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.
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 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 when 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
[18] [“The name Vikramaditya,” says Sir W. W. Hunter in his _Brief
History of the Indian People_, p. 81, “is a title meaning ‘A Very Sun
in Prowess,’ which has been borne by several kings in Indian history.
But the Vikramaditya of the first century before Christ was the
greatest of them,--great alike as a defender of his country against the
Scythian hordes, as a patron of men of learning, and as a good ruler of
his subjects.” This will explain the confusion that has enveloped the
name. See also the previous section on “Traditional Kings.”]
[Illustration: RETINUE OF AN INDIAN PRINCE, IN THE TIME OF ALEXANDER
THE GREAT]
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 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 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: “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.
[Illustration: COSTUME OF AN INDIAN WARRIOR
(Based on Soluzen and Dreger)]
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 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.
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 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.
“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 mode 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.
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.
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.
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 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 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 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.
_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 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
[19] The original system seems to have been very lax in this respect,
and each caste might take wives from the caste or castes below them,
as well as their own. “A Sudra woman only, must be the wife of a
Sudra; she and a Vaisya of a Vaisya; they too and a Kshattriya of a
Kshattriya; those too and a Brahmani of a Brahman.” Manu, iii. 13. And
although it was a sin for a Brahman to marry a Sudra woman, yet such
things did happen.
[20] Colebrooke on the Indian Classes, _Asiat. Research._, Vol. LIII.
[Illustration: THE INDIAN ARMY ON THE MARCH]
[Illustration: ANCIENT INDIAN BAS-RELIEF]
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.
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.
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 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 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.”
“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 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. 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 “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 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]
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 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
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.
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 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 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
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]
_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.
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 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, 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 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 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.
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
[21] [This picturesque account by Diodorus has already been given in
the history of Mesopotamia.]
[22] [On the matter of the famous “Juggernaut” procession which has
become a proverb of relentlessness and fanaticism, it is important to
note that Sir W. W. Hunter in his history of _The Indian Empire_ makes
a sweeping denial of the traditions concerning Jagannath, declaring
that his religion is opposed to suicide or slaughter and that the
deaths which happen at his festivals are few in number, less indeed
than at ordinary political parades, and are due to accident or hysteria
and not at all to religious frenzy.]
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_.
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.
* * * * *
=Adams=, H. D., Episodes of Indian History, London,
1891.--=d’Alviella=, G., Ce que l’Inde doit à la Grèce, Paris,
1898.--=Anquetil-Duperron=, La religion des Indous, Paris,
1823.--=Anquetil-Duperron=, A. H., Recherches historiques et géograph.
sur l’Inde, Berlin et Paris, 1876.--=Arrian=, Ἀναβασις Ἀλεξάνδρον
to which is added Arrian’s Indian History--Ἰνδικα--(translated by
Mr. Rooke), London, 1729.--=Assmann=, W., Handbuch der Allgemeinen
Geschichte, Brunswick, 1853.
* * * * *
=Bajnáth=, Lala, Some Problems of Social Reform in Hindu Society,
Aligarh, 1891.--=Balfour=, E., Cyclopædia of India and of Eastern
and Southern Asia, Madras, 1857-1858, 2 vols.--=Barth=, A., Les
religions de l’Inde, Paris, 1879; The Religions of India, London,
1890.--=Bastian=, A., Die Weltauffassung der Buddhisten, Berlin, 1869;
Buddhism als religionsphilosoph. System, Berlin, 1893; Der Buddhismus
in seiner Psychologie, Berlin, 1882.--=Beal=, Samuel, Outline of
Buddhism from Chinese Sources, London, 1876; The Buddhist Tripitaka as
it is known in China and Japan, London, 1876.--=Bell=, J., Compendious
View of Universal History and Literature, London, 1820.--=Benfey=,
Th., Vedica und Verwandtes, Strassburg, 1887.--=Bergaigne=, A., La
religion védique d’après les hymnes du Rig-Véda, Paris, 1878-1883,
3 vols.--=Bettany=, G. T., The Great Indian Religions, London,
1892.--=Beyer=, C., Orientalische Novellen nach den schönsten Sagen aus
Indien und Iran, Leipsic, 1890.--=Bhandarkar=, E. G., Early History of
the Dekkan, Bombay, 1895.--=Bhattacharyya, Yogenda Nath=, Hindu Castes
and Sects, Calcutta, 1896.--=Bhimacharya=, Nyayakosa, or Dictionary of
the Technical Terms of the Nyaya Philosophy, Bombay, 1875.--=Bird=, J.,
On the Historical Geography of Hindustan and the Origin of the Social
State among the Hindus (in Journ. Asiat. Soc. of Bengal, Calcutta,
1840).--=Blavatsky=, Helena P., Die Grundlage der indischen Mystik,
Leipsic, 1893.--=Bohlen=, P. von, De Buddhaismi origine et ætate
definiendis tentamen, Regiomont, 1827; Das alte Indien, Königsberg,
1830, 2 vols.; Das alte Indien mit bes. Rücksicht auf Ægypten,
Königsberg, 1830-1831, 2 vols.--=Le Bon=, G., Les civilisations de
l’Inde, Paris, 1887; Les monuments de l’Inde, Paris, 1892.--=Brodbeck=,
A., Leben und Lehre Buddhas, Zürich, 1895.--=Brosse=, Et., L’Inde
inconnue, Lyons, 1898.--=Brunnhofer=, H., Iran und Turan. Histor.
geogr. und ethnolog. Untersuchungen über den ältesten Schauplatz der
indogerman. Urgeschichte, Leipsic, 1890; Urgeschichte der Arier in
Vorder- und Centralasien, Leipsic, 1893, 3 vols.--=Bühler=, G., A
Digest of Hindu Law, London, 1867-1869.--=Bühler=, G., and =Kirste=,
Indian Studies, Vienna, 1892, 2 vols.--=Burgess=, J., The Ancient
Monuments, Temples, and Sculptures of India, London, 1897.--=Burnouf=,
E., Essai sur le Pali, Paris, 1826; Vendidad-Sadé, l’un des livres
de Zoroastre, Paris, 1830; Commentaires sur le Yaçna, Paris, 1835;
Introduction à l’histoire du Bouddhisme indien, Paris, 1844; Le Lotus
de la Bonne Loi, Paris, 1852; Essai sur le Véda, ou études sur les
religions, la littérature et la constitution sociale de l’Inde, Paris,
1863.--=Burnouf=, E. (in collab. with E. V. S. =Jacquet=), L’Inde
française, Paris, 1827-1835, 2 vols.
