Part 7

Astyages having given his daughter Mandane in marriage to a Persian chieftain named Cambyses, the issue of this marriage was the famous Cyrus, the founder of the Persian monarchy. The circumstances which led to the revolt of the Persians under Cyrus against the Medes, and the dethronement by him of his grand-father Astyages (B. C. 560), had been woven into a romance resembling the story of Romulus, even so early as the age of Herodotus (B. C. 408), so that that accurate historian could not ascertain the particulars. ‘The native Persians,’ says Mr. Grote, ‘whom Cyrus conducted, were an aggregate of seven agricultural and four nomadic tribes, all of them rude, hardy, and brave, dwelling in a mountainous region, clothed in skins, ignorant of wine or fruit, of any of the commonest luxuries of life, and despising the very idea of purchase or sale. Their tribes were very unequal in point of dignity; first in estimation among them stood the Pasargadæ; and the first clan among the Pasargadæ were the Achæmenidæ, to whom Cyrus belonged. Whether his relationship to the Median king whom he dethroned was a fact or a politic fiction we cannot well determine, but Xenophon gives us to understand that the conquest of Media by the Persians was reported to him as having been an obstinate and protracted struggle.’

Master of Media, the Persian chief in his turn became a great Oriental conqueror; indeed all the Oriental conquests bear the same character. A nomadic race, led by a chief of great abilities, invades the more organized states, and conquers them; the chief assumes the government, and founds a dynasty, which after a rule of several generations, becomes enervated, and gives way before some new nomadic incursion. The first power against which Cyrus turned his arms, after having subdued the Medes, was the famous Lydian kingdom, which then subsisted in Asia Minor under the great Crœsus. And here, therefore, we must give some account of the ancient condition of Asia Minor and its principalities.

STATES OF ASIA MINOR――THE LYDIANS. The river Halys divided Asia Minor into two parts. East of the Halys, or near its source, were various nations of the Semitic stock――Cappadocians, Cilicians, Pamphylians etc.――each organized apart, but all included under the Assyrian, and latterly, as we have seen, under the Median empire. West of the Halys, the inhabitants were apparently of the Indo-Germanic race, although separated by many removes from the Indo-Germans of Persia. Overspreading this part of Asia Minor, as well as Thrace and other parts of south-eastern Europe, this great race had been broken up into fragments distinguished by characteristic differences. To enumerate these various nations, assigning to each its exact geographical limits, is impossible; the chief, however, were the Bithynians, a sort of Asiatic Thracians on the southern coast of the Euxine; the Lydians and Carians in the south-west; and, intermediate between the two, geographically as well as in respect of race and language, the Mysians and Phrygians. These were the native states; but along the whole Ægean shore was diffused a large Greek population, emigrants, it is believed, from European Greece, chiefly gathered into cities. These Greeks of Asia Minor were of three races――the Æolic Greeks in the north, and the Ionian and Dorian Greeks in the south; and perhaps the earliest manifestations of Greek genius, political or literary, were among these Greeks of Asia. The intercourse of these Greeks with the native Lydians, Phrygians, etc., gave rise to mixture of population as well as to interchange of habits; the native music especially of the Lydians and Phrygians became incorporated with that of the Greeks.

When Lydia, with its capital Sardis, first began to be a powerful state, is not known; it is remarkable, however, that the Lydians are not mentioned in Homer. According to Herodotus, the Lydians traced their history back through three dynasties. 1_st_, The Atyadæ, from the earliest times to B. C. 1221; 2_d_, The Heracleidæ, from B. C. 122 to B. C. 716; and 3_d_, The Mermnadæ. Only the last dynasty is historic; the manner in which it succeeded to that of the Heracleidæ forms the subject of a curious Lydian legend.