* * * * *
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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
COPYRIGHT, 1904,
BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.
_All rights reserved._
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
PERSIAN HISTORY IN OUTLINE
A PRELIMINARY SURVEY COMPRISING A CURSORY VIEW OF THE SWEEP OF EVENTS,
AND A TABLE OF CHRONOLOGY
THE MEDIAN OR SCYTHIAN EMPIRE
The Scythians or Manda, a people whom the Greeks confused
with the Mada or Medes, were a part of the nomadic
Indo-Europeans that migrated into Western Asia from southern
Russia. They descended upon and quite obliterated the
ancient kingdom of Ellipi, east of Assyria and stretching to
the Caspian Sea. In the Ellipian capital of Ecbatana they
seem to have effected quickly the organisation of a state
recognised as a danger to Assyria as far back as the reign
of Esarhaddon.
Of the early rulers at Ecbatana we have no accounts except
those of Herodotus and Ctesias. From these we must assume:
700 B.C. =Deioces=, the first leader or prince mentioned by the
Greeks. He lives at a time of great Assyrian power and seems
to have been a vassal of the kingdom, but he was probably
the founder of his empire. Apparently he did not rule at
Ecbatana, for the kingdom of Ellipi was still in existence.
647 =Phraortes= (=Frawarti=) succeeds. He extends the power
of the Manda, and in his reign the kings of Persia and Elam
are made his vassals.
625 =Cyaxares= succeeds. About this time the Scythians first
invade Assyria. They burn Calah, but are unable to take
Nineveh. They sweep over the land as far as the border of
Egypt, where Psamthek pays them to turn back.
610 Sin-shar-ishkun, king of Assyria, attacks Nabopolassar
of Babylon. The latter calls upon the Manda to help repel
the invaders. The Manda immediately respond and attack
Nineveh.
607 Fall of Nineveh before the Manda. They take possession
of the old kingdom of Assyria as far as the Babylonian
frontier, and begin conquest of the countries of the north.
Cyaxares makes war on the Lydians, the people of Urartu,
Media, Minni, and others.
585 =Ishtuvegu= (=Astyages=) succeeds. His empire extends in
the north and west as far as the river Halys.
553 For some reason, not yet clear, Ishtuvegu proceeds
against his vassal Cyrus, king of the Elamite province of
Anshan.
550 Ishtuvegu is betrayed by his soldiers to Cyrus and made
prisoner. The Elamite king takes Ecbatana, and becomes
king of the Manda.
End of the Median or Scythian empire.
THE PERSIAN EMPIRE
The country of Parsua or Persia was first settled by
Iranian tribes of Indo-European origin. The leading ones
were the Pasagadæ, Maraphians, and Maspians. These lived by
agriculture, cattle raising, and horse breeding, but in the
mountains and desert steppes there were many nomadic tribes
such as the Mardans, Kossæans, and Sagartians. Our earliest
knowledge of Persian history is obtained from the Assyrian
monuments, and the country seems to have been in vassalage
to the mightier conquerors and to have recovered, in a
measure at least, its independence whenever a weaker monarch
ascended the Ninevite throne. The first historical dynasty,
according to Greek historians, is the Achæmenian, and of its
origin we know nothing; the founder, Achæmenes, is probably
a mythical character.
FIRST PERIOD--THE EARLY ACHÆMENIANS AND THE ELAMITE DYNASTY (730-521
B.C.)
730 The first historic king, =Teispes=, rules about this
time. His attainment to power is probably connected with
some relaxation of the Assyrian grip. His successors,
according to Herodotus, are _Cambyses_, =Cyrus=, and
=Teispes II=. The last seems to have conquered the Elamite
province of Anshan, which on his death went to his son
Cyrus, and the throne of Persia to =Ariaramnes=. From the
latter half of the seventh century B.C. reign, independent
of each other, the two lines of the Achæmenians of which
Darius speaks--one in Anshan, where by conquest the
entire ancient kingdom of Elam was absorbed, the other
in Persia. Both houses become vassals of the emperor of
Ecbatana. Ariaramnes is succeeded by =Arsaces=, and then
by =Hystaspes=, and in Elam, =Cyrus I=, according to the
accounts of his grandson, by =Cambyses=, the father of Cyrus
the Great.
559 =Cyrus the Great= succeeds Cambyses on the throne of
Elam.
553 He is attacked by his suzerain, Ishtuvegu (Astyages).
550 Ishtuvegu is betrayed to Cyrus and made prisoner. The
Elamite takes Ecbatana and obtains possession of the Median
or Scythian empire.
His career of conquest begins.
549 Cyrus enters Assyria and takes a district belonging to
Babylonia.
547 King Crœsus of Lydia, fearful of Cyrus’ power,
determines to attack him, and forms a coalition with Aahmes
II of Egypt, Nabonidus of Babylon, and the Spartans.
546 Cyrus meets Crœsus in Cappadocia. The latter, defeated
in two battles, retreats to Sardis and sends for his allies,
who do not appear. Sardis falls in the autumn. Cyrus now
calls himself king of Persia. Hystaspes probably remains his
vassal, as he had been that of Ishtuvegu.
545 The whole of Asia Minor is in Cyrus’ hands. It
is divided into satrapies with strongly organised
governments. Greek cities in Asia Minor gradually subjected.
549-539 Cyrus annexes Bactriana, and makes numerous
successful expeditions in the East.
539 Cyrus starts for Babylon. He is opposed at Upi, but is
victorious and moves southward.
538 Babylon opens her gates to Cyrus. Nabonidus flees. The
Syrio-Phœnician provinces submit. Cyrus gives permission
to the Hebrew exiles to return. The new territory is
reorganised.
529 Death of Cyrus in battle. =Cambyses=, the heir apparent,
has his brother Smerdis put to death.
526 Warlike preparations for conquest of Egypt begin.
Phœnicia furnishes a fleet.
525 Battle of Pelusium. Defeat of Psamthek III. Egypt
becomes a Persian province. Polycrates, of Samos, also
submits. Cambyses plans attack on Carthage, but his army is
lost in the Libyan desert.
524-523 Expedition against Ethiopia, which seems to have
overthrown the kingdom of Napata. The army suffers great
loss in the return march. Cambyses, enraged by this,
outrages the Egyptian gods and the Apis bull.
522 He starts for home, but in Syria is informed that
=Gaumata=, a Magian, has impersonated the murdered Smerdis
and seized the throne. Cambyses commits suicide.
521 The Achæmenian, Darius Hystaspes, of Persia, and six
other princes form a conspiracy against Gaumata, who is
murdered.
SECOND PERIOD--THE PERSIAN DYNASTY (521-331 B.C.)
521 =Darius= made king. The throne now passes to the
“second line” of Teispes II’s descendants. Darius marries
Atossa, wife of Cambyses, and daughter of Cyrus. The end
of the Elamite Dynasty is the signal for revolt in all
the provinces. Babylon rebels, and a son of Nabonidus is
proclaimed king as Nebuchadrezzar III. Susiana rises. Darius
has to begin the reconquest of Cyrus’ empire.
519-518 Babylon besieged, captured, and the usurper put to
death. Another usurper is also put to death. The Scythian
provinces, Parthia, Hyrcania, Urartu, and Margiana are
quieted. Another false Smerdis in Persia is overthrown.
Orœtes, in Sardis, becomes too independent, and is put to
death. In Egypt, the governor, Aryandes, proves disloyal,
and is executed. Darius shows favour to the Egyptian priests.
515 By this date the empire is thoroughly reorganised,
divided into satrapies, and taxes regulated. The Asiatic
Greeks intrigue with those of Europe. Expedition of Darius
into Scythia. He crosses the Bosporus with 800,000 troops,
and his generals reduce towns in Thrace and make the king of
Macedonia pay tribute.
512 Darius marches to the Indus, subjugating the tribes on
the right bank north of the Kabul. The region is formed into
a satrapy.
506 The overthrown Athenian tyrant, Hippias, appeals
to Artaphernes, satrap of Sardis, for restoration. The
Athenians refuse to comply with a request for restoration.
499 Aristagoras, satrap of Miletus, revolts, and is
supported by the Greeks on the Ægean Sea. The Persians
attack Naxos. The Ionians revolt.
498 Sardis burned by Aristagoras. The Ionian war begins.
494 Ionians defeated off Lade. Fall of Miletus and end of
the war.
492 Mardonius sets out to reconquer Greece. He captures some
towns in the archipelago, but his fleet is wrecked off Athos.
491 Persian forces concentrated in Cilicia for the second
attack on Greece.
490 Invasion of Greece under Datis and Artaphernes. Naxos
and Eretria taken. Defeat at Marathon. Darius begins
collection of another army, but his plans are suddenly
486 stopped for Egypt revolts, the Persians are expelled,
and Khabbash placed on the throne.
485 Death of Darius and is succeeded by his son =Xerxes I=.
484 Defeat of Khabbash in a naval battle. Achæmenes, brother
of Xerxes, made satrap of Egypt.
481 Revolt in Babylon crushed; her temples pillaged.
480 Invasion of Greece. The Persians victorious at
Thermopylæ and Artemisia.
Athens occupied. Battle of Salamis. Defeat of Persians.
Athens evacuated.
479 Invasion of Attica under Mardonius. Defeat of Platæa.
Persian fleet also defeated at Mycale.
479-478 Ionia and the islands lost to Persia.
476 Persians expelled from Thrace.
470 Fall of Eion.
465 Cimon’s victory over the Persians at the mouth of the
Eurymedon. Xerxes is assassinated by Artabanus in league
with Artaxerxes, who also puts his elder brother Darius to
death.
464 =Artaxerxes I= takes the throne.
462 A rising in Bactria is quelled after two battles.
460 Rebellion in Egypt under Inarus, king of Libya, assisted
by the Athenians.
459 Victory of Inarus at Papremis. He besieges the Persians
in Memphis.
455-454 Megabyzus with a large army finally subdues Egypt at
Prosphitis. Thannyras is made king of Libya in his father’s
place. Some Egyptians proclaim Amyrtæus king in the Saïd.
449 Persians attempt to recover Cyprus. Cimon of Athens
opposes them. Death of Cimon. Persian fleet and army
defeated at Salamis in Cyprus. Callias concludes a treaty of
peace between Persia and Athens.
448 Megabyzus, governor of Syria, rebels. He is subdued and
pardoned.
424 Death of Artaxerxes. His eldest son =Xerxes II= reigns
forty-five days, and is murdered by Artaxerxes’ illegitimate
son =Sogdianus=, who after six months’ rule is in turn
423 killed by another bastard son Ochus, who assumes the name
of =Darius II= (=Nothus=) and marries his aunt Parysatis.
The king’s brother Arsites, and Artyphius, son of Megabyzus,
rebel. They are overcome, and Arsites put to death.
418 Revolt of Pissuthenes, satrap of Lydia. It is put down
by Tissaphernes.
412 Amorges, son of Pissuthenes, who has continued the
revolt in Caria, is finally overcome. Treaty with Sparta
recognising Darius’ suzerainty over Greek cities in Asia
Minor. Cities in Ionia and Caria recovered. The Spartans
intrigue with Tissaphernes.
408 Cyrus, the king’s son, made satrap of Lydia, Phrygia,
and Cappadocia. Tissaphernes retains the coast cities only.
Cyrus burns for revenge on the Athenians.
405 Cyrus allies himself with the Spartans and is accused of
treason. He aims to procure the throne for himself.
Amyrtæus (Amen-Rut) proclaims the independence of Egypt.
404 Death of Darius. Cyrus attempts to kill Arsaces, the
eldest son and heir, but fails. Arsaces ascends the throne
as =Artaxerxes II=.
401 Cyrus sets out for Persia with an army, but is met and
defeated at Cunaxa by the imperial forces. Cyrus dies in the
battle. Retreat of the ten thousand Greeks, his mercenaries.
Alliance of Persia and Athens against Sparta.
399 Amyrtæus (Amen-Rut) in Egypt succeeded by Niafaarut I.
Egypt recovers her old-time activity; she intrigues with
Syria and Cyprus against Persia.
Artaxerxes is compelled to send an army raised for the
suppression of Egypt into Asia Minor.
394 Conon at the head of the Persian fleet defeats the
Spartans at Cnidus.
391 Artaxerxes and Evagoras of Cyprus at open war.
387 Peace of Antalcidas. The Asiatic Greeks are given back
to the Persian power.
386-385 War between Cyprus and Persia. Defeat of Evagoras.
Haker of Egypt allies himself with the Pisidians.
Artaxerxes’ campaign against the Cadusians.
383 Surrender of Evagoras to Persia.
378 Nectanebo I ascends throne of Egypt. Chabrias, the
Athenian, reorganises the Egyptian army.