The first king of the Mermoad dynasty was Gyges (B. C. 716-678), the second Ardys (B. C. 678-629), in whose reign the Cimmerians invaded Asia Minor, the third Sadyattes (B. C. 629-617), the fourth Alyattes (B. C. 617-560). Each of these Lydian kings was engaged in wars both with the Asiatic Greeks of the coast and the native states of the interior. The growth of the Lydian power was impeded by the Cimmerian invasion; but those savage nomades were at length expelled by Alyattes; and Crœsus, the son of Alyattes by an Ionian wife, having succeeded his father B. C. 560, soon raised himself to the position of a great potentate, ruling over nearly the whole country westward of the Halys, comprehending Æolian, Ionian, and Dorian Greeks; Phrygians; Mysians, Paphlagonians, Bithynians, Carians, Pamphylians, etc. At Sardis, the capital of this extensive dominion, was accumulated an immense treasure, composed of the tribute which the Lydian monarch derived from the subject states; hence the proverb, ‘as rich as Crœsus.’

Separated from the Median kingdom only by the river Halys, the Lydian dominion naturally became an object of desire to Cyrus after he had acquired the sovereignty of Media. Accordingly (B. C. 546), provoked by an invasion of Crœsus, who had received from the Delphic oracle the equivocal assurance, that ‘if he attacked the Persians he would subvert a mighty monarchy,’ Cyrus crossed the Halys, advanced into Lydia, took Sardis, and made Crœsus prisoner. It was intended by the conqueror that the Lydian king should be burnt alive――it is even said that the fire was kindled for the purpose; Cyrus, however, spared his life, and Crœsus became his friend and confidential adviser. On the subversion of the Lydian monarchy, its subjects, the Greeks of Asia Minor, were obliged to submit to the conqueror, after having in vain solicited the aid of their brethren the European Greeks. The Lacedæmonians indeed sent an embassy into Asia Minor; and one of their ambassadors had a conference with Cyrus at Sardis, where he warned him ‘not to lay hands on any of the Greek towns, for the Lacedæmonians would not permit it.’ ‘Who are the Lacedæmonians?’ said the astonished warrior. Having been informed that the Lacedæmonians were a Greek people, who had a capital called Sparta, where there was a regular market, ‘I have never yet,’ said he, ‘been afraid of this kind of men, who have a set place in the middle of their city where they meet to cheat one another and tell lies. If I live, they shall have troubles of their own to talk about.’ To save themselves from the Persians, the Ionian portion of the Asiatic Greeks proposed a universal emigration to the island of Sardinia――a striking design, which, however, was not carried into execution. All Asia Minor ultimately yielded to Cyrus.

THE PERSIAN EMPIRE. Having subdued Asia Minor, Cyrus next turned his arms against the Assyrians of Babylon. His siege and capture of Babylon (B. C. 538), when he effected his entrance by diverting the course of the Euphrates, form one of the most romantic incidents in history; an incident connected with Scriptural narrative through its result――the emancipation of the Jews from their captivity. Along with Babylon, its dependencies, Phœnicia and Palestine, came under the Persians.