374 Failure through mutiny of the mercenaries of the Persian
expedition against Nectanebo.
370-365 The satraps of Asia Minor break out in revolt. This
weakens the empire greatly.
364 Tachus succeeds Nectanebo I in Egypt.
361 Tachus invades Syria.
359 His nephew Nectanebo II seizes the Egyptian throne and
Tachus is obliged to take refuge with the Persians.
358 Death of Artaxerxes II. His son Ochus murders all
possible claimants, and takes the throne with the name of
=Artaxerxes III=. Defeat of the Persians in Egypt.
352 Revolt of Tennes of Sidon against Persia. Cyprus joins
him.
347 Isocrates exhorts Philip of Macedon to attack Persia.
345 Tennes betrays Sidon to Artaxerxes III. The city is
cruelly punished. Cyprus subdued.
340 Conquest of Egypt by Artaxerxes.
338 Murder of Artaxerxes by the prime minister, the eunuch
Bagoas. =Arses=, the king’s youngest son, placed on the
throne.
336 The Macedonian army crosses into Asia. Death of Philip.
335 Bagoas puts Arses and his children to death. Codomannus,
great-grandson of Darius II, placed on the throne as =Darius
III=. He has Bagoas put to death.
334 Alexander crosses the Hellespont. Battle of the
Granicus. Mysia, Lydia, Caria, and Lycia submit to the
Greeks.
333 Battles of Issus and Amanus. Phrygia, Cappadocia, and
Cilicia submit to the Greeks; also the whole of northern
Syria.
332 Alexander captures Tyre,--Phœnicia, Judea, and Samaria
submit. Egypt goes over to the Greeks. Darius’ attempt to
recover Asia Minor is frustrated.
331 Alexander invades Assyria. Battle of Arbela which
overthrows the Achæmenian Dynasty. Darius flees into Media.
Fall of Babylon and Susa. Pasagarda and Persepolis captured.
330 Bessus, satrap of Bactria, seizes Darius and murders
him. He calls himself =Artaxerxes IV=, but finally falls
into Alexander’s hands and is put to death.
[Illustration: FROM THE CAPITAL AT SUSA
(Now in the Louvre)]
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.
“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 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]
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, “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.
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 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, 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
[23] [See Chap. II.]
[Illustration: BAS-RELIEF FROM THE PALACE AT PERSEPOLIS]
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
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 700-607 B.C.]]
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 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.
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 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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 607-585 B.C.]]
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 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.”
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 585 B.C.]]
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]
[Illustration: COSTUME OF A PERSIAN KING.]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 555 B.C.]]
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.
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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 553 B.C.]]
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.
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 }
Phraortes 22 years } }
} 150 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 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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 700-625 B.C.]]
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
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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 625-600 B.C.]]
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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 600-550 B.C.]]
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 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 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.
“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 “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
[24] [It is interesting to note that this description tallies very well
with what the Assyrian monuments have taught us concerning the Mada or
true Medes, whom the Greeks confused so hopelessly with the Manda or
Scythians of whom Cyaxares and Astyages were kings.]
[25] [The philological confusion is now complete. Deioces may have been
a Median prince, since the political conditions described by Herodotus
are precisely those that existed in Media; whereas, so far as we can
ascertain from the Babylonian monuments, the Manda had a strong central
government ruling at Ecbatana.]
[26] [Professor Sayce in the article “Babylonia and Assyria,” in
the New Volumes of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, says: “Under
his [Asshurbanapal’s] successor, Asshur-etil-ilani, the Scythians
penetrated into Assyria and made their way as far as the borders of
Egypt. Calah was burned, though the strong walls of Nineveh protected
the relics of the Assyrian army which had taken refuge behind them.”
This occurred about 626 B.C.]
[27] [Of course since the Scythians themselves were besieging Nineveh,
this could not be. But it is easy to see how the application of one
name to another people could have been responsible for Herodotus’
words.]
[28] Probably the Agusi of the Assyrian texts.
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
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 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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 836-546 B.C.]]
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.
[Sidenote: [_ca._ 730-550 B.C.]]
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]
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.
|
1. Teispes.
|
2. Cambyses.
|
3. Cyrus.
|
4. Teispes.
|
+--------------+--------------+
| |
{ 5. Cyrus. Ariaramnes. }
{ | | }
First { 6. Cambyses. Arsames. } Second
line. { | | } line.
{ 7. Cyrus (Great King). Hystaspes. }
{ | | }
{ 8. Cambyses (Great King). 9. Darius (Great King). }
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.
[Sidenote: [550-546 B.C.]]
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.
[Sidenote: [550-538 B.C.]]
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 sudden 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 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.
[Sidenote: [538-529 B.C.]]
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
[Sidenote: [529 B.C.]]
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: ‘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
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.
“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 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.
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.
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, 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
[Sidenote: [529-525 B.C.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [525-523 B.C.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [523-522 B.C.]]
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; 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.
[Sidenote: [522 B.C.]]
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
accepted 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
[29] [Or rather, as the latest authorities hold, of Elam.]
[30] [The exact fortunes of the expedition to Ethiopia have always been
a matter of historical dispute. Dr. Prasek has recently made a most
critical examination of all the ancient accounts, and concludes: “There
seems to be no good reason to doubt that Cambyses reached Napata,
and overthrew the old Ethiopian kingdom, which to be sure was later
re-established at Meroë. But, returning through the sandy desert in
the terrible heat of the summer, the Persian army had to endure the
agonies of thirst, and its ranks were decimated.”--_Kambyses und die
Ueberlieferung des Altertums._]
[31] [See Herodotus, Book III, chap. 35.]
[Illustration: RUINS OF DARIUS’ PALACE, PERSEPOLIS]
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
[Sidenote: [521-519 B.C.]]
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 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, 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.
[Sidenote: [520-518 B.C.]]
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.
[Sidenote: [515 B.C.]]
Darius did not attempt to subjugate the races that peopled his domains;
on the contrary, he encouraged the people to retain their languages,
customs, 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.
[Sidenote: [515-512 B.C.]]
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 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 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 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.
[Sidenote: [513-487 B.C.]]
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.
[Illustration: OLD PERSIAN ALTARS]
_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, then 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.
[Sidenote: [522-487 B.C.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [486-485 B.C.]]
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.
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
[Sidenote: [484-480 B.C.]]
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.
[Sidenote: [480-464 B.C.]]
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 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
[Sidenote: [464-454 B.C.]]
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 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 he gave over the prisoners to his mother Amestris,
who had Inarus crucified to avenge the death of Achæmenes.
[Illustration: PERSIAN INSCRIPTIONS OF DARIUS AND XERXES
(From casts in the British Museum, London.)]
[Sidenote: [454-449 B.C.]]
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.
[Sidenote: [448-405 B.C.]]
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.
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.
[Sidenote: [405-399 B.C.]]
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 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.
[Sidenote: [399-387 B.C.]]
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.
[Sidenote: [387-378 B.C.]]
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.
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 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.
[Sidenote: [378-373 B.C.]]
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.
[Illustration: PERSIAN WARRIOR
(After Du Sommerard)]
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.
[Sidenote: [373-361 B.C.]]
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.
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.
[Sidenote: [361-352 B.C.]]
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.
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.
[Sidenote: [352-340 B.C.]]
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, 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.
[Sidenote: [340-338 B.C.]]
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 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, 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 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
[Sidenote: [338-330 B.C.]]
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 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]
[Sidenote: [330 B.C.]]
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.
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, “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
[32] [We reserve full details of the Persian wars with Greece for the
next volume.]
[Illustration: PERSIAN LION FROM THE PALACE OF DARIUS AT SUSA]
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]
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 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, 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 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.
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.
[Illustration: COSTUME OF A PERSIAN PRIEST
(After Du Sommerard)]
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 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.
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 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 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 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 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. 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 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.
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 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
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 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 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.
[Illustration: COSTUME OF A PERSIAN KING
(After Du Sommerard)]
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.
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 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 1_l._
0_s._ 4_d._ 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 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 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
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 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.
[Illustration: PERSIAN BAS-RELIEF AT PASARGADA]
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.
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.
[Illustration: PERSIAN MONUMENT AT PASARGADA]
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 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.
[Illustration: BAS-RELIEF IN DOOR FRAME OF PALACE, PERSEPOLIS]
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, 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]
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._
A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PERSIAN HISTORY
BASED ON THE WORKS QUOTED, CITED, OR EDITORIALLY CONSULTED IN THE
PREPARATION OF THE PRESENT HISTORY.
=Ælianus=, Claudius, Ηοικίλη Ἱστορία, Rome, 1545.--=Æschylus=, Persæ,
Tragedies of Æschylos. Literally translated by Th. A. Buckley, London,
1663.--=Alcock=, Th., Travels in Russia, Persia, Turkey, and Greece in
1828-1829, London, 1831.--=Ali Riza= of Shiraz (Ibn Abd al-Karim), Das
tarikh i-Zendije (herausg. von Ernst Beer). History of the Zend-Dynasty
in Persia, Leyden, 1888.--=Anacleri=, G., La Persia deseritta,
relazione di un viaggio, Napoli, 1868.--=Arbuthnot=, Persian Portraits,
London, 1887.--=Augur=, T., Tratado de la conquista de las islas de la
Persia y Arabia de la muchas tierras, Salamanca, 1512.
* * * * *
=Babelon=, E., Catalogue des monnaies grecques de la Bibliot.
Nationale: Les perses, achémenides, les satrapes et les dynastes
tributaires de leur empire, Cypre et Phénicie, Paris, 1894.--=Backer=,
L. de, La Perse et la question d’orient, Saint Omer, 1867.--=Bang=,
W., Zur Erklärung der altpersischen Keilinschriften (in Mélanges
de Charles de Harlez), Leyden, 1896.--=Barbier de Meynard=, C. A.,
Dictionnaire géographique, historique et littéraire de la Perse et des
contrées adjacentes, Paris, 1861.--=Bassett=, J., Persia and the Land
of the Imans, London, 1887.--=Bauer=, A., Die Kyrossage und Verwandtes
(in Wiener Acad. d. Wiss. Bd. 100, 1882, Wien, 1882).--=Benjamin=,
S. G. W., Persia and the Persians, London-Boston, 1887; The Story of
Persia, New York, 1891.--=Berchet=, G., La Repubblica di Venezia e
la Persia, Torino, 1865.--=Bezold=, C., Die Achämenideninschriften,
Leipsic, 1882.--=Bible, The Holy= (“authorised version”), London,
1611; (“revised version”) London, 1884.--=Bird=, I., Journeys in
Persia and Kurdestan, London, 1893.--=Boettger=, B., Persische
Heldensagen, Eppendorf, 1900.--=Bonvalot=, Revolutions de la Perse
ancienne et moderne, Paris, 1833.--=Booth=, A. J., The Discovery and
Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions, New York,
1902.--=Borrichius=, A., De Persico Imperio, Hafn, 1688.--=Brodbeck=,
A. Zoroaster, ein Beitrag zur vergleichenden Geschichte der Religionen
und philosophischen Systeme des Morgen- und Abendlandes, Leipsic,
1893.--=Brugsch=, H., Reise der k. preussischen Gesandtschaft
nach Persien, Berlin, 1860-1861.--=Brun-Renaud=, C. G. N., La
Perse politique et militaire au XIX siècle, Paris, 1894.--=Bruyn=,
Le, Reysen over Moscovien door Persien en Oost-Indien, Delft,
1711.--=Buchholz=, A., Quæstiones de Persarum Satrapis Satrapusque,
Leipsic, 1895.--=Buckingham=, J. S., Travels in Assyria, Media, and
Persia, London, 1828.--=Burnouf=, E., Mémoire sur deux inscriptions
cunéiformes, Paris, 1836; Études sur la langue et les textes Zendes,
Paris, 1840-1850; Science of Religions, London, 1888.
* * * * *
=Casartelli=, L. C., The Philosophy of the Mazdayasnian Religion
under the Sassanides, Bombay, 1889; La religion des rois achéménides
d’après leurs inscriptions, Brussels, 1895.--=Castonnet des
Fosses=, H., Les Relations de la France avec la Perse, Angers,
1889.--=Champollion-Figeac=, J. F., Histoire des peuples anciens
et modernes, Asie orientale, la Perse, Lagny, 1857.--=Chardin=,
F., Voyages en Perse et autres lieux de l’orient, Paris, 1811,
10 vols.; Travels into Persia and the East Indies, London,
1836.--=Clermont-Ganneau=, C. S., Études d’archéologie orientale,
Paris, 1895.--=Cloquet=, L., L’art monumental des Indous et des Perses,
Brussels, 1896.--=Collins=, E. T., In the Kingdom of the Shah, London,
1896.--=Ctesias=, Persica.--=Curzon=, G. V., Persia and the Persian
Question, London, 1892, 2 vols.