Cyrus, one of the most remarkable men of the ancient world, having perished in an invasion of Scythia (B. C. 529), was succeeded by his son Cambyses, who annexed Egypt to the Persian empire (B. C. 525), having defeated Psammanitus, the son of the Pharaoh Amasis. Foiled in his intention of penetrating Libya and Ethiopia, Cambyses was dethroned by a Magian impostor, who called himself Smerdis, pretending that he was the younger brother of Cambyses, although this brother had been put to death by the order of Cambyses during a fit of madness. A conspiracy of seven great nobles having been formed against the false Smerdis, he was put to death. He was succeeded by one of the conspiring chiefs called Darius Hystaspes, who reigned――over the immense Persian empire, extending from the Nile to the Indus, and beyond it――from B. C. 531 to B. C. 485. ‘The reign of Darius,’ says Mr. Grote, ‘was one of organization, different from that of his predecessor――a difference which the Persians well understood and noted, calling Cyrus “the father,” Cambyses “the master,” and Darius “the retail trader or huckster.” In the mouth of the Persians this last epithet must be construed as no insignificant compliment, since it intimates that he was the first to introduce some methodical order into the imperial administration and finances. Under the two former kings there was no definite amount of tribute levied upon the subject provinces. But Darius probably felt it expedient to relieve the provinces from the burden of undefined exactions. He distributed the whole empire into twenty departments (called Satrapies), imposing upon each a fixed annual tax. This, however, did not prevent each satrap (the Persian governor appointed by the king) in his own province from indefinite requisitions. The satrap was a little king, who acted nearly as he pleased in the internal administration of his province, subject only to the necessity of sending up the imperial tribute to the king at Susa, the capital of the Persian empire; of keeping off foreign enemies; and of furnishing an adequate military contingent for the foreign enterprises of the great king. To every satrap was attached a royal secretary or comptroller of the revenue, who probably managed the imperial finances in the province, and to whom the court of Susa might perhaps look as a watch upon the satrap himself. The satrap or the secretary apportioned the sum payable by the satrapy in the aggregate among the various component districts, towns, or provinces, leaving to the local authorities in each of these latter the task of assessing it upon individual inhabitants. From necessity, therefore, as well as from indolence of temper and political incompetence, the Persians were compelled to respect the authorities which they found standing both in town and country, and to leave in their hands a large measure of genuine influence. Often even the petty kings who had governed separate districts during their state of independence, prior to the Persian conquest, retained their title and dignity as tributaries to the court of Susa. The empire of the great king was thus an aggregate of heterogeneous elements, connected together by no tie except that of common fear and subjection――noway coherent nor self-supporting, nor pervaded by any common system or spirit of nationality.’

CONTINUATION THROUGH GREEK AND ROMAN HISTORY. How Darius, in consequence of the assistance rendered by the Athenians to the Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor, who had revolted against him (B. C. 502), sent a vast Persian army into European Greece; how this army was defeated by the Athenian general, Miltiades, with only 11,000 men, in the glorious battle of Marathon (B. C. 490); how, ten years later, Xerxes, the son and successor of Darius, undertook an expedition against Greece with a host of several millions, and was defeated by Themistocles in a naval battle at Salamis (B. C. 480), which was followed by two contemporaneous defeats of his lieutenants at Platæa and Mycale (B. C. 479); how the Persians were thus finally driven back into Asia; how for a century and a-half relations, sometimes hostile and sometimes friendly, were maintained between the Greek states and the Persian monarchs, the degenerate successors of Darius and Xerxes, under whom the empire had begun to crumble; how at length, in the reign of Darius Codomannus (B. C. 324), Alexander the Great retaliated on the Persians the wrongs they had done the Greeks by invading and destroying their decrepit empire, and organizing all the countries between the Adriatic and the Indus under, not a Semitic, as in the case of the Assyrian empire, nor an Indo-Germanic, as in the case of the Persic empire, but a Greek or Pelasgic system; how, on Alexander’s death (B. C. 323), this vast agglomeration of the human species fell asunder into three Greek monarchies――the Macedonian monarchy, including the states of European Greece; the Egyptian monarchy of the Ptolemies, including, besides Egypt, Phœnicia, Palestine, and Arabia; and the Syrian monarchy of the Seleucidæ, comprehending, although with a weak grasp, Asia Minor (or at least parts of it which had belonged to the Lydian and Assyrian empires), Syria, Assyria, and Babylonia――with the loss, however, of the countries between the Tigris and the Indus, where a germ of independence arose (B. C. 236) in a native nomad dynasty, which ultimately united all the tribes of Iran in one empire, called _the Parthian_ _Empire_; and how these three fragments dragged on a separate existence, full of wars and revolts; all this belongs to Grecian history.