* * * * *
=Darmesteter=, J., Haurvatat et Ameretat, essai sur la mythologie
de l’Avesta, Paris, 1875; Essais orientaux, Paris, 1883; Ormuzd,
et Ahriman, Paris, 1877; Études iraniennes, Paris. 1883, 2
vols.; “the Zend-Avesta” in “Sacred Books of the East,” London,
1880-1883.--=Delattre=, A. L., Le peuple et l’empire des mèdes,
Brussels, 1883.--=Della Valle=, P., Viaggi in la Turchia, la Persia
et l’India, Brighton, 1843, 2 vols.--=Desai=, P. B., History of
the Kings of Persia, Bombay, 1895, 2 vols.--=Dieulafoy=, J., L’art
antique de la Perse, Paris, 1882-1889, 5 parts; La Perse, la Chaldée
et la Susiane, Paris, 1887; L’acropole de Suse, d’après les fouilles
de 1884-1886, Paris, 1887.--=Dorn=, B., Collection des monnaies
Sassanides, St. Petersburg, 1873; Muhammedanische Quellen zur
Geschichte, St. Petersburg, 1850-1858.--=Dubeux=, L., La Perse, Paris,
1841.--=Duncker=, M., Geschichte des Alterthums, 5th edition, Leipsic,
1878-1883, 7 vols.
* * * * *
=Ehrenstein=, A., Persien, Leipsic, 1829, 3 vols.--=Evers=, E., Das
Emporkommen der persischen Macht unter Cyrus, Berlin, 1884; Der
historische Wert der griechischen Berichte über Cyrus und Cambyses,
Berlin, 1888.
* * * * *
=Fava-Parvis=, G., A bordo della Persia: impressioni e recordi, Torino,
1900.--=Feis=, L. de, La Battaglia di Cunassa in un Mosaico pompiano,
Florence, 1893.--=Fergusson=, J., The Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis
Restored. An Essay on Ancient Assyrian and Persian Architecture,
London, 1851.--=Ferrier=, J. I., Voyages en Perse, dans l’Afghanistan,
le Bélouchistan et le Turkestan, Paris, 1860, 2 vols.--=Feuvrier=, Dr.,
Trois ans à la cour de Perse, Paris, 1899.--=Flandin=, E. et =Coste=,
P., Voyage en Perse, Paris, 1844-1854, 6 vols. (Vol. I contains Perse
Ancienne, 245 plates).--=Floigl=, Victor, Cyrus und Herodot nach den
vorgefundenen Keilinschriften, Leipsic, 1881.--=Fontane=, M., Histoire
Universelle, Paris, 1881.--=Francklin=, W., Observations made on a Tour
from Bengal to Persia in the Years 1786-1787, with a Short Account of
the Remains of Persepolis, London, 1790.--=Fraser=, J., Travels and
Adventures in the Persian Provinces, London, 1826; A Winter’s Journey
from Constantinople to Teheran, with Travels through Various Parts of
Persia, London, 1838.--=Fryer=, J., A New Account of East India and
Persia, London, 1698.
* * * * *
=Galetti=, Geschichte von Persien, Gotha, 1832.--=Gayet=, A., L’art
Persan, Paris, 1895.--=Geiger=, Ostiranische Cultur im Altherthum,
Berlin, 1882.--=Geiger=, W., and =Windischmann=, Zarathustra in den
Gathas, 1899; and =Kuhn=, E., Grundriss der iranischen Philologie,
Strassburg, 1895.--=Gobineau=, J. A., Histoire des Perses d’après
les auteurs orientaux, grecs et latins, Paris, 1869.--=Gobineau=,
J. de, Les Religions et les Philosophies de l’Asie Centrale,
Paris, 1865.--=Gordon=, Sir T. E., Persia Revisited, London,
1895.--=Grotefend=, G. F., in Heeren’s Historical Researches,
Oxford, 1838-1846, 5 vols.--=Grundy=, The Great Persian War and its
Preliminaries. A Study of the Evidence, Literary and Topographical,
New York, 1902.--=Guenot=, L., La Perse ancienne et nouvelle, Paris,
1862.--=Gutschmid=, A. von, Geschichte Irans von Alexander dem Grossen
bis zum Untergang der Arsakiden, Tübingen, 1888.
* * * * *
=Hammer-Purgstall=, J., Geschichte der schönen Redekünste
Persiens, mit einer Blütenlese aus persischen Dichtern, Wien,
1818; Geschichte der Ilchane, d. i. der Mongolen in Persien,
Darmstadt, 1842-1843.--=Harris=, W. R., From Batoum to Bagdad,
London, 1896.--=Heeren=, A. H. L., Historical Researches,
Oxford, 1833.--=Hegel=, G. W. F., Lectures on the Philosophy of
History, London, 1857.--=Herodotus=, Historiæ, Strasburg, 1816,
5 vols.--=Hoeck=, C. F. C., Veteris mediæ et Persiæ monumenta,
Göttingen, 1818.--=Hommaire de Hell=, Adèle, Voyage en Turquie et en
Perse, Paris, 1854-1856, 3 vols.--=Hommel=, F., Neubabylonien, Elam
und Persien (in Handbuch der class. Altertumswissenschaft, Vol. 3),
Nördlingen, 1889.--=Hoonacker=, A. V., Néhémie en l’an 20 d’Artaxerxes
I. Gand, 1892.--=Horn=, P., Geschichte der persischen Literatur,
Leipsic, 1901.--=Houtoum-Schindler=, Eastern Persian Irak, London,
1897.--=Hovelacque=, Abel, L’Avesta, Zoroastre et le Mazdéisme, Paris,
1880.--=Hunt=, Outram and Havelock’s Persian Campaign, to which
is prefixed a Summary of Persian History by G. Townsend, London,
1858.--=Husain=, Mirza, History of the Bab, Cambridge, 1893.
* * * * *
=Jackson=, A. V. W., Avesta (in Library of the World’s Best Literature,
Vol. 2); Ancient India and Persia; their Literature and Civilisation.
Syllabus printed by Rutgers College (January, 1898).--=Judeich=, W.,
Untersuchungen zur griechisch-persischen Geschichte des IV. Jahrh,
Marburg, 1892.--=Justi=, F., Geschichte des alten Persiens, Berlin,
1879; Iranisches Namenbuch, Marburg, 1895.--=Justinus=, Historiarum
Philippicarum Libri XLIV, Venice, 1470.
* * * * *
=Kaufman=, M., Some Modern Views of Zoroastrianism, London,
1897.--=Kendall=, The Cradle of the Aryans, 1891.--=Kenrick=,
John, Ancient Egypt under the Pharaohs, London, 1850, 2
vols.--=Kiesenwetter=, K., Der Occultismus des Alterthums, Leipsic, 3
vols.--=Kinneir=, J. M., A Geographical Memoir of the Persian Empire,
London, 1813.--=Kossowicz=, C., Inscriptiones palæo-persicæ, Petropoli,
1872.--=Krusinski=, P., History of the Revolution of Persia from His
Memoirs, translated into English, Dublin, 1729.
* * * * *
=Laet=, T. de, Persia, Lugd. Bat., 1633.--=Langlés=, L., Voyages
de la Perse dans l’Inde et du Bengal en Perse, avec une notice sur
les révolutions de la Perse, un mémoire historique sur Persepolis
et des notes, Paris, 1798.--=Laurent=, F., Études sur l’histoire de
l’humanité, Paris, 1800.--=Layard=, Sir A. H., Early Adventures in
Persia, London, 1887.--=Lenormant=, F., Sur la Monarchie des Mèdes,
Paris, 1871.--=Lichtenstein=, A. A. H., Tentamen Palæographiae
Assyrico-Persicæ, Helmstädt, 1803.--=Lincke=, A., Forschungen zur alten
Geschichte. I. Zur Lösung der Kambyses-Frage, Leipsic.
* * * * *
=Malcolm=, Sir J., History of Persia, London, 1829; Sketches of Persian
Life and Manners, London, 1828.--=Mano=, R. du, État de la Perse en
1660, Paris, 1890.--=Markham=, C. R., General Sketch of the History of
Persia, London, 1874.--=Marquardt=, P., Untersuchungen zur Geschichte
von Eran, Göttingen, 1897.--=Maspero=, G. H., Histoire ancienne des
peuples de l’orient, Paris, 1886.--=Ménant=, J., Les langues perdues de
la Perse et de l’Assyrie-Perse, Paris, 1885; Les écritures cunéiformes,
Paris, 1860; Les Achéménides et les inscriptions de la Perse, Paris,
1872.--=Meyer=, Eduard, Geschichte des Alterthums, Stuttgart,
1884-1902, 5 vols.--=Mir-Davoud=, Davoud zadour de Melik Schauazar,
Notices sur l’état actuel de la Perse, Paris, 1818.--=Mirkhond=, M.,
The History of Atabegs of Syria and Persia (edited by Morley), London,
1848.--=Mitford=, G. N., The Chronicles of a Traveller, or a History
of the Afghan Wars with Persia, London, 1800.--=Montagne=, E., Les
Légendes de la Perse, Paris, 1890.--=Montclius=, O., Der Orient und
Europa, Berlin, 1900.--=Morier=, J., A Journey through Persia, Armenia,
and Asia Minor to Constantinople, London, 1812; A Second Journey
through Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor, London, 1818.--=Mounsey=, A.
H., A Journey through the Caucasus and the Interior of Persia, London,
1872.
* * * * *
=Niebuhr=, C., Lectures on Ancient History, London, 1852.--=Nolde=,
Ed., Reise nach Innerarabien, Kurdistan und Armenien, Braunschweig,
1895.--=Nöldeke=, Th., Oriental Sketches, London; Persia (article in
the Ninth Edition of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_); Geschichte des
Korans, 1860; Tabaris Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der
Sassaniden, 1879; Aufsätze zur persischen Geschichte, Leipsic, 1887;
Persische Studien, 1888; Orientalische Skizzen, 1892; Das iranische
Nationalepos, Strassburg, 1896.
* * * * *
=Oppert=, J., Le peuple et la langue des mèdes, Paris, 1871;
Inscriptions des achéménides, Paris, 1852; et =Ménant=, J., Documents
juridiques de l’Assyrie et de la Chaldée, Paris, 1877.--=Ouseley=, W.,
Travels in various Countries of the East, more particularly Persia,
London, 1819-1823.--=Osculati=, G., Note d’un viaggio nella Persia e
nelle Indie orientali negli anni 1841-1842, Milano, 1844.
* * * * *
=Perrot=, G., and =Chipiez=, C., History of Art in Persia, London,
1892.--=Picault=, C., Histoire des Révolutions de Perse pendant
la durée du 18. siècle, Paris, 1810, 2 vols.--=Pinches=, Th.,
Inscriptions (in Transactions of the Soc. of Bibl. Arch., Vols.
VI and VII).--=Pizzi=, I., Storia della poesia persiana, Torino,
1894.--=Polak=, T. E., Persien, das Land und seine Bewohner, Leipsic,
1865, 2 vols.--=Poole=, S. L., The Mohammedan Dynasties, London,
1894.--=Prasek=, J. V., Forschungen zur Geschichte des Alterthums (3
parts), Leipsic, 1898; Die ersten Jahre Dareios des Hystaspiden und der
altpersische Kalender, Leipsic, 1901.--=Prellberg=, V., Persien, eine
historische Landschaft, Leipsic, 1901.--=Prévost-Paradol=, L. A., Essai
sur l’histoire universelle, Paris, 1890.--=Price=, W., Journal of the
British Embassy to Persia, London, 1832.
* * * * *
=Ragozin=, Z. A., The Story of Media, Babylon, and Persia, New York,
1888. (Story of the Nations.)--=Rassam=, Hormuzd, Excavations and
Discoveries in Assyria (Persia) (in Transactions of Soc. of Bibl.
Archæol., Vol. VII, London, 1880).--=Rawlinson=, G., A Manual of
Ancient History, Oxford, 1869; The Five Great Monarchies, London, 1871,
3 vols.; The Seventh Great Oriental Monarchy, London, 1876; Parthia,
London, 1893.--=Rawlinson=, H. C., Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western
Asia, 1861-1870; The Persian Cuneiform Inscription at Behistun, London,
1846.--=Reed=, E. A., Persian Literature, ancient and modern, Chicago,
1893.--=Renan=, J. E., Histoire du peuple d’Israël, Paris, 1887-1893,
4 vols.--=Rennell=, J., Illustrations of the Expedition of Cyrus the
Great, London, 1816.--=Reynier=, J. L. E., De l’économie politique
et rurale des perses et des phéniciens, Genève, 1819.--=Rich=, C.,
Narrative of a Journey to the Site of Babylon in 1811, with Narrative
of a Journey to Persepolis, London, 1839.--=Rothstein=, J. W., Die
Dynastie der Lachmiden in al-Hira. Ein Beitrag zur arab.-pers.