How, about two centuries and a half before Christ, another, but more mixed portion of this Pelasgic family, which had arisen in Italy, and in the course of several centuries rendered itself coëxtensive with that peninsula――began to assume consequence in the wider area of the Mediterranean world: how it first grappled with the power of the Carthaginians (B. C. 264-201), who for several centuries had been pursuing the career of world-merchants, formerly pursued by their fathers the Phœnicians; how it then assailed and subdued the crumbling Macedonian monarchy, incorporating all Greece with itself (B. C. 134); how retrograding, so to speak, into Asia, it gradually absorbed the Syrian and Egyptian monarchies, till it came into collision with the Parthian empire at the Euphrates (B. C. 134-B. C. 60); how, advancing into the new regions of northern and western Europe, it compelled the yet uncultured races there――the Celts or Gauls, the Iberians, etc.――to enter the pale of civilization (B. C. 80-50); how thus, from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, was founded a new empire, called ‘The Roman,’ retaining, with vast additions, all that portion of humanity which the former empires had embraced, with the exception of what had lapsed back to the Parthians; how this empire subsisted for several centuries, a great mass of matured humanity girt by comparative barbarism――that is, surrounded on the east by the Parthians, on the south by the Ethiopians, on the north by the Germans and Scythians, and on the west by the roar of the Atlantic; and how at last (A. D. 400-475) this great mass, having lost its vitality, fell asunder before the irruption of the barbaric element――that is, the Germans, the Scythians, and the Arabs――giving rise to the infant condition of the modern world; all this belongs to Roman history, which forms the subject of a separate treatise.

With one general remark we shall conclude; namely: that the progress of history――that is, of Caucasian development――has evidently been, upon the whole, from the east westward. First, as we have seen, the Assyrian or Semitic fermentation affected western Asia as far as the Mediterranean; then the Persian movement extended the historic stage to the Ægean; after that the Macedonian conquest extended it to the Adriatic; and finally, the Romans extended it to the Atlantic. For fifteen centuries humanity kept dashing itself against this barrier; till, at length, like a great missionary sent in search, the spirit of Columbus shot across the Atlantic. And now, in the form of a dominant Anglic race, though with large inter-mixture, Caucasian vitality is working in its newest method, with Ethiopian help, on the broad and fertile field of America.

HISTORY OF GREECE――EARLY MYTHOLOGY.

The history of the Grecian states commences about 1800 years before Christ, when the Egyptians on the opposite side of the Mediterranean were in a high state of civilization; but the portion of history which precedes 884 B. C. is understood to be fabulous, and entitled to little credit.

According to the Greek poets, the original inhabitants of the country, denominated Pelasgians, were a race of savages, who lived in caves, and clothed themselves with the skins of the wild beasts. Uranus, an Egyptian prince, landed in the country, and became the father of a family of giants, named Titans, who rebelled against, and dethroned him. His son Saturn, who reigned in his stead, in order to prevent the like misfortune from befalling himself, ordered all his own children to be put to death as soon as they were born. But one named Jupiter was concealed by the mother, and reared in the island of Crete, from which in time he returned, and deposed his father. The Titans, jealous of this new prince, rebelled against him, but were vanished and expelled for ever from the country.

Jupiter divided his dominions with his brothers Neptune and Pluto.

The countries which he reserved to himself he governed with great wisdom, holding his court on Mount Olympus, a hill in Thessaly, 9000 feet in height, and the loftiest in Greece. Any truth which there might be in the story of the Titans and their princes was completely disguised by the poets, and by the popular imagination. Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, were looked back to, not as mortals, but as deities; and the top of Mount Olympus was supposed to be the heavenly residence of gods, by whom the affairs of mortals were governed. And for ages after the dawn of philosophy, these deified sons of Saturn, and numberless others connected with them, were the objects of the national worship, not only among the Greeks, but also among the Romans.