Geschichte zur Zeit der Sassaniden, Berlin, 1899.--=Roux=, M., Mémoire
sur Midia, Paris, 1822.
* * * * *
=Sacy=, Silvestre de, A. T., Mémoires sur diverses antiquitées de
la Perse, Paris, 1793.--=Sarre=, Denkmäler persischer Baukunst,
Berlin, 1901; Transkaukasien, Persien, Mesopotamien, Transkaspien,
Berlin, 1899.--=Sauvebeuf=, Comte Ferrières de, Mémoires historiques,
politiques et géographiques de voyages faits en Turquie, en Perse et en
Arabie 1782-1789, Paris, 1790.--=Sayce=, A. H., The Higher Criticism
and the Verdict of the Monuments, London, 1894.--=Schlosser=, F. C.,
Weltgeschichte, Frankfurt, 1844.--=Schwab=, B., Les Coupes magiques et
l’hydromancie dans l’Antiquité orientale, Paris, 1891.--=Schwab=, M.,
Bibliographie de la Perse, Paris, 1875.--=Schwarz=, J. v., Alexanders
des Grossen Feldzüge in Turkestan, München.--=Shepherd=, W. A., From
Bombay to Bushire and Bassora, including an Account of the Present
State of Persia and Notes on the Persian War, London, 1857.--=Sherley=,
A. R. and F., The Three Brothers, or the Travels and Adventures of
the Three Sherleys, London, 1825.--=Solinus=, Caius Julius. “The
excellent and pleasant Worke of Julius Solinus Polyhistor, containing
the noble Actions of humaine creatures, the Secrets and Providence
of Nature, the description of Countries, the manners of the People,
&c., &c., translated out of the Latin by Arthur Golding, Gent.”
London, 1587.--=Southgate=, H., Narrative of a Tour through Armenia,
Kurdistan, Persia, and Mesopotamia, with Observations on the Condition
of Mohammedanism in those Countries, London, 1840.--=Spiegel=,
F. von, Eran, das Land zwischen Indus u. Tigris, Berlin, 1868;
Eranische Alterthumskunde, Leipsic, 1873, 3 vols.; Einleitung in
die traditionellen Schriften der Parsen, Wien, 1856; Iranian Art
(translated by Darab Sanjana), London, 1886; Anecdota Palica, Leipsic,
1845; Die traditionelle Litteratur der Parsen in ihrem Zusammenhang
mit den angrenzenden Litteraturen, Wien, 1860; Die Alexandersage
bei den Orientalen, Leipsic, 1851; =Stack=, E., Six Months in
Persia, London, 1882.--=Stackelburg=, Bemerkungen zur persischen
Sagengeschichte (in Wiener Zeitschr. für d. Kunde des Morgenlandes,
Vol. 12, p. 230).--=Stahl=, A. F., Reise in Nord- and Central-Persien,
Gotha, 1896.--=Stevens=, J., The History of Persia, London,
1815.--=Stockeler=, J. H., Fifteen Months’ Pilgrimage through Untrodden
Tracts of Khuzistan and Persia, through Parts of Arabia, Persia,
Armenia, 1831-1832.--=Stolze=, F., Persepolis, Die achæmenidischen
und sassanidischen Denkmäler und Inschriften von Persepolis, Istakhr,
Pasargadæ, Shahpur, Berlin, 1882.
* * * * *
=Tabari=, Abu Jaafar-Mohammed, Geschichte der Perser und Araber
zur Zeit der Sassaniden (übersetzt von Th. Nöldeke), Leyden,
1879.--=Tassy=, Garcin de, La poésie philos. et religieuse chez les
persans, Paris, 1864.--=Taylor=, J., The Origins of the Aryans, London,
1890.--=Terrien de Lacouperie=, A. E. T. B., L’ère des arsacides en
248 avant J. C., Louvain, 1891.--=Texier=, Ch., L’Arménie, la Perse,
etc., Paris, 1843.--=Thomas=, E., Early Sassanian Inscriptions, London,
1868.--=Tiele=, C. P., Cyrus de Groote en de godsdienst van Babel (in
Mélanges de Harlez), Leyden.
* * * * *
=Vaux=, W. S. W., Ancient History from the Monuments; Persia from the
Earliest Period to the Arab Conquest, London, 1894.--=Viaggi=, fatti da
Venetia alla Tana in Persia, Venetia, 1543.
* * * * *
=Wagner=, M., Reise nach Persien und dem Lande der Kurden, Leipsic,
1852, 2 vols.--=Wahl=, S. F. G., Allgemeine Geschichte der morgenländ.
Sprachen und Litteraturen, Leipsic. 1784.--=Wallis=, H., Typical
examples of Persian and Oriental Ceramic Art, London, 1891-1893, 2
vols.--=Waring=, E. S., Tour to Shiraz, by Kazroon and Feerozabad,
London, 1809.--=Watson=, C. F., Darius, the Median; Chronologies of
Ancient Monarchies, London, 1885.--=Watson=, R. G., A History of Persia
from Beginning of XIXth Century, etc., London, 1873.--=Weber=, G.,
Allgemeine Weltgeschichte, Leipsic, 1857-1880.--=Weeks=, E. L., From
the Black Sea through Persia and India, London, 1896.--=Weissbach=,
F. H., Die Achämeniden-Inschriften zweiter Gattung, Leipsic,
1890.--=Weissbach=, F. H., and =Bang=, W., Die altpersischen
Keilinschriften, Leipsic, 1893.--=Wills=, Dr. C. J., In the Land
of the Lion and the Sun, London, 1883; Persia as it is, London,
1886.--=Wilson=, Sir C., Handbook of Asia Minor, Transcaucasia, Persia,
etc., London, 1895.--=Wilson=, S. G., Persian Life and Customs, New
York and Chicago, 1895.--=Wolffgarten=, De Ephori et Dinonis historiis
a Trogo Pompeio expressis, Bonn, 1868.
* * * * *
=Xenophon=, Κυροπαιδεία, Florence, 1516; Ξενοφῶντος Κύρον Ἀναβάσις,
Oxford, 1735.
* * * * *
=Yate=, Charles Edward, Khorassan and Sistan, Edinburgh,
1900.--=Yonan=, J. M., Persian Women, Nashville, 1898.
[Illustration: MAP OF ANCIENT INDIA.
BORMAY & CO.]
[Illustration: MINOR NATIONS OF WESTERN ASIA.
BORMAY & CO.]
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