At an uncertain but very early date an Asiatic people named the Hellenes immigrated into Greece, in some cases expelling the Pelasgi, and in others intermingling with them, so that in process of time all the inhabitants of Greece came to be called Hellenes. They were, however, divided into several tribes the principal of which were the Dorians, Æolians, and Ionians, each of whom spoke a dialect differing in some respect from those made use of by the others. These dialects were named the Doric, Æolic, and Ionic, in reference to the tribes which used them; and a fourth, which was afterwards formed from the Ionic, was named the Attic, from its being spoken by the inhabitants of Attica.

In the year 1856 B. C., Inachus a Phœnician adventurer, is said to have arrived in Greece at the head of a small band of his countrymen. Phœnicia, a petty state on the coast of the Mediterranean, in Asia Minor, was at this time one of a few countries, including Egypt and Assyria, in which some degree of civilization prevailed, while all the rest of the people of the earth remained in their original barbarism like the Pelasgians before the supposed arrival of Uranus. Navigation for the purposes of commerce, and the art of writing, are said to have originated with the Phœnicans. On their arrival in Greece, Inachus and his friends founded the city of Argos, at the head of what is now called the Gulf of Napoli, in the Peloponnesus.

Three hundred years after this event (1556 B. C.), a colony, led by an Egyptian named Cecrops, arrived in Attica, and founded the celebrated city of Athens, fortifying a high rock which rose precipitously above the site afterwards occupied by the town.

Egypt is situated in the north-eastern part of Africa. It is bounded on the north by the Mediterranean Sea, and is watered by the great river Nile, the periodical overflowings of which by supplying the moisture necessary for vegetation, render the soil very fertile. From this country, which had at a very early period made considerable advances in some of the arts and sciences (see ANCIENT HISTORY), Cecrops imparted much valuable knowledge to the rude inhabitants of Attica, whom he had persuaded or obliged to acknowledge him as their chief or king. He placed his rocky fastness under the protection of an Egyptian goddess, from whose Greek name, _Athena_ (afterwards changed by the Latins into Minerva), the city which subsequently rose around the eminence was called Athens.

About the year 1493 B. C., Cadmus, a Phœnician, founded the city of Thebes in Bœotia; and among other useful things which he communicated to the Greeks, he is said to have taught them alphabetical writing, although it is certain that that art did not come into common use in Greece until several centuries after this period.

The city of Corinth, situated on the narrow isthmus which connects the Peloponnesus with the mainland of Greece, was founded in the year 1520 B. C., and from its very advantageous position on the arm of the sea to which it anciently gave its name, but which is now known as the Gulf of Lepanto, it very soon became a place of considerable commercial importance. Sparta or Lacedæmon, the celebrated capital of Laconia in the Peloponnesus, is said to have been founded about 1520 B. C. by Lelex, an Egyptian.

In the year 1485 B. C., an Egyptian named Danaus, accompanied by a party of his countrymen, arrived at Argos, the inhabitants of which must have been at that period in an exceedingly rude state, since it is said that he excited their gratitude so much by teaching them to dig wells, when the streams from which they were supplied with water were dried up with the heat, that they elected him as their king.

Fully more than a century after this period (about 1350 B. C.), Pelops, the son of a king of Phrygia, a country in Asia Minor, settled in that part of Greece which was afterwards called from him Peloponnesus, or the island of Pelops, where he married the daughter of one of the native princes, whom he afterwards succeeded on the throne. In the course of his long reign, he found means to strengthen and greatly extend his influence in Greece, by forming matrimonial alliances between various branches of his own house and the other royal families of the Peloponnesus. Agamemnon, king of Mycenæ, in Argolis, who was, according to the poet Homer, the commander-in-chief of the Greeks at the siege of Troy, and Menelaus, king of Sparta, on account of whose wrongs that war was undertaken, were descended from this Phrygian adventurer.

Hercules, a Theban prince, was another of the descendants of Pelops.

The numerous and extraordinary feats of strength and valor of Hercules excited the admiration of his cotemporaries, and being afterwards exaggerated and embellished by the poets, caused him at length to be regarded as a person endowed with supernatural powers, and even to be worshiped as a god.